Today: Part Three. Have you read One and Two? Well why not?! Scoot back there, we'll wait here, and I'll have coffee ready by the time you get back.
Go on now!
“I have ensconced myself in the corner booth. Such a beautiful place: cut-glass chandeliers, diamond-tufted upholstered booths in blood-red leather, dark wood and dim lights. And the cats? Sleek, elegant felines from the best families – and the worst.”
Liza Bean Bitey, of the Minneapolis Biteys, jumps from the table to the ground, ignoring the plate of canned cat food at her feet, beckons me with a jerk of her chin. I follow her into the living room. I take a seat on the couch as she settles onto the coffee table directly in front of me.
“The thing one must remember about a cat bar is that manners are the key to a roomful of cats behaving themselves. One’s clothing, one’s demeanor, one’s choice of words is paramount.” Liza Bean lifts a front paw, extends her claws, one by one, narrowing her bright green eyes. “Without manners, it all comes apart very quickly.”
“In an establishment catering to those of the feline persuasion,” she continues, “one is polite. Unless, of course, one wishes to fight.”
She smiles at me, tiny, pointed teeth glistening in the dim light of the afternoon’s fading sun. “Sometimes, one wishes to fight.”
She sets her paw down.
“The place is called The Nip and The Saucer,” she continues. “The clientele are primarily well-to-do, well-groomed. It isn’t a cheap place to spend the evening, and this is no accident.”
The cat pulls a tiny flask from somewhere, takes a swallow, passes it to me. I lift it to my nose: gin, and, from the smell of things, limes. I take a swig, pass it back, whereupon it promptly disappears.
“I am sharing the booth with Pupples Old Bean and Lucky – you remember them, don’t you?”
I nod. Pupples Old Bean, a scrawny, twitchy alley cat with the nervous habits and fashion sense of a young Art Carne, a cat I will forever picture perched, mid-winter, on the massive engine block of a 2003 Cadillac Deville hurtling its way toward the airport, per local legend. Stumpy “Lucky” Strikes, drummer for Liza Bean’s current band “Squeak Toy”, a rhythmically gifted animal with cats and kittens in every club in the U.S and most often seen sporting a shirt that says “You ARE the father”.
I close my eyes, nodding.
Liza Bean laughs. “Let’s not judge now,” she says.
At that, the flask reappears, whereupon we toast each other: Your Health.
“I am sitting in the booth, squeezing a fourth lime wedge into my gin and tonic, when there is a stir from the bar. There is a Russian Blue – I can’t remember her name – with an empty drink in her hand. From the look of it, she has just thrown it into the face of – well, just the most interesting cat I’d ever seen.”
She looks at me. “Have you ever known that you absolutely must meet someone?”
Our eyes meet. “I have.”
“His name is Juan Diego,” she says. “Juan Diego de la Patas Oro.”
Liza Bean drinks from her flask, passes it to me; and I rise, absentmindedly – did I have dinner yet? – in search of gin and limes.