Cheetahs and Tigers and Panthers, Oh My

[janedavitt]

I'm one of the authors featured in Animal Attraction 2, available tomorrow from Torquere, edited by the lovely vdiamond.

My story is, unusually for me, not a contemporary, but one set in Hollywood of the late 1920s/early 1930s. Prohibition time. When I had to choose an animal, being a cat lover, my thoughts turned to the big cats and I recalled vaguely that there was a Hollywood star who used to walk a big cat along the streets of L.A. as other people would walk a dog. Cool.

But what sort of cat?

So I researched that lady online (Pola Negri, exotic, smoldering, bisexual, one of Valentino's lovers) and read her autobiography which my local library owned a copy of.

And I still couldn't narrow it down; different sites said different animals and she didn't mention it in her book at all.

I got around that ::g:: I'm an author; improvising is what we do and it wasn't as if I was going to be writing about Pola herself.

So my story in the anthology is about the fabulous star Destiny Delancourt (born Doris O'Toole), or, to be precise, her long suffering manager, Kerr, and her bodyguard, Tony, who discover that they share more in common than they'd thought in one wild night.

Mix bootleg whiskey with wandering panthers, add a spice of kink and shake it up.

Here's a worksafe taste.



"A pet," Kerr repeated. His hair was blond, and if he took after his mother, it would hold its color as he aged, but he swore he could feel it turning gray around Destiny. "You already have a lovebird, a tortoise, a horse you've never ridden, and a pond filled with fish. You don't think a large jungle cat might not be the ideal addition to the family?"

"It's glamorous," Destiny insisted. She didn't stamp her foot and she didn't pout; more signs that she was serious. "The studio keeps talking about my image and how I have to stand out from the crowd."

"You do." Kerr turned as Tony spoke, and saw him place a red jack on a black queen. "Any crowd. Always."

"Darling!" Destiny cooed at him and then turned her attention back to Kerr. "Me, all in black furs, a chain of silver -- no, gold -- and on the end of it this majestic beast, lashing his tail, pacing, growling --"

"Biting some poor sap who'd sue," Kerr interrupted impatiently. "How much would it cost to feed the brute? And where would it live? This place of yours is big, but it's no jungle."

"Kerr!" Her voice was flat, dangerous. "That's what I hire you for. To take care of the details."

"Of your career, yes. Your menagerie, no." Kerr was starting to lose his temper, something that happened a lot around Destiny. "Whose stupid idea was this, anyway?"

Her dark blue eyes failed to meet his squarely and he already knew the answer before she spoke. "If you must know, Paul thought it would be a real winner."

Paul Beddoes. The latest in a long line of her lovers. Rich, slightly shady, twenty years older than Destiny. Kerr sucked in a breath and prepared to tell Destiny exactly what he thought about amateurs with promotion ideas when Tony cleared his throat.

"People will say it's a tribute to Negri."

Destiny's eyes narrowed. "What? Pola Negri? Why would they say that?"

"She used to have one." Tony shrugged indifferently. "I don't know what color or breed -- leopard, I think, but it was this giant cat and she used to take it for walks in the gardens of the Ambassador."

"She did?" Now, Destiny's eyes were like chips of ice.

"It rings a bell," Kerr admitted. "That was almost a decade ago, of course, back when Valentino and Negri were an item."

"She did it first and Paul wanted me to copy her?" Destiny's voice was rising in an incredulous shriek. "That bastard. That -- I would have been a laughing stock! The press would have gone to town!"

"No," Kerr said soothingly. "I'm sure they would have, well, taken it as a tribute, as Tony said." And God bless him for saying it.

Destiny breathed in once sharply, and grabbed the nearest ornament, a smiling pottery Buddha, glazed red and shiny. She sent it sailing across the room to smash into the wall and turned on her heel before the shards had landed. The slam of her bedroom door ended the conversation.

"I owe you a drink," Kerr said quietly.

"Not really," Tony said and gathered the cards into a heap that he reduced to a neat, squared-off pile with a few deft pats of his long fingers. "But it's my night off and I was planning on sinking a few if you want to join me. There's the bar I know down in Venice that gets the good stuff in from Canada every Thursday, ready for the weekend rush."

"Make it a lot, not a few, and I'm in."

Tony smiled down at the pack of cards he held. "Done."