“Hey,” the guy says. “Cody, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Richard,” he says.
“Right. We met before,” I say. He doesn’t seem to remember. He was probably too stoned.
“I’m Alice,” the girl says. I remember Meg mentioning a new roommate moving in for the winter term, taking the place of some other girl who transferred out after one semester.
“Where’d you go?” he asks.
“I stayed in a motel,” I lie.
“Not the Starline!” Alice asks in alarm.
“What?” It takes me a second to realize that the Starline is the motel. Meg’s motel. “No, some other dive.”
“Would you like some coffee?” Alice asks.
All the coffee I drank last night has turned acidic in my stomach, and though I’m hazy and exhausted, I can’t fathom drinking any more. I shake my head.
“Wanna smoke a bowl?” Stoner Richard asks.
“Richard,” Alice swats at him. “She has to pack up all that stuff. I don’t think she wants to be stoned.”
“I’d think she’d wanna be stoned,” Stoner Richard replies.
“I’m good,” I say. But the sun is fighting its way out of the thin haze of cloud and it’s making everything so bright that I feel dizzy.
“Sit down. Eat something,” Alice says. “I’m practicing making bread, and I have a new loaf.”
“It’s slightly less bricklike than usual,” Richard promises.
“It’s good.” Alice pauses. “If you slather it with lots of butter and honey.”
I don’t want the bread. I didn’t want to get to know these people before, and I certainly don’t want to now. But Alice is gone and back with the bread before I know it. The bread is kind of dense and chewy, but she’s right; with butter and honey, it’s decent.
I finish it up and brush the crumbs from my lap. “Well, I’d better get to it.” I start toward the door. “Though someone already did the heavy lifting. Do you know who packed up her stuff like that?”
Stoner Richard and Alice look at each other. “That’s how she left the room,” Alice says. “She packed it up herself.”
“Girl was on top of shit till the bitter end,” Richard adds. He looks at me and grimaces. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry. It saves me work,” I say. And my voice sounds so nonchalant, like this is such a load off my plate.
x x x
It takes about three hours to pack the rest of her stuff. I pull out holey T-shirts and underwear because why do they need that? I throw away her stacks of music magazines, piled in a corner. I’m not sure what to do about her bed sheets because they still smell like her, and I have no idea if her scent will do to Sue what it’s doing to me, which is making me remember Meg in such a real visceral way—sleepovers and dance parties and those talks we would have until three in the morning that would make us feel lousy the next day because we’d slept like hell but also feel good because the talks were like blood transfusions, moments of realness and hope that were pinpricks of light in the dark fabric of small-town life.
I am tempted to inhale those sheets. If I do, maybe it will be enough to erase everything. But you can only hold your breath for so long. Eventually, I’ll have to exhale her, and then it’ll be like those mornings, when I wake up, forgetting before remembering.
x x x
The UPS place is downtown and I’ll have to get a taxi, cart the stuff over, ship it, come back for the duffels, and be ready to catch the last bus at seven. Downstairs, Alice and Stoner Richard are where I left them. It’s unclear to me if these students at this supposedly well-regarded college ever actually study.
“I’m pretty much done,” I tell them. “Just have to close the boxes and I’ll be out of here.”
“We’ll get the cats for you before you go,” Stoner Richard offers.
“The cats?”
“Meg’s two kittens,” Alice says. She looks at me and cocks her head to the side. “She didn’t tell you about them?”
I refuse to show any surprise. Or hurt. “I don’t know anything about any cats,” I say.
“She found these two stray kittens a couple months ago. They were totally emaciated and sick.”
“Nasty shit coming out of their eyes,” Stoner Richard adds.
“Yes, they had some kind of eye infection. Among other maladies. Meg took them in. She spent a ton of money at the animal hospital on treatments, and then she nursed them back to health. She loved those kittens.” She shakes her head. “That’s what was the biggest surprise to me. That she’d go through all that trouble for the kittens and then, you know. . . .”
“Yeah, well, Meg worked in mysterious ways,” I say. The bitterness is so strong, I swear they must be able to smell it on my breath. “And the cats are of no concern to me.”
“But someone has to take them,” Alice says. “The house has been looking out for them, but we’re not supposed to have pets and we’re all leaving for the summer and none of us can take them.”
I shrug. “I’m sure you’ll think of something.”
“Have you seen these kittens?” Alice goes to the side of the house and starts making kissing sounds, and soon enough two tiny fur balls bound into the living room. “This one’s Pete,” she says, pointing to the mostly gray one with a black splodge on its nose. “And the other one’s Repeat.”
Pete and Repeat went out in a boat. Pete fell out. Who was saved? Meg’s uncle Xavier told us this joke, and we used to torment each other with it. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.
Alice puts a kitten in my arms, where it immediately starts doing that pawing thing that cats do when they’re trying to find milk. But then it gives up and falls asleep, a little ball against my chest. Something tickles inside, an echo from another time when it wasn’t all frozen in there.
The cat starts to purr, and I’m screwed. “Is there, like, an animal shelter here?”
“There is, but there are dozens of cats there, and they only keep them for three days before, you know.” Alice mimes a knife to the throat.
Pete, or maybe it’s Repeat, is still purring in my arms. I can’t bring them home. Tricia would have a shitfit. She’d refuse to let them come inside, and then they’d get eaten by coyotes or killed by the cold in no time. I could ask if Sue and Joe wanted them, but I’ve seen the way Samson goes after cats.
“Seattle has a few no-kill shelters,” Stoner Richard says. “I saw an Animal Liberation Front thing about it.”
I sigh. “Fine. I’ll swing up to Seattle on my way out of town and drop the cats off.”
Stoner Richard laughs. “It’s not like dry cleaning. You can’t just drop them off. You have to make an appointment for, like, an intake or something.”
“When have you ever had anything dry-cleaned?” Alice asks him.
Pete/Repeat mewls in my arms. Alice looks at me. “How long is your drive back?”
“Seven hours, plus I have to ship the boxes.”
She looks at me and then at Stoner Richard. “It’s three now. Maybe you should go up to Seattle and bring the cats to a shelter, and you can leave first thing tomorrow.”
“Can’t you bring the cats to a shelter?” I ask her. “You seem to have it all worked out.”
“I have a Women’s Studies paper I need to work on.”
“What about after you finish?”
She falters for a second. “No. Those cats were Meg’s thing. I don’t feel right sending them to a shelter.”
“Oh, so you’ll leave the dirty work to me?” I hear the anger in my voice, and I know that it’s not Alice who’s left me the dirty work, but when she cringes, I get a grim twist of satisfaction.
“Dude. I’ll drive you to Seattle,” Stoner Richard says. “We’ll get the felines settled, and you can come here and get out of town first thing in the morning.” He seems like he wants to be rid of me as much as I want to be rid of him. At least it’s mutual.