Remembering how Byron had insulted Peg, Amber decided not to sleep with him after all. Once she transferred to Engineering, she would phase both him and Peg out of her life. She would forget she'd ever set foot in Student Services.
The next morning, Peg seemed much more calm.
"I've been thinking about our little arrangement, Amber," she said, "and I'm prepared to offer you a deal. I'll continue to do your work, no strings attached, if you can do one thing."
Amber's heart pounded painfully. Was she prepared to indulge the little troll's perverted sexual fantasies? The yogurt she'd had for breakfast flipped around in her stomach like clothes in a drier.
"Okay," she said thickly.
"Tell me my cat's name."
"What?"
"It should be easy, Amber," Peg said. "We're friends, right? Surely I've mentioned my cat's name to you during one of our many phone conversations."
"I'm not sure you have, Peg, honestly," Amber said, feigning innocence.
"You have three chances to guess my cat's name," Peg said. "For three nights we'll dine together, and you'll guess. If you guess correctly, I'll do your work without a peep and then disappear from your life when you leave Student Services as though we'd never known each other."
"What if I can't guess it?"
"Then we'll have dinner together once a month, talk on the phone weekly, and you'll join my bowling team."
"What?"
"We're actually very good. Is it a deal?"
"Is the cat a boy or a girl?"
"That's cheating."
Amber racked her brain. Peg's workstation contained several photos of the cat sitting next to the Christmas tree and lolling about on a sheepskin rug. It had long white hair, a pushed-in face, and bottle-green eyes. Peg talked about it frequently, its special diet and how when it was sick with kidney stones it had urinated all over the house. If only Amber had been listening more carefully, she might know the answer to Peg's question right now.
"Fine, it's a deal," Amber said curtly.
"Tonight you're taking me to Lance's Kitchen."
"Oh, Peg, that place holds nothing but bad memories for me. To go back there would be like begging or something."
There wasn't a speck of truth in it—Amber had gone back to Lance's often to have a beer with the girls and flirt with Barry, even though he had dumped her, but she didn't want to be seen there, or anywhere in public, with Peg.
"How about the Olive Garden?" Amber suggested. It was on the outskirts of town and sure to be deserted on a weeknight.
"Lance's Kitchen or no deal," Peg said, swinging around in her chair to face her computer. "Pick me up at seven."
That evening Peg wore a white blouse with a ruffle at the neck and a black spandex mini skirt that made her lumpy hips look like a half-empty tube of toothpaste. The hostess at Lance's, who was still wearing too much bronzer, greeted Amber enthusiastically and gave them the quietest booth. But then she and their waitress—whose skirt length emphasized her thick calves—and the bartender—who had colored his hair an unbecoming shade of straw—now stood at the bar whispering. Barry the cook came through the swinging doors from the kitchen, wiping his hands on his apron. Someone must have tipped him off about the troll Amber had brought to dinner.
Peg downed two cocktails before they'd even ordered their meals, and when she couldn't decide between two entrees, she ordered both and then set upon the food like a starved animal. Amber only picked at her taco salad. She could never come back here again, thanks to Peg, who was now ordering coffee and dessert.
"Oh, my goodness," Peg said fifteen minutes later, leaning over to lick the edge of the tulip glass that had held her hot fudge sundae. "I'm stuffed."
The brown and gray hair framing her face was flecked with Alfredo sauce, one eyebrow was smeared with gravy, and she had a fudgy ring around her mouth.
Fighting back tears, Amber left three twenties on the table and pulled Peg out the back door by one of her thick arms. As Amber drove, Peg reclined in the passenger seat, moaning about how much her stomach hurt. Then she sat up and began to spit—great, wet gobs of saliva on the dashboard, the floor, the passenger window. Amber shrieked as a blob of spit landed on the back of her right hand, and she pulled over to the side of the road just in time for Peg to open the door and vomit for an impossibly long time onto the gravel shoulder, making a sound like a garbage disposal. Amber hadn't heard anything like it since she'd dated an alcoholic who threw up first thing every morning.
It was cold outside, but when it seemed Peg was finally finished, she still hung on the car door, panting, her stout body half in, half out of the car. Her skirt had ridden up so that Amber could see most of her cheesy left thigh. She considered putting a foot on one of Peg's haunches, launching her out the door, and driving away. But she still needed her, at least until next week, when Amber would be "training" her own replacement.
"Are you finished?" Amber could not say it nicely.
