The Cat's Pajamas

by Soraya May

  I watched as his hands moved deftly over the piece of wood, selecting one knife, then another. “Each of these blade shapes gives you different effects on the wood; some make it easier to cut straight lines, some are better for curves. See here?” He indicated a long groove on the old handle.

  “That was probably done using this kind of tool, so that’s what we’re going to do. Of course,” he smiled, “the person who made this the first time round may well have had to go out and mill the timber themselves, so I’ve got it easy.”

  I was intrigued. “I thought you were mostly interested in preserving things.”

  “Well, you’d be surprised.” Ryan put down his knife, and took a long swallow of beer from the mug. “Part of preserving the past is making sure that you can replace things the way they were. If something is lost, you need to find a way to remake it.”

  “What if you can’t remake it?”

  “Then you need to come up with a modern equivalent. Often it isn’t enough to just try and keep things exactly unchanging, because that’s impossible.” He gestured with the knife. “Just look around us, Cat. The human environment wears out; things change. So, if we want history to be really preserved, sometimes we have to reinterpret it, and sometimes we have to make our best guess as to what would have happened.” He shrugged. “It’s not always easy, and there are a lot of arguments, believe me.”

  I pulled my chair closer. “Yeah, I see. But what about situations where you have a choice to save one thing or another?”

  Not thinking of any specific situation in particular, like, for instance, my bar.

  “Then,” Ryan put down the knife, and picked up a piece of sandpaper, “you have to try and save as much as you can of everything. No one piece of history or prehistory is more important than any other. And, we don’t always know what’s important and what isn’t.” He held up the new handle, next to the old, broken one. “What do you think?”

  I looked at them in detail. I was impressed, I had to admit; the new one already looked almost indistinguishable from its broken counterpart.

  Ryan saw my look, and smiled. “Yeah, it’s getting there, I think. Still needs some sanding, and the color will change a bit as it fades. But it’s pretty close. Maybe I’ll leave it out in the weather for a day or two.”

  “Thanks for all of this.” I was suddenly struck by the generosity of his act. “I mean, you’re busy, and you didn’t have to do this.”

  He put both handles carefully down on the table. “Honestly, I’m just glad I could be of some use.” Reaching over, he pushed the new handle toward me. “Here. Feel it under your fingers; it needs to not just look the same, it needs to feel the same.” As he did, our hands touched, his fingertips on top of mine. I couldn’t help shivering; something about his touch had the ability to set me thinking very surprising thoughts.

  He was leaning closer to me now, looking down first at our hands on the table, and then back up to me.

  “Feel the same, huh?” My voice came out low and throaty, and it surprised even me.

  Ryan nodded, slowly, eyes fixed on me. “Yeah. One of the things I liked about conservation work is that you never know what you’re going to get. One day,” his fingers still hadn’t left the top of mine, “you could be doing what you expect, and then, all of a sudden…”

  The air was very still between us. I tilted my head slightly. “All of a sudden?”

  “All of a sudden, something can happen which is completely,” his index finger traced its way, feather-light, up the back of my hand, over my wrist, “and unfathomably,” up my arm, over my bicep, and over the skin of my neck, “unexpected.”

  I blinked. Is this really happening?

  I was inches away from Ryan, and where his finger had traced across my skin, it burned like fire. I felt desire rising in my breast, and I shifted in my chair. “Unexpected, you say?”

  “Yeah.” His voice was almost a whisper. “Completely,” his index finger coming to rest on the point of my chin, and tilting my face toward him, “unexpected.”

  Before I knew what was happening, I’d pressed my mouth onto him, and the sound of blood rushing in my ears had gotten steadily stronger, until I almost couldn’t hear his words. He kissed me back, and I was surprised at the force of my own passion. It was like a dam starting to crack, the sudden flash of what I now realized was jealousy in the hardware store adding fuel to my fire. I’d only had one taste of him, of his desire for me, and I wanted more. Pushing my mouth onto his, I tried to talk, but only muffled noises came out.

