I have been a fool. Abandoning the desk, I return to the windowsill. All I can get, I have gotten from those pages, from this room. I am not a house pet, nor will I ever be. What I am is a hunter, more experienced than this poor child, and yet I am hanging back? No, the night is mine. The girl is safe for now. Warm and fed, the door blockaded against any intrusion.
The window is low. She has closed it some, against the cold, but with my feline flexibility I can work my way beneath the lowered pane. I judge the leap more accurately this time, landing with the grace of my species despite my age and despite the stiffness that will not shake off. One last look up at the window, still and dark. If all goes well I will return by morning. But now the quarry waits.
FOURTEEN
It’s no great feat to track the suited man. If anything, I would prefer more of a challenge. The time I spend with the girl already threatens to soften me, to take away something of my feral edge. But although our unwelcome visitor reeked as well of the usual vices – alcohol, the must of badly stored cigars and a particularly pervasive cologne – what I stick to is the potent combination that sets my ears back. The odor of that pelt – dead fur and, now, wet wool – overlying the very personal scent of his fear. As I pass the night haunts of his kind, the other scents are common. Where they don’t confound each other, they explain themselves. One would want to dull one’s senses around such loud and uncongenial company, the numbing effect of the drink covering the poor quality of the leaf and vice versa.
I am not surprised that my pass takes me back across the tracks and down toward the river. But this man did not travel by back alleys or by boxcar. No, despite the anxious sweat – or perhaps because of it, afraid of the enclosed car, the metal machine, the box – he seems to have sauntered, making his way down the wider avenues, even as they grow rough and loud.
He would not have been alone. As the night progresses, I pass revelers – some in couples, others in crowds. One group catches my particular attention, their voices growing louder even in the time it takes me to make my way up the block. I do not need their volume to know their placement, the slight movements as they laugh and swing at each other in jocular role play. Three men, deep in drink. Despite their inebriation, I am wary. Males in their first flush of strength, they are ready for the hunt, and I, though a predator too, am smaller than they are. Where once I may have ignored such men, I do not now. Not since my vision of the other night, that dream of three.
But this trio is another such. There is no one leader, taller than his companions, and seemingly no one guiding intellect either. As their voices fade behind me, they talk of women and I cannot help but think of Care. In a year or two she will be seen as sport by such as these. I cannot help but hope that she sees them as I do, all bluff and noise and cheap cigars. I recall the trace of scent on those papers, a leaf both mellow and fragrant, and wonder again at the character of the old man, the one who died. What he would have done for the girl, if he could.
I have no time for idle musings, however, and must seek this Bushwick’s scent. I open my mouth, taking in the damp of the air and all the fragrance of spring. An opossum has her burrow somewhere near. Has taken prey and given birth. Life and rot and – yes! – the sharp tang of sweat and fear as well. Bushwick has passed here, where the track is confined between cobblestones and concrete, his scent mixing with the cinder and ash of the mechanical beast.
The scent is muddled – the train, the river damp. It matters not – I am on familiar ground. A name comes into mind: Dock Street. And I have found his lair: a warehouse at the edge of the nightlife district, bordering the docks. A closed block of brick, it poses a challenge, but not an insurmountable one. Although Bushwick’s trail leads to the street, I make my way toward the back, toward the river. Halfway there, I find my ingress. The scrabbling of claws leads me from the gutter to a vent of some sort, where the mortar has been worn away by a slow and constant drip. Had I not recently fed, I would find good hunting here – this is not only an opening into the building, it is a source of water for creatures of many kinds. As it stands, I pass through, pointedly ignoring the timid stares from the crevices. For tonight, my ears signal my disinterest. Let there be a truce.
I hear the frightened chatter as I pass by. The denizens of this space know well how to read my signals. This is how they live, but I cannot blame them for their nervous skittering. As I believe Care has learned, trust is a gift given only once.