Peg struggled to get back into the car, but her short limbs and top-heaviness worked against her. Finally, Amber grasped Peg's sleeve and pulled her back into the bucket seat, a move she regretted as soon as she saw the vomit-drool hanging from Peg's chin and the ends of her hair, pooled in the ruffles of her blouse. She smelled like meat kept in the refrigerator past its expiration date.
"You could have held my hair back, Amber," Peg sobbed. "I'm starting to think you don't have any human feelings at all."
Amber clenched her teeth. "There now," she said, patting Peg a little too hard on the shoulder, squinting in the dim interior light to make sure she wasn't aiming for a stray patch of vomit. "Let's get you home."
Finally, Amber pulled into Peg's driveway.
"Help me inside, won't you, Amber?"
Amber guided Peg into the house. When Peg turned on the lights in the living room, Amber was taken aback. Brilliant rugs in deep reds and purples set off the glowing wood floors, and built-in shelves jumbled with books and framed photographs flanked a broad fireplace. In comparison, Amber's apartment was a dump. With her next check, Amber decided she would buy some new curtains, maybe a matching cover for her couch. She would call maintenance tomorrow about the plaster flaking off the walls in her bathroom.
"You have a lovely home," Amber said.
"You sound surprised," Peg growled, and Amber looked toward the sound, alarmed. Peg had entered the dark corridor and become a shadowy figure with hair hanging over her face, her hands balled into fists. Amber shivered. Then Peg turned and staggered into a room.
Amber thought quickly. Where might she find information about Peg's cat? She looked through the basket of mail next to the telephone, through the papers on the desk, hoping to find a bill from the veterinarian. From the bookshelf she took down a photo of the cat and slid the backing from the frame, but the reverse side contained only a date.
The other pictures on the shelves showed normal-looking people, a short man, a boy, and a girl whom Amber guessed were Peg's former husband and their children. There were graduation pictures of the kids, who had turned out only slightly ugly, although the girl had Peg's unfortunate doorknob of a nose.
In a small brass frame, Amber found a black-and-white photo of a girl in a leotard and tutu, her arms raised to form a graceful circle. It had to be Peg—there was no mistaking the gapped front teeth, the widely spaced eyes—but she actually looked like a little girl a mother could have loved.
Amber stared at the photo for several minutes, lamenting the fact that one day she too would be older and uglier, and then she turned away from it and wandered into the kitchen, which was spacious and bright, with teal valances and white wallpaper dotted with tiny teal and yellow flowers. She opened a couple of drawers but found no papers, no clues as to the cat's name. She ran her hands over Peg's stainless steel range, the stone countertops, the wooden cabinets that felt like satin under her fingertips. Out the kitchen window, she could see a snow-covered sundeck, and she imagined it in the summer furnished with puffy floral chairs and a gas grill.
Amber jumped when something brushed against her leg. It was Peg's cat, looking up at her with wide green eyes. From it's green collar, a silver tag dangled.
"Pretty kitty," Amber cooed, rubbing the cat's head with her fingertips. She didn't like cats, or animals in general, and so she was surprised by how good it felt to stroke the silky white fur. "What's your name, kitty?"
The cat began to purr loudly as Amber scratched around its collar, her fingers moving slowly toward the tag under its chin. But just as she was reaching for it, the cat ducked its head and flopped down onto its side on the floor. Amber crouched and stroked the cat's back with her left hand while her right found the tag. She grasped the cool metal chip and turned it over.
In a flash, the cat reached out and caught Amber's wrist with its front claws and bit her hard in the meaty place under her thumb. Panicked, Amber shook her arm violently until the cat fell away. She stood and took a quick step back from the cat, which crouched on the floor in front of her now, its ears flattened. A little blood oozed from the marks on Amber's hand and wrist, less than she expected from how much they hurt. She stepped toward the cat then, intending to kick it across the floor, but it ran away, into the living room.
Amber followed the cat and found Peg leaning in the mouth of the dark hallway. She had changed into a red teddy-bear sweatshirt and a worn pair of corduroys. Her hair was pulled back with a cloth band, and her face was clean and bright pink. She was barefoot, her large square toenails painted red.
Oddly embarrassed by her injury, Amber hid her right hand behind her back. "Are you feeling any better?" she asked Peg.
"Yes, thank you," Peg said coolly. "Can I offer you something? A cup of Sanka, perhaps? An Archway cookie or a Little Debbie snack cake?"
"No thank you," Amber said.
"Did you meet my cat?"
"Yes," Amber hissed, pain pulsating in her hand.
"Shall we get started, then?"
