Cat Leaves

“Why are you leaving, Cat?! I don’t understand…”

“I’m taking the sofa, too.”

“Please don’t take the sofa. That’s my favorite piece of furniture. And… and I paid for that! Take the bed. The lounge chair! Just not the sofa. Please Cat…”

Two muscly men in tight “Mike’s Movers” t-shirts walked in like mindless robots, as if Cathryn had complete power over them via remote control. The villain bad boss and her cronies. Their blank facial expressions frightened Trevor, whose right hand was placed on the backrest as if to comfort his beloved lounger friend. “Just doin’ our job, guy,” one of them said. They lifted the furniture piece with ease and began to march toward the front of the house. Trevor’s hand drifted away slowly from what he could no longer hold. And Cat stood there trying to hide her impatience. Heartless, he thought.

“Fine. Take the goddamn sofa!” Trevor shouted, “Why not just take everything while you’re at it?!”

Trevor received only a side glance from Cathryn. She was unperturbed by his hysterics.

He tried his best not to choke up in front of everyone. Especially not Mike’s Movers. They’d probably kick his ass right then and there, and by the looks of her, Cathryn would just watch, arms crossed, head slowly shaking. “Pathetic,” she’d say. “Fucking. Pathetic.”

Each of the movers had at least five inches of height on Trevor. The two men had criminal histories. Who knows if this was true, but Trevor liked to at times knowingly find his observed assumptions as facts. He wavered. Prison, maybe. Rough childhoods at the very least. They had been in fights no doubt. They were the type that women might consider “ugly hot”. The type that an emotionally vulnerable woman might run off with for a short summer fling. Was Cathryn attracted to them? Trevor’s eyes widened and tracked Cathryn’s gaze, which seemed to be directed at one of the large men’s asses. Trevor felt his concave ass clench in embarrassment.

His imagination of the whole event only served to exacerbate his feelings of desperation. She couldn’t be this cold, right? No one could be this cold. No politician, no violent criminal, no psychopath could be so ruthless!

He had no other option but to sacrifice his own self-respect and kneel on the carpeted floor. Not the tile; his knees would get sore.

“Cat! Kitty Cat… Why are you doing this?! Please, please, I don’t understand! What did I do wrong? Please tell me, and I think we can work this out.” Trevor could barely hold back tears. “We’ve always been so good at working things out, right? We’re a team, you and me babe. I love you! Please!”

And he really had loved her.

Cathryn looked down on him with removed pity and a hatred so immense, so indifferent that it stopped Trevor’s heart for a full minute. He froze in fear and despair, swirling around the event horizon of a black hole. No escape. No more pretending.

“Look at you,” she says plainly, “You’re too dumb to even realize something so fucking obvious.”

Trevor’s eyes shifted back and forth, mouth open, hands still in a prayer. Why am I praying?, he thought.

“You’re so selfish. It’s always about you. I’m sick of it. You always just do what you want to do. You don’t care about me. You don’t care about the things I do for the house,” two fingers were up now counting Trevor’s past oversights.

She was talking about the gaudy wall decorations, modular shelving, and antique-style furniture she’d purchased over the years to ‘make the house come together.’ In reality, all three categories of home furnishings greatly clashed with each other, making the interior of the home a sort of patched quilt of passé vogue, modernism, and old-time Pottery Barn. Basically, the house had no idea what it was supposed to be. And neither did Cathryn – at least up until this point. Trevor’s only contribution was paying for half of the sofa - a long, heather grey rectangular piece complete with a wide chaise for extra comfort. The backrest cushions each formed different stages of a soda can being crushed, and feather tips would penetrate their woven surfaces replicating a bug bite on one’s backside or an itch to the shoulder.

Many memories were made on that sofa. The first time he watched Step Brothers (by himself) and became drunk enough to fall asleep with a beer bottle in his hand. Cathryn was working out business plans in the other room. Or the time Showgirls happened to come on, which led to Trevor spending half an hour finding a way to project porn onto the television screen from his computer. She was out of town on a business trip that day. Or the time he convinced Cathryn to watch one of his favorite comedian’s special together despite her wanting to watch the latest forgettable streaming romcom. Trevor’s white t-shirt became a Jackson Pollack of cheese dust, burger grease, and popcorn butter. He cackled and howled the whole time. She did not.

But there were also fonder memories. They had fallen asleep together there numerous times, Trevor being the big spoon. When they finally pulled the trigger and bought ‘the damn thing’, as Trevor had called it before ownership, right when it was on the floor and in just the right spot in the living room for optimal Feng Shui, they both collapsed onto the cushions in pride for a job well done. “I love you,” he said, “Want to make out or something?” And they did, which turned into sex, which turned into Cathryn sliding off of the pristine fluffed and feathered cushions and onto the glass coffee table, striking the back of her head in the process. Trevor was game to continue. She was not.

Cathryn held up a third finger.

“And guess what?” She continued, raising her tone, “I’m done! I’m just done. I’ve given you way too much of my life for you, only to be taken advantage of, Trevor. That’s enough.”

Trevor’s thoughts raced. Advantage? he thought of all of those times he had put himself before her. Each scene carouselling and reanimating in front of him.

