Cat in the Dark by Shirley Rousseau Murphy Page B

to her right,only three travelers occupied the long lines of worn chairs. Two men sat slumped and dozing, as if they might have traveled all night or maybe waited there all night huddled down into the cracked leather. She couldn’t see much of the man behind the pillar, just his legs. She had the impression of limpness; maybe he was asleep, too.
    She thought she’d like a cup of coffee but, checking her watch by the airport clock, there really wasn’t that much time. Anyway the airport coffee was expensive and not worth hiking upstairs, throwing away a buck and a half. Wilma’s coffee was better. And where would she put another cup? She was so full of breakfast her ears bulged.
    Choosing a seat in the middle of a row of attached chairs, she settled down where she would be able to see the incoming plane but away from the overflowing ashtrays and their stink of stale cigarettes. After one week with Greeley smoking in the house, she longed never to see another cigarette; her little cottage smelled not only of cat, but like a cheap bar as well.
    She could have put up one of those THANK YOU FOR NOT SMOKING signs in the living room. Not that Greeley would pay any attention. He’d pitch a fit if she tried to make him go outdoors to smoke. Between the stink of cigarettes and the stink of that cat, she’d have to burn her home to the ground to get the smell out.
    Mavity’s cottage, anywhere else but Molena Point, would be called a shack. It was a low-roofed, California-style clapboard, one step up from a single-wide trailer. But in the upbeat seaside village, it had value. Well, she thought, the land had value. Located right on the bay, it was real waterfront property, even if the bay, at that point, was muddy and smelly.
    One would think, from looking at the MolenaPoint map, that her house faced a wide bathing beach. In fact, her little bit of land occupied a strip of marsh between the bay and the river—oh, it had patches of beach sand, but with heavy sea grass growing through. And the marsh was sometimes in flood. All the foundations along the shore were real high, and in bad weather one wanted to have buckets handy. The lower part of her house was stained dark with blackish slime that, as many times as she hosed and scrubbed it, just kept getting darker.
    She hadn’t thought much about her property value until Winthrop Jergen pointed out just how dear that land might be and had explained to her how much she could borrow on it, if she chose to invest more heavily. But she hesitated at the thought of a mortgage. She would hate to have something happen, though of course nothing would happen.
    She did love the view from her porch; she loved the marsh and the sea birds, the gulls and the pelicans and terns. The land just above her place, up the hill where the old Spanish mission rose against the sky, was pricey property. There were fine, expensive homes up there bordering the valley road; and the old mission was there. She loved to hear its bells ringing for mass on Sunday morning.
    Dora said the bells brought her right up out of a sound sleep. But what was wrong with that? Being southern, they got up for church, anyway. They always trotted off to mass, even if they weren’t Catholic. Ralph said it was good for the soul to worship with a little variety.
    The airport loudspeaker crackled, announcing the incoming commuter flight from L.A., and she rose and moved into waiting area number three and stood at the window. The runway was still empty, the sky empty.
    It had been a long time since she’d seen Dora and Ralph, though they had talked on the phone quite a lot recently. Now that Greeley was considering moving back to California, she thought the Sleuders might decide to come out to the coast, too, maybe settle down inland where property was cheaper. Since they had that terrible financial loss last year, she supposed they didn’t have a lot of money. Well, the only reason she could afford