by Alex A King
I shoveled another slice of pizza into my pie hole.
New day, new job interview. This one was for a local no-kill pet shelter. What could be better than spending the day cuddling with puppies and kittens before they went off to their forever homes?
Who was I kidding? Probably I’d be their best customer.
“So, do you like animals?” the interviewer wanted to know. Betsy was an elf in a Christmas sweater and thick glasses. Animal hair freckled her outfit from head to toe. Either she didn’t own a lint brush or she didn’t care. We were in a room filled with litter boxes and cat trees and a hundred cats that ranged from bored to homicidal. A marmalade kitty the size of a loaf wanted me to die. The teeth lodged in my ankle sank in deeper until they hit bone. I wanted to shake him off but I needed the job. “Because it’s really important that you like animals,” she went on.
“I love animals,” I said through the pain tears. “I have three of my own at home.”
Her face lit up. “Oooh … what do you have? Cats? Dogs? Let me guess. You look like a cat person.”
“A goat, a donkey, and … another one.”
Her forehead scrunched. “Another donkey?”
“Sure, let’s go with that.”
Betsy peered down her nose at my resume, which was sparse. I’d updated it this morning before fleeing the house. All the decorations made me twitchy and uncomfortable. They were a reminder that someone managed to break into my house.
“What happened with Hipster Burger?”
“I only worked there a day.”
“Why?”
“It exploded.”
“And Meow Meow Ruff Pet Food?”
“It burned down.”
She glanced at the resume. “And both of these were this week?” Her voice wobbled out, high and neurotic.
“They were on the news,” I said. The marmalade loaf changed tactics. He decided my leg was a scratching post.
Betsy crumpled up my resume and dropped it in a nearby litter box. “Oops, would you look at that. The job is magically unavailable.”
“Unavailable?”
“Someone else got the job.”
I peered past her. “Who?”
“You can’t see them but they exist, I swear.”
“For the record, I don’t believe you.”
“The door is that way,” she said in a snobby voice, like she wasn’t covered in animal hair. “And leave Mr. Peabody here.”
Mr. Peabody wasn’t going anywhere without my leg. I raised my foot and waited while Betsy unhooked his claws. She hugged the cat to her chest while he seethed. “You won’t be dying in a fire, will you Mr. Peabody? Betsy won’t let a thing happen to her ickle bickle kitty baby boy.”
I bolted before Mr. Peabody unleashed his claws and turned her face to raw souvlaki.
I grumbled back to the Jeep and kept up my inner monologue all the way home. What did I have to do to get a job and keep it around here? Employment never used to be this difficult—or this incendiary.
Ignoring the inflatable snowman on the porch and the skirt of blow-up presents around its bottom snowball, I unlocked the front door and slipped inside. And stopped. Again.
This was becoming a habit.
I walked back out and tried again, in case I’d fallen into a parallel universe.
Guess who had two thumbs and wasn’t that lucky?
Me. It was me.
The problem was this. Some thoughtful soul had propped up a corpse against my Christmas tree—the Christmas tree I didn’t construct and decorate to begin with. The dead man sat back to the trunk, head between a cluster of silver bells and a glass pickle, his skin a gray shade of colorless. Probably in his twenties. Putty-colored hair that formed a grubby helmet on his scalp. Same hair freckling his chin and sprawling down his neck, vanishing into a sweatshirt that had recently lost a fight with a pack of wolves. His bottom half was hidden under a chenille blanket that stopped being trendy in 1979. And he had the audacity to be dead in my house. My house. A strictly no-corpses-allowed zone because I desperately wanted—needed—a life of no crime whatsoever.
“Hello?”
The dead man, predictably, said nothing.
“Are you dead?”
The dead man kept on being dead.
Obviously he hadn’t arrived here on his own. Like an abandoned baby or puppy, he came with a note pinned to his sweatshirt. The note came with a local phone number and a helpful message. Call if you need help.
I did what a normal person would do—not what I would do.
Post-Greece me wanted to call Grandma or Takis or Xander, someone with the power and the vehicle to make a dead body disappear without alerting the authorities, because nothing makes law enforcement more curious than an unexpected corpse in a mobster’s granddaughter’s house. A normal person’s first call is to the police because they’ve got nothing to hide.
Defying all my Makris instincts, I called 9-1-1 … after I plucked the note off the dead man’s sweatshirt and stuck it in my pocket.
Then I went outside to wait.
Chapter 6
Everybody showed up. The police. The feds. Several of my neighbors who wanted to see a dead body that wasn’t anybody they knew or cared about. A handful of outside cats who took off after I chased them away from the Christmas tree with a broom.
The badges stood around the tree, contemplating the body. Nobody wanted to touch it. Homeless, they decided. Best leave touching him to the professionals. Never mind that they were the professionals and had badges to prove it.
For crying out loud.
I bent down and touched the man’s neck. No pulse. His skin was on the cold side of room temperature. “Dead,” I said. “As dead as dead gets. Now do something about it!”
“You can’t just touch him!” one of the cops said. “You’re tampering with a murder scene!”
The officer rigged up a perimeter of yellow tape while his partner tried to grill me on the couch. The feds stepped in.
