Love Saves the Day (15 page)

Laura heard the sound of the TV from the living room as she pushed open the door of the apartment she shared with Josh, carefully hanging her coat and stowing her bag in the front-hall closet. A bit farther down the hall, she spied Prudence. Although she was lying down, the cat’s entire body was a coil of tension. She leapt up when Laura entered, took a few steps toward her, and then, seeming uncertain, turned and started back in the direction of the living room. Laura paused to wonder at this, even as she went into the kitchen to pour the two glasses of red wine she brought into the living room where Josh sat watching the TV with fixed attention.

“Sorry it was such a late night again,” she said, dropping a kiss on his cheek and handing him a glass. “How was your day?”

Josh clicked off the television and turned to face her. Something about the abrupt silence and Josh’s expression sent a flicker of panic darting through Laura’s stomach.

“Not so great.” Josh took a deep breath and exhaled loudly through his nose. “I lost my job.”

T
HE NEWSPAPER
J
OSH DROPPED ONTO THE KITCHEN FLOOR HAS
turned vicious. At first I only darted into its folds to make sure there weren’t any rats or snakes trying to hide inside it (when I lived outside, I noticed them nesting in old newspapers all the time). But now it’s trying to fold itself completely over me, even when I roll onto my back and kick at it with my hind legs. So I stand, crouch down with my tail straight out for balance, and take a flying leap onto it—to show it that
I’m
boss. It sees how much stronger I am and slides all the way into the kitchen wall as it tries to get away, taking me along with it. But I refuse to give up the fight so easily.

The newspaper stops moving once we both hit the wall, knowing that it’s been beaten. Triumphantly, I tear a few pieces off with my teeth. Josh and Laura, who are eating breakfast at the kitchen table, are so relieved to see my victory over the newspaper—and to
know for sure that there are no rats or mice or snakes hiding in it—that they burst out laughing. I return to my post by the table, rubbing my head against it and also the chair legs, so that anything else (like a rat or another vicious newspaper) that tries to get in here will know this territory is protected by a cat. Josh reaches down with one hand to pat my head, but I quickly pull back from his fingers, wrinkling my nose with distaste. He sighs and goes back to eating his breakfast.

Even though it’s a Thursday, Josh isn’t wearing his work clothes or shiny black feet-shoes. That’s because the humans at his office won’t let him go there to do work anymore. Now Josh is “working from home,” although mostly what he does is talk on the phone and exercise his fingers on the cat bed in Home Office. (Is this what humans think “working” is?) Ever since this past Friday, when Josh told Laura he lost his job, Laura has been feeding me my breakfast in the kitchen. Josh says it’s too hard to concentrate on his “work” with the smell of cat food drifting in from my room next door. Obviously, Josh doesn’t know
half
of all the ways his suddenly being home inconveniences
me
.

I was nervous at first about eating my breakfast where Josh and Laura eat theirs, because of what happened that night of the Seder dinner. But it turns out that it isn’t so bad. I’ve learned that if I
gently remind
them—by standing next to the kitchen counter and meowing—to let me have little bits of milk or eggs or the cheese they melt on top of bread in the toaster, I’m more likely to get to try new things. Sarah says my meows are irresistible. Actually, what she says is that some cats have meows that are almost musical, but I, sadly, am not one of them. I have a voice like a Lower East Side fishmonger, according to Sarah, and nobody can listen to
that
for too long before giving in. I think Sarah was afraid I would be offended whenever she called me a fishmonger, because she would always scoop me up in her arms and kiss my nose and say,
Don’t worry, Prudence. I love your lovely atonal meows
. I don’t know why she thought I’d be insulted, though. I’m not exactly sure what a fishmonger is, but it sounds like a
wonderful
thing to be.

Josh goes over to the counter now to get some more coffee, and
when I meow at him he also pours a little of his coffee cream into my Prudence-bowl to mix with my breakfast. Just as I suspected would happen, Laura hardly mixes any of my old food in anymore with the “organic” food Josh buys for me. But I’m not as nervous about eating as I was that first week, and mixing the “organic” food with coffee cream makes it taste much better. Still, I use all the toes on my right paw to tilt my Prudence-bowl and spill just a little cream onto the blue rubber mat with all the cat drawings, because I hate that stupid thing.

