by Ellen Datlow
ANOTHER WEEKEND PISSED away, another week started. The Monday-morning office grind was as much an escape from Sunday midnight as Friday night had been from Friday. Only change made breathing bearable; only change gave hope of change, even if the redemptions all failed.
It was just past midnight, Thursday morning by less than an hour, and he was dreaming of Austen—the pale lips, the blood-wet hair, the ragged edge of skin seen side-on again, again, again—when his phone went off. He thrashed in the darkness, the dream still riding him. In the twisted logic of nightmare, he knew that if he reached the phone in time, if he could get to the phone, only Claire’s Austen would die, not his.
He could hear his boy shrieking in the next room. If he could get the phone … The feel of cool, hard plastic in his hand and the glow of the buttons began to undercut the dream. He pressed to accept the call.
“H’lo?” he managed.
“Ian! It’s in here,” she hissed, her voice so tense and close he could feel her lips brush his ear. “It’s been in here. While I was asleep. It got in the bed—”
“Claire? What’s the matter?”
“I don’t know what it is. I thought it was her, I thought it was Henrietta.”
Shut the fuck up and tell me what happened. He bit his lip and took a deep breath.
“Claire, sweetie,” he said. “I don’t know what happened. You need to tell me.”
She took three long, ragged breaths. Ian fumbled for the bedside light, suddenly dreading the darkness. The light turned his windows into mirrors, staring blankly back at him.
“I was asleep,” Claire said, her voice calmer. “And when I tried to turn over, there was something against my leg. Right where Henrietta used to sleep. You remember?”
Ian rubbed the back of his own knee, recalling the warm, familiar weight of cat.
“Yeah,” he said. “I remember.”
“There was this noise. I thought it was Henri licking herself. I wasn’t awake. When I moved, it got up and jumped off the bed. I heard it. Hearing it land was what woke me up.”
“It was probably just a dream.”
“It wasn’t. In the kitchen. It might be blood, I don’t know,” she said, and then, “I’m scared.”
He hesitated, wanting to ask, hoping but afraid.
“Do you want me to come over?”
“Yes,” she said, and her tone made the word sound like of course and please at the same time.
“Hang tight. I’m on my way.”
The drive out to the house took twenty minutes. Pulling into their street, he saw the porch light glowing over his door, the only light burning on the block. A wave of vertigo washed him. To be coming down this street again, to this house, to this woman. It felt unreal, like being in a long nightmare, but on the edge of waking.
Claire opened the door before he could ring the bell. Her housecoat was wearing through at the elbows. Her hair was pulled back, and it seemed more white than blonde. She looked frail.
“Thanks for coming,” she said and stood aside. Her voice seemed fuller, richer, softer than he was used to. He’d been hearing it so much through the phone.
“You bet,” he said and stepped in.
Nothing had changed. The same pale carpet, the same old sofa where he’d taken naps Sundays after church. The ceiling fan in the living room that still clicked while it sliced the air. Only the smell was wrong. Claire closed the door behind him.
“Back this way,” she said and walked toward the kitchen. He resisted the urge to put his hand on her shoulder or her hip. The tacit permissions between husband and wife had been suspended. All that was left was the impulse.
“When I woke up, I went looking. I thought maybe it was Henri.”
The kitchen was a mess from the waist down. Above the countertops, everything was fine, clean, normal. Below, at the height a two-year-old or a small animal might reach, it was ruined. White gouges marked where claws dug through the cheap veneer of the cabinet doors. The garbage can was knocked over, old food spilling out of its mouth. A pile of what must have been feces—brown and yellow and white—reeked in the middle of the room. And smeared over all of it were swaths of blood.
Claire stood in the doorway, her arms across her breasts, her lips pressed thin.
“You slept through this?” Ian said, regretting the disbelief in his tone as he heard it. Claire didn’t take offense.
“I’ve been taking pills. Insomnia.”
“Oh.”
“I went through the house. I didn’t see anything at first, but after this …”
“There’s more?”
“A little here and there. Some blood or a scratch.”
Ian squatted at the refrigerator, looking at the smear of blood running across it. Whatever did this had been angry.
“A raccoon?” he suggested.
“There’s handprints, though. See? Like right there.”
“Raccoons have fingers like that.”
“That thick?”
“It’s smeared, sweetie. That’s all. It probably tore a claw coming through the cat door. Raccoon. Or maybe a badger.”
“It felt like a cat,” she said. “It felt like Henri.”
Ian stood and brushed his palms together, though he hadn’t touched anything. His reflection in the window above the sink looked calm, competent, sane. Like someone she could rely on when she needed him, someone she could trust.
“You’re working on your own wild kingdom, sweet,” he said, dismissing the mess lightly to reassure her. “That’s all. Are there still those boards out back? I’ll just nail that cat door shut.”
“I’ll get you a hammer and some nails.”
“I know where they are.”
Claire managed a rueful smile—of course you would—and started straightening the damaged kitchen. The backyard was night-dark. Out of her sight, a sense of unease pricked at him. He kept looking for the glow of animal eyes in the blackness beyond the circle of light around the door. Nothing appeared.
