-17

“I’ll get it, Willie.” Shirley, ever sensitive, had seen her weary look, and as Willie now grunted and turned back to the sink, the actress poured coffee, then moved to the breakfast nook. Sat down. And warmly smiled as she looked at her plate. A blush-red rose. Stephanie. That angel. Many a morning, when Shirley was working, Stephanie would quietly slip out of bed, come down to the kitchen and place a flower, then grope her way crusty-eyed back to her sleep. Shirley shook her head; rueful; recalling: she had almost named her Goneril. Sure. Right on. Get ready for the worst. Shirley chuckled at the memory. Sipped at her coffee. As her gaze caught the rose again, her expression turned briefly sad, large green eyes grieving in a waiflike face. She'd recalled another flower. An adopted daughter. Sachiko. She had died long ago at the age of three, when Shirley was very young and an unknown chorus girl on Broadway. She had sworn she would not give herself ever again as she had to Sachiko; as she had to her father, Steve Parker. She glanced quickly from the rose, and as her dream of death misted upward from the coffee, she quickly lit a cigarette. Willie brought juice and Shirley remembered the rats. “Where's Karl?” she asked the servant.
“I am here, madam!”
Catting in lithe through a door off the pantry. Commanding. Deferential. Dynamic. Crouching. A fragment of Kleenex pressed tight to his chin where he'd nicked himself shaving. "Yes?" Thickly muscled, he breathed by the table. Glittering eyes. Hawk nose. Bald head.
“Hey, Karl, we’ve got rats in the attic. Better get us some traps.”
“There are rats?”
“I just said that.”