Tablets!
You fall forward on your coat, and search one pocket and then another pocket, and then another, and turn it inside out, and rip the lining loose and shout and cry and four waves come pounding in on the shore behind you, like trains passing, roaring. And you go back through each empty pocket again, hoping that you have missed one. But there is nothing but lint, a box of matches, and two theater ticket stubs. You drop the coat.
“Anne, come back!” you cry. “Come back! It’s thirty miles to town, to a doctor. I can’t walk it. I haven’t time.”
At the bottom of the cliff you look up. One hundred and fourteen steps. The cliff is sheer and blazing in the sun.
There is nothing to be done but climb the steps.
Thirty miles to town, you think.Well, what is thirty miles?
What a splendid day for a walk.
THE CAT’S PAJAMAS
2003
IT IS NOT EVERY NIGHT driving along Millpass, California’s Route 9, that one expects to spy a cat in the middle lane.
For that matter, it is not every evening that such a cat could be found on any untrafficked road, the cat being, more or less, an abandoned kitten.
Nevertheless, the small creature was there, busily cleaning itself, when two things happened:
A car traveling east at a rapid rate suddenly braked to a halt.
Simultaneously, a much more rapid convertible, traveling west, almost ruptured its tires to a dead standstill.
The doors of both cars banged wide in unison.
The small beast remained calm as high heels clattered one way and golfing brogans banged the other.
Almost colliding over the self-grooming creature, a handsome young man and a more than handsome young woman bent and reached.
Both hands touched the cat simultaneously.
It was a warm, round, velvet black ball with whiskers from which two great yellow eyes stared and a small pink tongue protruded.
The cat assumed a belated look of surprise as both travelers stared at the placement of their hands on its body.
“Oh no you don’t!” cried the young woman.
“Oh no I don’t what?” cried the young man.
“Let go of my cat!”
“Since when is it yours?”
“I got here first.”
“It was a tie.”
“Wasn’t.”
“Was.”
He pulled at the back and she at the front and suddenly the cat meowed.
Both let go.