Cat by Any Other Name (9781101597729) Read Free Page B

wasn’t loud enough to rouse a mouse. So I slapped it hard. I’ll flip back into the charm mode as soon as the proprietor appears, I told myself.
    â€œComing, coming,” I heard someone grumble from the back of the store. A man appeared a minute after that. He was dressed in black T-shirt and jeans, and was covered with dust. I noticed he was carrying a pair of pliers and a light bulb, obviously having been repairing something in back. He didn’t seem excited at the prospect of what, for all he knew, was a paying customer.
    â€œWhat can I do for you, miss?” He ran his hand through the wisps of graying red hair above his round face.
    By way of an answer, I took out one of the small packets from my shoulder bag and held it up. “I’d like to interest you in carrying our wonderful organic catnip. It’s homegrown, right here in the city in a lovely herb garden downtown. It costs you only seventy-five cents a unit, and you could sell it easily for a dollar and a half or even two dollars a bag.”
    I guessed my pitch wasn’t working, because he didn’t reply. He looked from my face to the bag of catnip and then back at me. Before I could go on with my spiel, though, he began to laugh. Not just a chuckle but a huge laugh—one I might have appreciated if this had been a production of
Private Lives
, for instance.
    I didn’t understand. What had I done?
    After a minute he composed himself. “I’m sorry. Please excuse me. It’s just that I come out here like Jeeves the Butler, in answer to that ridiculous bell, and I see this tall, gorgeous woman in a forties suit jacket my mother would have killed for, and then you launch into a spiel about catnip, and then I realize you were Kate in the last play I ever took my mother to. It was all just too funny.”
    â€œYou saw me in
Taming of the Shrew?
”
    â€œThe Cherry Lane. Nineteen seventy-one. You were exquisite.”
    â€œWell, aren’t you nice? And you like my clothes, too.”
    He laughed again. “Guess you never know how things are going to turn out, right? I’m managing a rabbit-food emporium, and you’re pushing— I mean . . .”
    â€œYes,” I jumped in. “Well, anyway, this really is a fine product. Would you consider trying a few packages?”
    â€œLook. Thanks, anyway. But we can’t use it. There’s a pet store around the corner. Why don’t you try them?”
    â€œI could leave it here on consignment,” I pressed on, though I wanted nothing more than to be out of there. “You pay nothing unless you sell it.”
    â€œI’m sure we won’t have any call for it.” He shook his head. He was starting to walk away. I was losing him.
    â€œOne minute more!” I called out, knowing now the literal meaning of “Don’t take ‘no’ for an answer.” “You do know, of course, that catnip is not just for cats?”
    â€œWhat do you mean?”
    â€œDid you know, for instance, that catnip was brought to the New World back in 1620 by a Captain Mason, who had selected it as one of the essential herbs to be planted in the gardens of Newfoundland fishermen?”
    I’d done it now. But since he’d obviously already decided I was a nut, I went on. “Why, the Romans used it for ailments of the nose and throat. The American colonists used it as a remedy for mild stomach disorders in children. And trappers used it to relieve poison ivy burns.”
    I didn’t know whether he believed all of it, but I knew then that I had him. I threw out, as a final flamboyant tidbit: “In medieval Europe it was a common culinary herb for soups and stews. And surely you know how delicious and healthful it is as a tea?”
    The man sighed, all the fight gone out of him. “Leave a couple,” he said, and he smiled again.
    I stacked twenty packets neatly on the counter and left.
    I began the walk