Don't Let Me Go Page 14

  Billy sighed a very noisy sigh. More noisy than any sigh really needed to be. The kind of noisy that’s more to make a point. But then he took off the safety chain and let them in, which Grace was pretty sure he would. She’d pretty much known all along that he’d sigh that big sigh, but then he’d go ahead and let them in.

  She sat on Billy’s couch and put her ear to Mr. Lafferty’s side to listen to the purring.

  “He just sort of purrs all the time. Ever since I got him to come out from under Mr. Lafferty’s bed, he hasn’t stopped purring even once, and it’s really cool when you put your ear right up against him. It sounds like he has a motor or something, and it makes you feel good all the way inside, like all the way down to your tummy. You should try it, you really should. I know you, and I just know you’d like it.”

  Billy sat on the very end of the couch, acting like couches made him nervous all of a sudden, but Grace figured it was really the cat he was nervous about, even though he wasn’t looking at the cat.

  “He’s a pretty cat,” Billy said. As if that was the only good thing he could think of to say about Mr. Lafferty. “I’m not much of a cat person — or a dog person, for that matter — but I always thought calico cats were pretty.”

  “Calico! That’s the kind I was trying to think of.”

  “I still think he needs a better name,” Billy said.

  “I think Mr. Lafferty is a perfect name.”

  “But it’s confusing.”

  “I don’t think it’s confusing.”

  “Look. Think about what you said a minute ago. He’s been purring ever since you got him to come out from under Mr. Lafferty’s bed. So, Mr. Lafferty’s been purring ever since Mr. Lafferty came out from under Mr. Lafferty’s bed. Confusing.”

  “But he won’t be under the bed any more, and Peter has to take all Mr. Lafferty’s stuff and either take it home or get rid of it, so then Mr. Lafferty won’t have a bed any more.”

  “Who, the cat?”

  “No, Mr. Lafferty. Pay attention.”

  “But you said the cat was Mr. Lafferty.”

  “I know you’re just doing that on purpose, Billy. I know you’re not even confused for real.”

  “Try this one on for size. You overhear someone talking about how Mr. Lafferty died. And just for a minute, you think, Oh, no! My cat!”

  “Hmm,” Grace said. She pressed her ear to the cat’s side again, because she wanted that nice tummy feeling back. “Maybe you’re right. But I already told him his name was Mr. Lafferty, and I don’t want to go and break a promise to him first thing, so I guess his name is Mr. Lafferty the Cat. Why are you looking at me that way?”

  “It’s kind of long.”

  “Let me ask him if he minds.” She pressed her ear to his rumbling side again. “He says he doesn’t mind. So. Can he stay here?”

  “I don’t know, baby girl. I’m afraid of animals.”

  “You’re afraid of everything!” Grace blurted out, exasperated.

  Then, as soon as it left her mouth, she could tell she’d hurt Billy’s feelings, and she felt bad.

  “That was cold,” he said.

  “I’m sorry.”

  She wanted to go on to say, “I didn’t mean it.” But she sort of had meant it. She still agreed with it. She just knew now that she shouldn’t have said it out loud.

  “Really, I’m sorry, Billy. I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings. Can I just leave him here while I go upstairs to Mr. Lafferty the Man’s apartment, so I can get Mr. Lafferty the Cat’s litter box and look for cat food?”

  Billy hadn’t finished looking hurt yet.

  “I guess so,” he said.

  Grace let the cat down on to the couch, and Billy jumped up and backed all the way over to the window, which seemed like overdoing it, even for Billy. After all, Mr. Lafferty the Cat wasn’t even a very big cat.

  Grace ran to the door.

  “I figured out something really important,” she said, her hand already on the knob. “I can’t tell you everything about it now because I’m in a hurry, but it’s about how people should all have somebody, and about how nobody should have nobody, and about how, now that I figured it out, things are going to be a lot different around here. We’ll have to have another meeting.”

  Then she threw open the door and raced out into the hall, slamming the door behind her.

