Montgomery Tower 2
Three days into cat sitting, Lena’s condition is worsening, in general...
O.’s cat Poppy is a white Manx, a breed Lena hasn’t heard of that looks basically generic, as far as she can tell, except for its short, stubby tail. O. assures her as she’s leaving that the breed is well-regarded and highly-awarded on the circuit, second only to those goddamned Persians, which makes O.’s blood boil, by the way, because an animal that can barely breathe shouldn’t be winning awards, should it?
Lena shrugs and says, I guess, and O. hands over the keys to her flat looking a bit apprehensive. Though many people liked Lena, few trusted her deeply. Including Lena.
– How’s your sleep, my love?
– Bad.
– Even in a place like this?
– Yes.
– Then how can you ever expect to sleep?
Lena is interviewing herself in front of O.’s bedroom mirror, floor-to-ceiling with a gold frame. The questions don’t surprise her.
Three days into cat sitting, Lena’s condition is worsening, in general. She spends most of her time pacing O.’s flat, which is disconcertingly small with disconcertingly low water pressure. Glass walls overlook the Thames, brown, and further out the city’s other glass husks, grey. It makes no sense to have a peeling, gilded mirror in a place full of chrome and plastic.
At night, after giving up on bed, she sits on the living room balcony and smokes until time passes, or until her headache feels like the actual skull’s being riven. Every once in a while, O. sends a message and asks how she’s doing. Lena says the cat is well, and O. Sends the emoji with the little hearts floating around its face.
Poppy appears intermittently, mewling. She doesn’t like Lena and hides until she’s hungry. Lena opens the fridge and grabs a few pieces of salmon, tosses them at the cat.
When O. explained Poppy’s diet Lena thought she was joking, but no, every few days O. get a fresh platter of Mayfair sushi delivered. Should Lena peel the fish off the rice then? O. told her Poppy needed the whole morsel.
Lena thinks about loneliness, about rent she doesn’t have, about the dietary requirements of obligate carnivores –
Too much glass. The weather up here is so three-dimensional and terrifying. When the morning sky goes from brown to blue, the world becomes impenetrable haze suffused with light, then settles into a layer of fog lower than the flat and flows slowly east, following the unseen river. White water until the horizon, and Lena becomes a paper ship, worrying about the slim-but-there possibility of the building toppling.
– Do you have a job?
– Shut the fuck up, Poppy, Lena says. Do you?
– I don’t need one. Meow.
She throws Poppy a piece of sushi. Eel this time. Poppy’s blue eyes stay fixed on Lena as she lowers her head to eat.
Cats don’t have a concept of weather. Or the military. Or O.’s flourishing career involving lots of international travel. Though maybe Lena’s quiet despair, which up here was tangible and magnified. She hasn’t cleaned the litter box once.
The doorbell rings that evening and snaps Lena out of a stupor. The little screen next to the front door shows a delivery man, warped, in black and white, holding a box. Lena is convinced she needs to step on the ground, so she tells him she’ll come down. She wonders if she looks normal.
The hallway is long and smells of fake roses. Carpet deadens her footsteps and thoughts. The lift purrs upwards and slides open, purrs and closes, purrs as it descends.
– Meow.
Poppy followed her. She sits next to Lena in the lift and looks up expectantly. Now the cat impresses her, because she’s probably clever enough to know this is the food delivery.
– In a way, you’ve escaped, Lena says. Right?
Lena opens the lobby door with Poppy in tow, greets the driver, balances the tray on one hand. As she thanks the man, Poppy the rare white Manx darts forward, between the man’s legs, across the granite plaza, past decorative fountains, under the spindly branches of the hedge encircling the development, and right into oncoming traffic.
Lena is on the pavement, on her knees. Poppy is there in two, her head severed. A black-looking slick spreads across the asphalt and absorbs into that beautiful white fur, which Lena never got to touch. Her hands are covered in blood.
– You wanted to escape?
Lena says this to the head in her hand. But the cat isn’t dead; Poppy’s eyes are bright and moving. She yawns exaggeratedly with her tongue out and gazes into Lena’s eyes.
– Did you want to escape?
– Yes.
– Can you tell me what to do?
– With me?
– With me.
Pascale’s day was unsettled from the start: She had no coffee left even though she definitely just bought some; her mother in Annecy had called and cried with guilt for the first time she could remember; and now, coming back from the supermarket, she saw a madwoman with very big hair outside the entrance to Montgomery Towers, sobbing and cradling a dead cat’s severed head, into whose neck cross-section of arteries and windpipe she’d stuck a thumb and two fingers deeply, letting her manipulate its mouth like a sock puppet. Even though the cat was dead, its body on the ground looked handsome and lithe. The woman was mumbling something through sobs big enough that tears dripped onto the poor creature’s glossy white fur.
Pascale helped the woman up and told her not to worry, that inexplicable things happened all the time, and when she saw next to the woman a tray of sushi from Omote – two Michelin-stars! On Portland Square! – she realised this woman wasn’t homeless and crazy but lived in Montgomery Towers, was merely grieving the recent loss of a pet.
