“I’m trying to decide if—” Billie stops talking suddenly, her eyes going wide. “Who is that?”
I turn to see who she’s looking at. A big, broad-shouldered man with brown-gold hair has come into the comic shop. He looks like a very large fish very much out of water in the group of geeky nerds I like to hang out with.
But of course I know who it is. It’s Jesse.
He catches sight of me and heads straight across the room, the small crowd parting in front of him like he’s Moses and they’re a body of water.
“Do you know this guy?” Billie asks, obviously recognizing Jesse’s beeline for what it is.
“Yeah.” I don’t elaborate.
“Girl, you need to tell me when you’ve got a guy that hot chasing after you.”
I wave her off. I don’t want to get into the details. Besides, by now Jesse is standing in front of me.
I start to say hi, but before I can, he kisses me on the mouth. It’s nothing like what we shared the other day after dinner, but it’s enough to make Billie suck in a breath and take a step back.
“Hi,” he says when he’s done pecking at me. “I’m Jesse. I’m Maddy’s boyfriend. Nice to meet you.”
He sticks his hand out, and Billie takes it. “Nice to meet you, too,” she says, still looking gob smacked. I realize then that pretty much everybody in the room is staring at us. Billie turns her attention to me. “You didn’t tell us you had a boyfriend.”
“Um…hadn’t gotten around to it.” I fall back on the excuse Jesse used. “We haven’t been dating that long.”
“How did you meet?” Billie asks.
I can tell Jesse is ready to jump all over that story, so I elbow him in the side, hopefully surreptitiously. “It was a work thing,” I say to head him off. “What did you need, dear?”
“Can we talk in private?”
“Sure.”
Billie gives me a knowing look, like she thinks my “boyfriend” crashed the party for a booty call. “You can use Jim’s office. He won’t care. Just don’t mess up the desk, if you know what I mean.” She adds a broad wink, just in case I missed the innuendo. I never knew my friends had such dirty minds.
“Thanks,” says Jesse, and grabs my elbow. “Which way?”
He seems like he’s in an awfully big hurry. When he closes the door to Jim’s office behind us and turns to face me, though, I can tell there’s something going wrong.
“Thor has lost his fucking mind. Worse than usual. I need help. Now.” He looks desperate. So much for that imaginary booty call. I don’t know why I’m disappointed. This whole deal is about me helping him with his cat, after all.
“What’s he doing?” I ask, expecting to hear more stories about shredding the couch cushions or pissing in Jesse’s shoes.
“He’s pacing around the house. It’s like he’s got cat OCD all of a sudden.” The expression on his face is pleading. “You need to come. Please?”
“There’s an emergency vet on South Street. Take him there. They should be able to help.”
“No, I don’t think he’s sick. Can you please just come?”
I really wish he’d just take Thor to the vet. This doesn’t sound like behavior issues to me. But I can’t really tell him no.
“Okay,” I tell him, “but if I come over, you have to come to a party with me next week. It’s a cosplay thing.”
He makes an offhand wave. I wonder if he even knows what “cosplay” means. I guess he’ll find out, because he says, “Fine. Just come help me with the cat.”
With the deal sealed, we head back out to the party. Billie looks disappointed. “That was quick.”
“Jesse’s having some trouble with his cat,” I tell her. She knows I work at the vet’s office, so that’ll make sense to her. “I need to go.”
“Are you coming next week?”
“Yes,” I tell her firmly, with a grin.
“Bring the boyfriend.”
I give him a sidelong look. “I will.”
Christopher isn’t happy about leaving the party, but he comes when I tell him to. Then he proceeds to mope in his car seat the entire way to Jesse’s house.
The minute I walk in the door, though, I understand why Jesse’s upset about Thor. The cat is pacing up and down the living room, into the kitchen, going from one door to another, then going back to pacing the walls. All the time, he’s meowing louder than I’ve ever heard him. Just about louder than I’ve ever heard any cat meow, in fact.