  Not three steps later, a hand stopped her forward progress. The hand just came out of nowhere, and slapped over her mouth so she couldn’t yell, and then another hand grabbed around her waist, and then she was on her way down to the basement apartment whether she wanted to go or not.

  Which she didn’t.

  She squirmed, and she even kicked backwards, but the kick missed.

  She wanted to yell. She tried to scream, to say, “Help! I’m being stolen!” but the hand over her mouth was too tight.

  It wasn’t until she was inside her basement apartment that she found out she’d been stolen by her own mom.

  Billy

  “We’re getting impatient,” Billy announced.

  It didn’t sound noticeably different from Billy’s daily comments to himself. But, in this instance, he was talking to Mr. Lafferty the Cat, who looked directly into Billy’s eyes when he spoke, unnerving him.

  Mr. Lafferty the Cat was curled on Billy’s couch, settled, but not asleep. Staring at Billy. For just a moment, Billy dared to stare back. He had interesting markings, that cat, with a line of color change right down the middle of his face. Like a mime, Billy decided. Like a showman in makeup.

  Maybe we have something in common after all, Billy thought, but he did not say any of that out loud, for fear the cat would hear it as some type of invitation.

  Billy had already tried to sit down once, in his big stuffed chair, because the couch was alarmingly…taken. But Mr. Lafferty the Cat had been inexplicably drawn to that move, and he had frightened Billy by jumping on to the arm of the chair and then trying to sit on his lap. So now Billy just stood, his back against the sliding-glass door, which felt shockingly cool. From his vantage point, he could see the kitchen clock, which he’d been watching with even greater than usual compulsivity.

  “How can it take her an hour to go get your litter box and food? Unless she has to rummage around in all the cupboards looking for cat food. But still. An hour. Do you think she got distracted by something?”

  Unsurprisingly, Mr. Lafferty the Cat appeared to have no answers. No opinions.

  • • •

  Exactly two hours and twenty-six minutes after Grace had left on her cat-food run, someone knocked on Billy’s door.

  “Grace?” he said, running to answer it.

  Mr. Lafferty the Cat jumped down and crouched on the rug, ready to run under the furniture if anything else alarmed him.

  It had been Rayleen’s signal knock, and Billy knew it. But he called Grace’s name anyway, because he wanted it to be Grace. She could be imitating the knock. Kids imitated.

  He undid the locks and threw the door open wide.

  It was only Rayleen.

  “Oh. It’s only you,” he said.

  “Nice to see you, too. I’m thinking I need Grace back now.”

  “I haven’t got her.”

  “Don’t make jokes.”

  “I’m not making jokes. I don’t have her. Last I saw her she ran out my door so she could go up to Mr. Lafferty’s — the man, not the cat — to get a litter box and food for Mr. Lafferty — the cat, not the man.”

  “Maybe she’s at Felipe’s,” she said.

  “I hope so,” he said, with a dawning sense that panic, rather than irritation, might be in order.

  “I’ll go check.”

  Billy uncharacteristically remained there in the doorway, waiting and viciously biting his nails, until she came back down again.

  Rayleen shook her head. “You don’t suppose she went back to her mom?” she asked. “She was pretty upset about not coming when her mom called her.”

  “No,�
�� Billy said. “Oh, it’s not outside the realm of possibility. But it just doesn’t seem possible now. When it first happened, maybe. Or tomorrow. But she just got this new cat, and she was going to run upstairs extra-fast and get something to feed him. She’s excited about the cat. She couldn’t wait to get back to him. And she knew she only had my permission to leave the cat here for a matter of minutes. It just doesn’t work timing-wise. The whole thing just doesn’t add up.”

  “OK, I’ll keep looking,” Rayleen said.

  “Wait! Um. Sorry to sound like a wimp, but…” Too late, Billy thought. You’ve been sounding like a wimp all your life. But he pushed the voices away again. Such nasty bastards, as always. “Maybe the cat can stay with Felipe while we figure all this out.”

  “Sorry. Felipe isn’t home.”

  “Oh. Well, then maybe he does have Grace. Maybe they went someplace together.”

