Meow by Tanith Lee

I was young, last year. I was twenty-six. That was the year I met Cathy.

I was writing a novel that year, too. Maybe you never read it. Midnight and four A.M., five or six nights a week, I used to do my magician act at the King of Cups, on Aster. It paid some bills and it was fun, that act. Even more fun when you suddenly look out over the room and there's a girl with hair like white wine, and the flexible, fluid shape of a ballet dancer, looking back at you, hanging on every breath you take.

Later, around four-thirty, when we were sitting in a corner together, I saw there was a little gold cat pendant in the hollow of her throat. Later still, when we'd walked back, all across the murmuring frosty pre-dawn city, with the candy-wrapper leaves blowing and crackling underfoot, I brushed the cat aside so I could kiss her neck.

I didn't realize, then, I was going to have trouble with cats.

I might have thought the trouble would be over money. You know the sort of thing - well-off girl meets male parasite. Somehow we worked it out, keeping our distance where we had to, not keeping it where we didn't. We were still finding the way, and she was shy enough; it was kind of nice to go slowly.

But, she did own this graystone house, which her parents had left her when they went blazing off in a great big car and killed themselves. She'd been sixteen then. She'd just made it into adulthood before they ditched life and her. Somehow, I always resented them. They'd done a pretty good job of tying her up in their own hangups, before they split and gave her another one.

The house was still their house, too. It was jammed full of their trendy knickknacks and put-ons, and their innovative furniture you couldn't sit on or eat off. And it was also full of five cats.

Cathy had acquired the cats, one by one, after her parents died. Or the cats had acquired her. After that, the house was also theirs. They personally engraved the woodwork, and put expert fringes on the drapes. And on anything else handy, like me. You're right - I had a slight phobia. Maybe something about the fanged-snake effect of a cat's head, if you forget the ears. Cathy was always telling me how beautiful the cats were, and I was always trying to duck the issue. And the cats. They knew, of course, about my unadmiration; I'd have sworn that right from the start. They'd leap out on me and biff me with their handfuls of nails. They'd jump onto the couch behind my shoulders and bite. When Cathy and I made love, I'd shut the bedroom door and the cats would crouch outside, ripping the rug. I never dared make it with her where they could see and get at me.

I'd spot their eyes in the early morning darkness when I brought her home, ten disembodied dots of creme de menthe neon spilled over the air. Demons would manifest like that. Ever seen a cat with a mouse or a bird? I used to have a dumb dove in my act, called Bernie, and one day Bernie got out on the sidewalk. He was such a klutz, he thought everyone was his damn friend, even the cat that came up and put its teeth through his back. No, I didn't like cats much.

One night it was Cathy's birthday, and we had to be in at the house. Cathy was rather strange about her birthdays, as if the ghosts of Mom and Pop walked that night, and maybe they did. I'd tried to get her to come out, but she wouldn't, so we sat in the white-and-sepia sitting room, under the abstract that looked like three melting strawberries, and ate tuna fish and drank wine. I'd managed to get the cash to buy her the jade bracelet that had sat in a store window the past five weeks, crying to encircle her wrist. When I'd given it to her, she too cried for half a second. It was often harder to get close to her when she was emotional than at any other time. By now the jade was warm as her own smooth skin, and the wine not much colder. The cats sat around us in a ring, except when Cathy went out to the kitchen; then they followed her with weird screechings. The cats always responded to activity in the kitchen in the same way, even to something so small as the dim, far-off clink of a plate. When the house was empty of humans, I could imagine every pan and pot holding its breath for fear of attracting attention.

Finally Cathy stopped playing with her tuna and gave it to the cats.

"Oh, look, Stil," she said, gazing at them madonnalike as they fell on the dish. "Just look."

"I'm looking."

"No, you're not," she said. "You're glaring."

I lifted the guitar from the couch and started to play some music for us, and the cats sucked and chewed louder, to show me what they thought of it.

