Floyd

Well that just sucks.

The coffee he bought, thinking it might help him to process things, teetered on the edge of the table and, in slow motion, fell to the footpath next to his table. The cup and saucer shattered, and the coffee left a Rorschach test within which he could see the spider tumour tendrils that were strangling his brain.

“I’m so sorry,” the young waitress said, although Warren doubted it, instead thinking she cared a bit less than the guy driving past in the garbage truck. “I’ll get you another.” And she walked off like a mechanoid.

He patted at some splatters on his trousers pointlessly, took a paper napkin to mop up the spill.

“At the absolute best, with treatments, you probably have just over two years,” his quack said. “We can talk about the best course to get you this extra time, but it’s not pretty. But without treatment, it could be as little as six months!”

Warren stared at the man’s face although in reality he was staring into space, weighing up the point. Then he stood and just walked out. He felt a headache coming on, decided on the coffee, and with the spilled cup, regretted his choice.

Running through the doctor’s office scenario in his mind killed another five minutes of his life and he blinked rapidly when the waitress returned and with over-kill on the care factor, she slid the cup onto his table, holding her hand over the top as though to ensure it remained stable. Warren wasn’t sure what he had done to her that got up her nose. It could have been that he was male, or he was wearing a suit, or perhaps she hated her job. He decided he had done nothing to deserve it, just like he didn’t deserve his brain arachnid; he just watched the bitch walk away, and wished the universe was a bit fairer in meting out the punishments.

“Why me?” he asked the doctor.

“Why not you?” the doctor countered. “You smoke, you drink, you don’t exercise, you eat large amounts of fatty, processed foods, and none of these things are great, nor are they key to this type of tumour. But they don’t help.”

“What causes these menagi … miniagi… ?”

“Meningioma! Some people have a genetic predisposition, but the only known cause is radiation.”

“Radiation? Seriously? Like, my accounts are radioactive? Or my office? I’m an accountant for god’s sake!”

His doctor’s face was mostly blank, a little furrow of concern between his eyes appearing and disappearing. After all, there was not much he could say.

“Surgery would normally be the first step, but you’ve waited too long and it is now significantly intrusive in sensitive areas of your brain. It is a benign tumour but it is growing. So first we need to do radiation to try to reduce its size. Then, if successful, we can do the surgery to remove it. But Warren, it is very large. Very.”

“Radiation? So, radiation can cause it and radiation can reduce it. Hmph! I’ll have to think about it.”

His doctor told him not to wait too long. He really didn’t have that long to wait.

Warren took a sip of his coffee. It was truly dreadful and he placed it back on the table and left. He had closed office for the day and he didn’t feel like returning, but his Spartan home was barely more inviting. Then again, he didn’t have anywhere else to be, so he headed for his car and tried to switch his brain off. His head hurt from whirling thoughts as well as pressure behind his eyes. He wanted a dark room and silence. He’d had enough of this day.

It was late afternoon and the sun was beginning to set by the time Warren drove into his garage. The automatic garage door shut out the failing daylight and although lights flickered on as the door shut, he felt the darkness of his home creeping around him. He locked his car, unlocked the door between the garage and the house, juggling keys and briefcase, dropping his keys twice, then shut the door and snibbed it behind him.

His home was almost empty. Dust in beams of intruding light settled on the floor, not quite covering rectangles where furniture had been. His fridge rattled loudly – a quick replacement for the one his wife took only a week earlier. He sat on the single folding chair, flicked the remote for the old television, watching the images without sound. He supposed he should eat something but couldn’t be bothered checking the fridge, knowing there was nothing in there that interested him.

Playing before his eyes was a soap opera – a man and a woman were arguing. He imagined they were saying pretty much the same things he and Carol yelled at each other the last time they spoke.

“You never want to do anything I want to do,” she accused.

“I love staying at home with you, just the two of us,” he countered.

“I want to do other things. I want to go out with friends. We could go camping with a group from work.”

“I hate camping. You know that.”

“So, we just do what you want,” she said bitterly. “We just stay at home and watch the same old rubbish on TV until we go to bed. We might have sex but you’re usually too tired. We go to sleep after you read. We get up the next day, but I’m seriously sleep deprived from your shakes and moans in your sleep, and we go to work. It’s not good enough for me any more. You’re an old woman.”

He was always like that. She knew this when they met. He thought she was happy with how he was. And her accusation about his moans and shaking in his sleep confused him. Yes, sometimes he woke as though in the middle of a fit. Perhaps, he realised in hindsight, it was something to do with the tumour.