Peg sat down at one end of the dark-brown leather sofa and Amber at the other. Amber pulled the sleeve of her pale pink cashmere sweater down over her right hand and opened the small notebook in which she had written her list.
"Is your cat's name Fluffy?" she asked.
Peg shook her head.
"Is it Snowflake, Muffin, or Green Eyes? Is it Precious?"
"Nope."
Was Peg smirking?
Amber read all the cat names that might be appropriate for a white cat with green eyes: Casper, Smoky, Phantom, Ghost, Whitey. Then on to all the cat names she'd ever heard of, period, none of which was right.
She left Peg's house exhausted and hopeless.
Amber was dreading the following evening, but when she arrived at Peg's house, she found that Peg had ordered delicious Vietnamese takeout, which they ate at Peg's gleaming teak dining room table. At work that day, Amber had compiled a list several hundred strong, getting the girls' input at lunch. Maybe, she thought, the cat was named after a famous person. That idea alone added two hundred names to her list.
After dinner, Peg, who was wearing a long sleeveless caftan that left her winglike upper arms exposed, ate two Little Debbie Zebra Cakes, while Amber, who had refused dessert, read from her list.
"Is it Tigger, Tiger, or Tommy Boy? Is it Eleanor Rigby? Tipper Gore? Ed McMahon?"
Peg shook her head. She pulled one layer off a Zebra Cake and lapped at the white cream she had exposed.
"Is it Olivia Newton John? Cleopatra? Popeye the Sailor Man, Olive Oyl, or Swee' Pea? Is it Boy George?"
"Nope," Peg said. She shoved the entire bottom layer of the cake into her mouth.
"Dopey? Sneezy? Doc? Bashful? Bluto! Is it Bluto?"
But Amber was never right.
That night, she dreamed of a basket full of white kittens. She scooped one up, and its mewling became a screech that made the hair on her neck prickle. Peg's white cat approached from a great distance. As it got closer, Amber could see it was really Peg wrapped in a white sheepskin rug. She was chanting something Amber couldn't make out. Then Peg threw off the sheepskin, under which she was naked. Her breasts swung from her torso like sweat socks filled with sand, and beneath her swollen stomach, between her tree-trunk legs, hung a pair of meaty balls and the thumblike stump of a penis. Peg was shouting in Amber's face now, her breath like feces, but Amber still couldn't understand what she was saying.
Amber woke in a panic, drenched in sweat. It was Friday morning. Her last chance. She called in sick to work and then sat on the couch in her fuchsia satin pajamas, frantically adding names to her list. The phone rang, and Amber cowered on the couch as the answering machine clicked on.
"Byron told me you're sick, poor thing," Peg said loudly against the mouthpiece, not bothering to mask her glee. "I hope you'll feel well enough to come to dinner. There's goulash cooking in the Crock-Pot. See you at six-thirty!"
Amber had always thought of goulash as elbow macaroni and ground beef mixed with a can of crushed tomatoes, but Peg's goulash consisted of chunks of tender meat in a rich, red paprika broth. She'd also made potato dumplings and a salad of wild greens with a mustard vinaigrette, and she poured a cold, fruity Zinfandel into Amber's glass. Amber ate as though it were her last meal. She'd barely had anything all day, having spent most of it calling every veterinary clinic in the area trying to find the one Peg used. But none of them had ever heard of Peg or her cat.
Peg couldn't wait until after dinner. "Are you ready, Amber?" she asked through a mouthful of salad.
"Ready," Amber said glumly. She opened her notebook. "Is it Cricket? Is it Sailor, Butterfly, or Potato Pancake?"
Peg shook her head.
"Is it Ashley, Victor, Victoria, or Nikki? Tad or Dixie or Adam or Erica Kane? Lily or Holden or Sammy or Austin?"
"No, Amber," Peg said, smiling and wiping her mouth daintily with a cloth napkin.
Would it really be so bad, Amber wondered, to call Peg once a week, to have a nice meal like this with her once a month? Maybe Peg would even help Amber redecorate her apartment.
"Is it Victoria Lord or Luke Spencer?"
"Nope."
And bowling might be fun. She was actually quite curious about Peg's teammates. Were they all dwarfs? Or was it dwarves? Amber watched Peg shovel a mammoth bite of goulash into her mouth.
"Is it Daisy or Petunia or Rose or any kind of flower? Is it named after a truck?"
