Scratch the Surface

“You must be exhausted.”
    Janice hung her purse, a large handwoven sack, on the back of a chair and removed a red woolen cloak embroidered with colorful stick figures. Underneath she wore chino pants and a thick greenish-yellow sweater that smelled vaguely of animals. Goats? Felicity wondered. Or some more exotic species? Yak or llama, perhaps.
    “I’m still a little bit weak.” Janice seated herself at the table.
    “A drink? Scotch? Wine? Or maybe you’re not ready for that yet. Ginger ale? Spring water?”
    “Ginger ale would be good. With the bubbles stirred out, please.”
    As Felicity was pouring ginger ale for herself and her guest, Brigitte flitted into the room, scampered to the table, and jumped onto it.
    “What a beautiful pussycat!” Janice exclaimed. “Here, Miss Pussycat!” She smacked her lips and tapped her fingernails on the tabletop. Brigitte moved toward her. “What gorgeous eyes she has. Golden! Felicity, this cat is to die for. And she’s young. She really is just a little baby kitten, isn’t she? Aren’t you lucky! Dorothy-L is fourteen, which isn’t all that terribly old for a cat these days, but it isn’t young. I’ve practically forgotten what it’s like to have a young, healthy kitty like this one.”
    Brigitte, having moved toward Janice, sauntered to the opposite end of the table, where she sat on her haunches next to a dinner plate and fixed her amber eyes on the newcomer.
    Addressing her, Janice cooed, “Aren’t you a lucky baby girl to be allowed on the table! Not all kitty cats are so spoiled, you know.” As Felicity handed her a glass of ginger ale and seated herself at the table, Janice returned to her normal tone of voice. “Felicity, was Morris allowed on tables? Your own Morris, I mean, not the one you write about, not that there’s all that much difference, is there!”
    “Morris was allowed everywhere.” Felicity did not add that there was even less difference between her own Morris and the fictional one than Janice might suppose. “My other cat, Edith, is quite shy. She may show up, or she may not. She’s young, too. She’s four. Brigitte, this one, is two.” In the hope of gently leading the conversation toward Janice’s pilfering by way of one of her possible motives, she said, “And they are both healthy. Robustly so. Up-to-date on their shots, everything. In fact, Edith is a blood donor at Angell. She gets all her shots free. Free exams, blood work, everything. A bag of cat food when she donates. Dorothy-L must be costing you a fortune. All the medicine. And you’re thinking about some new treatment for her. And she has to eat special cat food, doesn’t she? That can’t be cheap.”
    A startled expression crossed Janice’s face. Felicity attributed it to her own indelicacy in having spoken so directly about money. Still, the topic of money was the only reason she’d invited Janice to dinner.
    “But, of course, you have an advance and a book coming out,” Felicity said. “A wonderful book!”
    “Thank you.”
    “And you have such extensive plans to promote it. I’m very lazy about that myself. And the expense! Maybe it’s my Scottish heritage, but I can’t see spending all that money unless I’m sure it’s worth it.”
    “Oh, it is worth it!”
    “Not always. It’s important to be selective, not just to throw money randomly at any promotion at all. But I do understand the temptations. I really do. Mystery writing is a tough business. All writing is. It’s very competitive.”
    “Fiercely.”
    “On the other hand, there’s a tradition in mystery writing of supporting one another. Look at all our organizations. Take the two of us. We both belong to Sisters in Crime and Witness and some other organizations, too. But those cost money. The dues for Witness are fairly low, but some of the other groups? And it adds up when you join everything.”
    “It does,” Janice said stiffly. “Then there are clothes. I need new clothes. And my car. I can’t go around driving that junk heap.”
    Distracted from her goal, Felicity said, “Who cares what you drive? How many of your readers are going to see your car?”
    “You never know. Image is terribly important. It’s essential. When your readers meet you, they don’t want to just meet some ordinary old person, do they? They want to meet a star.“
    “I wouldn’t say that,” said Felicity, who cultivated a rich picture of her readership and took care to present herself in