Free Even Cat Sitters Get the Blues by Blaize Clement

is sick and we have to take her home.”
    I think that was the moment our mother became afraid of Michael’s strength and capability. It was also the moment when I knew I could always depend on him.
    I hadn’t thought about that train trip in ages, or about my mother. Just the possibility that I might be shirking responsibility like she’d always done was enough to jerk me to attention. As the checkout line moved forward, I stacked Ziggy’s veggies on the conveyor and resolved to do what I had to do and not whine.
    On the way out, I folded a five-dollar bill and put it in the Salvation Army Santa’s pot. Not that I’d suddenly come down with the Christmas spirit, it was just the memory of that first Salvation Army Santa and how kind he had been. Maybe my five dollars would help some other stranded kids get home.
    It was nearing noon and I’d been up since four o’clock without caffeine or food. Not having Ziggy’s ability to store fat under my dewlap when food was scarce, I made a detour to the village and went into Anna’s Deli, where the woman at the counter had hair almost as red and carelessly abundant as Gilda’s.
    I said, “I need a surfer sandwich bad.”

    Even as I spoke, part of my mind considered the odds of running across two women with messy red hair in one morning. I even considered the possibility that the entire morning was a dream, and that red-haired women were in it to symbolize something I needed to remember.
    The woman must have sensed that I was spacing out because she barked out my order to the sandwich maker like a drill sergeant.
    I said, “I need coffee, too.”
    “Sure you do,” she said, in the tone one uses with a two-year-old about to have a tantrum or with a mental patient off her medication.
    I wondered if my eyes were as big and white and staring as they felt.
    While the sandwich person laid thin slices of ham, turkey, Swiss, and cucumber on thick marble bread, I thought of Ken Kurtz lying on his black satin sheets. He hadn’t had breakfast either. For all I knew, he hadn’t eaten in weeks.
    The sandwich maker piled onion, lettuce, and tomato on my surfer, and topped the whole thing with Anna’s special sauce. As she sliced it in half, I held out my empty coffee cup.
    “Give me a refill, please, and another surfer. Also another coffee, large. And some pickles and chips, two of each. Oh, and give me four cups of chicken soup, too. And a couple of brownies.”
    Straight-faced, the woman said, “No salad?”
    “Oh, yeah. One tuna and one garden. Ranch dressing.”
    With bags of veggies for Ziggy in the backseat and
deli bags from Anna’s in the front, I tore off for Kurtz’s house, where a Contamination Sheet had been posted on the front door while I was gone. Technically speaking, a Contamination Sheet is only posted at a crime scene, and in this case the crime scene was solely the guardhouse. The presence of the sheet meant the nurse’s disappearance had extended the range of investigation.
    Through the window, I could see Guidry in the living room talking to some crime-scene techs. Looking at him gave me a fizzy feeling like my blood had turned to 7-Up. I signed in, noted the time, and opened the front door without ringing the bell. When I came in, Guidry looked up and I frowned at him.
    I said, “I’m going back to feed the iguana.”
    He nodded, already bored with anything having to do with my pet-sitting duties, and I nipped down the southern corridor to the east wing and Ken Kurtz’s room.
    Propped on those black satin pillows, his blue skin gave him the look of a two-day decomposed corpse. Only the furrows of pain on his face and the neural chaos under his skin showed that he was alive. He was the most alone-looking human being I’d ever seen in my life.
    I said, “I’ve brought food for Ziggy,” and hurried through the bathroom to the gym.
    Wide awake and bright green now, Ziggy looked like a not-so-miniature dragon. Even the spikes down his spine seemed to