Cattitude (12 page)

In her head she heard her mother say,
“Whatever it takes, baby, I know you’ll do it.”

She set her jaw. Damn right she’d do it. She
pictured Emery, blood splattered on the bottom of the hard ground,
his arm and leg at awkward angles, his neck twisted.

She would think of something. In the end, she
always did.

This time, nothing was going to screw it
up.

***

Belle set the can of tuna on top of the
newspaper. Looking down, she saw drawings of people and animals.
She moved her tuna to get a better look, then traced her finger
over the figure of a cat and dog, wondering what they were saying.
She knew the marks inside the cloud above the cat and dog were
letters that formed words. How many times had she stretched out on
Max’s map, letting him pet her while he read? Even Ted read,
although not as much as Max.

If she stared at the letters hard enough,
maybe she’d learn how to read too. If humans could read, it wasn’t
that hard.

She told herself that out of bravado, but as
she stared at the letters, something happened. It felt as if she
knew them already. Not from Max but from Sorcha, stored in this
body’s brain cells. If she looked at them a bit longer, or if
someone started her off, she would pick up the knack of reading
faster than it used to take her to throw up a hairball.

“You don’t know how to read, do you?”

Belle’s head snapped up. Max leaned against
the doorway, watching her. Gladness welled up from her stomach to
her throat, plugging words from coming out. She’d missed him. After
dinner last night, Max disappeared into his office and was still
there when she went to sleep in his bed.

For four years, she’d slept with him and now
she was sleeping by herself. She didn’t like it. Not at all.

Where was Sorcha? She wanted her cat body
back.

“Can you read?” he asked again.

She swallowed too fast and tuna caught in her
throat, though it was nothing compared to a hairball. She coughed
and grabbed the glass of milk she’d poured for herself. For a
moment she’d forgotten she was expected to answer when he spoke to
her. “No.”

He straightened and strolled into the room.
“Tuna? For breakfast?”

Belle nodded. Why did everyone think tuna for
breakfast was odd? It was delicious.

“Is this a craving? You’re not pregnant, are
you?”

Belle choked. “No!”

“You honestly can’t read?” He flattened one
palm on the table and leaned over her.

She nodded. Did he think she lied? Well, when
necessary, of course.

“If you’re here long enough, I’ll see that
you get help.”

“I’ll be here.” Forever. She’d be here
forever.

Max continued to gaze at her face.
Unblinking, she stared back into his blue eyes, the same color of
the sky when the sun was the highest in the sky.

“What else can’t you do?”

She shrugged. Admitting she couldn’t do
something soured the tuna in her stomach.

“Do you remember how to drive a car?”

Belle blinked several times. The only time
she went in the car with Max was to the vet, imprisoned inside a
carrier, yowling the whole time. But she’d seen people drive on TV.
You stuck a key in a hole, turned it, stepped on a pedal on the
floor, and the car moved forward.

She’d learned how to use the can opener. How
much harder could driving a car be?

“Maybe.”

“What about—” His lips clamped together, and
he moved backward.

Why did Belle have an idea he was going to
say “sex”? Maybe because the people in
The Love Chronicles
talked about it a lot. In fact, they talked about it a lot on all
the TV shows she’d seen. When she was a cat, sex was boring. Now
she looked at Max and thought
hmmm
.

She rose from her chair and stepped toward
him. Was that what those tingles were about yesterday morning when
he saw her in the bathtub? His gaze lowered to her breasts now, as
if he were remembering too, and the tingles started again, like
fireflies dancing over her skin.

Did she want to have sex with Max?

But cats didn’t have sex with humans. Humans
had sex with humans. If she had sex with Max, it could change her.
Not her body, but the essence of cat that remained inside this
human shell.

She stopped and wrapped her arms over her
breasts, not liking this. She was used to doing whatever she wanted
whenever she wanted. Now she wanted Max. But she couldn’t have
him.

Being human was awful. How did they stand
it?

The silence stretched into moments. A current
of energy crackled between them, like invisible lightning. Then Ted
stumbled bleary-eyed into the kitchen.

***

Max felt the tension ease, like a flame
sizzling down. But it didn’t go out completely, the heat simmering
inside him. Sorcha sat at the table, her lips pressed together,
giving nothing away.

