Devil Cat

The battered red collar hung from the lowest branch of the caragana bush.  “Oh, no.”  Frannie blinked back her tears and crawled through the hedge, calling softly as she tried without success to wriggle her way around the thorns.

“Blackbird.  Where are you?  Come on, it’s time to go home.  Blackbird?”

Her knees ached and she winced at the thought of the disinfectant her scrapes and scratches would require.  She hated the stuff, always had.  Even now, she wasn’t convinced the sting was worth the elimination of possible infection but, like putting the red collar on Blackbird, she couldn’t give up putting Dettol on scratches.  Both things reminded her of Hal. 

Her beloved stepfather had been gone for almost five years and she still missed his wisdom and humor.  Frannie sometimes wondered if knowing Hal had spoiled her for other men.  He wasn’t drop-dead handsome, but like Red Green said, If you can’t be handsome, at least you can be handy.  Hal was the handiest man she’d ever known.  He could repair anything, cook anything, comfort anyone.  Everyone loved Hal. 

Including Frannie and her mom.  Frannie didn’t remember her real father and her mother refused to even speak of the man who disappeared before Frannie was old enough to distinguish anything more than a big moon face floating over her crib.  When they first ran into Hal at the hardware store he owned, they immediately fell in love with him and Frannie was convinced that neither of them would ever fall out.  For her mom, being in love with a dead man was perfectly okay.  She was almost 80 and she had her bingo, her cribbage club, and her daily yoga workout.   She didn’t need a man.  But Frannie might. 

Because here she sat, thirty-six years old, and still single.  Okay, let’s admit it.  She was more than just single – she was a spinster.  She hadn’t had a date in almost five years.  Frannie liked men, she really did.  The problem was that every time she met a new man, she compared him to Hal and the new man invariably lost.

Frannie stood up on the other side of the tangled hedge, her arms and legs marked with tiny red scratches.  No sign of Blackbird.  Frannie sighed.  Another round of photocopied “Lost Cat” posters, calls to the SPCA, hours of walking and driving the neighborhood looking for the meanest cat in town.  Hal’s cat, never trained to the leash, and still hating the touch of the damned red leather.  But Frannie didn’t dare let Blackbird out on her own – she loved to fight and always came off the worse for it.  Frannie’s vet bills were unbelievable.

Frannie spent half her time trying to hide the leash and collar from Blackbird and the other half searching the neighborhood for the cat once she figured out how to get out of it yet again.  Blackbird was smart, too smart.  Hal never needed a leash; Blackbird, like all females, came when he called.  Frannie needed more.  So she bought the leash.  Blackbird wriggled out of it in less than five minutes.  Then she added a choke collar.  Blackbird laughed, made her neck pencil thin and dashed off down the street.  Frannie bought one of the harnesses that go around the legs and chest.  “No cat has ever gotten out of this harness,” the pet shop guy said.  Blackbird studied it for all of fifteen minutes and then disappeared for almost two days.

Frannie lifted her hand to shade her eyes while she scanned the yard.  Blackbird might be anywhere in this mess.  Grass grew as high as Frannie’s knees, and wildflowers and windblown roses scented the air.  Trees leaned over tangled vegetable beds and faded trellises trailed sweetpeas and clematis.  Messy, yes, but beautiful as well.

Frannie’s reverie shattered when a huge bass voice yelled, “Get out of here, you mangy creature!”

She didn’t even try to stifle her grin.  Blackbird.  Of course he was yelling at Blackbird.  With the red collar and matching leash dangling from her fingers, Frannie followed the voice.  Crashes, bangs and curses echoed out into the yard, and beneath it all, Frannie distinguished Blackbird’s menacing growls, sounding more like a Doberman than a cat.  She felt sorry for anyone going up against Blackbird.

The sounds led her through the garden to a back porch and a screen door.  She stood with her hand on the doorkob.

“Not in there!”  The exasperation in the man’s voice was as thick as the heat on the porch.

That was her cue.  She opened the door into chaos.  Plates lay shattered on the floor, dirt mingled with once-potted plants, spilled sugar crunched beneath her sandals.  But no sign of the voice, or of Blackbird.  She moved gingerly into the room, balanced on the balls of her feet, avoiding the worst of the disaster.  A black and white blur appeared in the doorway.  Frannie, with five years’ experience behind her, reached down and scooped up a furious cat then looked up into the olive green eyes of an equally furious man.

“This is your cat?” he growled.

“Yes,” she said, trying to hold onto the squirming bundle in her arms.  “This is Blackbird.  She’s mine.”  She looked around at the room.  “I’ll replace whatever she’s broken.”

The man shrugged.  “Don’t bother,” he said, picking up bits of greenery, holding them in his big hands as if they were still alive.  His body matched his hands and his voice.  Big and solid.  His weathered jeans fit like a second skin and Frannie stared as he moved around the room in his bare feet, totally focussed on the dead plants.  She swore she saw tears glistening in his eyes.

She knew that couldn’t be right, though.  It must be her contacts.  Men didn’t cry.  It wasn’t in the manual.  The man-manual.  Frannie hadn’t read it, but she knew what was in it.  The rules were so obvious, women had no trouble figuring them out.  At least pretend to be a touch guy.  Never say I love you first.  Run if a woman says I love you first.  Wait at least a week before calling back.  The list went on and on. 

Frannie didn’t blame the men she knew for following the rules – they couldn’t help it.  The manual had been around for so long it was embedded in their genes, probably right in their DNA.  That extra little bump on one of them was the manual gene.  Frannie shook her head and returned to the problem at hand.

