The Familiar

by Jill Nojack

  "Gillian dropped them off just after you left this morning. She says hi. Apparently, she still knows my size. Says this is what the 'young folks' are wearing these days and thinks I should try to fit in if I'm going to be in the public view. What do you think?"

  I avoid telling him that I think I'd like to have him twirl for me so that I can see how the pants fit around the back. "Flattering. You look good." I nod polite approval. Inside, I applaud my own restraint.

  "Good, then. I know Natalie approved, but she's not my preferred audience."

  I set my packages on the counter and rest a hand on the top of the register Tom is standing behind. "How'd that go?"

  "It was strange talking to her after all these years. I feel a little dirty about knowing the things I know about her because of my spying expeditions. And I'm not sure she bought my 'Hi, I'm Tom Sanders the Third, how can I help you?' routine. Kept saying how much I look like old granddad—said she knew whose grandson I was the minute she walked in the door," Tom laughed. "And then she actually flirted with me, the randy old thing. Same old Nat. She hasn't changed much."

  "Do you think we should tell her what's in her skin cream someday?"

  "Nah, she hasn't needed to know to this point. And, it works, right? She definitely looks younger than seventy-five."

  "Wait a minute? She's seventy-five? I thought she was the same age as Gilly, maybe younger—early sixties or something."

  "The cream works."

  "I guess! Maybe we should make a double batch next month and I can try it out."

  "Cassie, you'll be beautiful at any age. You don't need magic potions for that."

  Huh.

  Not acknowledging that one. Nope. No way.

  "I need to get my packages upstairs and take care of a couple other things. I'll spell you in about an hour so you can get some lunch?"

  "Sure. Assuming by 'spell' you mean 'take your place' rather than 'put you under an additional curse'?" Tom gives me a broad smile.

  I giggle and give a broad smile back, then I walk upstairs and drop my day's shopping on the bed.

  Beautiful? Did Tom just say he thinks I'm beautiful?

  I'd rather Cat curl up to sleep next to Cassie than prowl the night away, but he has his needs, and he won't be denied without embarrassing slips into Cat behavior during the day. When I have my druthers, I don't want to leap the counter to bat a fly out of the air in front of a tired housewife who's looking for an nonprescription form of mother's little helper.

  And when I'm being completely honest with myself, I'd like to sleep curled up next to Cassie in human form. Not necessarily in a sexual way, although I wouldn't throw her out of bed for eating crackers. It's a human contact thing: I've even woken up from dreams where Eunice is holding my hand or embracing me, telling me it's okay—that she'll be back soon, and I won't be alone any longer. When I come full awake and shed the sleepy part of me that lingers with her touch for its warmth, the very idea scares the bejeebers out of me.

  I get almost no contact with other people now that Cassie hardly ever gives Cat any affection. She knows the kitten is really a man, so she stays away. I'm pretty sure she'd keep me from crawling into bed with her if she wasn't asleep when I come home after the hunt.

  This whole train of thought is getting to be a downer. I put the day's takings in the bag for the bank, lock up shop, and head for the back. Cassie is reading a book, waiting for the lock bag so she can walk it across the street to the night depository. I hand it to her saying, "Someday I'm going to take the deposit to the bank myself."

  "You will. I know you will. Gillian and I aren't going to give up on you. Ever. She's still talking to people on the down low, trying not to draw attention. She just hasn't figured anything out yet."

  "I want to believe it'll happen. I've already got more than I thought I'd ever have again by just being human most of the time, so maybe I shouldn't get greedy. The good vibes the universe is sending could end any minute." I say it like it's not important, but, like Pinocchio, what I want more than anything is to be a real boy again. It's an ache. It's hunger.

  I cook us a nice dinner—nothing fancy, just good grub. We could be a couple of roommates living normal lives, doing normal things. We watch TV for a while on opposite ends of the couch, but Cassie looks annoyed and sits up straight, then says she's going upstairs to read, when I move and my big, bare feet accidently brush over her small ones. She's kind to me, but she obviously can't stand to have me touch her. What I am, what I've done, who wouldn't be repulsed?

