Pulse

34

S he liked imagining herself in the old movie she’d watched last night, Rear Window, but she’d rather have been Grace Kelly. Instead she was James Stewart, sitting at a window with his leg propped up, helplessly watching the world go by.

Deena Vess’s ankle had stopped aching, but it itched like crazy under the plaster cast. Day after tomorrow she was supposed to go back to the doctor and get the cast removed, to be replaced by a plastic one that could be taken off occasionally and was sure to be more comfortable.

From where she sat, she could look out her apartment window at the street below if she strained herself. A fly buzzed frantically and futilely against the lower pane, trying to get on the other side of the invisible glass barrier. She knew how it felt.

It was a hot day, and there were fewer people than normal down there on the baking sidewalks. Traffic wasn’t very heavy, either.

But there was the foreshortened figure of Jeff the postman, crossing the street to his mail truck. He stepped up into the truck and drove away.

Okay, something to do! Get the mail. A chore that required her attention.

It would hurt slightly, but it was worth the pain. And worth it to escape daytime television. Or roaming Facebook or Twitter. She’d tired of sending out messages about her aching ankle. The social network didn’t want to hear you bitch any more than people standing right next to you.

She used one of the metal crutches she’d bought at Duane Reade to brace herself as she stood up from her chair. Then she hobbled toward the door. From the corner of her eye she saw the cat that wasn’t Empress stretch and edge toward the kitchen door as if stalking something. She still couldn’t work up any fondness for the cat, and how it had taken Empress’s place was still a mystery that sometimes kept her up at night, wondering. The longer she and the cat shared the apartment, the less the animal looked like the real Empress.

But what you couldn’t understand you at last got tired of thinking about. She’d posted a status on Facebook asking if anyone could explain the bizarre cat substitution. The answers from her “friends” strongly implied that she might be insane and should seek help. Sure, Deena should hobble into a psychoanalyst’s office with a cat under her arm and say it was impersonating another cat.

She reached the door to the hall, opened it, and clattered out into the tiled hall on her crutches. After closing the door, she used the crutches to make her way to the elevator. There was some pain, but it was bearable. And going down to the foyer and getting her mail was one of the few things she looked forward to these days. She needed to get off these damn crutches and back on her skates, if she was still employed at Roller Steak. The boss had assured her the job would be there for her, but what was that worth?

Deena hobbled out of the elevator and over to the bank of brass mailboxes. She glimpsed white through the slot in her box. Mail!

A disappointed Deena discovered that her mail consisted of an ad for Viagra.

She returned to the elevator, pressed the up button, and momentarily got one of her crutches caught in the crack between elevator and floor. Finally safe inside the elevator and leaning on the wall near the control panel, she pressed the button for her floor.

By the time she was back in her chair, facing the muted TV playing Sex and the City reruns, her ankle was throbbing. Probably these mail-fetching missions every day weren’t the best thing for the ankle, but she had to do something to get out.

She’d been sitting there for almost an hour when it occurred to her that she hadn’t seen the Empress imposter since returning from her mail pickup. She knew she’d closed the door behind her and-

Someone knocked on her apartment door hard enough to startle her, then continued to knock, softer but insistently.

Deena cursed, snatched up her clattering crutches, and hobbled over to look out the peephole.

An eye was staring right back at her. She hated it when people did that.

A male voice in the hall said, “I have a cat somebody told me was yours.”

Deena peered through the peephole again. This time a guy was standing back, farther from the door. He was holding up a cat that, even distorted by the peephole glass, looked more like Empress than the imposter.

Deena worked the dead bolt, then opened the door, leaving it on the chain.

The man looked in at her and held the cat up again for her inspection. Definitely the real Empress.

But then-

“I ran some found cat ads in the paper,” the man said. He was a good-looking guy, storybook handsome but not effeminate. “I’m a cat person, and I knew this one was loved and had an owner in the neighborhood who must be worried stiff about her.”

Empress waved a paw at Deena and mewed.

Deena detached the chain lock and opened the door all the way. “It’s odd,” she said. “There was this other cat-”

The man threw a yowling Empress into Deena’s face and at the same time kicked her injured ankle and pushed her backward. She fell with a sharp intake of breath and a clatter of aluminum.

He was on her while she was too shocked to utter another sound. She saw and then felt the sticky gray rectangle of duct tape slapped over her half-open mouth. He gripped her wrists and kept her hands away from her face while she struggled and tried to scream. He was laughing. That was what for some reason terrified her more than anything, his soft, amused laughter.

He stood up, crouched over her, still squeezing her wrists hard enough that her hands were twisted into claws. She couldn’t stop working her legs, fighting to stand up despite the agonizing pain in her ankle.

Smiling, he waited patiently until he had the opportunity and then kicked her broken ankle again, this time as hard as he could, grunting with the effort.

The pain carried her to a place where she could no longer hear her muffled screams.

To where she melted to nothing and consciousness stole away.