Her tail wafted into view at that precise moment and she gave it a vicious look. Beat it.
It flicked its tip contemptuously, and suddenly she’d had enough. “It’syour fault!” She leaned to snap at it—and it swerved just beyond reach, then paused to beckon tauntingly.
“I mean it!” She leaned and snapped—her teeth clicking on air, then spun to follow its fluttering retreat. “Damn!” She slapped, missed, pinned it with a paw, fell over, bit at it again, and this time she caught it. “Ow!”
Great idea, Jessica. Slowly, panting, she sat up.
Her tail quivered with suppressed outrage.
“Truce?” she tried grudgingly.
Her tail settled warily, jumpily, at her feet.
Just do me a favor. She gave it a rueful look, then a remorseful swipe of her tongue. Stay out of my sight, would you?
The tail whisked from view and she sighed. The pound…Sam…blondes…Maybe you should’ve left me in the road, Sam. It might’ve been kinder in the end.
As always, Cattoo seemed to sense her sadness, if not the reasons for it. Jessica could feel her nudging somewhere deep within—velvet nose, anxious eyes. Thanks, sweet. Sorry about that tail.
How about a nap? came the suggestion. In Cattoo’s world, there wasn’t much a catnap couldn’t cure.
Jessica sighed. Maybe you’re right. But first she found Sam’s sweater tossed on a windowsill. Dragging it by its sleeve to the floor, she curled herself into a small ball of misery, buried her nose in its folds, and slept.
AND DREAMED OF FALLING—falling forever.
Above her, Sam leaned over the edge of the world and waved. It was he who had dropped her.
Below her, rushing relentlessly closer, was the pound, a pen of dogs waiting, their slavering grins upturned. And Raye Talbot crouched in their midst—smiling.
“Yowww!” Jessica awoke with claws bared, fur standing on end. Panting, she lay very still but for her galloping heart and her trembling whiskers. Dream, dream—only a dream. Horrid dream. “What time is it?”
Cattoo had no idea, but she was growing restless. Time to rise and prowl.
“Sam’s not back yet.”
Don’t wait up, he’d said. Out with that insipid blonde? Or some other woman. Rhode Island held roughly half a million. A man like Sam would have his choice.
She shivered, and shivering, the image of the pound returned. Barking dogs. Chain-link fences. Cold, damp concrete. Inedible food. A concentration camp for cats, with death the likeliest deliverance. God, he wouldn’t, would he?
He might.
There had to be a way to make him see. There had to be. And suddenly she had it—not the whole solution, but perhaps the solution to this particular problem. She stood, stretched her ritual stretch and looked around. Where’s that phone?
While nudging it onto its back, she knocked it off the coffee table. After that, it was easy to flip it over, but not so easy to punch out the numbers she wanted. Her paw was precisely three toes too wide for the buttons. She misdialed and reached some man with a Western twang and a bad case of adenoids.
“Darn.” Pressing the disconnect, she tried using her nose the second time, but as she neared each key, her eyes lost their focus. This time, the woman who picked up the phone seemed to be speaking Japanese. “Sorry!” Jessica said, speaking into the mouthpiece.
Her meow elicited a questioning, incomprehensible word, repeated several times in ascending volume.
“Maybe Korean,” she decided, disconnecting.
The third time she tried her paw again and got lucky. At least, she thought she’d dialed correctly. She hovered over the mouthpiece while a phone rang somewhere. “Answer, Mother. I know you’re there.” It could be no later than eight-thirty here, which made it seven-thirty in Chicago. Almost surely her mother would still be at her desk—which didn’t mean she’d deign to pick up the phone. And her secretary, who would have, must have staggered home hours ago.
“Hello?” The cool, crisp voice, impatient at being disturbed, sounded from the earpiece.
“Mother!” Of course, the word came out “Meow.”
There was a pause, then, with an edge of suspicion, “Hello? Who’s this, please?”
“Your daughter! Jessica!” Mother, Sam can understand me, almost. But what about you? The odds were much longer here, and not just because this was long distance. There was plenty of caring, but had there ever been comprehension? Real connection? “Mother?”
“Is this a joke?”
