The Cat Sitter's Whiskers

by Blaize Clement

  “I see.”

  I gave her a kind of hopeless smile. “Yeah, that’s exactly how I feel about it.”

  “Tell me what happened.”

  I shrugged. “I think I’m actually making a mountain out of a molehill, because really when you get right down to it, nothing happened. We were just talking, and I threw a carrot at him—don’t ask why, I was just being silly—and he made a joke about kids … our kids. He didn’t mean anything by it, I don’t think, but just … the words our kids … I don’t know. It’s ridiculous, but it really got to me.”

  Cora frowned. “You threw a carrot at him?”

  “I told you not to ask why.”

  She reached out and tore a piece off the loaf of chocolate bread and laid it on the plate next to me. Immediately the room filled with the luscious scent of melted chocolate and butter.

  She said, “All right, first of all. It’s not ridiculous. It makes perfect sense. You’re protecting yourself, and no one can tell you that’s not the right thing to do. Dixie, did I ever tell you about my little Buddy?”

  I glanced at Kate. She was still gazing out the window, but now she was slumped a bit, and at the mention of the name Buddy she sighed audibly. I wondered if the burst of energy she’d summoned to meet me had worn her out. I looked back at Cora and shook my head.

  “Well, when I was a little girl, all I wanted was a puppy. You know, something to hug and love and take care of. But my daddy said no. He was a strict man. He said it was all he could do to keep the farm going, and he always said we didn’t have the money for another mouth to feed that didn’t earn its keep.”

  I realized my hands had torn a bit of chocolate bread off the piece that Cora had put on my plate. The moment it touched my lips, I felt a wave of warmth wash over my entire body. It was that good.

  Cora paused and gave me an expectant look.

  I nodded. “I’m listening!”

  “Well, one morning my mother took me to town with her. Oh, I must have been about nine or ten years old. We stopped by the hardware store to pick up a case of jelly jars, and they had a basket of guinea eggs sitting by the woodstove—a nickel each! And they came with instructions for hatching, too. Well, lo and behold, my mother bought me one of those eggs, and I kept it cupped in my hot little hands the whole way home.

  “For weeks I hovered over that darn egg like its own mama, making sure it didn’t get too cold or too hot, keeping the air around it all nice and moist with a little misting bottle, and talking a blue streak to it. I even sang hymns to it on Sunday morning! My daddy just shook his head. He said it would never work and it was a waste of a good nickel, and he said the poor thing would just die in its shell without a real hen to hatch it proper.

  “Well, Dixie, guess what? My daddy was dead wrong. That little guinea grew up to be big as a watermelon, and she followed me everywhere, pecking at my shoelaces and hopping up on my shoulder. Oh, my goodness, I loved that little bird. And she ate ticks and fleas in the yard and laid eggs, too, so my daddy couldn’t say Buddy didn’t earn her keep.”

  She slid her cup toward me and I filled it from the teakettle. I looked down at my plate and my piece of chocolate bread was completely gone. There was nothing left but a few crumbs, which I picked up with the tip of my finger like a bird pecking at seed on the ground.

  Cora was watching me. I said, “Okay, then what happened?”

  “One day I came home from school, and Buddy was nowhere to be found. I looked everywhere. She especially liked to roost in one of the apple trees we had out behind the house, but she wasn’t there, so finally I found my poor mother upstairs. She was in bed with all her clothes on, taking a nap in the middle of the day, and I can tell you nothing like that had ever happened before. Right off the bat, I knew something was wrong.”

  Her eyes turned misty. “Turned out my daddy had killed poor Buddy. Wrung her neck. And not only that, but he was expecting my mother to make guinea stew for supper. He told me he was sorry, but that it was high time I learned a lesson, and that lesson was: don’t ever get too attached to anything, and that way you can’t ever get hurt.”

  She gave me a little nod and then popped a bite of chocolate bread in her mouth with a little wink.

  I was staring at her with my jaw hanging open and my eyes wide as saucers. I said, “That’s it?”

  She nodded. “That’s all she wrote.”

