The Ninth Life

by Clea Simon

  He steps back into the street, a look of grim determination on his face, and is gone.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  ‘Where’s Tick?’ She spins around, eyes wild. The man’s disappearance has spooked her.

  I watch, unable to explain. The man, more scarecrow than live threat, had frightened the boy when he reached for her. She heard the boy’s yell, his warning shout. That she did not notice him backing away was a lapse. Now he has run, though to safety or to her enemies I cannot tell, as she turns again, locking her eyes on mine. ‘Blackie, did they get him?’

  That is the wrong question, as foolish and one-sided as asking that frail man whether he had given in to temptation. Though he, at least, explained that it was his reluctance to act that ruined him rather than some desperate gesture. I would that the boy were as unwilling, but I cannot in good conscience vouch for him – for either his intentions or his moral strength. I lash my tail, once back, once forth and hold her gaze, willing cool by example. Willing her to consider.

  She slumps back against the wall. I have failed. ‘Damn it, Blackie. I don’t know what Tick heard – or what he’ll do.’

  Unable to offer counsel, I rub against her ankles. This seems to calm her, and for a moment we are at peace. The shouting has died down, the truck has left. The thin man either back at his labors, or silenced for his trespass, I do not know. It is interesting, this absence of sound. Like the absence of an action, it may have a meaning, as the lack of something – of a marker – means a life.

  I am pondering this as the girl pushes herself off the wall to stand upright. ‘Blackie.’ She brushes off the red brick dust. ‘It’s time for me to take control.’

  I don’t like it, the way she strides off down the street. She’s talking to herself, head down, heedless of the bustle around her. It’s broad daylight, and with the sun the city’s denizens have come out, taking to the street for their business and their leisure. Groups of men on the corner rake their eyes over her, as slim as she is, her confidence pulling their eyes as they smoke and laugh. She’s on the border of adulthood, I can see, her attitude swaying the balance. A hackney driver calls to her as she crosses in front of him, while a suit – his gaze as greasy as his modish hair – ignores his companion to watch her pass.

  I do what I can to keep up, dashing from shadow to doorway, availing myself of the preoccupied rush to skirt both vehicles and feet. I would abandon her, in this setting, were it not for her mood. Midday in the open, she ought to be safe – safer than I – but I do not like the tension around her. She fears for the boy, I understand, even if I do not share her concern. More than that, she is settling on some plan, some course of action. I see once again why her mentor must have chosen her. She is strong, this girl, her determination the biggest thing about her. But it is foolish to simply walk through the city this way. Like me, she is a small creature, a hunter only on a limited field. Like me, she must practice stealth, must take care if she is going to survive.

  ‘What the—’ The boot appears from nowhere, and I dodge it only by leaping into the gutter. ‘Filthy beast!’ I scramble to distance the agitated voices and must swerve and dash to avoid catastrophe in the street. By the time I have reached safety – the underside of a vendor’s cart, a shadowed place both cool and dark – I have lost the girl. I am also, I am embarrassed to note, panting. There is nothing to be gained by dying out here, I decide, and instead tuck myself into a niche by the wheel well, to wait out the crushing mob and, perhaps, to think.

  I understand the girl’s vexation. Her courage was discounted, her offering – that ledger – rejected as of as little value as any trinket that a street waif might pick up. She is frustrated, I can tell, by her inability to negotiate with that self-satisfied miscreant Bushwick. She does not comprehend him as I do – the rancid sweat, the fear he barely holds at bay – but she does not like him and sees him as a hindrance, blocking her way.

  This I know, and it makes me concerned for her, for the bluff she may attempt. She may have started on this path out of grief, fear and loss prompting her to avenge the old man she so dearly misses, but she has added another impetus along the way. As she told the smug man, she seeks to take over the old man’s business. She wants to finish his assignment, to solve the crime he had been hired to investigate. It would be a tall order for a full-grown male. For a young girl, it is madness.