  Rayleen shook her head, as if wishing she didn’t have to. “He was home. I talked to him. But now he’s not. I don’t want to freak you out too much—”

  “Then don’t,” Billy said.

  “You really don’t want to hear this?”

  “Well. I guess I have to. Now.”

  “OK. Here goes. There was one stranger in the building today. Mr. Lafferty’s son. He was here going through his father’s things.”

  “Yeah. I overheard that. Wait. Shit. You don’t think—”

  “We just can’t take any chances, that’s all. Felipe was talking to him for a while today, and the guy happened to mention where he was staying, which I’m sure he wouldn’t have done if he was up to no good. But, just to be on the safe side, Felipe is going to go down to his motel and check it out.”

  “I feel sick,” Billy said.

  And he meant it quite literally. Suddenly he felt flushed, feverish. Achy. The world’s fastest onset of the flu.

  “Just keep breathing,” Rayleen said.

  “You checked old Mrs. Hinman’s?”

  “I did. There’s one possibility we haven’t discussed yet. Maybe her mom snatched her back. You know. Against her will.”

  “Oh, God. I hope it’s just something like that. Not that a thing like that isn’t bad enough. Should we be calling the police?”

  “I don’t see that we’re in any position to,” Rayleen said. “We’re not her legal guardians. So we call them, and they come over, and let’s say it turns out she’s at home with her mom. And we say we called them — why? Because we stole the kid, and her mom stole her back?”

  “But if—”

  “Don’t think I haven’t thought it through, Billy. Don’t think I haven’t run every possibility in my brain, including the ones that are very bad for her…and us. I think I’m just going to have to pound on her mom’s door and tell her Grace is missing, and if she doesn’t know where her kid is, then she better call the police.”

  “Which looks very bad to her mom regarding our babysitting capabilities.”

  “If she doesn’t have her. If she does, it looks bad for us if we don’t go ask. Grace disappears, and we don’t even bother to check and see if she’s home. Besides, it can’t be helped,” Rayleen said. “This is just a bad situation either way. All around. I’m going.”

  Billy’s knees felt so mushy that he sank gently down on to them, on the rug close inside his doorway. He glanced over at Mr. Lafferty the Cat, just to be sure he wasn’t about to try to get out. But he’d curled up on the couch again, and was watching Billy with mild curiosity.

  He heard the pounding on the basement apartment door, and each knock went through him like a gunshot.

  “Ms. Ferguson?” he heard Rayleen call. “Do you have Grace? Because, if you don’t, we need to know. We need to put our differences aside to find her. I mean it. This could be serious.”

  Another series of pounds.

  Then Billy saw Rayleen come up the stairs again. Her face twisted with curiosity when she saw him kneeling by his door, tearing at fingernails with his teeth, though he hardly had fingernails left to tear.

  “Why are you on your knees?” she asked, standing over him now.

  Apparently the second part of the observation was self-explanatory.

  “Long story. Can I tell it some other time?”

  “So, surprise, knocking didn’t answer much,” Rayleen said. “My throat is starting to tighten up.” She took a few steps back from his doorway, defensively. “I’ll let you know when I hear back from Felipe.”

  “Wait!” he shouted, pulling himself to his feet, against odds. “Maybe Mrs. Hinman would take the cat. You know. Just for tonight.”

  Rayleen stood still in the hallway for a time, looking disoriented. As if she couldn’t pull her head around to such trivial considerations.

  “I guess I could ask her,” she said, finally.

  Billy sighed with relief.

  More fingernails, barely grown out to the quick line as it stood, fell victim.

  Rayleen came back downstairs not two minutes later. A long two minutes all the same.

  “Sorry, no,” she said. “Mrs. Hinman hates cats.”

  “So do I!” he wailed, much more pathetically than intended.

  “Well. If Mrs. Hinman had the cat right now and wanted you to take him, you might win with that argument. But you have him. So it’s that possession thing. You know. Possession being…I forget. Most of the law.”

  “Nine-tenths,” Billy said, miserably. “Tell me as soon as you hear from Felipe.”

  “I will.”

  “I still need that litter box. And food.”