  I looked over at Kate, who appeared to have dozed off in the middle of the story, her teacup perched precariously on her lap. I said, “Cora, that is hands down the most depressing story I have ever heard in my entire life.”

  Her eyes sparkled as a tiny smile played across her lips.

  “I know it.”

  29

  Halfway down the driveway, I thought I saw fireflies flickering in the leaves and branches deep in the woods, but as I pulled the Bronco into the carport next to Paco’s truck, I realized what I’d seen was the tiki torches around the perimeter of the courtyard. The big table in the middle was crowded with glassware and china, and Michael and Paco were buzzing around inside their kitchen. I raised both my hands over my head and did a little victory dance in the car before I got out, then I bounced up the steps to my apartment two at a time. As soon as I got inside, I threw off all my clothes and collapsed on the bed.

  I hadn’t been lying there five seconds when I heard a tiny plaintive, “Meep?”

  Ella Fitzgerald’s not allowed outside by herself. She won’t run away—she’s just as much a homebody as I am—but it’s way too dangerous out here for a cat. Being an island, the Key is safe from the occasional panther or alligator our landlocked neighbors may have to contend with, but there’s a whole cadre of predators up above: owls, eagles, falcons, ospreys, and red-tailed hawks. They patrol the sky like fur-seeking drones in search of four-legged critters, so Ella’s only allowed outside when there’s human supervision.

  I sat up, thinking maybe Michael had brought her over so she wouldn’t slip out the kitchen door while they were setting the table, but then I looked up to see her big tawny eyes staring down at me from the window that runs along the top of my bedroom wall. She was sitting on the sill outside. I slid the screen open and she hopped down onto the bed and stretched herself into a fluffy Halloween cat.

  “Ella, who said you could go outside this time of night by yourself?”

  She said, “Thrrrrr,” as I sat down next to her, and then she gave the back of my hand a sandpapery kiss and purred like a tiny jackhammer as she crawled into my lap. That’s the thing about cats. It’s hard to be in a bad mood around them. You can feel as cold and lonely as a piece of dry toast, but the minute you hear that soft purring, something opens up inside you and makes the world seem like a nice place to be after all.

  There were clumps of wet sand between her toes, which meant she’d probably been down on the beach hunting for crabs and minnows. I took her into the bathroom and rinsed her paws under the tap, which she did not appreciate one bit but didn’t put up too much of a fight, and then I dried her off with a spare towel. I was about to put her down when I caught the scent of something delicious wafting up from downstairs. I looked at Ella. She was cradled in my arms, her nose and whiskers quivering.

  I said, “You hear it, too? Is that Michael calling us down for dinner? Okay, let’s go see.”

  She twisted out of my arms and ran ahead into the closet, where she licked her damp paws with a vaguely accusing look in her eye while I put on a yellow V-neck tee and a pair of soft faded jeans, the cuffs of which I rolled up over my calves—I was already thinking I might take a nice quiet walk along the beach before dinner. Then we both scampered out and down the steps.

  There was a cornflower-blue cloth laid over the table on the deck, with the silver candelabra that’s usually on our grandmother’s piano holding court over an artful arrangement of china and wineglasses, all reflecting the dancing flames of the tiki torches. There was a long white platter heaped with Paco’s white bean and radish salad, topped wit
h paper-thin slices of red onion, chunks of fresh mango, capers, and chopped parsley.

  I couldn’t resist. I picked a piece of mango out and popped it in my mouth, at which point I think I actually moaned out loud.

  “Dixie!”

  Michael was standing behind me watching me lick my fingers like Ella cleaning her paws. I must have jumped a foot in the air.

  He frowned. “Funny, I don’t remember announcing dinner.”

  “I know, but Michael, I’m totally starving.”

  He had a ceramic bowl the size of a satellite dish balanced in one hand and a bottle of white wine in the other. He said, “Good for you. Now I want you to back away from the table, and if you know what’s good for you, you’ll stay away until I say it’s ready.”

