Page 46 of Satisfied By the Slime
Maisie
We got through the batch.I don’t know how we did it, but we did. Oz’s touch… Well, magical is one way to put it. I feel like my body’s ten years younger, and with this newfound lack of pain and his extra hands, the Verdance order feels like it might actually be possible tofulfill now.
It’s early next morning, Oz is lying dormant on the couch, and I’m staring at my coffee maker unsure what to think about what’s developing between us.
Between me and Oz. Not the coffee maker.
He’s such a sensual creature. And me?
I thought I had lost all sensuality years ago.
The coffee maker starts with a gurgle when I hit the button, and I stand there in my oversized shirt, watching with unfocused eyes as the carafe begins to fill.
Through the kitchen window, the ridge is just starting to separate from the sky.
A thin line of paler dark along the top, the sage and creosote below still flattened into silhouette.
And there’s Gary.
He’s up on the ridge trail again, his outline sharp against the brightening east.
I can see his binoculars catching the first light, two small flares where his face should be.
He’s been doing this three, four mornings a week now.
Facing the valley.
Scanning the terrain the way you’d read a newspaper, methodical, left to right, back again.
I pour my coffee and lean against the counter.
Watch him watch.
Gary’s missing cat poster is still stapled to the mailbox cluster at the end of the road. One of his rescues, a gray-and-white shorthair named Captain, has been gone three months now.
The man has five cats.
Had five.
Losing one of them to something he can’t explain is the kind of wound Gary would fold up neatly and store somewhere behind his ribs, right next to whatever else he brought home from the service.
So that’s what he’s doing up there every morning.
He’s not the type to make a production out of grief.
He’s the type to set an alarm and climb a ridge.
I take a long drink of coffee.
It’s too hot but I do it anyway.
I understand his loneliness. If I lost Oz now, I’d be out there day and night searching until somebody forcibly stopped me.
I finish my coffee standing at the window.
The golf cart announces itselfbefore I see it.
A high, whining motor sound that carries across the flat like a mosquito with ambitions, and I know exactly who it is because there’s only one person in Coyote Springs who drives a golf cart on a public road and considers it reasonable transportation.
