Hot Damn(4)

One more step. Thor just sits there, twitching, eyes narrow, the yellow in them bright and lurid.

“All right, Thor,” I say quietly. “Fuck the hell off and let me in the house.”

Thor hisses again, baring those white teeth like tiny knives. He doesn’t move off the bottom step.

“I’m not putting up with any more of your bullshit. Or your cat shit, for that matter.”

Still, I’m wary of moving closer. As if he can sense it, Thor lowers his head then vaults himself off the step right into me. The maniac wraps his paws around my leg and opens his little mouth, tiny fangs gleaming before there’s a sharp pain on my leg that makes me scream so loud I’m glad I live alone. It’s not the pain, but the fucking suspense of the attack. A second later Thor has disappeared in a streak of gray into the living room.

“Fuck!” I reach down for my leg where the cat bit me—he fucking bit me, for God’s sake—expecting to find torrents of blood pouring out. “Fuck!”

There’s no blood. There’s not even a hole in my pants. Damn. It felt like he ripped a chunk out of me. It still stings, but maybe it’s just a scratch. I’ll have to look at it, clean it up to be sure it doesn’t get infected.

I head into the kitchen. There are shreds of white paper towel all over the floor. On the holder next to the stove, where there was a half-full roll this morning, there’s now an empty cardboard cob. I grit my teeth. If this is the worst Thor’s done today, I can live with it. But I have a feeling this is only the tip of the iceberg.

Glancing toward the fridge, I catch sight of the picture of my sister that’s hanging there, secured under a silver magnet. She’s smiling out, looking happy and healthy and beautiful.

“I hate your cat, Lacey!” I holler at her suddenly, as the bite on my shin starts to throb. Then all the guilt rolls back over me, all the sadness, and I take a deep breath. Lacey loved Thor, and I promised to take care of him for her. I can’t back out now.

I squat and pick up the shredded paper-towel bits, gathering them together into a paper-towel ball that I crush in one hand. I’ve got to take Thor to the vet tomorrow for a checkup, and I’m not even remotely looking forward to shoving him into a carrier to get him there. I’ll probably end up looking a lot like this roll of paper towels, but bloodier.

Straightening, I toss the paper towels into the trash. I never wanted the responsibility of pets or kids, but now I’m stuck with the cat from hell.

At least there’s beer in the fridge. I’m off duty and I’m not on call, so I’m free to indulge. I pull out a can of Guinness and pop the top.

There’s no sign of Thor as I move into the living room, so I let myself relax a little, thinking again of Hot Single Mom from the apartment building, her precarious towel and her smokin’ body. I can’t even enjoy those thoughts now, though, because I start to wonder if she really can’t afford to fix her door—doors—after I bashed my way through them. She’s got a kid to feed, after all—or kids, even—and I have no idea what she might do for a living. She looked awfully young. She could be trying to get by on a minimum-wage job, or even more than one, juggling them around a day-care schedule or something.

Wow. Add that to the Thor situation, and that’s a lot more guilt than I can handle tonight.

Sighing, I settle into my favorite armchair and take a long drink of the dark beer. For a moment, there’s a blessed silence.

Riiiiip.

Shit. My head jerks toward the noise, and there’s the damn cat, tearing into the arm of the couch. A deep noise rumbles from his throat as he closes his eyes, the needlelike claws piercing the fabric as he kneads.

“Stop that!”

He doesn’t react to the noise, so I fling the nearest copy of Sports Illustrated in his general direction. Thor sidesteps it and runs across the top of the couch like some kind of four-legged tightrope hero, then leaps onto the mantelpiece.

This isn’t going to end well. Shit.

I sit forward in the chair and try to stare him down, afraid to startle him. The mantel is lined with huge framed family pictures.

“Get down.” I point toward the ground.

Thor’s triangle-shaped head turns toward me and utters a soft mew.

“Don’t you dare move. Do not take one single step.”

The cat keeps staring, those yellow eyes locked with mine. As if in deliberate defiance, he takes a step forward.

“Get down!”

As he weaves between the frames, one of his back feet hits a picture and it crashes to the floor in a shower of glass.

“Shit! Goddamn it, you stupid piece-of-shit cat. Stop!”

