bone marrow was exhausted. I’d been up over eighteen hours. No hot dog would keep me awake tonight.
Birdie hadn’t waited up. As was his habit when alone, he’d curled up in the small wooden rocker by the fireplace. He looked up when I came in, blinking round yellow eyes at me.
“Hey, Bird, how was it being a cat today?” I purred, scratching under his chin. “Does anything ever keep you up?”
He closed his eyes and stretched his neck, either ignoring or enhancing the feel of my stroking. When I withdrew my hand he yawned widely, nestled his chin back onto his paws, and regarded me from under heavy lids. I went to the bedroom, knowing he’d follow eventually. Unclasping the barrettes in my hair and dumping my clothes in a heap on the floor, I threw back the covers and dropped into bed.
In no time I fell into a dense and dreamless sleep. I hosted no phantom apparitions, no menacing stage plays. At one point I sensed a warm heaviness against my leg, and knew that Birdie had joined me, but I slept on, enveloped in a black void.
Then, my heart was pounding and my eyes were open. I was wide awake, felt alarm, and didn’t know why. The transition was so abrupt I had to orient myself.
The room was pitch black. The clock read one twenty-seven. Birdie was gone. I lay in the dark holding my breath, listening, straining for a clue. Why had my body gone to red alert? Had I heard something? What blip had my personal radar detected? Some sensory receptor had sent a signal. Had Birdie heard something? Where was he? It was unlike him to prowl at night.
I relaxed my body and listened harder. The only sound was my heart hammering against my chest. The house was eerily silent.
Then I heard it. A soft clunk followed by a faint metallic rattle. I waited, rigid, not breathing. Ten. Fifteen. Twenty seconds. A glowing digit changed shape on the clock. Then, when I thought I might have imagined it, I heard it again. Clunk. Rattle. My molars compressed like a Black & Decker vise, and my fingers curled into fists.
Was someone in the apartment? I’d grown accustomed to the ordinary sounds of the place. This sound was different, an acoustic intruder. It didn’t belong.
Silently, I eased back the quilt and swung my legs out of bed. Blessing last night’s sloppiness, I reached for my T-shirt and jeans and slipped them on. I stole across the carpet.
I stopped at the bedroom door to look back in search of a possible weapon. Nothing. There was no moon, but light from a streetlamp oozed through the window in the other bedroom and partly lit the hall with a faint glow. I stole forward, past the bathroom, toward the hall with the courtyard doors. Every few steps I stopped to listen, breath frozen, eyes wide. At the entrance to the kitchen, I heard it again. Clunk. Rattle. It was coming from somewhere near the French doors.
I turned right into the kitchen and peered toward the French doors on the patio side of the apartment. Nothing moved. Silently cursing my aversion to guns, I scanned the kitchen for a weapon. It wasn’t exactly an arsenal. Noiselessly, I slid my trembling hand along the wall, feeling for the knife holder. Choosing a bread knife, I wrapped my fingers around the handle, pointed the blade backward, and dropped my arm into full extension.
Slowly, testing with one bare foot at a time, I tiptoed forward far enough to see into the living room. It was as dark as the bedroom and kitchen.
I made out Birdie in the gloom. He was sitting a few feet from the doors, his eyes fixed on something beyond the glass. The tip of his tail twitched back and forth in jittery little arcs. He looked tense as an unshot arrow.
Another clunk-rattle stopped my heart and froze my breath. It came from outside. Birdie’s ears went horizontal.
Five tremorous steps brought me alongside Birdie. Unconsciously, I reached out to pat his head. He recoiled at the unexpected touch and went tearing across the room with such force that his claws left divots in the carpet. They looked like small, black commas in the murky darkness. If a cat could be said to scream, Birdie did it.
His flight totally unnerved me. For a moment I was paralyzed, frozen in place like an Easter Island statue.
Do like the cat and get yourself out