The asset, I thought. Can't have the asset deteriorating overnight without supervision.
Cross shifted slightly in the chair. Resettled.
Stayed.
I looked at the ceiling and thought about that, and then I stopped thinking about it, and somewhere in the stopping I went under.
7
The ceiling was wrong.
That was the first thing. Not bad wrong, just not my ceiling. My ceiling had a water stain in the upper left corner that I'd been meaning to report to the building manager for four months and had not reported because that would require me to find out who the building manager was.
This ceiling was perfect. Flat, clean, no water stains, no opinions.
My head had opinions. Several of them. A persistent low throb behind my left eye that I categorized immediately and then tried to put somewhere I wasn't looking.
My mouth tasted like the end of recorded history.
Something was purring.
I looked down. There was a cat on my chest.
Orange, fluffy, resting between my sternum and my collarbone. It looked up at me when I moved. Brown eyes, amber-warm, catching the light.
I stared at it.
It purred.
"Who are you?" I asked, as if it would answer.
The cat blinked, slow and unbothered.
I was in a bed that wasn't my bed. The bar. The alley. The car. Cross's apartment. The floor, the trash can, Cross's shoes, the shirt being removed, the—
Oh no.
Thevomiting.
I put my arm over my face, which disturbed the cat, who repositioned without leaving. I lay there with my arm over my face and thought about the vomiting, specifically, with the full force of a sober brain that had slept and was now processing last night's receipts with terrible clarity.
Cross's face. The shoes. I'm sorry. I know. The floor, the towels, the deadpan efficiency of a man cleaning up after me while I sat there and contributed nothing.
The guy with the good shoulders' text.
The fractional pause.
I moved my arm. The cat looked at me. I looked back at it.
"When did you get here?"
The cat sat on me and purred, which was not an answer.
I remembered Cross waking me. Twice, maybe three times, light and questions, same drill each time, same level voice in the dark pulling me back up to the surface.
I sat up. The cat relocated to my lap.
My body filed a complaint about the sitting up. My head filed a supporting brief. I noted both and got up anyway, mostly because lying in Cross's bed feeling sorry for myself was not a viable long-term strategy, and the cat jumped down and looked at me like I'd made a questionable decision.
