Raining Cat Sitters and Dogs (5 page)

As slender and dark as Michael is broad and blond, Paco also gives women hopeless fantasies of turning a gay
man straight. His family is Greek-American, but he can pass for just about any nationality, which is a strong asset in his line of work. He’s also a master at disguise, and there have been times when our paths crossed while he was working undercover and I didn’t recognize him. Since I’ve come close to blowing a few drug busts that way, he now gives me a secret hand signal if we meet when he’s in disguise—usually his way of telling me to back the heck off. After thirteen years as my brother-in-love, Paco is almost as dear to me as Michael.

Michael works twenty-four/forty-eight at the firehouse, which means he’s on duty twenty-four hours, then off forty-eight. Paco doesn’t have any set schedule, and Michael and I never question him about where or when he’s working. He wouldn’t tell us if we did, and we’re better off not knowing because we would worry a lot more than we already do.

Michael’s twenty-four-hour duty had ended that morning at eight, and from the looks of the bags of groceries he and Paco were hauling out of his car, he had apparently left the firehouse and hit every supermarket in Sarasota. Michael is the family cook. He’s also the firehouse cook. If it were possible, Michael would be the world’s cook. I don’t think it’s because he loves throwing raw stuff in pots and pans and putting them over heat, I think cooking is merely one step toward his real goal, which is to feed people. With all due respect to the miracles Jesus performed, give Michael a few fish and a little bread, and he’d not only feed multitudes with it, he’d season it and turn it into the best dinner anybody ever ate. Plus he’d give them dessert.

When I pulled my Bronco into its spot, Michael and Paco paused with their arms full of groceries and watched me slide out of the driver’s seat.

I said, “Have I missed a hurricane warning?”

As soon as I said it, I regretted it because it’s not cute to joke about hurricanes in Florida. Especially not in the middle of hurricane season.

Michael said, “I just stocked up on staples. We were running low.”

Behind Michael’s back, Paco rolled his eyes at me because he and I are pretty sure Michael has enough staples to last at least ten years.

I leaned over his car trunk and hoisted out a bushel basket of green beans. “Yeah, I’ve been worried about our green bean supply.”

Paco grinned and headed toward the back door of their house.

Michael said, “I got those at the farmers’ market out on Fruitville. Got some sweet corn too. It’s all organic.” He got a creative light in his eyes just at the thought of what he could do with those green beans and ears of corn.

We all moved across the sandy yard to the house’s wooden deck and into the kitchen, where Ella Fitzgerald was impatiently waiting. She ran first to Michael for a quick cuddle and reassurance that he was going to be home for a
long
time, and then to Paco to get her ears ruffled. Only then did she deign to wind around my ankles and tell me hello.

Ella is a true calico Persian mix given to me as a kitten by a woman leaving the country. If Ella had never met Michael and Paco, she would have been happy with me,
but one look at them and she swooned into their arms the same way most females dream of doing. It probably had as much to do with the smell in their kitchen as their looks. My kitchen smelled like tea bags and bottled water. Michael’s kitchen smelled like love.

While Ella watched from her accustomed stool at the big butcher-block island in the center of the kitchen, I helped put away a few groceries so I wouldn’t look so much like a taker instead of a giver. Then I kissed the top of Ella’s head, promised Michael I wouldn’t be late for dinner, and left them with their organic booty.

I didn’t tell them about the young men coming in Big Bubba’s house looking for a girl named Jaz, or say anything about Hetty Soames hiring Jaz to help her with the new puppy she was raising. For one thing, I was too tired to go into it. For another, Michael tended to get downright paranoid at the first hint of me being involved in anything out of the ordinary. Not that I blamed him, since I’d got tangled up in some fairly bizarre situations in the last year. None of them had been my fault, but Michael thought I was entirely too willing to stick my nose into places it had no business being stuck. That had never been true, of course, and wasn’t true now, but I knew Michael wouldn’t see it that way.

It was strictly to spare him unnecessary worry that I kept quiet about everything that had happened that morning. I thought it was very thoughtful of me.

