The Fireman I Loved to Hate

by Jenna Gunn

  Doesn’t look like an inside cat to me, I think as I begin heading up the ladder. She keeps jabbering away down there as I get up to the branches.

  An orange cat squats on a branch, yowling and screaming. Why do they do this? Why do they get up in high places and then scream until someone comes to help? I reach out for it; it turns its big yellow eyes on me and yowls again, showing its little pointy teeth. It’s obviously scared. It’s an ugly little thing, with a squashed-up face as if he’s been hit by a car. Its front leg is missing, which is pretty gross; I try not to touch the blank spot where the leg should be as I reach for it. Trembling, it ducks under my hand, and I grab it by the scruff of the neck and pull it into my arms.

  “Oh!” Raina Groves exclaims below me.

  I back down the ladder, cradling the still-screaming cat in one arm. It’s doing its predictable purring and head-butting. “Coming down,” I warn her so she’ll get out of my way.

  She’s dancing nervously near the base of the ladder. As soon as both of my feet are safely on solid ground, she bounces toward me, arms outstretched, and the damn cat launches itself off my chest, digging its claws into my jacket.

  “Oh, baby,” she says to it, catching it and pulling it close. She buries her face in its fur before turning her big green eyes to me. “Thank you,” she says breathlessly.

  “No problem.”

  “No, really.” She runs a hand over the cat’s head. “I don’t know what I’d do if he got hurt. He seems to like you,” she adds, bending her face down so that the cat can head-butt her forehead.

  I stop myself from shrugging and watch her snuggle the cat. She’s thin - waifish, almost. Her curly blonde hair is pulled up into a frizzy, messy ponytail, with several bobby pins around her hairline to keep it out of her face. Her eyes are big, round, and a rather lovely shade of green, like grass just before summer. She’s barefoot. I think that’s cute.

  “How could I ever repay you?” she asks, still breathless.

  This time, I actually do shrug. “I’m just doing my job. Your taxes do enough.” I turn and head back to my truck, leaving her standing barefoot on her front walk with her ugly cat.

  Chapter 3

  “It’s a tragedy, Monroe,” I say to him woefully as I usher him into his crate. “That fireman was oh, so rude to you - you! The nicest, cutest kitty in the whole wide world!”

  Monroe’s being stubborn. He meows in protest when I scoop him up and raises his volume when I shut the crate door.

  I peek through the metal grid at him. “Sorry, but this is the only way we’re getting you to Trisha’s.”

  He meows again.

  “I realize you don’t want to go, but I want you to get a checkup.” I ignore his next meow as I go about gathering the things I’ll need. Keys, purse, phone…

  I can’t stop thinking about the fireman that rescued Monroe yesterday. He was so rude. He saved my cat, yes, but he also barely spoke, and he didn’t seem to have any regard for Monroe’s wellbeing aside from doing his job. Where is his compassion? His heart? Why, oh why, did he have not a mite of kindness toward the feline which he rescued, the cat who art also mine own heart?

  Monroe meows and I shake myself out of my reverie, hurrying to grab a scrap of paper to scribble down the soliloquy I just made. I shove it under a magnet on the fridge and stare at it for a moment. Sure, maybe Mary could say something like that, but the references to “felines” and “cats” would have to be changed out. And what could Frederic do with an item that is so close to her?

  Again, Monroe meows plaintively from his crate. “Sorry, boy,” I say, drifting over to the counter and plucking him up. “Got lost in my own head.”

  From inside the crate, he turns his face toward mine and stares at me without blinking. I can almost hear him saying something like, “So what else is new?”, or “Wow, surprising.” Monroe may not speak English, but I know what he’s saying. And he’s definitely sarcastic.

  I grab the little bag I’ve packed for our visit and load everything into my car. Monroe quiets down as I get into the driver’s seat. He’s all right with car rides, thankfully - he just hates his crate.

  I turn his carrier to face me so he can see me; he puts his cute kitty eyes on me pleadingly. “I can’t let you out,” I tell him, shoving my keys into the ignition. “You’ll crawl under my feet and make me wreck.”

