Page 39 of How To Plot a Payback

“—but really, the workload, the freedom. You were worked to the bone at the other place—”

“Neighbors is actually going to be twice the load, I think—”

“But what’s most important in all this,” she says, her voice rising shrilly as she slams her hand on the table, “is that you’ve changed your job. And you know there is some reason you changed your job, so we can leave it at that.”

This. This is my pep talk.

“I appreciate that,” I say reservedly. Now clearly is not the time to dwell on the fact that if all of this falls through, and I lose my job on the first day, or week, or whenever, then I can guarantee I’ll be pretty much ejected from the Hollywood community altogether.

I shake my head. Enough talk about me and this day. “How old are those two?” I say, motioning to the two black cats creeping slowly toward our food. “And where’d you find them? And can you take them back to wherever that place is?”

I’m at the point with the spay and neuter clinic at my vet that they want to put my name on a plaque on a bench. I’ve taken so many cats to the clinic, they started referring to me as “Cat Man.”

“Oh, who knows,” she replies, batting one away from nosing her plate.

“I think you do,” I say. “I fancy you found them . . .”

She waves her hands around airily. “By the trash cans. I couldn’t leave them, of course.”

She absolutely could leave them, and I have told her so a hundred times.

“You haven’t got room for them.”

“The world didn’t have room for them,” she counters, then taps her heart. “Me? I’ve got plenty of room.”

“What does this make?” I say, unmoved. “Twelve?”

“Nonsense,” she says. “I’d never have so many as that in my house. Don’t try to make me sound like a crazy cat lady.”

I look around.

I count at least fourteen.

“You know it’s not allowed—”

“And you were allowed to have those two Ukrainians in your apartment last month?”

I frown. “They were refugees who needed a short-term stay until they got on their feet.”

“They were two non-tenant visitors sleeping on your couch well past forty-eight hours, and we have a crotchety old landlord.” She grins, knowing she got me. “We are the same, Finnyboy. Won’t let rules stand in the way of justice.”

This is not the same thing.

Nevertheless, arguing will get me nowhere. The best I can do is quell the cat-breeding dilemma.

I sigh. “I’ll take—”

“Wilma and Fred,” she supplies.

“Wilma and Fred,” I repeat, nudging one off my lap, “to the vet tomorrow. I have to drop Miles off anyway before work.”

Miles is my eight-year-old Weimaraner. Seventy pounds of lean muscle with a mind as sharp as a tack. Brings the mail to the neighbors. Boosts morale when spirits are low. Stopped an attempted break-in last year. But sure, she has a name for every cat in here and still refers to him as that dog.

Mrs. Teaberry agrees to the plan, and after a lengthy supper and gelatin dessert (of which I managed one bite before the cats swooped in), my headache settles to the cadence of a light throb.

Scripts are swimming through my head, though. As are the meds and the need for sleep. I break off for home.

My keys fall into the bowl as I step inside my front door, and the sound of it cracks like a whip. I rub my temples. Miles perks up, his doleful eyes watching as he rests solemnly on the doggie bed. I give his sleek gray head a rub as I pass.