Second Fiddle (16 page)

“I’m the one who writes novels,” Giselle said firmly. “They are contemporary and very hip. They’ve got lots of sex and death in them.”

“Ew!” Vivi turned to Giselle. “That’s so gross!”

Giselle kicked her in the shins.

“Ow!”

“It’s true,” I said to cover up. “I especially like the, um, dead parts.”

There was a pause, and Mr. Whitman gave us a you’ve-got-to-be-kidding-me look.

“Here’s my composition,” I said quickly, sliding it along the counter to him. “This is just eight bars of the intro, but I put all three parts down.” Mr. Whitman picked up the page, and I could see him make the music in his head as he read through each part.

“Is there no viola part?”

“Well, no,” Giselle said. “Because then it would be ‘Canon for Four Friends.’ ”

“I can write a viola part for you,” I said. “Do you play? If you let me and my friends stay here tonight, I’ll do it.”

“So you can compose just like that in one night? Are you so talented?” Mr. Whitman asked. He looked at me hard, and it’s tricky to tell when a man’s face is mostly eyebrows and wrinkles whether he’s mad at you or not.

“I’m not so talented. I’m just going to work at it really hard and not give up until I get it right, because my friends need a place to stay, and the song is about being friends and sticking up for each other.…” I was going to say more, but I got a little choked up because Arvo ran out on me, but Giselle and Vivian never would.

look, a kitty!” Vivian said.

A striped cat came in the front door and walked along the wall behind the sales counter. He jumped onto the counter and walked toward the sunlight that spilled in from the window. He made a circle of his body in the square patch of light and turned his face away from us.

“Kitty, kitty,” Vivian crooned. She reached out to pet him. Vivi would cuddle a scorpion if it had fur.

“Do you like my cat?” Mr. Whitman said.

Vivian nodded. “What’s his name?”

“William.”

“William Shakespeare?” she said.

“Exactly.”

Vivian stroked William’s head lightly. He turned to her and snarled. There was a dark red stripe of blood on the side of his face from his ear down to the white patch on his chest that was the exact shape of Spain.

“Have you been playing with the neighbors?” Mr. Whitman said. He ran a hand along the cat’s back. “Didn’t I warn you about that?” His hand came away with blood and dirt on it. “A German girl took the apartment across the street. She calls her cats
Hans und Fritz
, but we call them the Huns!”

“Poor Will,” I said. “Do you need a bath?”

Mr. Whitman wiped his hand on his baggy corduroy pants.

“If we give your cat a bath, can we stay the night, Mr. Whitman?” I said.

“Deal,” he said briskly. “The bathroom is at the top of the stairs. Use a pot from the kitchen—third door to the right. Annalies will help if you need anything. You’ll find her typing in the dining room—orange hair, soul of a poet. Welcome to Shakespeare and Company, girls.” He gave a nod in the direction of the stairs and went back to his shelving.

“William, come on, William,” Vivian said, picking the cat up around the middle. He hissed and scratched her arm and writhed out of her grasp.

“Let’s try this,” I said.

I took a faded denim shirt from the back of the chair by the cash register. I dropped it over William’s back and swaddled him in it, claws and all, like he was a baby brother. I scooped him up, and he glared at me like he was thinking hard about what bribe he might give me to leave him alone. I decided not to use the word “bath” in his hearing. Vivi followed me up the stairs, carting my violin and backpack
along with hers. Giselle turned her cello sideways and held it in front of her like a dance partner to get it up the narrow staircase. We walked down a dim hallway with rooms full of books on either side. Some of the rooms had couches or beds in them. One had a desk where someone was working, and the clack of a typewriter could be heard from down the hall. The bathroom was the size of a phone booth, with a prehistoric toilet and a sink not even big enough to bathe a gerbil.

“Right,” Giselle said, surveying the miniature sink. “Brilliant idea, Jody. I’ll just let you two animal lovers wash the cat. I’m going to find a place to put our stuff.” She disappeared down the hall.

Vivi collected a pot, warm water, and dish soap from the kitchen. I shifted William to my left arm and opened the cabinet, thinking I could find a ratty towel that no one would mind if I used on the cat. They were all ratty towels. I took the one that was already gray and draped it over my shoulder. Vivi balanced the cooking pot on top of the sink and said, “Have you ever given a cat a bath before?”

I shook my head. “We had a gray kitten once, but Dad made us give it away before we moved to Germany.”

“Yeah, me too. Mom always says we travel too much to have pets. Besides, they are constantly entertaining a zillion dignitaries. Pets would just get in the way.”

“You hold him, and I’ll get the soap.”

I unwrapped William, and Vivi grabbed him around the
middle and held him over the water. She started to dip him in, back legs first. William curled his feet up and yowled like we were torturing him with boiling oil. He twisted his body around and climbed right up Vivian’s arm and perched on her shoulder. He dug his front claws into the top of her head.

“Ow! Ow! Ow! Jody, make him stop!”

William glared at me with intense hatred and said bad cat swears to me in French. Sleeping on the sidewalk was starting to look inviting.

“Hey, sweet William,” I said. “We aren’t going to hurt you. Don’t you want to be clean?”

William shared his views on personal hygiene.

“Oh man, you must be the new girls. I heard about you.”

I spun around to see a woman with all-black clothes, a bright orange Mohawk, and a safety pin through her nose. A man with an Einstein haircut and a plaid flannel shirt stood behind her.

“You must have really pissed off the old man if he’s making you wash the cat,” she said.

