by Mike Resnick
It took me almost half the day to convince myself that what had happened the night before was just a dream. It wasn’t like any other dream I’d ever had, because I remembered every detail of it, every word she said, every gesture she made. Of course she hadn’t really visited me, but just the same I couldn’t get Priscilla Wallace out of my mind, so I finally stopped working and used my computer to try to learn more about her.
There was nothing more to be found under her name except for that single brief entry. I tried a search on Travels with My Cats and came up empty. I checked to see if her father had ever written a book about his explorations; he hadn’t. I even contacted a few of the hotels she had stayed at, alone or with her father, but none of them kept records that far back.
I tried one line of pursuit after another, but none of them proved fruitful. History had swallowed her up almost as completely as it would someday swallow me. Other than the book, the only proof I had that she had ever lived was that one computer entry, consisting of ten words and two dates. Wanted criminals couldn’t hide from the law any better than she’d hidden from posterity.
Finally I looked out the window and realized that night had fallen and everyone else had gone home. (There’s no night shift on a weekly paper.) I stopped by a local diner, grabbed a ham sandwich and a cup of coffee, and headed back to the lake.
I watched the 10:00 news on TV, then sat down and picked up her book again, just to convince myself that she really had lived once upon a time. After a couple of minutes I got restless, put the book back on a table, and walked out for a breath of fresh air.
She was sitting on the porch swing, right where she had been the night before. There was a different cat next to her, a black one with white feet and white circles around its eyes.
She noticed me looking at the cat. “This is Goggle,” she said. “I think he’s exceptionally well-named, don’t you?”
“I suppose,” I said distractedly.
“The white one is Giggle, because he loves getting into all sorts of mischief.” I didn’t say anything. Finally she smiled. “Which of them has your tongue?”
“You’re back,” I said at last.
“Of course I am.”
“I was reading your book again,” I said. “I don’t think I’ve ever encountered anyone who loved life so much.”
“There’s so much to love!”
“For some of us.”
“It’s all around you, Ethan,” she said.
“I prefer seeing it through your eyes. It was like you were born again into a new world each morning,” I said. “I suppose that’s why I kept your book, and why I find myself re-reading it—to share what you see and feel.”
“You can feel things yourself.”
I shook my head. “I prefer what you feel.”
“Poor Ethan,” she said sincerely. “You’ve never loved anything, have you?”
“I’ve tried.”
“That isn’t what I said.” She stared at me curiously. “Have you ever married?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know.” I decided I might as well give her an honest answer. “Probably because none of them ever measured up to you.”
“I’m not that special,” she said.
“To me you are. You always have been.”
She frowned. “I wanted my book to enrich your life, Ethan, not ruin it.”
“You didn’t ruin it,” I said. “You made it a little more bearable.”
“I wonder…” she mused.
“About what?”
“My being here. It’s puzzling.”
“Puzzling is an understatement,” I said. “Unbelievable is more the word for it.”
She shook her head distractedly. “You don’t understand. I remember last night.”
“So do I—every second of it.”
“That’s not what I meant.” She stroked the cat absently. “I was never brought back before last night. I wasn’t sure then. I thought perhaps I forgot after each episode. But today I remember last night.”
“I’m not sure I follow you.”
“You can’t be the only person to read my book since I died. Or even if you were, I’ve never been called back before, not even by you.” She stared at me for a long moment. “Maybe I was wrong.”
“About what?”
“Maybe what brought me here wasn’t the fact that I needed to be read. Maybe it’s because you so desperately need someone.”
“I—” I began heatedly, and then stopped. For a moment it seemed like the whole world had stopped with me. Then the moon came out from behind a cloud, and an owl hooted off to the left.
“What is it?”
“I was about to tell you that I’m not that lonely,” I said. “But it would have been a lie.”
“It’s nothing to be ashamed of, Ethan.”
“It’s nothing to brag about, either.” There was something about her that made me say things I’d never said to anyone else, including myself. “I had such high hopes when I was a boy. I was going to love my work, and I was going to be good at it. I was going find a woman to love and spend the rest of my life with. I was going to see all the places you described. Over the years I saw each of those hopes die. Now I settle for paying my bills and getting regular check-ups at the doctor’s.” I sighed deeply. “I think my life can be described as a fully-realized diminished expectation.”
“You have to take risks, Ethan,” she said gently.
“I’m not like you,” I said. “I wish I was, but I’m not. Besides, there aren’t any wild places left.”
She shook her head. “That’s not what I meant. Love involves risk. You have to risk getting hurt.”
“I’ve been hurt,” I said. “It’s nothing to write home about.”
“Maybe that’s why I’m here. You can’t be hurt by a ghost.”
The hell I can’t, I thought. Aloud I said: “Are you a ghost?”
“I don’t feel like one.”
“You don’t look like one.”
“How do I look?” she asked.
“As lovely as I always knew you were.”
“Fashions change.”
“But beauty doesn’t,” I said.