  But – as my eyes close in the cool shade – she may yet have a chance. Another type of female, supported by societal strictures and accustomed to its cosseting, would have given up by now. This Care is tough. She is smart, and as I have noted before, she has been given the rudiments of training. No, it is not impossible that she should achieve both her aims. The obstacles she faces are formidable, however. Not only Bushwick but her former colleague, AD, the leader of that rough assemblage by the docks. Which is why I do not trust the boy either. He loves Care. I am not so removed from social intercourse as to miss that. But his allegiance is, at best, divided. She must keep in mind that he has disappeared once more, and that fear may not be his only motivation. How easy would it be for him to lead those two thugs up to her, whether wittingly or not? If AD sent him scurrying, if he were careless – or chose to be for a moment blind – those two brutes could follow and then flank him. And Care, preoccupied by her hunt, might perhaps be heedless, be searching for connections between a jeweled necklace and those who may have seen it last. Not until all chance for escape was lost would she look up and see them waiting; hear the cold laugh as they made their final approach – the two henchmen stepping forward to complete their vile task.

  I can picture them with ease, tall and looming against the light. The two bullies approach first, stepping each to the side to better set their trap – to seal off any hope of escape. The one in the middle does not speak, and too late I recall that cruel sneer as he comes toward me …

  I wake in darkness, the shade beneath the cart matched now by shadow on the street. Shaking the dream like dust from my fur, I peer from my sanctuary. The day has passed, the traffic calmed. Above me, the vendor is pulling in his wares, folding down the awning that protected his display. The vibration must have woken me, though I cannot discount the possibility that its creaking collapse may also have sparked the dream. No matter – it is time for me to set out. The girl needs a companion she can trust. Already, I may be too late.

  Twilight, with the long cool shadows of early spring, and the streets are quiet. I consider the scent of people passing, of their animals in leash and harness in the business of the day. I spy, as well, others of my type. A nursing mother – her hunger and desperation have driven her out wide and early. I mark a corner; she would know of my passing regardless, but vow not to hunt, not here. Three kittens I can sense, too large for milk alone. The humans who come here, their buildings full of grain and cloth stuffs, should be grateful for her attentive nature.

  I steer clear. While I am subject to the usual urges of my nature, there is nothing for me here. The female is of single mind at this point, her energy focused on her young. In truth, I realize as I continue on – her scent fading on the cold stones – I do not care. As I trot, my ears picking up the sounds of the nocturnal world waking, I ask myself if, perhaps, this is the result of age. A dulling of appetite. I try to recall an earlier time of heat and urgency and find I cannot.

  I pause, in part to take in the air, mouth open, for all its richness. In part because this thought has troubled me. I have no memory of my life before I came to myself in that drainage ditch. Before the … incident, for lack of a better word, that nearly killed me. Perhaps the girl was right, and I was at some point a pet. My fur bristles at the concept: to be servile. To beg. But as I ponder, I see myself, suddenly, contemplating a fire contained behind a screen. I feel myself warm and well fed and – dare I say? – complacent.

  No, I shake it off. If that was my life, it is over now and has left me with my senses, at least, intact. I raise my head, the damp air intoxicating with its riches. Perh
aps I am not too battered, too tired, too old.

  And then, at last, I find her – the girl. Not in person but in scent, the trace of fear near gone from her trail of sweat and thought and dust. I begin to follow and then stop, pausing as the evening fog begins to settle.

  It is not her trail. To my fine senses, her scent is such that I could track her through the city. It is my deductive powers that stop me, here on the frayed edge of this massive city. I could follow, ducking around corners in the dark. To do so is not the best use of my time or my instincts, however, tagging along, always a beat behind. And so I leap onto a window ledge, its glass long since gone, and wrap my tail around my feet to think.

  The girl is on the hunt. My senses tell me she is traveling quickly and on her own. That does not make her invulnerable, and I have seen both the size and the tenacity of her enemies. What I need to do is anticipate her moves. One young girl, nearly a woman. For a street cat who has, apparently, survived for years, this should not be too difficult a challenge.

