“Proxies”

By Anne Freier

Proxies

I had been dating the man who said he loved me more than he loved his cat for 46 days. This seemed an excessive time because good things always disappeared from my life after four weeks. Good things like the scent of blossom in April, the two-inch fringe, the excitement of an unheard melody, or the promise of my parents’ return from prison.

The cat was a tabby with white socks for paws. Esquire, the man would call and it would come darting from behind the sofa or the cupboard or some other nook that it had squeezed between. How useful it would be to bend into the hollows in the concrete walls! Confined spaces were the safest, my parents liked to joke.

I didn’t ask about the cat’s name. He may want my opinion and I’d have to tell the truth, that I didn’t think it was a good fit for a tabby with white socks for paws. Boots or Moose or any name with a double ‘o’ felt more appropriate.

Esquire despised the touching. I was fond of his hand on my body. Maybe that’s why he liked me just a little more. Stroking was a soothing pastime for the hand. I liked other things he did to me too, but the petting was my favorite. He was quick to notice my preferences and reached out to caress my neck or shoulder whenever he passed by.

There was a dead palm tree overlooking the apartment. His landlady hadn’t bothered to remove it. It lends the place a certain charm, he said, but I didn’t ask what charm that was because he could be one of those repressed goths. My mother had warned me not to go near people with death ideologies. Sooner or later they’ll want to know what it feels like for themselves, she’d said and I always took her advice seriously. Unless it was about money. Those behind bars for embezzlement couldn’t be trusted on the matter.

He was younger than me by five years, but thought that he was older by two. He never asked, but just assumed and when he finally said it out loud, five weeks had passed. I put a cut-off on honesty. After four weeks, the truth became a matter of interpretation. I asked how old Esquire was and he said he didn’t know.

The man whom I’d been seeing for 46 days sold charity donations on the doors of strangers. That was how he’d stumbled into my territory. Leaflets depicting hungry children stacked up on his coffee table. I liked to shuffle through them and look at all the pictures when I was low on spirit. These days I was blue more often. My yoga teacher suggested it was on account of all the things disappearing. Get a pet, she said, they’re reliable company. And I thought that it was practical that the man whom I was seeing had a cat. But I refused to get my own. It would run away eventually and there were no spaces left for posters on the lamp posts on my street.

He cooked large, lavish dinners for the two of us; a menu filled with dishes I had never tried before – grilled quail with arugula, glazed goat cheese bake on lemon honey risotto, and avocado chocolate-dipped berry ice cream. We ate the leftovers for breakfast and lunch. At first, I’d sit on his crotch all grateful because there was no one home to feed me meals. But soon it occurred to me that the feeding was conspiracy. A body that couldn’t fit through the door frame was a body that could never leave. I noticed that Esquire’s bowls were always full. Lucky for the cat, it was a picky eater. Mind to cut down on the courses, I asked, and he said that I was being silly. Then he stroked my eyebrows and I forgot about his scheme.

I came to see him every evening, mostly unannounced but I sensed he knew that I’d be there. We ate and drank, and talked about our day or stories we’d read in the paper. Sometimes we’d watch a movie on TV and he asked if he could comb my hair. I sank deep into his hands as the soft bristles gently pulled on the roots. One hundred strokes, he said and brushed until my scalp vibrated. I hummed along to every second motion.

When it rained, he liked to play a game with me. We gave into chess. We gave up on chess when Esquire got into the habit of jumping onto the board to move the queens and knights with the white-sock paws. I was relieved because I wasn’t very good at chess and worried I’d lose my patience and hide the board in one of the hollow spaces. It was the cat, I could have said. My favorite game was hide and seek. All of me tingled when I saw his feet approach the bed.

At night, I buried my head in his armpit. His perfume reminded me of mint and sandalwood. I lay still for hours, enveloped in his scent. A single thought that came escaped me quickly. I shook my head on instinct when he suggested we ought to plan something special for our two-month anniversary. What makes you certain we should last, I asked. He smiled and gently flicked my earlobe. I rested my head on his chest and listened to the heart beating. My tongue rolled across my teeth to locate a thing that was stuck between the top front row. It wouldn’t budge. Forty-six days, more days than I had teeth in my mouth. The excess of time was disquieting. Then I freed what had been lodged between the teeth and fished it from my mouth. I held it closer to my eyes to see it in the dark. What is it, he asked. Nothing, I said, just a strand of cat hair.

Anne is a writer of fiction, creative non-fiction, and poetry. Her foray into publishing began when, as a child, she self-published booklets on pet care that she sold in front of supermarkets to collect donations for the local animal shelter. Her first book is being published by a Berlin-based indie press in 2021.