Like the time she was sick with a chest flu in the middle of being in charge of a ‘product drop’, as the specialist retail business she worked at put it. He didn’t really care about her work but pretended to – because you’re supposed to seem like you care about the things the person you’re sleeping with cares about. Trevor took care of Cathryn in shallow ways by essentially functioning as a personal delivery man. “I got you the medicine you asked for”, he had said lovingly with hope. “I gotta go - I told Nate I’d meet him for a beer.”

She responded through sniffles, “Okay, thanks for the meds. Text me when you get there.” And she blew her nose into what must have been the ninety-seventh tissue of the day, added it to the pile on the floor next to the couch she laid on, and half-smiled. Trevor almost sneered in revulsion but instead decided to return a rueful smirk and a peck on the cheek. His “Let me know if you need anything on the way back, babe” was as empty as his presence in the house was at nearly one o’clock in the morning that night.

Is it really over? Trevor thought. He couldn’t take his eyes off of Cathryn, who was now passively monitoring her automaton subordinates, assuring they didn’t bump the walnut kitchen chairs into the framed wall hangings in the entry hallway - one a motley colored print of a French bicycle advertisement, the other a large abstract painting made entirely of bowel-colored streaks (also a print). Cathryn’s apparent utter lack of sympathy for Trevor forced him to finally loosen his psychological grip on the two’s relationship, or lack thereof. This was not a moment of relief, but one of near giving up, a releasing of the gates to immanent unrestrained nihilism. Complete hopelessness. Dejection.

Trevor’s whole body drooped and became a thick, hot liquid. He couldn’t feel his face, which now gave a lobotomized visage. The whole world became fuzzy and quiet. Cathryn seemed completely unfazed.

“Yeah, you can take that too,” she said to one mover, Mike, who needed permission to grab the seventy-four inch flat screen television, and who ironically wasn’t the owner, nor had a familial relationship with the owner, of Mike’s Movers.

“Careful with the coffee table! It’s glass and already has a crack!” She snapped at the other mover down the hall who apparently ignored her.

“Trevor, look…” Cathryn said, dropping her arms and softening her gaze.

Trevor’s eyes widened in a rekindling of hopefulness.

“We had some great times together. We did. And you’re not a terrible person.” Cathryn paused.

The corners of Trevor’s lips rose to anticipate a smile.

“But, you’re kind of an asshole. And the worst kind: a childish asshole. A childish, selfish asshole with no regard for anyone but himself.” Her arms recrossed. Dead eyes.

Trevor’s face drooped again as he relived the total incineration of his heart and soul. He felt like a little boy being scorn by his mother. Why didn’t she say something earlier? Why now? And why this explosive?

“So, I’m leaving. End of story. Now pick yourself up off the floor, you’re embarrassing yourself.” She was also somewhat embarrassed.

Trevor didn’t - couldn’t - move his body. Cathryn rolled her eyes, humphed in disgust, and stormed toward the kitchen. She opened one of the top drawers built into the island, to the right of the sink, and hastily pulled a cigarette out of a mangled, turquoise pack of American Spirits. She only smoked on three types of occasions:

1. She had an exceptionally stressful day at work and had already drank half a bottle of Australian Sauvignon Blanc.

2. The rare trifold event that she sees “old friends”, is near a patio that allows smoking, and has already had a few glasses of Australian Sauvignon Blanc.

3. She had an exceptionally successful day at work and had already drank half a bottle of Australian Sauvignon Blanc.

This time she lit up inside the house, unashamed. A final blow which signified and certified her imminent abandonment of all that her and Trevor had once together deemed holy. Trevor’s jaw was agape.

After a few drags, Cathryn stubbed out her cancer stick on the peppered marble island top and flicked it toward the kitchen sink. She missed, and the half-burnt white cylinder slid and rolled off of the other side of the island and onto the beige builder tile. Trevor’s awestruck eyes followed the flying, flaming white tube closely. She had already started walking toward the front of the house and couldn’t care less if she accidentally burned the whole place down. It was time to start a new life. One of independence, self-regulation, self-reliance, and self-exploration. A confident jump off of the cliff of helplessness and subservience and into the unknown. It was time to be a woman of power who paved her own path, wrote her own destiny.

She pulled the front door open and took the first step out. The summer’s full, yellow sun squeezed through the rectangular opening and beamed impossibly bright columns of light that danced around Cat’s body with her every movement and tickled Trevor’s cheeks. She was an angel returning to God’s kingdom from Trevor’s perspective. An evil, bitchy angel. Whom he loved so deeply that his heart contracted into a molten ball that rose to the top of his throat. She was so beautiful, so poised in her newfound self-assuredness. The ice queen that she was.

“I–” Trevor yelped, still hunched on his knees which were now numb.

She paused and peered over her shoulder. She was nearly a silhouette against the white wall of flooding light. One last fiber of hope sparked in Trevor’s heart. She’d talk about it with him. She’d try again, one more time. She can’t leave like this. It’s a scare tactic. And, I’ll do better this time, he thought.

“I love you!”

The door swung shut.

A dim, empty hallway remained. So cold and dead was the leftover air in the furniture-less house. The silence and the emptiness was staggering. Trevor felt like a ghost in his own home, trapped there forever, longing for his lost love.