You Again

by Peggy Nicholson

  She landed teetering on the mattress, staring wildly down at her own body. And now what? “Well…here I am.” Her voice squeaked with terror. She stepped closer, fur standing on end, tail puffed enormous, eyes saucer-wide and whiskers quivering. “Take me back? Please?” She stretched to touch noses with her…self just as Sam sat up on the far side of the bed.

  “Son of a blue-nosed, double-jointed, monkey-faced…” he swore in a reverent whisper. “Crazy, perverse, son of a cat!“ He reached for her.

  “Take me back?” she begged, closing her eyes, aiming her spirit like a hurled shaft. “I want to come home. Wake up…”

  “Oh, God,” Sam gasped. “Jess!” On his knees, he leaned over the bed. “You blinked, babe! Yes! Come on, you can do it! Blink again.”

  Jessica opened her eyes, but Sam wasn’t looking at her. His forehead was pressed to the temple of the motionless, dreamless face on the pillow. His hand cupped her forehead, smoothing endless, feather-light caresses up into her hair. “Come on, baby, wake up now. Talk to us. We’re here. We love you. Come back to us.” His eyes opened, gleaming diamond-bright. “Come on, darlin’, come back.“

  Stretching across her own body, Jessica touched her nose to his cheek. “Sam…”

  “She blinked,” he swore fiercely, his whisper ragged and aching. “I swear she blinked.”

  “I didn’t see it.” She drew her nose across his cheek to the corner of his eye, caught a tear on the tip of her tongue. “I’m sorry, Sam. I tried.”

  “Yeah,” he said dully, his eyes fixed on her human face. “You tried. I thought for a minute there…” He heaved a sigh and continued smoothing his palm up her forehead. “Jess, Jess, Jess-babe…enough of this foolishness. It’s time to wake up.”

  But she didn’t.

  After what seemed like hours, with a groan like an old man’s, Sam pushed himself off the floor. He settled heavily onto the mattress. “Well…” He rumpled one hand up through his hair, then mustered a self-mocking ghost of a grin.

  “What now?” Following Cattoo’s instincts, she had settled at last in the crook made between her body’s right arm and side. That arm was extended and fastened to a board to stabilize the IV, which entered at the wrist. Her position felt both right and utterly bizzarre. I’m curled up with myself. Almost home, but not quite. “Oh, Sam, what do we do now?”

  “Beats me,” he muttered. Gently he lifted her other arm. Spreading her limp fingers against his chest, he sat there stroking them, his face carved in stone. “So much for that theory.”

  And so much for hers. Proximity wasn’t enough. Here she sat, her spirit not twelve inches out of place, yet it wouldn’t make the leap—whatever the outcome of that leap might be. “I suppose you need some sdrt of stress? Last time, I was in danger of dying. Maybe it takes that kind of event, to make a…a soul disregard reality and…hop? But this time, my spirit’s perfectly comfy where it is—under Cattoo’s skin—so there it sits, blast it.” Inertia was a force to be reckoned with in every field of science, so why not in the matter of souls?

  Sam sat up straighter. “But that’s my whole life in a nutshell, isn’t it? Chasing theories down dead-end canyons. Not one in twenty pans out. Not one in a hundred. That doesn’t mean you quit. You just go on to the next…”

  “Or maybe the phenomenon has something to do with inviting me aboard? Cattoo knew. I needed help, so she took me in? And now, since I’m…here, in a cat, there’s nobody there, in my body, to invite me back home? And I can’t jump without an invitation?” She sighed. Normally she’d research a problem like this, ransack the med literature till she understood every nuance of the problem. But in this case…she’d never heard of a case like this.

  Because nobody ever made it back home to write about it? She shivered at the thought. Still, that made sense. Fat chance the New England Journal of Medicine would accept a paper from her once the editors learned she was a cat.

  “So for now, I guess we just keep on keeping on, huh, babe? I’ll keep babbling till I bore you to tears. You want me out of here, you’ll have to wake up and throw me out.”

  Speaking of writing…She sat up. “Sam, you have to let me use your laptop. If I could just explain the problem to you, you’d help me figure out a way back home—I know you would.” She winced, imagining Sam, apprised of the problem, testing out her stress theory. He knew how she hated heights. He’d probably hang her out the window by her tail—till she was terrorized back into her own skin.