We sang Happy Birthday to the tune of an old Stones number, and some other stuff. Then we went up to the bedroom and I shut the door. She cried again, afterward, but she held onto me as if afraid of being swept out to sea. I was the first human thing she'd really come across since her parents left her. That night at the King had been going to be her experiment in failure. She'd thought she'd fail at communicating, at being gregarious, and she'd meant to fail, I guess. That would have given her the excuse for never trying again. But somehow she'd found me. I didn't really think about the responsibility on my side of all this. It was all too dreamy, too easy.

A couple of the cats noisily puked back the tuna on the Picasso rug outside.

"Why don't you," I said, "leave this godawful house? Let's take an apartment together."

"You have an apartment."

"I have a room. I mean space."

"You can't afford it."

"I might."

"You want to live off me," she said. The first time she ever said it.

"Oh look," I said, "if that's what you think."

"I didn't mean it."

"Sure you did. Just don't mean it again. Next year MGM'll be making a movie of my book."

"It isn't even published yet."

"So, it will be."

"I'd better go and clean up after the cats," she said.

"Why don't you train them to clean up after themselves?"

We lay awhile, and pictured the cats manipulating mop, pail and disinfectant. But somewhere in me I was saying to them: If there are any parasites around here, I know just who. Make the most of it, you gigolos. Your days are numbered.

I really did have it all worked out. Cathy was going to sell the house and I was going to sell the book. We were going to take an apartment, and I was going to keep us in a style to which I was unaccustomed. Cats aren't so hot ten floors up in the air. And five of them, in those conditions, are just not on. Of course, I knew she wouldn't leave them without a roof, and I'd already become a cat salesman. But suddenly it seemed everyone I knew had one cat, two cats or three. Except Genevieve, who had a singularly xenophobic dog. Everybody, even Genevieve, told me cats are bee-ootiful, and I should let Cathy educate me over my phobia.

Then someone got interested in the book. Things seemed to be coming along, so I sat up from five in the morning until eleven the next night a few times, and finished the beast with heavy hatchet blows from the typewriter.

I got ready to broach the apartment idea again to Cathy. I began to dream crazy schemes. Like renting out Cathy's parents' house, and whoever took it on got the cats as a bonus, while we had the cats to visit us twice a week. Or buying the cats a ranch in Texas. Or slipping them cyanide in their Tiger-Cookies.

I was fantasizing because I basically understood Cathy wouldn't agree. And she didn't agree.

"No, Stil, I can't," she said. "Can't and won't. You're not making me leave my cats."

"I need you," I said, striking a pose like Errol Flynn. It wasn't only the pose that wasn't one hundred percent true. I was wondering how exactly I did analyze my feelings for her, the first time I'd had to do that, when, brittle and hard as dry cement, she said, "You just need my money."

"Oh Jesus."

"You want to use me."

"Yeah, yeah. Of course I do."

I stood and wondered now if I was only demanding we live together because I wanted her to choose between me and the zoo. Did I really want to be with her that much, this white-faced maniac with green electric eyes?

"You bastard," she whispered. "Dad always told me I'd meet men like you."

And she pulled off the jade bracelet and flung it at me, the way girls fling their engagement rings in old B movies. Like a dope, I neatly caught it. Then she turned and ran.

I stood and looked at the sidewalk where the colored lights of the King of Cups were going like a migraine attack. I now had the third wonder, wondering what I felt. But I was too numb to feel anything. Then I went into the club and perpetrated the worst goddamn magician act I hope never to live through again.

Two weeks later, Carthage Press bought my book, with an option on two more. I got a standing ovation at the King, got drunk, slept with a girl I can't remember. Three weeks later, Genevieve, who reads tarot at the King, came over and stood looking at me as I was feeding the dental-floss-white rabbit I'd just accumulated to put in the act as a cliche.

"You know, Stil," said Genevieve, gazing up at me from her clever, paintable, look-at-able face and all of her five-foot-one inches, "you are going all to hell."

