The Ninth Life

by Clea Simon

  ‘I don’t want to give this place up, Blackie. I mean, maybe I really can take over. The rent’s paid up till the end of the month, I know that. And if we leave …’

  She doesn’t finish. Doesn’t have to. Bushwick had the gloss of a pampered house cat, accustomed to having his way, but there is something off about him. Something driving him. ‘Nothing I can do about it tonight, though, and I need some kip. I’ll barricade the door. And at first light, Blackie, we’ll see what we can find.’

  I watch her as she sleeps, careful that she’s fully out before I do what I must. It’s pleasant, I find, to perch on the sofa’s back as she curls on the cushions below. In sleep, she becomes younger. A child almost, her face losing its taut watchfulness as it relaxes. Even her body appears softer, more childlike, her knees pulled up and one hand lying open on the pillow. As her mouth opens slightly and her breathing deepens, I dismount the sofa’s arched back and land softly by her side. It is warm here and her breath is sweet. I lean in, my whiskers coming close to those chapped and worried lips, and must pull myself back. It is her youth, I suspect, that draws me. The change I have witnessed once more from the guarded young animal of the evening to this open and tender child that urges me to give over my plans. To fit myself beside her and let her wake to the softness of my fur. I am not a house cat and have no memories of domesticity. Of kindness at the hands of others. And yet I understand its allure.

  Which, I recall, is why I must not linger. Turning from her face, with care I sniff her palm. She has told me what matters to her, but I want to know for myself what happened during her outing. Besides, before that greasy suit took off, she took his hand and shook it, although – or perhaps because – it disconcerted him. I do not think she did so for my benefit, but I will make use of her gesture, examining what traces he has left. I am glad I have eaten. As his attire suggested, Bushwick is self-indulgent. The big man has a fondness for bacon and eggs, as well as other meat products that I cannot name. His corpulence could have told me that, but there’s another scent beneath the grease and salt that is more disturbing – one that had been masked by the cheap fur and the overbearing cologne. The bitterness could be explained by illness: this man indulges himself to an unhealthy extreme. But when I factor in the sweat, beyond what the stairs up to the office merit, I sense the acid has come from more than indigestion or, perhaps, both the indigestion and the self-comforting with food spring from an external stimulus.

  This man may appear prosperous. I do not understand exactly how I am able to judge the value of his clothes. To know, as well, the impression he seeks to convey. But I sense that this is true, just as I understand the smell of his hand reveals something other than moneyed comfort and a need deeper than the hunger to consume the city’s riches. Scent does not lie: this man Bushwick lives in fear.

  He also, and this I find most strange, has not had contact with the boy Care misses so. As lightly as I can, I walk the sofa’s length, taking in every scent he has left from their brief interaction. In my mind, I run through that strange meeting: the man on an errand, stopped apparently by the appearance of a girl. No, he was lying about Tick; perhaps about many things. What I would like to know is why.

  With a lightness that belies my age, I arc over the sleeping girl and attain the floor. If only she had been sleeping when he came by, I would have answers as well as questions. Though as I leap up to that desktop, I am mulling the most challenging of all. Why, that is, I did not examine the man more thoroughly when I had my chance.

  I pause to consider this, wrapping my tail around my feet in a move both reflexive and comforting as I list the possibilities. In part, I know, it was fear that stopped me from accosting him. Fear for her, that is. Unlike that brute at the pawn shop, this man was not a killer of dumb beasts. I would not have turned my back on him, not without expecting a sly kick, but he posed no real danger to me. To the girl, though, he could have been a source of evil. His lasciviousness boded ill, and his love of money and of comfort worse. He would trade in human flesh with no more compunction than he would devour an animal’s, and Care’s youth and frailty would only add to her marketability in his all-consuming world.

  In part, my own fastidious nature may have been to blame. Even now, the stench of the man makes my ears flicker back. The fact of that fur, as well, offends me. Not the source – some are made to die, just as some to hunt – but the care, or lack of it. When I kill, I do so cleanly – a quick shake to snap the neck. A bite to pierce the skull. Although it is reasonable to assume I have offspring, I have no recollection of teaching a kitten to do the same. Never had to prolong the last agony into the panic and squeals that marked that pelt. It is not what I do. I hunt alone.

