until I get enough money for a room, I’m sleeping on a park bench,” he said, hoping he didn’t sound like he was looking for sympathy; he wasn’t. “Well, we can’t have that,” she said. “You’ll just have to stay with me for a while.”
Jack’s heart almost stopped. Was he hearing her right? Did she just invite him to live with her? The thought so overwhelmed him that for a moment he actually considered declining the offer. But then he came to his senses, and said “Really? You would do that for me, a perfect stranger?” She just shrugged and said, “Us strays have to stick together.”
He looked at her with awe, and suddenly the love he already felt for her magnified itself a thousand-fold. The feeling was so intense that for a moment he thought he might dissolve into tears. Instead he took a deep breath and said “I guess so. Thank you.”
“No sweat,” she said. “There’s just one thing I need to know first.”
“Sure.”
“What’s your name?”
Jack smiled, embarrassed. “Jack,” he said. “Jack Horn. What’s yours.”
“Diane Foster.”
Diane Foster, Jack thought. He knew that wasn’t her real name any more than his real name was Jack. Her real name was Eve. He wondered if she knew that. “Now I have to ask you something,” Jack said.
“Shoot.”
“How do you feel about cats?”
“You got a cat? You don’t even have a home.”
“It sort of adopted me. We sleep together on the park bench.”
She crinkled her nose and said “Sure, bring it along.”
•
The rest of the day flew by fast. Faster than any day Jack could remember. All day he had that light-as-a-feather feeling he had gotten the first time he had seen her. Only there were concerns, too. In the space of a day this girl had gone from a glorious phantom in his dreams to someone he worked with to someone he was going to live with. Exactly how was he supposed to pull this off? How could he act normally around her? How much should he tell her about what he knew? And how soon? And what did she know, if anything? What if he told her, and she thought he was crazy, and never wanted to see him again? He didn’t know the answers to any of those questions. He decided to simply take it slow, letting things play out one day at a time. For the first few days, he would say nothing.
When quitting time rolled around, he punched out and waited for Diane down in the lobby. He did not have to wait long. She got off the elevator, along with three others, and they made their way into the parking lot, to her car. She pulled out, made a quick left onto Old Hook, then a quick right onto Main, which she took to the park, where they got out together and made their way to the picnic area.
“Here kitty kitty kitty,” Jack cooed, snapping his fingers, and looking around for signs of feline life. Nothing. Jack and Diane exchanged a kind of puzzled stare, then Jack started in again with the here kittys. This time Diane joined in. Within moments the cat appeared, looking cautiously at the new party, then walking briskly over to Jack and rubbing up against his leg. Jack scooped it up in his arms, nuzzling its head with his chin, and brought it back to the car.
Diane retraced her path, back to Old Hook, and took it all the way to the end. Then she made a few more rights and lefts, each one taking them deeper into the outskirts of town, where there were less homes and more trees, trailers, and dirt roads, until they arrived at her place—a basement apartment beneath a large colonial that was only one of a few homes on a mostly deserted street.
Diane parked right in front of the house. Jack followed her out, down a flight of stairs that ran along the side of the house, to her door. She unlocked the door, and held it open for her new guests. Jack wanted to say “Nice place you’ve got here” just to be polite, but it would have been too big of a lie, and Diane would have surely called him on it. Instead he just went “Hmmm . . . interesting,” to which Diane replied “Yeah, I know . . . it’s a wreck.”
“But a very cozy one,” Jack said, putting down the cat and taking a stroll around. “Come one, I’ll give you the grand tour,” she said, pointing out the highlights and lowlights of her humble basement abode. On one wall was a black couch with badly beaten cushions, and an equally beaten up accent chair beside it. Opposite the couch was a TV on an entertainment center. Just past the couch was a table with two chairs, and past that, a kitchen with no room for a table. Opposite the table in the living room was a hallway, leading to a bedroom on one side and another bedroom and a bathroom on the other. All of the rooms were very small.
“I hope your landlord won’t mind my being here,” Jack said, “not to mention my furry friend.” He pointed at the cat, who was on top of the couch, stretching itself. “I don’t think she’ll mind,” Diane said. “The owner is very old, barely even aware of what’s going on. I think she should probably be in a nursing home by now.”
“I see,” Jack said. “That’s too bad.”
“Yeah, well . . . It is what it is.” She paused for a few moments, staring at him with those big eyes, then said, “Well, you can get settled in now if you want. I’m going to take a shower. I’ll bring you some sheets for the bed later on. And after that . . . I’m going to cook us a big dinner.”
“That sounds great,” he said, taken aback by her hospitality. With that, she turned and went off to her bedroom. He did the same. He tossed his back pack on the bed and unpacked. It was going to feel great eating real food tonight, not to mention sleeping in a real bed. The fact that he would be doing it with her . . . well, that just made it a million times better.
He settled in quickly; there wasn’t much to unpack—just a few toiletries and some cloths. And of course, his glock, which he put in a dresser under some pants.
And that was that. He had a new home.
He heard the shower running in the next room. He waited for it to stop, waited for her to finish up, and then he took his turn. After showering and getting dressed, he went back into the living room. Diane was already in the kitchen working on dinner. “Is there anything I can do to help?” he asked, feeling guilty about being the beneficiary of so much hospitality. “No, I’m good,” she said. “Besides, there’s only room for one person at a time in here.”
“I get it,” Jack said, plopping himself on the couch as the cat curled up in his lap. He stroked it behind the ears. It purred deeply. “So, what about a name for this cat?” he called out. “Oh, I don’t know,” she said, “Is it a male or a female?”
“Male.”
“I had a cat named Tabby as a kid. How about that?”
“I don’t think she looks like a Tabby,” Jack said.
“Probably not,” Diane agreed.
“What are some good cat names?”
“I don’t know. Mittens. Buttons. Fluffy.”
“Maybe we should work on it later,” Jack said.
“I can’t cook and think at the same time,” Diane explained.
“I
