The door swooped open and ricocheted off a rubber stopper on the marble floor. The window blinds on the back end smacked against the wall and swung side to side like a demented jack-in-a-box. I immediately felt guilt creep in from my innards because of the sound. It rose in me like a wave of nausea. And yet, I was not to be deterred.
The two women behind the desk flinched at my sight. Of course they did. That was the point of my dramatic entrance. Emma and Casey were their names.
Enemies.
“Whodoya think yoh ah, tellin’ me houhta cut my grass?”
Casey cleared her throat. Emma swilled her mug of what I assumed was tea like she was trying to decide if she needed to take a shit.
“You need to abide by the same rules as everybody else Mr. Pinker,” Casey said.
“Don’t tell me ta-bide by an-ee-thin’. I pay my mortgage six months in air-vance. I’m not sum dere-lic. I make hey-ahts… and youtube reaction videos! Can you see-ay ya make a livin’ with yar own creativity? You Casey? You Em-ma?”
Casey worked full-time for the Home Owner’s Association. She lived in the cul-de-sac, Sunny Memories, as well. I don’t know how she angled for the job. I think she was a stay-at-home mom and lickspittled whomever needed lickspittling. Emma is a stay-at-home mom and is just always happy. About anything.
She makes me sick.
“It was just a note Mr. Pinker. But please, cut your grass at normal intervals and you won’t receive any letter in the future.”
“Ah’ll do as I plays, Casey,” I said.
I crumpled up the orange note into a distant star enveloped by my fist and tossed it six feet toward the pot containing that stupid fake plant. I heard a sigh escape Emma’s idiot face. Good.
“Ah’ll tell ya anothah thing…” I paused. I didn’t have anything else to say. I simply wanted to punctuate things before I slammed the door behind me. I was mostly bothered by my Southie accent creeping out at the worst of times. Usually, it was dormant, but it would pop up sporadically when I would raise my voice or get emotional. I tried dispelling it over time, but we can’t always run from who we are deep down. My eyes searched the room. “… taupe is a shit colah!”
***
I was done for the day early at my shoppe. It’s called, The Hat Man, and it’s got a nice, blue metal sign I forged using found material hanging over the entrance. Only two people entered within a six-hour period and so I thought it would be a better use of my time to take out my angst on those charlatans inside that hut in the front of the cul-de-sac before returning home. I still felt guilty for the sound of the blinds smacking against the back of the entrance. I didn’t feel guilty about my other behavior. I don’t know why.
Most of the business is online and I’m doing my best to keep the brick-n-mortar going for as long as I can because I enjoy it. Shipping hats out of a garage and marketing solely through a website and social media would de-humanize too much of my existence.
The Go Pro 8 was in front of me. The backdrop was set. I played Twisted Sister’s, “We’re Not Gonna Take it,” and pretended like I’ve never heard it before for the audience on the interwebs. I bobbed my head. I played imaginary drumsticks on my keyboard. And I paused every thirty to forty seconds to comment on the video to avoid any copyright strikes against my account. I’ve got sixty thousand subscribers to my channel, “Hatman re-ax!”
I play anything and everything that’s trending on social media. I’ll also occasionally have my subscriber’s vote on the next videos. Or if they want something expedited, they can Venmo me a few bucks. It’s shocking how much people will send my way for a reaction video. And the channel has done wonders for my haberdashery business. I’ve doubled my sales with the exposure.
“Wow, this is really different,” I said glancing up and to my left. “I love the intro of the drums. It has such a nostalgic feel to it. It is nostalgia.” I clicked the space bar and Dee Snider continued explaining his rebellion in song.
The front door slammed.
“Fawk!”
I clicked the spacebar and paused the video. Slid the clip back to the beginning. I had to start the recording all over again. An amateur would leave a door slam in a video. Not me.
I exited my office.
***
My wife, Anna, was a registered nurse. She was Puerto Rican, and a ball of energy, and I could always tell when not to look her in the eye. She worked her twelve-hour shift in the ER, and when days were untenable, there would be a wine glass on the kitchen island with an unopened bottle adjacent, and I knew to remain scarce.
“Gary!” Anna screamed from the bedroom.
Oh no.
“Gary?” The question sounded emotional-like she was on the verge of tears. Not for me.
I put down the cereal.
“Yeah babe?” I smiled. “How was ya day?”
Anna’s shoulders began to shutter. Her head plopped down, hiding her chin, and she began to weep.
“Oh no. Watappened?”
“Cupcakes dead.” Tears bum-rushed her cheeks.
“Wat?”
“He’s out on the front lawn.”
“How diddee get out?”
“You tell me?” she said. Her tone changed. Eyes darkened. Beady.
“I ‘ave no idea. ‘Aven’t seen ‘em all day. Thot he was in the beh-dgroom.”
“Well, he wasn’t.”
“I’m gonna go take a lawk.”
