Felix Takes the Stage (2 page)

W
ith the exception of the elementary school where Edith once lived, she'd always had a penchant for theatrical places — grand old movie palaces, theaters, opera houses — the more ornate the better. Therefore, she was familiar with the tradition of theater cats. These cats slinked about backstage, a soothing presence for nervous performers and an effective way to keep down the mouse population. Perhaps the most notorious of these felines was Fat Cat's distant cousin Boy Cat, who had hopped down from the stage into the empty front row seat during
The Phantom of the Opera,
perched next to Princess Margaret, and then proceeded to eat her bouquet.

Fat Cat, or Fatty, as he was fondly called, was a lazy caramel-colored Manx and had long been the “house cat” at the philharmonic hall. He had arrived some years before on a cruise ship that specialized in theater on the high seas. The seas, however, got a bit too high and the drama — well, too dramatic — when the ship sprang a leak. Fatty had washed up in a bucket on the shore of Venice Beach in California.

He had arrived at the symphony hall shortly before Edith. The poor spider was clearly exhausted when she staggered into Fatty's basement. But Fatty was drawn to her immediately. Even sleepy, she had a charm.

“Don't worry! Don't worry!” she kept telling him. “It's nothing. Nothing! I'll be fine in a few hours. But I'm too tired to make a web at the moment.”

“Rest here, madame.” Fatty wiggled an ear.

“Oh, how kind.”

“Here, I'll help you.” Fatty pressed his furry cheek against the floor so Edith could climb into his left ear.

A few hours later, Edith had spun a silken sac into which she had deposited her eggs. “You don't mind? Do you?”

“No, not at all,” Fatty replied, although it was rather like having cotton plugs in his ear.

And then a few weeks later, what Edith referred to as “nothing” became “something.” Something that Fatty would always think of as a miracle. For that evening, during a stirring cello performance, Edith's eggs hatched. Jo Bell first, then Felix, and finally Julep almost an hour later. It was a small brood, most likely because of how tired Edith had been. She later explained that her husband had died shortly after she found out that the children were coming. Without Fatty, she might not have managed on her own.

Fatty became the children's godspider. One did not have to be a spider to assume this role of mentor, second-opinion giver, and protector. Kindness and wisdom were Edith's main requirements. Edith herself had had a pig for her godspider, a pig named Charlotte, who oddly enough had been named for a famous spider in literature. If Fat Cat had any flaws, it was a tendency toward laziness that left him a little chubby.

 

“Fatty! At last. We've had a disaster!” Edith began.

Fatty caught sight of Felix and blinked. “What in the name of …”

Edith sighed. “Did you hear that thump?”

“Yes.” Fatty said, then purred with deep apprehension. “Not the …”

Edith nodded wordlessly.

“We must check on the Maestro at once!” Fat Cat exclaimed.

“That's why I sent for you. If he is not d-e-a-d”— She could not say the dreadful word. She had to spell it out, although all of her children could spell — “if he isn't, we must do something to save him.”

“Of course.” Fat Cat nodded.

Edith turned to Felix. “Felix, we're going upstairs to the stage and investigate. You stay here.”

“I don't think I have much choice, Mom. Remember, I've lost a leg.”

“Yes, dear, but that eighth leg will grow back. Next molt. Now I'm going to wrap that bandage a bit tighter.” Edith made a grimace and began squeezing out some more liquid silk. Then, like the most superb seamstress, she began to weave an outer layer around Felix's wound.

“Marvelous, simply marvelous!” Fatty purred in wonder as he watched Edith with her son.

“All right, we're off!” Edith said as she tied the last knot. “The girls and I will take the air vents, Fatty. You take the stairs. We'll meet at the podium.”

And so the cat and the three spiders made their separate ways toward the stage, where the Maestro lay in a heap.

Let him not be dead! Let him not be dead!
Edith prayed to a nameless spider god of silk and venom. Edith was not one to complain or whine, but in bad moments, she did feel that there was something very sad about being so misunderstood. Not simply misunderstood but reviled. It seemed preposterous to Edith that humans feared her as much as they feared great white sharks.
We're not mean,
Edith thought mournfully.
We just happen to be extremely venomous.

B
rown recluse spiders,
Edith thought,
rarely waste our venom on things we cannot eat.
What lay before her was definitely indigestible. The Maestro was a mountain of a man. The immense expanse of his starched white dress shirt lofted into the dim light like an alpine field. The pages of his score for the Brahms symphony were scattered about like patches of snow at a mountain base. And now the time had come to climb. “All right, children, I want you to start paying out your number one quality silk. We're going to need the best haul lines ever.”