  Or I have, until now. Which may, ultimately, be what was at play today as I stood back to watch. The girl is intelligent and has had some rudimentary training. But she is not a cat, and now I regret my wasted deference. The opportunity lost as I, the hunter, stood aside. My vision is not my strongest sense, and yet I was acting in a most un-feline fashion. Did I consider an attack? Or was there something else about this man, about this shopkeeper, that kept me in the shadows? It is a question for another night, I decide finally. The girl has started to stir and I do not know when I will get this chance again.

  First, the papers. Care has been through them, and her scent lingers. She has found soap to wash with, and the impression of her warm, clean fingers makes me pause over certain pages. It is not sentiment that holds me so. While I consider my senses superior to those of any human, and certainly this child, she has the advantage of me in one way: I cannot read. And although I sense the import of these papers, I receive only the barest hint – as if in memory, forgotten, from a dream. No, I seek out those pages with which the girl has lingered. It is her interest in them that marks them for me, and when I find the one over which she exclaimed, I pull it free, gently piercing its corner with one extended claw.

  It is one of the newer pages. The scrawl looks hurried and the writing brief. Still, it had some significance. She held this one so tightly she left an indent, and I run my nose over the marks. She sweat holding this, and there is a faint mark of water – a trace of salt – in the corner. I sniff that too, though it leaves me both confused and saddened. I would turn away if its mystery did not compel me so. But as I close my eyes, I get another, fainter trace. Tobacco from a pipe, its ashes tossed carelessly as the writer puffed. The nicotine was soothing and it helped him concentrate when sleep was not an option. I imagine him sitting in that chair: the old man as he must have been, resting his pipe here – the darkness of a burn marks the desk’s edge – and scratching away at this paper mere hours, perhaps, before his death.

  This is what drives her, more than defiance of AD or fear for the trades he might apprentice her to. She seeks some connection with the old man, an understanding of his end. I settle on the page to absorb what I can. This quest has led her to another dead man – Fat Peter – and perhaps cost her the boy. Yet she will continue; I can read that in her as easily as I can spot a mouse.

  I have been a fool. Abandoning the desk, I return to the windowsill. All I can get, I have gotten from those pages, from this room. I am not a house pet, nor will I ever be. What I am is a hunter, more experienced than this poor child, and yet I am hanging back? No, the night is mine. The girl is safe for now. Warm and fed, the door blockaded against any intrusion.

  The window is low. She has closed it some, against the cold, but with my feline flexibility I can work my way beneath the lowered pane. I judge the leap more accurately this time, landing with the grace of my species despite my age and despite the stiffness that will not shake off. One last look up at the window, still and dark. If all goes well I will return by morning. But now the quarry waits.

  FOURTEEN

  It’s no great feat to track the suited man. If anything, I would prefer more of a challenge. The time I spend with the girl already threatens to soften me, to take away something of my feral edge. But althoug
h our unwelcome visitor reeked as well of the usual vices – alcohol, the must of badly stored cigars and a particularly pervasive cologne – what I stick to is the potent combination that sets my ears back. The odor of that pelt – dead fur and, now, wet wool – overlying the very personal scent of his fear. As I pass the night haunts of his kind, the other scents are common. Where they don’t confound each other, they explain themselves. One would want to dull one’s senses around such loud and uncongenial company, the numbing effect of the drink covering the poor quality of the leaf and vice versa.

  I am not surprised that my pass takes me back across the tracks and down toward the river. But this man did not travel by back alleys or by boxcar. No, despite the anxious sweat – or perhaps because of it, afraid of the enclosed car, the metal machine, the box – he seems to have sauntered, making his way down the wider avenues, even as they grow rough and loud.