  Still…She looked longingly across the room to where his valise sat by the bowling-ball bag. He’d brought his computer as usual, but it might as well be on the moon. If she strolled over there and tried to open his Powerbook, he’d hang her out the window—and drop her.

  “You know, I feel sort of awkward ’bout this, my touching you,” Sam confessed, stroking her body’s fingers. “Just because you once gave me the right doesn’t mean I have any right to touch you now, I know that, babe. And I know if you were feeling better, you’d probably slap me silly for…intruding on you, like this.”

  “I guess, yes, once upon a time I would have,” Jessica admitted, staring up into his face. Once upon a time, I thought pride was worth something. That pride was the last thing, the one thing, you held on to, when your world fell apart. Now I’m not so sure. Sam—I’m not sure of much, anymore. This last week had blown all her beliefs to cat kibble.

  He lowered her arm to his lap, smoothed his fingers up her forearm, then down. “But even so, Jess, everything I’ve read about your…condition seems to say that touch may be the best way to get through to you.

  “I know you’re thinking and feeling in there, even if you don’t feel like answering right now. But I need to keep reminding you there’s a world waiting out here. That you have a body, and it’s a sweet place to come back to.” Supporting her elbow on the palm of his left hand, he bent her arm slowly. Next he extended her arm, kissing her fingertips as they neared his face. His mouth twisted and his eyes closed for a second, then he repeated the exercise. “So, meantime, if I take a few liberties, will you forgive me? Or if you won’t, will you please, please wake up and tell me so? You tell me to take a hike and I’ll go, babe.”

  I wish I could tell you that I’ve changed my mind, she thought, staring up at him. That I’m not so sure, anymore, that pride is the last thing you should hold on to. Now, I think maybe friendship is all that matters, when everything else in the world is stripped away. And Sam, nobody has been a better friend to me than you. There isn’t a word big enough, bright enough, to tell you what that means to me. “Thank you” doesn’t begin to touch it.

  She lay, staring up at him, the tip of her tail beating slow time to her thoughts. I still wish I could’ve had your love, Sam. Once upon a time, I thought I might die without it. But in the end, it looks like I got what I needed, even if I didn’t get what I want. Your friendship is the most precious thing I own—all I own. It’s my fortune and my treasure.

  Sam propped her elbow in his lap again, her fingers splayed against his heart. Leaning, he rested his other hand on Jessica’s furry flank. They sat like that for a long time, wordless, both drawing strength from the touch of a friend.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  “WHEW,” SAM MUTTERED, a long time later. “Gettin’ stiff.” He arranged her arm carefully alongside her body, then stood to stretch. “Don’t know how you stand it, lying there, Ms. Slugabed. Me, I’d be bored silly by now.”

  Jessica stood and arched into an inverted U. “Ha! That’s not how I remember it. Weekends, I had to pry you out of bed with a crowbar.” Not that he hadn’t been a morning person. He just knew what he liked to do with his mornings.

  She gave a startled squeak as he scooped her up and draped her around the back of his neck. “Cheaper than mink,” he declared, strolling over to the mirror to admire the effect.

  “And much more elegant,” she agreed, drooping her chin on his shoulder to play her part as mink stole. “Green eyes, instead of those nasty, littl
e, beady-brown glass eyes.”

  Not blinking, they studied each other in the glass. “You know…it’s the weirdest thing, but somehow this fuzz-farm reminds me of you, Jess.” Sam aimed that statement toward the bed.

  “And so I ought!” Jessica murmured wickedly in his ear.

  “She has your great green eyes, Mama—must be yours.” He tugged her tail absentmindedly. “Only thing is—you probably never noticed this, moms always being the last to know—but she’s a spoiled-rotten brat. Could’ve used a tougher hand in the discipline department—eat your liver, feet off the furniture and all that. Or maybe that’s where the dad is s’posed to come in, to make the rug rats toe the line?” He sighed, then strolled back to stand at the foot of the bed. He stood there, frowning, rocking gently on his heels. “You know, babe, you haven’t asked me the most important question of all—why I happen to be here.”