"I'd better pack a bag, then."

"I mean it, Stil," said Genevieve, helping me post the rabbit full of lettuce. "The act is lousy."

"Gee thanks, Genevieve," I gushed.

"It's technically perfect, and it's getting better, and it's about as dead as Julius Caesar."

"Gosh, is he dead? How'd it happen, hit and run?"

"No, I'm not laughing," said Genevieve, not laughing. "I want to know where that girl is, the blond girl." She waited awhile, and when I didn't say anything, said, "Let's get this straight. I'm worried about her. She was on a knife-edge, and you were easing her off it. Now I guess she's back on the knife-edge. You're not usually so obtuse."

"Not that it's any of your business, but we had nothing left to say to each other."

"To coin a phrase. That's why the act stinks. That's why the next novel will stink."

"Genevieve, I honestly don't know if I want to see her again."

"I know," said Genevieve. She smiled, riffled the cards, and picked the Lovers straight out of the pack. "Just," said Genevieve, "go knock on her door, and see what happens to you when she opens it."

I went out to the pay phone in the Piper Building down the block. I didn't realize till I came to put the nickels in that I still had a leaf of lettuce in my hand.

I didn't think anyone would answer. Or maybe one of the cats would take the call, and spit. Then there was her voice.

"Hi, Cathy," I said.

I heard her drag in a deep breath, and then she said, "I'm glad you called. It doesn't make any difference, but I want to apologize for what I said to you."

"It does make a difference," I said.

"Thank you for mailing me back the bracelet," she said. "I'm going to hang up now."

"Carthage is doing my book," I said.

"I'm so glad. You'd never read me any. I'll be sure and buy it. I'm going to hang up right now."

"OK. I'll be with you in twenty minutes."

"No - "

"Yes. Give the cats a dust."

It was a quarter to five when I reached the house, and a premature white snow was coming down like blossoms on the lawns along the street.

Here goes, Genevieve, I thought as I pressed the doorbell. Now let's see what does happen to me when Cathy opens the door.

What happened was a strange, strange thing, because I looked at Cathy and I just didn't know her. For one thing, I'd never properly seen how beautiful she was, because she'd looked somehow familiar from the first time I saw her. But now she was brand-new, unidentifiable. And looking into her clandestine face, I wondered (always wondering) if I was ready to break the cellophane wrapper.

"There's snow in your hair," she said quietly, and with awe. And I comprehended that she, too, was seeing something new and uncannily special, in me. "Are you sure you want to come in?"

"You're damn right I do. I'm getting cold out here."

"If you come in," she said, "please don't try and make me agree to anything I don't want. Please, Stil."

"Cross my heart."

She let me in then, solemnly. We went into the living room. The once-conversation-piece electric fire, which didn't look like a fire at all but some sort of space rocket about to take off and blast its way through the ceiling to Venus, exuded a rich red glow. It enveloped five squatting forms, and their fur was limned as if in blood.

"Hi, cats," I said. I knew by now I was probably going to have to concede, perhaps even share my life with them. Maybe I could get to love them. I reached down slowly, and a fistful of scythes sloughed off some topskin. So. I could tie their paws up in dinky little velvet bags, I could cover the floors with washable polythene, I could always carry a gun. Cats don't live so long as humans. Unless they get you first.

We sat by the fire, the seven of us. Cathy and I drank China tea. The cats drank single cream from five dishes.

There were some enormous fresh claw marks along the fire's wood surround, bigger and higher than any of their previous original etchings. Cathy must have gone out at some point and missed one of their ten or eleven mealtimes, and they'd gotten fed up waiting. I surreptitiously licked my bleeding hand.

"Genevieve told me," I said, "about a ground-floor apartment just off Aster. There's a backyard with lilac trees. They'd enjoy scratching those."

"You still want me to sell this house," said Cathy. "My parents' house, they wanted me to have."

"Not sell. You could rent it."

She looked at the fire, which also limned her now, her bone-china profile, the strands of her hair, with blood.