“Mom, we've never spun that kind of silk,” Julep said.

She didn't want to alarm her children, but this was an alarming situation and it seemed Julep was on the brink of one of her pre-K moments.

“Julep, don't whine. Just do it! This is a matter of life and death.” Edith paused. “Now prepare to ascend!” The message was clear.
This is serious business!

Fatty watched as the three spiders entered a kind of deep trance. Soon the silk was paid out and he saw the little spider family, led by the intrepid Edith, begin their ascent. Unlike human mountain climbers, their ropes never ever twisted and were hundreds of times stronger per weight and strand, although many times thinner. But to Fatty, this was more than mountain climbing. The air was suddenly filled with flowing rivulets of silk, and the three spiders, as graceful as aerial artists, swung through the air on glimmering threads. The air seemed to sparkle with their silken choreography.
Now, this is theater!
Fatty thought.

“Summit!” Edith called down. The leg hairs of spiders contain some of the most highly refined sensors of any animal on earth. They can detect the slightest vibration of a microscopic insect in a web. Edith quickly scuttled across the Maestro's belly and crawled up a gully formed by a pleat of his dress shirt. She wanted to stand over his heart to see if she could confirm a pulse. Hardly a quarter way up the pleat gully, Edith felt distant heartbeats, though they were somewhat irregular. Relief swept through her entire body, from fangs to spinnerets.

“Heartbeat confirmed!” she cried. “The Maestro lives! Quick, children, down we go. I must consult with Fatty at base camp.”

And so Edith swung herself onto the two parallel threads of silk and began a controlled but speedy downward slide. She was followed by Jo Bell and Julep, who argued about who got to go first. “You always go before me,” Julep complained.

“Don't whine! I'm older.”

“That's no excuse.”

Fatty shouted up, “Stop your bickering, both of you!”

 

“So, Fatty, he lives. Did you find any signs of bites, any fang marks at all?” Edith asked. “Unconsciously, Felix's fangs could have shot out — just a reaction.”

“No, Edith,” Fatty said slowly, but there was a certain tension in his voice. “There was no sign of injury — not of injury inflicted by Felix.”

“It was obviously fear that made the Maestro faint,” Edith said confidently.

“Yes, he definitely fainted.”

“But what, Fatty?”

Fatty looked down at the starched white cuff that extended from the sleeve of the Maestro's tuxedo jacket. All six of Edith's eyes focused on the two pale blue drops at the very edge of the cuff. Felix's blood! Despite her eight legs, she suddenly felt unsteady.

“Mom!” Julep gasped.

“Mother!” Jo Bell said.

“I'll be fine, girls. Just let me catch my breath.” She turned to Fat Cat. “Fatty, you know what this means.”

“It's like a calling card, isn't it?” the cat answered.

“Yes, exactly — a calling card: ‘Brown recluses have been here.'”

“Mom?” Julep said, her voice fraught with alarm. “Will the humans come for us?”

“Yes, I'm afraid so,” Edith replied in a dim little voice.

“No hope mopping up the blood, I suppose?” Fatty asked.

“None. It's soaked into the material.”

“But, Mom, what are you talking about? The Maestro's not dead,” Jo Bell said.

“No, but it will still be the …”

“The E word,” Julep whispered.

“Yes, children. We haven't much time.” Edith swung around to face Fat Cat. “The Maestro might have suffered a heart attack when he saw Felix. Fatty, we have to alert someone. And then the children and I have to skedaddle.”

“Oh, Edith!”

“Fatty, no drama! If he has suffered a heart attack, we might be able to save him.”

“But how?”

“You're going to have to pull the fire alarm. It's the only way.” She paused a moment. “And to put it plainly, children, as soon as they see that blue blood, we'll be on the Most Wanted list. Murder suspects.”

“But he's not dead,” Jo Bell said.

“It doesn't matter. The E-Men will come within the hour. This place will be sealed off. Fatty, you'll have to leave, too, at least temporarily. That stuff is terrible. It kills spiders, but it won't do you any good either, believe me. I've seen what it can do.” Her somber tone was like a death knell.

Fatty heaved a deep sigh. “Yes, yes, I suppose you're right, Edith.”

“There's an alarm to stage left, in the wings, by the switch box. Get to it, Fatty.”

Julep and Jo Bell gasped as Fatty streaked across the stage. Never had they seen the old cat move so fast.

Within seconds, the performance hall was reverberating with the screech of the alarm. And in less than two minutes, there was the answering scream of sirens as fire trucks and ambulances tore through the streets of Los Angeles toward the little spider family.