Clarence met Lindy Braverman at a bar in downtown Sacramento called Smiling Faces.
He went in because of the name.
He figured only women with self-esteem issues would go to a pickup place with the audacity to call itself “Smiling Faces.” And that was the kind of woman he needed to meet.
Lindy was a cat person, and that meant she had pet hair from her six beloved felines stuck in the creases and folds of most of her boldly patterned clothing. She was a walking hairball, and it was enough to give people sensitive to cat allergies attacks of prolonged sneezing.
But Lindy was unaware of this. She was unaware of many things.
So when the good-looking, gangly, copper-haired man leaned against the bar and almost purred, “Why don’t you buy me a drink?” she did.
Her horoscope that morning had said it was a day to be bold and make new friends.
Several hours later, when the two were alone in Lindy’s cramped apartment with just the cats, she didn’t even notice that part of Clarence’s left leg was man-made.
Lindy had had too much to drink, and she was too happy about the fact that Tom Baker, as the crazy-handsome man was named, was a Kings supporter. She had been wearing her Kings superfan underwear, and he had congratulated Lindy on her team choice.
Several hours later, when Clarence left Lindy Braverman’s apartment at three thirty in the morning, he had an antique diamond ring that he’d taken from a small leather box in her underwear drawer, most of the cash that was in her wallet, and all the leftover prescription pain medication for her gum surgery, which was on the second shelf in the medicine cabinet.
And then, for the icing on the criminal cake, he opened a window in the kitchen to create a bigger distraction.
He gathered up Lindy’s six beloved cats and herded them out onto the sidewalk. The two small ones ran right back to the closed door, terrorized to be outside in the dark of night.
The other four cats set off to explore the brave new world.