***
Cupcake, our household pet, was a black and white cat. He had green eyes and an aloof temperament-the ladder could be said of any of them. I was more of a dog person, but Anna had him since before we met. Cupcake was there in our first one-bedroom apartment outside Boston, our second apartment, and finally, the big move to Daytona Beach, Florida. I didn’t know what type of breed he was. It didn’t much matter to me. But he was a fine cat.
I made the foreboding steps out of the front door and towards the sidewalk. Scanned the lawn and didn’t see anything. Then I spotted him at the edge. His back leg teetered on the sidewalk. His eyes were closed. He laid on his side and it didn’t occur to me how the dead could look so bloated; as if somebody put a bicycle pump in ‘em and ratcheted away.
Anna appeared in a daze. Reflections of the sun twinkled off her hair like an angel.
“I think we should bury him in the backyard,” she said.
She handed me a box from Amazon. It was the perfect size for his carcass, and then I realized she meant me. I’d much rather not, but I couldn’t find an argument to get out of dealing with the cat corpse. I pursed my lips and accepted the box that was pressed up against my chest-doing my best to avoid eye contact, and held in a long, agonizing sigh.
***
“Should we say anything?” Anna asked. She elbowed me in the side. It wasn’t hard, but they were like butcher knives.
I buried Cupcake four feet deep. Something about him being too close to the surface eeked me out. I had a wheelbarrow, as an amateur gardener, and did my best to separate the mulch and dirt. Decided to bury him in the secluded area beside the deck. Surrounded by a bird of paradise and firecrackers. It was a proper burial for a pet. After I was done, you’d never know anything was out of place.
“Well…” I coughed, “yoh wah a good boy.” I gave her a wink.
Anna squinted at me in disgust.
“And it was teh-rrible that, I’m guessin’ a cah hit ya…maybe…” I scratched the bristle on my neck, and could feel the heat from her laser eyes. “Yoh dahserve bettah bud. Much bettah. Be in peace.”
Anna curled her arm around my waist and buried her face on my shoulder. Her weeping stopped.
“Thank you,” she said.
She recovered rather quickly, I thought.
I glanced up at the kitchen window. Observed the empty space where Cupcake bathed in the rays of the sun on the regular. Then, a furry, black and white leg crept out of the ether and Cupcake landed on the sill. Stretched his back out like an accordion, in that way only cats do, and settled calmly in a line. He continued his aloofness, staring at the perfect angle to not recognize my existence.
“Mothafawka!”
Anna’s arms dropped and she hopped to the side.
“Mothafawka,” I looked down at the mulch. “Cupcake, yoh motha-fawka!”
“What is wrong with you?” She smacked me on the shoulder.
“Look at the gah-damm window,” I said.
“Oh, ohhh, Cup-cake,” she screamed and smiled at the same time. She rushed over the grave of the John Doe feline and pattered her hand in jubilance on the kitchen window.
I shook my head in disgust. I didn’t want Cupcake to die before.
I did then.
***
Two days later, Anna exploded into the kitchen. It was her day off and she had just left for a cycling class. I was dining on Honey Bunches of Oats-with Almonds, when she flicked a flyer across the kitchen table. It didn’t stop until it poked me in the chest and flopped onto my lap. It read with a photo beneath; and I am not making this up:
MISSING CAT. HE GOES BY CONGRESSMAN IAGO. IF FOUND PLEASE RETURN TO 1106 COTTONMOUTH DRIVE. REWARD$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
“These are posted under the windshield wiper of every car. On the front door of every home. On every tree, and above the sign in front of the cul-de-sac entrance.”
I nodded my head, put the flyer to the side, and continued eating my cereal.
“We’re surrounded by the Congressman.”
I nodded. Naturally.
“Well?”
“Well wat?”
“What are you gonna do?”
I giggled.
“This isn’t funny.”
“I agree,” I smiled. “Ahm sorry. Wat would yoh like to do?”
“Me? I thought you’d have the idea.”
“Why? Because ya made me barry some old ladies cat in ehrownbackyahd. That’s a few dohs down. It’s the old bird who puts her gahbage in other people’s gahbage cans.”
“I didn’t make you.”
“Didn’t ya check the house?”
“Yeah… kinda,” she said.
“Kinda?”
“I just got home from work!”
“Ohhhh earweego! Ya not makin’ me feel guilty foh yahr mistake. I reject it!”
She started crying. I didn’t buy it. Then, I felt guilty anyway. I don’t know why.
“I’ll right, relax.”
“What are we gonna do?”
“Isn’t it awbvious?”
“What?”
“Ah’ll just dig’emup and plawp’emohn-er front pawch.”
“You can’t do that!”
“I was kiddin’. Watahya nuts?”
“Then what do we do?”
“Could tauce him back on the lawn in the middle of the night. Crause-ah fingahs a kid finds ‘em and angles for the rewahd.”