  She seeks the boy. Therefore, first I consider the basement where they have sheltered. It is also there she left the book and its continued security, as well as her questions about its utility, might draw her back there. What she does not consider is the boy who found it for her, and who may have drawn his own conclusions about its worth.

  I leap down to the pavement and set off. The city reveals itself to me through sounds as well as scents, and I can hear the nighttime revelers begin to gather blocks away. I have not forgotten my last visit to this area, this middle ground between the city and the river, and I plot my path accordingly. The girl is older than her years in many ways, and I tell myself she will devise her own route.

  But as I round a battered dumpster and slink through the torn chain link at an alley’s end, I wonder. Her mentor’s office was her last stated goal, and it is a sanctuary, too. Perhaps it is my concern about the boy, about his familiarity with the basement and the book, but I find the thought of that other, more ordered space appealing. Perhaps it is the creak and ache of my old bones, seeking peace and warmth. I think of a fire again, the roaring contained behind a hearth. I think of my standing – a cat of the streets, a feral, a beast – and pause again. No matter, it is a place to start, and I alter my path, leaving behind the boisterous waterfront for quieter streets. If I cannot trust my instincts, I am dead already, one more cas-ualty of the growing dark.

  TWENTY-SIX

  The building’s door is propped open, the brick inside smelling more of mud than of a human hand. When I see the rags left on the floor, a drying pile left in the shadow of the stairs, I understand. I am not the only creature seeking shelter in this damp and rainy spring. The occupant has gone out, seeking food or solace, but he wishes to return, and no one here has bothered to forbid him entrance.

  Up the stairs, I pause before the office. The door – what there was – has been shattered; splinters of the old wood have landed a body’s length away. From inside, I hear movement. Something heavy – a chair, that desk – is being moved. Papers catch and crackle, caught beneath. Not lifted, then, slid. One person, light.

  I approach and note her scent, even as she curses, softly, beneath her breath. Care, alone. Tail erect, I step into the doorway, waiting for her to turn.

  ‘Blackie!’ She beams, despite the disarray, and comes forward as if to lift me. Neat as a dancer, I slip by her, perching instead on the back of the sofa. This is what she had been moving – or righting, perhaps – the cushions I once shredded now look far worse used, the cotton batting leaking out like the innards of a beast.

  ‘Bushwick’s people gave this place a good going over, didn’t they?’ She kneels before me and I see what she has been after. The papers she did not remove are scattered now across the floor, muddied with the prints of boots and other marks. ‘I don’t know what they were after, though. I doubt those oafs could even read.’

  She gathers up the pages, bouncing them on the floor to straighten them and returns them to the desk. That piece, I see, has also been moved, and its drawers lie now on the floor.

  ‘I told him I had the ledger.’ She looks around and blinks, lost in her thoughts. ‘I’d think this was a message, only he did come here seeking something, before …’ She shakes her head. ‘I don’t know what it is.’

  Food is not the answer, but I don’t refuse when she fishes a last piece of that cheese out of a corner, cutting off a slice. She sniffs the bread carefully when she finds it on the floor, but she eats that too, knowing better than to offer me such poor stuff. She has propped the door shut with the desk chair and relaxes now, lying back on the couch. There is no hearth here, no fire, but it is shelter of a sort. Her breathing settles into an easy rhythm, and my own eyes begin to close when we hear it: a scraping too big to be a mouse. A rattle of a knob. The door.

  She is on her feet in a moment, her eyes darting from the door over to the window. I am on the ledge but I cannot see her take this route, this high and the perch so narrow. Panic passes over her face – the realization that she is trapped – and then she grabs the board that once framed the door in one hand and, in the other, the small knife she has used on the cheese.

  The door rattles and the chair scrapes inward. She raises the board as a hand reaches in. And drops it. ‘Tick!’ She pulls the door open to embrace the boy who is, I am relieved to see, alone. ‘Thank God.’

