Stop.I shoved down my ridiculous melodrama. It was just a building, one I’d spent a lot of unhappy time in as a kid, but I hadn’t been tortured or physically abused or anything. Miserable, yeah, but I was two decades past that and what’s more, I now owned the place.
“I’m your new boss,” I told the building, and had to laugh at my ridiculousness.
Pulling out the ring of keys the lawyer had given me, I headed around to the side door. The lock yielded oddly when I turned the key, but opened to let me in. I flicked a switch, but no lights came on.Of course. Power must be off.Memories assailed me left and right as I marched down the incongruously dark hall past the kitchen. Once, there would have been chattering voices, my grandparents sharp tones, and the smells of food from the tasting menu overlying the deeper tang of red wine. As I turned a corner, I thought I caught a familiar whiff and my stomach lurched, but after two years, probably it was all in my head.
Front room first. Get it over with.Passing through the wide arch with its inset of pretentious stone blocks made me shiver.
The tasting room, my grandmother’s pride and joy, stood empty and silent. Someone had cleared out all the fancy polished tables and high-backed wooden chairs, the sideboards and tall coolers. Under the malevolent glitter of the cut-glass fixtures, the marble floor stretched empty. Only two wooden plant stands that had once held cut flowers remained, one in each front corner. It’d been my job to keep the arrangements in those vases perfect, trimming and replacing and culling, plucking petals the moment they withered. One of many jobs I never did well enough to satisfy my grandmother…
“Thibault! Quickly! Stupid boy. The guests are waiting.”
The echo of Grand-mère’s voice rang in my head. I jumped and turned. Suddenly, fury swamped me in a hot, bitter wave. I strode over to the nearer plant stand, lifted it by one leg, and swung the top against the mirrored wall. Glass smashed, cracks running over the surface. Bits fell at my feet.Hell, yes!
I swung again and again. A shard of glass sliced my shirtsleeve, bringing a flash of pain, and I had a moment’s worry for my eyes, but the glee of destruction was too strong to stop.Break! Smash! Fall! Die?—
A strong hand closed around my arm, jerking me to a stop, and an unfamiliar man’s voice barked, “Hey! Cut that out!”
He yanked me off balance and I dropped the stand. I turned to glare at him. “Let me go!” My planned defense of, “I own it and I can break it,” died on my lips because this wasn’t some security guard charging in to protect private property.
The man holding my arm was tall and skinny and definitely not in uniform. In the dim light, I could only make out a bulky sweatshirt with pale skin showing through a rip above one shoulder. His hair was long and shaggy, and he peered at me from under tangled strands. I couldn’t make out his eyes.
I wrenched my arm free and he let go, stepping back and holding his hands high. “Sorry, dude, I won’t touch you again, but you need to stop breaking things. This is a great squat, real clean, and I’m willing to share, but?—”
“Share?” I stared at him.
“Yeah. I found it first. That’s why the door was unlocked. It’s plenty big enough for us both to camp out and not be in each other’s space, but if someone walking by hears crashing glass, they’re gonna call the cops. That’s a nice neighborhood over there.” He waved vaguely in the direction of the nearest Marina Park houses.
“You opened the door?”
I saw a flash of white teeth. “Climbed to the second story and got in a window. Wasn’t easy, so you should thank me for clearing your way.”
He’d broken in. I should’ve been calling 9-1-1, but being yanked out of my meltdown still had me off balance.
A soft meow made us both turn. The stranger sprinted over to the archway and scooped up a small, pale-colored cat into his arms. “No, Mimsy, you’ll have to wait till I get a broom. Don’t want to cut your paws, sweet girl.” He came back toward me, cradling the cat. “This is Mimsy, my fur kid. You’re not, like, allergic to cats or anything, are you?”
“No.” My throat had tightened too much to say more. Here, with the echoes of the past shaking me, I remembered how I’d always wanted a pet. How the stray cat I’d befriended was unceremoniously tossed out of the house to hunt rodents, and I was punished for feeding her…
The cat stretched a paw toward me, claws sheathed, and made a soft noise.
“Huh. She likes you.”
Before I could think better, I asked, “Can I pet her?”
The man hesitated. “You have to be real gentle.”
“I promise.”
He came over to stand in front of me, the cat held against his chest. “She likes when you stroke her cheeks and over her ears.”
I ran a finger from her whiskers to her neck, then twisted to smooth down her ear in a gesture twenty years forgotten. She rubbed against me and purred. I stroked her cheek again, and the top of her head. My finger shook.
With an odd sound, she snagged my arm with her paw and then her little sandpaper tongue slurped a trickle of blood from my wrist.
I stepped back. “Sorry.”
“For what? Turning my cat into a cannibal? She will totally eat my corpse when I die.”
Don’t die.I fumbled and said, “Wouldn’t it only be cannibalism if she ate other cats?”
