*
The block of Seventy-Fourth Street between Columbus and Amsterdam was lost in time. The sidewalks were broken and uneven and interrupted at regular intervals by old trees whose branches created a canopy over the street, their leaves rustling pleasantly three seasons a year. Cars parked on either side narrowed the one-way street to the bare minimum needed for vehicles to pass. Despite its location in a busy part of Manhattan’s Upper West Side, that block tended toward a kind of quiet much of the city never achieved. Nora always imagined that her little block had changed hardly at all in the past half century. Only the cars gave it away.
She lived in a third-floor studio in a building that looked even narrower than the street. Three flights of stairs kept her in decent shape, but she nearly always stumbled on the way to her floor, as if the stairs conspired against her, with steps taking turns being the one that unaccountably grew in height on a given day. An extra inch or so, just enough to catch the toe of a shoe. The banister had saved her many bruised shins.
The original advertisement for the apartment had described it as a “loft,” but she’d quickly discovered that this was code for “studio so small that you’ll put your mattress in a loft space not much bigger than the top shelf of a closet.” Still, for all the time that she spent at home, the studio suited her needs well enough. A bathroom, a tiny galley kitchen, a closet, and a high-ceilinged living room complete with a ladder that let her climb up to the shelf above the kitchen. Her mattress smelled like food 24-7. A tiny space, but enough room for Nora and her three cats.
Kelso, Red, and Hyde had been named after her three favorite characters from That 70’s Show, which turned out to have been a generous gesture on her part because the cats were assholes.
Nora told anyone who would listen, My cats are assholes. But at least they’re my Assholes.
She regretted it every time, but somehow she couldn’t stop herself from saying it.
Just after eight o’clock that night she sat on her sofa, a thirdhand piece of furniture whose original color was lost to history and its fabric threaded through with cat hair that the vacuum cleaner never drew out.
“I hate you little shits,” she told Kelso.
He arched his back and sneered down his nose before marching away.
Hyde jumped onto the sofa, walked onto her lap as if he’d barely noticed her, then curled into her lap. He knew a lie when he heard it.
Nora preferred dogs, but she spent too much time out of the apartment to be a dog owner. In truth, she disliked other people’s cats and other people’s cats disliked her, but she loved her three Assholes.
Sometimes, though, they watched her with more than typical feline interest. On early mornings when she stumbled out of bed or on exhausted late nights when she fell asleep watching television, she would mutter accusations that the three of them were hatching some sinister plot. Joking, mostly.
Hyde purred as she stroked his fur.
On her TV screen, Jason Statham used his fists and a sharp knife to avoid being killed by a trio of grim men with guns. Nora had been channel surfing when she stopped at the sight of Statham’s chiseled features. She had no idea what the movie might be, but it didn’t matter. After a full day at work, she needed to unwind with something that did not demand much of her attention.
One thing she refused to do was watch the news. She’d spent the entire day writing about dead kids and grieving parents, with tangents into New York City politics and various criticisms of the police investigation into the Kingsbridge murders.
She’d had enough of reality.
A quick rap at her door brought Nora off the sofa. She dumped Hyde from her lap and hurried to answer the knock. The deliveryman from the Golden Lotus stood in the hall with a fat brown paper bag, redolent with the smell of Chinese food. Nora’s stomach growled as she quickly signed the credit-card slip, adding a nice tip as she thanked the man.
Breathing in the delicious aromas from the bag, she began to close her door only to be interrupted by another loud knock. Nora turned to find Shelby Coughlin waiting on her threshold.
“I saw the delivery guy!” Shelby said happily, slipping inside. “So hungry!”
“Me, too.” Nora closed the door. “Ravenous.”
“You’d better have remembered the beer!”
“I acquired the beer as instructed, Your Majesty,” Nora said archly.
“Well done, lowly creature,” Shelby replied, playing along. “Although I still object to the delivery thing. The whole point of going to the Lotus for Chinese food is that they make it fresh. If we get it delivered—”
“Y’know, you keep using that word, but I don’t think it means what you think it means.”
Shelby smiled as Nora carried the brown bag into the galley kitchen. “Which word is that, Inigo Montoya?”
“We.”
“Yes, okay, you have been buying the Chinese food lately, and I’m deeply grateful. But it’s practically on your way home, right?”
Nora sighed. “Fine. Next week, I promise I will go and pick it up myself. But you are bringing the beer.”
Shelby grinned. “You are my hero. Really.”
“You’re lucky you’re my favorite person.”
“Am I really your favorite person?”
Nora opened the bag of Chinese food. “Absolutely. If you liked cats, I would give you all of mine.”
Shelby tied her long red-and-gold mane back with an elastic and took plates down from Nora’s cabinet. “You hate your cats,” Shelby said drily. “I don’t hate cats, but I don’t want your cats.”
They put the food out on the coffee table and then did battle with the cats to keep them away from the spread. Shelby turned off the TV and opened Nora’s laptop, choosing the eighties alt-rock channel that Shelby herself had set up on Pandora radio. They’d known each other less than eighteen months, but the girl from Atlanta had been making herself at home since day one. Every time, Nora surprised herself by finding it endearing instead of intrusive. If anyone else behaved as presumptuously in her home as Shelby did, Nora would never stand for it, but whenever Shelby swept into the apartment and took over Nora’s life, it never seemed to be selfish.
“I was watching that,” Nora said, mostly because she felt that she should issue some sort of protest.
“Not really.” Shelby settled beside Nora on the sofa and nudged Red away from the edge of the coffee table. “You just like having the TV for company, and now you’ve got actual company, not to mention food and beer and music.”