Back at home, after unharnessing the feline fuhrer and removing Leonard's leash, I heated up some leftover pizza and sat at the kitchen table, wondering if something was seriously wrong with me.
First, I'd seen…well, something, twice out of my kitchen window. Then I had a conversation with a little girl up at the playground just now, who didn't exist. What was happening? Was I losing it?
To be honest, it was only a matter of time. A lot of ex-spies went crazy in the end. One woman who retired just about the time I started at the CIA moved to Antarctica with the dream of selling bikinis to orcas. A guy I'd worked with in Mongolia retired and became a break-dancer in Sweden, where he married a hamster named Joyce.
No one really knew why these things happened, but the main theory was that this was the result of the stressful life of a spy. That or boredom. We never did find out if either of these was the case. It could've been from the fumes of markers made in Russia (they use gasoline in the manufacturing process, so avoid Sharpies that make you dizzy), or maybe it just took a crazy person to join the CIA in the first place. Who knew?
Maybe Mr. Sun and Mr. Moon were part of my imagination too? What was in that cake we had? LSD? I hoped not. That stuff messed you up. The CIA used to use it decades ago in an attempt to make people see things that weren't there. It was forbidden these days, but other nations had used it on me more than once.
The CIA gave it up right after this guy broke in at the Farm—the training place for new agents—and got the chemical into our water supply. Because we'd had fried chicken for lunch that day, for the rest of the afternoon, until our instructors found out what was going on, twenty-three recruits walked around scratching at the ground, thinking we were roosters. We were so convincing that the whole class got an A in Disguise.
Kelly had brought the cake. She'd never lace it with psychedelic drugs. No, the girls hadn't acted out of the ordinary. The problem was me.
Had I been drugged? There were drugs that affected you through your skin. Touch the wrong handrailing or use the wrong toilet paper and you could find yourself thinking you were playing miniature golf on Jupiter with Eleanor Roosevelt. My mind reeled back to what I'd been doing that the girls hadn't.
Nellie Lou! Was there something on the deceased vulture? I was the only one who'd really handled it. And the twins thought strange things were going on in their shop. Was the taxidermied bird covered in a narcotic? Maybe I shouldn't have kissed her so much the next morning when Rex wasn't looking.
I needed to know. After grabbing the bird from my locked bedroom, I set it down on the table and studied her. After snapping on my dishwashing gloves, I went over every inch of feathers and skin, looking for who knows what. Powder? I swiped the bird with my fingertips, but there didn't appear to be anything on them.
Oils were perfect for spreading toxins through contact with skin. And if that was the case, it would be absorbed into my bloodstream even faster. I sat back in my chair and screamed.
Philby was sitting behind the bird, her head poking out like the vulture had a cat head attached to it.
"Holy crap!" I put my hand on my chest, as if that would still my pounding heart. "Philby! Don't sneak up on me like that!"
The cat replied by coming around and sitting close to the bird. She sniffed it gingerly, and I had an idea. If Philby came into contact with it and acted bizarrely, maybe I was on to something. Now, how could I get her to touch the bird so she'd get dosed? Oh sure, it was wrong to hope your cat came into contact with LSD—but this was educational. Once she came into contact, I'd watch her to see if she acted weird.
The trouble would be that Philby acted like that most of the time. Even though she was predictable in many ways, she was, after all, a cat. A creature who would come tearing around the corner as if chased by wolves, then stop suddenly, give me a withering look, and trot away as if nothing had happened.
My cat was working her way up to the bird's googly eyes, when she froze, drew back suddenly, hissed, and ran away. That was interesting. Normally, the cat's next move would be to tear into the bird, destroying it utterly. Our attic was loaded with taxidermied animals she'd destroyed since the twins had been giving us dead things doing stuff. The saddest loss was a classroom diorama of ducklings wearing wigs and ironic T-shirts that said things like Fowl Play and What the Duck?
But my cat didn't attack Nellie Lou. Something had frightened her. Something on the bird.
Philby wasn't afraid of anything, and that included the mailman, the giant doofy dog Leonard, or Ronni. She could face down Satan himself and send him running away in tears. But now, she was afraid of a dead vulture.
It was as if she was confirming what I'd already suspected. I'd been drugged by a deceased bird of prey.
Martini jumped up onto the table and approached. But instead of dropping onto her back and falling asleep, her eyes grew wide and her tail fluffed out. She stalked the bird as if it was prey. Like her mother, she started sniffing. When she reached Nellie's purple bald head, she yowled and ran away.
Leonard came in to see what the commotion was and possibly to celebrate the fact that it wasn't because of him. His reaction was quite different. Our super gentle giant bared his teeth, and he lunged for the bird. I barely snagged her off the table before he claimed it with snapping jaws.
