Bad People (25 page)

She didn’t say what she had intended to say. She intended to say something closure-y; what came out was: “I can’t believe you’re really single,” depriving some lucky girl of all that.

He closed the towel and tucked the end into his waist. “I’m telling the truth,” he said—a bit too pointedly she thought. He went and sat down on the bed, looking at her the whole way.

He waited, seeming to be working out if he should go into it with her or not. His apparent difficulty in deciding made her salivate to know what he was going to say. Forbidden fruit is always sweetest, someone quoted to her once. An older man, when she was much younger herself, of course. Possibly more than one.

“Well…” she said, without the finality she knew the occasion required.

“I’ll take the cat,” said Luke.

You will?” This surprised her. She wasn’t sure, but she had formed the impression he hadn’t taken to the kitten. “Oh that’s nice. You don’t have to do that.”

“Do
you
want it? I mean her?” Luke asked.

“No…I thought I’d bring her to the desk, or something. I don’t really know. You want to keep her?”

“I have a friend who likes animals.”

Why did she feel a twinge of jealous at the word
friend
. This was her way out, she had only to embrace it. “Oh?” she said. “A friend, huh?” She tried to sound light about it.

“She just broke up with someone. It would cheer her up.”

So it
was
a woman.

“Hadn’t you better ask your
friend
first?” Connie said, feeling the edge in her voice. A close friend that he could just bring a strange kitten to, without a head’s-up.

Luke was silent for a second. “You’re right. I should call her first.”

“Maybe you should.”

He smiled.

“I think it’s rude is all,” she went on. Don’t you think it’s rude, to bring a kitten to a friend without asking first? What if your friend doesn’t want it? What if your friend has other plans?”

“She’s been looking for a cat.”

“Oh,” said Connie, stopping suddenly. “You didn’t tell me that part,” she said in defense of herself. Her cheeks burned.

“If you don’t think it’s a good idea.”

“Not at all. Of course it is. It must be. I mean it’s better than abandoning her to strangers. This is more responsible. I don’t know what the hotel staff would do. Though nothing bad I suppose. Maybe we
should
check with the desk first; in case someone is missing her. The kitten. Do you think that’s possible? Someone could be looking for the poor thing. That’s probably what we should do.” While she babbled on, knowing she was babbling on, yet unable to stop herself, he was listening to her and getting dressed.

“Whatever you want to do,” he said, after he had tied his shoes.

This was getting ridiculous. She looked at the peaceful kitten. Sleeping.

“We should give her to your friend,” she said. “Definitely.”

“Okay, I can do that.”

“It’s a good idea.”

And even better that she wouldn’t have to go back to the front desk of the hotel. “Well, we’re all set, I suppose.”

She waited for Luke to pick up the kitten, and he just waited…for something. It hit her. “Oh!” The kitten had scratched him. “Do you want me to carry her down to your car?”

“My car isn’t here.”

“I forgot about that.” They had come in her car. “I’ll drive you back to it.”

“Thanks. I have the cat to carry…”

“No of course! What was I thinking! Oh course I’ll give you a ride back to the restaurant.”

“I didn’t drive to the restaurant last night. I took a cab from home.”

Why had he done that?

“I didn’t want to be drinking and…”

“No, that’s very responsible of you.”

“I could take a cab home now, but with the cat….”

“Of course I’ll drive you, Luke. Don’t be ridiculous.”

Now that was settled. They left the room, went down to her car. “Where did I park?” she asked him. She was carrying the kitten.

“The cat is happy with you holding it.”

She found herself smiling at that. “She’s just not used to you,” Connie said, not really knowing what she meant. The kitten was not used to either of them. Connie unlocked her car. Before getting in she put the kitten on the floor of the back seat, on her side.

“We should have grabbed a towel or something,” she said. To make a bed for the kitten.

“It isn’t that far,” said Luke.

“I’m sure she’ll be okay,” said Connie, peering through the rear door glass at the kitten on the floor, before getting into the driver’s seat. “She’s come this far.”

The kitten had been passive and quiet all morning, not mewling like the night before. She hadn’t been given anything to eat. “Does your friend have food?” she asked. after Luke’s inquisitive eyebrow-raise, she added, “
Cat
food.”

“We should pick some up, if you mind stopping.”

This was turning into a morning of domestic errands. How had that happened? Yet she didn’t want to leave the kitten with nothing to eat.

She pulled her car out of the garage and into the sunlight. An especially sunlit day: harsh, like Sundays can be. Sundays always felt weird.

Luke lived on Fire Hill, which was her neighborhood as well, now. Almost her neighborhood. The condo was on the border, the cusp, so-to-speak, with Meridian Valley. On the drive they spoke idly about the changing character of the neighborhoods, and even the changing borderline. When she was a girl the Valley had been a sensible middle-class neighborhood, and Fire Hill a run-down one. In the nineties the Valley was chi-chi and Fire Hill was bohemian.

Now the valley was considered expensive, though now that no one was buying, she’d gotten the condo for nothing. Rents on the Hill were stagnant. The line between the neighborhoods was becoming hard again.

They found a place to buy cat food and bought cat food. Back in her car she asked, “Where to now?”

“It is my ex-girlfriend,” said Luke.

“Yes,” said Connie. “I figured.” She didn’t know why all of this made her sad. Or why it mattered. “You’re still friends.”

Luke nodded.

“That’s good, isn’t it?” she asked.

He nodded again. He was hard to read right now. Was she offending him, prying, asking all these questions?

“I’m sorry,” she said. “You know, the thing I haven’t told you is…”

He shifted in his seat and turned toward her.

