Page 63 of Kitten

21

Sunlight spilled over my body. My mouth tasted like bad oranges. I was alone in Lou’s bed, which I recognized from the amber smell of her sheets. I was also wearing Lou’s clothes, an oversized Kate Bush T-shirt and tracksuit bottoms. Snippets of memory from last night came to mind. Lou lifting my arms, barking “Up! Up!” which made me feel like a show dog flunking a career-defining performance. Lou wiping my eyes with toilet paper, saying, “For God’s sake, Katie, you didn’t kill his cat.” Shoving Advil into my mouth, washing it down with tap water.

My stomach churned when I saw that I had three missed calls and a flurry of text messages from James. He picked up immediately.

“Where the hell are you?”

“At Lou’s,” I said, alarmed by his alarm. “I’m sorry, I thought you knew that.”

“I knew you were seeing her, not spending the night. I stayed up waiting for you—I thought something bad happened.”

“No, God.” I raked my scalp. “I’m fine. We just hung out in her place all night. I’m really sorry I didn’t text.”

“You were at Lou’s,” James said. “I honestly don’t even know what to say right now.”

“I’m sorry,” I replied feebly.

James sighed. “I want to be patient with you, because I know you’re probably not as okay as you’re pretending to be. But this is really fucking awful of you, to be honest. If I’d killed your cat, I’d never treat you like this.”

“So you do blame me.”

Nothing.

“I don’t mind, James,” I said. “I would rather you say it than pretend.”

“Look, it’s not about blame,” James finally said. “I just needed you last night, and you weren’t there.”

After we ended the call, I studied Lou’s wall for five minutes, categorizing the discordant items. Most of them I recognized from when we lived together: the Rothko print, postcards from the Guggenheim in Venice, a Louis Vuitton purse, a beaded clutch. Birthday cards from various friends, a note of congratulations I wrote to her when she got her job. Then I put my vomit-stained clothes into a plastic bag and left.

Descending the stairs, I crossed my fingers in the hopes that something big and out of nowhere would happen, yanking me out of the trajectory of my morning. But nothing did. The building door opened to crisp fall weather. Chained to a post outside the liquor store, a pit bull strained to reach a pile of abandoned french fries, while on the otherside of the street, a man in a bedazzled baseball cap belted “Valerie” and gave me the finger.

—

The door to James’s apartmentstood slightly open, as if he knew I’d forgotten my keys. He’d cleaned. Our shoes sat in an army line with their noses to the wall.

James’s eyes were sunken. A small layer of stubble shadowed his jaw. “Hey,” he said.

“Hi.” I took a tentative step to close the gap between us. He cleared his throat. “It’s okay,” he said at the same time that I said, “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay, honestly. I was just worried about where you were.”

“No, it’s not.”

James glanced at me. I continued. “For once can you let yourself blame me for longer than five seconds?”

“Don’t, please. I’m not in the mood.”

“In the mood for what?”

“For this.” He began to pace around the living room. “Managing this, you. Let’s just move on. I need to do some work.”

“Work?”

“Yes,” he snapped. “Work. I have to work. It might be a foreign concept to you, but things don’t just stop when bad things happen. You can’t just disregard everything else in your life.”

He paused. I let him continue. “Do you think I want to be this kind of person? Do you think I can’t see how ridiculous it is, to still care about work, when I’ve just had to tellmy mother, who trusted me, what’s happened, and when you, my girlfriend, are either disappearing off to nowhere or just standing here, saying nothing and looking haunted, as if she was yours? Do you think I don’t realize how, if I hadn’t gone to work in the first place, Silver would still be alive?”

He exhaled. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that.”