Little Cat

‘Shut up!’

Silence numbed the line again.

‘I shouldn’t have called.’

‘Fuck it, Mira, just go on. What about Hosea and his whore? What about Rahab?’

‘I shouldn’t have called you.’

‘You’re frustrating me.’

‘Yeah?’

‘Look, I want to understand, but you’re frustrating me. Let me come and get you now, that’s all I want to do. Okay?’

‘It’s not a good idea.’

‘Fuck!’

‘I should be telling someone else. I should be telling everyone else.’

‘What? Telling them what?’

‘That Hosea loves his whore, no matter what she’s done. The whore knows how to collaborate.’

I heard Ezrah’s breathing slow right down. I kept talking into the sudden space.

‘I’ve felt all these things from what I’ve been doing. I mean, it was a whole other world in that place, in that club, everyone had different weight to their feet, everyone was heavier and we were all attached to each other. If someone was slimy, I had the same slime. It wasn’t the law of opposites attracting: the girls were like the girls and the slime was like the slime. It’s good to be a pig rolling in the slime sometimes, Ezrah. Because now I know what everyone pays for, now I know whose body pays more. I’ve been there trying to clean it all up. I have been trying to organize people’s unbearable needs because I see their unbearable forms. All I want is for things to be equal.’

Ezrah was about to protest.

‘All the feelings I had there have rebounded and hit me in the chest. Shame is just everything that hit me in the chest before the feeling came full circle.’

‘I don’t understand,’ Ezrah said slowly.

‘I had these moments in the dark in that crappy little room when I could literally see from the back of my head … ’

‘Stop, Mira, please … ’

‘And there was this gluey white thread there, floating in the air, it was about halfway between the bed and the ceiling. I knew that this cord had been whipped around the earth … ’

I heard Ezrah snort back to life, a nervous reaction in his nose.

‘I want to wait for more of these feelings, Ezrah, I want to wait every night, ruined or not. It feels good to see these kinds of things, like your brain’s practically dripping from the walls, like your brain can act outside your head, moving without static, like everything is equal, I can understand myself and all men … ’ My voice suddenly got hoarse. ‘Will you tell my mom that I called?’ I heard myself asking. ‘Tell her I’m okay. Tell her I’ll call her.’

‘No.’

‘Please, Ezrah. Just tell her I’ll call her. I’ve got to go now.’

I heard Michael coughing awake.

‘I’m coming there. I’m going there right now. The police told me where that dead girl worked. I don’t care who’s there with you, I’m going to pound his face in. You happy now, Mira? I bet you’re there anyway. I bet you never left that fucking shithole.’

‘Don’t you dare go there. I am not there.’

‘I don’t believe you. I’m going. Getting my shoes on. Getting my car keys … ’

‘Ezrah, I mean it. Don’t go. I’m not there!’