6 - That Darn Cat

“Well, you look like shit,” Obie observed, shoving a cup of coffee into Jon’s hand.  “Of course, since I heard you up banging around at four this morning, I’m guessing you didn’t get any sleep – as usual – so it’s no surprise that you’ve got sunglasses plastered to your face in the pouring rain.”

Jon took a cautious sip of the caffeinated goodness before grunting at his friend and striding the hundred or so feet from the hotel lobby to the car.  Considering that he never did go to sleep last night, it was only nine o’clock now and he’d just had his first drink of coffee, Jon thought he was giving an impressive display of adulting. 

What he really wanted to do was cram something in Obie’s yapping mouth.  Instead, he ducked his head low to avoid as much of the torrential downpour as he could and wondered why it had taken Cassidy to show him that his friend possessed an unhealthy number of Chihuahua characteristics. 

“Oh, no.  Hold it right there, buddy!” 

With one hand on the Camaro’s door handle, Jon looked over his shoulder, unsure whether his friend should be thankful that the stink eye being thrown his way was veiled by tinted lenses or not.  At least if he saw it, he’d have fair warning that Jon could kick his ass this morning without feeling the least bit sorry about it.

“What?”

A single finger pointed across the midnight blue roof of the car, directly at Jon’s paper coffee cup.  “You’re not getting in my hot rod with that thing.  Drink it up and then we’ll go.”

“You do realize you just handed me the fuckin’ thing and lured me out into the goddamn rain?”

“That’s because social interaction with you is a moot point until you’ve had coffee, but you’re not taking it in my car.  If you hadn’t hauled ass out of the lobby so fast, I would’ve told you back there.”

Jon swore and looked around for the nearest trashcan.  The dark brew was burning his hand through the paper cup.  There was no way he could drink it, and he damn sure wasn’t going to stand in the rain and wait for it to cool. 

“I’m never going on another road trip with you,” he declared over his shoulder as he tossed the cup in the can, then jogged back to the car.  He threw his duffel in the back seat and ducked inside, slamming the door to lock out the rain. 

“Yeah, yeah,” the ridiculously unruffled – and dry – driver said, putting the car into gear.  “I’ll remember that the next time you start talking about a new tour.”

Jon grunted and pulled his sunglasses off so that he could wipe them with the tail of his t-shirt.  The only reason he wasn’t plotting Obie’s death was because the rain was a warm one, and he didn’t have nipple pucker or shrinkage going on. 

“When’s that gonna be, by the way?”

Tucking the arm of his shades into the neckline of his shirt, Jon frowned at Obie.  “When’s what?” 

“The next tour.”

The twelfth of never if I don’t get a song or fifty written.

“Not sure yet.”

“Well, how’s the next album coming?  Isn’t your deadline soon?  Aren't you going to release at the end of summer?”

Jon bristled and a vain attempt to relieve his discomfort by shifting in his seat.  This was not a conversation he wanted to have.  Having it at nine in the morning, with water dripping down the back of his neck and no coffee was completely out of the question.

“Did you see me dump that cup of coffee in the trash?” he asked grouchily.  “No coffee means I’m not in the mood to play twenty questions.”

“Pfft.”  Obie accelerated the car onto the freeway with a nonchalant wave of his hand.  “You were up all night.  I’m betting you had at least three cups before gracing me with your presence.  I just gave you that last cup so I could jerk you around.”

Shaking his head, but uninterested in squabbling, Jon just asked, “Is there a point to you being a dick, or are you just passing the time?”

“Both,” his friend laughed.  “But I thought if I pissed you off real good, you’d welcome my true agenda with open arms.”

Jon couldn’t imagine what the actual agenda might be, but, if it required cruel and unusual de-caffeinated torture to make it look good, he wasn’t interested.  “Not fuckin’ likely.”

“Awww, c’mon,” Obie goaded while slipping into the fast lane to pass up a little old lady doing forty-five on the freeway.  “Since when do you not wanna talk about a good lookin’ woman?”

One eyebrow slid up Jon’s forehead, and he slanted a critical look toward the driver’s seat.  “And who might that be?”

“Cassidy, of course.”  The windshield wipers flicked left and then right, squeaking just slightly as they did.  “You were so wrapped up in the orgasmic afterglow of talking to the Adams guy, that you never told me what you thought of her.”

She’s got the ass of an angel and a face that ain’t far behind.  Like hell if I’m tellin’ you that, though.

“I dunno.  She’s okay, I guess.”