Warren switched the idiot box off. He grabbed a packet of cigarettes from his briefcase. She wasn’t around to nag him about it now, but even so, he went out onto the back deck rather than smoke inside. She would complain about the smell if she did happen to front up, he thought.

He scrabbled in his pocket for a lighter then remembered he threw it away because the flint was broken or something. In the kitchen next to the gas stove was a long-nosed lighter which he grabbed. Then he remembered the stubbies in the door of the fridge, so he took one of those out too. Carol hated beer. She was into room temperature red wine. He hated the stuff.

Out on the deck, he sat on the edge, his legs swinging over the edge, and he scanned the long grass below. A wet summer meant everything grew like an overfed goldfish. Warren’s headaches deterred him from dragging out the mower which was no longer up for the job of the crop below his feet - at least that was his excuse.

He whipped off the bottle cap, took a swig, then placed the bottle next to him while he pulled a cigarette out of the packet. There was a large coffee tin half-filled with ash and butts next to him which he pulled a little closer. He peered in, winced a tad, then lit up.

“Oh well. These aren’t going to kill me any quicker than my brain now!”

For the preceding fortnight, every night after work, he ate little, but drank a stubby and smoked half a packet of cigarettes. Somewhere he knew things weren’t right in his head. He told himself he was being paranoid, that pressure from work and the sudden (he thought) end to his marriage were the causes of his growing head pains. The shaking hands and back pain were due to sleeping on a mattress on the floor. The blurring vision was just a reminder he was due to get new glasses. One excuse after another.

Warren finished his beer and was about to stand when he felt a strange sensation, a pressure against his left leg, warm and rattling.

“Brain tumour,” he muttered.

Meow.

The noise made him jump.

Sitting next to him, leaning hard up against his leg, was a half-grown ginger cat. Warren had not heard the cat arrive. He had not felt it sit down or lean up against him. He just suddenly became aware that it was there.

“Bloody hell. Where did you come from?”

The cat looked up to his face with what seemed like a massive grin, and it meowed again.

One of the things Carol pulled from her list of grievances was ‘no animals’. “You have allergies so we don’t have a dog, a cat, a bird. No guinea pigs, parrots, no pets! What the hell is wrong with you?”

Warren found animals confounding, like so many things in life. He was not raised with pets, although he had a vague memory, very vague, that he had ‘something’ when he was very young but his parents got rid of it when he was at kindergarten. It was something he was given by someone who didn’t know better, words he heard his mother say in his dreams.

This cat though did not seem to care about Warren’s lack of history with animals. It decided it would be with him this night and it purred like they were lifelong friends.

“No point sticking around with me, cat. I’m not going to live long enough to care for you,” he said, stood up, and walked inside, closing the door before the cat could follow him.

The cat sat at the glass door staring in at him. There was no concern on its face, no beseeching meows, no scratching at the door. It just sat and stared, the smile still evident. It looked up at the sky, showing a bright white chest, making its smile look very pink, very happy. Warren stared back at it for a minute, then walked over to the door and drew the curtains.

In his dreams Warren saw the cat walk up the steps of the deck. “Gimme a beer,” it drawled. “Get it yourself, Warren answered. The cat started screeching its protest. “Gimme gimme gimme” … “gimme gimme gimme”. He woke, slapped the alarm clock across the room in uncharacteristic impatience, then painfully stood from the mattress on the floor.

The day began as it always had except he did not have to compete for the bathroom, could get whatever he wanted for breakfast (which consisted of a packet of custard creams for lack of anything else in the place), and there was no kiss goodbye as two cars started up their engines in the garage, and there was no race for who got out to the driveway first. He thought that was their little morning game, but it turned out it annoyed the shite out of Carol.

Before heading to the door, curiosity got the better of him and Warren pulled back the curtain across the sliding door to the deck. No, there was no cat sitting on the mat or anywhere else on the deck. He knew he had not imagined it, but it was quite strange, he thought.

The day’s routine was much like the preceding fifteen years. He fronted at the office, said hello to the reception staff who kept a steady flow of customers at a pleasant pace down the corridor to his office. He grabbed a coffee from the machine in the kitchenette, then went to his office, checked emails, appointments, his desk cleared for the first tax return or business accounting advice. The routine was pleasant for him although he understood most would find it boring. For Warren though, keeping those numbers in their appointed spots usually gave him a sense of balance. But his mind kept wandering to the cat which left him feeling a bit unbalanced and distracted.

