Free Disintegration by Richard Thomas Page A

with my black boots and rib-rattling kicks. It wasn’t me, I try to tell her, but she has her doubts. She’s reluctant to trust me and I don’t blame her. I reek of violence and remorse.
    The window in the kitchen had been open for weeks now. Cold air gusted in, overwhelming the rattling heater that sat coiled beneath the gap. I came into the kitchen to find empty potato chip bags, gum wrappers, and leaves, bits of debris scattered about the room. I left it. I embraced this new relationship with Mother Nature.
    I took what she gave me and hunted for clues, clues to the whereabouts of my gray-and-white cat. A dingy Target bag meant that she had been caught in the crosshairs, the focus of a dark spirit, and was broken in a gutter, dead. A torn bit of the
Chicago Reader,
the movie section, spoke to me, specifically the release of a cult classic,
The Professional
. It meant that things were not as they seemed, but in the end, the innocent would survive, after great sacrifice by those around her. A water-damaged and faded piece of manila paper, with a Crayola drawing of a sun and flower, brought me to my knees, telling me my cat was still alive, if I could just make it to the dawn.
    So when I awake to a pressure on my chest, sandpaper rubbing across my face, it is everything that I had hoped for. So sad that I pin my hopes on a stray, damaged cat, that the glue in my life is a random act of feline affection. When I open my eyes, tiny emeralds sparkle in the night, her head cocked to one side, a hoarse meow gurgling from her open mouth. I am afraid to move, fearful that like Holly, she will disappear when I look at her too hard.
    But she is real. She stays. I scatter kitty treats all over the floor, my hands shaking, as she looks up at me, trying to make some sort of offering. I keep her food bowl full, and after she eats, I fill it again. I want to defeat time, and keep every act of hers the same, changing nothing, every by-product of her actions the same, so that nothing disappears.
    I promise her fancy wet food, foreign-sounding French cat mousse, whatever her heart desires. But I’m afraid to leave her, terrified that she will be gone when I get back. So I apologize for lying, for not going next door for two goddamned minutes, because I just can’t make the trek. She understands.
    So we sit on my bed, and I run my hands over her. She licks at her paws, fat and happy now, warm and inside, unafraid of the unkempt, half-naked man. She looks deep into my eyes and decides I’m more harm to myself than anything else. So she’s along for the ride.

Chapter 40
    The next morning, as she sleeps on my bed, I break my own rules and go out into the sunlight. It’s entirely too bright and it makes my head spin, but I owe her one, Luscious, and I mean to deliver.
    It’s early for me, but late in the morning for the rest of the world, almost noon. Cars roll back and forth, the mighty buses lurching and stopping, the street rumbling beneath my feet as the el train heads into the city.
    Walgreens is closer, and while I don’t need a Chia Pet, Christmas lights, or a refill on my penicillin, the cat could use more fancy cat food, and the convenience store won’t do. In and out, a basketful of chicken, beef, pork, and fish, neatly compressed into tiny little squares, the gelatin it swims in no doubt ground down from leather-faced, bow-legged old horses. Five minutes, I give it, ten tops. In and out.
    The door slides open and in I go, immediately unsure of my direction. Cash register to the left, cameras and film developing farther down, cosmetics to the right. None of them scream cat food to me, so I veer to the right.
    No eye contact, I don’t need to speak, or get spritzed, no nail files or eyelash curlers today.
    “Oh, sir, excuse me….”
    Fuck, what now? Keep walking.
    “Please, excuse me, sir, I think your order…”
    I turn to her and stop for a second, the blue buttoned-up shirt wrinkled under a white vest. Her name is