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Since none of the cats voiced an objection to puree, Katie rubbed their heads—asking Sue politely for permission first—lined up their bowls, and gave them their breakfast. She took a minute to listen to their wet eating purrs before she broached the subject she needed to talk with them about.
“So, my darling peanuts, while you eat, I have to tell you something.” Katie walked over to the large array of buttons she had setup on a credenza outside the kitchen’s cased opening. The credenza faced the wall of glass that looked out on the pool and the bird feeders she had installed to provide her indoor cats with enrichment.
The buttons were mounted to interlocking foam mats of the type preschoolers sat on for circle time. Each button was a plastic circle, about three inches across, that played back a brief recording when depressed.
Almost two years ago now, Katie had begun with one button—a recording of her own voice saying the wordtreat—and she had patiently and painstakingly trained the cats to associate the word with the action of getting a treat.
Then they’d learned to push the button themselves when they wanted a treat, which was, conveniently, always.
After that, it was easy. One by one, Katie had added more buttons to the array, known among speech therapists as an Augmentative and Alternative Communication board, until she had more than fifty concept-words that she could use to communicate with her cats.
And which her cats could—and did—use to communicate with her.
Katie pushed the large buttons while she said the words out loud. “Cats,” she said as she pushed theCatsbutton. “Mama. News.”
The cats looked back at her. Trois, a three-legged calico who was the most active and adventurous of Katie’s cats, swished her tail in anticipation. Phil finished eating, stretched, and let out a long, multipitch report on his feelings.
Sue jumped down from the counter and leapt onto the credenza. She was often the spokescat for the rest of them. She was the chattiest on the AAC, and Phil complained the most.
“Mama. Trip. Cats. Trip.” Katie pushed the three buttons, then surveyed the cats for reactions. Trois, naturally, looked excited. Phil dropped back into his loaf.
Sue approached the buttons. “No. Kennel. No.”
Sure. They had been here before. Katie’s work as an actress meant that she’d taken her cats on a lot of airplanes to a lot of different destinations—enough that they understood the significance of her announcement. Sue was not a big fan of having to spend time in her kennel, whether in a car, on the airplane, or visiting the vet.
“Yes,” Katie said, pushing the button. “Cats. Kennel. Airplane.” She rubbed Sue’s head to soften the blow.
Sue pushed the buttons again. “Sue. Mad. Mad.”
“I know you don’t love the smaller airplane kennel, Sue. But itisa direct flight, on a chartered plane, so you’ll be with me the whole time.” Katie pushed the buttons. “Mama. Cats. Together. Plane. Your reward is that, just like I told you, none of you had to say good-bye to Nana Diana for long.” She pushed the button forNana Diana.“Because that is where we are going. You like it there, even at Christmastime when it’s cold. You will be spoiled, and I will be with you the whole time! No meetings. No visitors you don’t know. Just me and you. Because, as you are aware, I am supposed to be writing, and if I have to barricade myself in Green Bay with my mom’s cooking to pull it off, I will.”
Katie pressed her hand against her belly to head off the buzzy, cold shiver of nerves that hunted her whenever she thought about writing. Really doing the thing. The secret thing that she’d told five hundred super-smart film students was scary, that every one of them would give a vital organ to get to do, and so she better do it well, right?
Because the very last words that Honor Howell said to her, before she got inside a sleek navy car, were,We’ll soon see if your script is better than theunpleasantnesswe suffered on that stage, Katelyn. I do wonder how ready you are for work out of the spotlight.
Sue gave a short, huffy meow and jumped down from the credenza.
“I love you, Sue,” Katie said.
She cleaned up the cats’ dishes and then got out the truly massive breakfast burrito she’d ordered on Uber Eats the night before to have now, slathered with warmed-up white queso and covered with an avocado from her tree in the conservatory. It didn’t matter that Katie had lived in Los Angeles for almost thirteen years, her Wisconsin soul would never, ever get over that she could grow her own avocados in her sunroom—in December!—and how good the breakfast burritos were here. Ever.
Katie loved breakfast burritos. There had been no such thing growing up in Green Bay unless you counted the ones at McDonald’s, which were emergency breakfast burritos only.
She’d fixed her burrito and pulled out her phone, wiggling in her dining room chair with delight at her chance to have burrito-and-phone time, when a FaceTime request came through from Madelynn, her primary publicist.
Katie gave a very, very tiny sigh. Madelynn was tremendously talented, but publicists were such that even if you got the best ones, if you had any scruples at all, you’d end up running through them. Madelynn was Katie’s fifth publicist.
She was Katie’s publicist forever, herlastpublicist, because she listened when Katie told her that she didn’t want anyone manufacturing anything that wasn’t true, and she wanted 99 percent of the publicity focused on her projects.
Also, Madelynn would never make Katie talk about Ben. In fact, Madelynn had quietly released a few dozen photos of Katie in Chicago in her serious director outfit, some of them with smart pull quotes that Katie almost couldn’t believe she’d said. There was a fat series of shots of Katie posing with or talking to film students with bright, interested faces, and even some of Honor Howell looking at Katie with interest and a smile.
But if Madelynn was calling her early on a Saturday morning, this was a call about something Katie didn’t want to talk about.
“Hi, Madelynn!” Katie said. Then she put a very big bite of burrito in her mouth. Pointedly.
“Katie, good morning.” Madelynn Soh was forty, with one of those pixie cuts that made everyone ask their stylist for a pixie cut. She had a whole wardrobe of glasses. Today, they were orange frames with little fried eggs where the jewels would go. “I’m calling about your secret project. Specifically, I am calling about the fact that the existence of your secret project leaked to Ben Adelsward, thereby fucking up your appearance in Chicago.”
Madelynn never beat around the bush, which Katie appreciated.