  Grumpily, he tucks his feet underneath his body and narrows his eyes; I roll my own eyes at him and start the car, shifting the manual transmission into reverse.

  It’s a long drive to the rural town where Dr. Trisha Nash runs her veterinary office, but she’s an old friend of mine from high school, and I don’t know anyone else near this town. There may be plenty of vets closer to my house, but Trisha is the only one I trust.

  The drive gives me time to think. So I think about the only thing I’ve been thinking about since yesterday - the fireman. If I close my eyes - which I can’t right now, since I’m driving and that would be dangerous - I can picture him. He’s tall, at least a foot taller than I am, if not two, making him around six feet. Broad shoulders. Probably muscular, though he wore a jacket, so I couldn’t see his arms. And his eyes...such dark, brooding eyes, set in a face with high cheekbones and square jaw, framed by long, black lashes…

  A car honks at me; I jump and speed up, shifting my car into a higher gear. “Focus,” I grumble at myself. Monroe chirps back at me from his carrier.

  Okay, so the Rude Fireman is...attractive. Very much so. Tall, dark, handsome, everything a modern woman wants in a modern man. But I don’t want a modern man.

  I want a real hero - a man straight out of a novel. Someone dashing and gallant, gentlemanly, who will sweep me off my feet with a passionate, whirlwind love affair.

  And the exact opposite of that would be a rude fireman, however handsome and dashing he was as he rescued Monroe.

  I glance around the familiar rural town where Trisha has taken root and look for the turn to her road. There isn’t a single stoplight. A pickup truck comes toward me from the opposite direction; the old man behind the wheel lifts one finger in greeting, and I do the same.

  I finally find myself in “downtown”, which is just a cluster of buildings sitting alongside a Dollar General, and turn my car into the vet’s office parking lot. It would be an unassuming stucco building if Trisha hadn’t had it painted a lovely shade of blue.

  “Okay, Monroe,” I say, unbuckling; he begins meowing in earnest as he sees me leave the car. He’s still meowing when I pull out his carrier and packed bag.

  As I’m pushing my car door shut with my foot, Trisha comes out to watch me from the front step of the office, a lopsided smile on her freckled face. “Raina Groves,” she says with her slow drawl.

  “Trisha Nay-ash,” I retort, copying her cadence to draw out her last name into two syllables.

  Trisha laughs and walks up to grab Monroe’s carrier. “So you moved away from Mt Pleasant just to move an hour away from nowhere?”

  I shrug and close my car door. “The hustle and bustle of the city had become too much for me,” I sigh.

  Trisha snorts. “Okay.” She pauses while I open the door for her. Monroe meows his protests all the way through the lobby. “It’s Groves,” she calls over her shoulder to the girl working reception, who nods without looking up.

  Trisha’s already letting Monroe out of his carrier when I step into her exam room and shut the door behind me. She scratches him beneath the chin with a gloved hand. “What did you say happened, again?”

  “He got outside and went up a tree,” I say, sitting up on her counter. My feet dangle above the white-tiled floor.

  “Did he get hurt at all?”

  “Not that I can tell. I just wanna be safe.” I reach over and pluck a glove out of the box on her counter.

  “Oh, that more clients were like you,” she sighs. “And that you were like some of my other patients,” she adds angrily to Monroe, who is desperately trying to wriggle his way out of her
grasp.

  I open the bag I packed and toss a plastic baggy full of Monroe’s favorite snackies to her. She catches them deftly in one hand.

  I slip the glove on and open her jar of cotton swabs to pull one out. They look just like the ones you would find in a human doctor’s office. How strange, how poetic, that to examine humans and animals, one must use the same instruments - how different, then, could our species be? One unlucky mutation and humans would still be crawling in the dirt while another life form rose to intelligence, ruling over us, keeping us in their homes to pet and feed and fuss over. Nay, perhaps a lucky mutation, for what has intelligence brought us but despair? How much could our lives be improved -

  “Earth to Raina!”

  I jump as Trisha snaps her fingers; I turn toward her, still holding a cotton swab in my gloved hand.

