Блейз Клемент - The Cat Sitter's Nine Lives

I decided to act like a grown-up—something I do every once in a while. I flicked on my turn signal and started to slow down, but before I’d even moved over to the side his tires screeched and he came peeling around my back bumper into the oncoming lane. I put my face in a perfect “You bald jackass” expression so he’d know exactly what I thought of his antics, but he didn’t even give me the pleasure of shooting me a dirty look as he roared by. He just glanced at me with a blank expression on his face, all business, as if nothing were wrong.

I took a deep breath. Siesta Key is home to only about three thousand full-time residents, and thanks to our sugar-white sand and bathtub-warm waters, we have another three or four thousand part-timers on top of that, but it’s a whole different story in the winter. That’s when the snowbirds descend on our little paradise, and the population swells to about twenty-four thousand. While folks up north are shoveling snow and chipping ice off their windshields, we’re sipping daiquiris out on the deck or watching dolphins frolic in the Gulf. On Christmas Day, you can find whole families headed down to the water to spread their presents out on beach blankets. The kids play in the surf with their new toys while Mom and Dad blissfully soak in the sun with a good book and a beer or two.

There are some snowbirds, though—like my friend here in the red convertible—who have a genuinely hard time smoothing out their feathers once they land. It’s as if they haven’t unpacked yet and they’re dragging all their baggage around everywhere they go, full of unpaid bills, ungrateful children, looming deadlines, and mounting household chores. Not that I’m complaining. We love our snowbirds. They spend lots of money and keep us all employed and happy. Plus, they flock here from all over the world, so it gives our little town a bit of cosmopolitan cachet.

I pulled back out on the road and told myself that once ol’ Baldy McGrumpypants had spent a few more days here, he’d settle down and all that pent-up anger and anxiety would melt away. He’d eventually nestle in and be just as happy and serene as the rest of us. At least, that’s what I hoped.

Not more than a minute later I had a sneaky feeling something wasn’t quite right. I’d been keeping an eye out for the bookstore, so I’d looked away from the road for a second, and when I looked back, coming at me like a speeding meteor was the back end of an old black Cadillac, its fin-shaped taillights glowing bright red.

I slammed on the brakes as hard as I could and heard a gut-wrenching squeal as I felt the Bronco veer slightly off kilter. I’m not completely sure, but I think at least three or four key scenes from my life flashed before my eyes as I slid to a grinding stop, just inches from the Cadillac’s rear bumper.

I looked down at my hands. They were gripping the steering wheel so tightly that my knuckles had turned chalk white, and I could literally hear my heart beating in my chest. In front of the Cadillac was a pileup of at least three more cars, and in the oncoming lane farther down was a disabled landscaping truck with a red front grille and three steeple-high palm trees swaying in the breeze in the back.

I let out a sigh of relief, which turned out to be a little premature. I glanced up, and sure enough there in the rearview mirror was a bright pink Volkswagen Beetle speeding straight for the back of my car. I had just enough time to see a young woman behind the wheel, absentmindedly twirling her long blond curls in one hand and holding a cell phone to her ear with the other. As I slammed my open palm down on the horn to get her attention, the thought flashed across my mind that she could only have been operating the steering wheel with her knees. I thought to myself, If we live through this, I’m going to kill that little bitch.

I closed my eyes and prepared for impact, but the woman must have looked up and hit the brakes at the last moment, because I heard what sounded like a pack of howler monkeys and then when she did hit me, the Bronco lurched forward only a foot or so, bumping into the Cadillac in front of me with a loud clank!

I opened my eyes and looked around. Everything seemed to be in one piece. Then I looked up in the rearview mirror, primarily to see if the woman was in good enough shape for a sound beating, and all I could see was a mass of blond curls spread out over her dashboard. Without even thinking I jumped out of the car and ran back as fast as my legs would carry me.

As I approached the car I could see her through the windshield. She was wearing a black and white striped tank top and a green barrette in her hair. Her head was lying completely still on the steering wheel, and her left arm was hanging listlessly at her side. As I approached the driver’s-side door, I took a deep breath and prepared myself for the worst, and just as I reached out to try the door handle she jolted her head up, eyes wide with alarm. She rolled down the window halfway, and that’s when I realized she was still cradling the phone to her ear.

“I have to go,” she said into the phone. “I just hit somebody.”

She flicked the phone closed and dropped it down into the cup holder next to the seat and stared straight ahead. I reached out and put one hand on the hood of her car to steady myself. “Umm, are you okay?”

She looked up at the mirror in her sun visor and blinked her eyes a couple of times, like she was checking her makeup. “Yeah, I think so.”

I thought to myself, Now is the time to strangle this woman to death . Just then she looked at me, pulled her curly locks away from her face, and said, “Are you ?”

She was much younger than I’d thought, probably not a day older than the legal driving age, which in Florida is eighteen. Her eyes started to well with tears.

I sighed. “Yeah, I’m fine. Why don’t you put that phone to good use and call 911.”

She touched a finger to her lip. “You’re bleeding.”

“Huh?”

“Your lip is bleeding.”

I looked at my reflection in the backseat window. She was right. My lower lip was bleeding, but not badly, just smudged with a bit of red, as if I’d been interrupted in the middle of putting on lipstick. “I must have bit my lip when you hit me.”

Handing me a tissue, she said, “I am so sorry. I was talking on my phone and I guess I just got distracted.”

“That’s alright,” I said, dabbing at my lip. “I used to be young and stupid, too. Just call 911. I’m gonna go up and see what happened.”

But I already knew what had happened: Baldy McGrumpypants. He’d probably been weaving in and out of traffic and caused an accident. I tried to stay positive, but with so many cars and people around, it was hard not to think someone could’ve been hurt. As I headed up I glanced at my rear bumper to assess the damage.

My Bronco is pale yellow, like homemade lemon ice cream, so it shows even the slightest nick or speck of dirt, but there was hardly a scratch, just a couple of dime-sized dents on the chrome guard. The girl’s front fender was slightly concussed, but nothing a good body shop couldn’t hammer back into shape in a couple of minutes.

“Ma’am?”

I looked back at the girl, who was already on the phone with 911. She was leaning her head out the window. I hate it when teenaged girls call me ma’am. She said, “What street is this?”

If she hadn’t looked so serious I would have thought she was joking. “It’s Ocean Boulevard.”

She gave me a quick thumbs-up and then got back on the phone, gesticulating wildly with her hands. I could tell she was describing the accident to the emergency dispatcher.

Okay, I thought to myself, maybe I was never that young and stupid, but I had to smile. She was just a kid, and she was lucky. We both were. Except for a bloody lip and a few tears, we’d both come out smelling like roses. I had a terrible feeling not everyone up ahead had been quite so fortunate.