Jefferson Davis was wearing a red-and-white basketball uniform. The hat he held in his left hand had been turned into a basketball, although an oddly shaped one. His skin had been painted black. The marble base he stood on had been turned into a gym floor.
Kitchen sped ahead, shocked, crazed, almost out of control. He slammed on the brakes to get a closer look. The number on the jersey was 12. Kitchen was a sports fan and knew without a doubt the University of Richmond Spiders uniform. The number 12 on the jersey was that of Bobby Feeley, who was one of the most pathetic recruits Kitchen had ever seen. Kitchen yanked the portable radio off his belt and raised his supervisor on the air.
‘Someone’s turned Jeff Davis into a colored basketball player!’ Kitchen declared.
CHAPTER seventeen
Niles would not leave West alone. The cat had never been easy, but there was one sin he wasn’t allowed to commit. No cat or anyone else kept West awake unless she chose to be awake, and she had chosen no such thing.
‘What the hell’s wrong with you?’ West complained, turning over and punching the pillow under her head.
Niles wasn’t asleep, but he wasn’t moving, either. He’d been in the same position since midnight when his owner had finally decided to toss aside that silly Chicken Soup for the Soul book that promised a hundred and one happy heartwarming stories that meant nothing to Niles.
‘Shut up!’ his owner said, kicking the sheets.
Niles’s ribs silently rose and fell as he breathed. He wondered when his owner would figure out that she always got cranky whenever Piano Man had been sighted in the area.
‘I can’t take this anymore,’ his owner announced.
She sat up. She picked up Niles and dropped him on the floor. He had put up with quite a lot in the past few hours, but enough was enough. He jumped back up on the bed and batted her chin with his paw, keeping his claws tucked in.
‘You little shit!’ She popped Niles’s head.
Niles jumped on her abdomen as hard as he could, knowing how much she hated that in the morning when she had to pee. His owner threw him off the bed again, and he jumped back and hissed and nipped her little finger and leaped back off the bed and ran like hell. She jumped out of bed in pursuit.
‘Come back here, you little fuckhead!’ she yelled.
Niles ran faster, taking the corner into his owner’s office and springing on the top shelf of her bookcase, where he waited with swishing tail, crossed eyes staring. His owner made the turn not quite as gracefully, hitting her hip on the door frame and swearing some more. She pointed her finger at Niles. Niles wasn’t intimidated. He wasn’t even tired. She came closer and reached up, trying to grab him.
Niles sprang over her head, landing on her desk. He hit InLog on her Personal Information Center phone until he found the number he wanted. Then he hit Speaker and Dial. He waited until his owner almost had her hand on the back of his neck. He bopped her nose and was gone again as a phone loudly rang and rang over the speaker.
‘Hello?’ Piano Man answered.
West froze. ‘Hello?’ Brazil asked again.
She snatched up the phone.
‘How’d I call you when I didn’t?’ she demanded to know as she read Brazil’s number on the video screen.
‘Who is this?’ Brazil asked.
‘Niles did it, not me,’ West said.
‘Virginia?’
‘I didn’t do it,’ she said, glaring at Niles, who was stretching one leg after another from a safe distance.
‘It’s not like it’s a crime if you called me,’ Brazil said.
‘That’s not the point.’
‘You want to have breakfast or are you tied up?’ Brazil said haltingly, as if he was just being nice and had no interest whatsoever in seeing her.
‘God, I don’t know,’ she replied as she ran through a list of other fabricated options. ‘What time is it? Niles kept me up all night.’
‘It’s almost seven.’
‘I’m not running with you if that’s what you’re really asking,’ West shot back as her heart forgot its rhythm.