“Please let me help you.”

Kevin turned away from his ruined kitchen and really looked at the woman for the first time.  She appeared wary, but defiant, standing in his house with the devil cat grasped in her arms.  Her auburn hair shone in the sunlight.  Her face glowed  with health and dozens of perfectly placed freckles.  And her legs…

That’s when Kevin noticed.  “You’re bleeding.  All over,” he said.

The woman glanced down at her arms and legs.

“Don’t worry about it.  A few thorns bit me when I was chasing Blackbird.”

“Sit down.”

He pulled a chair out from the table.  “Sit here.  Don’t move.  Don’t bleed any more than you can help.  The red dots don’t match my tiles.” 

She looked at the faded orange tile and smiled up at him.  “You’re not kidding.  I don’t think anything could match those tiles.”

“What?  The turquoise appliances don’t go with the orange tiles?  Or the red and chrome chairs?  I’m shocked.”

He reached for the squirming animal in her hands.  “Give me the cat.  I’ll put her in the bathroom while I’m getting the antiseptic.” 

He didn’t give the woman a chance to answer.  The look in her eyes told him she wasn’t agreeing to anything.  He grabbled Blackbird – what kind of a name was that for a devil cat? – and took her into the bathroom.  She purred in his arms.  “Hmmmm,” he said, “you’re not so bad after all.  And at least she caught you before you did any damage in the workroom.”

Kevin rummaged in the medicine cabinet for Dettol and band-aids.  Some of the scratches were nasty.  The woman’s face had lost a little of its healthy glow when he got back to the kitchen.

“They hurt, don’t they?”

She shook her head, making her hair float around her face, releasing an aroma of…  What was that smell?  Oranges and cinnamon, that’s what it was.

He knelt on the floor beside her chair and took her small feet in his hands.

“This’ll sting a little,” he said.

Frannie forced herself to sit still.  It wasn’t easy.  The Dettol hurt.  She wondered why men always said it would only sting when it really hurt.  Another guy thing,, thinking that pretending it didn’t hurt would  minimize the pain.  But his hands were gentle as he wielded the cotton balls, gentle and warm.  She gave herself up to them.

His hair was graying although he couldn’t be more than a couple of years older than her.  And curly.  She couldn’t help herself, she touched it.  It wrapped itself around her fingers like the fleece of a young lamb.

“I’m sorry,” she said, removing her hands from his hair.

“It’s okay.  I liked it.”  He smiled up at her.  “I’m done with your legs.”

She forced herself upright on the chair.  “I can do the rest.  My arms are hardly scratched at all.”  And besides, she wasn’t sure she wanted him that close to her.

“Okay.  Just sit there for a few minutes.  I’m going to get a broom.”

“You have to let me help you clean up.  Blackbird’s my cat and I’m responsible for her.”

“It’s not as bad as it looks.  Let me sweep up the mess on the floor and we’ll see then.”

He was right.  Ten minutes with a dustpan and broom and the kitchen looked fine.

“What about the rest of the house?” Frannie asked.

“I chased her back out here before she hurt anything else.  Let me show you.”

Kevin reached for the woman’s hand and realized he didn’t know her name.  And she didn’t know his.  How was he going to ask her out for dinner if he only knew her cat’s name?

“I’m Kevin Lloyd,” he said.

“Frannie, Frances Gray, I mean.  I live two doors down.”

“Okay, Frannie Gray.  Come along and I’ll show you that everything else is okay.”

He showed her the mostly unused living room, the never used dining room, and then opened the door to the room where he lived.  His workroom.  He watched her face as she took it in, the plants hanging from every wall, sitting on the floor, the tables, the bookshelves, growing on the windowsill and the windowseat.  And his easels, all of them with paintings just begun, in the middle stage, almost finished, a muddle of plants and paint.

Her blue eyes opened wide as she stood in the doorway.

“It’s amazing.”  She threw her arms out in front of her.  “Gorgeous.”

Frannie wandered into the magical room and took a deep breath, inhaling the smells of living plants and pungent paint and turpentine.  He smelled like that, too.  Kevin smelled just like this room.  She liked him, liked him even before she saw this room, but now?  Now the liking was tinged with awe at his talent and anticipation.  For the first time in a long time, Frannie wanted to get to know a man better.  Could she ask him over for dinner?  An apology for Blackbird’s destruction?  Her faced reddened thinking about it.  What if he said no?  But that shouldn’t stop her, she couldn’t let it stop her.  Frannie thought of what Hal would say.  “Fear is never a good excuse for not doing something you want to do.”

So she did it.  She stood in the middle of that magical room and she did it.

“Would you come to my house for dinner tonight?”  She waited for his answer.

“I was trying to get up the courage to ask you the same thing.  Yes.  I’d love to have dinner with you and Blackbird.”

He reached out his hand for her as if it were the most natural thing in the world.  His hands were warm and calloused and tender.  Frannie couldn’t help herself.  She remembered the way Hal’s hands had looked the day he died, resting on the white sheet, tanned and strong as ever.  She pictured her mother’s tiny hand resting in his and the way his fingers tightened and then fell away from hers when he stopped breathing. 

Kevin touched his thumb to the tear on her cheek.

“Frannie?  Are you all right?”

“Yes.  I was just thinking of my stepfather.  He would have liked you.”

Frannie and Kevin  stood in the middle of his workroom, surrounded by life, and smiled at each other and knew, at that moment. neither the future nor the past mattered.  Everything that counted surrounded them.  Life and love and growth was right there in their linked hands. 

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