The Cat Sitter's Whiskers

13

It’s probably only a couple hundred feet, but the walk from Michael and Paco’s kitchen to my front door felt like a hundred miles, mainly because my head was spinning all over again—not because I was dizzy, but because I was completely lost in thought as I ambled across the courtyard.

Paco had admitted he was really only making an educated guess about how I got my bump, but he’d also said he was beginning to recognize all the little telltale signs I exhibit when I’m not telling the entire truth … something I sometimes do to protect Michael. Being my older brother hasn’t always been a bed of roses, and he’s got a light sprinkling of gray hair on his head to prove it.

I made a mental note to figure out exactly which telltale signs Paco was referring to, but for now I knew he was on to something: When I woke up and found myself on the floor of the Kellers’ laundry room, I was flat out on my stomach with my cheek smashed into the floor, which Paco said would indicate that I’d fallen straight forward. But if that was the case, why was there a bump on the very top of my head and not a gash on my cheek? Or a black eye? Or, at the very least, a bloody nose?

I didn’t want to jump to conclusions, but if Paco was right, it could mean only one thing: I wasn’t hallucinating when I saw Dick Cheney. And it wasn’t just a dream that he bonked me on the head with a small stone figurine. As for the lit candles on the coffee table and the open doors in the living room—well, it was anybody’s guess. After a blow like that it was a wonder I hadn’t seen a halo of stars and yellow tweety-birds flying around my head.

During my deputy training, we were subjected to a lecture by a retired medical examiner visiting from Orlando who had made a name for herself in the field of forensic osteology. With me wincing the entire time, she had gone down a list of practically every bone in the human body, along with a corresponding list of all the various ways in which each of those bones is most typically broken. When it came to injuries to the top of the skull, she said in nearly every case it was the result of either a physical attack or, strangely enough, falling debris.

It had stuck with me all these years mainly because one of her cases had involved a man who’d been mysteriously killed while taking a stroll all alone in an open field. He had died of a cerebral hemorrhage, and the only sign of injury was a curious dent in the top of his skull. To everyone’s utter horror (including my own) it was later proven that a tiny frozen chunk of wastewater, dropped from an overpassing plane, had landed right on top of him. Ever since then, whenever I hear a plane overhead, I don’t exactly run for cover, but I keep my eyes open.

“Mreeep?”

Just as I was about to unlock the front door, I felt something furry brush up against my ankle and looked down to find Ella Fitzgerald gazing up at me. Ella is technically my cat, but it didn’t take her long to figure out all the good stuff comes out of the main house, so she spends most of her time hanging out with Michael and Paco. She’s a true Persian mix calico—meaning she’s got some Persian in her bloodline and her coat has distinct patches of black, white, and red. She earned her name by the funny scatting sounds she makes.

I said, “Oh, my goodness, Ella! Fancy meeting you here!”

She said, “Thrrrip mrack!” and then walked her paws up my legs, being careful to keep her claws in, and arched her long body as she flicked her snow-white whiskers at me. I handed her the little piece of smoked salmon that I’d snatched out of Michael and Paco’s fridge and winked at her.

“Thanks for coming up with me. I could use a little company right now.”

She downed the salmon in one quick gulp and then squinted her eyes, which in cat language means, I love you. Or it means, I love salmon. Either way, I knew it was a dirty trick on my part, but I didn’t feel like being alone and I knew Ella would follow me upstairs if she sensed I was hiding something yummy. When I handed it over I expected her to go right back down, but instead she waited while I opened the door.

“Oh, you wanna hang out for a bit?”

She tilted her head and eyed me curiously, as if to say, Of course. Our love is deeper than salmon, and then trotted in.

As soon as I shut the door I started peeling off my clothes. I left one shoe on the jute rug by the front door and another in the middle of my ragtag collection of furniture—a puffy couch, an old leather lounge chair, and a walnut coffee table that once belonged to my mother—and then I left both my socks on the floor just beyond the breakfast bar that separates the living room from the galley kitchen. As I stumbled down the short hall, I threw my shorts into the wicker basket in the laundry alcove and flung my T-shirt and bra into the bedroom before making a quick right turn into the bathroom.