“That’s very kind of you to say, but I must look very old fashioned. In fact, the world I knew must seem primitive to you.” Her face brightened. “It’s a new millennium. Tell me what’s happened.”
“We’ve walked on the moon—and we’ve landed ships on Mars and Venus.”
She looked up into the night sky. “The moon!” she exclaimed. Then: “Why are you here when you could be there?”
“I’m not a risk-taker, remember?”
“What an exciting time to be alive!” she said enthusiastically. “I always wanted to see what lay beyond the next hill. But you—you get to see what’s beyond the next star!”
“It’s not that simple,” I said.
“But it will be,” she persisted.
“Someday,” I agreed. “Not during my lifetime, but someday.”
“Then you should die with the greatest reluctance,” she said. “I’m sure I did.” She looked up at the stars, as if envisioning herself flying to each of them. “Tell me more about the future.”
“I don’t know anything about the future,” I said.
“My future. Your present.”
I told her what I could. She seemed amazed that hundreds of millions of people now traveled by air, that I didn’t know anyone who didn’t own a car, and that train travel had almost disappeared in America. The thought of television fascinated her; I decided not to tell her what a vast wasteland it had been since its inception. Color movies, sound movies, computers—she wanted to know all about them. She was eager to learn if zoos had become more humane, if people had become more humane. She couldn’t believe that heart transplants were actually routine.
I spoke for hours. Finally I just got so dry I told her I was going to have to take a break for a couple of minutes while
I went into the kitchen and got us some drinks. She’d never heard of Fanta or Dr. Pepper, which is what I had, and she didn’t like beer, so I made her an iced tea and popped open a Bud for me. When I brought them out to the porch she and Goggle were gone.
I didn’t even bother looking for her. I knew she had returned to the somewhere from which she had come.
She was back again the next three nights, sometimes with one cat, sometimes with both. She told me about her travels, about her overwhelming urge to see what there was to see in the little window of time allotted us humans, and I told her about the various wonders she would never see.
It was strange, conversing with a phantom every night. She kept assuring me she was real, and I believed it when she said it, but I was still afraid to touch her and discover that she was just a dream after all. Somehow, as if they knew my fears, the cats kept their distance too; not once in all those evenings did either of them ever so much as brush against me.
“I wish I’d seen all the sights they’ve seen,” I said on the third night, nodding toward the cats.
“Some people thought it was cruel to take them all over the world with me,” replied Priscilla, absently running her hand over Goggle’s back as he purred contentedly. “I think it would have been more cruel to leave them behind.”
“None of the cats—these or the ones that came before—ever caused any problems?”
“Certainly they did,” she said. “But when you love something, you put up with the problems.”
“Yeah, I suppose you do.”
“How do you know?” she asked. “I thought you said you’d never loved anything.”
“Maybe I was wrong.”
“Oh?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe I love someone who vanishes every night when I turn my back.” She stared at me, and suddenly I felt very awkward. I shrugged uncomfortably. “Maybe.”
“I’m touched, Ethan,” she said. “But I’m not of this world, not the way you are.”
“I haven’t complained,” I said. “I’ll settle for the moments I can get.” I tried to smile; it was a disaster. “Besides, I don’t even know if you’re real.”
“I keep telling you I am.”
“I know.”
“What would you do if you knew I was?” she asked.
“Really?”
“Really.”
I stared at her. “Try not to get mad,” I began.
“I won’t get mad.”
“I’ve wanted to hold you and kiss you since the first instant I saw you on my veranda,” I said.
“Then why haven’t you?”
“I have this…this dread that if I try to touch you and you’re not here, if I prove conclusively to myself that you don’t exist, then I’ll never see you again.”
“Remember what I told you about love and risk?”
“I remember.”
“And?”
“Maybe I’ll try tomorrow,” I said. “I just don’t want to lose you yet. I’m not feeling that brave tonight.”
She smiled, a rather sad smile I thought. “Maybe you’ll get tired of reading me.”
“Never!”
“But it’s the same book all the time. How often can you read it?”
I looked at her, young, vibrant, maybe two years from death, certainly less than three. I knew what lay ahead for her; all she could see was a lifetime of wonderful experiences stretching out into the distance.
“Then I’ll read one of your other books.”
“I wrote others?” she asked.
“Dozens of them,” I lied.
She couldn’t stop smiling. “Really?”
“Really.”
“Thank you, Ethan,” she said. “You’ve made me very happy.”
“Then we’re even.”
There was a noisy squabble down by the lake. She quickly looked around for her cats, but they were on the porch, their attention also attracted by the noise.
“Raccoons,” I said.
“Why are they fighting?”
“Probably a dead fish washed up on the shore,” I answered. “They’re not much for sharing.”
She laughed. “They remind me of some people I know.” She paused. “Some people I knew,” she amended.
“Do you miss them—your friends, I mean?”
“No. I had hundreds of acquaintances, but very few close friends. I was never in one place long enough to make them. It’s only when I’m with you that I realize they’re gone.” She paused. “I don’t quite understand it. I know that I’m here with you, in the new millennium—but I feel like I just celebrated my 32nd birthday. Tomorrow I’ll put flowers on my father’s grave, and next week I set sail for Madrid.”