“Okay?”  Obie frowned in annoyance.  “I set up a demo recording for a gal who you think is ‘okay’, you ‘guess’?  Couldn’t you have thrown me some kinda signal if you didn’t think she was worth the time and money?  Seriously, man.  What the hell?”

Okay, so maybe his attempt to keep a leash on his overzealous interest in the cute redhead had resulted in a muzzle, harness and leash.  Obie was interested in a professional opinion, not a high school locker room recap of yesterday’s events. 

“She’s got a good voice,” Jon gruffly attempted to redeem himself.  “Good tone, good range and she’ll look good on stage.  Anything beyond that is a crap shoot until you find out what kind of work ethic and temperament she’s got.”

“If her work schedule at the bar is any indication, I don’t think work ethic is gonna be a problem.”

“What kind of schedule does she work?”  Jon asked, wondering when Obie had gleaned this tidbit about the singing barmaid.  Of course, there had been that half hour when Jon had abandoned them in favor of football talk.  A lot of information could be exchanged in that length of time.

“Well, apparently the big goon boss makes her take a day off every couple of weeks.  She says she needs the money.”

That sounded a lot like Jon’s work schedule.  It also sounded like his boss/wife. 

“Yeah, well, money is a great motivator.”

Obie threw a bony hand up in the air.  “Right?  That’s what I said!  She needs money and isn’t afraid to work for it, so I’m of the opinion singing for some cash isn’t going to present an issue.  As for temperament…”

Jon stared out the side window of the car, watching raindrops slither down the glass. 

His limited experience with Cassidy’s temperament had strongly indicated that she could charm the birds from the trees, a la Snow White.  With that convivial smile and honeyed drawl, Obie might have to worry about the girl molding him instead of the other way around. 

“She seemed pretty laid back,” was what he offered aloud.  “Rolled with the punches and kept her sense of humor.”

“She has all the markings of a perfect protégé.”  His friend frowned thoughtfully at the highway ahead of them.  “You know what that means, don’t ya?”

“Means she probably has skeletons in her closet.” 

Most everyone did, and those with the most perfect exteriors could be counted upon to have the smelliest skeletons.  Jon was a prime example.  He was a musician who had been married to the same woman for more than two decades and was involved with a fair amount of philanthropical endeavors.  Those two ingredients combined in the minds of the media and general populace to make Jon’s life a recipe for sainthood.

Jon was not a saint, he had merely found the most effective methods for removing the stench from his skeletons.  There had been enough of them over the years to fill Arlington National Cemetery, so he hadn’t been left with much choice if he wanted to maintain a career in the public eye. 

Nobody would find his skeletons unless he wanted them to be found.

“Yeah,” Obie sighed.  “Maybe I should Google her and see what comes up.”

That idea actually held more appeal for Jon than it should have, but he maintained a neutral tone when negligibly agreeing, “Couldn’t hurt.”

The hum of the tires against the wet pavement and the vibration of the car were the only sounds for a long moment, until Obie let loose with an irritable, “Shit.” 

“Problem?” Jon asked of the man frantically foraging in his pants pocket as though it held the cure for cancer.

“Slight one, but you’re about to fix it for me.”  Bony fingers extracted Obie’s phone and he impatiently waved it in front of Jon’s face.  “Call Cassidy and ask what her last name is.  It’s gonna make Googling a helluva lot easier if I know.”

###

“What the hell?” 

Cassidy pulled her head out from under the pillow and finger-combed tangled tresses away from her face, searching for the sound that had awakened her. 

“Mrowwww!  Mrooooowwww!”

“Dammit, Tucker,” she groaned and fell face-first into the pillow.  “I don’t even like cats.  Why in the world do you insist on tryin’ to be my roommate?”

Two months ago, she would’ve adamantly proclaimed that morning was her favorite time of day.  It was the sliver of time where the world was awake, but its people were still enough that you could hear the earth breathe. Being an insomniac bartender had drastically altered that opinion, and Cassidy fastidiously pulled the curtains at night to preserve the darkness for as long as possible.

She had completed the ritual last night, but her cleaning fest mean she reopened them to wash windows.  By the time she’d finished that, scrubbed the bathroom and wiped down the tiny kitchenette, it was just before dawn.  Exhaustion made her completely forget about the curtains when she finally collapsed into bed.

“Mrrroowwwww!”

“Shaddup!”