  She turns me into Cat before she goes, and I take off outside to prowl the neighborhood for mice or even interesting shadows. But tonight, I've got a few stops planned that have nothing to do with Cat's needs.

  ***

  First stop, the middle-striving-to-be-upper-class home of Kevin Andrews. Eunice often sent me prowling around Robert for tidbits she could keep up her sleeve in case she needed leverage, but she kept Kevin under control without my help. Now I'm keeping my eye out. I don't want any more surprises. And I don't want him anywhere near Cassie.

  The windows at Kevin's house are cracked a few inches tonight to let the breeze in, and that's good for me. Not only can I see, but I'll be able to hear anyone inside. I stealthily jump to a sill and take a look. This window opens to his office. Nobody there.

  I go along to the other side of the house and bingo! Kevin is sitting on the couch, shuffling through papers as he watches TV. A woman comes in with dinner on a tray. She's a cute black woman in her early thirties or so with a trim figure and a pleasant face.

  After she drops off the tray, she says, "If there's nothing else tonight, Mr. Andrews, I'll be on my way home. I've got your meals all prepared and labeled with the warming instructions for this weekend." This must be the housekeeper he said he was buying headache powder for.

  "Hold on for a moment, Keisha. You know I hate to have my dinner alone all the time. Have a drink with me before you go? I bought a bottle of that champagne you like."

  "Sure. I don't mind. Is it in the kitchen? I'll get us each a glass."

  Keisha returns from the kitchen with a champagne glass in each hand. The two of them exchange pleasantries—nothing that would indicate they are anything more than employer and employee. He doesn't slip anything into her glass. Maybe Eunice got it wrong.

  "Any plans tonight?" Kevin asks.

  "It's been a long week, sir. Especially with the late night tonight—but I'm not complaining. It's out of my work clothes and into a hot bath for me."

  Kevin smiles. "Well, don't let me keep you from it. Here, I'll take that glass." He rises and takes the glass, then walks with her toward the back door. I jump down from the windows and haul butt to the back. "Have a good night," he calls as she walks down the back steps.

  Then, only moments later, he comes out dressed in a ridiculous outfit—hooded coveralls of some kind with a mask and gloves attached. Could be what he was wearing the night of the break-in. He hustles down the street behind his housekeeper, catching up but staying a safe distance behind.

  An elderly couple pass by Keisha. They nod and smile in that small town way. When they pass Kevin, they don't seem to even know he's there, although he scooted over to the far side of the sidewalk to avoid them. If they did, who wouldn't do a double-take? He looks like a bandit dressed to rob a liquor store. The coveralls even cover his shoes.

  And then I realize—no one can see him but me. That's got to be why Cassie couldn't see him outside the storeroom.

  Eunice's gift—the one she gave him just before she died: were the coveralls in that package? She did say her gift was "transparent.” Had she made him an invisibility suit that was charmed in a way that still allowed me to track him? He would never have known that if I hadn't attacked him when he broke in to the shop. What was she planning? And how was I a part of it?

  I push the thoughts away. She's six feet under now. She isn't getting out of that one. The whole coven turned out to make sure she was planted. Whatever
scheme she had in mind, I won't be a part of it now. But I do want to know what Kevin's up to.

  When Keisha turns up the walk to a small cottage with a well-maintained garden, Kevin turns across the grass and goes into the backyard. He quietly closes and opens the small gate to gain entry. I slip underneath after he closes it, the bottom bar barely making an impression on Cat's tough skin as I squeeze through. Kevin goes directly to a back window. He seems to know exactly which one he wants. There's even a large, white plastic bucket hidden in the bushes next to the window which he moves and then steps up to stand on. He's been here before.

  I'm too close to the ground to see what's going on inside, but a woman's shadow falls across the window, arms raised as though she's removing something over her head. Geez—the guy's got a magic invisibility suit and what he wants to do with it is spy on women while they bathe? And then I hear the zip. I no longer want to know what he's up to. I'm a small black blur as I head back to the gate.

