Chuckles climbs on my bed and settles into my lap. This must be worse than I thought if he’s offering me comfort. You know how those nature shows on cable TV talk about how animals have a preternatural instinct to sniff out natural disasters like tornadoes and earthquakes before they happen?
Uh oh.
“Why did you just go blank?” Amy asks. She keeps wandering in and out of the room and I see why. Her hair is pulled up now in a perfect up-do, one long, springy curl cascading down around each ear. Her work suit is cut to fit her curves and she’s inserting a simple pearl earring into one creamy lobe.
“Why do you look like a young Chelsea Clinton?”
She beams. “Do I? Because she worked for venture capital firms, too, and now she makes $600,000 a year!” My inadvertent compliment makes me forget, for a split second, the mess in cyberspace I apparently need to deal with in real life. At Anterdec.
Today.
“I think that $600,000 has something to do with her last name, Amy.”
“Whatever.” Amy fluffs her hair. “If I can make half that I don’t need to chase billionaires.”
Ouch. Chuckles leaps off my lap and gives her ankles a rub. Too bad she’s not wearing laces. His head twitches around and our eyes lock, as if my damn cat read my mind.
“What time is the meeting?” I ask Amanda.
“One o’clock. But Greg wants to have a strategy session before we go.”
“Strategy session?”
“James McCormick wants us to start evaluating his high-end properties immediately. They’ve experienced a significant financial loss over the past two quarters at their major hotels, specifically.” She claps her hands with joy, like Pee Wee Herman. “We’re gonna shop The Fort! We’re gonna shop The Fort.”
All I can manage is a scowl. “One o’clock.” Can I wait that long?
My damn mind-reading friend says, “Text him. Call him.”
“He didn’t text or call me!”
“Maybe he’s just busy.”
“Amanda, he was sexting nonstop after our last date, and then he goes cold.” I hold up a finger to get her to pause. She’s sliding her shoes back on, and I want to warn her, but...
I type Please call me and click send, hoping he replies.
She watches me, and when I’m done Amanda says, “Maybe he lost his phone in a toilet?”
I throw a pillow at her. Chuckles chases after it, then stops at her foot. I open my mouth to say something but it’s too late.
“Jesus Christ!” she screams as a thin stream of yellow pee hits her foot. She limps back into the bathroom, whimpering something that sounds close to a Scottish curse you’d hear Geillis Duncan mutter in one of the Outlander books.
Chuckles looks back and me and I swear he winks.
“Bad kitty,” I mutter through a smile.
“Did you train him to do that? Why does he pee on laces and gladiator shoes, of all things?”
“Your kink is not my kink,” Amy says as she slings her leather bag over her shoulder. She really does look like a commanding businesswoman, ready to take on a boardroom full of investors, cat-pee-free and blissfully unencumbered by Twitter rumors about her sociopathic use of a bad-boy billionaire to clinch a business deal while cheating on her lesbian wife.
Say that five times fast.
“What does that even mean?” Amanda shouts from the other room. “I don’t have a kink. I’m vanilla.”
“Nobody’s truly vanilla,” Amy scoffs. She gives me a mischievous look, playing Amanda. “You have to have a kink. Getting golden showers from Grumpy Cat, for instance.”
“Golden what?”
Amy frowns at me. “And she’s the one who gets to do sexy toy store evaluations?” She shakes her head sadly but, thankfully, does not elaborate.
“No, but Mom offered to go with her on those.”
Amy’s face twists with agony. “Poor Amanda.”
“Right. Mom has a kink or two she can lend.”
“I don’t need a kink!” Amanda insists, walking into my bedroom smelling like the orange air freshener spray we keep in there.
“Everyone needs a kink,” Amy and I say in unison.
And it was like saying Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, because my front door opens and in walks my mom.
“You summoned her!” Amanda hisses. She’s holding her sandals again, and turns to my closet just as Mom walks into the scene. “You better have some nice shoes I can borrow.”
Mom looks at Amanda’s shoes and immediately whips around to look at Chuckles, who is staring into the mirror on the back of my bedroom door and hissing at that strange cat.
“You wore shoes with long laces around him?” Mom giggles and shakes her head slowly. “I’m so sorry.”
“Why are you sorry?” I ask.
“That’s my fault. Um…” Her brow furrows. “Actually, it’s your father’s fault. He wore that gladiator outfit that one time we got into this little role play where I pretended to be tied up for the Kraken to come and take me, and Chuckles panicked. He peed all over Jason’s feet and I haven’t been able to wear a pair of sandals with ankle laces ever since.”
Amy freezes in the doorway.
“But Marie, the Kraken…why would you use that in a bedroom role play?” Amanda’s muted voice calls back. She’s buried in my closet. I see her ass poking out and I want to kick it.
“Don’t provoke her! I don’t want to hear!” Amy dashes out the door. I hear the apartment door slam. My fingers are in my ears as I say “tra-la-la-la-la” as loudly as I can to drown out whatever depravity-laden story Mom is oversharing.
Amanda’s distinctly paling face tells me I need to keep up my verbal assault. Even Chuckles looks a shade or two lighter than usual.
“Shannon! Shannon! You can pull your fingers out of your ears,” she says with exasperation, as if I am the transgressor.
Amanda mouths Be careful.
I pull my fingers out and Mom says, “You’re coming to my yoga class on Friday.” It’s Tuesday, so I have three days to agree and then come up with a really lame excuse to back out. Agnes might rough me up in the alley if I show my face without Declan’s ass.
“Okay,” I say.
“And no excuses! Chuckles did not have a leg amputated, like you said last month to get out of coming.”
Damn. Chuckles examines his front paw with a distinct expression of relief. Great. I’m going to come home to find he’s used my jelly bean stash as a litter box, aren’t I?