  Ryan reached across and grabbed my shoulders, hard. I took hold of the front of his shirt, feeling the ripple of his muscles underneath it, and pulled myself off the chair toward him, still glued to his lips. Straddling him, I felt his hands slide up the back of my t-shirt, pulling me down onto him. I could feel his arousal now, pressing hard against me, and a shiver ran through my body. He breathed in deeply, hot and ragged, and I could hear the pounding of his heart as he kissed me back.

  Somewhere inside me, I could hear a voice shrieking what the hell are you doing? You’re kissing him again?

  But it was drowned out by a torrent of desire, and at this point I didn’t know that I had much of an answer.

  My head started to spin. Slowly, reluctantly, I tilted my head back, and drew a breath, breaking lips with him. His hands were still pressed hard against my back, and his knee between my thighs, grinding into me.

  He took a deep breath of his own. “Damn.” Still not moving, he looked at me, inches from my face.

  “Is that,” I swallowed, “what you mean by unexpected, is it?”

  Several seconds passed before he answered, releasing the grip of his arms around my body only a fraction, and tracing a line with his finger down the bare flesh of my back that made me arch involuntarily with pleasure. “Yeah. That’s a pretty good example of what I mean by unexpected.”

  20

  Ryan

  I pushed my head-torch up on my forehead, and stretched to get the kinks out of my spine. How come you never see Indiana Jones with lower back pain from spending hours hunched over a pile of dirt? Talk about unrealistic.

  There was so much to do here; every time I extracted something from the hard-packed earth behind the basement wall, I got a new thrill of investigation. I’d had to stop myself repeatedly from rushing to my laptop and diving into research on each piece, reminding myself I was only here to do a cursory preliminary investigation.

  I could easily spend a year or more here just working on what I’d already uncovered—and the more I looked, the more there was to find. Excited, I stood up and stripped off my latex gloves, wanting to go and tell someone, anyone.

  No. Not just anyone. I wanted to tell Cat. I wanted to tell her everything I’d found.

  I thought for a minute about her watching me attentively as I carved the new handle for the wardrobe, asking questions, making me explain why preserving the past was important. About the lines of her smile as I handed it to her, and the almost-electric charge that went through my hand when we touched. About the taste of her lips, sweet like strawberry ice-cream on a hot day.

  “But,” I muttered to myself as I reached for my water bottle, “she ain’t gonna want to hear this, is she? She said so herself. Might as well face the truth; it’s hard to make something appealing when it means the end of someone’s livelihood.”

  My phone rang and I blinked, surprised that I could get reception down here. Peering at the screen in the gloom, I saw my mother’s picture.

  “Hi, Mom. Everything okay?”

  “Fine, sweetheart. How’s the dig? Yielding anything?” My mother’s voice was warm and rich, and after twenty years with my father, she knew more about archaeological field-work than many academics.

  “It’s—it’s fantastic, Mom. There are some things here I’ve never seen before in this stratum. I don’t want to jump to conclusions, but we could be rewriting a lot of textbooks based on this find. I wish I could tell Dad; he woul
d have been amazed by some of what I’ve seen today.”

  “Well, maybe you can. How is Cable Bay? Your father and I went there a long time ago, although I don’t remember much about it. Picturesque?”

  I thought for a minute. “Yeah, picturesque is about right. It’s really pretty, but I get the feeling my arrival in town is the biggest thing that’s happened in a while. The people are nice, though; it’s quite a departure from the city. Everyone’s very welcoming.”

  My mother coughed politely. “So I’ve heard. I was talking to Antoinette, and she tells me you’ve met someone.”

  “What?” I tried not to spit out a mouthful of water. “You know what sailors are like; they’re always telling tall tales. I have not ‘met someone’. I’ve only been in town a few days.”

  “Oh, yes, I know.” There was a pause, which it somehow seemed I was expected to fill. Eventually, I cracked, as I always damn well did with my mother.