  I glanced longingly at the bowl he was holding. There was a mound of pencil-thin asparagus stalks, all lined up with their tips pointed at me and glistening with melted butter, resting on a bed of baby greens sprinkled with toasted pine nuts. Next to that was a heap of crispy sweet-potato fries, sprinkled with ground pepper and freshly grated parmesan cheese. For a brief moment I estimated the size and weight of the bowl, trying to figure out how far I could run with it before he caught me.

  I sighed. “Okay, fine. I’ll just sit here and suffer.”

  I reached out for another piece of mango and Michael slapped my hand away. I folded my arms over my chest.

  “Ugh! How much longer?”

  “What are you, five years old?”

  I was about to ball my hands up in fists and stamp my feet in response, but suddenly there were tears in my eyes. I tried to laugh it off. “Well, apparently yes.”

  “Wait, what’s the matter?”

  “Nothing, nothing, I’m fine. You just wouldn’t believe the day I’ve had. It’s been one hundred percent crazy.”

  He frowned and looked me up and down as he handed me the bottle of wine. “Okay, first pour yourself a glass of this, and then tell me what happened. How’s your head?”

  I picked up one of the glasses. “It’s fine. Still a little tender, but the swelling’s almost completely gone.”

  “Well, that’s good, at least.”

  While I was filling my glass, he pulled another chair over to the table and then looked at his watch.

  I said, “So … I don’t even know where to begin.”

  He nodded absentmindedly. “Crab cakes.”

  I said, “Huh?”

  He raised his eyebrows, and I immediately knew he wasn’t even listening to me. He said, “What?”

  Michael and I have been through a lot together. I think I can safely say nobody knows me better, and normally I can read him like a compass. I guess I’d been so caught up in my own day that it was taking me a little longer than usual. He was nervously straightening the silverware around the table.

  I said, “Where’s Paco?”

  “He’s inside. We’re eating a little early tonight.”

  I said, “Okay,” and then we both fell quiet.

  When you live with an undercover agent, especially somebody like Paco, who’s often involved in high-stakes criminal investigations, you learn to speak in code. It’s practically a foreign language. All the words are in English—they just have double meanings.

  For example, I didn’t need to ask where Paco was. I could see him standing over the griddle in the kitchen. What I’d meant was more along the lines of, You seem nervous. And what Michael meant by saying we were eating a little early was that Paco was working tonight, and probably leaving shortly after dinner.

  Ultimately, what it all meant was that Michael and I would be walking around on pins and needles until Paco got back home, which might be hours or it might be days, you never know. Michael’s shift at the firehouse started in the morning—he works two days on and one day off—so that meant he’d get to throw himself into his work, but for me, I figured I’d better enjoy having some big strong men around the house while I could.

  It was then that I noticed the table was set for four. I said, “Hey,” and pointed at the chair Michael had just dragged over to the table. That was code as well. It meant, Hey, but with a subtle reference to Ethan.

  Michael nodded as he headed back to the kitchen. “Yeah, he’s having dinner with us.”

  “Oh, I wasn’t aware.”

  He cocked his head to the side, and I could tell he knew that already. “Yeah, he said you wouldn’t return his calls…”

  He left me standing there staring at the table, but then he poked his head out again and said, “Umm,” and tipped his chin toward the beach.

  I looked out at the ocean to see the silhouette of a man standing at the water’s edge, illuminated by the moon. I said, “Is that…?”

  He’d already gone back inside and was standing at the griddle next to Paco with one arm hung over his shoulder. I let out a deep sigh as I looked down at my feet, where Ella was gazing up at me with an expectant look on her face. I held my hand out like a cop stopping traffic and said, “Stay.” Then I guzzled the rest of my wine and walked down the path to the beach. At one point I looked back, and Ella was following along right at my heels.

  Ethan was standing in his bare feet, his pants rolled up over his ankles like mine, and he was gazing quietly out at the water. When he heard me he turned and said, “Hey, there,” and reached his hand out.

  I folded my fingers in his and leaned into him. “Hey, I didn’t know you were here.”

  “Surprised?”

  “No. Michael told me.”

  He nodded. “I went for a walk and ended up here. That okay?”

