Tsunami of Cats

I put my hand out but couldn't reach her even though we were in the same room. She laughed, not at me, at the TV—something to do with mice. It was a pleasant evening outside. Inside it was just evening. I asked her to change the channel to something more interesting and she replied that I should change into something more interesting first. She had the remote and is sometimes packing a nine so I went and sat in my easy chair.

I leaned back in my easy chair and stared at the ceiling. A spider crawled along upside down over all those bumps in the ceiling; I stared at them, sure that the people who made the ceiling were glad they didn’t have to put them up one by one. Or maybe they did put them there one by one. Who am I to assume they took any shortcuts?

She and I had dinner later. I had made her favorite dish that she had grown most tired of. She was really annoyed at something I had done earlier but wasn't going to get mad about it. I asked if we could talk and she said we just had; I pressed on further in words that had no meaning and she gave me looks with all sorts of meaning but none I was aware of. I concluded my crime would remain a mystery to all but her. Conversation floated above our heads but none landed in our mouths. Her dog clicked in on its toenails and she fed it a bone from her plate, which was strange since I had cooked pasta for dinner—where had she gotten the bone? We had a certain length of time left for dinner but it took too long so we had to end it then.

I spoke with my neighbor the next morning and he asked if I was going to work. I said I would if my car was up to it. Then I asked him if he thought that Salinas, being forty feet above sea level and ten miles inland, was safe from tsunamis. He said he didn't know. I said I’d have to continue living in fear then. Trying to be helpful he said he’d never heard of a tsunami hitting Salinas. I told him I was sure that was why John Steinbeck had left the place in such a hurry. He asked me if I had been experimenting in the medicine cabinet and I said no, and that none of the booze around the place had suffered any losses in volume either. At that he claimed he had to go and I let him. Since my car remained in the garage, I assumed it wasn’t going to take me to work. I spent the day planting my fears in the garden in hopes the gofers would eat them before they grew up into threats.

That night I leaned back in my easy chair again and began to count those little bumps in the ceiling. I got to seven-hundred-thirteen when I realized that someone might come around and ask me to describe each one individually, so I stopped, just to be on the safe side. I realized the English language was woefully lacking in words for such a nuanced task, and if it couldn't handle uniquely describing seven-hundred and thirteen bumps that were all identical then what good was it? If confronted about this I decided I'd describe the bumps in tongues since only Pentecostals would know I was faking it, but they wouldn’t be able to prove it to non-Pentecostals because they would have to describe what I said in English and would fail, and besides, everyone else knows they’re totally full of shit. They might attempt to translate from tongues to Latin but only lawyers, biologists, and your better doctors would understand and they’re all too busy to be bothered with this kind of thing.

When I had worked out my plan about describing the bumps the door slammed open and she came in and threw her coat at me. I took it as a sign and asked her if a tsunami made of cats would be dangerous? She said it would not and bounced our cat off my head as proof. Neither I nor Mr. Frisky was injured in this display of outward animosity from her, which I feel was quite unjustified. Later I burned her coat on the back porch. My neighbor saw me doing this and went back into his house in a hurry.

When she and I had sex later she called out the wrong name and this alarmed me because I had been pretending to be him and was worried she was on to me. Afterward we both pretended to be ourselves even though it felt unnatural.

I decided to go to work the next day and told my neighbor the reason was because I no longer lived in fear of tsunamis. He didn’t ask why so I told him I had it on good authority they are made of cats and those wouldn't harm me. He gave me a strange look and said nothing, which I suspect was because this had never occurred to him.

I got to work and remembered that I didn’t have a job. I found a keycard lying on the counter in the bathroom and went into an office. I found an empty cubicle and did that person’s work. At the end of the day a man came up to me and said it was quitting time, why was I still there? I left and came back the next day but a thin man sat in my cubicle. I found a better cubicle by the window and made some calls. I sold a tractor to a farmer in Billings but the man in our warehouse claimed that we sold office supplies. I told him he’d better find a tractor somewhere because I wasn’t the kind of guy to disappoint a good customer. I called the farmer in Billings and told him the tractor would be on its way by the end of the week. The next day my keycard didn’t work so I went back home. If they couldn’t find a tractor somewhere and couldn’t keep my keycard working then dammit, I wasn’t going to waste my time with them.

I went home and started writing a manifesto about the bumps on my ceiling even though the spider had left. I used the same words over and over and over until I got all of the bumps described. I misspelled a few words for variation and threw in a few French words I didn’t know the mean of. When I was done, I sent it to a publisher and I’m waiting to hear back. That show about mice is on again. Mr. Frisky and I are going to watch it together from on top of the end table.