Myra Eberhardt is a self-avowed cat person; that particular kind of cat person who finds dogs and most of their people universally wanting in grace and civility.
A stickler for neatness and punctuality, always up-to-date on the latest fashions, and something of a snob, too, Myra is forty-four, beautiful, bright, and successful in all things save marriage. Men are attracted to Myra like bees to maple syrup, but the apparent faults of these fellows never fail to transcend their charms, and Myra despairs of ever finding her match.
Thus her three cats, Bingo, Butch, and Groucho are more than her pets, they are her children and her Significant Other(s).
As one of the top wedding facilitators in the greater Bay Area, Myra often auditions musicians seeking work in that relatively lucrative field, and in the slow time for weddings around Thanksgiving, before the usual outburst of Christmas nuptials, Myra has the extreme pleasure of auditioning an accordion player named Michael O’Reilly, and she falls head over heels in love with him.
Michael is a loose-limbed easygoing fellow of fifty with an uncouth head of wavy brown hair, his parents born in Ireland, he in San Francisco, his brogue slight but charming; and he proves to be an absolute wizard on his squeeze box, his repertoire essentially infinite.
“I used to say I could play anything from Bach to the Beatles,” Michael explains to Myra after wowing her with a medley beginning with Mendelssohn’s wedding march, climaxing with a Piazzolla tango, and finishing with an irresistible hip hop version of The Girl from Ipanema, “But we’ve entered an era when both Bach and the Beatles are considered classical music, so I’ve had to expand my genre base, so to speak.”
“I’m sold,” says Myra, struggling to keep her professional persona distinct from that of a deeply smitten woman. “I’m sure I can come up with plenty for you to do. Weddings, I mean.”
“Great,” says Michael, returning his accordion to its case. “To that end, here’s my brand new business card.”
With a graceful bow, Michael hands Myra an obviously homemade card featuring the mugs of not one but two smiling dogs.
Myra stiffens and her pretty eyes narrow suspiciously. “What… why dogs?”
“Oh, that’s Rex and Ziggy,” says Michael, smiling warmly at Myra. “I have a show for children, too, with Rex and Ziggy as my co-stars.”
“I see,” says Myra, commanding her frontal lobe to terminate infatuation with the handsome Irishman. “I trust that for weddings…”
“I hope you won’t think me impetuous,” says Michael, impetuously interrupting her, “but… would you please go out with me? Hear some music? Have a bite? I’m rather taken with you, and that’s an understatement.”
And the sweet musicality of his voice and the electricity flowing back and forth between them like a sideways Niagara makes Myra forget all about the dogs on Michael’s business card just long enough for her to say, “Yes!”
Two evenings later, Michael arrives at Myra’s impeccable Berkeley bungalow in a relatively new car not obviously outfitted for canine transport, and Myra invites him in for a drink before they zip off to Yoshi’s for jazz.
I have three cats,” says Myra, sitting not too far from Michael on her brown leather sofa and wondering if he’d be open to suggestions regarding his hopelessly outdated wardrobe. “But you won’t see them. They hide whenever anyone comes over.” She laughs. “Your classic scaredy cats.”
“I love cats,” says Michael, sighing in admiration of Myra. “You are one beautiful woman.”
“Thank you.” She blushes. “Wine? I have an excellent pinot.”
“I’d love a beer,” says Michael, nodding hopefully. “I’m not much of a wine drinker, but I love my ale.”
“Sorry,” says Myra, her hopes of a wine connoisseur dashed. “No beer.”
“Tea?” suggests Michael, smiling at the approach of three big kitty cats, Bingo appropriating Michael’s lap, Butch and Groucho rubbing and snuffling against Michael’s shoes and pants, the doggy scents irresistible to their inquisitive noses.
“This is unprecedented,” says Myra, dazzled by the sight of her cats fawning over Michael. “They’ve never done anything like this. Ever.”
“Oh, if I had half the way with women I have with animals,” says Michael, petting the adoring felines, “I’d probably…”
“Yes?” says Myra, laughing in delight as she forgets entirely that Michael features dogs on his business card. “You’d probably what?”
On Christmas day, Myra goes to Michael’s house for the first time. Having fulfilled their separate obligations to friends and relations that morning, and with their romance now well into the kissing phase, Myra braces herself for a front yard akin to her glimpses of certain unfortunate dog parks, rutted and muddy. But as she nears his house, she is mightily surprised to see a Shangri-la of rose bushes and fruit trees with nary a sign of canine trampling.
“Must have sacrificed the backyard,” she murmurs, hurrying through the rain to the house and wondering why she doesn’t smell anything particularly gross and doggy about the place.
The front door is ajar, the house resounding to Nat King Cole singing Christmas songs, the scents of freshly baked gingerbread and bubbling spaghetti sauce mingling surprisingly well.
“Hello,” says Myra, stepping into the piano-dominated living room with her big box of gifts for Michael, knowing she’s probably gone overboard on the shirts. “Anybody home?”
In response to her question, an enormous hound of complex origins appears on the threshold of the kitchen, wags his colossal tail, gives Myra a marvelously goofy smile, and sits. This is Rex, and he knows very well that his size gives any human pause, but would especially frighten a person with an aversion to his kind, as he senses Myra has.
A moment passes, Myra frozen in fear, and now Ziggy, a Lab-Collie-Whippet and who knows what else, joins Rex on the threshold, wags, smiles, and sits, too.
This can’t possibly work, thinks Myra, admitting to herself for the very first time that what she fears most about dogs is that they are so very much like people, and people have never been her forte, whereas cats…
At which moment, a third being appears on the threshold, this one a feline of many hues, a strikingly gorgeous calico named Miro who does not tarry with the dogs but approaches Myra without a whisker of trepidation, swirls about the woman’s legs, and communicates loud and clear (on the psychic plane), Pick me up, honey. I love women.
And as she cradles the sonorously purring Miro against her bosom, Myra’s heart breaks open, as all healthy hearts are made to do, and Rex and Ziggy feel Myra’s heart opening as the cue for them to cross the room and greet their master’s beloved, and so they do — Michael following to record the sweet miracle with his camera.
Mendocino writer and musician Todd Walton’s latest books are Buddha In A Teacup and Under the Table Books. His web site is www.underthetablebooks.com.
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