Part 2

Red-eyed, they walked into the hotel diner. Two calm, sweet kitchen women served dinner from a window to a patio on the beach. The palm trees swayed above them, and clusters of coconuts lay on the ground left behind by men who cut them down in the afternoon. Six patrons sat quietly with their voices tuned to whispers as if not to disturb the roaring surf that grumbled in the darkness behind them and slowly grated the island away. He ordered the creole chicken, and the creole came from a can, and she ordered the Catch of the Day, and the fish came from the freezer.

They ate quietly when a white cat with black tail and black head and missing the right eye sat on the edge of the slate floor across from them. Quiet, calm, and somehow thoughtful, the cat sat, not too close to impose and not too far to go unnoticed.

She yelped at the sight of the creature. Then she smiled and dropped shards of fish onto the ground to feed it. The cat jumped quietly but quickly toward her feet. She yelped again and jerked back in fear. He pushed the cat away firmly with his foot, and as he did, he felt the cat’s ribcage and its beating heart.

“Don’t do that. It’s a nice cat. It let me feed it.”

“It scared you. It might have fleas, the mangy thing.”

The cat moved back to its distant spot; and she fed it more fish from farther away.

“Look at the poor thing, without the eye half its face is gaunt,” she said and turned to the cat. “Where do you sleep?” she asked, and the cat sat in silence, purposely avoiding eye contact as it stared at the floor. After dinner, it followed them at a distance to their cottage, and once they closed the door, it curled up on the porch, and she looked eagerly out the window, “the poor thing,” she said and she fed it flesh from a can, and the cat obliged and ate.

* * *

The next day, she continued with the poetry and after each chapter, each tryst of a soul when the poet was done with her and she with him, she fell asleep. When she woke, she didn’t know where she had awakened. She looked outside and saw the cat sitting on the edge of the porch by the white picket railing, always looking down and never up, so quiet and mute that it seemed unwilling to disturb the surf behind it. She, the lady of the house, peered earnestly from behind the French window at the cat, which sat like a spirit animal bearing a message from another place or another space, enciphered and undecodable, a transfigured and disfigured Obeah Priestess, a quiet winged angel transfixed upon her. In that stray beast’s devotion, her heart – hardened by a lifetime of logic, synthesis, and math – jumped back to life. In that clear moment, she grabbed the roast chicken, ham, cheese, canned fish, and raw eggs. With her arms full, she threw the door open to welcome the messenger. At speed, the cat slipped inside. She panicked and screamed and dropped the food on the floor. The cat ignored both her food and her panic, and with a swift leap landed on the kitchen table.