35
Will woke up rumpled and sore-necked and covered with cats just after the local news began on Fox. That made it just after ten. The cats tried to keep him in placeâthey weren't ready to get upâbut there were advantages to being the alpha male, as Maggie would say. Reproachful stares were given to him as he pushed them off, stretching and yawning.
He came out from behind the coffee table and stood, doing stretching exercises for a couple of minutes, moving his shoulders, arching his back, and rotating his neck around and around. The cats found the last move endlessly fascinating. He always wondered what they thought he was doing; for all the stretching felines indulged in, he'd never seen one flop its head around in a circular fashion. But then, he never did the ass-in-the-air stretch that they favored. “Different strokes, huh, guys?”
Rorschach, always the most forgiving, trilled at him. He gathered the trash and took it into the kitchen, cats on his heels just in case something good magically fell out of the refrigerator. They watched as he tossed the leavings in the garbage pail then placed the empty bottles in a recycle bin under the sink.
He could feel their eyes on him. He always could. He turned and stared back. “No way.”
Immediately, the trills and chirps began. Freud rumbled a purr and nearly knocked him over with a sudden headbutt and rub against his legs. “It's not going to work.”
More shameless noises, more purring. More petting. Adult cats who weren't affectionate with their owners rarely vocalized beyond an occasional meow, but the pampered ones often kept up the kitten language throughout their lives. He was forever the parent, and they didn't have to grow up. Instead they talked to him the same way they'd communicated with their mother, in kitten languageâand kittens, no matter how overgrown, were hard to resist. Still, he did. “You had your dinner.”
Damn it.
They danced around his feet, all rubbing and chatting. Cats always walked on their toes, but when they heard the magic wordâ
dinner
âthey seemed to tiptoe even higher, almost prancing. “That wasn't fair. You made me say the word.”
Now he had to give them something more. He opened a can of overpriced turkey cat food with every amino acid and vitamin a cat needed, and put it all on one plate. They gathered around it and ignored him.
Still sleepy, he turned off the television and walked down the hall toward the bedroom, undressing on the way. He took a long shower and when he stepped out, found the boys arrayed around the bathroom, bathing themselves and waiting for him.
“You guys sure are clingy lately.”
They didn't reply, but they padded after him to the bedroom, followed him onto the bed, and resumed grooming.
As soon as his head hit the pillow, Will wasn't sleepy anymore. He thought about reading, but it sounded like too much work, so he grabbed the remote and turned on the bedroom set. He added the other bed pillow to the one he was using already and propped himself up so he could see the screen better.
“Let's see what we've got here.” He started surfing through the channels, pausing here and there to check things out. There were more Discovery Channels, which pleased him, a second humor channel, but it appeared to be family oriented, considering the lightweight clean-cut movie it was showing this late at night. He moved on, delighting in extra feeds of all the premiums, finally settling on the last hour of
Memento.
Within fifteen minutes, he dropped off, leaving the television to talk to itself.
36
Midnight. Caledonia slept. Far from the big city, the sky loomed dark and clear and full of twinkling stars. Orion, Leo, and the other summer constellations were brilliant in the moonless night. Jupiter glowed steadily and the Milky Way banded the sky. A plane, traveling from Los Angeles to San Francisco, moved silently over Caledonia. From 30,000 feet, the town looked like a small serene constellation itself, a strip of Main Street lamps sided by a few more glowing lights here and there among the hills.
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Up on Felsher Hill, Pete Banning's time-delay low-frequency transmission activated, and would remain active for the next twelve hours.
Instead of inundating the area birds with an umbrella-shaped plume of micro-microwaves, this one was directed seaward and had been set at a slightly different frequency. It would be Pete's first experiment in directional programming, and the results would be easy to spot. It began almost immediately, affecting the inner compasses of several small seals and a school of fish.
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Daniel Hatch slept fitfully in his narrow bed in his half of the narrow duplex owned by his mother. He had left the television onâit was blaring infomercials nowâin an effort to drown out the voice of his genitalia. Dr. Banning had increased his new medication and given him something to help him relax and get to sleep, but he could still hear the voice, singing and taunting. It was beginning to sound like Mother, and when your dick sounded like your mother, you were getting into real trouble.
