A NIGHT OUT

EDWARD PEPLE

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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organiza- tions, places, events and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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First Edition: February 2018

TABLE OF CONTENTS

III

I

Omar Ben Sufi was a cat. This unadorned statement would have wounded Omar Ben to the marrow of his pride, for he chanced to be a splendid tiger-marked feline of purest Persian breed, with glorious yellow eyes and a Solomon-in-all-his-glory tail. His pedigree could be traced directly back to Padisha Zim Yuki Yowsi Zind--a dignity, in itself, sufficient to cause an aristocratic languor; but, to the layman, he was just a cat.

He dwelt with an exclusive family of humans in a little eighty-thousand-dollar cottage on the outskirts of vulgarity--which is to say, the villa was situated near enough to town to admit of marketing, but far enough removed therefrom to escape the clatter of plebeian toil and the noxious contact with the unhealthy, unwealthy herd. Here the humans entertained selected friends who came at the ends of weeks to admire the splendor of Omar Ben's tail, to bow down to the humans' money, and to hate them fiercely because they had it.

The master did not toil. He lived, for certain hours of the day, in Wall Street, where he sank his patrician fingers into the throats of lesser men, squeezed them dry, then washed his hands in violet water, and built a church. True, he did not attend this church himself, but he built it; otherwise his neighbors might have been deprived of the opportunity of praising God.