The Older Woman

“Well, what do you call this?”

“A minor setback…brought on by people not…behaving.”

“Very funny. Now go that way.”

“I’ll be okay in a…minute.”

“I said go. It’s closer than trying to get back to Mrs. Bee’s. You’re going to fall on your face. You’ve let the muscles in your legs go into spasm—”

“Right,” he said. “I…let them. Just for the…hell of it.”

“Oh, quit whining and let’s go. You can get off your feet for a little while and then you can run along home and give Mrs. Bee your report.”

She wouldn’t take no for an answer. He hobbled in the direction she was pushing him—but he didn’t like it.

“Take the…umbrella,” he said at one point.

She took it, but his not carrying the umbrella didn’t help him walk much better. She had to hold it way up in the air to keep him covered.

“Try putting your hand on my shoulder,” she said.

“It won’t…help.”

“Do it.”

He did as she ordered, bearing down hard with his next step. “This is all your—”

“Fault,” she finished with him. “I got that part.”

“So how come he…dumped you?” Doyle asked bluntly. The question was entirely inappropriate, but pain apparently made him reckless. Besides that, he actually wanted to know, and this seemed like as good a time as any to ask.

“It’s none of your damned business,” she said for the second time.

“Right. But since I’ve gone to all this trouble, I ought to at least be able to…give Mrs. Bee the details. We live for drama and pathos.”

“You and Mrs. Bee need to get out more.”

“Ain’t that the truth,” he said, glancing at her. He’d made her smile again. Maybe the bust-up with the boyfriend wasn’t as serious as it looked out the window.

Still, she’d been sitting out in the rain all that time.

“Maybe you can work it out,” he said.

“Work what out?”

“The thing with the boyfriend.”

“Don’t think so,” she said, catching the back of his shirt when he began to list.

They finally reached the patio. She managed to open her back door and hold it with one foot while she closed the umbrella. He shuffled dutifully inside. The house obviously had central air, because the room was cool and quiet. There was a television, an easy chair, a whole row of plants under a big window, and a couch with a startled white cat on it. He didn’t like cats, or so he assumed. He’d never been around any, except the wild “barn” cats that used to live on his grandfather’s farm when he was a little boy. That relationship had been very one-sided. Every day, he’d toss them the table scraps his grandmother allotted them, and every day they hissed and spat and ran like hell.

The cat jumped down from the couch and disappeared.

“Sit down,” Meehan said unnecessarily. He couldn’t have made it any farther if he’d wanted to. He plopped down heavily on the couch where the cat had been.

The pain was less now that he was off his feet, but not much. He leaned back and closed his eyes. When he opened them again, Meehan had gone someplace, and the cat was sitting on the couch arm.

“Take a hike,” he said to it.

It continued to sit there, giving him its rapt attention. It was kind of unnerving. He’d never had an animal stare at him like that—or at least not one that was up to any good.

Meehan came back with a towel around her neck and one of those small electric blankets for couch potatoes in her hands. He sat there awkwardly, because he wasn’t sure what she planned to do with it and because he was in her house more or less against his will.

“I didn’t know you had a cat,” he said in an inane attempt at making conversation. She bent down, plugged the blanket into a nearby outlet. She was wearing shorts, and he appreciated it.

The cat gave an inquisitive, rolling chirp and looked at Meehan expectantly.

“No, he doesn’t,” Meehan said to the cat. “But he would, if he had to.”

She was smiling slightly. He got it right off the bat. She was giving him the business here, and enjoying it. The big tough soldier wasn’t sure what to do about the cat, much less her talking to it.

But she had no idea she was dealing with Doyle, the Supercool. Two could play this game.

“Doesn’t what?” he asked to put her on the spot.

She dropped the blanket over his bare legs.

“Barbecue cats,” she said without missing a beat. “She’s the only survivor of a coyote attack on her and her litter mates. She’s very concerned about whether or not she’s in someone’s food chain.”

“Don’t blame her. Where did she run into a coyote?”

“A friend’s place in the mountains. She was just a kitten, and she took up residence in my shirt pocket while I was there—so I brought her home. She doesn’t get out much, either. Of course, in her case, it’s by choice—I couldn’t get her out the door with a crowbar. I don’t know about you and Mrs. Bee.”

“Well, it’s not by choice with me,” he said. But the real truth was that the two guys he had called friends had been killed in the same helicopter crash. He missed the sorry sons-of-bitches more than he cared to admit, and thus far he hadn’t gone looking for replacements.

Meehan was busy drying her hair with the towel.

“So tell me,” she said out from under it. “Why do they call you ‘Bugs’?”

He glanced at the cat. “I went outside my food chain,” he said. “The survival-training thing.”

“You weren’t the only one to do that, were you?”

“I was the only one to throw up,” he said, and she laughed again. Easily. Pleasantly. He hadn’t been trying to be cute. He’d been telling the truth again—but he was beginning to feel pretty damned witty here.

He stretched his legs out in front of him. He wouldn’t have thought the blanket would help, especially in July, but the pain was already beginning to lessen. “I’m going to have to get me one of these,” he said.

“You can have that one,” she said.