A long covered porch runs the length of my apartment, with two ceiling fans to stir the air, and a hammock slung in one corner for daydreaming. There’s a glass-topped ice
cream table and two chairs next to the porch railing where I can have a snack and look out at waves curling onto the beach. Accordion-pleated metal hurricane shutters cover french doors and double as security bars. As I climbed the stairs, I punched the remote that raises the shutters, and yawned while the shutters folded themselves into the overhead soffit.

Pushing through the french doors, I stepped into my minuscule living room where my grandmother’s green flower-patterned love seat keeps company with a matching club chair. A one-person eating bar separates the living room from a narrow galley kitchen, and a window above the sink looks out at trees behind the apartment. To the left of the living room, my bedroom is barely big enough for a single bed and a slim chest of drawers that hold photographs of Todd and Christy. An air-conditioning unit is set high on the wall under narrow rectangles of glass to let in light.

I flipped the switch to start the AC and headed down the short hallway to my cramped bathroom, pausing at an alcove in the hall to shed my Keds and cat-hairy clothes and toss them in the stacked washer/dryer. I hate wearing sweaty shoes, so I buy Keds the way Michael buys organic produce. I always have several dry pairs waiting, some damp just-washed pairs on a rack above the washer, and some in the washer.

Mexican tile was cool under my bare feet as I padded into the bathroom and turned on the shower. As soon as the fine spray of warm water hit me, I went into a blissful zonked-out state. I must have had a previous lifetime
when water was scarce, because every time I’m in a warm shower all my pores start singing hymns of thanksgiving. After air, I think water is God’s best gift to us.

When I was squeaky clean, I slicked back my wet hair, pulled on a terry cloth robe, and fell onto my night-rumpled bed to sleep for a couple of hours. I woke up dry mouthed and a little chilled from sleeping under the AC, so I padded barefoot to the kitchen and made myself a cup of tea. Carrying it in one hand, I flipped on the CD player on the way to my office-closet and let its sly little robot shuffle through a stack of music and surprise me. Smart robot that it is, it selected Billie Holiday’s voice to wrap around me while I took care of the business part of pet sitting.

My office-closet is the only expansive feature of my apartment. I don’t know why my grandfather made it so big, but it’s a good thing he did. It’s square, with two entries. One wall has shelves for my shorts and Ts and the other wall has a desk where I take care of pet-sitting business. A floor-to-ceiling mirror on the wall between the two entry doors magnifies the light and makes the room look even bigger than it is. My meager collection of dresses and skirts hang on the back wall. I don’t dress up much.

My answering machine had a few calls to return, mostly regular clients letting me know when they would need me to take care of their pets, and I made quick work of calling them. Then I got out my big record-keeping book that I always have with me when I make client calls and transferred notes to individual client cards. I take my pet-sitting duties as seriously as I took being a deputy. In some ways,
they require the same skills. You have to be smart enough to tell the difference between a situation that requires force and one that requires diplomacy, you have to be quick to respond to unexpected situations, and you have to be patient if somebody upchucks on you.

My clients like the fact that I’ve been a law enforcement officer. Knowing that I can use a gun or disarm a criminal makes them feel more confident about letting me come in their houses while they’re gone. I don’t know how they feel about my crazy time after Todd and Christy were killed. If they know about it, they’re all kind enough not to mention it.

When I finished with my record keeping, I got dressed and took a banana out to the porch and ate it while I looked at distant sailboats on the Gulf and thought about how glad I was that I wasn’t in one. The thing about water and me is that I love having it fall on me in a warm shower and I love looking out at the Gulf’s waves and frothy surf, but I’m not crazy about getting
in
the Gulf. Not in the flesh or in a boat. The Gulf is too big and powerful for me to control, and that makes me uneasy. Not that I’m a control freak or anything. But if I were given a choice between shooting off into outer space or diving to the bottom of an ocean, I’d take space. At least you can see where you’re going in space, and it’s damn dark at the bottom of the ocean. Besides that, freakish critters live down there, pale things that never see the sun and have weird mouths shaped like flowers. I figure space aliens are similar to us, but sea creatures are bound to be slimy and cold.

Having reminded myself of my deep respect
for
but
aversion
to
deep water, I went back inside and got my backpack and car keys. It was time to make my afternoon rounds.

