Part One: A Bit of Fresh Air, Perhaps?

“I just want you to know,” I say, “that I will never, while texting, use the letter “U” for the word “you”.”

The cat looks up, a half-smile on her lips.  “This is not,” she intones, “going to be another one of those dreadful conversations in which you tell me the many ways we will know, should you suddenly disappear, that you are being held against your will, is it?”  She pulls a pack of cigarettes from what may or may not be some sort of breast pocket somewhere along her rib cage.  “You mind?” she asks. 

I reach into the coffee table drawer for my vintage Nye’s Polanaise ashtray.  “I wish you wouldn’t smoke in the house,” I mutter.

“And I wish,” she says, dropping a spent match and blowing the smoke out the window, “that you would get over the idea that you’re about to be snatched and held for ransom.”

I pshaw, a quick expulsion of air intended to show my disdain for her powers of deduction.  “It’s not that,” I say, while secretly acknowledging that it is, indeed that.  “What? Pfft.  No.  I’m just saying I refuse to substitute “r” for “are” and the like.  It just feels, I don't know...”

The cat smiles, takes a drag of her cigarette.  “Ah, and there we have it, Old Fruit.”  Liza Bean Bitey, of the Minneapolis Biteys, former high school debate champion and serial mouse-abuser, has been reading Wodehouse again. 

“Have what?”

“Hmm?”

The cat is toying with me.

“You said," I pout, "and there we have it.  What do we have?”

The cat sighs, a delightfully tiny sound, and grinds her cigarette out.  “What we have is you thinking your days are numbered.  Are they, Pearl?  Are they numbered?”

I stand, walk to the front door, gaze out the glass that makes up much of it.  The tree that looms over my deck just outside that door, the tree that arches over the roof and into the neighbor’s yard, is leafless.  The wind gusts, and its branches appear to shiver.

“Everyone's days are numbered,” I say. “Sometimes I dream of packing up, taking only the essentials, of going somewhere where no one knows me.”

The cat stands up, scampers toward the fridge and the box of Moscato wine on the top shelf.  “Just as you say then,” she calls -- is that a British accent? -- over her shoulder.  “Perhaps it’s time we took a little trip, you and I.”

"A very little trip, I would imagine," I sigh.  “Have you seen my wallet lately?”

The cat smiles, tiny gleaming teeth.  "We'll hop the bus, ride the lawless 10.  I know how much you enjoy that."

I smile.

"It's been a while since I've seen a real weirdo in action," I say.  "Sure.  Why not."