  He would not have been alone. As the night progresses, I pass revelers – some in couples, others in crowds. One group catches my particular attention, their voices growing louder even in the time it takes me to make my way up the block. I do not need their volume to know their placement, the slight movements as they laugh and swing at each other in jocular role play. Three men, deep in drink. Despite their inebriation, I am wary. Males in their first flush of strength, they are ready for the hunt, and I, though a predator too, am smaller than they are. Where once I may have ignored such men, I do not now. Not since my vision of the other night, that dream of three.

  But this trio is another such. There is no one leader, taller than his companions, and seemingly no one guiding intellect either. As their voices fade behind me, they talk of women and I cannot help but think of Care. In a year or two she will be seen as sport by such as these. I cannot help but hope that she sees them as I do, all bluff and noise and cheap cigars. I recall the trace of scent on those papers, a leaf both mellow and fragrant, and wonder again at the character of the old man, the one who died. What he would have done for the girl, if he could.

  I have no time for idle musings, however, and must seek this Bushwick’s scent. I open my mouth, taking in the damp of the air and all the fragrance of spring. An opossum has her burrow somewhere near. Has taken prey and given birth. Life and rot and – yes! – the sharp tang of sweat and fear as well. Bushwick has passed here, where the track is confined between cobblestones and concrete, his scent mixing with the cinder and ash of the mechanical beast.

  The scent is muddled – the train, the river damp. It matters not – I am on familiar ground. A name comes into mind: Dock Street. And I have found his lair: a warehouse at the edge of the nightlife district, bordering the docks. A closed block of brick, it poses a challenge, but not an insurmountable one. Although Bushwick’s trail leads to the street, I make my way toward the back, toward the river. Halfway there, I find my ingress. The scrabbling of claws leads me from the gutter to a vent of some sort, where the mortar has been worn away by a slow and constant drip. Had I not recently fed, I would find good hunting here – this is not only an opening into the building, it is a source of water for creatures of many kinds. As it stands, I pass through, pointedly ignoring the timid stares from the crevices. For tonight, my ears signal my disinterest. Let there be a truce.

  I hear the frightened chatter as I pass by. The denizens of this space know well how to read my signals. This is how they live, but I cannot blame them for their nervous skittering. As I believe Care has learned, trust is a gift given only once.

  I do my best to tune them out. I am hunting bigger prey, and once I am above the basement I know I have him. Bushwick, the man in the suit, has been here recently. His scent is fresh: new tobacco – newly lit, that is, but stale – the fetid fur and even more, that bitter undertone that makes his human sweat so sour.

  It is almost too strong. I close my eyes as it washes over me and find myself clinging to thoughts of Care. She has sensed something of this man, has tested his bluff with her own will and found him wanting. Still, he has experience on her and the power of a suit and a big cigar. She does right to be wary of him, although if I can find his weakness I will do what I can to bring proof of it to her.

  Tick. That is whom she fears for most, the reason she let her guard down with the suited man. Ears up, I listen. These walls jump with life, but I tune out the rodents and the grubs. His breathing would be softer than the large man’s, his footsteps quicker and more light. Starting with the corners, I search for any trace of the boy. For his powder-soft child scent or the acrid tang that had also marked him during our brief acquaintance. Scat. The word comes to me. Of course. But there is nothing of the boy or his drug here, not even the second-hand scent of one who had come in contact with him or his few possessions within memory.

  With the silence my kind are known for, I scale the stairs. Here a hall is lined with offices and wooden doors left half ajar, their daytime occupants heedless of the outside world. Bushwick is king here. I catch his scent on every door; every surface holds his ashes. I imagine the scene by daylight: workers scurrying as those rats did before me. Bushwick prowling at his ease. And yet not – that fear scent again. The tang of sweat. He is a big man, overdressed in his shoddy fur, but there is more to his stench than overheating, than vanity. I am on Bushwick’s territory, his base of operations, but he is not comfortable here either.