The scroungy orange tomcat currently bellowing at her had been a welcoming party of one on move-in day six weeks ago.  As she’d hauled her paltry few possessions from the road to the furnished cabin, he sat beside the stoop and surveyed her progress in that haughty way cats do.  One oversized suitcase and half a dozen boxes later, he had apparently approved of her presence, because he trotted up to the front door with a dead chipmunk, offering it as a housewarming gift. 

It had been eerily similar to the time in elementary school when Tucker Swanson had brought a dead lizard to her as thanks for sharing her cookies the day before.  Cats and little boys apparently viewed dead creatures as the highest form of compliment and, thus, the cat had been dubbed Tucker.

The most annoying trait about the feline Tucker was his unrelenting desire to be inside the cabin – and loudly voicing his displeasure when he wasn’t. 

“I swear to God,” she muttered, flipping back the Wizard of Oz quilt her grandmother had made for her tenth birthday.  “I am going to string you up by your freakin’ kitty toes the next time you wake me up.”

Cassidy’s bare feet planted into the fluffy rug at the bedside just as her phone started vibrating against the nightstand. 

“And if that is my sister callin’ me at nine freakin’ o’clock in the mornin’, I’m gonna string her up by the toes.”  She plucked the device up with a pithy growl and glared at its little screen. 

The number on the display was one she didn’t recognize, and Cassidy shouldn’t have any unidentified callers.  This was a brand new phone and a brand new number that she had given to only a handful of people, and this wasn't them.

Her heartbeat accelerated while her stomach tried to turn itself inside out. 

Don’t be goin’ nutso until you know who it is.  It could be just a wrong number.

“Hello?”

It was an eternity before the slightly nasal male voice spoke.  “Cassidy?”

Obie.  You gave the number to Obie.

All the anxious anticipation bled out of her in a single sucking breath, and she fell back on the queen-sized mattress with relief. 

“Yes?”

“Hi, this is Jon Bon Jovi.”

Now how many times did a girl get to hear that in a lifetime?  Not very damn many.

“I’m sorry could you repeat that?”

“Sorry about the noise.”  He spoke louder this time, “This is Jon Bon Jovi.”

“Oh, there’s no problem with noise,” she assured him with a smile in her voice.  “I just wanted to hear you say that again.  It’s not every day I receive calls from Jon Bon Jovi.”

The husky chuckle earned Tucker an apology.  This was worth being awake for. 

“I’m actually playing secretary for Obie since he’s driving.”

“Damn,” she sighed.  “I thought maybe you’d spent the night tortured with thoughts of a stunnin’ redhead whose Southern drawl made your teeth sweat.”

This time, it was a bark of laughter that came trilling over the line and down her spine.  He’d been so quiet and reserved yesterday that it gave her perverse pleasure to make him laugh.

“I’m gonna plead the Fifth on that one,” he averted, but the words were liberally laced with amusement.

“You celebrities and your legal loopholes.”  Her voice remained jovial, but she was just a tiny bit disappointed that he hadn’t played along and bantered back.  “Well, since you prob’ly have better things to do than listen to me jaw, I reckon I’d best ask what it is Obie needs.”

“It’s no big deal.  The dumbass just forgot to get your last name.”

“Cass-“ She choked on nothing but air, and was forced to cough several times before she could speak clearly.  “Sorry about that.  The name’s Cassidy Starr.”

Another barking laugh found its way to her.  “Are you fucking kidding me?”

“Nope.  Just like Ringo.”

He relayed that information in the background to Obie, who echoed Jon’s incredulous question.  Verbatim.

“Y’all gonna tell me what’s so dern astonishin’ about my last name?”

“Huh?  Oh, nothin’ really.  I guess we both thought it ironic that somebody he wants to make into a star is named Starr.  Obie’s decided it’s a sign from God.”

“Well, I dunno about all that,” she laughed.  “It’s just a name.”

“Maybe.”

The line went quiet and Cassidy was a bit unsure of what proper protocol was.  Did she chit chat with the man or let him get on with his day.  When he didn’t offer any clues, she finally prompted, “Was there somethin’ else you needed?”

“I don’t think so.”  Jon passed her question along and confirmed, “Nah, that’s it.  He said he’ll see you on Monday.”

“Alright, then.  Y’all have a safe trip home.”

“Thanks.”

And with that simple response, the call ended.

Cassidy sighed one of those school girl crush sighs as she rolled over on the bed and closed her eyes.  Maybe now, with Jon’s voice and laughter still fresh in her memory, she could finally conjure up a smutty dream or two about the man. 

“Mrrooowwww!”

As soon as she put a pillow over that cat’s face.