“She’s ours,” the Woman in Black said. Like last time, the dastardly duo were suited up for an alien invasion and a movie deal. Only things missing were the black sunglasses and the doodad to wipe and replace memories, and I was semi-confident the bulges in their pockets were sunglasses.
“Kat isn’t saying a word to any of you,” Reggie Tubbs said. He was in his robe with the belt tied and sneakers on his feet. Very formal for him.
I zipped my lips and tossed the away the invisible key.
That’s when then the paramedics showed up with their stretcher and medical equipment. They ignored the tape and crouched down beside the dead man, feeling him up until I wasn’t sure if what they were doing was legal or appropriate. They looked up at the cops.
“Dummy,” one of them said.
The paramedics stood up and rolled out the door.
Every head in the living room swiveled in my direction.
“It looks real!” I said. “You all thought it was real, too. Don’t tell me you didn’t.”
“The girl is right,” Reggie said. “Looks real enough that none of you stooges would even touch the thing. Go on now. Get out of here. Don’t you have homes to go to?”
The neighbors filtered out. Complaining about lost time, the cops left. On the way out they made plans to hit up Voodoo Doughnuts. The Woman and Man in Black lingered like the smell of microwaved popcorn.
“We’re watching you,” the woman said. “Put a toe out of line and we’ll see that toe and throw it in a cell in a facility no one knows exists.”
“If no one knows it exists, then how do you know about it?” I asked
“We’re no one,” she said. “We know everything.”
Long-dead philosophers rolled in their graves.
“Sounds like a threat to me,” Reggie said. “Get out before I call your boss.”
The Woman in Black flashed two rows of Chiclet veneers. “Our boss doesn’t exist. Not to you.”
“But she exists to us,” the Man
in Black felt compelled to add. I had a feeling he was the dimly lit one.
They hoofed it back to the vehicle and sped away.
I shot Reggie a grateful smile—but not too grateful because I didn’t want to wind up on the wrong end of his flashing. “What am I supposed to do with this dummy?”
“You ever see Die Hard?”
“Best Christmas movie ever.”
He grinned. “Can’t argue with that. Stick a gray sweatshirt on him. Sit him on the porch. Use him as a threat.”
“Now I have a machine gun. Ho-ho-ho.”
“Atta girl,” he said. He turned to leave then stopped. “Next time those feds show up I’m gonna show them my junk. Uptight, the pair of them. They could use a good flashing by a guy who knows the law better than they do.”
Under the circumstances—circumstances being that the retired judge was firmly on Team Kat—I didn’t point out that wiener waving is illegal in most places, even Oregon.
“You think they’ll be back?”
“They can’t help themselves.”
We diverged at the mailbox. He went left. I stayed to check the mail. The woman across the street pounded the pavement with her sneakers on the way past.
“Nice day for a walk,” I called out.
She pointed to her wrist. “Trying to get a personal best.”
Off she marched.
Watching her made me feel like a slug. Greece overfed me, yes, but I was always on the move. Oregon sat me on the couch with Netflix, chips, and no purpose.
Walking. I should try that. Walking was normal. Walking would make a change from dodging bullets.
I poked through my closet. I ditched the interview outfit and tugged on a pair of yoga pants, shoved my feet into sneakers, wriggled into a sweatshirt, and topped off the whole outfit with a coat and wool hat.
Dressed for exercise success, I started off down the street at a moderate pace. From the way my heart was banging around I could tell it was confused about this change. At home I’d reverted to my gelatinous state.
This was good. This was fitness.
Oh gods, was it over yet?
My phone rang, interrupting the Top 40 in my ears. A local caller. Vaguely familiar number—but not someone in my Contacts.
Probably I’d live to regret my decision—I was feeling all fit and happy about the direction my life was going: back toward home—but I answered the call anyway.
“Kat? Is this still your number?”
Also vaguely familiar? The voice on the other end. I knew the man, but how?
The past flooded back the way the past usually does, in embarrassing, humiliating Technicolor chunks—although usually at around 3 AM when I can’t sleep. Ugh.
“What do you want, Todd?”
“You still have my number in your phone?”
There was a smile in his voice. Why was there a smile in his voice? Considering how we’d ended—with a penis lodged in his throat—and considering how many times I’d imagined him in unfortunate situations—chipper shredder, meat grinder, tied to the MAX tracks—the smile in his voice was presumptuous and downright cocky.
“Once more with feeling: What do you want, Todd?”
The confidence fell out of his voice. “I was just checking to see how you were doing. I heard about the explosion at Hipster Burger.”
“You and everyone else who watches the news.”
He sighed. “Can you chill—”
“No.”
“—out?”
“Still no.”
“I wanted to offer an olive branch.”
“Why? So I can whip you with it? Go ahead.”
“We were friends once. I was hoping we could be friends again, now that you’ve had time to get over me.”
I laughed. Boy, Todd was a comedian. Who knew? Certainly not me when I was wearing his ring. “No thanks. I have enough friends.”
“I was also hoping we could talk.”
Was he high? I had to ask. “Are you high?”
“Kat, please?”
