Free Shaking out the Dead by K M Cholewa Page B

allowing himself the hope that Tatum would be sitting on the front stoop of the duplex. He pretended that she had called him at work from home, choosing to ease back into his company, first just a voice, materializing slowly.
    But the stoop was empty.
    Love is a demotion. The lover ranks lower than the friend. This is how Paris remembered what Tatum had told him that night in the park. He had decided that, for Tatum, such rankings must have to do with permanence. Those we can keep as opposed to those we can’t. Lovers were, undeniably, more slippery, more likely to come and go than were friends. Paris tried to understand her thinking rather than argue against it. He didn’t want to frame an argument on love’s behalf and risk it being a compelling one that wins her over but, in the end, isn’t true. She could be right. He might not hold up under love’s mighty scrutiny. When the hope for love outshines its reality, the beloved becomes a disappointment.
    And a person can’t measure up to an idea, Paris knew. It was apples and oranges.

8
    î‘
    Geneva dozed while the cold hands of November pressed against her window. The black sky outside spread its arms, holding back the dawn. Voodoo curved in the soft angle of her knees and hummed, a pleasure engine. The sheets were clean, softly warmed with the heat of but one night’s sleep. Geneva had changed them before she left for Amsterdam so they’d be here when she got back, cool and fresh for her first night home.
    She hiked the sheet farther up her shoulder and nestled deeper into the pillow. How good it all is, she thought, as the cat stood, stretched, and stepped over her hip to settle again against her belly. Geneva lifted a hand to pet him, a mere flutter of movement, and her mind changed direction like birds in the sky, a moment of love toppled by the fear of loss. A tragic equation of cause and effect.
    Her mind flipped through tragic possibilities. Voodoo meeting his end by lethal injection at the vet, a mercy killing, the only recourse to an unrelenting suffering. Or she might find him, little body twisted at the curb, victim of a hit and run. Bad thoughts. Bad. Ill-advised and dangerous. Geneva had heard the warnings. The theories that our thoughts move into the physical world, twisting and shaping outcomes just like in the quantum physics experiments. Balance the bad thoughts with good ones, the gurus counseled, something to even out the bottom line. Voodoo may live another seven years, she told herself, have nine lives.
    â€œJeez,” she said aloud, propping herself to an elbow. How exhausting it is to be happy for just an instant.
    Too many ideas camped out in Geneva’s noggin. Bad citizens, all of them, they left their litter behind, and they shook down newcomers, forcing all experience to run a gauntlet of comparison, reference, and cross-reference. Life arrived exhausted.
    Geneva was well aware that she could crash and burn ecstasy on the rocks of overanalysis. But she didn’t believe analysis, itself, was the problem. In fact, she thought it essential to the well-lived life. Just knowing when to stop — that was the rub.
    But her thoughts were interrupted. Her ears pricked up to attention. She heard a distinct click, a key in a lock. Her own front door opened and closed. The floor creaked beneath footsteps, and the hinges on a cupboard squeaked. There was no stealth, here. Whoever it was thought himself alone.
    Then, a voice.
    â€œBreakfast time.”
    Voodoo sprang off the bed and trotted out of the bedroom.
    Paris. Talking to Voodoo. Geneva’s heart resumed beating, and her adrenalin slumped off, slightly embarrassed. False alarm.
    She got out of bed and put her thin, flannel robe on over her thinner cotton nightshirt. She made her way down the short hall. Quietly.
    â€œParis?” she said from the kitchen entry.
    â€œUh-jeez,” he said, turning fast and jumping back, holding a bag of cat food.