The cat jumps back onto his lap, jolting him out of his reverie and demanding his attention. The loyalty and persistence of this singular independent creature never ceases to amaze him. He picks her up and begins to smother her, aggressively pressing her into his face. She begins to thrash and protest against his destructive focus, scratching him in the process. He tosses her away again. How can someone, a living thing, be so repeatedly abused and yet knowingly return so willingly to endure more of the same?? The very act of self-effacing debasement triggers such devastating rage, he needs to humiliate her to such a point that she can no longer endure and stands, fighting, completely striking back. When he met her, not the cat, but HER, SHE had called herself Azure. Like her eyes. He wrote poetry and prose in honor of her being. Delighted in the individuality of such parents who could recognize in the minute pinkness which had been her the exquisite beauty that infant would one day claim as her own. And then, one day, he found an envelope, a letter, addressed to Sidney. Casually, jealously, he asked in the most flippant expression he could generate, ?Who is Sidney?? ?What? she dropped over her shoulder with a casual shrug and a swoop that flicked her cigarette ash from one hand and filched the parchment with the other. ?Silly, that?s Me.? She flopped gracefully, ungracefully onto the couch across the room from where he sat before his typewriter. ?It?s my name. You know. The one my parents hung around my neck. You knew that. I told you?.? As if it were common. As if many people just had a name for all occasions. Demons of minute flickering birthed in the back of his mind as doubt fought trust over the likelihood of this tidbit. How would you expect me to just love you and trust you after that, he thought? I can?t just love you when I know you hurt people, when you kill things with a slip of tongue in the wrong mouth, on the wrong sentence. Anguish broils up in his mind at the remembrance. ?No. No, I don?t remember you mentioning any other name?? he managed to choke out. ?Huh. I thought I did. Oh well.? And she returned to concentrate on the ruby polish being applied in patient strokes to her stubby baby toes. She smiled at him and her eyes shone, open clear bright, guiltless.

One Response to “…part 3”

1. Lisa Says:
   August 31st, 2004 at 4:27 pm

   more please
   I’m intrigued

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