Now I had a problem. Leonard, being a Scottish deerhound, could stand on his hind legs and put his paws on my shoulders. Racing up the stairs, the dog on my tail, I barely managed to shut the door between us.
I placed Nellie Lou on top of our wardrobe.
Leonard whimpered at the door, and I knew I needed to find a very high spot for Nellie until I could get Dr. Soo Jin Body—our medical examiner—to study it. And it would need to be in one piece.
There was a very tall bookcase in our room that would be perfect. The problem was, the top shelf was out of my reach and spinning while spewing molten lava. No problem, I'd just run out to the garage to get the stepladder. I opened the second-story window and eased myself over to the downspout before shimmying down and landing on the grass, which appeared to be teeming with dung beetles in Vegas showgirl headdresses (I especially liked the one that looked like a chandelier).
Um, why did I do that? Why didn't I just go out the door? Ah. Right, I was hallucinating. Good thing Rex didn't see me, because he took issue with the dangerous and, in many cases, stupid things I'd done. This would bring the number up to 37 and a third.
Dusk had fallen, and it was getting dark. Where had the afternoon and evening gone? Oh. Right. Drugs. I'd probably been staring at that damn bird for hours. Now…what was I doing in the driveway?
The stepladder. I went into the garage via the side door. We had a strange setup because we had two entrances to the small building. One from the alley behind and one from the driveway in front. The previous owner had installed two large doors on either end of the building for whatever reason, and each one had their own remote. I'd always wondered if the lady who used to live there had been a spy, or career criminal.
Rex liked it. He thought the alley was the fastest way to leave. I preferred the driveway, so we split the two remotes.
My minivan was parked right in front of me, but Rex's black SUV was gone. Which was good because it was a tight space and I'd struggle to get to the stepladder—especially now that the walls were actively bubbling while singing showtunes from Cats. It was especially nice that the walls sang in three-part harmony. I walked around my van, and around the lump lying on the floor to snag the ladder, skidding briefly across a grease spot that turned into a sting ray and swam away. Then I walked back around the body and…
Body? It was pretty dim, but I could make out a man's body lying on the floor, eyes open to the ceiling. The chest was not rising and falling. Why was there a dead guy in my garage?
Oh! Right! The drugs. This wasn't real, but I poked him with my shoe, just to make sure. He felt real, but then again, so did that Nadia girl on the playground. Nope. I wasn't taking the bait this time. LSD wasn't going to make me look like an idiot! I'd had experience! I'd been a spy chicken!
Instead I took the stepladder into the house by crawling on my hands and knees up the purple polka-dotted deck stairs. In the kitchen, Philby was explaining string theory to Leonard, who wore a strapless ball gown and took copious notes, while Martini was passed out on her back, wearing black patent leather fetish wear.
Somehow, I dodged the sharks swimming in the dining room and the velociraptors who were on the couch watching TV in the living room (these hallucinations were taking a dark turn), before making it upstairs to my bedroom, where I installed Nellie Lou on top of the bookcase.
* * *
"Merry!" Rex's voice seemed to flutter over my head.
He sounded concerned. That was nice. I liked it when I had this dream. My husband, fearing that something had happened to me, would next kiss all my worries away.
"Merry!" This time his hands shook my shoulders.
My eyes popped open. I seemed to be on the bed, spooning the stepladder.
"What's going on?" I mumbled as I sat up.
"Why are you sleeping with the stepladder?" my husband asked as his eyes searched mine.
"Well…" I got to my feet. Huh. I was still dressed. My head hurt, and my tongue felt thick and hairy. "Nellie Lou is coated with a narcotic that's made me see things all day. And then Leonard tried to attack her, so I…" My voice trailed off as I looked at the open bedroom window. No, I'd better not mention that, or the 37 and one third would round up to 38.
"I totally took the stairs and went out to get the ladder and put her up there." I smiled. "You wouldn't believe the day I've had. I've hallucinated all kinds of things, from squirrels, to Mr. Sun and Mr. Moon, some little imaginary girl on the playground, and a dead guy in the garage."
Something in Rex's expression brought me up short.
"What's happened?" I looked to see that the vulture was still safe on top of the bookcase. Then I checked the open window again, in case there was a huge neon sign that said MERRY TOTALLY WENT OUT THE WINDOW.
Rex just stood there staring at me. Maybe he was a hallucination too. I'd better play it safe and imagine that he really was there.
"I'm not crazy," I insisted. "It was just some sort of hallucinogen I was dosed with when I touched Nellie Lou. I'm okay."
He shook his head. "It's not that." I knew that look. He was real alright. Which was a relief.
"It wasn't? Then what?"
Rex sighed heavily. "There really is a dead guy in the garage."