  “Okay. Look. Fine. I met a girl in a…one evening, and we shared a…kiss. But that was it.”

  “Was that it, was it?”

  “Yes!”. It wasn’t. “Why am I even having this conversation with you? This is not a son-to-Mom sort of topic. Shouldn’t you be telling me to wrap up warm, or something?”

  There was a chuckle from the other end of the line. “Honey, someone has to pay attention to your personal life, since you clearly don’t. Wrap up warm, by the way.”

  “Yeah. Thanks, Mom. Also tell Ant that if she never comes back to dry land again, it’ll be too soon.” It’s pretty inexcusable for a grown man to be sarcastic in front of his own mother, but she sure made it hard sometimes. She’d been through a lot with Dad in the past five years, and now she had more free time, I could see parts of the person she’d been many years ago.

  Younger than him when they were married, the old photos on their mantelpiece showed her pretty, confident, smiling with a hint of mischief. Mom playing college basketball. Mom in her stewardess’ uniform with a group of pilots; somehow, I’d always thought that was meant to be the other way around. Mom on her motorbike. Keep up with me if you can, that smile said.

  She and Dad had always been in my corner, through school and college, telling me I could do anything I wanted, even when I doubted it myself. When I was in graduate school and too poor to afford anything other than ramen noodles for dinner, Mom would invite herself over for coffee most weeks. She’d gripe about how I needed to dust more often, and offhandedly produce some ‘leftovers’.

  “Your father and I aren’t going to eat them, so you might as well; they’ll only go to waste otherwise.”

  Mom’s leftovers always looked suspiciously like a week’s worth of precooked dinners, but she’d deny it vehemently if I ever mentioned this.

  All I wanted to do was to live up to the start you guys gave me, Mom.

  “Do you like her? This girl, I mean.”

  “Yeah.” I paused. “Maybe I do. She listened to me talk about preserving memories, and I think she actually got it in the end, despite the fact it could mean the end of her job.”

  “I see. What’s her name, this girl? Does she like you?”

  “Her name’s Cat—uh, Catherine. As for whether she likes me, well, I wouldn’t go that far.” I rubbed my chin. “She might be,”—a flash of Cat astride me, hair falling about her shoulders, eyes wide, gasping as we broke off our kiss—”warming to me, though. Maybe. But it’s irrelevant, because I’m not staying here, right? I’m going to be gone in a week or so.”

  “You could stay for a while. You don’t have teaching for the rest of the semester, and you can write there, as well as anywhere.”

  I shrugged, although I knew she couldn’t see me. “I don’t know. It’s nice here, but I can’t stay just for a girl. I barely even know her.”

  “Ryan.” I could hear a slight tone of admonishment in her voice. “I want you to make time, now and again, to stop and think about what you’re doing, and to be sure you’re happy with it. I’ll tell you a story.”

  “Aren’t I a bit old for stories?”

  “No. Now listen. When your father and I were first together, he’d come and pick me up, and we would go out for dinner, or go out to dance, or to a movie. But, you know the funny thing? He’d bring me home, and neither of us would have the faintest memory of what we ate, or what movie we saw. We were so engrossed in each other that we’d see the same movie three times over, and barely realize.”

  “That’s wonderful, Mom.”

  “When I asked him whether he was ever bored by it, he looked aghast. He said that he’d rather be anywhere with me, than anywhere without me.”

  In the darkness of the basement, I smiled. “Dad was a lucky guy.”

  “I was a lucky girl. What I’m saying is that I want you to have that kind of experience. One day, with someone. That’s all. So maybe give this girl Catherine a chance, huh? If you like her, and she likes you, then that’s something special. If there are problems with you being together, then find a solution. Make it work.”

  “Yeah, I know. But maybe it’s best if I do it with someone who lives in the same town as me, and whose home I’m not trying to destroy. Look,” I tried to change the subject, “are you going to visit Dad on Sunday? If you take your phone, we could Skype, and I could talk to him from here.”

  A sigh. “We tried that, remember?”