Pascale said shh, shh, and patted the woman’s head, which seemed to help some. The cat’s head slipped off the support of her fingers. Pascale offered a spare shopping bag to carry both pieces of the body. The woman lowered them into bag very slowly, like she was moving in a dream, while Pascale picked up the tray of sushi covered in plastic. Tuna, scallops, eel, even sea urchin! They walked towards the tower together and she helped herself to a few pieces, since the grieving woman probably wasn’t hungry.
“That cat looks like it was very beautiful,” Pascale said. “Perhaps you would like to play some ping-pong?”
“Her name was Poppy.”
They circled the building and headed towards the shared recreation area, which was paved in poured rubber. The woman cradled the plastic bag. Pascale balanced the tray on one hand and picked at it with the other. At the ping-pong table she set it on an empty bench within easy reach.
They played a few rounds. Pascale was clearly the superior ping-pong player. The woman was crying again.
“How haven’t I seen you around before?” Pascale asked. “I think we live in the same building.” She pointed up at Tower 2.
The woman didn’t answer.
“It can be so lonely living in a place like this,” she said. “Hallways are no streets. For the convenience of modern living we give up so much community. These ping-pong tables usually go unused, and so does the playground. I don’t think children even live here. Isn’t that sad?
“I moved here two years ago, but my own home here still feels unknown to me, like a distant relative. Isn’t that sad?”
“It is,” the woman said, snivelling. “But I’m not here for long.”
“What a shame!” Pascale said, and she meant it.
They played two rounds and became more evenly matched, which pleased Pascale. Then the woman looked down and went pale as the ball whizzed past her into a flowerbed. The M&S bag of cat next to her apparently had a small tear, because it was leaking blood that stained the rubber ground.
“How could I forget?”, she said suddenly. “I need to go.”
The woman grabbed the bag and ran off, even though they didn’t know each other’s names. Pascale saw the faint, red imprint of her hand on the paddle.
In Tower 2’s penthouse, Cam is convinced something inside him tore. He tells the muscular Canadian accountant (Brian?) to wait for a second, but they’ve been smashing lines for hours through the night and he kind of just keeps pumping and grunting, so he probably didn’t hear him. The Canadian, sweating profusely like Cam expects a Canadian to says, You like that you little slut?
Cam is suddenly tempted to wrench the man’s penis off with his hand, but his mind snaps back to more pressing concerns: Did he actually tear? Is this actually happening?
He’s felt pain since they started fucking but has been so wired it’s difficult to tell which nerves are genuine sensations and which are just firing and can be safely ignored – the twinge he feels turns into phantom pain, then real again, but then Cam finally tells his lay to fucking stop, kicks him lightly in the chest which makes Brian (Brandon?) yell –
Cam definitely smells blood, metallic and savoury like meat. He flicks back to that ski trip with the bank where he seduced or was seduced by the Head of Compliance and was getting fucked by him, when suddenly the guy’s dick came out bright red, like a dog’s, and Cam thought they’d have to throw away the hotel sheets.
Is he actually bleeding?
What time is it?
Brandon (Brendon?) is standing over him, says, What the fuck. Cam tells him to shut up, reaches around himself to probe his hole while the Canadian gets another line from the living room. Cam rubs his fingers together, which have no blood on them, just a little lube, but Cam doesn’t trust his senses and continues.
You need to leave, he yells, and the Canadian just laughs –
These men come over more nights than not, it was only a matter of time until something –
Cam often had visions of these men conniving to killing him, because they were jealous of his property and his success –
The smell lingers but Cam’s fingers stay clean. Sniffing the air, sniffing again, he realises the Canadian was pressing his face down next to the ventilation grills running along the floor earlier, and then that he hasn’t injured himself but is detecting something more significant. No building’s air should smell like this –
Where are you going?
Cam ignores him and locks him in the flat, descends one floor to investigate. Emergency exit signs glow green in the hallway. Maybe someone is dead tonight. At least not him. The building sways as he walks, which is just the wind.
One door is open at the end of the hall. A dark and abandoned cavern. Cam approaches it cautiously. People in Montgomery Towers don’t leave their doors open, ever; it would surely be too tempting, for anybody. His whole body buzzes from fear of a trap but more than that. Maybe this is something like a discovery –
Hello? –
Quiet.
In the bedroom, he smells it, sees it. A rumpled plastic bag full of dark liquid, right on one of the vents. And when he peels it open, the mangled corpse of a white cat with its head and tail clean off. Blood has congealed at the bottom of the bag. It sticks the fur together in matted clumps.
At first Cam wants to vomit but then he laughs, hears the glee in it. If the smell of this dying animal – a woman’s cat? A lonely woman’s? A sad, lonely woman’s? – could reach his flat, it means something must be seriously wrong with the building’s ventilation system. He’ll demand a discount on his service charges from management, and with a well-worded letter they’ll surely have no choice but to give it to him.
He picks up the bag and inspects himself holding it in a mirror, strikes a pose. Cam laughs again because he’s been wandering the building naked. He takes it upstairs to show Brendan this sad, lonely, headless cat in a bag.