Josh returns to the table and sits down again across from Laura, who drinks her coffee black with no cream or even sugar. I follow and rub my head against his ankle, as a reward for good behavior, and note with satisfaction that along with my scent I’ve left a few strands of my fur on the bottom of his jean leg.

“So what’s on the agenda for today?” Laura asks him.

“The usual,” Josh replies. “Phone calls, emails. And I guess it’s time for me to break the news to Abe and Zelda.”

Laura makes a sympathy-face. “Yikes.”

Josh shrugs. “I don’t think it’ll be so bad. I’ve been working since I was fifteen, and this is the first job I’ve ever lost. They’ll probably tell me I was overdue.” He sips from his coffee mug. “And I have a call with that headhunter who tried to recruit me a couple years back.”

Sarah and Anise used to talk about losing jobs. Back in The Old Days, they had something called Day Jobs, which was where they worked to get money in between doing something else called Gigs. Sarah had lots of Day Jobs, like selling fruit at a farmer’s market that traveled all over the city and made Sarah show up for work before the sun was even up, which was especially hard when Sarah’d had a Gig that lasted all night. She also waited for tables and clerked at a record store. Anise only had one Day Job, as a bartender, but she ended up having to do that same job in lots of different places. The reason they changed Day Jobs so much was because sometimes Gigs happened at the same time as Day Jobs, and if they had to choose which one to go to, Sarah and Anise always picked Gigs—even though lots of times Gigs didn’t even pay
them. That’s why Sarah and Anise were Flat Broke almost all the time. Sarah finally stopped doing Day Jobs
and
Gigs when Laura was three and Sarah’s husband went away. That’s when she knew she really had to get serious, so she opened her own record store. By then, Anise was famous and getting Gigs all the time. She didn’t have to worry about Day Jobs after that.

It sounded like Sarah and Anise spent more time losing jobs than keeping them, so if it’s true that this is the first time Josh ever lost a job then he really
has
been lucky.

Laura reaches across the table to take Josh’s hand, and even though there’s a slight crease in her forehead from tension, she smiles. “Something’ll turn up,” she says softly.

“I’m not worried.” Josh is built with eyes that are turned just a little bit down and a mouth that’s turned just a little bit up, so it always looks like he’s right on the verge of being happy and also right on the verge of being sad. Now he turns the corners of his mouth all the way up until he’s smiling. But his eyes don’t smile at all.

As soon as I saw Josh last Friday, I knew that something unusual and bad had happened to him. I was napping on the cat bed in Home Office when he came home from work (inconsiderately) early. He noticed me there when he walked upstairs, and came over like he was going to shoo me off like he always does, but then he seemed to change his mind. He didn’t smell sweaty, exactly, but he smelled like he
had been
sweating more than he usually does—not exercise-sweaty, but scared-sweaty. He also smelled like he’d stopped somewhere before coming home for a few gulps of the evil-smelling liquid that Laura and Josh keep on a special cart in the dining room. After he left Home Office—without even turning the light off the way he normally does on his way out—he went downstairs, and I heard the sound of the TV going on.

I didn’t know yet what terrible thing had happened to Josh. But the smell of something terrible having happened made me nervous. Then I thought about Laura, who was going to walk right
into the apartment after work without knowing she should be on her guard. Against my better judgment (because Laura and I aren’t exactly friends after that horrible holiday dinner), I decided to wait downstairs and try to warn her. That’s what Sarah would want me to do. After all, Sarah loves Laura almost as much as she loves me.