“I wish it were! Mother, you’re the only one who might remember I lived with a cat. Didn’t you even think about Cattoo, wonder what happened to her, when you were here yester—”
Click.
“Rats!” Luckily the phone had a redial button. She stepped on it.
The phone picked up on the first ring. “Hello!”
“Mother, think. This isn’t a crank call. Think. Why would a cat call you? You, of all people. What could it mean? Don’t you remember Catt—”
Click!
Jessica winced, then let out a yowl of frustration. She stalked around the phone three times, tail whipping, teeth gnashing. Then she paused, as she heard the elevator’s groan.
“Sam?” Jessica hooked a paw under the phone, started to turn it facedown. The last thing she needed was to aggravate Sam. But on the other hand…She dropped it, button side up, then punched the redial. “Come on, Mother. Answer me.”
Brrrinnnng.
No answer. The phone rang for a second time as the doors to the elevator rolled open and Sam stepped out.
Crouching by the phone, teeth clenched, Jessica didn’t move. Come on, Mother. Answer it! Be there for me for once in my life. The ring of her distant phone skirled in the darkness.
And Sam’s head swung to track the tiny sound. “What’s that?” He flipped a wall switch. The track lights washed the room, one spot singling out Jessica, frozen to her tail tip, huddled beside the phone.
Brrrinnnng.
“What the…” Sam crossed the room in five long strides.
“Just let it ring, Sam! She’ll pick up any second. I know she—”
“Blasted cat! How the devil did you—”
“Wait!” But his hand closed over the phone.
“Hello!” her mother barked—just as Sam punched the disconnect.
“Huh?” he said belatedly. “Who the heck was-” He shook his head and, staring at the phone, sank onto the edge of the coffee table. His gaze jerked to Jessica. “Did you…nah.”
“Are you doing this on purpose? Driving me crazy? I had her! I actually had her and then you…you…” Fighting back a distinct urge to bury her teeth in his shin, Jessica turned in a circle of frustration, then flopped on her side.
“Maybe I’m going crazy? The strain…”
“You’re going crazy. Try being a cat!” Her tail thumped the floor, whack…whack…“I had her, Sam.” She leapt up and reared to nudge the phone in his hand. “Just let me hit the redial, and—”
He held it up out of reach. “Oh, no. You want to call your furry friends for a meow-along, you do it on your nickel. Better yet, act like a normal cat and go sing on the fire escape. Maybe I’ll get lucky and you’ll fall off.” He headed for the kitchen, taking the phone with him.
Filling the teakettle, he glanced toward her bowls. “Didn’t touch it, huh? Let’s see, you don’t eat chili, you sneer at liver, you scorn beef. Just where were you eating before you and I met up? The Dumpster behind a French restaurant?”
“I went in the front door, thanks.” Jessica jumped up on a chair and hung her head over its edge. “Sam, I give up. Maybe I should jump off the fire escape.”
Waiting for the kettle to boil, he wandered around the kitchen, opening drawers and cabinets, scowling, then closing them again. “What are you cooking for dinner?” she asked finally.
He shut another cabinet. “If you’re thinking I’ll cook for you, think again. I ate out. Somebody told me about this neat little Jamaican c
afe.”
“Who?”
“Don’t yell at me. You’ve got food. Melt-in-your-mouth moo.”
“Who told you about that cafe?” The hair shivered along her spine. RI Gen was a large hospital. There was no reason he’d cross tracks with Raye Talbot, no reason but the worst kind of luck. I’ve been having any other kind lately? “How’d you find the Jamaican place?” Anyone could have pointed him there. Sam tended to nose that sort of thing out—where to find the funkiest music, the best down-home cooking…
And he was too absorbed to receive her questions at the moment. Dropping to his heels, he opened the dishwasher, looked inside, ran the shelves out and cocked his head to look under them. “Nope.” He stood, picked up the toaster, peered into it, scowled.
“What are you doing, then, if you’re not cooking?”
No answer. He stopped to make himself a mug of herbal tea, then wandered over to the table and again dropped to his heels. “What are you doing?” She leaned to touch her nose to his cheek.