“You remember anything?” Ted asked
Sorcha.

“I can drive. Maybe.”

“We know that. You drove your car into a
ditch. Anything about your past and who you are?”

She shook her head, but her eyes flickered
and she avoided Ted’s gaze. Max wondered what caused the
flicker.

“We’ll find out something today.” Ted strode
past her, touching her shoulder. He opened the refrigerator door
and took out the orange juice. “Max and I are going to your
apartment.”

“Apartment?” She frowned at Max, then back to
Ted. “How do you know where it is?”

Standing in front of the open refrigerator,
Ted took a long swallow from the orange juice container.

“Your driver’s license,” Max answered for
Ted. “You have any objections?”

She shook her head, but her teeth worried her
lower lip and her head bent slightly, her expression and silence
shouting out her nervousness.

“You don’t mind if we use your keys to go
inside?” He watched her closely.

She stood, shaking her head so hard her hair
lashed out.

“Maybe I’ll have you home by tonight,” Ted
said. “You want to come with us?”

She walked backward until the cupboards
stopped her. Her arms crossed over her chest so tightly Max thought
they must hurt her breasts.

His jaw setting, he strode from the kitchen.
Whatever he and Ted found, he’d think twice before making her go
back. As uncomfortable as it was having her around, if she needed
his protection, she had it.

She just needed to tell him. He couldn’t
protect her if he didn’t know why she wanted to hide out at his
place.

Again the image of her in the bathtub popped
into his mind. Naked breasts bobbing, pink-tipped nipples pearling,
soft mouth open in an O of surprise.

He willed the image from his mind. He’d do
this for any woman, he told himself. Any woman at all.

Belle watched a red monster sing on the TV
about people liking his smile.

Humans wanted everyone to like them.

She sat alone in the big room that Tory
called a media room and Max and Ted called the man cave. Max and
Ted used it mostly to watch games where men tackled each other or
hit balls with their hands or wooden sticks. Tory used it to watch
The Love Chronicles
.

A noise like thunder came from the front of
the house. Bonnie, the cleaning lady, was roaring through the house
with the vacuum cleaner. Belle hunched her shoulders and dug her
fingers into a soft pillow shaped like a football. Before she
turned into a cat again, she planned to take the vacuum cleaner
apart and throw the pieces in the garbage.

On the TV, the monster’s friends ran to him,
calling, “Elmo! Elmo!”

Belle aimed the remote control at the screen.
She pressed but nothing happened. Sometimes her fingers didn’t work
right. She pressed again, but still nothing happened. She hissed
and stood.
The Love Chronicles
wasn’t on any of the
stations. She may as well leave, as soon as she got this stupid
thing—

“Let’s sing about the letter B!” the red
monster said in his squeaky voice.

Belle’s finger froze just above the power
button.
The letter B. The monster knew the letters?

She flopped back onto the couch. Crossing her
legs, she gave the monster and his friends a mental command:
Teach me the letters. Teach me to read. I want to know
everything
.

***

The three-story apartment building straddled
the edge of the worst part of Milwaukee, giving off a stench of
poverty and desolation. Max felt as grim as the neighborhood at the
thought of Sorcha living here.

Her name wasn’t on the tags for the
apartments, so he rang the manager. An emaciated man with a barbed
wire tattoo around his neck and a prison pallor told Max he’d been
the manager for only two months and he’d never heard of any Sorcha
Anders.

Two minutes later and fifty dollars lighter,
Max and Ted were being invited into 207B by a woman as plump as the
manager was thin. She barely gave Max a glance, her gaze fixed on
Ted, a smile creasing her apple cheeks. She was a foot shorter than
Ted and a few dozen years older, but she looked at him as if he
were a cheese Danish she wanted to devour.

“Mrs. Havenhoch,” Max began—

“It’s Ms., not Mrs.” She patted the tops of
her large breasts, not taking her gaze from Ted’s face. “You can
call me Maria. Come in, come in. Jimmy called and told me why you
came to see me. It’s not often handsome young men come
visiting.”

