Something Tells Me It Wouldn’t Have Been a Good Fit, Anyway

I arrive on time, but Liza Bean Bitey (of the Minneapolis Biteys) is already at the table.

The glass in front of her is empty, the umbrella that was once in it now tucked behind one perky little ear.

I sit down. “What, you’re one up on me already?”

She holds a paw up, two claws extended.

“Two? That’s your second drink?"  I glance at my watch.  "I thought we were meeting at 7:00?”

“We are meeting at 7:00,” she says.

Liza Bean Bitey (of the Minneapolis Biteys), a small-pawed, symmetrically striped catcher of mice, a delightfully purring example of nature’s having wrapped power in a fuzzy-wuzzy package, is feeling feisty.

She holds up her paw. A waitress appears immediately.

Cats are notoriously generous tippers.

“I’ll take another,” Liza Bean purrs. “How about you? The usual?”

“Gin and tonic,” I say to the waitress. “Extra limes, if you don’t mind.”

Liza Bean turns her green and slightly-unfocused eyes on me. “I shoulda never been honest in the interview.”

“Oh, no,” I say, mentally removing the tuna steaks from the grocery list. “What happened?”

She shrugs, decides she’s already said too much and turns quickly to lick a shoulder blade.

“Come on,” I nudge. “You asked me here. Obviously you want to talk about it.”

And suddenly I see.

“Oh, no,” I say, eyes widening. “You weren’t catty, weren’t you?”

Liza Bean stares at me over her raised glass and almost imperceptibly lowers her eyelids. She smiles, then closes her eyes. “It was inevitable.” She opens her eyes, sips her drink. “It started poorly,” she says, gazing out the window. “She opened the door to her office and called me in with a “Liza Bean Bitey? Here, kitty kitty kitty! I mean, really: Here, kitty kitty kitty?”

“Seems unprofessional, doesn’t it?”

Liza Bean chuckles. “Pearl, she had lipstick on her teeth!”

“The horrors,” I say, smiling.

“She—“ and here the cat snickers slightly, “She asked me if I minded if she ate her lunch while we talked, and when I said no, she pulled a Lunchable from her purse.”

Liza Bean’s third drink is placed on the table.

“No!”

“Yes!” She slips the waitress a dollar bill. “And worst of all?”

“It gets worse than a Lunchable?”

“She suggested that while they had just extended an offer to another candidate, they would like to offer the position of receptionist to me.” The cat sips her drink delicately. “As a way of getting my paw, so to speak, in the door.”

“Receptionist?! Did she not have your resume in front of her?”

She raises her eyebrows. “This was, as you can imagine, unacceptable to me; and I told her, in so many words, on my way out the door.” Liza Bean takes another sip of her drink and sighs in a somewhat exaggerated display of boredom. “Frankly, the smell of those tiny bologna bits in that lunch of hers was giving me a headache.”

I watch a group of people head for the smoking patio and the phrase “Hey, do you think I could bum a…” forms in my brain. I swallow half my drink. “In so many words, you say. And what words would those be?”

“Oh, you know,” she says, smiling. “Something about starving first, perhaps a comment or two on her wardrobe specific to the elastic-waist-banded pants she was wearing, blah, blah, blah. Who can remember?”

Liza Bean Bitey (of the Minneapolis Biteys) looks around the room, locates the waitress, raises one paw, turns to me. “You ready for one more? And then we really need to get going.”