Sam jumped, grunted, brushed her aside. “Yeah,” he muttered to himself. He touched the back of his chair. “That might—” He flipped it upside down, then propped it on the floor. “Yep.” His hand groped in his pocket, came out with the Swiss army knife he always carried.
“Oh, no.” But he was already flipping out the box wrench tool. “Sam, you can’t take it apart! It’s not yours. And it’s not broken.”
Pointedly ignoring her, he adjusted the wrench mouth to fit the bolts that held the oak-and-iron chair together.
They both jumped when, over on the counter, the phone rang. “Now who the…” Sam rose lazily.
“If it’s your little blond friend, tell her I’m still not interested,” she growled as he raised the phone to his ear.
“I’m hangin’ in there, Eleanor,” he responded after a moment. “How ’bout you?”
Jessica bolted upright. “Mother?”
He sighed, then wandered back to the table and hitched a hip onto its edge. “No change since I called you at noon. They didn’t move her today. Tomorrow, they’re sayin’ now. Once they do that, and let me start visiting for more than ten minutes on the blasted hour, then we’ll see some progress.” He paused. “Umm—no, Fisher didn’t say that, not exactly. They don’t say much if they can avoid it, do they? But I’m counting on it. You can count on it. She’s down, but she’s not out. Not by a long shot.”
Jessica leapt to the tabletop. “I have to talk to her.”
Without looking, he shoved her off again. “Yeah, well, it’s what anyone would…” His voice trailed off in embarrassment, then he brightened. “Yes, I did, and brought back her jewelry case. Want me to send that to you?” He listened, one leg swinging gently.
“Isn’t she saying anything about cats? Weird phone calls?” Jessica reared up on his leg and patted his knee. “Sam, let me talk to her. Please.“
He cupped his hand over the mouthpiece and hissed, “You want to hush, or should I stick you in the dishwasher?” He went back to listening, his foot swinging. Abruptly his brows flew together, his foot froze. “She had a…cat?” He looked down at Jessica blankly.
“Yes!” Jessica slapped his knee. Mother got it. Oh, she got it!
“No, I don’t know what happened to—Nobody’s said a word, but then…” He bent down to stare into Jessica’s eyes, his own wide with shock. “Yeah,” he murmured absently, still bent double, “the bedroom was pretty bad. Unless somebody actually went looking for a—Or maybe she was outside when it started? All the firetrucks and commotion spooked her, so she split?” He straightened, his eyes still locked on Jessica’s. “Just…what did this…cat…look like?” He nodded, kept on nodding, face stunned. “Black, female…Anything else?”
Jessica caught the negative tone of the response.
Sam snared her extended paw. “What about toes? How many did she have?” His thumb rubbed gently across Jessica’s digits. “I hear they’re s’posed to have four?”
Her mother’s laughing question carried clearly.
Sam laughed, too, but he was forcing it. “Oh, no. No reason, I was just…wondering if you might’ve…noticed. Who’s got time to go round counting cat toes?” He let Jessica go. “Did this cat have a name?” He frowned. “Sure…oh, sure. But if you think of it…”
“She doesn’t even remember?” Her mother had met Cattoo only once, on a flying trip through town, but still…
“Well, if it comes to you, I’d like to know. Maybe I’ll hunt around her house a bit. Or run an ad in the paperLost cat, answers to name of Fleabaggums, that sort of thing…” He rubbed a hand up through his hair, leaving it standing in rumpled spikes.
They talked a few minutes more, Sam promising to continue his daily calls to report Jessica’s condition. At last he pressed the disconnect. Eyes fixed on Jessica, he set the phone aside. “Can’t be…”
“Believe it.”
Hooking his thumbs under her armpits and lifting, he stared at her, their faces on a level, noses nearly touching. “There’s not a snowball’s chance in hell you could be the same…” He set her down on the table beside him. “There must be forty thousand black cats in this city alone. Every third cat you see’s a black cat.”
“I’m Jessica’s cat,” she insisted, resting a paw on his thigh. “Plus Jessica. Please believe it. Please!”
He shook his head. “That would be too weird for words.” Abruptly he stroked a hand down her spine, then snatched his hand back as if she were red-hot. “Too weird entirely. What are the rational, mathematical chances that you and I—”
“Rational-smashional—everything needs scientific proof? Can’t you just take my word?”