Peg began to laugh. At first it was a low sound, wet and grating, like a hubcap falling off a car in the rain, but then Peg began to shriek and gasp. She inhaled deeply, and Amber heard a sound like a ping-pong ball being sucked onto the end of a vacuum-cleaner hose. Peg's eyes bulged even more than usual. She tore at her throat with her large hands.
Amber sat very still. It seemed that Peg had sucked a chunk of meat into her windpipe. The best thing to do was stay calm. Did Amber remember the Heimlich maneuver from high school health class? You felt for a certain bone and then pressed underneath it. Or above it. Or was that CPR?
Peg stood. Her mouth formed some words—maybe "Help me"—but no sound came through. Inability to speak was one of the main signs of choking, if Amber remembered correctly. Peg tore the tie-on cushion from her chair and rent it in half. A few crumbs of foam stuffing fell to the floor. Amber rose, clutching her cloth napkin. Did Peg still have the strength to come after her? No, Peg fell to her knees, her face growing dark red like the goulash left in her bowl atop the gleaming table.
After a minute or so, Peg tipped sideways onto the floor, her head landing near the teak buffet. Her eyes remained open.
Amber sighed. It had been a long few days. With her napkin, she carefully wiped the wine bottle and the back of her chair. It would be as though she'd never been here, as though Peg had dined alone, as usual. For all anyone knew, Amber had been sick at home all day. In the kitchen, she washed and put away her plate, salad bowl, wine glass, and silverware. In the bathroom, she stuffed her napkin and placemat deep into the full clothes hamper in the corner and then paused to look at herself in the mirror.
Her naturally wavy hair, bobbed at chin-level, accented her strong jaw and large eyes. She was not only a very pretty girl, she decided, but a very lucky one. Byron would understand how the news of Peg's sudden death would affect the quality of Amber's work. One day off to recover, one day off for the funeral. She might even develop a horrible cold as a result of the stress.
As she gathered her coat and purse in the entryway, Amber thought she saw a flash of movement out of the corner of her eye, and her pulse quickened. Had Peg miraculously recovered, the chunk of meat dislodged by her fall? But it was only the track lighting reflected off the silver-framed photo of the white cat. Amber went to the bookshelves and wiped her fingerprints from each of the photos she had touched. She thought of the white cat's silky fur under her fingers.
Despite what the little beast had done to her, she couldn't leave it trapped in the house as Peg decomposed. If the body wasn't discovered right away, the cat might be forced to eat it. The thought made Amber suddenly dizzy, and she had to lean against the bookshelf for a moment.
When the room stopped tilting from side to side like a rocking boat, Amber walked to the front door and pulled the sleeve of her pink sweater down over her hand. She turned the brass doorknob and pulled the door open several inches. Frigid air swirled through the opening, creating a column of fog.
"Here kitty, kitty, kitty," she called.
Peg's cat crept out from under the teak table and stood considering her, its wide green eyes unblinking. Would it survive in the cold and snow? Amber wondered. Would one of the neighbors take it in? The cat streaked past her and out into the night.
Shoot, Amber thought as she watched it cross the street and disappear around the side of the neighbor's house. She never had found out the damn thing's name.
Heidi Bell works as an editor and writer in Aurora, Illinois. Her stories have appeared in Crazyhorse, The Seattle Review, Jane, and The Chicago Reader, among others.
Comments (closed)
Kathy
2011-11-01 13:28:05
Loved the story!
Dede
2011-11-07 13:15:33
decent. i was going to say the editor missed one of the tons of proper nouns (Visa), but then i realized the author is an editor. maybe a typo? so many proper nouns it almost interferred with the fluency of the read (then again, maybe they paid for advertising, in which case i don't blame the inclusion! :)). it's a little hard to believe anyone doesn't know how to turn on a computer, or that anyone would really care about the boss knowing they wiped their boogers under the desk. who doesn't? loved the Band-Aid breath, though. i guess penis and blow job were included for shock; kind of reminded me of middle school kids who draw pictures of penises on the bathroom wall so they can revisit their masterpieces. i like the ending though, there are people i wouldn't save in the same situation, that's for sure. I'm guessing the cat's name is Willie...another phallic reference would be fitting. ;)
JPenton
2011-11-10 15:10:40
The "visa" was a typo on my part; we changed that passage, and I made the correction on my crappy laptop screen. I don't think that one who has been exposed to young food service workers in the United States can be shocked by teenage girls who talk about penises and blowjobs. It would not occur to me to find those references shocking. The business with the computer and the boogers were over-the-top, but this is a comic story, so there you go. Anyway, thanks for your long look at the story and the site!