“Oh, well, since you said please …” Here I was, rolling out my best sarcasm, and Todd mistook it for acquiescence.
“Meet outside the Cheesecake Factory?” he said.
This close to Christmas the Cheesecake Factory is guaranteed to be a zoo. Its primo location at the Washington Square Mall means shoppers flock there to refuel with slabs of cheesecake. When the restaurant is half full the acoustics are lousy. At full capacity, Todd’s lips could move but ambient chatter would smother his words. Plus they had cheesecake. It was right there in the name.
“Fine.” I dragged the word out so far that even Todd couldn’t miss the sarcasm this time.
We agreed to meet in an hour. I didn’t bother changing clothes or slapping on basic makeup. He wasn’t worth the eyeliner.
When it was time to leave, my phone rang.
Todd again. “Can you pick me up?”
“I don’t think so.”
A voice burbled in the background, male and terse.
“Can you still meet me, then? Francis is going to give me a ride.
Yeah, I just bet he was. “Fine.”
I backed out of the driveway. My neighbor was charging around the block, swinging her arms. Still or again? It was hard to tell with her. Around the corner a second black van had snugged up behind the first. My forehead began to sweat like a piece of cheese left on the counter.
Twenty minutes later I was crossing Washington Square Mall’s parking lot with my head down, trying to pretend like I didn’t see Todd. Today’s suit was rumpled and he was carrying his messenger bag over one shoulder. He never left home without the bag. It was good leather, probably unicorn the way he treated it. Nothing about him gave me butterflies the way he used to. All I felt was nothing—nothing and irritation.
A smile flashed across his face when he spotted me. Relief. Someone—Todd—didn’t think I would show up.
“You look great,” he lied.
“You look like you spent an hour in the dryer after it stopped.”
“My car wouldn’t start.”
“Why not?”
“It’s on fire. Or it was until the fire department put it out.”
Wow. That was really going around. “Maybe someone who hates your stupid guts set it on fire.”
The face I used to find cute, but was now as repellant to me as boiled offal, looked worried. “Why would anyone set my car on fire?”
“Jilted lover maybe?”
Guilt flashed across his face. His gaze slid away, sticking to the parked cars behind me. “There was only you.”
Did that make me feel better or worse? Hard to say. “Nice to know I’m the only one you screwed over. Maybe you skipped a manufacturer recall.”
“Never.”
That was Todd. He functioned with robotic efficiency. Like a can opener or a coffeepot.
“I’m ready for that cheesecake. As soon as it’s done I’m leaving, so whatever you want to talk about, make it fast.”
He opened the door for me. The Cheesecake Factory was a better smelling mosh pit. After twenty silent and awkward minutes we scored a table—one of those half booth things where one person is stuck sitting on the chair. I took the booth. Todd didn’t complain. In the old days he’d whine like a puppy with a full bladder if he didn’t get the inside seat. He barely winced as a server bonked his blond head with a tray on the way past. Someone must have spent time in therapy.
“I meant what I said,” he said, giving me zero clues about things that were said.
I dredged through my short-term memory and came up dry. “About what?”
“You look great.” His gaze combed over me appreciatively. “Really great.”
“You said that already.”
“You look so nice I had to say it twice.”
Dude. Just no. “What do you want, Todd?”
“Seeing you again made me remember the past. How we used to be. How we were in sync. The way we liked the same things.”
“Penis. We both liked penis.”
The woman at the next table leaned over. “I like penis, too.”
I threw up my hands. “Everybody loves penis!”
“Penis is like Raymond that way,” the woman said.
Todd looked like he wanted to be the one slithering down under the table this time. Being the center of attention wasn’t his thing unless he was getting an atta boy or a trophy.
Our server showed up with two kinds of bread, butter, and questions about what we wanted to drink. As soon as she left I seized the breadbasket. The brown bread was mine—all mine. Todd could get his own brown bread if he wanted some.
“Kat …”
“That’s my name, don’t wear it out.”
“Kat …” He reached over the basket and tried to hold my hand, the one with the butter knife in it.
Whoa. Someone was really living dangerously for a change. Clearly Todd didn’t understand that this bread was mine and I wasn’t in a sharing mood. His hand was cool and dry. One of us was a Slytherin and it wasn’t me.
“Let go of the knife,” he said.
“But I want bread and butter, and I want it now.”
“Remember how it used to be?”
“Before the mouth penis? Sure. It was a nice lie. I was under the impression that you loved me and that your favorite animal wasn’t a trouser snake. Boy, you really showed me. Who knew you were an Olympic level kneeler?”
“Can you just stop? I get it. I screwed up. I lost you. But look at us now. We’re both happier. So in a way I did you a favor.”
“Are you happy, Todd? Are you?”
“Mostly.”
I raised an eyebrow in his direction. Clearly he’d brought me here for a reason other than a walk down nightmare lane, so he’d better hurry up and spill it or I’d walk … as soon as I finished this bread, lunch, and a giant wedge of cheesecake. I was thinking the Snickers or maybe white chocolate raspberry.
“For crying out loud, just stop messing around and tell me why I’m here.”
Regrets were definitely on the menu. Why the heck had I agreed to this?