They entered a room crammed with over-stuffed
furniture and knickknack-laden tables. It wasn’t an oasis in a
dessert, but the scent of poverty that clung to the hallway walls
was overcome by an aroma that jumpstarted Max’s saliva glands.

“I just made chocolate chip cookies.” Maria
pointed at two chairs in the living room. “Sit. I’ll bring a plate.
Do you want coffee too? I grind my own.”

“No—” Max began.

“Yes,” Ted said at the same time.

Maria bustled into the kitchen. Max glared at
Ted. He wanted to get the information and get out. He didn’t have
time for cookies and chitchat.

Ted dropped into a chair. “You’re jealous.
She likes me better than you. I’m the handsome brother.”

“Yeah, but I’m the rich one.” Max reluctantly
sat, feeling like a leashed dog.

Ted snickered, yanking that leash, when Maria
hurried back, carrying a loaded tray. She set it on the coffee
table. “Cream or sugar?”

Ted jumped up to help pass a cup of black
coffee to Max and take one for himself. Before sipping, Ted wolfed
down a chocolate cookie and started on the second. Unable to
resist, Max chewed one more slowly. It tasted like it came directly
from Aunt Bea’s Mayberry oven, but that wasn’t reason enough to
waste their time. He was a busy man with things to do, women to
relocate, cats to find.

He swallowed. “You know Sorcha Anders?”

“Do I know Sorcha?” Her eyes rolled and she
sat on the loveseat, resting her chubby feet in pink fuzzy slippers
on the hassock. “Didn’t she live next door to me for two years? No
matter how much I fed her, she never gained an ounce.”

“Then you know where she went when she left
here.”

A yellow flag of caution rippled across her
fleshy face. “Why are you asking?”

Max reached for his wallet in his back
pocket. Money again.

Ted leaned forward and aimed his 100-watt
smile at Maria. “She was in a car accident and lost her memory.
She’s staying at our home and we’d like to hook her up with her
family.”

“Amnesia?” She looked enthralled. “I never
met anyone with amnesia.”

Max took his empty hand out of his back
pocket and picked up the coffee cup. A thin trickle of steam curled
up to his nostrils, the smell of chicory almost as enticing as the
Aunt Bea cookies.

“We’re trying to help her recover her
memory,” Ted said.

“Of course, I’ll help. What do you want to
know? She’s a nice girl, never too loud, always ready to hold the
door and help carry groceries.” Her plump shoulders lifted. “She
was sad, though. She had the gift, but to her it was a curse.”

“What gift?” Max set his coffee cup down.

“You don’t know? She’s clairvoyant. That’s
how she earns her living.”

“Jesus,” Ted said. “You mean she claimed to
be a psychic?”

“She
is
psychic.” Maria’s abundant
bosom swelled. “Last May, almost a year ago now, she had a vision
of me counting dollar bills, yelling ‘Yahoo!’ Well, she told me on
a Wednesday and I only play bingo on Fridays. I don’t buy lottery
tickets, not ever, but I did that day. Won five thousand
dollars.”

Ted whistled. “Nice.”

“And I yelled ‘Yahoo!’ just like she said. I
tried to give her five hundred. Ten percent, that’s fair. But she
wouldn’t take any. Said all the cookies and cakes and pies I shared
with her were worth more than money.” She sniffed, her eyes
watery.

“She’s right.” Ted swiped the last cookie
from the plate.

Max picked up his coffee cup before Ted
snatched that too.

“That’s not what her boyfriend thought,”
Maria went on. “As soon as I left, I heard him giving her hell for
refusing my money. But she never came and asked for it. At least
she had that much backbone.”

“Boyfriend?” The coffee lost its flavor and
Max returned the cup to its saucer.

Maria’s mouth twisted with disgust. “She’s
such a pretty girl, but she hardly went out until she met that man.
She knew he was using her, but she didn’t care. When a woman gives
her heart to a man, sometimes she gives away her brains too.”

Max frowned. That didn’t sound like the
Sorcha he knew.

Ted leaned toward Maria. “If she was
clairvoyant—”

“She couldn’t see for herself,” Maria said
before he could finish. “It’s probably a good thing. I don’t want
to know what’s coming. Except for money. Sorcha knew that, and it’s
why she told me about the money. She’s a good girl.”