Блейз Клемент - The Cat Sitter's Whiskers

“Oh, you wanna hang out for a bit?”

She tilted her head and eyed me curiously, as if to say, Of course. Our love is deeper than salmon , and then trotted in.

As soon as I shut the door I started peeling off my clothes. I left one shoe on the jute rug by the front door and another in the middle of my ragtag collection of furniture—a puffy couch, an old leather lounge chair, and a walnut coffee table that once belonged to my mother—and then I left both my socks on the floor just beyond the breakfast bar that separates the living room from the galley kitchen. As I stumbled down the short hall, I threw my shorts into the wicker basket in the laundry alcove and flung my T-shirt and bra into the bedroom before making a quick right turn into the bathroom.

I grabbed a towel and draped it over the handle to the shower door while I turned the water all the way up to Niagara Falls level. Ella slinked in behind me and curled up on the bath mat, and while I waited for the water to get hot I opened the mirrored doors of my medicine cabinet and stared at my meager collection of soaps and lotions. As soon as the shower filled with steam, I stepped in with a deep sigh, sliding the door behind me like I was closing the curtain on a very bad play.

I stood there and let the warm water stream over me, imagining it washing the whole morning right down the drain. That seemed to work for a couple of minutes, but as soon as I felt my body start to relax, a lump formed in the base of my throat and my eyes started to sting with tears.

“Oh, my God, don’t be ridiculous,” I said out loud as I grabbed a bottle and squirted some shampoo on my palm. “You barely knew him.”

But it was no use. As I worked my hair into a lather, I cried.

I cried like a baby.

I cried not just for Levi, but also—I’m ashamed to admit—for myself. I like to think I’m tough, but seeing Levi’s lifeless body had thrown me for a loop, and now it dawned on me that even though we hadn’t been close, even if he hadn’t known it, Levi was something special to me. He would always be the boy who gave me my very first kiss, that first rush of breathlessness, that first taste of sex and love and deep, unquenchable need … at a time in my life when the world was simple, when life was good and innocent and never-ending.

Well, at some point, standing there thinking all those soapy thoughts with a frothy mix of shampoo and tears streaming down my cheeks, I caught a glimpse of Ella watching me quietly from her spot on the mat and realized I must have looked like a blubbering idiot, so I turned off the water and dried off as quickly as possible.

With the corner of my towel, I wiped the steam away from the mirror and parted my hair to check out my injury. It had gone down a bit, which was good, except now it looked like an angry nipple on the top of my head, or maybe a bite from one of those giant mosquitoes they’re always talking about on the Nature Channel.

Ella rolled over on her side next to my feet and stretched herself out full-length as she lapped gently at the water droplets on my toes.

I said, “You know, you’re lucky you don’t have to be a human and deal with all the crap that comes with it. If I were you I’d be the happiest girl in the world. All you have to do is lie around and be cute.”

She squinted her eyes and yawned, as if to suggest that it was, in fact, a pretty good life.

I padded naked into the bedroom and collapsed like a sack of grapefruit on the bed. There’s a long high window along the back wall of my bedroom, and when the weather’s warm, which is pretty much all year long, I keep it open so I can hear the ocean. Ella hopped up on the bed next to me and nuzzled her face against my cheek, and for the first time all day I felt safe and normal. I hugged her and gave her a kiss on the nose, a kind of thank-you for hanging out with me a while longer, and at that moment I made a decision.

I’d probably never know for certain what had happened to me at the Kellers’ house, and furthermore, it probably didn’t matter. I couldn’t very well go back in time and change it, so the only thing I could do was forget about the whole thing.

But I couldn’t forget about Levi.

Ella had scrunched herself up under my arm with her neck stretched across mine and her nose just under my chin. I lay there listening to the sound of her soft purrs mixed with the distant crash of the waves down below, and eventually I fell into a deep sleep.

I dreamed I was sitting on a beach chair in the middle of a tiny island, wearing a chocolate-brown full-length fur coat with my hair pulled back in a French braid. I knew I was dreaming right away because, one, I wouldn’t wear a fur coat to save my life, and two, I was surrounded by about a hundred little hermit crabs, all sitting in their own tiny beach chairs and reading their own tiny newspapers.

I’ve been known to have some pretty wacky dreams, but I figured this was just my dream guide’s way of making up for the lousy day I’d had so far. She probably thought I’d enjoy lounging around on a tropical island in a fur coat, and for now I didn’t feel like arguing with her about the politics of fur, especially since the beach was pretty and the breeze felt so warm and relaxing. I leaned back in my chair and pressed my toes into the soft sand, waiting for whatever ridiculous gift she had in store for me next.

But then while I was waiting, the breeze picked up a bit and a couple of stray hairs dislodged themselves from my French braid. I reached up to smooth them back, and as my fingers played across the bump on my head, I felt a little jolt of pain.

Wait a minute, I thought to myself. If this is a dream, why the hell does my head still hurt? I looked around the island for my dream guide as I whispered, “This is a dream, right?”

14

The next thing I knew, my clock radio was blaring at me from my bedside table, and the song it was playing transported me right back to high school and Mrs. White’s history class. At the start of every week, she’d serenade us with her own enthusiastic rendition of “Manic Monday” by the Bangles as she handed out our assignments for the day. We’d all groan and cover our ears, but we loved it.

I rolled over and smacked the snooze button with the palm of my hand and collapsed back down in bed. I don’t take weekends off, so Mondays don’t usually feel much different from any other day, but manic was as good a word as any for how my day had gone so far.

Apparently my nap had been pretty manic, too, because I’d thrashed around so much the blankets were wrapped around me like a straitjacket. I hadn’t woken up enough yet to summon the energy to wriggle out of them, so instead I felt around for Ella, but she wasn’t there.

“Kitty cat?”

I raised my head off the pillow and froze.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the outline of a man standing in the open doorway of my bedroom.

It’s astonishing how fast the mind works. In less than a fraction of a second, all kinds of thoughts went zooming around inside my head, including a series of words that appeared like flash cards on a projection screen in front of me.

The first word was STUPID . Here I’d been wondering all morning if I’d been attacked or followed, and yet I hadn’t bothered to lock the door when I got home.

The second word was SCREAM , which was funny because I’m not really a screamer. I’m more likely to deploy the rodent defense—completely still and quiet—but in this situation, alone in my apartment with a strange man not five feet from the foot of my bed, it didn’t seem like such a bad idea.

The last word was GUN.

When I retired from the sheriff’s department, I also retired my department-issue firearm, which I left on Sergeant Owens’s desk along with my five-point deputy’s badge. But like most officers, I kept a backup, and I still have mine: a Smith & Wesson .38 Special revolver. I store it in a velvet-lined case next to Todd’s 9mm Glock, which hasn’t been touched since he was killed. That case was right now directly underneath me in the hidden side drawer built into my bed.