A home is a home. Square footage and harbor views can’t measure pride or pain. I wanted to tell him about the family in Santa Ana I’d evicted just last week, immigrants who’d worked two decades to buy a teeny two-bedroom. They raised six kids there and kept it immaculate right up until the father was deported during an INS sweep at the taquería where he worked. This guy needed to hear that story. I wasn’t about to tell him.
“I have to go,” I said, eyeing Pussy.
“Shit storm’s comin’,” he slurred.
“Please don’t blame the messenger.”
That’s when he started clenching and unclenching his fists. He dropped his eyes to the floor, looking for some last chance to snatch his fantasy life from the swirl as it all circled the drain. He spoke quietly. “Don’ go. I’m just... need a few hours t’get m’head together. All this dark matter. You c’n do that for me. Ya gotta do that for me.”
I tapped my watch. “If I don’t check in soon, the office’ll come looking for me. It’s policy.”
“Tha’s bullshit.”
“It’s really not.”
“I said i’s bullshit.”
“I know you did. Doesn’t change policy, though. They keep a pretty close eye on us.”
He thought about that for an uncomfortably long time. “So you’re saying I’m fucked.”
“I’m not saying—”
“This’s really happenin’?”
He was losing his tenuous grip. My situation wasn’t exactly improving, either. I edged another step closer to the door. I’d watched him scratch Pussy between the ears. That was good enough for me. I’d take my chances with the tiger.
“Instincts!” he reminded, his voice rising.
When I hesitated, he stepped around the upended La-ZBoy, and in three quick steps was halfway across the room, coming directly at me. His groped into his pocket and the robe fell open, exposing his chest, his remarkably flat stomach, and the withered manjunk of a still-breathing fossil.
“Meaning?”
“They crush th’ windpipe, but it takes minutes to die. No sudd’n moves, now.”
He pulled the gun out almost casually. There was a tremor in his hand that I hadn’t noticed before. He stopped about twenty feet away, swaying. Even so, the barrel looked awfully steady, pointed right at my head. “I ask’t you a favor, tha’s all. One little favor.” He stepped slowly forward.
“You’re trying to make it look like I had something to do with this,” I said. “I can’t let you do that.”
“You two broke into m’house, you and partygirl there. Y’got into my thin’s. I saw all that.”
“You know that’s not true. The cops will know it too.”
He was maybe ten feet away, but still coming. I retreated until my back hit the corner where the window met the wall. Nowhere else to go. I went for my belt.
“See this?” I said, holding up a tiny canister.
He wobbled, trying to make sense of the sudden change in my voice. He came two steps closer, but it wasn’t a hostile advance. He lowered the gun and squinted at my hand like a man who wished he’d brought his reading glasses. That’s when I hit him with a jet of forced-cone pepper spray. Nailed him right in the eyes.
The gun fell to the floor as both hands shot to his face.
“Christ!” he screamed. “Y’prick!”
He staggered, shrieking as he backpedaled. Behind him, Pussy rose into a crouch. Her ears lay back against a head the size of a medicine ball. She twitched her whiskers, missing nothing.
“I was kidding!” he screamed. “Christ Jesus, it burns!”
The La-Z-Boy was right behind him, and he hit it in full backward stride. The impact sent his feet straight into the air and he came down hard on his back, robe fully open. He tried to leverage his momentum into a backward somersault, but tipped to one side and fell hard against the edge of the couch. It knocked him back to the floor, where his head thumped the hardwood. His hands never left his chem-scorched eyes even as one of his flailing legs caught Pussy square on the jaw. The big cat snarled, hackles up.
“Gaaaaaaa!” he screamed.
Pussy was on her blinded prey in a single bound. The roar that announced her attack was brief and deep, all business, the sound of heavy equipment at full throttle.
“Pussy! No!”
The animal didn’t stop. She batted him with her powerful right paw, almost playful, and the blow sent him reeling. He regained his balance, but her claws had opened wide gashes along his left shoulder. His orange skin hung in ribbons as he groped blindly with one hand for the source of the pain. Desperate to orient himself, he tried to open eyes that were all but welded shut.
I edged closer to the hallway door.
Pussy’s shoulders rose, her head dropped. When he fell to his knees, she lunged.
“Yaa—” was the only sound he made before she clamped down on his throat. She held him to the floor with giant fore-paws as his skinny legs thrashed.
By then I was racing for the front door. Behind me, the same sound of savagery I’d heard on all those National Geographic specials. They never ended well. My heart was pounding as I jerked open the heavy front door and stepped back into the cramped serenity of Balboa Island. I pulled the door shut, muffling Pussy’s roar.
I prayed my thanks there on his doorstep, waiting for my breathing to slow. Before I moved toward my car, I looked around. The cottages and mansions of Balboa Island were bathed in brilliant midmorning sun. The sails of passing yachts bobbed along the harbor’s main channel. Nothing was changed. Life went on. But behind me I felt a real and unmistakable force, like the gravitational pull of something dark and invisible.
On the Night in Question
by Patricia McFall
Garden Grove
When the first letter arrived, Fred Mackie was standing just inside his front door. He didn’t know or care if the mail carrier saw him through the curtains as the envelope slipped through the slot, bounced off his right shoe, and glided across the floor tile until it stopped. He’d had a feeling today would be the day, and he savored being right. Like with a lot of items he’d order from unreliable dot-coms, Fred was never sure whether or not anything would arrive. But this wasn’t some item he’d ordered. It was a connection that he hoped would transform his life. Way too shy to approach a pretty woman, he was well past thirty without every having a real being-in-love relationship.
He’d made a New Year’s resolution that he wouldn’t be alone after this year.
In California, people doing time weren’t allowed to have e-mail. But there were websites like InmatePlaymate.com that exchanged people’s snail-mail addresses for a reasonable fee. Playmate number 403, with her long blond hair, sparkling blue eyes, and mysterious smile, had taken him on.
He picked up the pale-yellow envelope and turned it over. The flap illustration showed three kittens in a wicker basket, playing with a ball of pink yarn. California Frontier Institute for Women was stamped diagonally across the image. Turning the envelope back over, he observed the old LOVE stamp and some one-centers to update the postage. The postmark was February 14 — Valentine’s Day. She’d written his address in childish handwriting, the “i” in Mackie dotted with a little heart. Smiling and shaking his head, Fred went to the kitchen to get a steak knife, and slit through the paper flap with precision. There was a single sheet inside. He sniffed, but it wasn’t scented.