Lilian Jackson Braun - Cat 11 Who Lived High

From the Press Club Qwilleran wandered over to the public library, one of the few buildings in town that had not changed, except for the addition of a parking structure. It was forty times the size of the library in Pickax, and he wondered if Polly Duncan had ever seen it. She crossed his mind more often than he imagined she would. What would she think of the Casablanca elevators? The tenants? The conversation pit? The mushroom paintings? The gold faucets?

The waterbed? He doubted that she had the objectivity to appreciate a building that looked like a refrigerator.

Browsing through the library's local history collection, he was gratified to find abundant material on the Casablanca in the years when Zwinger Boulevard was crowded with horses and carriages - later with Stanley Steamers and Columbus Electrics. Photos in sepia or black and white depicted presidents, financial wizards, and theater greats standing on the front steps of the building, or stepping from a Duesenberg with the assistance of a uniformed doorman, or dining in the Palm Pavilion on the roof. Women in satin hobble skirts and furs, escorted by men in opera cloaks and top hats, were shown departing for a charity ball. In the grassy park adjoining the building a bevy of nursemaids aired infants in perambulators, and overdressed children batted shuttlecocks with battledores. There was even a photo of the undersized swimming pool with male bathers wearing long-legged bathing suits.

What interested Qwilleran most were the pictures of Harrison Plumb with his little moustache, probably a souvenir of his Paris days. He was shown sometimes with his friend Grinchman, often with visiting dignitaries, frequently with his wife and three children, the boys in knee pants and little Adelaide with ringlets cascading below the brim of a flower-laden hat. In later photos Adelaide and her father posed in a Stutz Bearcat or at a tea table on the terrace. Qwilleran recalled hearing that the personalities and events of the past seep into the brick and stones and woodwork of an old building, giving it an aura. If true, that accounted for the Casablanca magic that Lowell had tried to describe.

Following his two-hour immersion in the gentle, elegant past, Qwilleran found the whizzing traffic hard to take. He walked home briskly because a cold breeze was blowing, and Zwinger Boulevard, with its high buildings, functioned as a wind tunnel. It had been called Eat Street by the Fluxion food editor, and Qwilleran counted a dozen ethnic restaurants not to be found in Moose County: Polynesian, Mexican, Japanese, Hungarian, Szechuan, and Middle Eastern, to name a few.

He intended to try them all. He wished Polly were with him.

It was the end of the day, and tenants were converging on the Casablanca by car, bus, and taxi. Qwilleran, the only one to arrive on foot, checked the parking lot, hoping that his space might be vacant, but this time a 1975 jalopy was parked in #28.

As he joined the miscellaneous crew trooping through the front door, a man with a reddish moustache hailed him.

"Hi! Did you move in?" "Yes, I've joined the happy few," Qwilleran acknowledged.

"What floor?" "Fourteen." "Does the roof still leak?" "I'll know better when it rains, but they claim to have fixed it yesterday." "You must have connections. They never fix anything around here." He ran ahead to catch the elevator, and only then did Qwilleran realize that he was the friendly jogger who had helped him on his arrival Sunday afternoon.

In the lobby were workmen in coveralls carrying six-packs, boisterous students with bookbags, women dressed for success and carrying briefcases, and elderly inmates with canes and bandages and swollen legs. Together they created the atmosphere of a bus terminal and a hospital corridor.

Most tenants stopped in the mailroom to unlock their mailboxes, after which they looked sourly at what they found there. Upon entering the crowded cubicle, Qwilleran had to dodge a large hairless man wearing a T-shirt imprinted "Ferdie Le Bull." Next, a middle-aged woman in a sequin-studded black cocktail dress, looking anxiously at a handful of envelopes, collided with him.

"Sorry," he mumbled.

"Well, hello!" she said in a girlish voice, regarding his moustache appreciatively. "Where have they been hiding you?" There was no mail in Qwilleran's box. It was too soon to hear from Polly, and other letters were being intercepted by his part-time secretary.

Rupert was standing by as if expecting an emergency, his red hat having the visibility of a fire hydrant. Mrs. Tuttle was sitting behind her desk, knitting, but keeping a stern eye on the engineering students. And among those waiting for the elevator was Amber, carrying a bag of groceries and looking tired.