She also found herself liking the way he sat watching from Mitch’s old chair, his tail occasionally twitching in barely contained excitement. His feline gaze upon her was almost an erotic one, something May found hard to admit to herself. Humming happily, she put on a CD and sat opposite the cat, who again didn’t start eating until May had lifted her fork.
The salmon tails were delicious, although meager, and though the potato and piece of broccoli were barely enough to stop May from waking up hungry in the middle of the night, she felt triumphant. She was surviving without Mitch, without a man to oversee all the economic realities she’d avoided these past two years. And even though the nagging fear that she might not make the rent loomed, she felt surprisingly self-contained and content.
May glanced over at Shadow, whose ears seemed to twitch to the music. She smiled at the comedic sight, amazed at how the animal appeared to keep perfect time, his frayed left ear butterfly-like as it fluttered in time with the right. His bitten left ear. His bitten left ear! May stared down at her plate. The image of a black human ear with a section missing out of the lobe suddenly seemed to float over her plate. How was it possible? Could it be coincidence, or some kind of projection of hers onto the innocent creature? And why had Mitch given her the cat? Did he know something about the animal that she didn’t, that it had some extraordinary power?
Nina Simone’s song “I Put a Spell on You” floated out of the speakers and drifted across the kitchen like a dangerous perfume. Suddenly she felt that the presence across the table had changed. May froze, terrified, still staring down at her plate, too afraid to look up and across at the cat. In this position she heard the chair scrape the floor as it was pushed away from the table; she heard the heavy footsteps as he walked toward her. She felt his breath on the back of her bare neck, his large hands slip around, finding her breasts, finding her nipples, until finally she managed to whisper, “Who are you?”
She was answered by a loud meow. The sound made her look up to see the cat sitting just as it had been a minute before, on the chair at the end of the table opposite her, its yellow-green eyes wide in innocent surprise.
• • •
Later that night May made Shadow a nest of an old pillow and a blanket in one corner of the living room. While she packed them into an old straw basket she’d found, the cat wound itself around her legs, meowing plaintively.
“You can’t sleep with me, you just can’t. I need to know, Shadow, do you understand? I need to know before I go mad,” she told him, pausing to caress him behind the ears. She was interrupted by a cough outside. Gary, her neighbor, had paused outside the open window on his way to his own back door. He grinned sheepishly at May, who, mortified, picked up the cat.
“Oh hi, Gary. . . .”
“Hi.” He stared warily at the cat. “The landlord doesn’t allow pets, May, you know that.”
“It’s my sister’s; I’m looking after him while she’s on holiday. He’ll be gone by tomorrow afternoon,” she lied, trying to smile at him. Gary hunched his shoulders defensively.
“Glad to hear it. Can’t stand the animals meself. But you should know, they don’t usually speak. At least not human,” he added, guffawing at his own joke before disappearing down the garden path and out of view. May collapsed, hugging her knees. In response Shadow rubbed himself affectionately against her legs.
“What does he know, eh, puss? Nothing, but then again maybe I really am going mad, like Mitch. Maybe he really was a warlock and now he’s cursed me and you. . . .” In response the cat sat on its haunches and, lifting a paw, touched her face. May’s resolve wavered for a moment. Would no cat mean no lover? Either way, she had to find out.
May slipped between the sheets and listened out into the silence. There was nothing. Earlier Shadow had settled into his basket without a protest, his whole body infused with sad resignation. Indeed, there was such finality to his movements that May feared he might slip away into the night, and she didn’t want to lose him. She realized, with some surprise, that she’d developed a dependence on the animal. She thought of him now, curled up on his pillow, his long tail wound around his face and whiskers, no doubt twitching slightly in his sleep. Would her man come with the cat firmly banished, or were the two inexplicably linked?
The silence in the bedroom thickened with the encroaching darkness. Her body, expecting a sudden caress, the surprising brush of fingertips as light as a breeze, tensed in anticipation, but there was nothing, not even a rustle in the shadows. May lay back and tried to unravel the complexity of her reaction. She was both relieved and disappointed, both sad and intrigued that she couldn’t just summon her incubus through sheer will. He appeared to have a will of his own. Staring out across the bare floorboards, she finally fell into a dreamless sleep.
What seemed like just minutes later she was woken by the sound of heavy knocking on the front door. Blinking in the sunlight that was now streaming in through the blinds, she sat up bleary-eyed from sleep. The clock showed ten a.m.—she’d overslept again. The knocking on the front door persisted. Just then the telephone began to ring. Swearing, May reached for the receiver and picked it up. It was her sister, June.
“May, you’ll never guess what’s happened. I’ve just done the books and someone’s stolen four hundred dollars out of the till. I guess it’s one of the temps—you can never trust them. I’m really upset. I’ve put a call through to the local cops.” May froze, the receiver in her hand, paralyzed by guilt, not knowing whether to tell her sister that she’d taken the money.
The knocking continued. May told her sister to hold, then climbed out of bed and pulled on her dressing gown. As she ran to answer the door it occurred to her that it might be her landlord demanding the rent. She paused at the door, unwilling to let him in.
“Who is it?” she demanded through the door.
“Hello? I’m interested in the room.” It was a man’s voice, a young man’s, velvety and deep, laced with a foreign accent May couldn’t identify.
“The room?”
“The one you advertised, on the university website?”
May’s heart leapt. All her problems could be solved if only she could rent the room today. Hurriedly she unbolted the door.
He was dressed in an elegant pair of linen trousers and a loose cream shirt. Towering over her, standing with the sun behind him, the first thing May saw was his silhouette against the light. But she recognized him immediately.
“You,” she could barely whisper.
He stepped out of the light. He was even more handsome by day than by night. There was a sensitivity to his bone structure and eyes that she hadn’t noticed until now.
“Sorry, do I know you?” He looked both surprised and bemused.
May blushed. “No, you just look like someone I used to know,” she hurriedly said, then blushed some more, frozen on the spot in confusion.
He misunderstood her hesitation. “I can put the deposit down immediately—if I like it. I really need to find something by the end of today.”
“That would be fantastic—if you like it, that is. . . .”