Cat In A Sapphire Slipper

By now I have been noticed, and, in fact, had about six toasts made to my unexpected presence en route to the bachelor party. That is why I and Mr. Matt are sober and surefooted, and all the Fontanas are lurching along like hail-fellows-well-met.

I am starting to feel the hairs on my spine stiffening and standing upright.

It could be the cooler night air.

It could be the off-key chorus of “O Sole Mio,” that is drifting back on the desert air.

It could be the fact that the convivial singing comes to a sudden halt on the warm, lamp-lit threshold before us all.

I, of course, was born to see in the dark, so I swagger into the lead. That is not hard to do. The brothers Fontana are already swaying instead of swaggering. I have never known them to be the tipsy sort, but this is a landmark occasion.

I gaze into the light, my pupils slitting to laser-sharp focus long before the humans in the party can stop blinking blindly.

And a little cat shall lead them. . . .

I march into the glare, having spotted all the hallmarks of bachelor bliss awaiting our party: several human little dolls of the leggy sort, attired in skimpy wisps of sheer fabrics decorated with sequins and rhinestones and (my favorite) mounds of marabou feathers.

Let the games begin!

Perennial Partner

Matt was trying to be a good go-along guy.

Mob scenes, figurative or literal, weren’t his thing.

Stag entertainment wasn’t on his horizon or in his history.

An ex-priest had a hard time regarding women as sex objects.

Large amounts of bare female skin still made him uneasy.

Intimately, it was a turn-on. Publicly, it was . . . gross, crude, blatant. Exploitive of both gawker and gawkee.

And, of course, all en route to this bachelor blowout, he wondered, not what Jesus would do—He’d probably be okay with it; witness the woman at the well and the wedding at Cana; Jesus had been the Prince of Peace and the Soul of Mercy and Tolerance—but what Temple would think.

Of him.

This did not promise to be an easygoing evening.

So when he saw the peep show backlit at the entrance to wherever they had been driven, he thought, Holy mackerel!

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid could not have been greeted by a perkier array of corseted, feather boa-strewn, high heel-booted saloon girls in their heyday.

He’d expected to suffer through this supposed festivity. He hadn’t expected to be as badly ribbed as the guest of honor, bridegroom-to-be Aldo Fontana.

“Pretty good goods,” a Fontana brother commented, jabbing his ribs.

“You get what you pay for,” Matt answered, meaning every shade of the words.

They bounced off Fontana brother bonhomie.

“Right. This is way spicier than I expected, now that Aldo is giving up his wild, womanizing ways. We’re gonna actually have fun. I can tell. Let the partee begin!”

Matt and, of all not-people, Midnight Louie were the last to move into the dazzling light. The cat had been first, but now hesitated on the threshold.

Temple’s black cat, a last-minute hitchhiker, finally trod in delicately, forefoot by forefoot. Matt could have sworn the cat was as much taken aback by this Wild West saloon scenario as he was.

“We’ll both have to keep a sober eye on the proceedings,” Matt told Louie under his breath.

It disturbed him immensely that the big black cat winked at him.

Okay. One eye closed momentarily. Maybe he had a hair caught in it.

Twelve men and cat had entered a Wild Wild West fantasy of a Victorian brothel. The flocked floral wallpaper wasn’t scarlet woman crimson-colored, but it was velvet-flocked: deep blue against a silver foil background.

The carpeting was a field of Victorian, full-blown roses (so appropriate to the feminine residents). The shades were blue and green with touches of gold.

Beyond the foyer in the parlor, on various blue velvet love seats and settees in the Victorian style, lounged, lay, and reclined about a dozen women attired in bits and pieces of corsets and lingerie, all in shades of blue.

If there were eight groomsmen in the party, there was a shade of blue for each one: baby blue, aqua, sky blue, periwinkle . . . lavender-blue, Dilly, Dilly . . . teal, ice blue, royal blue, sapphire blue, and even navy blue, in the form of a sailor suit with a bikini bottom and a skimpy sea-shrunken top.

While the groomsmen leapt to the task of inspection, Matt was interested to see that Aldo and Nicky were loitering in the foyer with frowns on their faces.

One was almost wed, one married, so Matt approved of them showing at least some discretion. Uncle Macho Mario Fontana was accepting a cigar the size of a submarine sandwich from the madam of the place, the only woman fully clothed. She wore some Mae West blue-sequined gown rimmed in pale blue feathers at the shoulders.

Matt edged over to the frowners because they most closely reflected his own confusion.