“Thanks!” Rachel called out the window as he stalked away. “Jerk,” she muttered beneath her breath as she motored on around the drive and onto the street.
Naturally, she had to park fourteen thousand miles away, and it was freezing out, and she was really PMS-ing, as in, retaining water like the proverbial sea cow. She didn’t have anything but her lavender shawl, so her teeth were chattering by the time she reached the top of the hill. She skirted around the end of the house so as not to run into Paul Revere, Doorman, and trudged on the path that led to the servants’ entrance (she knew exactly what the path was, having spent her formative years in Houston in a house of similar size, where they’d had an actual guard posted at their gate for reasons that seemed more ridiculous the older she got).
It was amazing, given her foul state of mind and the fact that her teeth were chattering, that she even heard the mewling sound. But she did hear it, and stopped in her tracks. There it was, very faint. She looked around to the hedges, and then to the bushes that lined the exterior of the garage. She heard it again, only louder this time, and as she neared the edge of the four-car garage, she saw the cat.
A cat that was, inexplicably, chained to a tree. Granted, there was a little kitty shanty there, and a bowl of water, but the cat was chained to a tree. In her thirty-one years, Rachel had never seen a chained cat. She didn’t even know it was possible to chain a cat.
And the cat obviously didn’t like it; she meowed at Rachel, who immediately moved to pet it, but the poor thing was so traumatized that it jumped away, aiming for her little kitty jail. Only the feline fell short because of the weight of the chain. Rachel moved very slowly, singing Kitty, kitty, kitty . . . until she at last got close enough to pet it.
That was, as it turned out, a huge mistake, because the cat was really frightened and let out a cat screech that echoed throughout the entire neighborhood.
“We’re not going to stand for this,” Rachel assured the cat. “We’ll think of something. Just give me a few minutes.”
And she did have every intention of doing something, but the sudden sound of pots and pans being clanged together startled her, and she turned to see a woman’s head pop out from behind the door leading to the kitchen.
Rachel instantly jumped up; the woman’s hair was in disarray, and there was what looked like fingerprints on her blouse. “Are you the help?” she asked quickly.
“Yes. My name—”
“Get rid of that shawl and hurry up. This is a nightmare!” she exclaimed, and disappeared again.
Rachel moved quickly; she followed the woman into a small sort of mudroom off the kitchen, saw hooks with coats on them, and hung her bag, then her shawl over the bag, and was straightening her clothing and hair when the woman shouted, “Hurry up . . . what’s your name?”
“Rachel.”
“Rachel, hurry the hell up! We’re already a half hour behind schedule!”
Rachel hurried the hell up, and stepped through that interior door into a madhouse. Men and women were rushing around an industrial-sized kitchen, checking pots and pans, carrying trays, and barely avoiding collisions with one another. The woman was standing at a small desk with a sheaf of papers in one hand, a Diet Coke in the other. She took one look at Rachel, up and down, and shook her head. “I said skirt. What sort of moron shows up to cocktail in pants?”
“I ah, I . . . the temp agency said black attire.”
“Jesus Christ!” The woman slammed the Diet Coke down onto the desk, spun around, and rifled through several clothes hanging from hooks next to her. She finally pulled out a skirt that looked five sizes too small and thrust it at Rachel as she glanced at her feet. “Oh great, boots with heels, too?” she cried angrily. “What the hell do I care? If your feet are killing you at the end of the night, it’s not my fault,” she snapped. “There’s a toilet at the end of the kitchen. Go change.”
Rachel looked at the skirt, then at the woman, who looked as if she might come apart at the seams at any moment, glaring fiercely and daring Rachel to argue, which Rachel was not stupid enough to do. She just clutched the skirt tightly to her, said thanks, and ran.
Unfortunately, it took her several minutes to maneuver into that skirt. In the end, she had to settle for zipping only. The button was not going in the buttonhole, no way, no how. She at last emerged, poured into the skirt so tight that she could hardly breathe. Thank God she had on a long sweater that covered any unsightly bulging and knee-high boots. Her hair was braided down her back, and having done some whimsical spell casting on her personal behalf, she’d felt a little festive—she’d threaded gold filigree through her hair to give it a sort of medieval look.