  This is a mystery I would unlock, and so, with paws and stealth, I make my way through the remainder of the floor to see what scares him so. The first room sends me reeling. Scent so thick as to be maddening. Tobacco: the leaves in back already rotting sweet. Bushwick and his minions have not cottoned onto the leaks that weakened their foundation. They do not know their store is going bad. This, I realize, as I retreat back to the hall, must be the source of the man’s power – there is too much here for his personal use. Too much, even, for the revelers I passed on the street. The man must bring this foul leaf in to distribute throughout these streets.

  The next chamber has been better secured. Against men, however, and not a cat who can contort himself through even the tightest space, around a loosened grill and in. Bushwick was more careful with the venting here, and as I drop to the floor I understand why. Once again, I am enveloped immediately by an aroma so strong it sets my ears back. Prey animals once. Or … I blink in the darkness, dim even for my eyes, and make out three figures. Men. No, mannequins; faceless and cold, despite the coats draped over their – I see now – decidedly female bodies, set before a sofa steeped in the funk of flesh and ash. I think of Bushwick’s collar, the way he stroked its cold, dead fur, of the reek that nearly sent me reeling. Of the woman outside Diamond Jim’s. For a moment, I wonder if I have grown used to the miasma. The smell of fear and death and commerce. The trade in flesh of many kinds. Or … wait, did Bushwick not say that such as these were missing? Could this room or others like it have held more? Is that why the stench has faded? I examine the mannequins, their forms so cool and still. All are covered; all are clothed. This stage has been set for its tawdry drama, and it has not been disturbed.

  And then it hits me. What I have not scented here matters as much as the odor that now enrobes me. I have not found Tick or any trace of him, despite the suited man’s insistence that the boy sent him to Care. Nor, I realize, have I gotten a trace of the old man, the subtle spice of his good pipe tobacco or the indescribable warmth Care sought on those pages. Not in these rooms, at any rate. Nor, I suspect, were these coats ever missing, despite what Bushwick has told the girl.

  Why this lie should threaten him so, I do not know, but logic suggests a connection. As surely as rats will find water and weak spots and rot, so too will men link money and power. And while this chamber – this entire building – appears full of the goods of commerce that the city craves, there is something wrong here. Bushwick is not enjoying the fruits of his success. He is seeking something, something he has lied about, and there is some element of that search that has left him in fear.

  FIFTEEN
/>   Getting back into the office is more challenging than leaving it, and not simply because of the distance or my sore hind leg. Although I do not like to admit that I failed to consider the specifics of how I left – or how I might re-enter, I am forced to as I sit in the alley, eyeing the wall before me. The brick is pitted; the years and the grit that cycles down this alley have left their mark. But even that crumbling surface will offer little purchase for my claws, and the ledge is simply too high for me to jump. I do not need to test this hypothesis, as I am quite capable of judging both height and distance and have no illusions about my capacity at this point in my life. Which is not to say I have not already tried it, to the amusement of a muskrat who has since, wisely, made himself scarce.

  It is not yet dawn, although the shadows of the street have begun to sharpen with the coming of day. The girl, from what I can hear, is still within. Still asleep, most likely, the scent of her former mentor and the lock on the door both granting her a peace I do not think she enjoys often. I would let her remain at rest, gathering what strength and solace she may. And once she wakes, then I would warn her, by what means I have not yet devised. I would turn her away from this Bushwick and his false quest. She is curious, I know, and more than that, desires to prove herself. To set herself up in the field her mentor was training her for. It’s a sensible development, promising longer health and greater autonomy than any of the other options that have been suggested. Watching her eat last night reminded me of how limited her resources are, how restricted her skills for survival.

  Still, I would have her seek another task – another field if not another mentor. This Bushwick is not a thug like those by Fat Peter’s, but he – his warehouse – stink of something worse. No, this is simply another form of trap, although she does not see it. Another source of filth that would use and discard her, like so many soft and living creatures used thus before, though this brings me to a deeper fear: that she sees the trap and knows it for what it is. Her mentor was a hunter, of sorts. That much I have gathered. This girl – Care – is on her way to emulate him, to mimic his skills. Not simply for a livelihood but for her own satisfaction. She seeks redress for her mentor. To avenge him and solve the mystery of his death, and that is the most dangerous motivation of all.