Ellen Datlow - Tails of Wonder and Imagination

I could only imagine what was going through her mind. How did you keep sleeping with a guy who thinks his cat is immortal? How did you let him rub your feet, make you breakfast, adore you, write you bad poetry, without doing something once the miraculous cat was out of the bag? Flee, fix it, lock me up, something . She loved me, loved my cat, even claimed to like my parents. But did she sign on for me being flat-out crazy? I couldn’t imagine so.

I halfway expected her to say she was going to get in her car and drive home, sleep at her place tonight, think things over, dump me tomorrow. Not Shannon.

When we were inside with Ben, she kicked off her shoes, pulled him out of his carrier, and cradled him in her arms, nuzzling his face. She put her whole body into it. It was kind of erotic, actually. “Benny Boy, I wish you could talk,” she said. He just purred like there might be something to this only-as-old-as-you-feel thing. Then she set him down and watched adoringly as he sauntered down the hall to the bed where he slept every night and half the day.

She poured herself a glass of wine. “Want one?”

“Sure.”

She poured. A lot. She drank. “I believe you,” she said. “I can’t see you having some weird serial cat fetish. Showing up at all those different vets with different cats over a twenty year period is just too strange—and for what? So you could convince me now? It has to be the same cat. It has to be Ben. It’s the only thing that makes any sense. Dr. Diderada thought so. Don’t you think?”

I couldn’t believe Ben was right again. I shook my head in wonder. “I did. He said he didn’t, but there was something… It was like no time had passed. I was five, I think, the first time I remember seeing Diderada with Ben. He gave me a lollipop when he gave Ben his treat, but Mom wouldn’t let me eat it. Sugar was poison.”

“I bet you were adorable.”

“I was afraid you’d think I was crazy. I’d think I was crazy if I hadn’t been there.”

She laughed, shaking her head. “It was a miracle. A blessing.” She looked me in the eye. “Have you ever tried—You know—”

“No. No way. Once was enough. Once has been more than sufficiently weird enough. I couldn’t deal with it. At first I tried to convince myself it wasn’t Ben who came back that night, but even if an identical cat who acted just like him showed up then, he’d still be 30—210 in cat years.”

She made a face, unhooked her bra, and pulled it out her sleeve. She hung it on a chair back. “I thought they changed that. That because of medical advances, it’s more like five to one.”

“150 then. Looks 20. What’s the difference? He doesn’t age. I can’t explain it.”

“So he’s just stayed exactly the same all these years?”

“Not exactly. He looks the same, but he changes, experiences new things, learns…” I almost said evolves, but I stopped myself. I’d said too much already.

“Like what?” She poured more wine for herself. I hadn’t touched mine.

“Uh. Just things in general.”

“Give me an example. One thing he does now he didn’t do when he was 17.”

There were dozens of simple things I could’ve recounted, but I couldn’t think of a single one of them. They were all blotted out by the enormous eclipsing mass of what I didn’t want to say: He talks . Would I then go on to explain he’s fluent in English, speaking softly, in a half-whisper, like a breathy purr. Not really built for speech, it took him awhile to perfect his technique. He understood what I said long before he talked back.

Would I go on to explain he reads voluminously, has a passion for discussing politics, and expresses his political opinions in unique ways, like pissing and shitting on every Hummer foolish enough to park on our block.

Should I then tell her the first time he met her he told me, “She’s the one for you, Jeffrey”? That would’ve been way too Son of Sam, don’t you think? Ben suggested from the beginning, and I’d always agreed with him, that any mention of his linguistic abilities to anyone would be a very bad idea, and he’d never spoken clearly in the presence of others except for a stray word or two, easily explained away as a fluke. He was convinced if word ever got out he could talk, he’d be jailed for all eternity or until they finally carved him up to discover his secrets. He’s always had a flair for the melodramatic, but I’m afraid he was right on this one. But how could I not tell her? At that moment, Ben walked back into the kitchen. He gave me the look, the same look he gave me when Dr. Whatsit who started all this with his frigging reminder card wanted to do tests.

“He tells me when his box needs changing,” I offered. “He has a—a special meow.”

She picked up Ben and cuddled with him. “Is that right, Benny Boy? To what do we owe the honor of your company?” She looked over his purring head at me. “I just realized. You’ve lived your whole life with him.” I wasn’t sure what all she meant by that, or what it might mean to her, nor did she care to elaborate. “I’m going to bed now.” I followed her into the bedroom. She put Ben in his usual place, stepped out of her jeans and left them lying on the floor, pulled back the covers and crawled into bed beside him. She was asleep in moments, the two of them breathing in unison.

I got into bed on Ben’s other side.

When I turned off the light, he scolded me in a soft sing-song, “You almost told her.”

“Oh fuck yourself, Ben.”

“Neutered, re-mem-berrrr?” He chuckled softly, enjoying his own humor, enjoying his endless life.

I lay awake listening to them snore together like an old married couple, wondering how these revelations were going to affect our lives, then drifted off. I dreamed Shannon was in a terrible accident, and I healed her, but when she woke up, she no longer spoke, not a word, and she blamed me. You could see it in her eyes, lonely and furious and afraid.

In the morning, Shannon came right to the point. “Jeffrey,” she said. “Would you help Aubrey?”

Ben, returning from a crunching good time at the cat food bowl, jumped onto the sofa, and flicked his tail— Careful .

Shannon’s younger brother Aubrey was in a car wreck five years earlier at the conclusion of a high-speed chase involving drugs—both in his person and in the trunk of the car—and he’d been in a persistent coma ever since. Until that moment, he was a mere fact of her existence from before I knew her, like the name of her childhood dog or where she went to high school. She never went to see him. He was as good as dead. There’d be no point. Not until now. Now there’d be a point. “You mean—”

“Heal him. Like you did Benjamin.”

“I didn’t do anything to Benjamin. It was just a weird one-time thing.”

“How do you know? You’ve never tried to do it again. I can’t believe you’ve never tried to do it again.”

There was a light in her eyes that made me uncomfortable. This wasn’t just about Aubrey, who everyone in her family pretty much agreed was an obnoxious little shit whose final, completely typical screw-up was not to have the good sense to die when he had the chance. “Believe it. Listen Shannon, I think this is a really bad idea.”

“But this is my brother. You could save him. I know you could.”

“Let me think about it, okay? I have to think about it.”

“Okay. How long do you need?”