But Josh ended up telling Laura right away what had happened, before I got a chance to convince her to approach him cautiously. He said that magazine companies everywhere were losing money, and when that happens the first thing they do is get rid of the people who work in marketing. Josh said they gutted his entire staff, which is
horrible
! I once saw a TV show about a human gutting a fish he caught. First he cut the fish open right up the middle, and then he pulled out all its insides and threw what was left into a big container. And even though watching that made me hungry for fish (I wish I had some fish right now), hearing that Josh’s office did the same thing to
humans
made all my fur stand straight up. How evil the humans at Josh’s office must be! It sounded like Josh was lucky to escape that place with his life, and it made me understand why he looked and smelled so awful when he got home. If I saw a thing like that with my own eyes, I don’t think I’d be able to sleep for at least a month.

I expected that Laura would throw her arms around Josh like in TV movies, and say something like,
Thank God
you’re
okay!
Instead, a crease appeared between her eyebrows. When she finally did put her arms around him, she was gentler than I would have thought she’d be (seeing what a narrow escape Josh had) and she said, “I’m so sorry, honey.”

Josh’s eyes over Laura’s shoulder looked worried, even though what his mouth said was, “I don’t want you to worry about anything. I know how rough things have been for you these past few months.”

Josh was still hugging Laura, so he couldn’t see her face the way I could. He couldn’t tell that it got that tight expression Laura always gets whenever Sarah is mentioned. It’s like there’s too much happening in Laura’s head for her face to show it all, so she holds all her face muscles as still as she possibly can so they won’t reveal
anything. (This is something cats can do naturally without having to practice the way humans do.) “Josh, I’m
fine
,” Laura said, and her voice sounded almost annoyed. “You don’t need to worry about me right now.”

Then Josh pulled back to look into Laura’s face, and he pushed the corners of his mouth up until his own face looked more happy than sad. “The good news is that I’ll be getting five months’ severance. They’re emailing me the agreement next week, and once I’ve signed it they’ll mail the check. And in the meantime I’ll start making calls first thing Monday morning.”

The crease in Laura’s forehead smoothed out, and she smiled. “That
is
good news. Five months should be plenty of time for you to find something else. You have such a great résumé.”

“I think so,” Josh said, and he smiled, too.

The days have been getting longer, and when Laura or Josh pushes open the top half of one of the long windows in the living room, I can feel how much warmer the air outside is. Still, it was cool enough inside the apartment. There was really no reason for the tiny beads of sweat-water that popped up on Josh’s forehead.

At first I almost felt sorry for Josh, because it sounded like what happened at his office was even worse than the things that happen at the Bad Place. That was before I knew how disruptive to all my usual routines it would be to have Josh home all the time. If I’m upstairs in my room with all the Sarah-boxes, trying to spend some quiet-time alone with my memories, Josh is also in that room, walking around in circles—like those pigeons Laura likes watching so much—while he talks on the phone. I don’t know why talking into the phone should have to involve walking around. I, for example, am perfectly capable of meowing as clearly and frequently as I need to from a still, sitting position. But Josh likes to walk when he’s talking on the phone. Every time I try to walk over to one spot, Josh is pacing around that same exact spot, and I have to dart over and around the Sarah-boxes to get out of his way. I’m paying extra attention to what my whiskers tell me these days just
to keep from getting stepped on or tripped over. (Maybe Josh’s balance is so imprecise because he shaves off his own whiskers every morning.)

When I decide to go downstairs to the living room, where I could
always
count on being alone during the day, Josh comes downstairs, too. He’s still talking on the phone, opening and closing the refrigerator and kitchen cabinets without taking anything out of them (or even really looking into them) as he talks. This is particularly frustrating because a cat has every right to expect that when a human opens the refrigerator or a kitchen cabinet, he’ll pull out some food and share that food with the cat. Even sitting directly in front of Josh and meowing while staring pointedly at the cabinets does nothing except cause him to walk around me without any acknowledgment, as if I were no more than a couch or coffee table in his path. Sometimes he presses down on the handle of the can opener, which then makes the whirring sound that usually means a can is being opened. And even though I’ve realized that Josh isn’t really opening cans when he does this, I
still
have to run in to check—just to be
completely
sure—because what if the one time I
don’t
check, Josh
is
opening a can of tuna or something else I’d want to try and I’ve missed it?