  “I said, I’m gonna run a standard blood test,” she says to me, grinning. “You all right in there?”

  I nod silently. She smiles and places Monroe squarely in my lap.

  “I’ll be right back.”

  I nod again as she slips through the door, then scramble to pull my notebook out of my bag to furiously scribble down the thoughts I just had. They would be great for the book.

  I feed Monroe a snacky while I wait for Trisha to return, which she does within a few moments. She grabs Monroe out of my lap and sits on her own exam table with him. “It’ll be about half an hour,” she tells me.

  “Don’t you have any other appointments?” I ask her.

  “Not today.” She scratches Monroe behind the ears, and he pushes his head against her hand. “He seems fine. Nothing’s broken. How’d you get him out of the tree?”

  “I had to call the fire department, and a fireman came out to get him down.”

  “Ooh.” Trisha has a twinkle in her eye. “A fireman, huh? Was he hot?”

  “No,” I say immediately; it comes out a little more forcefully than I intended. “Not at all.”

  Trisha raises an eyebrow. “Methinks the lady doth protest too much.”

  “He was rude,” I snap. “Barely talked and didn’t seem at all like he cared whether Monroe was safe or not. Monroe was purring and rubbing against him and he didn’t pet him once.”

  “Yeah, I didn’t ask about his personality. I asked if he was hot.”

  I snort and look away, thinking again of the high cheekbones, the dark eyes. The curve of his mouth, his full lips, so soft and strange in such a hard, manly face. “He was attractive,” I admit finally.

  “Knew it,” Trisha laughed.

  “How have things been here?” I ask her, hoping to change the subject.

  Trisha starts telling me about all the drama currently happening in the office - the receptionist’s new boyfriend, a client convinced his dog’s nipples were tumors, a house visit she had to make to a farm nearby. I listen, occasionally scribbling things down in my notebook, certain phrases she says that I think are poetic or interesting. When she gets up to check on the blood test results, I glance down at a few of the things I’ve written; nearby farm, a wistful assistant, screaming of goats. I’m not sure when I’d ever use these, but they strike me a certain way.

  “Raina, geez, are you in there?”

  I glance up. Trisha’s standing in front of me. “Monroe’s test came back completely normal,” she says. “You wanna grab some lunch with me?”

  “Yeah.” I close my notebook and shove it unceremoniously back into my bag. “Is there even a place to go around here?”

  “Every town has somewhere to eat,” she remarks.

  I scoop Monroe back into his carrier, despite his protests, and follow Trisha through the lobby.

  She glances over her shoulder. “So, do you think you might want your keys?”

  I freeze and check my pockets; I don’t have my keys. She laughs as I rush back to the exam room to grab them.

  Chapter 4

  I pat my hair nervously as I stare into my webcam. I hate doing things like this.

  About a month ago, my agent contacted me to tell me to do a livestream Q-and-A session to promote my next book. Today’s the day, and I hate it. I tried my best to tame my hair. I put on makeup. I wore a nice shirt. And now I’m going to have to sit at my computer for an hour and a half fielding questions from strangers whose faces I can’t see.

  I’ve never enjoyed interacting with the public, but doing it online makes it worse. I feel strange sitting in a room alone and talking to a camera. At least when I go do book signings or readings I get to travel. Plus, Q-and-A sessions are always the same. Everyone has the same questions; what’s your process like, where do you get your inspiration, how did you start, how do you stay motivated, blah, blah, blah.

  My agent texts me, the livestream starts, and I smile awkwardly at the camera. “Hi, everyone,” I say, glancing at the chat to make sure my audio is working. “I’m Raina Groves!”

  “Everyone, thank you so much for your questions,” I say, straining to smile into the camera. “Be sure to look out for the book!”

  I end the stream, disconnecting my webcam just in case; I place a hand over my hammering heart as I slump back in my chair. My phone buzzes, and I glance briefly at the screen to see a long text from my agent. I ignore it.

  “Monroe?” I call out, dragging myself from the chair. I feel drained as I walk down the short hallway to the living room, tugging bobby pins out of my hair. “Here, kitty kitty! Come cuddle Mommy!”

