Page 40 of The Holy Grail
“Torties?”
“It’s short for ‘tortoiseshell’,” she clarified. “It refers to the colors and pattern of their fur, which is linked to their gender, which is almost always female. And if it happens to be male, I think they’re sterile.”
“How do you know all that?”
“My friend Paige has had cats—she currently has three—and always shares cat knowledge with me, whether I ask for it or not. So, what’s your cat’s name?”
“Um … Don Corleone.” At her amused grin, he quickly defended his name choice. “Look, I didn’t know he was a she at the time, and he—I mean she—is a stone cold killer, so it made sense, right?”
“Are you implying females can’t be stone cold killers? Because that would be sexist.”
He simply looked at her, like he was trying to figure out the best answer to get himself out of this pickle.
“Because who does all the hunting in a pride?” Jules asked. “Thelionesses, that’s who, while the head lion lays around, dumb, fat, and happy, waiting for the next time he needs to give his balls a workout.”
Malcom choked out a laugh. “You’re right. I was being sexist, and I do apologize.”
“Thank you. Now then, we need to come up with a better name for your cat.”
“I like the name Don Corleone. Plus, I’m used to it and so is he. I mean,she’sused to it.”
“All right,” Jules acquiesced. “So, how about we just change the spelling from D-O-N to D-A-W-N?”
He looked at her like she was a genius. “You mean call herDawnCorleone?”
“Exactly.”
“Okay.” He came around the island to kiss her, lingering for several moments because the feel of her lips under his was becoming something he really enjoyed. “I love that.”
When Malcom went back to starting dinner, she got up and wandered over to his vinyl collection. He called out to her, telling her to put something on, so she started looking through the albums, only to stop after a few moments to say, “This is really … eclectic.”
“I know. There’s a little bit of everything in there.”
“I can see that.” She flipped through several more albums. “Have you ever thought about alphabetizing these?”
“Once. Then I realized how much work it was going to be and decided against it.”
“But what if you want to listen to something specific? Say, like—” she broke off to pluck an album from the row and hold it up so he could see it was Van Halen’sDiver Down, “—this one?”
“Then I usually spend a minute or two looking for it, and if I don’t find it, I pick something else.”
Shaking her head, Jules put the album back and continued going though the collection until she came across an album that made her eyebrows rise in amusement. “Talk to me about this,” she said, lifting up Donna Summer’sBad Girlsfor him to see.
“What?” Malcom blinked at her. “She’s a completely underrated singer. Are you aware she had fourteen top-ten singles, and four of those went to number one?”
“No. I wasn’t aware of that.”
“She also sold more than one hundred million records worldwide and was known as the ‘Queen of Disco’ … and rightly so.”
“You seem to know a lot about her.”
“I … might have had a crush on her at one point.”
Jules carefully took the album out of the record sleeve and put it on the turntable. As she gently set the needle down, a little bit of crackling noise filled the air before the first notes of “Hot Stuff” began playing.
Jules headed back to where Malcom was assembling all the ingredients necessary for the promised dinner of chicken and waffles and sort of hovered, partly because she wanted to be near him and smell him some more, but also to make him as aware of her as possible,since it wouldn’t be fair for her to be the only one experiencing hyper-awareness. So she shadowed him, sticking close as he did his thing, sometimes watching with her chin perched on his shoulder and a hand on his hip, as he measured and mixed the breading for the chicken.
She started to see signs she was affecting him—a slight flush creeping along his skin, the tensing of his muscles, and the shallow cadence of his breathing—so she began doubling down by getting closer and moving her hand to the back of his neck, where she played with his hair. Under her fingers it was wavy and a little coarse.