“That’s fucked up,” she said. “I feel bad for her.”
“Fine.” I put my spoon down. “Yah could tell-ah… we found ‘em and barried him. Easy.”
“Me?”
“Yeah, yoh. Yoh found ‘em.” I sighed.
“I’m not doing that.”
“Why not?”
She exhaled. “I don’t want to… seems awkward.”
“Watdoya want then?”
“I don’t know.”
***
My shoulders jostled back and forth. Wiggling like a fluorescent caterpillar. I was attempting an act of dominance. Popping my pecs like Hulk Hogan or The Rock. It didn’t occur to me at first-the lack of chest muscles or muscles of any kind. I must’ve appeared like a debilitated swan performing a mating call toward the ladies representing the Home Owner’s Association.
It was almost dusk. Befitting the crepuscular creatures within my line of sight. I half awaited them to turn into the vampiric monsters I knew them to be.
Big Brother periodically stapled up more flyers of the honourable Congressman Iago on a tree directly across my front door. Between intervals they peeked over their shoulders with concern.
Every now and then I’d twist my chin and spit a globular gob of who knows what in a spiteful manner. My lawn would be their effigies. I was wearing a plaid Ushanka hat made of the finest qualities in the dog days of summer. Bluetooth earbuds hidden under the flaps. Kendrick Lamar’s m.A.A.d city thumping in my skull. Coyote brown soft shoe regulation AR 670-1 military boots hugged my feet. Certified by The United States Space Force (purchased on Ebay, of course). My head and shoulders were circumambulated by half a dozen floating monarchs attracted to my perfectly curated arrangement of flowers. Twenty-two-inch hedge clippers loaded in my right hand like a pistol and my face carrying the ten-thousand-yard stare of a Korean war vet.
A stack of flyers slipped out of the grubby hands of shitlips Emma and I felt the evil in me grow like that little bastard in black from one of the Star Wars movies.
My jowls propped up the cheshire grin of a madman.
Casey turned and slowly plucked the dozens of flyers off the sidewalk. One by one. Her shitty orange crocs lost grip of the pavement and she slid back on her HOA ass. She squirmed around like the rat fuck she is and I heard a feeble whimper escape her husband’s jockstrap.
Then, for some reason, unbeknownst to me… I felt guilty. So, begrudgingly, I dropped the clippers, and scurried over to help.
***
“Thank you so much, Mr. Pinker. That is so kind,” Emma said without a hint of earnestness.
I smiled briefly in return.
“You know, Mrs. Mackenzie? She lost her cat the other day,” Casey said.
I did my best to not say, “No shit.”
“You haven’t happened to spot the Congressman anywhere, have you?” Casey said with a neutral tone and wide, unknowing eyes. Not a smidge of humor.
I was convinced she was unearthed in the bowels of hell.
My inner turmoil was dogging me as I stood up. What kind of man was I? What kind of creature? Would I relieve myself of this nonsensical guilt or would I allow those awkward moments of life to hijack my pride? Why was it up to me? This all stemmed from my wife’s mistake. She’d never tell. Secrets die in her family. Even if this is simply a product of her momentary idiocy.
The sweat beaded off my brow and temples. The thick fur from the hat wasn’t helping.
They awaited a response. Expecting answers.
I had to decide. What kind of animal was I that day? Was I a lion or a wolf? Or just some field mouse or rabbit engulfed in cowardice? Did the indomitable spirit of the honey badger burrow into my soul? No fucks given. Or was I nothing more than the fainting goat? Legs in the air like a scared prostitute with too much hair.
Which would it be? What would I be? Tell or not tell the creatures in front of me that the bloated corpse of a cat, whom probably received way too much food as result of loneliness, was getting eaten by maggots in my backyard. What was within me? Courage or a cowardice? A lion or a spineless jellyfish unable to deal with initiating a brief moment of awkwardness and provide solace to an old woman whom keeps placing her little bags of fuckin’ garbage in my receptacle on trash days like she’s hiding some kind of evidence of a crime?
What are you hiding bitch?
I gritted my teeth and gazed into the eyes of shitlips and shitlips senior. Inhaling deep before answering. Viewing my reflection in their irides. Looking fantastic and searching the profundity of my soul.
***
We lived in Sunny Memories for eight more years. We found a bigger place near the beach. Anna quit nursing. My youtube channel continued to grow until I had over a million subscribers. She even reacted with me as the business became larger than I ever dreamt. I still designed hats occasionally, but I outsourced it all to China as I became a global brand.
The garbage lady never stopped looking for her cat. Those fucks at the HOA kept replacing the flyers. We were haunted by Congressman Iago for all eight years. Gave him a good burial, in a beautiful plot, but still felt guilty about it. I don’t know why. Every time I entered and exited the cul-de-sac, the first, unavoidable thing I’d see was that fuckin’ flyah.