"I thought I'd never see you again," she said.

"The Invisible Man. It's OK. I took the antidote."

"I thought I'd just go back to where I was, the years before I met you. That I'd always be alone. Me, and the cats. I thought that was how it would be."

I took her hand. It was cold and stiff, and her nails were long and ragged. Down below, the cats were poised over their empty plates, staring up at her, their eyes like blank glass buttons.

"So I said to myself," she said, "I don't need anyone. I've got the cats. I don't need anyone human at all."

She pulled her hand out of mine, and got up.

"I'm not," she said, "leaving this house."

"All right. Good. Sit down."

"In a minute," she said. "I have to feed the cats."

"Oh, sure. The cream was an aperitif. Which is the starter? Salmon or caviar?"

She considered me, her eyes just like theirs. She wasn't laughing, either. She went out to the kitchen, and the cats trotted after her. They didn't screech this time, but I could imagine all that cream slopping loudly about in their multiplicity of guts.

Alone, I sat and contemplated the Venus rocket and the huge new claw marks up the wood. It looked, on reflection, really too high for the cats to have reached, even balanced on tip-claw. Maybe one had teetered on another one's head.

After a while, none of the cats, or Cathy, had come back.

The tea was stone-cold, and I could hear the snow tapping on the windows, the house was so quiet, as if no one else but me was in it. Finally I got up, and walked softly, the way you tread in a museum, along to the kitchen door. There was no light anywhere, not in the passage, not in the dining area, or in the kitchen itself. And scarcely a sound. Then I heard a sound, a regular crunching, mumbling sound. It was the cats eating, there in the dark. I must have heard it a thousand times, but suddenly it had a unique syncopation. It was the noise of the jungle, and I was right in the midst of it. And the hair crawled over my scalp.

I hit the light switch on a reflex, and then I saw.

There on the floor, in a row, were the five cats. And Cathy.

The cats were leaning forward over their paws, chomping steadily. Cathy lay on her stomach, the soles of her feet pressed hard against the freezer, supporting her upper torso on her elbows. Her hair had been draped back over one shoulder so it wouldn't get in the way as she licked up the single cream from the saucer.

She continued this about a couple of seconds after the light came on, long enough for me to be sure I wasn't hallucinating. Then she raised her head like a snake, and licked her lips, and watched me with her glass-button eyes.

I backed out of the kitchen. I went on backing out until I was halfway along the passage. Then I turned like a zombie and walked into the living room.

Nothing was altered. Not even the big new runnels in the wood surround of the fire.

I was sweating a dank cold sweat and breathing as fast as if I'd just gotten out of a lion's cage, which I hadn't yet. It was some kind of primitive reaction, because what I'd seen was really very funny, a joke. But I don't think I could have been more shaken if she'd come at me with a steak knife.

I pondered my alternatives. I could make it out the door, and run. I needn't come back. She'd know why not. Or I could stay and try to figure her out, try to persuade her to tell me what the game was and why she was playing it, and how I could help stop her going insane.

I was deliberating, when she came into the room. She looked straight at me and said:

"I'm sorry you saw that."

"Are you? Somehow I had the feeling I was meant to see. What's the idea?"

"No idea. I like it. I like scratching the wood, too. Over the fire. See? You look nervous."

"Must be because I am."

She glided across the room, and slid her arms around my ribs.

"You're nervous of me."

"I'm terrified of you."

She kissed my jaw, and each time she kissed, I felt the edges of her teeth. I could imagine what she'd be like if I made love to her now. Not that I wanted to make love to her.

I wanted to leave her and run. That was all I wanted, but concern gets to be a habit, and I guess we all know about habits. Besides, you find a girl sitting with a bottle of pills and a razor blade, and you go out and shut the door? And then, in any case, I realized she was trembling. I'd thought it was just me.

"Get your coat and your boots," I said.

"It's snowing."

"Excuses, excuses. Get your coat."

