Софи Келли - Cat Trick

Rebecca saw the best in everyone and everything. That was one of the many things I liked about her. But she was also a very good judge of people, and if she said that Mike Glazer was a good person at heart, I had to believe she’d seen some goodness in him.

Maggie had decided we were going to spend the class working on our weak areas. I knew for me that would be Cloud Hands. After the warm-up, we spread out and she moved from one person to the next, watching, encouraging, making small adjustments. By the time we finished the form at the end of the class, my T-shirt was blotched with patches of sweat.

“Your Cloud Hands look better,” Maggie said, holding her arms out and shaking them as she walked over to me.

“Seriously?” I said.

“I wouldn’t say they did if they didn’t.” She pulled both hands back through her blond hair. “Could you give me a ride?” she asked. “I have three bags of cotton stuffing in my office, and I don’t really want to carry them.”

“Sure,” I said. “That reminds me. I have Liam’s coffee mug in my bag.”

“Why?” The bridge of her nose wrinkled as she frowned at me.

“Because he left it at Eric’s and hasn’t been back. Claire gave it to me to give to you.”

“He’s had a lot on his mind,” Maggie said with an offhand shrug. “Thanks for bringing it.”

I didn’t see any point in bringing up the argument Liam had had with Mike. Maggie had a lot on her mind, too. “What are you going to do with three bags of stuffing?” I asked instead. “Are you working on another piece like Eddie?”

Maggie’s life-size Eddie Sweeney had been part of last winter’s Winterfest display at the community center. And he’d indirectly been the reason Roma and the real Eddie had started going out. The last time I’d been at Maggie’s apartment, Eddie had been sitting in her living room with his skates propped on a footstool.

Maggie grinned and gave her head a little shake. “Don’t tell Roma, but I’m actually working on Eddie. He needs a little bodywork”—she patted her hips with both hands—“if you know what I mean. Eddie—the real one—wants stuffed Eddie as a housewarming gift for Roma.”

“Aww, that’s so romantic,” I said, using the sleeve of my shirt to wipe sweat off the side of my neck.

“It is, isn’t it?” Maggie said as we started for her office. She bumped me with her hip. “Kind of like offering to put the pieces of an old rocking chair together for someone.”

I shot her a daggers look. She held up both hands as though she were surrendering. “I’m just saying,” she said.

We carried the three bags of cotton stuffing out to the truck. Mags put two of them in the middle of the bench seat and fastened the lap belt around them. The third bag she jammed down by her feet.

Maggie’s apartment was on the top floor of an old brick building that had been a corset factory at one time. The stairs came out onto a landing with a huge window that flooded the space with light. To the left was a small bathroom and an equally small bedroom.

Straight ahead, down two steps, was the living space, dark hardwood stretching all the way to the other end of the long room. Maggie’s dark chocolate dining room table and chairs were in the area next to the stairs where the wall jutted inward to make room for a small roof terrace outside.

An old Oriental rug, which Mags had confided she’d scavenged from the dump and half carried, half dragged home, marked the living room space. There were two deep blue sofas and a square-shaped leather chair in front of the built-in bookshelves with their beveled glass doors. Faux Eddie was in the chair, skates up on the dark blue footstool. Maggie had somehow fastened a copy of the Wall Street Journal to his hockey gloves. From the front it actually looked like a real person sitting there reading the financial news in skates and full hockey gear.

At the end of the long room there was a small galley kitchen with a dropped hammered-tin ceiling.

“How about some hot chocolate?” Maggie asked, setting the two bags of stuffing she’d been carrying on one of the sofas and heading for the little kitchen. She set Liam’s coffee mug on the counter.

“Sounds good,” I said. I put the bag of stuffing I’d been holding next to the other two, sat on the empty sofa and studied Eddie. He really did look like the real thing.

I watched Maggie move around the tiny kitchen, shifting her weight instead of stretching and overreaching. It made me wonder if eventually all the tai chi practice would have me moving like that. “That’s really nice of you to let Eddie have Eddie,” I said. “I had lunch with Roma out at Wisteria Hill today.”

Maggie turned from the refrigerator, a container of milk in her hand. “I know,” she said. “Roma called me—before she called Marcus.”

“She told you about seeing Liam arguing with Mike Glazer.” So she knew after all. I kicked off my shoes and curled my feet up under me.

“She did. I know he was angry about the way things were working out. Mike was driving everyone crazy.” She shot me a sidelong glance. “That’s why he left his mug at Eric’s, isn’t it?”

I nodded. “Claire said he just tossed some money on the table and left before she could catch him.”

She sighed. “Kath, Liam’s not the kind of person who would hurt someone, let alone kill anyone. People say a lot of things they don’t mean when they’re angry.” She got the marshmallows out of the cupboard over her head. “I got mad at Jimmy Harrison in third grade and told him I was going to stuff him in the toilet and flush him to China.”

“You didn’t, did you?”

“Of course not,” she said. “You can’t flush someone to China. And anyway, eight-year-old boys don’t fit in elementary school toilets.”

“I’m not going to ask how you know that,” I said.

Maggie just laughed.

I looked over at Eddie. Straight on, it looked like he was reading the news, but from this angle it seemed as though he were watching me out of the corner of his eye, over the top of the newspaper. “Mags, is Eddie watching me or am I just imagining things?” I asked.

“Very good,” she said with a smile. “You’re the first person to notice that, or maybe I should say you’re the first person to say you noticed it. Everyone else has just moved to the other end of the sofa.”

“So you did it on purpose?”

She picked up one of the heavy pottery mugs and brought it over to me. “It was an experiment. Remember me telling you about the art show I went to in Detroit?”

“There was a painting—a landscape. You said it made you uncomfortable, but you couldn’t figure out why at first.”

She nodded. “It turned out there was a person in the image, almost lost in the shadows of the picture. Wherever you stood in the gallery, it felt as though that figure were watching you.” She picked up her own mug. “Close your eyes.”

I closed them. The feeling I was being stared at seemed stronger now that I couldn’t see Eddie.

“Don’t look,” Maggie said.

I folded my fingers tightly around my cup, and after a minute I felt Maggie sit down. “Okay, open your eyes,” she said.

The first thing I did was turn my head toward Eddie. I had no idea what she’d done, but he wasn’t watching me anymore. That unsettling sensation, like someone’s breath on the back of my neck, slipped away.

“What did you do?” I asked.

Maggie was curled into the opposite corner of the sofa. “I just moved his head, maybe an inch or so down and about the same amount to the side.”

I leaned forward. “It’s almost like he’s smiling at me now.”

“I know,” she said. She grinned and took a sip of her hot chocolate.