Tail down now, I circle. I would not be caught in this alley, and I do not trust this boy who has buried his face in that borrowed shirt. He reeks of dirt and sweat and the musty smell of Fat Peter’s storefront, where perhaps that body yet lies. He is scented, too, by that pungent smoke.
‘Tick, look at me.’ Her nose buried in his hair, the girl has smelled it too. But the face that looks up at hers is stained with tears and dirt. A mark the size of a man’s ring is purpling beneath his eye, and she loses her resolve. ‘Come with me,’ she says. Keeping one arm around the boy to guide him, she looks back at me.
I meet her eye and take a step forward. She will know I am with her, that I will not leave her alone with this boy or whoever he has brought with him. If she has the sense to realize I do not trust him, then she will know, as well, that she should not either.
Against my better judgment, she leads him around to the front of the building, holding the door for him to enter. I follow as they go upstairs, but when she opens the office door I dart past with a hiss. The boy recoils, as I intend, and this gives me the moment I need to reconnoiter. Nothing has changed that I can smell or see, and I experience a moment of gratitude. The boy was not a decoy, at least not for this kind of trap.
As they rumble in, I take a seat on the windowsill. From here, I can observe. I also, if need be, have an exit at my back. The boy settles on the sofa where Care has slept. She has gone to the cabinet where she keeps her small store of food. It is hers to share, and so I do not protest. While she busies herself with openers and bread, he eyes me as suspiciously as I do him.
‘That cat doesn’t like me,’ he says.
She doesn’t comment. My hiss spoke for itself.
‘He’s mean. Why do you keep him?’
‘I don’t “keep” him.’ She answers without turning. ‘He just showed up.’
The boy squints and I wonder about his eyesight. Then I realize I am sitting with the sun to my back. He is trying to read me as he would the girl – or any of the other humans around whom he circulates. As if my cool glare would reveal my thoughts.
‘But you let him in.’ The boy seems hurt by this, as if we were competing for a limited resource.
‘He’s company.’ Care returns, the canned meats we have feasted on now spread between layers of bread. She has kept some aside for me, I see, and brings it – in a shallow bowl – over to the windowsill.
‘The old man said you could learn a lot about people from the way they treat animals.’ She puts it down but does not attempt to touch me. She is learning. ‘Especially if they thought no one was watching. Besides, he liked cats.’
The boy makes room for her on the couch and reaches for his plate. Even as he eats, however, he keeps glancing over at me. ‘There’s something spooky about this one, Care. I swear, he’s watching me.’
The girl looks over at me but she denies it. ‘He’s just skittish. You must smell funny to him.’
He shrugs, and as they eat I settle in, tucking my paws beneath my body. The boy is at ease. The time is right.
‘So, what happened, Tick?’ Care keeps her voice level, although I can hear the tightness of stress in its upper register. The tears, that bruise. ‘I thought we’d lost you there.’
She says it as if it were a joke, a counter to that note of tension, but the boy shudders. ‘You know what AD says.’ He looks at his sandwich, as if the meat has suddenly gone bad. ‘We’ve all got to earn our keep.’
Now it’s her turn to put the food down. ‘Tick?’
‘It’s not what you think,’ he says, his voice petulant. ‘It’s my job to run errands. To do the small things. You know.’ He picks up his sandwich again, but I cannot avoid the suspicion that he is dissembling, avoiding the meat of her unspoken question by offering a lesser or partial answer. ‘Brian and those guys, they needed me.’
I wait for her to pounce. He has left himself open, both in terms of the nature of his tasks and their seeming cessation. The girl is no fool. She can see as well as I what he has implied. His presence here is not of his own volition, or not entirely.
She does not question him, though. Instead, she goes to the larder. When she returns, she is holding a box of biscuits. In the moments it has taken her to do this, he has wolfed down the rest of his sandwich. He eats like an animal, afraid to make himself vulnerable, unsure of when he will have such bounty again. As she offers him the cookies, he looks up at her. For a moment, his face is open, and I understand her reasoning.
‘They don’t want you messing around with this, Care.’ There is fear in his voice. Fear for her, I believe. For the moment, he has forgotten the sandwich. The cookies. Everything but her. ‘Fat Peter? The stuff the old man was looking into? They got someone else to take care of it. Someone, you know, big.’
He pauses. Swallows. He puts down the cookie before he speaks again. ‘They knew I’d told you what the old man said. That I’d sent you to Fat Peter. I mean, I didn’t mean to, but—’