I squirm slightly and readjust, dreading what I know I will see next. Three faces, cold and blank. Three sets of eyes, impassive. Cruel. They stare as they have always stared, and I roll onto my side. My ribs are still sore and my hind leg twinges as I kick myself over. I need to stretch, to lie in the sun and sleep, but this half-drowse, neither restful nor productive, must make do. I flip, pushing myself off, and hear the girl grunt as my claws slip through the thin cloth and deep into the tweed. I cannot have punctured her, not with that thick coat, but the movement has thrown her and she shifts, resting her arm against the bag. Holding me, briefly, against her.
Holding me against my will. I am in the warehouse again. Behind the stacked pallets, watching and waiting. Only, I am not the one watching – I have been watched. Been seen, and now I am surrounded. My arms are pinned to my side. I feel the heavy cloth press against me, restricting my movement as I would kick, as I would jump. Against my will, I am dragged from behind the sheltering stack and held as the leader – the tall man with the dead eyes – comes forward. I know those eyes. That face. I know what happens next.
‘Kill him,’ he says.
‘Whoa!’ The girl is standing over me, her hand in her mouth. I have clawed her. Torn through the bag to the hand holding me to her side and made her bleed, and now she sucks the sore, eyeing me with a wounded look.
I jump from the bag onto the pavement. The perfume of opossum situates me but it is faint. We are nearer to the river now, that locating scent overrun with fish and rot. I long to investigate – to round the stone around us and seek out the wooden wharfs, the teeming waterside. The mix of aromas is intoxicating, rich with life even this early in the season. With death too, I realize.
And I remember. This building, this street – they are not far from where the girl rescued me – from where the old man must have met his end. And that thought brings me back to myself, to my companion. Belatedly, I blink up at her. I did not mean to draw her blood. I would not hurt her for all the world.
‘Mew,’ I say, looking up at her shadowed eyes. It is a poor attempt at an apology, this sad, soft syllable. For once, I am ashamed of myself. Of being a beast, so easily manipulated by my own fancies, by my dreams. By my overladen senses, here where it all began.
‘It’s OK, Blackie.’ She removes her hand from her mouth and looks at it. I can see where the blood is welling up, slowly, in bright red beads. ‘You must have been having a nightmare.’
She fishes a handkerchief from the depths of the pocket. A scrap of cloth that is somehow familiar to me, that I knew would be there, and wraps it around her hand, tying the makeshift bandage in place. ‘Anyway,’ she says – to herself, I believe. ‘We’re here. He was found somewhere around here.’
We are sitting, I now realize, in the shadow of a stoop. A niche between a building and its grand entrance stairs. Stairs I have circumvented before, and with reason. For now, this space is safe. In the twilight, where we sit is shadowed. I am as good as invisible by virtue of my coat. The girl is more visible than usual in that oversized brown tweed, but the waterfront seems to have died down for the night. It is cold, the wind off the river damp and chill, and for a moment I wonder whether it is too late in the season for snow. No matter. I shiver and move closer to the girl, glad of that thick coat, as I am of my fur. This wind, which sneaks around the stairway to find us here, will drive others inside. They will be seeking the warmth of the bars, of the alley. Of their drugs.
‘They dumped him in that ditch, Blackie. Did you know that?’ She is talking to herself, for sure. To build her courage for what she will do next, and that is why my ears prick up, why I feel my guard hairs bristle at her tone. ‘Farther down than where you were – down by the tracks. Another hour and there wouldn’t have been much left to ID, but … I don’t know why they didn’t throw him in the river. I mean, I’m glad. Nobody would have ever found his body if they had.’
She flexes her hand and I wonder what she is thinking. I do not believe I injured her that deeply. No, she is preparing, rehearsing some scenario in her mind, some scene that I cannot imagine.
‘That was three days before I found you, Blackie. It was almost like …’ She shakes her head, dismissing whatever thought has crossed it. ‘No, but he liked cats, Blackie. The old man always said we could learn a lot from cats.’
I am listening. Alert and suddenly aware … Footsteps, soft and obscured by the wind. Someone is approaching the building. I stiffen, straining to make out anything that will give me – give us – an edge.
‘What is it?’ the girl whispers but has the sense to duck down, crouching in the lee of the steps. She is safe there, hidden, and I am freed to leap onto the stairs. From here I see two men approaching, collars turned up against the cold. One of those collars is fur. Not fox, I think, with a shiver. One hand reaches up to adjust it, to turn it further against the wind, against any who might be watching from the blank, black windows as they pass me and pass inside. Bushwick.