Sex Kittens and Horn Dawgs Fall in Love Read Online Free PDF

his shoe phone, but only when she has her violin in hand. She has quite a repertoire (of Russian profanity, I mean). When I ask her what the words mean, she just looks at me. “It’s so obscene,” she’ll say gravely, “it’s
untranslatable
.”
    Like New York weather, Kat comes in two seasons. No-Violin Kat is shy and says as little as possible, but Violin Kat looks you straight in the eye when she talks, stomps her foot when she’s frustrated, yells filth in Russian when she makes a mistake, and practices, practices, practices. Especially when she has a recital coming up, which she does.
    I wonder if I could find some magic object, like Kat’s violin, that would render me invincible on demand? My problem (like I only have ONE!) is that I think of things that make perfect sense inside my own head (where, like any poet, I spend a lot of time). But when these ideas get LOOSE and are all of a sudden lying there in the cruel light of day, the perfect sense part goes
p ft!
All gone.
    Right now, as the minutes separating Me from Doom tick-tock away, that’s how I’m feeling about the Search for X. I mean, WHAT was I thinking? Wouldn’t it be easier, and in fact totally preferable, to leave things with Matthew the way they are? Me pining and yearning, him oblivious? It’s not an ideal relationship, but it’s something, right?
    Kat opens the door of the practice room. She’s breathless, as if she’s just done fifty jumping jacks. She’s holding her violin. Watch out.
    “Felicia! What are you doing here?” She looks at me with the crazed eyes of someone who just got out of the Bach Violin Concerto No. 2 in E Major alive, but barely. “Why are you hiding here in the basement? I thought you were going upstairs to confess your love to Matthew—”
    “I am! Later!” I interrupt. Thinking about it is unbearable. “Now I’m just, you know. Writing poems and stuff. You sound good today,” I add lamely.
    “I sound TERRIBLE! I’m going to smash my violin into a thousand pieces and set the pieces on fire and never, ever play again!” She wipes her sweaty forehead with her sleeve. “Do you want to come in?”
    What I want is to hold that magic violin and suck up all its mojo, make myself stop thinking, and just be fearless and foolhardy in the name of love! But that’s asking a lot.
    Kat rarely lets me in the room with her while she’s practicing, so I know this is a special invitation. I enter the sacred cubicle and close the door behind me.
    “Do you want me to turn pages or something?” I ask.
    She turns her back to the music stand.
    “Just sit there,” she says. “I think I have it memorized. It’s going to sound like
bleeping borscht paprika bleepsky,
but I don’t care right now. The goal is not to stop.”
    The goal is not to stop. Hmmmmm. This sentence activates the philosopher-poet centers of my brain in a pleasant, provocative way. I turn it over in my mind as Kat cues her imaginary accompanist with a look, inhales sharply, and begins to play.
    I spotted Matthew on my very first day at the Pound. I was in the gungest of gung-ho moods that day, quite pleased at having survived the less-than-stimulating early years of my education, which I did by perfecting a kind of dreamy daze. Now I was hoping for something more.
    (To summarize: two years of fancy private preschool; then my parents split up and I switched to public school, where I spent another two years drawing ponies and writing verse novels while the other kids were getting hooked on phonics, which drove my mom insane, which led to a year of homeschooling, which was fun because I basically sat around and read my way through the bookstore, but Mom was all guilt ridden because she had to deal with the customers and couldn’t do lots of “educational” stuff with me, so back to public school for a final, dreamy-dazed shift before I was old enough for the Pound.)
    Was it the way his long limbs struck weird angles when he sat cross-legged on the