  I check the several cat beds scattered about the house, but he’s not in any of them - not even in his three-story cat-condo with his favorite scratching post. “I just want some cuddles, Monroe, come on.” All I need right now is to sit on the couch with Monroe in my lap and zone out in front of whatever inane reality show I can find; is that too much to ask?

  I head into my bedroom to check beneath my bed, but my heart sinks as my eyes fall onto my half-open window. I don’t remember opening it. “He’s gonna give me a heart attack,” I mutter as I rush to the front door.

  It’s bright outside, and I have to squint as my eyes adjust. A light breeze ruffles through my hair. Barefoot, I step into my front yard, glancing at the tree Monroe got himself caught in the other day - he’s not there.

  There’s movement in my peripheral vision; I glance over at my neighbor’s house to see Monroe sitting atop their chimney, tail swishing above him. He sees me and stands up to meow at the top of his lungs.

  I guess today’s a good day to meet the neighbors.

  “Sit down!” I yell at him, hurrying across my yard and up the neighbors’ walk. They have garden beds flanking their front door, and out of the mulch grow lovely rosebushes in full bloom, speckled with some smaller flowers in between. On their front door hangs a wooden sign that simply says “Spring!” in a playful cursive script; it sits in the center of a wreath dotted with fake flowers. An empty flagpole juts out of the ground near the front porch steps.

  I jog up the steps and press the doorbell. I can’t see Monroe from this angle, but I can hear him yowling, so I know he’s all right. I bounce on the balls of my feet as I wait, but no one comes; I open the screen door and wrap on the front door with my knuckles, just below the Spring sign.

  This time it’s only a few seconds before the door opens. A short, plump woman in her sixties stands there, sporting one of those grey old-lady perms and a pink cardigan. She raises a thin, penciled eyebrow at me. “Yes?”

  “Hi!” I say, a little breathlessly. “Hi, I - I just moved in next door, and - well, my cat is on your roof.”

  “Oh! Well hello there!” She pulls the door open even more, revealing a claustrophobic-looking living room behind her. “Open that screen and come on in.” She turns and heads into the house.

  I follow uncertainly, allowing the screen door to close gently behind me, and feel almost like my eyes are being assaulted. The living room is carpeted in teal, and huge mauve-and-pink plaid curtains hang on both the windows in the room, tied back with teal sashes. The fabric of the sofa is
faded, but it looks as though it was once a bright pink, and a matching loveseat flanked by two floral-patterned chintz armchairs sits across from it. The yellow-striped wallpaper has a bright floral border all around the top. An entertainment center dominates one wall, with a huge flat-screen TV sitting on it - the most modern thing in the whole room.

  “Close the front door, hon,” says the old woman.

  I obey, still trying to parse all the conflicting colors and patterns in the living room. It feels crowded with all the plants. They’re everywhere; sitting in big pots on the floor, sprouting from little vases on every surface, hanging from the ceiling with tendrils dangling from their pots.

  “You go on and have a seat. You want some sweet tea?”

  “Oh, uh - I’m really just here to - ”

  “I’ve already called the fire department, hon,” says the old woman, emerging from the kitchen with two tall glasses of iced tea. “Ain’t nothin much you can do now but wait. Come on, now.”

  Hoping that the Rude Fireman doesn’t show up, I wade through the knee-high plants, coffee tables, and end tables to sit in one of the armchairs. My butt sinks down into it so far that I think my knees might touch my ears.

  “My name’s Linda, but most people call me Lynn, or Lindy,” the woman says, placing the glass of tea on a cork coaster on the end table nearest me.

  “I’m Raina.” I shift until I can reach the iced tea. “Raina Groves.”

  “Raina. That a family name?”

  “Um - no, ma’am,” I say uncertainly. I take a sip of the tea; it’s so sweet it’s almost syrup.

  “Linda’s a family name,” she tells me, sniffing. “Hated it my whole life. Better than what my parents originally wanted to call me - Bernadette, ugh. Can you imagine?” She takes a long drink of her tea. “So that cat up there, what’s his name?”