I grabbed a towel and draped it over the handle to the shower door while I turned the water all the way up to Niagara Falls level. Ella slinked in behind me and curled up on the bath mat, and while I waited for the water to get hot I opened the mirrored doors of my medicine cabinet and stared at my meager collection of soaps and lotions. As soon as the shower filled with steam, I stepped in with a deep sigh, sliding the door behind me like I was closing the curtain on a very bad play.

I stood there and let the warm water stream over me, imagining it washing the whole morning right down the drain. That seemed to work for a couple of minutes, but as soon as I felt my body start to relax, a lump formed in the base of my throat and my eyes started to sting with tears.

“Oh, my God, don’t be ridiculous,” I said out loud as I grabbed a bottle and squirted some shampoo on my palm. “You barely knew him.”

But it was no use. As I worked my hair into a lather, I cried.

I cried like a baby.

I cried not just for Levi, but also—I’m ashamed to admit—for myself. I like to think I’m tough, but seeing Levi’s lifeless body had thrown me for a loop, and now it dawned on me that even though we hadn’t been close, even if he hadn’t known it, Levi was something special to me. He would always be the boy who gave me my very first kiss, that first rush of breathlessness, that first taste of sex and love and deep, unquenchable need … at a time in my life when the world was simple, when life was good and innocent and never-ending.

Well, at some point, standing there thinking all those soapy thoughts with a frothy mix of shampoo and tears streaming down my cheeks, I caught a glimpse of Ella watching me quietly from her spot on the mat and realized I must have looked like a blubbering idiot, so I turned off the water and dried off as quickly as possible.

With the corner of my towel, I wiped the steam away from the mirror and parted my hair to check out my injury. It had gone down a bit, which was good, except now it looked like an angry nipple on the top of my head, or maybe a bite from one of those giant mosquitoes they’re always talking about on the Nature Channel.

Ella rolled over on her side next to my feet and stretched herself out full-length as she lapped gently at the water droplets on my toes.

I said, “You know, you’re lucky you don’t have to be a human and deal with all the crap that comes with it. If I were you I’d be the happiest girl in the world. All you have to do is lie around and be cute.”

She squinted her eyes and yawned, as if to suggest that it was, in fact, a pretty good life.

I padded naked into the bedroom and collapsed like a sack of grapefruit on the bed. There’s a long high window along the back wall of my bedroom, and when the weather’s warm, which is pretty much all year long, I keep it open so I can hear the ocean. Ella hopped up on the bed next to me and nuzzled her face against my cheek, and for the first time all day I felt safe and normal. I hugged her and gave her a kiss on the nose, a kind of thank-you for hanging out with me a while longer, and at that moment I made a decision.

I’d probably never know for certain what had happened to me at the Kellers’ house, and furthermore, it probably didn’t matter. I couldn’t very well go back in time and change it, so the only thing I could do was forget about the whole thing.

But I couldn’t forget about Levi.

Ella had scrunched herself up under my arm with her neck stretched across mine and her nose just under my chin. I lay there listening to the sound of her soft purrs mixed with the distant crash of the waves down below, and eventually I fell into a deep sleep.

I dreamed I was sitting on a beach chair in the middle of a tiny island, wearing a chocolate-brown full-length fur coat with my hair pulled back in a French braid. I knew I was dreaming right away because, one, I wouldn’t wear a fur coat to save my life, and two, I was surrounded by about a hundred little hermit crabs, all sitting in their own tiny beach chairs and reading their own tiny newspapers.

I’ve been known to have some pretty wacky dreams, but I figured this was just my dream guide’s way of making up for the lousy day I’d had so far. She probably thought I’d enjoy lounging around on a tropical island in a fur coat, and for now I didn’t feel like arguing with her about the politics of fur, especially since the beach was pretty and the breeze felt so warm and relaxing. I leaned back in my chair and pressed my toes into the soft sand, waiting for whatever ridiculous gift she had in store for me next.

But then while I was waiting, the breeze picked up a bit and a couple of stray hairs dislodged themselves from my French braid. I reached up to smooth them back, and as my fingers played across the bump on my head, I felt a little jolt of pain.

Wait a minute, I thought to myself. If this is a dream, why the hell does my head still hurt? I looked around the island for my dream guide as I whispered, “This is a dream, right?”