by Joseph Bonis
Chapter 2: Cresting
Tracy woke up the next morning to a warm weight on her shoulder, the sleeping cat rousing with an annoyed noise and a brief prickle of a claw as Tracy stretched and got up, disturbing his sleep.
The cat was welcome and omnipresent company, always watching her with his calm eyes, no matter what she was doing. Despite her protestations, she ended up 'not keeping him' for longer than expected, though she threw up some printed signs around the apartment complex asking if anyone had lost a cat. By Friday, Nameless had a litter box tucked away in the bathroom, and his own bowl in the kitchen, and no one had come by looking for him.
Other than Nameless moving in, the week had gone pretty much as normal. Boring tech support during the day, mild chores and entertainment at night. Wednesday, she spent the night cleaning her apartment; Thursday, she pulled out the jewelry kit and worked at making three small wire-wrapped stone pendants and half of an intricately designed beaded wire bracelet. Once the weather got warmer and the Renaissance Faire opened up, she'd give Ted the stock she'd been making all winter so he could sell them for her. The extra money was always welcome, and Ted already had his own booth at the faire.
Tonight, though, she had the gang coming over for Dinner and Movie Night, and she needed to grab some supplies first. On the Fridays she hosted, she drove to work so that she could stop off at the store on the way home. Dressed in the bland slacks and polo shirt of the cube farm, she clocked out at the front desk and then went through the elevator into the parking sub-basement.
Tracy smiled and made some light good-byes to some co-workers, who all slowly peeled away as they found their cars. She smiled proudly as she saw her truck, as she did every time. It was a somewhat battered deep green 4-wheel drive '83 Chevy with extra-sized wheels, raised flexible suspension, and really good clearance. A roll bar, larger bumpers, and a winch over the front bumper reinforced the exterior. The engine had many of its original parts, but she had gotten it modified with a reduction drive to help in off-roading. She rarely drove it anywhere for normal purposes, preferring to use the bus and save the truck's mileage for fields and rivers in the summertime.
She started it up and listened to the motor hum beautifully, letting it warm up, though it wasn't too cold thanks to the underground parking area. After several minutes, she threw the stick shift into reverse and pulled out of the parking space, making her way to the grocery store.
The grocery store's parking lot wasn't too bad, but Tracy knew that in fifteen minutes, it would be packed full. As she got out of her truck, purse in hand, she saw a soldier a few cars down. Dressed in casual fatigues, he still had that straight back and precise movement, that confidence and strength that settled in unconsciously on every soldier she saw, marking them more than any uniform could.
She took a deep breath and stepped up to him, clearing her throat. The man turned around, curious, with a quick move as if he was about ready to come to attention. He relaxed as he saw her, smiling. “Can I help you?”
She shook her head. “No, I just…” She paused. How to answer that? “You already have. Thank you.”
He didn't need to ask for what. They never did. It was understood. He just straightened up that tiny bit more and nodded. “You're welcome.”
She blushed and nodded, then turned around and hurried towards the store, feeling embarrassed that a moment of such intimate understanding could be felt with a total stranger, every time. Embarrassed, but proud and awed as well.
A sudden jolt made Tracy lose her train of thought. She stumbled backwards, looking around for whatever had run into her, and found it in a tall, lanky, Native American guy wearing jeans and a stained polo shirt who had just come out from between two SUVs. “Hey!” she yelled, annoyed.
“Oh, I'm sorry!” said the surprised man. “I was distracted by -” he paused, took a second look at her. “Wait, aren't you -” he started, then stopped. “No, no, never mind,” he amended, a slightly confused look on his face. He turned and hurried off, shaking his head and mumbling to himself.
Perplexed, Tracy watched him for a few moments more, then shrugged and turned back towards the store. “Oddballs,” she murmured quietly, but felt a bit uncertain when he glanced back at her again with a less confused and more discerning look.
Her first stop in the store was the bread aisle, where she simply closed her eyes and inhaled. The rich, fresh, delicious scent of every kind of bread washed over her, a magnificent overload of grainy goodness. She breathed deeply and let out a contented sigh, then wandered along the aisle, seeing what caught her eye.
The processed, bleached, cheap breads were right out. They were fine, sometimes - like the baker's version of candy, though. They didn't have any heartiness to them, they were just a tasty little snack. She picked several loaves in turn to give a good deep inhalation before settling on a hearty loaf of stone-ground seven grain bread.
She continued on into the produce aisle, still breathing deeply. The fruits weren't quite as aromatic, not at this time of year, but she still loved the smell of it. Once she got past the produce, her quick shopping trip actually did become faster. You could smell a box and go “Ahhh… sterile processing environment,” only so many times.
At home once more, Tracy worked quickly to put away the spoilables and prepare dinner. She loved cooking for people. She loved the anticipation, waiting to see how they liked it. She loved when they came back for seconds. She really, really enjoyed it when they groaned afterward that they had eaten too much.
