Book One, Page Four. A Gentle Thaw.
Mrs. Lacey Lancaster was sitting with a handkerchief in her hand on one of the dogproof benches in Jerry's waiting room. Jerry sat next to her and said nothing, knowing that it was easier to let her ask how her cat was. Which would be easier than just coming out and telling her the cat was deceased.
But Mrs. Lancaster asked the wrong question. "How much do you think it will cost to make Pinky well again?" She seemed to be exercising brave control of great sadness.
The perfect answer popped into Jerry's head. "There will be no charge," he said. Mrs. Lancaster's eyes turned to lock onto his, as she tried to puzzle out what he meant. Somehow, his return glance told her the truth. He watched her eyes fill with tears, as if little water pipes had been turned on under her lower eyelids. Her lower lip trembled.
"Is poor Pinky dead? Is she dead? Did you try absolutely everything?"
"I'm sorry, Mrs.--I'm sorry, I forgot your name. Lancaster. I'm sorry. Your cat was dead when you brought him here yesterday. There was nothing I could do."
"I read about a shot that can make a stopped heart start beating again," she said hopefully.
Jerry shook his head somberly. "No, I don't know of that. If there had been anything that could have been done, I would have done it. But Pinky was hurt so badly that even if he lived he would have died soon from other things. It's really a good thing he died right away."
"Pinky was a girl!" she said. Obviously, Jerry hadn't tried as hard as he was saying if he didn't know that. "So, what do I do now? I'd like to bury her at home."
"Yes, of course," said Jerry. He was never much good at this pet undertaker business. "I'll get Pinky for you. Excuse me." Jerry went to the freezer, a big upright in a shed just outside the back door. He opened it to see that Pinky, which he'd more or less just thrown in there the night before, had her legs splayed out in a highly unnatural, silly way. He thought for a second. He picked the cat up, put it into a plastic bag, and brought it to the kitchen. He put the sack into the microwave oven, and pressed "Defrost." The microwave asked how many pounds. Jerry punched in 4, closed the door, and pushed Start. The panel showed that this would take twenty-eight minutes. Jerry went back to Mrs. Lancaster.
"Mrs. Lancaster, there are some papers that need to be filled out before I can release your pet," he said. "Some ridiculous state law. You know how it is. My assistant is working on them now, but they need to be faxed up to Baton Rouge and approved. It might take about a half-hour. Maybe you could come back later, and we'll have a nice box for Pinky."
"Oh, that's all right," she said. "I'll just wait here."
Mrs. Lancaster sat on Jerry's hard wood bench for a half-hour while her frozen cat thawed in the microwave. He excused himself from Mrs. Lancaster to tell Peggy, his assistant, about the ruse. Then he returned to the bench and tried to ease the transition for her.
"Do you have any other pets, Mrs. Lancaster?" he said. "If you need one to replace Pinky, we have some cats here looking for a home."
"Oh, yes," she said. "I have seven other cats. But Pinky was one of the oldest. My daughter Winifred got Pinky for her eleventh birthday. Of course, when she went away to college, she left Pinky here with me, and she's so busy now that she can't take care of a pet. She's going to feel terrible when I tell her that Pinky died." Mrs. Lancaster's lower lip began to tremble again.
"What does your daughter do now?" Jerry asked.
"She should be a doctor like you, but she started working as a waitress in college. She spent more time at the restaurant than she did studying. Then she started cooking. She worked her way up to being a chef. But she's too smart and too beautiful a girl for that. She's just throwing her life away."
"Oh, I wouldn't say that," Jerry said. "Look at Emeril. He's made a lot of money as a chef. More people know him than any doctor I can think of."
"That's what Winnie tells me all the time, too. But she's getting nowhere. She says that she has to move from one restaurant to another to keep moving up, but it just looks to me like she can't hold down a job."
"Where is she working now?" Jerry asked.
"Nowhere," said Mrs. Lancaster. "The restaurant where she was working closed down when the owner was sent to jail for tax evasion. What kind of people are these? But she still wants to stay with it. I wish I had some money so I could help her open up her own restaurant. That's what she really wants to do."
"Really?" Jerry said. "Mrs. Lancaster, I know this might sound cruel, but it might be a good thing that--" Jerry caught his callousness before it formed into words. "That you came in today. I think I might know where your daughter can get a really good job with a new restaurant I think is going to do very well."
"Oh?" she asked, with a hint of suspicion. "What restaurant is that?"
"I don't know the name. I'm not sure they have one yet," said Jerry. "It's going to be on the corner of Carrollton and Claiborne, in the old Roquette's drugstore. I can't believe it closed after all these years."
"Oh, yes, he had to close," said Mrs. Lancaster. "Bobby talked about retiring for a long time, but at eighty-eight it's about time. Bobby Roquette is my brother, you know. But he didn't tell me about a restaurant in his old building."
"You're kidding!" said Jerry, his smile widening. "Boy, this is just like New Orleans. Sometimes I think there are only five hundred people in this whole city. I went to Roquette's every afternoon on my way home from high school when I was a boy." He held back from saying he himself was the would-be restaurateur.
"You're still a boy," said Mrs. Lancaster.
"Tell you what," Jerry said. "Can you give me your daughter's phone number, and I'll pass it along to the person who's opening the new restaurant?"
"I'll have to ask her first."
"Sure! Would you like to use our phone?" Jerry said, then had the feeling perhaps he was getting pushy. He got the cordless and brought it over to Mrs. Lancaster, and left her to make her call while he checked how well the cat was defrosting.
