It was warm and humid on the porch, and the Siamese had found a cool patch on the concrete slab: Yum Yum lounging like an off-duty sphinx with forelegs fully extended and paws attractively crossed; Koko with hind quarters sitting down and front quarters standing up. His elongated Siamese body made him look like two different cats with a single spine, and the thinking end of the cat was now alert and waiting for something to happen. Suddenly ears pricked, whiskers curled, and nose sniffed. A few moments later Qwilleran caught a whiff of smoke and turned to see June Halliburton approaching through the weeds.
"Don't invite me in. I'm just enjoying a legal smoke," she said, holding a cigarette gracefully in one hand and a saucer in the other. As usual, a limp Panama drooped over her red hair and white complexion. "The esteemed management will have me shot if I smoke indoors or drop live ashes outdoors."
"I agree with the esteemed management," Qwilleran said. "Today's too warm for anything as uncomfortable as a forest fire."
Peering through the screen at the three of them, she said with an arch smile, "What a touching domestic scene! I suppose the demographers have you classified as an untraditional family: one man, two cats."
"One man, two animal companions," he corrected her.
"And how do you like your cottage?"
"The roof doesn't leak, and the refrigerator works," he said. "What more can one ask?"
"My refrigerator is full of ice cubes, so join me for a drink, any time."
"Yow!" said Koko impatiently, his nose twitching.
"No one invited you," she said. Stubbing her cigarette in the saucer, she walked away at a languid pace, and Koko shook himself so vigorously that the flapping of his ears sounded like a rattlesnake. Then he ran indoors and yowled over the domino box.
"Okay," Qwilleran agreed, "but this is a whole new ballgame. We don't add scores any more; we spell words."
Koko watched with near-sighted fascination as the dominoes were randomly scattered over the tabletop. Instead of standing on the chair with forepaws on the table, however, he elected to sit on the dominoes like a hen hatching eggs.
"What's that all about?" Qwilleran demanded. "Are you getting a gut feeling?"
The cat seemed to know what he was doing. Suddenly he rose and, with a grunt, pushed several pieces onto the floor. Quickly and with high anticipation Qwilleran retrieved them: 0-2, 1-3, 3-4, 2-6, and 5-6. By adding the pips on each piece he got 2, 4, 7, 8, and 11, which corresponded to B, D, G, H, and K in the alphabet.
"That won't fly," Qwilleran said in disappointment.
We need vowels, the way we did when we played Scrabble." He asked himself, What does a cat know about fowels? And yet ... Koko could read his mind without understanding his speech.
Either Koko understood, or the next draw was a phenomenal coincidence. It produced 0-1, 0-5, 1-4, 2-3, 4-5, and 3-6, all of which corresponded to the vowels, A, E and L
Qwilleran groaned and pounded his forehead with his fists. It was beyond comprehension, but luckily he had earned to take Koko's actions on faith, and he continued the game. Who would believe, he asked himself, that a grown man in his right mind would participate in such a farce? He took the precaution of drawing the window blind.
After that, Koko's efforts were more to the point. Sometimes he swept pieces off the table with a swift flick of his tail, and from the seven or eight designated dominoes Qwilleran was able to spell words like field, beach, baffle and lake. (It could also be leak.) Unfortunately, the operation was limited to the first twelve letters of the alphabet. Nevertheless, he liked the challenge and kept a record: fable, dice, chalk, chick, cackle. Koko pushed dominoes off the table; Qwilleran translated them into words; Yum Yum sat on her brisket and kibitzed.
Eventually the cats lost interest, having a short attention span, and Qwilleran decided it was time to walk downtown. His first stop was the antique shop. Noisette was sitting at her desk, looking stunning, and reading another magazine, or perhaps the same one.
"Good afternoon, mademoiselle," he said pleasantly.
She looked up with a smile of recognition, and he realized that her lustrous brown eyes were a rich shade ol hazel. "Ah, you have returned! What is it that interests you today?" she asked.
"The green glass luncheon set," he said. "It would be a good gift for my sister in Florida, but I don't know about the color."
"Green glass can be used with pink, yellow, or white napery," she said. "It gives the most enjoyment of color."
"I see ... My sister lives near Palm Beach. She'd enjoy your kind of shop. Are you on Worth Avenue?"
Noisette shrugged apologetically. "At the moment I regret I do not know my address. I am moving due to the expirement of my lease."
