Page 47 of Rafferty's Rules
I come to a halt for a second time at the open kitchen door. Everything I said before about it being none of my business? I take it all back. The woman is a five-foot-three walking disaster magnet.
‘Run that by me again. You fell out of a tree? It’s not mango season. Besides, it’s too cool to grow them down here. What—’
‘I wasn’t climbing to pick mangoes. I was climbing to—’ And just at that moment, I hear a very faint and pitiful meow.
‘That’s not what I think it is, is it?’
‘Well, if you think it’s a parrot, then it’s definitely not what you think it is,’ she answers so quickly, her words run together as she scurries deeper into the room, bending to scoop whatever the hell that was up. ‘This is Cat,’ she announces, cradling a skinny looking furry rag to her chest.
‘You’re sure that’s a cat? It looks like something I once saw streak across a street in Istanbul, and I’m pretty sure that was a rat.’
‘Of course,he’s a cat. His name is also Cat.’
‘Good idea,’ I respond, bending to bring my gaze level with the thing which appears to have only one good eye, a yellow and malevolent-looking eye at that. ‘Best not to get too attached to the thing.’
‘What? No. Catishis name. Like the cat called Cat inBreakfast at Tiffany’s.’
I straighten, open my mouth to speak, then snap it shut, attempting to process my current thoughts into words that sounda little less ... me.
A fucking cat is in my kitchen, held at her breast, the lucky beast.
‘I know what you’re thinking,’ she says, swirling away from me as though I’d just said I was gonna shove the furball between two slices of bread.
‘Do you? Maybe you should tell me because I, for one, have no fuckin’ idea what to think.’ Except that she shouldn’t be left alone. She needs twenty-four-hour security!
‘You’re thinking you already took me in, and now I’m taking advantage of your good nature and overstepping the boundaries of our fake relationship. That I’m crazy for climbing a tree to rescue him.’ At this point, she brings a hand to his head as though to cover his ears from what she says next. ‘And I’ll admit, there was a point when I was straddling the branch twelve feet from the ground that I thought I might’ve made a mistake, but then he cried, and he just sounded so scared and so lonely and so pitiful, and it made me think of you—’
‘Let me stop you there; flattery doesn’t work with me.’
‘—because,’ she continues regardless, ‘if you hadn’t helped me, I’d be scared and lonely and pitiful, too.’
I almost reply she wouldn’t be alone; she’d be back on a flight to the States, no doubt sitting in economy on a route with probably as many stops as it’d take to get there on a bus. But with one look at her sad face, her tip-tilted noise raised, and her eyes stoically glistening, all of my arguments turn to dust on my tongue.
‘I do think you’re mad for climbing a tree because that’s what the fire service is for.’ I thought the scar on her chest might be following some childhood illness, not that it’s my place to ask, but now I reckon it could be from an accident. Does she have a death wish?
‘I’m sure they’d think I was making a prank call. Besides, I don’t have a phone.’
‘But you know who else is mad?’ My tone is icy, and I ignore her explanations, which are aimed as distractions. ‘Me. I’m fucking seething that you’d climb a tree. That you’d put yourself at risk.’ To reinforce my point, I point at her injured thigh. ‘It could’ve been so much worse than a fucking cut!’
‘Why are people always trying to wrap me in cotton wool?’ she mumbles into the bag of bones and dirty fur.
‘Oh, I don’t know. Maybe to cushion your fall from fuckin’ trees!’ My reaction is way over the top—I know it, and I can hear it—but I can’t get the image of her balanced on the edge of a branch way too fucking far from the ground out of my head.
‘At least I’m trying to live.’
‘Trying to break your neck, more like.’
‘At least I’m not hiding from things likesomepeople.’
‘And what the fuck is that supposed to mean?’
‘Look at yourself, Rafferty. You’re gorgeous. You’re obviously doing well for yourself,’ she retorts, throwing her hand around the room like a game show hostess. ‘Yet you need a fake girlfriend? What’s that all about?’
‘It’s about giving you a place to stay,’ I mutter bitterly, sliding past her to pull a bottle of beer from the fridge.
‘Yeah, sure. You tellmethat, but we both know that’s not the real reason. And then you try to tell me you don’t want to have sex with me because you don’t want to complicate things. Yet clearly, and also according to your brother, you’re not usually so very discerning.’
‘Yeah, well, maybe I’m trying to change,’ I answer coolly as I pop the cap and drink half the bottle immediately. But I feel anything but cool. I feel hot and angry and just pissed off.
