9. Lydia Meets a Bird.

Oct 09, 2020

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Room 680

Light from the hallway fanned into the dark room as Lydia hurried to the desk. The door slowly closed behind her, narrowing the hallway light to a sliver, then to nothing at all.

Carefully, she removed her bowler-bag purse from her shoulder and set it down. She made soft kissing sounds as she pulled the chain on the desk lamp, casting the room in an orange haze, and then opened her purse. Out burst a flash of white fur that leapt to the vomit green carpet.

“I know, dear,” Lydia said. “I know. I’m sorry.”

She looked in the full-length mirror and ran a hand through her stark white hair, fingers finding a tight curl. She pulled it taut for a moment, then let it free to rebound. In the mirror she saw the regal white head of Phillip the Cat the Second poking out from under the bed.

“Been a long day for me, too,” Lydia said.

Phillip The Cat The Second crept out a paw at a time, looked up curiously at Lydia, then dug his claws into the carpeting for a stretch and a purr.

Lydia reached into her purse and found a small metal tin; this caught Phillip’s interest. He finished his stretch and strode closer. Lydia opened the top, poured a few morsels into her hand, and tossed one into a far corner of the room. Phillip sprung, snatched the treat, and returned for more.

Lydia threw another into the bathroom, and he sprung and slid across the tiles, his nails tapping in the dark. He choked it down and came back for a third round. Lydia threw one into the closet next.

“Long day,” was all Lydia said.

That was for sure.

They’d begun the day in her apartment before taking the hour-long subway ride into downtown’s Central Station, Phillip in a ball nestled in the crack of her curled arm. They had an hour to kill before the train that was to take them a few states over. Only then did Lydia discover the company’s new transit policy—Phillip would have to be kept in the baggage compartment beneath the cars.

This obviously wouldn’t do, so Lydia went across the street to a discount store and bought a cheap bowler-bag to smuggle Phillip in. She dubbed these accommodations “Purrst Class.” She was proud of the name, but didn’t have the chance to tell anyone yet.

After an hour of delay at the train station, then another, then one more, it had become clear that the mechanical failure was more serious than the crew was letting on. A few hours more and they began distributing to all the passengers a ticket for the first train tomorrow and a voucher for a free night’s stay nearby. She chose to set out for the hotel—hiding Phillip on the way in, just in case they had a policy, too—rather than navigate the subway system back home.

Plus, that was the only way the timing would work for her trip out of the city. She needed to be on tomorrow’s first train if she was going to make her sister’s funeral.

Lydia hadn’t seen Patricia in years. Last time was at the lake, after Dad had negotiated the terms to “the great Powell reunion,” as he’d put it. It was an extended weekend with just him and his gals. Before that, Lydia hadn’t seen Patricia for even more years and years, the last time being when they’d met at that same lake to spread Mom’s ashes off the deck of a boat.

“What do you think she’s up to now?” Lydia had asked from the bow.

“Cooking up a feast for the ranch hands,” Pat shrugged.

That’s what they’d always called it. The “Old Ranch in the Sky.” A remnant from grandpa and grandma, coined in that unique time of their lives when it seemed like they had to face another friend’s funeral every other week.

“Time to send ‘em to the Old Ranch in the Sky,” grandma would tell Pat and Lydia as they were getting dressed.

“But before they go, one last hoedown,” grandpa would say with a wink and a shuffle of his feet.

The sisters had had their big falling out a year after the lake reunion, right after Dad died. It all happened over the phone.

It had been brewing for a while, based mostly on Patricia’s simmering resentment that Lydia had chosen to move away from their small town. The bubbling intensified when Mom had died, then boiled over when Dad joined her. Pat felt she was left with all the dirty work—the wake, the funeral, figuring out what to do with all the stuff they’d left behind. There was probably truth to that, Lydia admitted, but thought they’d patch things up eventually. Then the clock ran out, so here she was at the Palmer, the night before Pat’s last hoedown.

She grabbed another treat from her purse and flung it listlessly at the wall, where Phillip retrieved it with relish.

Lydia walked to the window and lifted it open to the sounds of the city night, the honks and shouts and the rattle of the elevated train, all swirling within the brick walls of the courtyard.

It was a magical symphony she never grew tired of. It somehow comforted her, being surrounded by constant activity, human ingenuity, the quaint chaos of happenstance. It was something she could never get Pat to understand, and now it was too late.

She felt Phillip’s weight spring onto her lap, and there he was, waiting.

“Okay, okay,” Lydia relented.

She flung a treat hard against the front door, and Phillip scurried to get it.

She returned to the window and looked across to the Palmer’s other building. Most windows were darkened, but two held backlit silhouettes. One a few floors above hers, one a few floors down, both figures appearing to stare out into the night, just as she was. It was hard to tell in this light—moonless, only the hazy red from the rooftop sign—but Lydia swore they were both staring directly back at her.

A loud knock on the door. She jumped at the sound.

She waited for a moment. Then came another knock. She crossed the room and peered into the peephole, but there was only an empty hallway.

“Hello?” she said meekly.

No response.

She waited for her heartbeat to settle, then opened the door.

She stepped into the hallway, looked left then right. It was indeed empty, so she retreated back into her room.

“Just the building settling,” she said to Phillip.