“Are you sure he’s not sick?” I ask, setting Christopher down. “He sounds really upset.” Christopher plops down on the floor with his lower lip sticking out, making it clear he’s still not happy about his situation.
“He’s eating, he’s pooping, he hasn’t puked or anything.” Jesse sounds frazzled. “It’s just this, all night, up and down and up and down. I tried to play with him—I tried that lure thing, and I gave him some catnip. None of it works. He just paces and paces. If I let him in the bedroom, he scratches like crazy to get out, and if I lock him out of the bedroom, he scratches and cries to get back in.” He shoves a hand through his hair, and I noticed the grayish circles under his eyes. “I don’t know what to do with him.”
I’ve been watching Thor while Jesse spoke. His pacing seems almost deliberate, going from door to door, like he’s looking for something.
“Does he want out?” I ask.
“I don’t think so. He’s never been an outside cat.”
Thor sits down next to the front door and meows piteously, then rubs his head on the doorjamb. Suddenly it hits me. He’s not looking for something. He’s looking for someone.
“He’s looking for your sister,” I say quietly.
The comment is met with complete silence. Slowly Jesse folds his arms over his chest, his forehead compressing into a frown. Thor keeps meowing.
“He misses her,” I continue. “Animals respond emotionally to loss, too, just like people. When they lose their humans, or even when other animals in the family die. They form bonds, and they can feel it when those bonds are broken.”
He gives me a look. It’s not a mean look; he just seems to be digesting everything I’ve said. I can tell it’s not what he expected to hear, and it’s hitting him in a way he didn’t expect. Finally he nods. “I guess now he needs grief counseling on top of everything else.” His tone is scathing, like he’s angry rather than joking. I have a feeling what I said hit a little too close to home.
“Maybe…” I venture, “maybe you could pick him up. Hold him. It might make him feel better.”
“Okay. I’ll give it a try.” He sounds skeptical but sincere at the same time. Good. At least I know he’ll give it his best.
He walks over to where Thor is sitting next to the front door and squats next to him. Reaching down, he lifts the cat by closing his hands behind Thor’s front legs.
“No-no—” I start, but it’s too late. Some cats would tolerate being picked up like that, but Thor isn’t one of them. Probably because he’s so big, and it’s uncomfortable to have his full weight dangling from his kitty armpits. He lets out an enraged hiss and leaps away from Jesse, leaving a set of claw marks on Jesse’s wrist as he does.
“Fuck!” Jesse says, shaking his injured hand. “Right back at you, you stupid motherfucking feline piece of crap.”
Thor hisses at him again and tears across the living room to a cat tree in the corner, where he hides inside the bottom section. At least he’s got a cat tree now, I think. It’s an improvement over the less cat-friendly house I saw the first time I came over.
Christopher comes running, too, tearing up to me from where he was sitting by the door and grabbing my hand. This time he doesn’t seem to find Jesse’s cursing funny.
“Kitty okay?” he asks.
“The kitty’s fine,” Jesse answers. “Sorry I yelled.”
And then Christopher bursts into tears. “Go party! Go party!”
I start to move to pick Christopher up, but Jesse drops to a squat, looking him in the eye. “Little dude, I’m sorry. I made you leave your friends, didn’t I?”
Christopher has half of one hand in his mouth now, and he nods, tears pouring down his face. “Friends,” he says, or at least that’s what it sounds like. It’s hard to tell for sure around his mouthful of fingers.
“The kitty’s okay. He’s just sad.”
I take a small step back, interested in this new version of Fireman Jesse. He shifts from his squatting position, flopping down onto the floor.
Christopher takes his hand out of his mouth. “Wanna go party.”
“I know. I’m sorry. Look, I’ve got some comic books. Do you want to look at them?”
I’m not sure Jesse is going to make any headway, but it’s a change of pace to have somebody else trying to decipher his crazy toddler brain for a change. I know he’s tired, and upset that he had to leave his friends, but maybe the novelty of having Jesse talk to him will calm him down faster than I would be able to manage. I’m familiar, after all.