32.

I was in a lousy mood when I got home, and it didn’t get much better over the next few hours. I’d solved a murder and got nothing for it. I’d found a million dollars in missing diamonds and got nothing for it. I’d found almost ten million dollars hidden in a Swiss bank account and got nothing for it. All I’d gotten for the whole thing was half a transmission and a cat that had no more use for humans than Marlowe did.

I went out to a chili joint for dinner, brought back a cheese coney for each of the animals, and sat down on the couch to watch some TV while they were chowing down. I was hoping for a Bogey festival, or at least a Jimmy Cagney one. But it was as if someone at Turner Classic Movies had been spying on me and had a sardonic sense of humor. It was Animal Night, and as Sam ambled in and jumped up on her cushion and tried to push me onto the other one, and Marlowe jumped on his cushion and started pushing me back, we were treated to Rhubarb, about a cat that inherits a baseball team, which was certainly more productive than a cat that loses a ten-million-dollar collar; and Lassie Come Home, which was a few steps ahead of a dog that reluctantly leaves his couch very briefly three or four times a day.

I fell asleep ten minutes into the first one. I don’t know how long I slept there on the couch, but life became appreciably better when Bettie Page started purring in my left ear while a magically youthful Sophia Loren passionately kissed my right.

Then the dog and cat movies were over, The Black Stallion came on, Bettie began running moist sandpaper in my left ear while Sophia started barking in my right, and I was back in the real world again.