Primal Scream Read Free Page B

England, raised the towering keep that stands today, once one of the ten most important fortresses in the Occident. King Henry II stayed here with his sons, King Richard the Lion-Hearted of the Third Crusade and evil King John of Magna Carta and Robin Hood fame, before he faced the pope's legates in Domfront ("Who will free me from this turbulent priest?") to seal the murder of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas a Becket. Twenty times the castle was laid to siege: a tug-of-war which passed possession back and forth between England and France, Henry V, flush from victory at Agincourt, besieging the French for eight months in 1417, then followers of Joan of Arc, burned at the stake in Rouen, later driving the English out in 1430.
    A published historian of the Mounted Police ( Those Who Wore the Tunic, and Bagpipes, Blood, and Glory: The Myth of Wilfred Blake ), DeClercq was drawn to Normandy by its history. Turning from the window with a glass of Cal vados in hand, sipped " Trou nor mand " between courses as the locals do, he wondered if Katt was inspired to write a historical romance. The teenager sat scribbling away at a French Provincial desk pulled in front of the soaring French windows facing west, one knee tucked up almost to her chin, ash blond hair escaping like Medusa snakes from the nest pinned up under her jaunty Parisian beret. From this viewpoint halfway up the hill, she commanded the darkening vista beyond the maison garden with its apple and pear trees and solitary palm, across the quiet lane beyond the coach house and wrought iron gate to a wide panorama of rolling hills stretching for miles under a sky dragged from purple to pink to red by the setting sun. Lost in concentration, Katt nibbled at her lip. Sensing his curiosity, she glanced up to raise her glass in a toast, "To civilized drinking laws," then went back to work.
    Katt was the source of his contentment.
    Robert DeClercq's life was as battered as Domfront castle. His first wife, Kate, and their daughter, Jane, had been killed by terrorists in Quebec's October Crisis of 1970. A decade later his second wife, Genevieve, was shot to death in the aftermath of the Headhunter case. Since then guilt had besieged his downcast mind, for had the chief not been a cop, all three would be alive, his life a tomb as bleak and lonely as the dungeons sunk in this hill, until Katt burst from the Ripper case to free and uplift him.
    Katt moving in had revolutionized his home. Raised by a practicing witch, she was an off-the-wall imp. The self-appointed poet laureate of her new realm, she penned screeds to commemorate home-front events, like "Ode to Teaboy" and "Dog Bites the Vet." Lately, her nascent ability had turned to prose instead. "The way I see it, Bob, writing's the cushy job. Home is anywhere that has a post office or modem. The world will be mine," Katt had decreed with a far-flung flourish of a gallivanting arm.
    Now each day saw a new Kattechism stuck under the Happy Face magnet on the fridge door:
     
    Katt on Zippers
     
    Have you ever had one of those days when you're late for school, your hair dryer is on the fritz, and the cat just puked a hairball in your lap? Then, as if life isn't vexing enough, your only clean shin pops a button. Not an inconspicuous button down near the tail; no, that would make things far too easy, but the button smack-dab in the middle.
    And you ask why I only wear polyester zip-up jumpsuits from Kmart?
    I know you're thinking: How can she afford to take such a fashion risk?
    To which I say: How can you afford not to?
    The average unbuttoning time of five-button shirts is 7.8 seconds, while a zipper requires but 2.1 seconds or less to undo. The difference in time consumption may seem minor to some, but to with-it, going-places people like you and me the exponential growth of a few seconds a day is years in the long run. And when you're feeling the call of nature in a desperate way—say, you ate the special in Cairo's