The noise of the falling picture, the shattering glass, and my yelling at his ass startles Thor. He bolts the rest of the way across the mantelpiece and leaps for the kitchen, leaving a trail of broken pictures behind him.

I collapse back into the chair. There’s glass everywhere. I’m going to have to clean everything up, hopefully without opening a vein and having to call 9-1-1. I can just see the expressions on the other guys’ faces if they have to show up at my house for a paramedic call.

I really, really hate cats. Why can’t they just be sensible? Why can’t they just learn English?

But there’s not much for it now but to brave the glass-covered carpet and go get the vacuum cleaner.





Chapter 3





Maddy




“Now, Christopher, you be a good boy for your Auntie Mel, okay?”

I’m holding Christopher on my hip. I poke the arc-reactor design in the middle of his Iron Man T-shirt and give him a kiss on the nose. “Auntie Mel—goggy,” he says. He’s starting to lose patience with my extended good-bye ritual. I’m too clingy, I guess.

“Yes, and you need to be nice to the doggy.” He loves the dog, but Sparks is a smallish dog—some kind of mutt, maybe part Yorkie, part Pomeranian, and part Corgi, and just as weird-looking as that mix implies—and Christopher can get pretty intense.

“Nice goggy.” Christopher squirms, reaching toward Melinda, who holds her arms out for him.

“Yes,” Mel says. “Nice goggy. And nice Christopher, okay? She didn’t like when you decided to build the big dungeon around her. She likes to run around, okay?”

“Okay. Nice goggy.”

Reluctantly I pass Christopher over to Mel, who tucks him against her, holding him firmly while he bends and twists, looking for Sparks. Sparks, I’m pretty sure, is under the couch. She’s no dummy.

Normally I’d turn and head out right away so Christopher wouldn’t have time to notice I’m gone, but for some reason I’m reluctant today. Mel frowns at me and finally sets Christopher down. Christopher heads toward the couch and starts looking under it. He’s no dummy, either.

“You okay, Mads?” she asks me.

“I’m fine.”

Mel plops her arms across her chest. “You seem a little off.” Trust Mel not to let it go.

“I’m just…” I glance back toward Christopher, who’s thoroughly occupied in his quest to find Sparks. In a lower voice, I add, “There was a fire in my apartment building last night.”

“Oh my God.” Mel’s entire attitude changes. “Are you okay? Did you lose anything? Did anybody get hurt?”

I almost feel guilty for making it sound worse than it was. She’s probably picturing the entire building up in flames, me leaning out my upstairs window waving a handkerchief and hoping a handsome fireman would hold a blanket out for me to fall into. A blanket would have been better than that damn tiny towel, that’s for sure.

I reassure her quickly. “No, no, I’m fine. It was just in one apartment, down on the second floor. I think there was damage there, but nowhere else.”

“Well, thank God for that.” She relaxes, but I can tell she’s still concerned. I can also tell she knows there’s more to the story, and that she’s going to wait until I tell her.

“There… Well, there was some damage to my place.” Before she can freak out again, I add, “This fireman busted in and broke my front door and the bathroom door. The dead bolt still works, but it’s a little precarious. I piled furniture in front of it last night.”

“He broke your door?” Mel sounds about as affronted as I was. “Did he not know how to knock?”

“I was in the shower. Couldn’t hear him. And for some reason my smoke alarm didn’t go off. I just checked the batteries a couple months ago.”

“You’re supposed to change those when they change the clocks.”

Oh, great. Another lecture. “I’m aware,” I shoot back. “But I tested them and everything was fine.”

“Did you check…” She stops suddenly, and her expression changes. Eyeing me narrowly, she says, “Wait. He broke into your bathroom? And you were in the shower?”

“Yes.” The anger from last night starts bubbling back up. “And he just busts right in and drags me out, says the whole building has to be evacuated—”

“Wait wait wait wait,” Mel breaks in. “He dragged you out of the shower? While you were naked?”

Now my face is getting warm. I shouldn’t have brought this up. Mel is my sister, though. Theoretically she should be supportive, right? “Well, yeah. I grabbed the shower curtain, and then he gave me a second to get a towel, but mostly he just dragged me right out. And then there turns out to not even be a fire on my floor. Can you believe that shit?”