  “Then let’s try it again.”

  “Okay, it’s just—”

  “Mom, if it’s a good day, it’ll make all the difference. Won’t it?”

  “Ryan, I hate that…that fucking place.” My mother almost never cursed, and the words were all the more shocking in her mouth as a result. “The worst part is, it’s not even the home. It’s fine, really. It’s me.”

  “It’s not you.” I leaned against the wall, ignoring the cold of the earth seeping through into my back, and let her talk.

  “One day, it’s a waste of my time, and his. The next day, I have my husband back. I don’t know which one it’s going to be, and I feel so guilty for feeling angry when it’s not…it’s not the day I want.”

  “Mom, listen to me.” The dust was stinging my eyes, like it always did when we got to this subject. “We aren’t required to like it, or to pretend it’s okay, because it’s not. We aren’t required to pretend it’s fair, because it’s not. All we’re required to do, is to do the best we can, and try to be as kind as we can. You’ve told me that yourself enough times.”

  “How long is it going to be like this? How long before…” There was silence on the line, and I hoped she wasn’t crying. When I was a kid, she never cried.

  “I don’t know, Mom. Nobody knows. But all we can do is carry on.”

  “Okay.” She sounded calmer now. “I’ll tell you when I’m going.”

  I made myself sound positive. “Look, when I’m back, we’ll go together, alright? Just like I said. I’ve got lots of photographs of the dig site here, and we can talk about those. That’ll be an easy conversation. You know I can talk for hours about this stuff.”

  She laughed. “I sure do. After listening to your father hold forth for all those years, I’m pretty sure I know where that came from.”

  “It’s a miracle you put up with either of us for this long, Mom.”

  “It is that.”

  “Mark my words, you’ll be stuck with both of us for a while yet.” Hold on tight to the phone, and keep talking. Talking makes everything okay, because it passes the time. Time makes everything okay, and that, you see, is why talking makes everything okay.

  “I hope so. Look, I should go, sweetheart, and leave you to work. We’ll talk on the weekend, okay? I love you.”

  “Okay, Mom. I love you too. Take care of yourself.”

  I hung up the phone, and stared at the notes I’d made.

  Note 5: Overall, the set of specimens are significantly different from previous findings in this region and geological stratum. In particular, Specimens 4 and 7 do not match any known findings, and are of cons
iderable interest. If contemporaneous with the other specimens, they may represent a previously unknown and completely novel pattern of migration to this region.

  Right now, I was certain that the fossils underneath Cat’s bar were an important discovery, one that would boost my career, and which needed to be investigated in painstaking detail.

  I pressed my fingers against my eyelids, and concentrated on feeling happy about what I’d found.

  21

  Cat

  Wunderbar was lit up like a riverboat, light pouring from every door and window into the warm night. Music filled the bar, and I was already run off my feet. Bob was down the far end of the bar, pulling pints as fast as he could, and I was trying to bus glasses back from the packed tables, and mix drinks at the same time. It wasn’t going very well, and several times I’d had to ask people to repeat their orders after a sudden emergency had driven their first order from my head.

  Why the hell didn’t I get some temporary help? I berated myself as I almost-ran a tray of empty pint glasses back to the bar and dumped them into the rapidly filling sink. Behind me, the first of the music acts was just kicking off; the evening hadn’t even started yet, and the place was already nearly full. This was going to be a great night for takings, as long as I didn’t have a nervous breakdown before the end of it.

  “Hey, Cat!” Bob waved an arm at me. “Running out of pint glasses! Got any more?” I looked under the bar. Uh-oh. There were some more upstairs, but it’d take some time to get them, and I had two Cosmos and a Long Island Iced Tea to make.

  I really hate people who order complicated drinks on a busy night.

  “Hold on, Bob. Hang in there.” Positive attitude, but a bar with no pint glasses has a really, really big problem. I wiped my brow with the serving cloth, and immediately regretted it as cold, beery liquid smeared across my fringe.