Peering at the cursor on the screen, I started to type, the story quickly taking shape with a description of my usual morning with B – who oft made appearances in the column as my trusty sidekick. I described the crisp smell of the air as we stepped out the front door, the warmth of the sun on my face, signaling summer was coming soon, the flowers lining the sidewalk. Down the street we went, saying hi and stopping for pats (B, not me… though sometimes me) from neighbors familiar with our faces, around the corner where several businesses were just opening up for the day, and down a few more blocks to Prospect Park.
It read like the beginning of a romcom movie.
But what followed was anything but cute and romantic as I gave a scathing reenactment of my encounter with Little Miss Poo Patrol.
I chuckled as the last line materialized in my mind, imagining my editor shaking his head and laughing… the reactions I’d get from the neighborhood… the sympathy for B and me from our horrid encounter.
“This was no meet-cute, my friends,” I said aloud as I typed, looking over my shoulder to Brontë, who opened a curious eye. “This, tragically, was a meet-poop.”
Chapter 4
Lior
I woke to wetness against my nose, followed by loud purring and a soft headbutt to the chin.
“Good morning, Gomez,” I murmured to the male half of my best friend Adeline’s two cats, my eyes still closed.
Another headbutt to my jaw and I sighed, not wanting to return to reality just yet, but slipping a hand out from beneath the comforter I was cocooned in to give him a pet. Opening my eyes, I gave a contented sigh at the sight of Addie’s guest room, which was inspired by a hotel room she’d once stayed in during a trip to the English countryside. Wainscoting, striped cream-and-robin’s egg blue wallpaper, and florals upon plaids upon paisley fabrics. She had a way of making spaces looked lived in but fresh, a contrast to the cold and bare hospital room she was lying in now.
My heart sank as I thought back to the night before, my oldest friend in the world looking small and beat up, screens beeping beside her as they monitored some bodily function or another. It had been terrifying to see her in such a state, but a small comfort when she woke for a moment to give me a bleary half-smile and diss my outfit before falling back into a medicine-induced sleep.
I stared up at the cat sitting on my chest.
“Where’s Morticia?” I asked. “She’s going to be jealous if she sees you flirting with me.”
I heard a sniff and glanced toward the bedroom door where his lovely wife sat on the threshold, glaring at me in disdain. She couldn’t be bothered with telling me she was hungry so, as usual, she’d sent her man.
Morticia and Gomez had been aptly named by Addie after the matriarch and patriarch of the Addams family.
“Couple goals,” she’d said by way of explanation.
Gomez bumped his head against my chin again. I was taking too long.
“Okay okay,” I said, pushing myself up and sending both cats skittering from the room.
Pulling on the moss-green robe I kept here for when I visited, I trudged sleepily out of the guest room and down the hall to the kitchen. The two felines, white-haired Gomez with his dashing black mustache, and black-haired Morticia with a tiny white beauty mark beside her nose, did figure-eights around the legs of the table while they waited for me to deliver their breakfast.
I’d gotten in the day before and had immediately gone to the hospital where I’d checked in on my friend, gotten an update from her folks, met the doctor — a young guy who stared at me a moment too long before remembering he was a doctor, and then used my key to let myself into Addie’s house. It was a no-brainer I’d stay there and take care of the cats until she could come home, which, I’d been assured, would be sooner rather than later.
She had a black eye, a broken cheekbone, a broken arm, several cracked ribs, and more bruises than I could count. It looked like she’d gone ten rounds in a boxing ring with someone twice her size. Or was hit by drunk driver at five am, their car ramming into hers after they’d run a red light. Which, we’d learned, was what had happened.
The cats fed, I made myself a cup of coffee and then wandered around the house. Addie lived in the kind of home we’d always dreamed of when we were girls. Small, tidy, and so cute it looked like it belonged in a fairytale. She had an eye for what looked good and could make a space look like a showroom with just a few well-chosen pieces. It was a gift. The kind people always tell someone they should do for a living. But Addie hadn’t wanted to be an interior designer. She only did that for fun. She’d wanted to be in advertising. Until she realized she didn’t and headed to vet school instead.
I smiled as I noted the nods to our friendship around the house. A hair ribbon tied to the chain of a lamp from a dance recital the year we decided we were totally going to be ballerinas – until we found out we were expected to practice outside of practice and admitted we had only been in it for the tutus. A smooth white rock from a long weekend in Cape Cod. Sand dollars from the Oregon Coast. A hand-spun bowl from a trip to Costa Rica. A dried lei from our first trip to Hawaii. And photos. So many photos. Some framed, others carefully curated and put in a coffee table book, and still more stuck to a bulletin board in her home office with tacks in the shape of umbrellas.
I carefully removed one particular photo from the board and stared at it. It was taken moments before we’d said goodbye at the gate for the plane that would take me to New York and my new life. My mother, in a sentimental move that shocked us all, had bought Addie a ticket just so she could sit with me until it was time for me to leave. We had tears streaming down our faces in the picture and were laughing. It was us in a nutshell. My favorite memories of us were always some version of this image, and I had the same photo framed on a shelf at home.
I kissed it, then re-tacked the picture to the board just as an alert sounded on my phone. I glanced down to see a reminder. “Japan. 3pm.”
I’d forgotten to delete the reminder of my flight after cancelling the job I was supposed to be going on this week. I did so now and then hurried down the hall to shower before returning to the hospital.
“She’s got some color in her face,” was the first thing Addie’s mom said when I walked into the room and handed her a chai latte.
“I’ve got a rainbow of colors in my face,” Addie said from where she was sitting up in bed, doing an impressive eye roll with her one good eye. “No coffee for me?”
I started to hand mine over but got mean-mugged by Mama.
Everyone called Addie’s mom Mama. The tiny blonde was a force to be reckoned with and we joked that while her husband, affectionally known as Pa, could be knocked over with a kiss, Mama couldn’t be taken down by a tank. Nerves of steel, that one. But filled with more love than one knew what to do with. That had been my experience anyways when I’d first met her at the tender age of five. She’d taken one look at my own mother – standing off to the side with a slightly horrified look on her face at all the small children that could so easily get germs or stickiness on her – and then swept me into a hug, whispering in my ear, “You ever need anything, Lior, even just a hug, you come find me.”