  “Of course … and I’m sorry I never called you back. I had a really ridiculous day.”

  He studied my face for a moment, and then he said, “Let’s walk.”

  We took off down the beach, following the line of foam the waves had left along the sand while Ella ran ahead, skittering back and forth, occasionally pouncing on something either real or imaginary, I couldn’t quite tell. The sand was still warm from baking in the sun all day, but the cool water felt good rolling over my feet.

  Finally, I couldn’t take the silence anymore. I said, “So, I guess this is where we talk about kids and the future and all that icky stuff.”

  He squeezed my hand. “Ha. Only if you want to.”

  “Honestly?”

  He stopped and turned to me with a solemn nod.

  I thought for a second. “I kind of don’t.”

  The moon had been momentarily hidden in a bank of clouds, but as we came to a stop they began to part, gradually painting the sky and the dunes all around us in a wash of silvery violet. Ethan turned and looked back up the beach in the direction of the house.

  I said, “You think it’s a deal-breaker?”

  He said, “Huh. I wasn’t expecting to hear the words deal-breaker tonight.”

  “I know. I’m just trying to figure out where you are.”

  He paused for a moment. “I don’t know. I don’t know where I am.”

  “So … you’re saying you’re not sure.”

  We both just stood there, each of us facing in slightly different directions, long enough that it began to feel awkward. Finally, he turned and took me in his arms. He kissed the nape of my neck and then nuzzled his face into the crook of my shoulder, and I felt goose bumps glide all the way down my sides and across the backs of my legs.

  He whispered, “I just want to be here for now.”

  I could feel his heartbeat against my chest, as fast as a drum. “Okay.”

  He said, “Let’s go back.”

  I nodded and took his hand again, but somewhere in the back of my mind I heard a tiny voice, just barely audible over the sound of the waves lapping up on the beach, the sound that’s been the underlying sound track to my entire life.

  It said, We can’t.

  30

  The next morning, my radio alarm went off bright and early, like it always does, except this time it felt particularly jarring. It may have been that I’d been up
late talking to Ethan, or rather, not talking to Ethan, but lying on my side in the dark and staring at the back of his head while he slept. It might also have been the song that was playing on the radio. It was some sort of heavy metal tune, although tune seems a bit generous since there didn’t seem to be any kind of melody involved—just a cacophony of what sounded like a hundred drum sets, accompanied by a chorus of unintelligible screams and high-pitched wails, all submerged in a cavernous echo chamber of doom. I slapped my hand across the clock’s snooze button to knock some sense into it, and then rolled over to see if Ethan was still asleep.

  He wasn’t there.

  While I got dressed, I wondered if he hadn’t gone out for an early morning jog, but by the time I backed the Bronco out of the carport there was still no sign of him. I left a note on the kitchen counter, but I was seriously beginning to think he’d gotten up in the middle of the night and gone home. The note just said, Hey, where’d you go?

  Rolling down the driveway, I flipped the headlights on and a river of fog appeared before me, rolling across the road and into the dark brush in a slow, billowing wave, and just as I was getting the strongest feeling of déjà vu, there was a fluttering of parakeets in the treetops overhead. I was beginning to realize why Detective McKenzie had asked me to meet her so early in the morning.

  She had already arrived when I pulled up in front of Mona’s trailer and switched off my headlights. Her unmarked car was parallel to the crime-scene tape, next to the police cruiser that was still on duty, and she was standing in the road just beyond it. If I hadn’t known better I’d have sworn she was wearing the same clothes she’d had on the last time I saw her: a knee-length skirt the same pencil-eraser-red as her hair, a drab beige blouse with small brown buttons down the front, and a wispy gray scarf tied loosely around her neck. But then I thought, who am I to judge? I’ve practically been wearing the same exact thing for five years straight.

  As I made my way along the dewy grass in Mona’s yard, I hoped it was early enough that McKenzie hadn’t had any coffee yet. That way her mind wouldn’t be in full, spinning-out-of-control, manic-hamster-on-a-wheel mode. But as I got closer, I saw she was holding not one, but two large cups of Starbucks coffee.