Restless, he turned on his side. Coming into partial wakefulness, he wondered again if his mother might be behind the whole thing, pulling a trick to somehow make it seem like Dick was talking. He had mentioned this to Dr. Banning, who appeared concerned. He probably thought Daniel was around the bend now, and he was probably right.
But Hatch still thought Mother might be the real culprit. After all, she had spent an inordinate amount of his childhood grilling him about his habits and warning him about the evils of masturbation. Ever since he'd moved out of her house and begun paying her rent for the separate unit, she'd harped about the evils of cheap women, lecturing him on how they carried venereal disease. She called it “the drip.”
She'd done it again tonight when he'd gone over for dinner. “Daniel, how was work? Did you make time to study the new tax laws today? If you want to get ahead, even when you're just a C.P.A., you have to study, you know. And what about that woman, Mr. Queefer's secretary? Did she speak to you again? Did she ask you out again? Only cheap sluts ask men out.” Daniel told her he'd studied and that Miss Moyle, a.k.a. the cheap slut, was a nice young woman who went to church (he didn't mention she was Jewish), and wore no makeup or low-cut blouses. She actually wore a little lipstick, and beneath her modest clothes, her figure was an hourglass that his penis frequently made lustful remarks about.
He had made up the story about her asking him out just to rile Mother one evening not long ago. He said they'd had coffee and conversation, then let her blat on about how expensive Starbucks wasâhe never said Starbucks, Mother assumedâinstead of admitting they'd merely taken a coffee break at work, and that it was the only good thing that had happened that day.
When she finally shut up about Starbucks, she asked if he'd seen that worthless Dr. Banning again. He said yes, she asked why, and he wanted to scream, “Because of you!” but he merely said he helped him manage stress. She wanted to know, for the millionth time, what could possibly stress out a C.P.A., and when he didn't tell her, she told him Banning was a charlatan, all headshrinkers were charlatans.
All he could think about now was that his dick was nagging almost as much as Mother, but that she was his real problem. Dr. Banning knew she was a problem, but he was too embarrassed to tell him just how bad she'd become. That he put up with her was even more embarrassing than his talking dick.
As he drifted back to sleep, Dick slyly suggested Daniel get rid of her, right away. And that, he agreed, was a damn fine idea.
He clicked the remote and the television stopped babbling about carrot curlers and onion choppers. His penis crooned a lullaby, just like Father used to do.
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Lara Sweethome woke from sleep, thinking she heard the door to her bedroom open and close. She drew the sheet up around her neck and nervously listened for footsteps. Had her mother's ghost been in the room with her, or had it just entered?
Neither. You were dreaming. It was just a dream.
The room, the house, was filled with silence. It really had been a dream. Turning on her reading lamp, she glanced at the alarm clock. It was long past midnight and her Valium had worn off. The bottle was on the bedstand, but she'd forgotten to bring in a glass of water, so she got up, took two pills from the bottle and walked to the door.
Slowly, silently, she opened it and peered out into the hall. The nightlight cast its dim yellow glow down the hall.
What else did, I expect to see? I've never
seen
anything.
She walked to the bathroom, making herself move at a reasonable pace instead of running. In the bathroom, she took her pills and splashed her face with cool water. She listened, heard nothing, then left the bathroom and returned to her bed.
The sheets were cool and welcoming and she gratefully slipped between them, turned to lie on her side, then pulled them up to her chin. She turned the lamp off and snuggled, shutting her eyes against the darkness, sighing with pleasure as she relaxed.
After a few minutes, she imagined she felt something gently pressing against her back as she fell back into sleep. It didn't alarm her; she was too close to dreaming to worry. It felt like a lover was spooning with her, a cool lover under the sheets, his body pressed to hers. She could feel the legs, knees bent to knees, hips to hips. He didn't put his arms around her and in the almost-dream, she asked him to. He didn't, but pressed closer and she became aware of breasts, soft and low, pressing like lumps against her back. Still, she went with the dream.
Hold me, darling.
It was her old boyfriend, Brad, from high school. He was a football player, handsome and blond. Once, he had held her in this very bed and made quiet love to her while her mother slept down the hall.