"All right."

Ten minutes later, we were on the street. The cold, silvery air seemed to blow through my head, and I started to ask myself where I was taking her. But Cathy didn't speak, just walked beside me like a good little girl doing what the adults tell her, though she doesn't understand.

We rode the subway, and came back up out of the ground and walked to my place, to which I never take anyone unless I must, not even a rabbit. The King of Cups is where I live. Twenty-three Mason is where I occasionally eat, and less occasionally sleep, thrash a typewriter, and worry. And that's the way it looks. It's a couple of flights up, or chiropractical jerks if you use the elevator. In the snow-light, it was gray and chill and littered by reams of paper, magazines and dust. My world and no one else's, and I didn't want her here, and this was where I'd brought her. Why? Because part of me had subconsciously worked it out that this place had been built from my own individual ectoplasm, and I was going to use it to bawl her out and back to sanity, louder than any shout I could make with my throat.

We got inside the door, and she glanced drearily around. We hadn't offered a word to each other since leaving the house.

"Every luxury fitment," I now said. "Most of them not working."

Cathy crossed to the window, and stood there in her coat with the snow dissolving on its shoulders. She looked at the yard two floors down, and the trash cans and broken bottles in their own cake frosting of snow. When she turned around, her face was gleaming, waves of tears running over it. She sprang to me suddenly and held onto me. I knew the grip. I knew I'd got her back. If I wanted her. Her hair seemed the only thing in the room which had color, and which shone.

"I'm sorry," she muttered, "sorry, sorry."

I felt tired and it all seemed faintly absurd. I stroked her hair, and knew that in the morning I was going to call Genevieve and ask her what the hell to do next.

In the morning, about seven, I slunk out of bed, put some clothes on and went out, leaving Cathy asleep. The pay phone in the entry, as usual, was busted, so I walked down to the booth on the corner of Mason and Quale. The snow lay thin and moistly crisp as water ice, and the sky was painting itself in blue as high summer. It was an optimistic morning, full of promises of something. I got through to Genevieve, who hardly ever sleeps, and told her all of it, feeling a fool.

"Oh boy," said Genevieve. And then: "Bring her over here to breakfast, why don't you? Maybe the dog'll chase her up a tree."

"You think I'm on something and I imagined it."

"No."

"You think I should laugh it off, it doesn't matter."

"It matters."

"Well?"

"Well. I think you're going as bats as she is. I don't know what I can do except feed you pancakes - little children like those, don't they? - but I know a guy who might help."

Genevieve genuinely knows a remarkable number of guys who can help. Help you get to sing with the opera, help you find out who you were six hundred years ago in Medieval Europe, or help you find a cop who cares somebody mugged you and stole the fillings from your teeth.

"A shrink."

"Sort of. Wait and see."

"It has to be gentle, Genevieve. Very, very gentle."

"It will be. Bring her. I'll expect you by eight."

Once you've passed the buck, you feel better. I felt better. I walked back through the snow, identifying the footprints in it like a kid: human, bird, dog. I knew I could leave all the delicate maneuvering to Genevieve, who is one of the best social surgeons there are. Sometime later I'd have to decide where I wanted to be in all of this, but I didn't have to do it right now.

I got up to the second floor and let myself into the apartment, and Cathy was gone.

The bed was empty, the bathroom, even the closet. I was working myself into a panicky rage when I saw her purse lying under the window. The window was just open, and the dust-drape of snow on the fire escape had neat dark cuts in it the shape of shoe soles. I climbed through onto it, and looked down and saw Cathy standing in the yard, with her back to me.

I didn't react properly. I was just so relieved to find her. I leaned on the rail and shouted.

"Hey, Cathy. We're going to Genevieve's for breakfast."

She turned around, then, and her eyes came up to mine, but without a trace of recognition. And then I saw what it was she had in her mouth. It was a bleeding, fluttering, almost-but-not-quite-dead pigeon.

Cathy had found her breakfast already.