He found the boards—old lengths of weathered two-by-fours that he’d always meant to oil and use to build forms for her flower garden. The wood was rotting a little, splintering. He started the nails first, then propped the back door open and braced it. The white-plastic cat door set in the wood was marked gray where Henri’s back had brushed against it over the course of years.
He lay a board across it diagonally and drove the nail home. Each blow sounded like a pistol shot in the still night, and the door bounced at each shock. What should have taken four blows took eight. He secured the other end and then took another board to the inside face, laying it in the other diagonal in an X.
Claire stood in the doorway, blocking his light. Backlit, her housecoat was almost transparent, and the familiar lines of her thighs hurt a little to look at.
“You’ll want to be careful. I don’t want to bend the nails down—it’ll make them hard to take out. There’ll be some sharp points sticking out.”
“She’s really gone, then, isn’t she?” Claire said.
“It’s been a long time.”
“I know. You remember when we got her? She was tiny. Hardly even weaned.”
“Yeah. She used to climb up on the bed and try to suck my earlobes.”
Claire laughed and leaned against the doorway, looking out past him at the darkness. He started the last nail, but found himself striking more softly, drawing out the task for those few extra seconds. Claire scratched absently under her right breast. Ian felt his cock start to shift and harden, and he turned back to the job.
“She was such a good kitty,” Claire said. “I mean, she was always so … I don’t know.”
“Yeah. She was.”
“What do you think happened to her?”
“Probably got a better offer at some other house,” he said, hoping she could believe it and knowing she wouldn’t.
She was weeping now. No sobs shook her, but her tears flowed down her cheeks, and her eyes reddened. Ian put down the hammer a
nd reached out, his fingers touching her bare foot. She looked down, a pained half-smile thin on her lips.
“I hate this,” she said. “I think of my kitty dead in a gutter someplace, and I hate the whole fucking world.”
She’s talking about Austen, he thought, and felt his own sorrow rise to meet hers. He unblocked the door, stood and folded her into his arms. She pressed her head against his breast and pulled him in, letting the door swing closed behind them. In the silence of the kitchen, he stroked her hair, her shoulder, her back, while she cried, her sobs—soft and infrequent—the only sound. Ian felt his breath coming shorter at the smell of her. Her hands slid around him, fingertips pressing against his shoulder blades, her breasts against his ribs. Tears washed his own eyes. His hands shook. When he felt her lips against his neck, kissing him, he caught his breath.
Her mouth moved against him slowly, her hands pulling him close, pressing his cock against the soft flesh of her thigh. He didn’t move for fear that he might break the moment.
“Ian,” she murmured, her voice low and rich, “don’t go home tonight.”
I am home, he thought. Where besides here could ever be home?
“No,” he said. She guided his hand to her breast, slid her fingers down over the cloth of his pants, brushing against his prick. She leaned back to look at him, her face soft, the ravages of years and of all their sorrows washed away by the warmth of lust, or else by some other need so close he couldn’t make out a difference.
“Come to bed with me,” she said.
“Christ. Yes.”
Naked and between his old sheets, between her legs, pressing his cock into her, Ian almost cried. Her gasps, her gaze locked on his and fierce with hunger, her fingernails scoring his back when he came inside her—it felt almost like being saved.
“YOU LOOK LIKE shit,” Little Dave said, sliding into the chair across from him. The lunch rush packed the café. The thick scent of searing meat lay over the perfume and sweat smell of too many bodies in not enough space. The din of chewing and conversations, cell phones and laptops, built a white noise and gave them something like solitude.
“Feel perfect,” he said.
“You order yet?”
“Yeah. You’re having a burger, medium rare, fries and a coke.”
“You’re cool. So what’s the story?”
Ian tried to look innocent, but the corners of his mouth twitched up. Little Dave grinned and nodded, urging him on.
“Talked to Claire last night. I think things are starting to … you know … improve.”
“Really? Fucked up. I mean, I’m glad and all, but who guessed, you know?”
A harried waitress pushed in beside them and dropped plastic baskets of food in front of them, her expression glassy and dislocated.
“Well, its not like things were bad before,” Ian said, leaning around the waitress’ reach. “In the end, a tragedy like this makes you closer. As bad as it is, it’s something we have together.”
“She said that?”
“Sort of. And she’s lost so much, you know. I went over because Henrietta went missing and the other neighborhood cats were coming in and messing the place up.”
“Cats?”
“Or something. And I think being together just kind of woke her up, you know?”
“And what about you?” Little Dave said, gesturing with a french fry.
Ian smiled, shook his head, and bit into the burger. The meat was rarer than he usually liked it—almost bloody.
“What about me?”
“You know. What did she have to say about how you’re dealing?”
Ian shrugged, tilted his head like he was hearing something in a language so close to English he could almost divine the meaning.
“The anger, the guilt,” Dave said airily. “All that shit.”
“Anger and guilt about what?”
Little Dave blinked and his chewing slowed. Ian’s food sat abandoned in its cheerful basket.
“What anger and guilt, Dave?”
“Forget about it.”
“No, I think I’d like you to explain that comment. You think I blame her for Austen? Well … well, I don’t, okay? I don’t. It was an accident. The problem is that Claire can’t fucking deal with the grief!”
