She heard his steps hesitate—please stop, talk to me, hold me—but he didn’t stop, would she? Probably, it didn’t happen all that often, you come home and find your cat lying dead, and then the president and all those others, she had poor Happy’s body in a shoebox and didn’t know what to do with it.
Am I being punished for sin, is my mother’s God really up there counting the times I put a camera up my cunt to pay the bills? No, cats die, presidents die, snap out of it, you know better, you know better. Her nose was running and she didn’t have anything in her purse; she blew into her wet hand and scraped the mucus onto the bottom of the park bench, then splashed her palm in the puddle at her feet, and rubbed her nose hard against her forearm.
Aliens dropping out of the sky, a science father figure blows up himself and everybody in the room, a perfectly good cat drops over dead, and I’m ten minutes late for an anal-intercourse shoot. Which I’m not going to do. Even if it means my job. Louis is gentle but he’s just too big around. It’s not the proper use for that opening; things are supposed to come out, not go in.
“Oh, sweetheart. Things can’t be that bad.”
She wiped her eyes and looked up. It was the old lady with the shopping cart. She sat down next to her. “What is it that’s so bad?”
She looked into the old kind face. “My cat died.”
“Oh, my.” She lifted a corner of the sodden shoebox and looked inside. “What was her name?”
“His name. Happy.”
“Never had a boy cat. Lots of girl cats. You want one?”
“Not now, no. Thank you, no.”
“You got cat people and dog people, you know? My husband, he was a dog person. One reason I had to get rid of him.”
Gabrielle smiled. “He take the dog with him?”
“No, that would be cruel. I kept the dog, even though he smelled bad.” She leaned close and whispered. “He had gas. Both of them did.”
Gabrielle wiped her eyes. “How long ago was that?”
“Thirty-some years, I guess. Buried him when Hull was president. Hardly anybody had the cube back then.”
“You still think about the poor thing.”
“Oh, yeah. Buried him under a big piece of plywood out in the swamp. Mall there now.”
“You couldn’t just bury him in the backyard?”
“No. Gosh and golly. Way too big. Laws, too.”
“There are laws about burying dogs?”
She nodded slowly. “Some kinds.” She looked over Gabrielle’s shoulder. “Afternoon, Officer.”