Hold me.
In her mind, she heard an answering voice, old and female, her mother's voice.
I have no arms, you know that dear. Why don't you hold me instead?
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There was no doubt that Doris Tilton, wife of the log-sawing, Colonel Wallis Tilton, Retired, loved her husband of forty years, but the incredibly loud snores, whistles, and lungy sighs, interspersed with Popeye-esque
cha-cha-cha-cha-chas,
and punctuated by loud gulps, were sometimes too much to take. Wallis had always been a noisy sleeper, but age had turned him into the maestro of all snorers. Usually, she wore earplugs, but tonight they'd made her feel claustrophobic, so here she was, in the family room in Wallis's recliner with a crocheted afghan spread over her legs.
Even space and walls between them didn't mum the snores enough for her to ignore them completelyâsometimes, tonight for instance, they had the power to drive her crazyâso she reluctantly ended up turning the television back on to drown them out. She had a love-hate relationship with the boob tube. Since retirement, if Wallis wasn't at the golf course or puttering around the garden, he was parked in front of the television watching The History Channel. And now, thanks to the damned cable upgrade, there was a second channel full of old battles for him to watch. True to form, he'd spent the afternoon flipping back and forth between the two of them.
Maybe I should go in for a checkup.
Not since the darkest days of menopause had she been as irritable as she had been today. Wallis was a good man, excellent husband, top-flight father. He had never been a carouser, or forgotten their anniversary or anyone's birthday; even when he was away on active duty, a present and phone call or a letter would appear. And, even now, he remained a tender lover, and even managed to listen to her once in a while. So he snored and watched a lot of television. Why was she so annoyed about that?
Just thinking about it increased her annoyance, and that wasn't like her. Maybe she was simply tired. Maybe the movie drowning out the snores had too many shrill voices in it. She changed stations, finally landing on
Singing in the Rain,
which had just begun. Doris smiled and closed her eyes.
Music to tame the savage beast.
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Maggie Maewood awoke with a start and a grunt as her wire-haired terrier landed squarely on her chest and stomach. “What the hell?” she muttered as the canine tried to lick her face. “Stop it, Anteater! Stop it now.”
She sat up in bed, turned on the light. The terrier, eyes glinting, stood on her thighs and watched her intently. He was a cute little creature, white with a brown saddle and, despite his name, a tin can-shaped muzzle.
“Why did you do that?” Her two cats, previously asleep at the foot of the bed, padded up and stared at the dog. “They want to know, too. Why did you do that?”
Anteater threw his head back and howled. The cats hissed. Outside, other dogs took up the call. A flock of birds shrieked overhead. Silence returned. The cats were instantly bored.
“What's wrong?” she asked the dog. “Do you know what time it is?”
Anteater tried to lick her face. His stubby tail wagged madly and he raced from the room, then turned and stared at her from the doorway, still wagging.
“You want to show me something?”
A small bark.
Yes.
“Okay, but this had better be good.”
She dragged herself out of bed, felt around for her slippers, gave up, and followed the dog into the hall and down the stairs, turning on lights as they went. She didn't expect a prowlerâthe wagging tail reassured her, but she didn't really like being in the dark. She never had.
Downstairs, Anteater led her to the kitchen and barked once, happily, and she heard his claws scrabble across the linoleum.
“I'm not feeding you again,” she muttered, and turned on the light. “Crap. I should've known.”
An ant trail a quarter inch wide led from the window over the sink, across the counter and down the cabinet. Little black piss ants marched in a purposeful manner across the floor to the dog food bowl, where one nugget of kibble was being excavated and removed, an antload at a time. She looked at the dog, who was joyously lapping up the ant trail. “I should have known. You probably left that kibble there on purpose, you little monster.”
One happy bark, lots of wagging. The dog, doing what he was named for, made the trail disappear from the floor until only about six inches was left. Anteater stopped there and waited. He was a smart dog and didn't want the ants to move the trail.
Maggie wasn't crazy about his predilection for ants, but it didn't really hurt anything. “You have fun, but don't you dare try licking me again!”
Anteater's entire body wagged.
Maggie smiled, and returned to bed.