“Madrid?” I repeated. “Will you watch them fight the brave bulls in the arena?”
An odd expression crossed her face. “Isn’t that curious?” she said.
“Isn’t what curious?”
“I have no idea what I’ll do in Spain…but you’ve read all my books, so you know.”
“You don’t want me to tell you,” I said.
“No, that would spoil it.”
“I’ll miss you when you leave.”
“You’ll pick up one of my books and I’ll be right back here,” she said. “Besides, I went more than 75 years ago.”
“It gets confusing,” I said.
“Don’t look so depressed. We’ll be together again.”
“It’s only been a week, but I can’t remember what I did with my evenings before I started talking to you.”
The squabbling at the lake got louder, and Giggle and Goggle began huddling together.
“They’re frightening my cats,” said Priscilla.
“I’ll go break it up,” I said, climbing down from the veranda and heading off to where the raccoons were battling. “And when I get back,” I added, feeling bolder the farther I got from her, “maybe I’ll find out just how real you are after all.”
By the time I reached the lake, the fight was all but over. One large raccoon, half a fish in its mouth, glared at me, totally unafraid. Two others, not quite as large, stood about ten feet away. All three were bleeding from numerous gashes, but it didn’t look like any of them had suffered a disabling injury.
“Serves you right,” I muttered.
I turned and started trudging back up to the house from the lake. The cats were still on the veranda, but Priscilla wasn’t. I figured she’d stepped inside to get another iced tea, or perhaps use the bathroom—one more factor in favor of her not being a ghost—but when she didn’t come out in a couple of minutes I searched the house for her.
She wasn’t there. She wasn’t anywhere in the yard, or in the old empty barn. Finally I went back and sat down on the porch swing to wait.
A couple of minutes latter Goggle jumped up on my lap. I’d been idly petting him for a couple of minutes before I realized that he was real.
I bought some cat food in the morning. I didn’t want to set it out on the veranda, because I was sure the raccoons would get wind of it and drive Giggle and Goggle off, so I put it in a soup bowl and placed it on the counter next to the kitchen sink. I didn’t have a litter box, so I left the kitchen window open enough for them to come and go as they pleased.
I resisted the urge to find out any more about Priscilla with the computer. All that was really left to learn was how she died, and I didn’t want to know. How does a beautiful, healthy, world-traveling woman die at 34? Torn apart by lions? Sacrificed by savages? Victim of a disfiguring tropical disease? Mugged, raped and killed in New York? Whatever it was, it had robbed her of half a century. I didn’t want to think of the books she could have written in that time, but rather of the joy she could have felt as she traveled from one new destination to another. No, I very definitely didn’t want to know how she died.
I worked distractedly for a few hours, then knocked off in midafternoon and hurried home. To her.
I knew something was wrong the moment I got out of my car.
The porch swing was empty. Giggle and Goggle jumped off the veranda, raced up to me, and began rubbing against my legs as if for comfort.
I yelled her name, but there was no response. Then I heard a rustling inside the house. I raced to the door, and saw a raccoon climbing out through the kitchen window just as I entered.
The place was a mess. Evidently he had been hunting for food, and since all I had were cans and frozen meals, he just started ripping the house apart, looking for anything he could eat.
And then I saw it: Travels with My Cats lay in tatters, as if the raccoon had had a temper tantrum at the lack of food and had taken it out on the book, which I’d left on the kitchen table. Pages were ripped to shreds, the cover was in pieces, and he had even urinated on what was left.
I worked feverishly on it for hours, tears streaming down my face for the first time since I was a kid, but there was no salvaging it—and that meant there would be no Priscilla tonight, or any night until I found another copy of the book.
In a blind fury I grabbed my rifle and a powerful flashlight and killed the first six raccoons I could find. It didn’t make me feel any better—especially when I calmed down enough to consider what she would have thought of my bloodlust.
I felt like morning would never come. When it did, I raced to the office, activated my computer, and tried to find a copy of Priscilla’s book at www.abebooks.com and www.bookfinder.com, the two biggest computerized clusters of used book dealers. There wasn’t a single copy for sale.
I contacted some of the other book dealers I’d used in the past. None of them had ever heard of it.
I called the copyright division at the Library of Congress, figuring they might be able to help me. No luck: Travels with My Cats was never officially copyrighted; there was no copy on file. I began to wonder if I hadn’t dreamed the whole thing, the book as well as the woman.
Finally I called Charlie Grimmis, who advertises himself as The Book Detective. He does most of his work for anthologists seeking rights and permissions to obscure, long-out-of-print books and stories, but he didn’t care who he worked for, as long as he got his money.
It took him nine days and cost me $600, but finally I got a definitive answer:
Dear Ethan:
You led me a merry chase. I’d have bet halfway through it that the book didn’t exist, but you were right: evidently you did own a copy of a limited, numbered edition.