Daniel is sitting on the couch in his sister’s apartment, phone blaring dial tone in one hand and the other twisting and untwisting the cap of a skinny bottle of Polish vodka, the only bit of alcohol his sister kept in the condominium because Daniel told her to.
“Sarah, I’m not some addict. I’ll be out of your hair by next Tuesday.”
She had put the bottle back in the fridge, gingerly, like it was something fragile or about to explode. That conversation was over a month ago, and Daniel had taken over the guest bedroom, which was Meow’s room. Daniel was always shocked at Meow’s size. Even for a three-and-a-half feet tall and fifty-pound Himalayan Long Hair, when Daniel picked her up by the forepaws and made her stand, Meow was the same size as his son Jamie. Daniel had been declared an unfit guardian to Jamie by a district judge. It had been drinking, but this time it had been public. He had taken little Jamie to a minor league hockey game, the River City Ice Hogs against the Quad City Mallards and with each root beer or hotdog there had been two over chilled beers that he swallowed quickly. Daniel didn’t remember picking the fight with the radio personality and the large red pig mascot for the River City Ice Hogs, but he does remember being escorted by security to the parking lot, because he had not thrown any blows but refused to be removed from the scene, and sitting in the car with Jamie, as his son wept and him repeating the words, “Stop, crying, stop, crying,” rhythmically until his wife Rose picked them both up. By the weekend they were in court. Daniel had done things like this before, mostly personal, family gatherings, small things, that he had always apologized for afterward, as he did with the incident at the hockey arena, even writing a letter of apology to the Ice Hogs and their Mascot Hammie. This was a time of re-assessment and thought, the judge had told him.
Daniel had thought a lot, specifically about his new roommate Meow. He tried to win over the large feline, who, when not ignoring him, would go out of his way to crowd Daniel’s path with her body, or bite the under curve of his foot while Daniel slept. At first, Daniel began buying toys just as a way to appease Meow, whenever Meow entered the guest bedroom, they would meet eyes and Daniel would toss her a cat nip mouse and Meow would bat it a few times, go do her business and leave. It got to the point where Daniel could pick Meow up, even go outside with him. And even Daniel wasn’t sure exactly when he started to take Meow with him in his car, but with time grabbing the cat carrier and nestling it in the backseat became as natural as buckling his seatbelt. After work, Daniel would take Meow to the places he thought were nice, like the the lake front and Denny’s where he snuck Meow pieces of ham, but their favorite place was Bayford Park, with the swing sets and the little sandbox that he let Meow use as an impromptu litter box. Daniel would hold Meow’s weight in his lap and swing, and somewhere in the warmth of the evening he would be holding Jamie in his arms and not Meow. The moments had been so serene that he hadn’t felt Meow’s fifty pounds move away from the swing, from the sandbox, from the whole park, to a place that Daniel could never find with his car.
Now Daniel thinks about calling his sister, or maybe calling Rose and asking about his son, but really he thinks about drinking. But he doesn’t drink, though he thinks about it, how the vodka would be cold and floating, how it would be separate from his spit for a moment and then spill over his tongue and warmly down the back of his throat. He doesn’t drink though. Taking it out of the fridge he knew he could take a few swallows and she wouldn’t notice, maybe drink it all, and if she did he would just fill the gap up with water and then no one would know. Daniel thinks about the phantom weight of Meow, of Jamie, and how the bottle will never have weight like they did.
Jon Natzke is a recent Columbia College Chicago graduate of the Fiction Writing Department. He has had his work appear in The Story Week Reader and Hair Trigger, has interned at Knee-Jerk Mag and is currently a junior editor for Curbside Splendor. He hopes you likes the cut of his jib.