Puss 'N Cahoots

comment. “At least someone loved you enough to correct you.”
    “I was loved a lot!” Harry laughed, lightening the mood.
    “Renata, you know how much is at stake in this show. Booty and Charly fight at every show. Maybe they don’t hit each other, but they try to get under each other’s skin, push the other into a bad ride. It’s silly, but then again, it provides entertainment back at the barns and practice ring, as well as the show ring.”
    “Got that right, but I’ll be damned if Booty is going to smear my name to do it.”
    “Would you sue him?” Harry was leery of lawyers and courtrooms. She believed the Spanish proverb “Better to fall into the hands of the devil than lawyers.”
    “Unto my last breath, and I would hurt him in other ways. I’d take every client he had out of that barn, one way or the other. His revenue stream would become a trickle and then dry to dust.” She stopped a moment. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry on a lot of levels. I’ve caused you both time and trouble. I’m not always like this. These last couple of years I’ve been slipping and sliding. Not just in my career. I need to come back to my real self.”
    “Your real self is pretty impressive,” Joan wryly commented.
    Renata tossed her head; her hair swung back over her shoulders. “I come from a different place than you all do. It taught me a couple of things that maybe you know and maybe you don’t. But I’ll tell you, if you let one person push you around, sooner or later everyone will try. It’s harder being a woman. You have to bite a man bad, then he realizes you’ve got fangs and he backs off. We’re just a bunch of animals. If you look weak, you die. That’s how I see it.”
    “Truth to that.”
Mrs. Murphy closely observed the great beauty.
    “Most humans don’t want to deal with it. They think they can negotiate things.”
Tucker was thoughtful.
    “I reckon for most Americans that works. We live good lives, soft even.”
Cookie, too, was thoughtful.
    “Yep, but when the trappings of civilization are stripped away, it’s kill or be killed.”
Pewter was adamant.
“And I will kill Miss Nasty.”
    Mrs. Murphy, Tucker, and Cookie chose to say nothing about Miss Nasty. There’d been enough fits already.
    Joan took out the handkerchief from the pocket of her linen jacket, to fan herself. “That’s why we need good friends. Friends protect one another. The government doesn’t do squat.” She shrugged. “It’s friends that save you. And if you have a good family, they save you, too. Once people start talking about the big things, I can care but I don’t see that I can do much.” She looked straight at Renata. “But I can do for you, for Larry, for Harry, and what I tell you, Renata, is keep riding. Make movies until you’re sick of it, but don’t let people know what you really think like you just told us. People live in a bubble. They see the world the way they want to see it, not the way it is.”
    “I know.” Renata nodded. “I do know that.”
    “Anything or anyone that disturbs the bubble becomes a bad person. You’re in the public eye, so you have to be a good person.” Joan fanned Renata, then Harry.
    “You don’t think we can work together? I mean, work together as a nation?” Harry plaintively asked.
    “Daddy’s generation did. His father and mother did. World War One and World War Two pulled people together, but nothing’s pulled us together since then, really. Even September eleventh hasn’t pulled us together.” She stopped. “Maybe it has, maybe it’s underneath all this ugliness in Frankfort,” she named the town in which Kentucky’s state government was located, “and Washington is on the surface. Maybe underneath, we’ll do what we have to when the time comes. I don’t know, and no one cares what I think, anyway.”
    “I do,” Harry said.
    Joan threw her arm around Harry’s shoulder. “Harry, you can be so sweet.”
    Renata added, “I work in a profession that sells illusions. And you know, we’re pikers out there in Hollywood. Can’t hold a candle to Washington.” She sighed long. “God, it’s been a day. What’s the night going to bring?”
    “A good end to the show,” Joan replied. “Then we can all go home and get a good night’s sleep.”
    “You’ll have a barn full of customers tomorrow.” Harry knew the drill after a big show.
    “Good.” Joan brightened. “But I need one good night’s sleep.”
    “I swear I won’t cause