“But you’re fine.”
“No. I want my family back. But once I get them, yeah, I’ll be fine!”
“Them?”
“Her.”
“Okay, then. You don’t have to yell about it,” Little Dave said. He took a bite of his lunch and looked over Ian’s shoulder, not making eye contact.
“What?” Ian demanded.
“What ‘what’? You say that’s the problem, I say okay. It’s your fucking life, mon ami. You know better than I do.”
The afternoon seemed darker when Ian got back to the office. The normal stresses of the day—the constant ringing of the phones, the angry or demanding e-mails glowering on his computer screen, the buzz of the fluorescent lights, the way his tie chafed the side of his neck—all seemed worse. He told himself he was just tired, that after all, he hadn’t gotten much rest last night. The memory of waking up in his bed, Claire naked beside him, made him smile for a moment and forget his growing sense of being picked at.
Stepping into his apartment was a relief. The bulb of the living-room light glowed against the daylight, still burning from the night before. He pulled off his tie and dropped it on the floor, then lowered himself to the couch. His arms felt leaden. He was getting old if one long night left him exhausted. He pulled his legs up, lay back, stretched.
It wasn’t, he decided, a bad place. The peeling linoleum in the kitchen, the mildew creeping along the edges of the bathtub, the trashcan filled with empty bottles of beer and whiskey. This wasn’t him. This wasn’t his home. It was a cell where he served out his sentence. It was temporary, and the fact that it would end—that it had begun to end when Claire had put her lips against him—forgave it. It was almost over. He had to play his cards right, and he’d have his life back soon. He could feel it.
He let his eyes close, let the weight of his body draw him down. He didn’t know he’d fallen asleep until his phone rang. The sunlight was warm and low, the night coming up. He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand and pulled the phone out of his pocket.
“Hello?”
A pause, the familiar catch of breath in the back of her throat.
“Ian?”
He closed his eyes and smiled.
“Claire.”
“Hi. How are you?”
“A little sleepy. Long night.”
“Yes. Well. I was thinking … I think we should talk. Face-to-face. I don’t want to do this over the phone.”
“I think you’re right,” he said. “I’ll be right over.”
“I was thinking dinner, actually. I have a table for us at Amanda’s Grill in an hour. If you can, I mean. I know it’s not much notice, but I was …”
“Amanda’s is good. I love you, Claire. I’ve always loved you.”
From the pause, he knew he’d shaken her, taken her breath away for a moment.
“I love you, too,” she said at last, her voice a whisper.
Amanda’s lay against a curve in the river, the patio bent to look over the black water. He’d arrived first and been shown to his seat by a pale woman with seal-dark hair. He’d ordered a vodka-and-tonic, but changed his mind and got coffee. From his seat, he could see the 8th Street bridge, old stonework with downtown traffic flowing above, dark water flowing below, the two streams at an angle to each other, like an X.
The coffee came before Claire did. He was on his second cup before she came walking across the patio toward him with a rueful, exhausted smile.
“Are you late, or was I early?” he asked, and she sat across from him.
“I got halfway here and turned back. Nerve failed.”
The dark-haired girl appeared again and took Claire’s order. Across the water, Ian made out a couple walking down
the riverwalk, hand in hand.
“So,” Ian said after the waitress had gone.
“Yeah. You want to start, or do you want me to?”
“No chit-chat?”
“I’m way past chit-chat,” she said, and a slow smile played across her lips, the way she looked late at night, trying not to fall asleep even when she was weary to the bone.
“Take it away, then.”
She looked out, considering the city, and crossed her legs. After a moment, she sighed.
“I think we made a mistake,” she said.
His heart leapt, and the night was glorious, romantic as Paris. The rush of the river could barely cover the sound of angels’ wings.
“I do, too,” he said. “We were messed up, though. Divorce seemed like the answer.”
Bird-quick, she looked over to him, surprise in her eyes melting to sadness in the space of a breath. Ian’s heart died.
“Oh,” he said.
“Ian? You didn’t think this was a reconciliation. Did you?”
“I thought last night … Jesus. That didn’t mean anything to you, did it?”
“I was lonely and scared.” She leaned toward him, her eyes seeking his. Her hands were little fists on the table. “I love you—shit, I even want you—but not like we were before. I’m confused. I don’t know who I am anymore, but I know I’m not her.”
“What do you mean her. Her who? There’s only two of us here.”
“I know,” she said. “Baby’s not making three anymore.”
Ian heard the rage, felt it flowing up into him, heating his face.
“That isn’t what I meant. Don’t you ever fucking joke about that. Don’t you fucking dare make a joke about that.”
“Some nights I’m almost okay,” she went on, as if he hadn’t spoken. “Some nights all I can do is cry. It feels like too much trouble to breathe. It’s like I remember your wife, but she didn’t have this many scars. And she had a baby boy.”
“This isn’t about him!”
“Don’t shout.”
“This isn’t about him,” he said in a lower voice. “You’ve got to let go of that, you’ve got to get past the grief. I’ve forgiven you. You need to forgive yourself.”