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a week with
     a leaf blower, blasts off the top layer of étouffée dust, then runs out screaming.
     She refuses to be here alone, so now we have Erika Cleaning Woman and Erika Cleaning
     Woman’s Sister, Tonette. Tonette asked me if I’d considered having the residence exorcised.
     She knew a priest.
    And this is where we live.
    Apparently, with a cat.
    I’ve slept with animals before (I was married to the same ape twice before Bradley,
     a long story I don’t want to tell), but never with a four-legged furry animal. Bradley
     and I fell into bed on Sunday night and the damn cat hopped up and settled in between
     us like it was supposed to be there. I tried shooing it off and it bowed up and hissed
     at me with glow-in-the-dark eyes, sending me scrambling up the headboard. Bradley
     reached for the cat and calmed it down until it purred, then it settled at his feet
     after trying its best to shred my duvet cover into ribbons with its needle claws.
     We turned to each other in the dark. In addition to the distant gurgling noise from
     the kitchen, I could hear the cat, who I think might be asthmatic, trying to breathe
     through its smashed nose.
    “Now do you believe me, Bradley?”
    “I always believe you, Davis.” He traced a line down my nose with his finger, something
     I’d been watching him do to the cat. “I totally believe in you, Davis.”
    “About Magnolia.”
    He rolled onto his back. The cat rolled onto its back.
    “Davis, honey, if the platinum were here, we’d have found it by now.”
    “Bradley, honey, that’s why she keeps breaking in. She’s the one who stole the platinum,
     she stashed it here, and she keeps coming back to get it, a load at a time.”
    “I find that so hard to believe.”
    “I find it hard to believe we have a cat in the bed.”

Four

      
    On a normal workday, Bradley hit his desk while it was still dark out, five or so.
     I usually slept in till seven. Sometimes noon. Monday morning, promising to be anything
     but normal, found me up and out of the bed at the ungodly hour of six, Bradley long
     gone, the shower almost dry, and I could barely smell his sandalwood soap. I wondered
     if he’d slept at all.
    On the long list of things I love about being married to him, it starts every day
     with coffee. He sets up the coffee pot for me before he leaves, so when I stumble
     to it, all I have to do is push the “brew” button. I stumbled to it, but stopped short,
     because there was a dead fish in the kitchen. I slapped my hand over my nose and mouth.
     Beside the coffee pot was a bowl of gray fish mush. With yellow flecks. Cat food.
    I’d forgotten all about the cat.
    I picked up the bowl with a dishtowel, lest I accidentally make contact with its contents,
     and from behind me the cat had a fit, screeching and wailing, mad because I’d touched
     its food. I dropped the bowl to the floor. “Here, cat! Here!”
    This was no way to start my day.
    Not even five minutes from sleep, I turned back to the coffee pot and the cat was
     in my face. I let out a yelp. The cat moves at the speed of light. It arched up and
     tried to slap me with a right hook, followed by an uppercut, claws extended. I danced
     out of its way, but it continued to howl.
    “What, cat? What?”
    The food smelled hideous, overpowering the smell of the coffee, and the cat wouldn’t
     shut up, drowning out my favorite morning sound, that of the coffee brewing.
    “What do you want , cat?”
    It raced back and forth across the island, alternating between crying and lunging
     at me. I picked up the nasty food and put it back where I’d found it. The cat sat
     down on my kitchen counter (where’s the Clorox?), looked down its smashed nose at
     the food without touching it, hopped off the island, found its former spot on the
     rug, and was asleep in three seconds. The coffee was almost ready; the cat’s eyes
     were closed. I inched a hand in the direction of the nasty cat food to move it away
     from my