Part 2
It sat there amidst the Volvos and the Ramblers like a thing out of place, glistening in the sunlight. The lime-green placard on the windshield announced, "ONE OWNER!!" Sitting sublimely on the pavement as if placed there waiting for her and her alone...a '72 Mustang rag-top, the car of her dreams.
Beyond a shadow of a doubt, she had to have that car. "That's it!" she practically squealed with excitement. "I have got to have that car!" Grabbing Mique by the arm, she spun him in the direction of the epitome of automotive perfection.
"Whoa! You almost made me spill my hat," Mique muttered, trying to adjust his two-can beer helmet while he looked to see what Melly was squealing about. "Shit, Mel, it's a crappy Ford, an old Ford at that!"
"Ah, oh," Melly sputtered "You...don't dis' the car. It's gorgeous! That's the one I want. Humor me; I let you wear that damn hat."
Taking a long draw from the straw in beer number two (you have to keep them even, or the hat will fall off), Mique walked over to the little convertible and kicked the fender. "Losers kick the tires," he explained. "I always kick the fenders." Bending down to peek under the car, he added, "Would you look at that? No rust fell down. This might be a keeper after all."
"Of course it's a keeper. Besides, what difference would a little rust make? At least it's got windows." Melly moved around the other side of the car, peering through each window as she passed it. "The interior looks pretty cherry, too. Not too...Oh-oh, better duck. There's a salesman headed our way."
A gawky-looking man in a baggy gabardine suit was walking towards them, pretending to talk into what was obviously a toy cell phone. As he drew up to them, he folded the phone and tucked it into his jacket pocket. "She's a beaut; just came onto the lot. I can see that you and your wife have an eye for a fine automobile." Melly gaped with astonishment that the man didn't even blink at the fact that she was standing beside a short cat person with beer on his head...wait a minute; did he say "wife"?
"I'm not..." she began, then stopped as Mique kicked her in the shin. Annoyed, she stood there fuming. "What in hell is going on?" she wondered. "What is it with this goof? Can't he see Mique?"
The seedy-heap huckster frowned slightly at this apparent case of wife battery, but who was he to judge? There was a sale here. He could almost taste it. "Yup, this little car has everything: good rubber, new wiper blades, and a classic eight-track stereo!" He opened the driver's door and smiled an oily grin. "Wanna take her for a test drive?"
Mique took another long draw from beer number one. "Is it an automatic or four on the floor?" He giggled, as the salesman had to look before answering the question.
"Um...definitely, um...automatic," the salesman answered, his Adam's apple bobbing up and down.
Before Mique could say a word, Melly answered, in an amazingly saccharine voice, "Oh, can we, honey? Try before you buy, right? Can we, can we, puleeez?" The odd glint in her eye and her sugary tone were almost frightening.
Mique cast a baleful eye at the redhead tugging on his arm and, much to his dismay, jostling his beer, causing foam to back up the straw. "Sure, pumpkin." He winked at the goofy salesman. "Let's take her for a spin."
"Pumpkin" earned him another dirty look, but Melly got in the car beside him. As soon as they were out of earshot from the salesman, though, she turned on him. "Spill it, Fur Face. Why wasn't he freaking over having a talking cat on his lot? And what the hell is with the 'wife' bit, anyway?" She tapped the dashboard impatiently. "Well?"
Mique twitched his whiskers and scratched the end of his nose. "When he looks at me, he sees a short little guy with a bad haircut." He scratched his nose again. "I can make most people see what they want to see when they look at me."
Melly looked at him in disbelief. "I don't believe you. You can do that, and we've been staying stuck in the apartment? Why, you...Wait a minute; does that mean I want to see you as a cat?"
"Ah, no, I can't do it to you at all. You're special."
"I see. No, actually, I don't, but..." Melly trailed off as she noticed the driver of the car in the next lane. "Uh, Mique, I think you should take a look at this."
"Oh, shit!" Mique yanked the wheel around, forcing the poor little Ford into a three-sixty turn. The driver in the other car, a huge hairy man who looked for all the world like a duck in an ape suit, careened through traffic in an effort to catch them. Mique wheeled the car in and out of traffic like a stunt man, only managing to hit one parking meter and slightly dinging a mailbox. They waited for fifteen minutes in an alley before deciding the coast was clear.
Mique wheeled the car back into the used-car lot, steam pouring out from under the hood. A hubcap bounced free and rolled to a stop at the feet of the wide-eyed salesman. "We'll take it!" Mique called to the man just as the back bumper fell off.
After the dust had settled, and the hysterical salesman calmed down, things got back to normal. Once again, Melly found herself the dismayed owner of an unbelievably trashed car. Of course, this time, the car was salvageable. They made arrangements to have it repaired, then headed back towards the apartment. Melly found it impossible not to glance warily over her shoulder as she walked. She had this horrified feeling that the roller-coaster ride was about to begin again. Looking over at Mique, she said plaintively, "What did I ever do to deserve you?"
"Did you bite the heads off of chickens in your last life?" Mique didn't look up for the dirty look he could almost feel bouncing off his aura. "You must be a trouble magnet...and I'm trouble, with a capital T," he explained, hoping he wasn't going to get hit.
Melly merely glared at him. "Oh, yeah, that makes me feel a whole lot better. Thanks a lot, shithead. Give over; what's up with the hairy duck-man? What'd you get me into now?"