Today, she was making a bacon mushroom soup, a dish she had modified from one of Wolfgang Puck's recipes. She was also setting up a plate of little mini-sandwiches to go with the soup - ham, turkey, and salami. Once the base soup was ready and heating up, she dipped back to her bedroom to get dressed for the night. Keeping in mind the still-cold weather outside, even though the kitchen would soon be toasty warm, she dressed in a long, heavy denim skirt and a white sweater with a lighter blue collar peeking out from underneath. She'd have to be careful not to let any soup spill on it - she liked this sweater.
She rolled up her sleeves as she went back to the kitchen. The pot was cooking nicely, a content simmering that sent its delicious scent all throughout the apartment, a thick and rich earthy scent spiced with bacon's tang but mellowed by the cream. She threw on an apron before stirring it carefully, watching the dark brown colors swirl and mix, big chunks of cut vegetables and bacon popping up to the surface and then sinking down once more.
Satisfied with how the soup smelled, she returned to the cutting board, where the lighter and more energetic scents of the sandwiches were stronger in her nose. She quickly assembled another sandwich, complete with cheese, tomatoes, and lettuce, then stuck four toothpicks into it before cutting it into four little triangles, one toothpick in each.
Life was good.
Fifteen minutes later, the food didn't matter any more. Everyone had called, and no one could make it.
Tracy was left with a hollow feeling inside. They all had good reasons - car troubles, family emergencies, sudden overtime at work, lack of a ride - and she understood that none of it was personal. But there was the food on the stove and counter, and there were her plans for the evening, and all of it was pointless. She had been prepared for an evening of laughing and friendship and socialization, and instead she was going to be alone.
It felt slightly surreal. A rational part of her was observing the rest of her from a distance, as if she didn't actually feel bad, but rather was simply watching herself feel bad.
She moved to the counter, reaching into the bread bag for another two slices, but then reminded herself that she didn't need to do that anymore. Instead, she calmly closed the bag and put the bread away. For a moment she felt the urge to throw the bread across the living room and let herself have a good cathartic yell of frustration, or at least a decent sulk, but instead she just set it gently into the breadbox. Calmly, she put all the unprepared food away into the fridge, nibbling on
one of the mini-sandwiches in the process. She turned the soup down to a simmer to keep it warm and let it finish, cleaned off the counter.
Normally, she would have enjoyed these simple tasks, chatting with early-comers about their day, their week. About movies and stories and her jewelry and their hobbies. Perhaps Ted had driven about and taken some more photographs of landscapes, and Stephen would, of course, be excited about the latest in video game news. Sing would have been sitting back and listening to it all with that enigmatic grin on his face, like watching them talk about trivialities was a great treat for him. Alex and Jill would have more stories of how cute their cats acted - and no doubt would have been cooing and baby-talking to Nameless.
“Well, at least there's that,” she said quite seriously to Nameless. “Your dignity gets to be preserved, because I certainly won't speak down to you like that.” She wrapped up most of the mini-sandwiches in plastic wrap, stuffed them in the fridge, and then sat down on the couch with the remainder.
Normally she wouldn't eat at the couch. She had her routines, like anyone else, and part of her routines involved eating at the table - but today she wanted the comfy seat. She wanted to feel spoiled. She turned on the television and flipped through the programming, but it all felt flat and uninteresting, so she turned it off again, nibbling at her food without any real hunger.
A gentle touch against her leg made her look down to see Nameless, and she smiled and patted the couch next to her. The cat looked at the movement, but ignored the invite, instead twining about her legs a couple more times before leaping up onto the couch on her other side. Nameless looked at Tracy with a flat stare, as if to say, “I did that to show you it's because I want to be here, not because you asked me to be here.” and then put a paw up on Tracy's knee to lean over and nibble at the sandwich in Tracy's hand. Tracy gave a reluctant little smile and let the cat do so - Nameless had been eating Tracy's food all week, and hadn't thrown up once, yet. She knew the cat should have, at some point in time. Cats don't eat human food without throwing up - or at least, that's what she had read on the internet - but there you are.
“Ah,” she sighed, “Thanks for being there, Nameless.” She swapped the sandwich to her far hand, and felt the light pressure as Nameless's other front paw came up on her thigh, following the slight movement of the sandwich. With her newly freed closer hand, Tracy lightly played fingers over soft feline ears and the sleek fur at the back of the cat's neck. “I dunno what to do, now.”
The small gray cat leaped from Tracy's lap and bounded to the front door, his lean form lengthening and flowing like dark water. Even as he did so, Tracy felt that great urge to go walking, to let her frustration ease itself out of her through activity. The pull of the outside. She pulled on her puffy jacket and stepped out, surprised that Nameless followed after her. She pulled her hat from her pocket as she walked down the hall to the entryway, snugged it over her ears against the cold that was sure to be out there.
Sure enough, the wind bit into her as she stepped outside, tugging her mittens on. Her heavy denim skirt pulled against her legs, the denim not all that good at keeping the chill out, but better than the light skirts she had worn on Tuesday. She turned away from the wind and just walked, following that random little urge deep inside her that pulled her around one corner, then the next, walking past shop front after shop front until the shops gave way to homes, then homes gave way to shops once more, her restless legs carrying her quite far and quite quickly.
