Pieces of Healing

Jodie slogged home through the rain. Pelting down, and icy cold. She tugged her coat around herself, trying to snuggle into the furry rim of her hood. With the rain came mist and breeze, a combination of biting cold with reduced visibility, so that she felt as if she existed alone in this unforgiving storm-world, with street-lights and headlights, and the faint squares of windows just peering in from some other, summer, civilised world.

With her head down, she only noticed the door as she was nearly approaching it, but muscle memory turned her that way. She fumbled with her key and walked upstairs.

Doug was cooking dinner.  “You made it home.”

“Yup.”

“You’re dripping on the floor.”

“Bugger.”

“You look like somebody drowned a cat.”

Did Furball raise her head with an accusatory glance? Probably not. Probably not.

Jodie shook her hair, more dog than cat; she shed her coat – more lizard than butterfly.

Doug started imitating a drowning cat, with special effects, with attempts at mewling noises.

“Oh, don’t, it’s a been long day, and you’re not a cat.”

Apparently, he was; he rubbed his head up against her shoulder, snuggled his forehead irritatingly against her wet hair.

“You’re getting yourself wet. Are you happy?”

Well, maybe. He attempted some sort of facsimile of purring. It got a contemptuous, unimpressed glance from Furball, still coiled in her preferred spot, on the back of the couch, warm, not in the least bit wet or cold or overworked or tired.

And Jodie: she did something she wasn’t really expecting. She burst out laughing. It just crept up on her and she really couldn’t help it.

#

Samantha was upstairs. She was elbows-deep in this bloody essay, and it just wouldn’t write. No matter what angles she tried it from, no matter what little mental tricks she performed, she was immured in writer’s block, and couldn’t find a way out. And she had to have this thing ready to hand in on Monday. No point in thinking: should have started earlier; because, once again, it was too late for that sort of thinking. Coulda, woulda, shoulda. She needed to do a half decent job of this one too, because she’d gotten a C in the last one, and she wanted to do well in this paper. It was just Economic History, but it was what her dad had been so pleased to see her studying, pleased to see her studying at all, gobbling up the opportunities he always told her he’d never had when he was young.

And then she’d had that argument with Clayton. And when Clayton got into a fight, he was stubborn and aggressive. He wouldn’t back down. She wondered if maybe this would be the fight they didn’t come back from.

And she wondered if maybe a few crackers and a can of Coke would help her figure this essay out. Samantha dragged herself down the stairs and heard laughter coming from her flatmates in the kitchen. She walked right into this scene of hilarity: Doug rubbing himself all-over an outdoor-wet Jodie, who was half-hearted trying to fend him off but too disabled with laughter to do a very good job.

“Did somebody bring home some pot, then?”

Doug lumbered over, he crouched, he started rubbing his head all the way up her legs, along her stomach, twisting and turning it against her neck, even as she tried to tilt her head against her shoulder to discourage him. “You’re a crap cat. Furrball agrees with me.”

“Meow.” Doug responded.

“Bad kitty.”

“Meow?”

“Get out of there. Furrball’s less annoying.”

Was that a challenge? It must have been a challenge? Doug threw himself on the floor, curling himself around her ankles, and she just couldn’t help it, she burst out laughing.

#

Violet waited on the end of the line. Three rings before the phone was picked up. “Hey, it’s me,” she said, and added: “Violet.” Because she hated it when people rang up and said ‘hey, it’s me’ and she didn’t know who they were and had to pretend like she did.

It was hard to hear the answer: “Samantha. …what’s… what’s up?”

“What’s so funny?”

“D… D… Doug. Doug get off there, get out of there!”

“Doug, your flatmate?”

“Yeah… my…” she seemed to lose herself in another peel of laughter.

“What? Are you two having sex?”

“Ewww.”

“Is he tickling you?”

“…n…. No,” a bit more laughter, “he’s… he’s the new cat.”

“What?”

“He’s the new cat.”

That meowing sound in the background was ridiculous. And Samantha: she couldn’t seem to form a sentence without laughing about it. Violet looked around at the drab loneliness of her own little box of an apartment. She’d been hoping all morning that Steve was going to call her, and Steve hadn’t called, and if she was really honest she shouldn’t even want Steve to call, because there was nothing good that could possibly come out of what she and Steve had, but still, anyway, regardless, she wanted Steve to call. She’d been half ready to say all this to Samantha, but this cackling harpy on the end of the phone was not a receptive bed on which to lay this burden.

Samantha was struggling to say, “So, what… do… you…? Doug!”

“You guys are nuts.”

“Come over. You might as well. You won’t get the floor any wetter than Jodie has.”

“She’s not house-trained?”

Samantha just roared with laughter. She was incapacitated, shrieking.

“Seriously?”

“Now… you’re… going to make me not house-trained.”

Violet couldn’t help it, it seemed laughter was the most pernicious virus, infectious over phone lines, it must be, since she was suddenly laughing her head off.

#

All the way down in the lift she couldn’t keep the giggles properly inside her. The tall guy from the sixth floor kept glancing her way.

“What?” he said, “is it my hat?”

“Huh?”

“What you’re laughing at?’

She turned. He was wearing a hat, a sort of tall, rounded affair with complex patterns and scraggly, multi-coloured fur. Violet controlled herself: “Is it a costume?”

“It’s a gift.”

“From your arch nemesis?”

“From my uncle.”

“Well, it looks… it looks…”

“Like somebody skinned a cat and dropped it on my head?”

He’d had to say cat. She doubled over.

“Miss…  um….” He was bent towards her.

She managed to choke out, “Violet,” by way of introduction.

“Are you all right?”

“Fine.  Fine.  You… you just reminded me of something.”

“O. Kay. Then.”

Violet straightened up and extended her hand. Why? It just felt like the thing to do. “Hi, I’m Violet from 4G.”

“Logan. 6B.”

“Nice to meet you.”

“Thanks. Hey, all right if I drop by sometime? If that’s not…”

Violet tossed him a smile. “It’s… not.”

#

The girls ran upstairs to do – Doug could only suppose – some manner of girly thing. Jodie and Samantha, having invited Violet over, now seemed intent on a night out. And for whatever reason that seemed to necessitate running upstairs to tear their wardrobes apart looking for what they were going to wear into the saturated night.

He shook his head, happily perplexed. Flatting with girls was an experience all right.

Over on the couch, Furrball stretched and looked at him, she favoured Doug with a lazy yawn. A yawn which was just enough to set her off balance and cause her to fall off the back of the couch, all legs flailing and claws scrabbling at fabric. She let out an undignified yowl of protest.

Doug didn’t mean any offence, but he couldn’t help it: he laughed so hard he could hardly get a breath out.

 

Picture credit/discredit: author's own work