Later, I would look back on that afternoon and marvel at how innocent I’d been. While I dithered about scary deep-sea creatures I would never meet, scarier beings were on land and headed my way.

S
ummer on the key is so hot that going outside between ten in the morning and four in the afternoon is somewhat like crawling inside a pizza oven. By August, the only people who don’t illustrate the meaning of “redneck” are shut-ins or nighttime workers who sleep during the day. The only thing that keeps the key from spontaneously combusting in August are the occasional rain showers which, along with sending people running from tongues of lightning, soak the vegetation and cause steam to rise from the ground. August in Florida is God’s way of reminding us who’s in charge.

Maybe we’re just perverse, but the locals love the heat. We use it to keep visitors away. When out-of-state relatives phone to say they’re thinking of coming to see us, we say, “Oh, gosh, you don’t want to come now! Oooowee, you can’t imagine the heat! It’s just absolutely miserable, not to mention the sand fleas and mosquitoes. Wait until October or November when it’s cooler.”

If we’re convincing enough, they’ll stay away. We
already have red necks from the sun and white eyes from fear of hurricanes. Add company to entertain, and it’s just too much.

The sky was clear that afternoon, and heat was rising from the ground in visible shimmering waves. Even cats who never left their air-conditioned homes moved more slowly, as if they felt the need to conserve energy. None of my charges had peed on a houseplant or shredded paper into confetti for me to pick up. When I left them, every pet’s tail was raised in approval. To a pet sitter, a raised tail means “Brava! Encore!” I try to be modest about those raised tails, but I’m secretly proud.

On the way to Big Bubba’s house, I saw Hetty and Ben on the sidewalk chatting with a man and his Beagle. I tapped my horn and waved, and Hetty gave me a big grin. Ben looked hard at me as if he were memorizing my car. Service dogs are so smart, he might have been.

At Big Bubba’s house, sounds of gunshots, sirens, and screaming women blared from his TV, and he was pecking the heck out of a silver bell hanging in his cage. I turned off the TV and looked anxiously at him, hoping he wasn’t freaking out from being left alone for so many hours. African Greys react to living behind bars the same way humans do. Leave them in solitary confinement too long and they become self-destructive.

Cocking his head to give me that weird one-eyed stare that birds do, he said, “Did you miss me?”

“Desperately. Did you miss me?”

“Al-waaaaays! Al-waaaaays!”

I swear sometimes Big Bubba truly seems to be carrying on a conversation, not just repeating sounds he’s heard.

I said, “Your mom probably misses you too. She’s in France, you know, eating at four-star restaurants.”

He didn’t answer, but tilted his head to one side as if he was considering how much a woman would miss him while cruising down a river in the south of France and eating at four-star restaurants.

I took him out of his cage and put him on the floor. He waddled around peering behind the furniture like a suspicious hotel detective looking for unregistered guests. To replace the sunflower seed I’d sent off with Deputy Morgan, I filled a clean jar with seed from a big bag in Reba’s pantry. Then I scraped poop off Big Bubba’s perches, disposed of all the seed hulls and knobs of dried fruit on his cage floor, put down fresh newspaper carpet, washed his food and water dishes, and gave him fresh seeds and fruit. I knew he would immediately set to work throwing nuts and apple slices into his water dish to make it yucky, but I gave him clean water anyway because that’s how I like it.

Until he was free of the allergy to red tide, I didn’t want him to do any strenuous exercise, but I made him do about three minutes of wing flapping. That entailed having him sit on my arm while I moved it rapidly up and down, which meant that I did three minutes of wing flapping too. Then I chased him around the house until I was winded and he was squawking in parrot hilarity.

A pet sitter’s life is just one exciting moment after another.

Pet birds need at least twelve hours of dark silent sleep every night, so the last thing I did was tell him good night and drape his cage with a lightweight dark cover. With him tucked in, I went back down the front steps to the
Bronco. I looked, but I didn’t see any ghostly faces peering at me through the dark trees. Maybe Jaz had left town. Maybe she wouldn’t show up at Hetty’s the next day. Maybe those scary boys had left town too.