  You know, I did forget that, what with the fire, then waking up in a fur coat. I guess I just assumed you came because I needed you. Which didn’t make sense—he’d have had to have a crystal ball to know she needed him before the fire.

  On the other hand, her view of the universe as an orderly, rational, scientifically predictable sequence of events had taken a rude hit this past week. Was precognition any weirder than the rest of this mess? “Okay, I’ll bite. Why’d you come?”

  “It was what you said down in New York, ’bout my cheating on you. What I was trying to ask you then, what I came to Providence to ask, was where the blue blazes did you get that crazy notion?” He laughed unhappily and swiped a hand up through his hair. “I was going to ask you that, if I had to chase you off the edge of the earth to ask it.

  “But instead of running, you pull this—burn your house down, then fall into a coma. You’re sure tryin’ my patience, woman.” He sat at the foot of the bed, took hold of one of her feet through the sheet and caressed it absently. “I wish you’d tried ‘no comment’ before you tried this.”

  “Sam…” Jessica braced her forepaws on the slope of his chest, so she could peer down and around into his face. “What the blue blazes are you talking about? That blonde in our living room? Unbuttoning.her blouse? You’re going to tell me you were moonlighting doing chest exams, while I commuted to med.school?” She laughed bitterly, then leapt down onto the bed. “Don’t lie to me. I’d take almost any truth from you, but please, please, please don’t lie.”

  “Here I’ve always figured I knew why you left me—I didn’t like it, but ‘least I thought I’d figured it out—then you lay that one on me down in New York. I felt like you dropped King Kong on my head, complete with Empire State Building. I’ve been rackin’ my brains all week, trying to figure out where the hell that could’ve come from…”

  “Sam, the blonde?” She paced to the pillow, stared down at her own empty face, then swung around to stalk back. “You’re going to tell me I was dreaming? Or that you have a twin brother I never met, who dropped by our house that night to seduce a blonde in the living room while you were off innocently tending your petri dishes?”

  “Do you remember how we were having all those fights ’bout having kids, back about the time you left?”

  “Of course I do. So what? You’re telling me you meant to adopt her?” She stood on his leg and glared up at him.

  “And do you remember that kid, Timmy Rafferty, who used to hang around my lab after school? His mom was Fullerton’s lab assistant?”

  Jessica closed her eyes, trying to remember. “Things were so crazy back then.” She might have handled the three-hour daily commute to med school, or school itself. The two together, especially with her futile attempts to make the top grade in every course she took, had nearly overwhelmed her. And with Sam and her fighting about everything from the meaning of life to housecleaning on top of that, the whole period was a blur of misery, cumulating in that one searing, indelible memory of the blonde. “Timmy…you bought him a Frisbee for his birthday? Every time I’d drop by the lab, he’d be there doing his homework in your office. Yes, I remember him. So?”

  “He was a latchkey kid. His dad had flown the coop years ago. His mom was scrambling to make ends meet, working all day, going to school nights to get her degree. Kid was bright as a whip, a real sweetheart, but any fool could see he was headed for trouble—twelve, mad with the world, startin’ to run with the tough guys at school.

  “And there I am, wishing we could start a family, wondering what it would be like to have kids, wondering if they were really as important as I felt in my bones they were, or if you were right and they were something we could postpone—maybe put aside altogether.”

  “I never said that, Sam! I never thought that! I just wanted—”

  He pushed her off his knee. “Shut your mouth, cat, I’m talkin’ to your mom. Anyway, Jess, there I was at loose ends, what with you dropping in and out of our marriage, sleeping half the week up at med school, straggling home when you could spare me a minute. There he was, needing a dad, so I guess I sort of fell into that role. Played Frisbee with him. Taught him how to toss a football. He asked me to take him to a father/son deal at his youth club, so of course I went…”

  “Sam, what did his mother look like?” She could see Timmy, now that she thought about it, but his mother had always been a figure of hearsay, off in some other part of the lab, working for somebody else. “Was she blond? You started playing daddy and next thing you knew you were playing husband—is that how it happened?”