"That's Mister Shithead, if you don't mind," the cat man said, polishing his nails on the sleeveless sweatshirt he was wearing. (Melly was still kind of mad that it was her shirt and that it had sleeves when she loaned it to him.)
"Oh, goody. Again with the evasive tendencies. This must really be a good one. Are you going to tell me, or do I die of curiosity?" Her voice fairly dripped with sarcasm.
They walked up the stairs to Melly's loft. A large green stain still graced the rug just inside the door. (Mel still hadn't gotten a vacuum, although it was high on her list of "Buy me"s, and at this rate, the list was going to get a whole lot longer.) "It's like this, kiddo. We got rid of the top dog; now the rest of the pound is sniffing around to see what's left."
Melly swore profusely, then headed to the fridge. "Damn. We're almost out of beer." She grabbed one for herself and a refill for Mique's hat. "Where does that leave us?"
"Right in the middle, darlin'." He sucked furiously for several moments, trying to keep his helmet from falling off. When this failed, he abandoned the headgear in favor of drinking straight from the can. "As near as I can see it, we need to take a road trip as soon as the car's ready. A change of scenery is in order."
"Car won't be ready for at least a week. They know where I live. What do we do in the meantime?" Melly began pacing restlessly. "We need to hole up somewhere until then. Where, though? The Pit closed down last month."
Mique fingered the pop-top of his beer can. "Shame about that; it was my second-favorite watering hole."
"Second-favorite? What's first?"
"Your fridge; where else?" Mique snickered as he was backhanded in the gut.
"Turkey." Melly thought for a second, then snapped her fingers. "That's it. I know the perfect place. Nobody will ever look for us there. Let's go."
"As long as we don't have to spend the next week hiding in your underwear drawer, I'm in."
Melly looked at him in disgust. "You can't be serious for six seconds, can you? As if I'd let you anywhere near my underwear drawer, after what you did to my shirt. Grab the rest of the beer, and we'll book out of here." She picked up her jacket and looked at him impatiently. "Are you coming or not?"
Melly hadn't even crossed the room when Mique was standing by the door with the last four cans from a six of heinie. He had the gall to hum, tap his toe and check a nonexistent wristwatch. This earned him a slap to the back of the head as they walked out the door.
She stopped on the first floor and knocked on the side door. A gnarled old man opened the door and peered out at them. "We need to borrow the van, Al. Star'll bring it back in the morning." The man just nodded wordlessly, then handed her a single key on a grimy plastic fob. "Thanks a lot," Melly said with a grin, then headed off down the block. A few minutes later, she stopped by a battered old VW van and got in.
Hopping in the passenger door, Mique peered into the dusky interior of the bus. "Christ! It smells like something died in here." He wrinkled up his nose and waved one paw in front of his face while fighting with the stubborn crank on the window.
Laughing, Melly said, "Something probably did. Al's an exterminator. You'll live; a little bad smell isn't going to kill you." She carefully threaded the cranky old van through the traffic and out onto the highway. "We won't be in the van long anyway. Star lives just outside of the city. It's only about a fifteen-minute drive."
The entire trip out of town, Mique rode with his head hanging out of the window, squinting into the wind like a carsick pup. He was grateful when the van finally pulled to a stop.
Even though there were about twenty cars in the front of the house, Melly had pulled right around the back before stopping. Getting out of the van, she closed the door as quietly as she could. Motioning Mique to do the same, she picked her way through the darkness to the back door.
The door opened almost immediately when she knocked, revealing a tall, willowy blonde goddess just slightly older than Melly. The goddess looked at them for a moment, then shook her head and motioned them in. "Mom is worried sick about you, Amelia," she said accusingly. "She called the university, and they said you'd taken a leave of absence from your classes. She actually condescended to call me, just in case we'd talked." She looked over at Mique for a moment in puzzlement, then back at Melly. "What's with the freak show?"
Mique looked the young woman up and down several times, sniffed the air appreciatively, and then grinned and held out his hand. "Hi, I'm Mique, Mel's new boyfriend."
As the blonde stood there with her mouth open in astonishment, Melly shot Mique a warning look. "Pay him no mind, Star. He's a perfect ass sometimes." She shook her head ruefully. "Look, Sis, I'm sorry if Mom called you, but there isn't much I can do about it now. I didn't have a lot of choice." Taking a deep breath, she continued, "We need a place to hole up for a couple of days."
"Shit, what'd you do now? Aren't you supposed to be the good sister?" Without waiting for an answer, she turned and headed up the narrow stairs at the far side of the room. "One of the girls is out of commission for a few months. You can use her room for a few days." She led them to a door at the far end of the hall. "I'll talk to you in the morning. We've got a full house tonight."
She unlocked the door, then headed quickly back down the hall.
"So Sis runs a cat house, huh? I think I'm going to fit right in here." Mique wiggled his eyebrows at Melly and took another deep sniff. "Yup, this is my kinda hidey hole. Even better than your underwear drawer."
The strain of the last few weeks was beginning to take its toll on Melly. She had been run absolutely ragged, and things had been just too weird. Suddenly, she was terribly, terribly weary. "Leave it alone, Mique" was all she said as she flopped face-down on the big double bed.
Thinking better to leave well enough alone, the cat man simply crawled up onto the other side of the bed and sat silently until he heard soft snores. He stared at the ceiling for a while before he, too, nodded off into a dreamless sleep.
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(c) 1999 S. Day & M.C. Sak