  When I was a young man, I might have chased tail all over town. I might have cheated on the wife who loved me despite my many flaws. But when Cassie changed her clothes with Cat in the room, I always made him close his eyes or look away. She thought she was alone. I had no business invading her privacy.

  Men like Kevin make me ashamed to be the same species. The first thing I'm going to do when I have my humanity again? I'm going to take that bastard down.

  On my way home, I stop at Kevin's homestead and make tracks across the hood of his car. Or, to be exact, across the air circulation grille. I wonder if it's difficult to get the smell of pee out of the vent system.

  ***

  My next stop before the hunt is Gillian's. My angry feelings dissipate some as I get closer to her place. They're replaced by something softer and sadder.

  In the small amount of time we've had to talk alone, she told me she's content. She said my disappearance left her devastated, but from that devastation came a good life. Maybe I don't want to believe her. Maybe I want to believe she has a shrine dedicated to my memory and sits in front of it every night, silent and wanting.

  Forty-five years ago, I was enough of a horse's patoot to believe that. I didn't appreciate women the way they should be appreciated.

  As I stalk along, distracted here and there by the scents and sounds of the night, I catch a whiff of a female in heat. Fortunately, Cat is too young to be drawn by her scent. For all I know, it's one of his children, grandchildren, or great grandchildren. There are an abundance of black cats in this town.

  Being Cat and leading a cat's romantic life has taught me one very important lesson—there's nothing fun, romantic, or exciting about running after every female who's got the whiff of seduction on her. Nothing. When you've been forced by instinct to mount every female within sniffing distance, you get to the point pretty quick where you realize mating is just mating. Cats don't have a choice. It's built into them not to be able to resist the lure. It's not conquest or an ego-stroke. It's nature insisting on it.

  Humans are wired the same, but we can also make choices. If I'd chosen better, I'd be snuggled up next to my loving sixty-something year old wife, enjoying our long history spent together. I lost so much when I strayed from the woman who loved me.

  What a jerk I was: I thought I was a sex-god, the poor man's Jim Morrison. Now, my chance of waking up with my beautiful, kind, smart, funny wife is as dead as that long ago rock and roll icon. And there's no going back. I learned my lesson far too late. In the past few days, I've felt anger from her, not forgiveness. But why get angry with me if she doesn't still have feelings for me?

  I slink around outside her darkened house, looking for a room with a light on. I find one and jump up to the sill, hoping not to attract her attention. Gilly is sitting on a woven mat, eyes closed, sitting still in a meditation pose. Her relaxed face looks happy.

  I look around the room at the pictures and knick-knacks. In many of the photos, Gillian and her husband Martin smile for the camera in a variety of exotic locations. She always loved to travel. It looks like she got to do lots of it. She looks fulfilled.

  Why didn't I ever visit Gillian through those years so that I understood she'd moved on? I visited the café to see my parents until my mother died and my father sold to Robert, then passed on himself shortly after. But Gillian—after she married, maybe I didn't want to know. Why did I allow myself to believe that I could somehow be central to her life just because she and Eunice sometimes brawled about me? I can't believe that I sat there on the counter next to the cash register for years, grooming and dozing, and had the audacity to believe that anyone's universe revolved around me.

  Or maybe, just maybe, not knowing helped keep me alive. What will keep me going now?

  In a vacant lot just past Gillian's, I slink forward on my stomach, eyes fixed on the young mouse who hasn't heard me nor seen me where I blend into the darkness. Its whiskers twitch once, then it turns to locate the source of my predator's smell and darts away, but it's too late. I've already sprung. I play with my prey until a final bat of my paw damages something inside it beyond repair, and it stops running, stops moving, stops being what makes a mouse a mouse.

  When Cat felt moved to make his toy into a token of his esteem, I went with the urge and padded along with the dead mouse dangling from my jaw, dropping it squarely in the middle of Gillian's front stoop.