  “Oh, yeah,” Rayleen said. “I think Felipe has them. I’ll look into that.”

  Billy closed and locked the door, then looked at Mr. Lafferty the Cat, who was still staring at him.

  “Stop staring at me,” he said. “I’m not that fascinating.”

  Predictably, the cat continued to stare.

  “This is all your fault,” he said.

  Mr. Lafferty the Cat flicked his ears back briefly, but didn’t do much more.

  • • •

  Felipe fed him a progress report through the door about half an hour later.

  “The Lafferty guy doesn’t have her,” Felipe said. “I really think he’s OK. She must be with her mom…I hope.”

  “Thank you,” Billy called through the door. “I still need the litter box and the cat food.”

  “Oh, yeah. I gave them to Rayleen. I’ll tell her.”

  “Thank you,” he called again.

  Then he began to cry uncontrollably.

  Mr. Lafferty the Cat came closer to investigate his tears, but Billy shooed him away with a startling sound, and the cat ran and hid under the couch.

  • • •

  It was nearly halfway through the movie Moonstruck, on late-night TV, when Billy heard the series of taps. He picked up the remote, stinging his bloodied and swollen fingertips, and muted the sound. He leaned over the couch and listened carefully.

  One, two, three…pause…four.

  But it wasn’t Rayleen knocking on Billy’s door. It wasn’t anyone knocking on Billy’s door. This was someone knocking on Billy’s floor. From underneath. From the basement apartment.

  He released an enormous sound, somewhere between a breath and a shout, and Mr. Lafferty the Cat, who had been sleeping on Billy’s stuffed chair, ran and hid under the couch again.

  Billy held still and listened. And he heard it again. One, two, three…pause…four.

  He ran to his front door and undid the locks with sore and shaky fingers. Throwing the door open wide, he ran across the hall, planning to knock on Rayleen’s door. Instead he ran into Rayleen, literally, in the middle of the hall between their apartments.

  “Did you hear that?” he shouted, radiating joy and relief.

  “I did!”

  “She’s downstairs.”

  “She must have waited till her mom fell asleep. To signal us.”

  “Smart girl,” Billy said.

  “Such a smart girl!”
Rayleen crowed. “I’ll tell Felipe.”

  “Maybe I can even get some sleep now.”

  Much to Billy’s surprise, she threw her arms around him. And they held each other. For a remarkably long time.

  “Careful, don’t let the cat out,” Rayleen said as she let go.

  “Oh. Right.”

  “By the way…Billy…you do know you’re out in the hall, right?”

  “Oops,” he said, and scrambled back inside.

  • • •

  In the night, Billy felt the presence of someone or something in the bedroom with him. He opened his eyes, and found himself staring right into the face of Mr. Lafferty the Cat, whose gold eyes gleamed in the glow from the kitchen night light.

  He screamed.

  The cat ran and hid under the bed.

  “Shit,” Billy said.

  He understood now that the proper move would have been to have closed his bedroom door with the cat still on the living room chair or couch. And it’s not that he hadn’t thought of it. More that he hadn’t been sure about sleeping without the usual glow of light. And he hadn’t anticipated quite such a rude awakening.

  He turned on his bedside light and lay awake for several hours, feeling an exhaustion of emotion, in his gut, at a level that could only be described as pain.

  In time, without meaning to, he fell back asleep.

  When he woke, it was due to a strange, muffled sound in his right ear. A kind of vibration and noise, but also the feeling that something was blocking his hearing on that side.

  It was light. He was sleeping on his back, which he never did. He always curled up on his side, in a fetal position, in preparation for sleep. But this had been a sleep for which he’d been unprepared.

  When he tried to turn his head, only then did he understand that Mr. Lafferty the Cat was curled against the right side of his face, purring vigorously.

  He sat up.

  But, oddly, he found himself missing the warmth and the vibration. It was something he’d been feeling all the way down into his gut. And, apparently, he’d been feeling it for much longer than he’d realized. Apparently he’d grown partially accustomed to the feeling before it had even wakened him.

  Slowly, gingerly, he lay back down again. The cat did not move.