‘You don’t love me,’ Lauren says sadly. ‘If you loved me you’d really try.’
I do, I do love you!I say, with a littlerow.I didn’t mean to upset you.
‘You’ve done it before, Olivia, I feel it. You take down the barrier and come up. It happens every time you knock the Bible off the table. There’s thunder, right, and the house moves? You do it when you make your recordings. Remember when you opened the refrigerator door? The meat really went bad! You just have to learn to do it on purpose.’
I remember but I don’t understand. Of course the meat spoiled – I left the fridge door open.
‘What colour was the rug that day, Olivia?’
It’s not surprising, I guess, after what she’s been through – Lauren has lost it.
Lauren says, ‘I guess I have, but try anyway?’ Weird having someone hear what you’re thinking. I’m not used to it yet.
‘Please.’ She sounds so sad that I am ashamed of myself.
All right, I say.I will!
I try again and again, but no matter how hard I wish all I can feel is my silky black coat and my four padding paws.
After what seems like for ever, Lauren says, ‘Stop.’
I sit on the stairs with some relief and begin to groom.
‘You don’t want to help me.’ Tears fill Lauren’s voice.
I do, I say.Oh, Lauren, I want to help more than anything. It’s just – I can’t do it.
‘No,’ she says quietly. ‘You don’t want to.’ My tail feels funny. Warm, somehow. I twitch it to feel the cool air along its length. But the warm feeling grows. It becomes hot.
‘I can stroke you,’ Lauren says. ‘But I can also do this.’
Pain glows red all along my vertebrae. It builds into flames. My tail becomes a red-hot poker. I am crying with it.
Please make it stop, Lauren!
Lauren says, ‘It doesn’t matter what I do to an imaginary cat.’
Oh, please, it hurts!Pain pulses through my brain, my fur, my bones.
‘You think you’re beautiful,’ Lauren says in the same, dreamy voice. ‘He took down the mirrors – you can’t see what you really are – so I’ll tell you. You are small, twisted, wizened. You are half the size you should be. Each one of your ribs stands out like a knife blade. You don’t have many teeth left. Your hair grows in stringy patches on your bald head. As the burns on your face and hands healed, over and over, the scar tissue grew so thick that it twisted your face. It pulled your nose aside, and it grew over your eyes so one of them is almost sealed shut by scars. You think you are stalking around the house on four elegant feet. That’s not what’s happening. You are crawling on your hands and knees, dragging your useless broken feet behind you, like an ugly fish. No wonder you don’t want to live in this body. You helped him make it andthen afterwards you climbed into his lap and purred. You are pathetic.’
She stops, and says in a different voice, ‘Oh, Olivia, I’m so sorry.’
I am running,rowing with horror. The aftershock of pain still rolls through me. Her words hurt more.
‘Please,’ she calls. ‘I’m sorry. I just get so angry, sometimes.’
I know how to hurt her back. I know the place she fears more than anywhere else.
I leap into the chest freezer and hook my claws into the lid, pulling it down over us with a crash. The dark closes over, welcome, and I close my ears to Lauren’s screams. I let soft nothing take me. I go away into the deep.
How many times can someone bend before they break for ever? You have to take care, dealing with broken things; sometimes they give way, and break others in their turn.
Ted
I go back to the bar with the lights in the trees where I met the butter-haired woman with the blue eyes. It is a warm day so I sit out back at a long table and breathe the smell of barbecue and think of her for a while. There’s country music playing from somewhere, mountain music, and it’s nice. This is the date we should have had. The real one didn’t go well.Don’t think about that.
Around me, men mill and flow. They are focused, energy comes off them, but no one’s talking much. Once again there are no women here. I wish I could keep that part of my brain turned off, to be honest. I feel bad about what happened with the butter-haired lady. The day is warm and calm begins to steal through me, almost as if I were in a waiting room. I drink six or seven boilermakers. Who’s counting? I will be walking home later. ‘Didn’t drive here. That would be irresponsible!’ I realise I am speaking aloud, and people are looking. I sink my face into my beer and keep quiet after that. Plus I remember now, I sold the truck a while ago.
