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sono povero in canna ."
    "Huh?" she said, looking at him
suspiciously.
    "It means, ‘where are your parents and
why aren’t you with them’?"
    "They’re divorced. Mom’s at work and
Dad’s wherever."
    "Then where is
your…nursemaid?"
    "What’s that?"
    "Maybe I chose the wrong word.
‘Nanny’?"
    "You better learn English if you’re
going to live around here. Everything’s English around
here."
    "I’ll bear that in mind," said Ari,
thinking that you couldn’t get more English than ‘nanny’. When
Diane tried to muzzle her way past his legs, he was reminded of a
mastiff he had encountered at the Republican Palace. This
particular dog had been trained to rip out throats and testicles,
talents he could almost imagine belonging in this girl’s
repertoire.
    "It’s near here. I can tell. It’s—" She
let out a shout and bolted into the living room.
    " Bint saie’a !" Ari bellowed, racing
behind her.
    "Here!" she exclaimed,
pointing.
    "Stop this! You have to leave!" But he
was brought up short when he saw the pile of cat feces against the
baseboard, directly under the air register where Ari had discovered
a murder weapon. Had Sphinx been making a comment on the lurid
history of the house and the untimely demise of his former
masters?
    "See!" Diane demanded, as if Ari was
the one with criminal bowels.
    "Yes," he said. But don’t rub my nose in it ….
    "But that’s not all," the girl said
with all the concentration of an artist in hot pursuit of
inspiration. Before Ari could stop her, she had skipped into the
short hall between the kitchen and stairs. "Oh!"
    Ari raced into the hall to find her
gawking at the kitty litter box.
    "Eeew!
Oop-de-doo-doo- doo ! Don’t you ever scoop?"
    "What do you mean?"
    "Scoop the kitty poop!"
    Ari looked over her head
and noted the numerous dark clumps and soggy swaths of urine. He
sniffed. Yes, what he had thought was dinner was,
instead… this .
    "No wonder Marmaduke did it on the
floor. You need to clean out the box. Didn’t you know?"
    The need to shovel feline excrement out
of the box had never occurred to Ari, although now it seemed
self-evident. Sphinx had spent many of his days and nights
wandering the woods, or visiting Diane, or else the problem would
have become apparent far sooner.
    "You have a scoop," the girl continued,
bending down and touching the vented shovel leaning against the
box. "It’s never been used!"
    The scoop had come with the litter box.
Ari had thought it was a complimentary kitchen utensil, like the
free prizes that used to come in Cracker Jack boxes. Before he
could speak…before he could come up with something that would not
make him sound like an absolute fool…a yellow phantom streaked down
the stairs.
    "Marmaduke!"
    "Sphinx!"
    They rushed into the living room but
the cat was gone. Familiar with the cat’s primary interests, Ari
outwitted the girl by pointing at the open door, then slipping
through the dining room into the kitchen.
    She wasn’t tricked for long. She found
Ari standing next to the refrigerator, holding the cat in his
arms.
    "Marmaduke!" she said soulfully. When
the cat began to squirm, Ari tightened his hold. "Stop, you’re
hurting him!"
    How often we claim moral
righteousness to suit our ends , Ari
thought sourly.
    "He’s just hungry," he said.
    "He wants to come to me!" Diane shot
back. "Get your own cat!"
    "But this is his home," Ari tried to
reason as Sphinx pinked his forearm with a single extended claw.
And then he mentally rolled his eyes in dismay. He had touched on a
topic not suitable for children: the murder of children. Joshua and
William Riggins had died upstairs, one by an accidental drug
overdose, the other shot by his own mother, who had in turn been
killed by her father. It had been worthy of Greek tragedy (which
Ari thought also unsuitable for girls like Diane), heavily plotted
with incest and eye-gouging and other unsavory topics, such as the
sacrifice of Iphigenia—a very well-behaved girl.
    "I know he