“
Bonne chance
, ducklings,” the man in plaid said, and he giggled as the two of them went downstairs.

“All right, Mr. Shakespeare,” I said. “You are getting wet whether you like it or not.”

I grabbed all the loose skin from his shoulders and the back of his neck. I lifted him straight up. Vivi gave a muffled squeak as his claws came free of her scalp and raked through
her hair. I grabbed his back end with my other hand, lifted him off Vivian’s shoulder, and began to lower him into the water.

William’s legs immediately telescoped out to three times their normal length. He straddled the cooking pot and clung to the rim with all four paws. No wonder it took Mom an hour to give my brothers a bath. What is it with boys and soap?

“In you get, you silly cat,” Vivi said. She pulled his back legs from the edge of the pot and lowered him into the water. William let out the most pathetic, you’ve-betrayed-me meow I’ve ever heard. I only put him halfway into the water and let him keep his front paws on the edge. Vivi scooped water up over William’s shoulders and chest and front legs. In thirty seconds the water was black.

“Yuck! I don’t think this poor cat has had a bath in a long time,” I said.

Vivi squirted dish soap into her hands. She soaped him from shoulders to tail. I dunked him up and down a few times to rinse, but the water was so filthy, it was making him dirtier.

“We should get some clean water to rinse him,” I said.

Vivian went to the kitchen, and I started thinking about how I was going to clean the blood off William’s face.

“You must be one of the new girls,” a man said right behind me, and I almost jumped out of my skin because I hadn’t heard him walk up. The man was not very tall, but he
had lots of muscles. He was younger than the Einstein guy we met earlier, and better-looking, but he smelled like that stuff men put on their hair.

“Um, yes, how do you do?” I said.

I started to shake his hand because Dad always said a good handshake was as important as a good salute. But William squirmed away from me, so I plunged my hand back into the water and got hold of the cat.

“Sorry, very nice to meet you. I’m Jody.”

“So what brings you to Paris, Jody?”

“Art,” I said without even thinking. “I came to see the art museums. Umm, I’m a big fan of French art … and music, of course. I’ll be playing with my trio at … a number of locations in town this weekend.” Gee whiz, when did I get so good at lying? I guess it just takes practice.

“A writer and a musician,” he said. He took a step closer and looked me up and down the way icky men did on the train. I would have pushed him away, but I was sure if I let go of William, we’d spend the next five hours looking for a wet, soapy cat in the bookstore. There were plenty of places to hide, I could tell.

“Will you and your friends be sleeping in the children’s room?”

“We’re not kids!” What was keeping Vivi with that water?

“It’s the only empty room, and it has the children’s books and a bunk bed. You’ll have to double up.”

“Oh, I see,” I said.

“Come share with me. I don’t mind doubling up. I’m in the poetry section downstairs.”

“Excuse me!” Giselle said in exactly her father’s wrath-of-God voice. “Thank you. For your gracious invitation.” Icicles were not colder than her. “But no. We have other plans.” Giselle stepped right into the creepy guy’s personal space and looked down on the top of his head.

“Hey, what’s going on?” Vivi walked up with a milk bottle full of water.

“The gentleman from the poetry section—” Giselle said.

“Was just leaving,” I added as forcefully as I could.

“Okay, okay.” He took a few steps back. “But stop by if you change your mind.” He smiled and raised an eyebrow like he expected me to come chasing after him.

“Go!” we all shouted together.

I shuddered as he laughed, rounded the corner, and disappeared down the stairs.

“So. Creepy. Thanks, Giselle.”

“No problem.” Giselle shrugged it off like she did that sort of thing every day. “How’s Will?”

I lifted William out of the water, and Vivi gave him a good rinse. With his fur all matted down, he looked more like a weasel than a cat. We rubbed him most of the way dry, which took three towels.

“Poor Will,” Vivi said. She swaddled him up in a fourth
towel and hugged him to her chest while I got to work on the blood on his neck. He snarled at me twice, but I managed to get a look at the cut under his ear, and it wasn’t very bad.

“Come on, I’ll show you where we are staying,” Giselle said.

We carried William along with us and followed her to the room with the children’s books. A bunk bed was tucked into a corner beside a tiny window. There was a half-finished game of checkers on the floor and a blue-and-white toy chest where Giselle had stowed our backpacks. The instruments were under the bed. I sat on the bottom bunk, unwrapped the cat, and fluffed up his damp fur with my fingers. His coat, which had been dull black and brown stripes, was now a dozen shades of black and gray with a pumpkinorange tummy.

“Aren’t you a beautiful boy,” I said, but he wasn’t going to make up with me. He wouldn’t even look at me.

“Now what do we do?” Vivian said. She passed around some of the penny candy. I wondered how long a person could live on Minties alone.

“We have to get back out there and earn some money,” Giselle said. “How much more do we need?”

Vivian was totaling it up in her head when the woman with the orange Mohawk came to the door and said, “So, new girls, what’s your game?” She had just enough of a German accent to trade her
w
for a
v
.

“Oh,” I said, thinking back to what Mr. Whitman had
said about orange hair and the soul of a poet. “You must be Annalies.”

“That’s me—the keeper of the keys—so you better be home by midnight, or I’ll lock you out.” She crossed the room and sat on the bunk beside me. She reached out to stroke William’s head, and he leapt into her lap, rubbed his head under her chin, and purred.

“Hey! He’s orange on his tummy! I’ve never seen this cat so clean.”