  If I weren't a cat, I'd smirk as I trot off, thinking of my childhood when I might have rung the doorbell and run away after having dropped off something even less desirable—now there's an idea for the next time I visit Kevin—but I think Gilly will get it, the point of this gift. Cat is giving her his thanks in his own way. He's leaving her something precious—sustenance, even if it's had all the fun smacked out of it.

  Only a little later, I slip into bed and snug up against Cassie's back. I wonder how much longer she'll let me sneak in next to her warmth. I don't know what I'll do without the simple pleasure of touch. Although every cat-lover in Giles has touched Cat, most of them many times, no one but Eunice has touched me for years and years. I'd shrink from her caress but crave it at the same time. I know I went wrong years ago, but no one should ever have to know this kind of loneliness.

  Cassie shifts slightly, yawning, then reaches a hand back, surfacing briefly from sleep, to run it along my spine. "Oh, there you are. Good Tom."

  She didn't mean to say what she said. But intention has never counted where my magic words are concerned. She doesn't stir again as I roll away from her and hold my breath during the change, not wanting to make a sound at the pain and startle her awake. I have little control over the movements of my limbs, but I hold them as immobile as I can. Then, my cat-to-human eyes see the unremarkable shape of my meal ticket's back become the curve of a delicate shoulder in a sweetly sexy cotton nightgown with a fall of silky hair cascading over it. The room and everything in it transforms as I transform, my human thoughts and feelings shoving to the surface as my limbs creak and strain and break their feline bonds.

  When the change is done and my tortured body relaxes, I'm unwilling to leave her. I know I should go to my own room, but instead, I spoon against her gently, slipping my arm lightly across her waist. It feels good and right and human. Her warmth against my skin is arousing but also makes me protective and determined to guard her against the bad things that can happen in this town.

  I'm fully awake after the shift, but I finally fall asleep by counting her precious breaths in and out, in and out, in and out instead of counting sheep.

  ***

  As the sun slips through the window, Cassie turns slightly and rubs a hand along my arm where it encircles her waist, patting my hand affectionately. I hold her tighter in response. Cassie's body slips from the relaxation of sleep into stiff alertness. I'm stiffly alert myself, but for an entirely different reason.

  "Tom, is that you back there?"

  "Yes."

  "Are you wearing clothes?"

  "No."

  "Yeah, didn't
think so. Hang on, I'll just go get your robe and toss it over my shoulder to you."

  Cassie's aim is even good as she flings me my robe. I have myself respectable quickly.

  "Okay, so how did that happen?"

  "Me not being Cat?"

  "Yeah, that."

  "I got into bed, you reached back and gave me a rub, and said, 'Good Tom'."

  "Oh, that's too bad." She bites her lip gently. "I kind of hoped for your sake something had changed and you could shift yourself. But you coming to my bed would be…wait a minute! You stayed in my bed afterward because?"

  I go for the truth and hope she understands. "Because I wanted to be near you."

  Cassie's face remains expressionless. "Oh."

  I wait.

  "If that ever happens again, please go to your own bed."

  "You let me stay when I'm Cat. I didn't think you minded. We're the same person."

  "Oh yeah, because there's no difference between a cat and a hot young guy."

  "Depends on the cat." I give her what I hope is my most charming smile. She doesn't look charmed.

  After a long moment, Cassie replies, "I guess it does. So, in the future, you're going to need to sleep somewhere else. Because you're right, it doesn't matter if you're Cat or not."

  I try to look like it doesn't bother me, but it bothers me. It hangs like a lodestone around my neck as I make my way to the door on my huge, clunky, human feet: in the past few weeks as Cassie and I have started to know each other, the feeling of being totally alone receded for the first time in years. But it's sliding back now with a vengeance.

  ***

  At breakfast, I tell Cassie what I observed at Kevin's house the night before.

  She actually looks happy about it for a moment. "Whew. So, I wasn't seeing things. He really can make himself invisible!" Her face changes rapidly as I tell her how he's using his super power.