Free The Heaven of Animals: Stories by David James Poissant Page A

instructions was weighted down by a manual can opener with rubber grips. He’d never bothered to read the instructions, and now he moved the opener aside to take a look. Printed at the top of the page were three phone numbers. There was the number of the cat’s veterinarian, the number of an emergency vet, and the number where the woman was staying. The first instruction began: Boots is an inside cat . Brig read that and couldn’t read the rest.
    He unstacked the cans and made a pyramid. He turned the cans so the cat on each label faced him, then spun the cans so the cat faced away. He’d hold on to them a few more days, in case Boots came back, but, on the last day, he’d open each can, switch on the disposal, and dump the food. He’d tell her the cat had just run off. That seemed kinder, unless he was only telling himself this because it was easier.
    The only other option was to call. He could beg her forgiveness, ask advice. And, who knew? Maybe this had happened before. Maybe she knew a place the cat might hide. But, looking around the apartment, at the careful placement of furniture in each room, he knew this cat had never gotten out before, knew this just as he knew he couldn’t make the call.
    He hadn’t meant to fuck up, hadn’t meant to make another big, giant mistake. It seemed unfair—brutally, relentlessly unfair—that certain big, giant mistakes weren’t made so much as begun with smaller, simpler ones: a wrong turn, a pan left too long on the stove, an open door.
    Brig opened cabinets until he found a glass. He filled the glass with water and drank. There was dish soap on the countertop, and he washed the glass, then returned it to the cabinet where he’d found it.
    The woman’s kitchen and main room were divided by the same thin, silver strip that divided his own, and he stepped over it. He crossed the room, then sat with his back to the door. He reached up, pulled the lamp chain, and the room went dark.
    He closed his eyes. He would wait out the night. Eyes shut, he’d listen for a scratch at the door, and he would not sleep. He’d wait through the silence, listen past the silence, until his head hurt from all the listening.
    If you hoped hard enough, you could wish a thing into existence. He’d believed that, once. He wanted to believe it again. Eyes closed, hoping—it was as close as he could get to prayer.

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    T he night is cold. The buildings are tall. The sky, except where it’s starlit, is black. Black like black checker pieces or what’s left of wood after the fire.
    Also, I should mention that there’s a large gun pointed at my face.
    And because there’s a large gun pointed at my face, things speed up the way they do in nature films, how a seed sprouts, turns to stalk, and takes leaves in ten seconds.
    Things here are speeding up just that way. Stars pinwheel beyond the buildings. The moon rises, sets, rises again. And then things slow way, way down.
    “If you don’t want to be caught dead in that shirt,” he says, “you’d best take it off.”
    The guy with the gun’s not fucking around. I don’t know anything about guns, but this is a big one. It looks like the kind that holds a lot of bullets, the kind that leaves your corpse unrecognizable when the cops come, which is okay because there’s no one to miss me, no one left on this spinning planet to faint when the coroner lifts the sheet from my bullet-riddled face.
    The gun’s pointed at me because the guy asked for my wallet and I said no.
    “No,” I said, and he said, “How’d you like to die?” and I said, “Well, I wouldn’t want to be caught dead in this shirt.”
    Which isn’t exactly true. If I hadn’t wanted to be caught dead in this shirt, I wouldn’t have worn it. It seemed fitting for the occasion. The shirt’s black with a skull-and-crossbones emblem on the pocket, what you see printed on bottles, the kind with caps to keep out babies and old people.
    Maybe the skull and crossbones