Nameless leaped from shadow to shadow, then chased down some of the very few fallen leaves that had escaped out from under the snow, the cold wind sending them skittering across the sidewalk. Tracy smiled as strands of her hair blew around her face. She uselessly brushed them away, trying to tuck them under her cap, but the wind just whipped them away from her again. Each step helped her forget her frustrations and just relax in the clear, crisp night, her spirit lightened by watching the innocent play of the adorable cat.
Every so often, a figure approached from the other direction. It was always something of a disappointment. It wasn't fear - though Tracy always got a little cautious about strangers in the night - but more it was a violation of privacy. On the nights like this, she could find her way to back roads and suburbs where she wouldn't see another person for block after block. She knew it was irrational, but strangers on her walk felt like intruders upon her private night, trespassers upon her own personal path.
She had gone two thirds of the way through a long, rough, haphazard circle and had turned back towards her apartment building when she felt a tingling up the back of her neck. She glanced back over her shoulder and saw someone following along behind her. Nervously, she picked up her speed, knowing that up ahead was another section of shops that would have more people around.
Tracy always walked quickly during her walks, even when she was feeling lazy. It wasn't a conscious choice - she simply had always done so, ever since she was a little girl walking with her parents. By this time, she had been walking rapidly for something approaching an hour, and when she sped up her pace, she felt her legs protesting slightly. She walked more during the summer than the winter, so it had been a while since she'd used those muscles on a regular basis.
She reached the shops rather soon, only two blocks on. She turned to walk along the shops, slowing down again now that there were people in view. Pretending to look at a store window, she instead glanced back at the man who had taken the same turn and was still behind her. His face was shadowed, but it seemed Native American, and familiar, but she couldn't put her finger on it. She glanced up to see what shops were upcoming, and turned into a convenience store, quickly stepping up to one of the shelves and staring sightlessly past whatever was on the shelf as she glanced out the corner of her eye at the front window.
The man walked quickly past, not even glancing into the store. Tracy let out a soft sigh of relief - it had been her imagination.
“I'm afraid I can't let that cat in here,” said a quiet voice at her shoulder. Tracy turned in surprise to see a young cashier, a high school boy.
“Oh, sorry,” replied Tracy. “I'll just be on my way, then. Sorry.”
Even though she logically could tell herself that it was all in her head, she couldn't help but think she could feel him, somewhere nearby, almost point to him. She'd anticipated him showing up at the window, sure, but of course she'd seen how fast he'd been walking, and had subconsciously calculated it – no sense being ridiculous, or making herself paranoid.
She stepped out onto the street again and walked on with Nameless shadowing her heels. She smiled at the small gray cat, fondly. “It's amazing that you stick with me,” she said quietly to the cat. “I've never seen a cat take to someone like you've taken to me.” Nameless looked up at her as if listening, then ignored her to go chase after a plastic bag blowing along in the light wind. Tracy laughed merrily.
She quickly passed beyond the shops and was in a residential area again, less than a dozen blocks from home. The buildings were shifting from houses to apartment complexes again.
“The weird thing is,” she said to Nameless, “I can't get it out of my head that I can feel that guy, like he's out there. Can't wait to get home, my imagination's just running away with me.”
She walked along, trying to shake off the rising feeling that she was being watched, that someone was circling around her. Every person that came past made her even more nervous, though she could have pointed to her imagined stalker somewhere else. Why was this happening? She had never felt this paranoid on a walk, before. Perhaps it was because of how depressed she had been feeling before she left.
Tracy was passing by a basketball court when she felt the goosebumps hit. She knew someone was there before they stepped out of the buildings on either side of her, loosely surrounding her and closing in. Nameless hissed angrily, pressing against her ankle with his fur bristled.
They stared right at her as they closed in on her. It felt surreal, something that only h
appened on TV. “You gotta be kidding me,” she muttered.
“No kidding,” said one of the guys. They all looked younger than her, late teens or early twenties, dressed in expensive and sloppy clothes. Everything took on a strange, super-detailed experience. It wasn't in slow motion, but with how many of the stupid little details she was noticing, it seemed like it should be. Two of the boys were black; two were white. One had a strange little scar just over his eye. Another had a smudge of something brown just under his lip.
For some reason, she noticed the mist. There was a fog rising up around her, and she would have thought it was far too cold for a fog. She noticed the thrumming, somewhere far away. Perhaps there was machinery working away - road construction or some sort of generator - but in her fearful imagination, she matched it up with the footsteps of one of the thugs approaching her.
They closed in around her. Her gaze focused on the one boy whose footsteps she imagined resonated with that far away machinery. She couldn't say why, but he drew her attention - perhaps because of that imagined tremor his every step created. There was nothing to indicate he was the leader or somehow important, but she seized upon it and had a focus, watching him.
They laughed at her - the sound making her still more afraid. She was afraid, but she was frozen, frozen and watching, not sure what to do. She knew she could run, but her weary legs, already having been walking or jogging for the past hour, might not carry her very far, except perhaps for adrenaline, but could she count on that? They were getting closer. She might be able to make it home if she ran, but could she run? Would they chase her? She didn't know. And the front door always stuck. She always thought as a private joke that it was the movie mistake, but here was the movie situation happening all around her.