Read Your Coffin or Mine? for Free Online

couch.
    He meowed and did more of the I’m-alone-and-I’m-scared-and-you-are-so-wonderful-for-saving-me blinking.
    “It won’t work. You wouldn’t last five seconds at my place. Trust me. I’m ruthless.”
    Yeah, right, the cat seemed to say.
    “Really, I am. You don’t want to make me mad.” I flashed him a little fang for show, which would have sent most animals running the other way. But the cat simply sat there. Looking at me. Begging me. “I don’t like cuddling.”
    Whadayaknow? Neither do I. Cuddling is for kittens. I’m old. Temperamental. Grouchy.
    “And I don’t like a lot of noise during the day when I’m trying to sleep.”
    As weak as I am, I can barely hold up my head much less make a lot of racket.
    “And keep your hair to yourself because I’m NOT vacuuming up after you.” If there was one thing I hated more than cats and pushy Visa collectors, it was vacuuming. Don’t do it. Don’t like it. Not happening. End of story.
    Sheesh, I’m nearly bald as it is. How much shedding could I actually do?
    “And don’t even think about peeing on any of my rugs.”
    I’m old, not incontinent.
    “Or clawing at the furniture. I don’t actually have a lot of furniture—I only recently moved out of my parents’ place—but what I do have, I cherish.”
    I can barely clean myself, much less scratch. I’m weak. Starving.
    “And,” I added as I stepped forward and scooped up the poor, pathetic thing, “if we’re going to be roommates, you can’t do any pooping on the floor. It’s the litter box or, I swear, I’m shipping you to my uncle Paul.”

Six

    B y the time I walked into Dead End Dating a half hour later (after a stop at the nearby grocery for a carton of milk), it was after ten o’clock and Evie had already left.
    That or she’d grown a zillion zits, a bad haircut, a size twelve foot, and a penis.
    I stopped and eyed the young man sitting at her desk. “Hello?”
    “Yo.” He looked to be about nineteen or twenty. Human. He had dark hair that curled down around his ears and stuck out every which way, a piercing in his right eyebrow, and a pair of wire-rimmed glasses with black electrical tape wrapped around the nose-piece. He had a headset hooked in his ears. An iPod blasted Disturbed.
    “I’m Lil.”
    He didn’t so much as glance up, his gaze fixed on Evie’s computer terminal. A small set of tools lay open on the desk. “Cool.”
    I motioned around me to the small outer office. “I own this tribute to fabulous decorating skill.”
    “Phat.”
    “Do you have a name?”
    Die Slut had been tattooed on the back of his left hand and Kill the Whore on his right. His fingernails, painted with black nail polish, flew over the keyboard of Evie’s computer. A display of numbers and letters scrolled across the screen. “Word.”
    O-kay. “That, um, wasn’t a comment. See question mark on the end.”
    “Word.”
    “No, really, could you tell me your name?” If he looked up, I could see for myself, but his attention stayed riveted on the computer.
    “ Word, ” he said, pulling off the earphones. He still didn’t look at me as he shifted his attention to the tool set. He retrieved a tiny screwdriver and reached for a small box that I recognized as a Flash drive. “That’s my name. It blows, doesn’t it?” He started unscrewing the front panel of the drive. “I was named after some old guy that I can’t even remember. My great uncle something or other. I dunno. Never met him.” He set the screwdriver aside and reached for another that was even smaller.
    I set the scrawny cat down on his wobbly legs. He wrapped himself around my ankles and stayed put. One paw rested on the toe of my shoe and my chest hitched. While he was a pain in the ass, he was sort of cute, in a scrawny, half-starved way. And he obviously had superb taste.
    I shifted my attention from the skinny cat to the skinny young man. “What’s your last name?”
    “Dalton.”
    “Ah, so you’re related to