Sam shook his head.
“Then I give up, I give up, I give up! Open that window for me and I will jump.”
He cocked his head, listening to her tirade. “If you were Jess’s cat—I don’t believe for a minute you are—but if you were, what would she be feeding you?”
“Champagne, scrambled eggs and caviar,” she growled spitefully.
He rubbed his chin. “You finished my eggs yesterday, didn’t you?”
He was seriously asking? “Yes!” she agreed, putting heart and soul into that meow.
“Hmm…” He wandered over to the fridge, leaned in, pulled out a carton of eggs.
“Oh, yes!” She leapt down from the table to strop his shins. Even if this was all the good that came out of her phone call, a square meal was not to be sniffed at.
“Little cheddar, maybe a touch of tarragon, some thyme?” he suggested, improvising as usual.
“Sounds fabulous!”
“Does sound sort of good, doesn’t it?” He added several more eggs to the three he’d set on the counter.
In the end, they ate together, Sam with his plate on the floor beside him while he attacked the chair, Jessica crouched nearby wolfing hers down. “Bliss!” she stopped to exclaim at one point.
“Not half-bad,” Sam agreed around a forkful. He set his plate aside and picked up the wrench.
“But why are you picking on that chair, Sam?”
He wasn’t telling. Halfway through his disassembly, he stopped to rake the last of his eggs onto her plate, then went back to work. They finished at roughly the same time. “That might be the best meal I ever ate,” she decided, sitting to comb her whiskers. “Thank you.”
“Ze chef is so glad you like eet, peti’ chat. Shall we repair to ze living rrrhhhum?” He picked up the iron weldment that had been the back of his chair and ambled off. Jessica finished her whiskers, jumped over the pile of wood and metal that remained and padded behind, tail on high.
Sam sat on the couch with his shoe in his lap, examining the sole. “Clumsy, but might do,” he told her when she leapt to the table. Reaching past her to open the lacquer box, he pulled out her ruined ring.
“Sam?” In the midst of licking her wrist, Jessica froze. “What—”
“Can’t make it any worse, can I?” He studied the jumbled wire
s, then gently pried one of the crushed rings apart. He slipped the misshapen circlet onto the end of one of the gracefully tapered iron rods that had made up the chair’s backrest. “Here goes nothin’.” Using the heel of his shoe, he tapped the wire, then turned, tapped and turned, delicately, deftly, gradually reshaping the softer gold against the iron.
“Oh, Sam!”
Eyes narrowed, lips pursed to a whistle, he hammered. As the ring bent back toward its original shape, it slipped farther down the rod. Whistling a halting bossa nova, he tapped, turned the wire, tapped. After a while he stopped, switched his attention to the second ring of the puzzle, started again.
“Sam, I love you.” It didn’t matter that he couldn’t hear her, though for a second there, his eyes far away, he stopped and smiled to himself. It didn’t matter that he didn’t quite love her back, never had, never would. Just that this man was in the world. You didn’t need to own a perfect sunrise to love it, after all. I love you.
At long last, all three parts of her puzzle ring curved round and smooth. He held the linked chain up for her to admire. “Now comes the hard part.” Grasping the links with the fingers of both hands, he closed his eyes. “Haven’t done this in eight years, y’know. Think I’ve still got what it takes?”
“I know you have.”
His fingers moved slowly, tentatively. The frown on his face deepened gradually to a look almost of pain.
She leaned closer till her whiskers brushed the backs of his hands. That expression on his face—where had she seen it before? Oh, yes, how could she ever forget? It was the look he wore when he was holding himself back, waiting for her to come, and then—
His eyes opened as he laughed aloud. “Yep.” He held out his hand with a flourish. “Voila.”
“You did it!” she cried, staring at her ring made whole. “Oh, Sam, oh, Sam, oh, Sam Antonio mio…you did it! Thank you!”
“There’s jus’ one problem,” he drawled, his words no louder than a whisper. “I had to force the fit a touch, there at the end. I don’t know if it’ll ever come apart again.”
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