  I do not know if her relief is because the intruder is this boy or because the boy is safe. I keep my distance as she embraces the dirty child and pulls him over to the sofa. The bread is gone, but she hands him the cheese and a jar with some kind of paste. As she does, he reaches into his thin jacket and pulls out a cloth-wrapped package that he presents with both hands, as he would a prize.

  ‘The book.’ She looks up, his impromptu meal forgotten as she takes it and then embraces him once more.

  ‘I thought, well, if you want to take it to AD …’

  ‘No, no, I don’t.’ She sits back, unwrapping the ledger and opening it. ‘Thank you, Tick.’

  ‘I was thinking.’ The boy studies her, ignoring the food. ‘If you give it to him, maybe he’ll forgive you, Care. Maybe he’ll let you come back.’

  ‘I’m not going back, Tick.’ She speaks casually. Concentrating on the ledger, she does not see the distress her words cause. ‘I meant what I said. I’m going to take over the old man’s business. I can stay here. We can stay here, Tick. The old man paid the rent in advance, by mail. I just have to make this one case and we can keep this place. A place of our own, Tick. And a job – a real job.’

  She turns a page, shaking her head slowly, squinting in the fading light. ‘If only I could figure this out,’ she says. But then she closes it, looking up, at last, at the boy. ‘It doesn’t matter. I have enough. I’m going to Diamond Jim in the morning, Tick. I can tell him who stole his necklace – and then got rid of Fat Peter to hide his trail. He’ll take care of the rest and we won’t have to worry anymore.’

  She turns back to the book, too distracted to notice that the boy does not share her enthusiasm. That his head hangs down and he doesn’t eat. That his hands play nervously in his pocket as we sit in the growing dark.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  The boy doesn’t want to go. That much is clear by the way he fusses, curling up in his makeshift nest – those slashed pillows – as Care tries to rouse him in the morning.

  ‘Please, Care …’ His words are muffled as he rolls over, pulling the old quilt above his head. She had found that quilt in the wreckage last night, its lining torn open, and given it to the boy. Although I bristled at this, in truth she didn’t need it. I slept by her, stretched out by her side on what remained of the sofa’s frame, both to lend her my warmth and as a safeguard, should that boy – or any other – make threatening moves in the night.

  ‘Let me stay here.’

  ‘Tick, I need you.’ She shakes the boy, more gently than I would have advised. ‘Get up.’

  He’s still grumbling
as she reaches for his clothes, shed overnight.

  ‘What’s this?’ She lifts his trousers, more patch than whole cloth at this point. She reaches into a pocket and pulls out the brass weight.

  ‘I found it, when I went back for the book.’ The boy sits up and rubs his eyes. ‘You threw it.’

  ‘So I did.’ She tucks the boy’s keepsake back into the trousers before handing them over. His complaints spent, he begins to dress.

  ‘Where are we going?’ He takes the mug she has handed him. Although she’s been wisely wary of electric light, she has risked a plug-in kettle that screeches like a trapped rabbit when it boils.

  ‘Not we, Tick.’ She fills a second mug, stirring in a spoonful of powder. Curious, I leap to the tabletop and sniff, recoiling at the bitterness of the brown grains swirling. ‘I’m going to talk to Diamond Jim.’ She smiles at my discomfort and strokes my back. ‘Present my evidence.’

  ‘Your evidence?’ The boy is fully awake.

  ‘Don’t you worry.’ She raises her mug, hiding the grin that has widened as the boy mouthed the unfamiliar word. ‘I have an errand for you, if you don’t mind.’

  He shrugs. This, after all, is what he does.

  ‘I know he startled you, but I want you to find Jonah Silver for me.’ She has clearly thought this out. ‘He’s down on his luck, Tick, but he’s a good man. I want you to tell him he can stay here, with us. I may have work for him, even. He doesn’t have to—’ She pauses. This part isn’t clear – at least, its presentation to the boy. ‘He doesn’t have to work for anyone he doesn’t want to.’

  The boy’s brow knits, confused by the double negative perhaps. ‘That bum? But you can’t trust him.’

  ‘Why?’ She leans in, suddenly serious. ‘What do you know, Tick?’