She hesitated. “I’m just going to say it,” she said. “The thing of it is…I don’t know if you think I’m divorced or separated or what…you know I have a son…”

“Stephen-David,” he said.

“Yes.” She found it hard to look at him; she stared straight ahead. “The thing is, my husband was killed. Murdered. Six months ago.”

“Oh…” he said. The sound of his voice was nearly inaudible.

“I just thought I should, I don’t know—” She stopped. She just thought she should tell him, and she didn’t know why, and she didn’t know why she was going on, about to explain to him that she didn’t know why she was telling him this. Sometimes she went crazy, and she had no one else to talk to, no friends certainly. No one.

“It’s okay,” he said.

That caught her attention, and her suspicion. “What is? What’s okay?”

“Don’t say anything you don’t want to,” he said. “Not to me not to anybody.”

And then he stopped talking. She reached across for his hand and he took it and just held it. They sat there awhile, without the need to talk, without the need to fill the air with anything. There was nothing to say. Barry didn’t get that, or Erica, or any of her shell of associates and acquaintances. But this boy Luke got it. He got her.

On the floor in the seat behind, the kitten purred.

Chapter 28: Luke, Ardiss

A month had passed since Luke gave the cat to Ardiss.

He had not decided whether to do so until Connie told him about Robb. When she did, he knew that she would soon fall in love with him, and might at some point want to know what happened to the cat.

He had intended to take the animal into his place, hold it by the tail and bat it around until it regretted scratching him the night before. That would have been what it deserved, but he settled for the satisfaction of knowing he could have his revenge anytime, or, if he chose, find some other animal to use as a substitute. Things like cats, otherwise useless, were come by easy enough.

But this cat had uses. He had realized that trust was an important issue to other people, and that trust could be earned by specific behaviors which he could become expert in. More immediately, the animal would reel Ardiss back in. He had finally managed to throw Ardiss out of his place. She had found one with a coworker. Now that the distance was established he needed to
re
establish a connection, give her hope that the separation was temporary. He still wanted Ardiss around to experiment on, to try out the techniques he would then use on Connie.

That meant maintaining Ardiss. Tending her. But what he had expected to find tedious and difficult was actually turning out to be fun. He was learning to work her like a fish, or stories he had heard about fish, where you reel them in, and let them out, gradually they weaken, they lose all will. Then you take them. His great coup these months had been getting Ardiss to take out a credit card in her name—with a second card in his name. He had done this because the real estate management company that ran his building had started taking rental payment by credit card, which, with a opening balance of $5000, meant he could float his rent for seven months, by then he would have some other means of income, certainly. She readily agreed—he had planned to give her a long explanation of how the balance could then be transferred to another card, or whatever, and that having the new card would help her credit—she’d already been turned down for a new car loan once. In the end it had not proven necessary. Once he told her that they would have to pretend she was still living at his address for the purposes of the credit card application she readily agreed. He had left that door open just a crack, telling her he needed to be living alone for
now
but could see that changing down the road.

He dropped by once or twice a month to her new place, usually when her ugly roommate was home too, so he could triangulate and keep Ardiss in line. Here too the cat had proved more than valuable to him in the time since he’d spared its life. Appropriating Stephen-David’s malady, he simply told Ardiss that he was allergic to cats. He could, he found, imagine himself allergic. If he thought about it he could make his throat tighten. If he rubbed his eyes hard enough they of course became red and wet, but in addition to that they even started to itch. One of his newly discovered powers. And it made Ardiss incredibly apologetic and sorry on behalf of the cat.

Ardiss loved the cat. She had named it Kino because it was “black and white.” That was supposed to make sense somehow, and he smiled knowingly when she told him. He had meant to google it later, or something, but didn’t bother. Its name was its name. Anyway, she eventually took to calling it “Scaredy Cat”, for obvious reasons. In fact, one of the times when Connie asked him about the cat and how it was doing, she had even asked what “his friend” had decided to name it. He told her the name was Patches because he didn’t quite remember the odd name at that moment, and, anyway, one name would do as well as another: Ardiss and Connie were never going to meet.

Now he was headed to meet Ardiss for the second time in two weeks. She had called him on his cell phone half-an-hour ago sounding angry and frustrated. Something about the roommate. Luke knew further adjustments were required.

Her block was one just off Broadway, the main Fire Hill artery, and near the espresso bar where she and her roommate Heather worked. Luke’s place (the one Ardiss had until recently shared with him) was also near the espresso place, just near it in the completely opposite direction. Far enough apart that there was rarely any nuisance of running into Ardiss by mistake, especially now that he spent so many nights at Connie’s.

Ardiss’s street was overgrown with greenery. Her building was the only triplex on the street, the rest of the dwellings were single family. Small houses in that area, according to Connie, belonging to owners who had gotten in cheap a couple bubbles ago, before the invention—or at least the proliferation of—variable-rate loans, and zero-down cash-back closings.

The type of people who lived there valued their city living quarters. When the markets started to rise those who hadn’t sold were now set. Even their taxes would go down, due to property-value losses. These people probably considered themselves lucky. Their less lucky neighbors, whether in skyrocketing rentals to the south, or in six-bedroom palaces with underwater mortgages to the north probably envied them. Luke didn’t. They were people who didn’t take risks, and none of them was ever going to be rich.

The triplex that Ardiss lived in, Luke had often noted, would be perfect to buy and flip. He was confident he would have already done this if not for the economy. Now credit was impossible, even for budding entrepreneurs. And not only for him—Connie seemed to have suffered in the downturn too. She had money of course, and assets, he was sure. She must have, because she wasn’t really working. He supposed she was set now, after Robb.