But when she looked down, she realized she was only speaking to herself.

She ran to the bed and ached down on her hands and knees to check under it. A previous guest had carved some jagged graffiti in the shape of a spiral into the bedframe, but no sign of Phillip.

She hustled into the bathroom and flicked on the light. The white halogen bulb flickered once, twice, then caught. She made kissing sounds as she searched between the wall and sink, behind the toilet, then pulled back the shower curtain to expose the filth-ringed bathtub. Empty.

She opened the closet and pulled the hanging light inside. Bare.

She returned to the bed and checked under it one more time. For an instant, a memory of Pat flashed in her head.

Pat was in third grade, in some argument with Mom and Dad about whatever silly thing one disputes at that age. But this time she’d gotten so upset that she’d written a note saying she was gonna go live on her own. She’d left it on her desk and had opened the window, but instead of leaving, she’d just hid under the bed. Lydia found her and decided to hide with her.

“No, this is my thing,” Pat pleaded, but Lydia wouldn’t budge.

They waited for what seemed like hours in silence, quietly breathing as they stared into the bottom of that box spring, now and then elbowing each other for extra space, until Mom and Dad finally showed.

“Guess she went out the window and somehow put the screen back in,” Dad had said loudly. “Ah well, better give all her stuff to Lydia then.”

Lydia awoke to a car’s blaring horn outside. She had fallen asleep on the hotel room’s carpet.

From the foot of the bed, she felt a soft breeze flow through her white hair. She rose and saw the open window. There was Phillip, meowing from the other side of the swaying curtains, sitting placidly on the fire escape. She jumped up and grabbed a treat.

“C’mon, fella,” she said, holding one out.

He didn’t budge.

“C’mon, Phillip,” she said.

He lightly stirred, then suddenly bounded up the fire escape stairs.

“Phillip!” she called, and took the chair from the desk. She used it as a step-stool to climb out onto the iron grating.

The wind hit her like a cyclone and rustled her mop of white hair. She pulled it back out of her way and waited for her eyes to adjust in the red of the rooftop sign.

Above her, she heard another meow. Phillip had climbed up to the next platform, again curled back into a tight ball of fur.

“Come on, now,” she said.

Phillip saw her, spooked, and leapt another floor up.

“Goddamnit,” Lydia muttered.

Her bare feet felt the chill of the metal as she gripped the railing and pulled herself up the thin stairs to the next level, then the next, and then the next, Phillip always one floor ahead, luring her higher and higher. She kept calling his name, feeling increasingly helpless and afraid as she ascended. On the tenth, the final floor of the hotel’s North wing, she watched Phillip bound up the steep stairs and onto the rooftop, as she slowly and painfully followed behind.

The hotel roof was a flat surface with scattered exhaust pipes jutting skyward. A single doorway—presumably hiding the access staircase—sat at the center. But the dominant feature was the two-story-tall sign that announced PALMER HOTEL to the city in electric red. Back behind the wooden beams of its massive truss, it was just rouged haze and stark shadows.

Lydia scanned the roof—there, on the distant edge, was Phillip, curled in a ball. She reached into her pocket for the last treat and waved it in front of her like a lure.

“C’mon,” she said, more out of exhaustion than anything. “It’s cold.”

Phillip didn’t budge, so she began to cross the rooftop.

As she walked, Lydia noticed how the ambient glow of the city was cast up onto the clouds above. She felt the wind that brought with it sounds of a faraway train whistle. She heard conversations coming from somewhere unknown, too faint to make out beyond scattered laughter and shouts.

When she got to Phillip, he was facing away from her, looking out into the night. She followed his gaze to a small cardinal perched on a wire that ran between the buildings. Lydia slowly approached Phillip, but then all at once, the cardinal fluttered its wings and Phillip crouched into a squat and leapt off the rooftop.

Lydia stretched her hands into the air over the edge and grabbed nothing. Her heart sank.

But then she grabbed the air again, out of desperation and out of fear.

She felt fur, and claw.

Pain lanced through her thumb and forefinger. Excruciating, as if torn down to the muscle and sinews. Her body wanted to let go, to rid itself of this pain, but she knew that if she did it would mean the splattered end of Phillip the Cat the Second.

She sucked in a deep breath and felt the cold air gather in the bottom of her lungs, then let out a loud wail. Her fingers got a firm grip on the writhing ball of fur and, as she heard her own shout echo into the city night, she pulled Phillip back into her cradling arms, soothing him until he stopped squirming.

Lydia held Phillip close and felt his warmth against her face. She began to cry.

The tears came like icicles down her cheeks. She sat on the roof and held her beloved cat until her arms reddened in the cold and her bare feet began to lose feeling. She stood and stumbled to the door in the center of the rooftop. Dreading the thought of descending the fire escape, she said a little prayer and turned the handle. It opened easily. She walked down the interior staircase to the sixth floor, then back into her room.

She shut the window and latched the lock, only then letting Phillip slip out of her arms. She pulled back the covers of the bed and crawled inside. The disobedient cat soon jumped up and curled next to her affectionately.

She slept in well past the next day’s first train. As she stroked Phillip’s fur on the hour-long subway ride back to her apartment, she thought that was probably for the best. There wasn’t much left for her back in that small town anyway.

Artwork by Tiffany Silver Braun.