  “Anyway, somehow his mom got the wrong idea. Katy was a pretty little thing, surely deserved some guy’s attention, but somehow she got to thinking I was courting her by fathering her son. And I didn’t have a clue what was goin’ through her head. You know me, sometimes I’m a little out of it, focusing on tree DNA through a microscope while the forest closes in around me…”

  “Sam…” I’m not sure I can stand to hear this. But there was no way out of the room, and she couldn’t have taken it even if there was.

  “Anyway—I can’t put my finger on what night it was, but somewhere toward the end of you and me—Katy asks if she can come talk to me about a problem she’s having with Timmy. And I say sure, figuring she’ll ask me to give him the old birds-and-bees song and dance, or the Dutchuncle routine—no big deal either way, I can handle it…”

  “Sam, tell me, dammit!”

  “So she drops in pretty late, after her night class…” He sighed, swiped a hand through his hair again, turning himself to a perplexed Mohawk. “Women…”

  “Sure, you’re going to blame it all on her? She seduced you, huh? Dragged a hundred and eighty pounds of whimpering, protesting male off to bed? I’m sorry, Sam, but I’m not buying.”

  “But Katy won’t get to the point, say what she came for. So I go out to the kitchen, pour us some wine to loosen her up. I was tired, wanted to get this over, go to bed…”

  And while Sam had been out in the kitchen, Jessica had entered the picture. She could almost see her younger self— as if she looked out through the window of her own living room to see an exhausted, bedraggled med student trudging home one night early, her arms full of books, her life as she knew it only seconds from its end…Pausing on the sidewalk when she sees movement beyond the glass…

  “I come back with the wine, and there she stands, naked to the navel.” He laughed and shook his head. “She’s decided I want her, but I’m too shy to ask. That I’ve been taking the slow, roundabout route to her through Timmy. So here she is, unbuttoning her blouse, ready to help me over my imagined hurdle…”

  “And so you…?” Jessica prompted. Her heart was pounding in her ears. She felt sick to her stomach.

  “So I tell her she’s beautiful—which she is—and that the men of the world are all fools not to notice that, and that Mr. Right must surely be waiting around the next corner. But there’s nothing here tonight but an ol’ married man.

  “I remember I lied and claimed you were due home any minute—yeah, that’s right. You were supposed to come
home the next night, but you never came. That next night was the beginning of our end.”

  “No, Sam, our end was that night, that minute…”

  “So I button her up. Give her a glass of wine. We’re both embarrassed enough to die. She’s about to cry, and I’m terrified she’s going to. So I start talking as fast and hard as I can about Timmy and my latest experiment and whether the Red Sox are going to pull it off this season, and so on and so forth. Pretty soon after that, she gathers her wits together and roars on out of there—leaves rubber on the road, believe me.”

  And by then I had already driven off—was on my way, by then, back to med school, since there was no place else in my life to go. Nothing else to do… She would have thrown up if there’d been anything in her stomach to heave. Wave after wave of sickness washed through her. I walked out on my marriage for this? One picture was supposedly worth a thousand words, but when you got the picture wrong?

  “Anyway—” Sam shrugged “—it was just one of those wish-you-could-die-then-sink-through-the-floor kind of comedies. I put it behind me and never thought twice about it again—till this last week. But now I’m wondering…could somebody at the lab somehow have gotten the wrong idea—about Katy and me? Maybe Katy told somebody she was dropping by my house, and he or she jumped to the wrong conclusion? And somehow the rumor was passed on to you, though you hardly knew any of the people I worked with…But if you really think I cheated on you, if that’s not just something you said to put me off, was it something to do with Timmy and his mom? Because there was never anything else, I swear, babe.”

  “Oh, Sam…” If cats could cry, she would have cried him a river. She dropped off the bed, landed clumsily, then leapt to the windowsill.

  “Hey.” Sam turned to look after her. “Where are you off to?”

  “I want my cave.” Crying was another thing that wasn’t done in public, not in her family. If she could only weep in her mind, still, she needed to hide. She needed to think—or perhaps never think again for the rest of her life, however long that might be. Sitting up on her haunches, she nudged her face between the two halves of the zipper, then jumped down into darkness.