The day passed without incident. The girls at the front desk kept their conversations low and business-like while he was around, just the way he liked it. A sandwich at twelve plus a coffee and a couple of painkillers, a custard cream and coffee at three plus another couple of painkillers, then out the door at six after the girls left for the day, and by the time he hopped in his car, he realised the afternoon had passed without him thinking about that cat.

While navigating his way through the last of the peak traffic, Warren decided for some drive through takeaway, and perhaps he would listen to some vinyls that evening. His record collection survived Carol’s exodus. She was all in for those downloads and did not care about his insistence that vinyl sounded better. “Lucky for me,” he muttered at a red light.

He turned into his driveway, pressed the garage door button, drove in and parked habitually in the left side, closed off the light outside, locked his car, opened the adjoining door to the house and locked it behind him despite juggling his paper bag of food, briefcase, and a cold drink with soggy paper straw.

Dropping the briefcase next to the kitchen bench, he headed for the spare room which was now his music room (and not Carol’s sewing room!)

Despite his house being locked up all day, the music room was a mess. His beloved vinyls were scattered all over the floor, the single kitchen chair in the middle of the room was overturned, and next to a pile of Pink Floyd albums was … the ginger cat.

“What tha hell?”

Warren’s immediate thought was Carol coming back to grab something she forgot, but there was nothing in this room that would interest her even vaguely, he knew! He seldom got angry, not even as he looked at the cat which seemed to be smiling proudly.

“Come out of here. Now, out!” The cat did not budge, just looked at him with wide, unconcerned eyes. “Out,” he yelled. Nothing. He looked at the albums scattered across the floor, then decide he needed a smoke. He went straight for the sliding door, still carrying his food, stepped out on the deck and sat with his legs hanging over the edge. The cat followed him and sat firmly against his right leg, purring as it placed its front paws over the edge.

Warren looked at the cat. “Are you copying me?” he asked it, but it continued to look out into the yard at the long grass. “How the hell did you get in my house?” It purred louder.

Warren sipped his drink, screwed up his nose, pulled the straw out of the cup, and threw it into the long grass below. The cat peered over the edge to watch the straw fall. The man flipped off the plastic cover and threw it after the straw, took another sip of the drink, then tipped the whole thing onto the ground below. “Don’t know why I bother,” he muttered.

He took the burger out of the paper bag, was about to take a bite, then looked at the cat. “You’re a bit scrawny, aren’t you?” He broke off a piece of the meat and set it in front of the cat, which licked it, then knocked it over the edge.

“Everyone’s a critic,” Warren said, then bit into the burger. “You’re right. It’s crap,” he muttered.

The cat leaned into his leg affectionately. “You know what. We deserve better,” he said. He stood, left the sliding door to the deck open, grabbed his keys from the kitchen bench, and headed for the car. In the supermarket Warren scanned the cat food tins and packets of dry food. Reading the descriptions made his stomach growl a bit. “Marketing scam,” he decided and went for the organic brands. “Also a scam,” he hmphed. But these ones had a picture of a celebrity vet on the label, so he figured there had to be something to it.

He was almost at the checkout when he remembered he had not bought himself anything, dashed back to the freezer aisle, scanned the ready meals, and chose something that was supposed to be healthy. “It’s almost like I care or something,” and he said to his reflection in the freezer door, then he grinned wryly and pointed to the spot on his head where he assumed was at least one tentacle of his tumour. As he did this his finger shook a little and his eye twitched and sagged ever so slightly. That wiped the grin off his face.

“Oh well. At least one of us will be healthy,” he muttered at the checkout. The woman who served him smiled. “No, no,” she said. “These are both good choices. I’m losing weight eating these and I feel great,” she said. He looked at her big smile. “Oh, I mean the frozen dinners, not the cat food," she laughed. "But my cat eats those and he looks great too,” she added. They both laughed, Warren paid her, and headed home.

They both ate their dinner on the deck, watching the sun go down. “Come on in, cat,” he said. “You might as well listen to some records with me.”

The cat walked in as if there was no question of whether or not he would come inside. He walked straight into the music room where the albums were still scattered across the floor, and planted his bum straight onto “The delicate sound of thunder”. In fact, he sat on the word ‘Pink’ and when Warren reached to push him off, he meowed loudly.

“What?”

He pushed the cat off the album cover, but the ginger immediately sat back on it, his bottom covering the word ‘Pink’ again.

“Floyd? You want me to call you Floyd?” The cat stood and walked to the corner of the room, curled in a ball and went to sleep. “Well, that’s weird,” Warren said. “And why am I talking to myself?”

Warren’s routine didn’t vary much usually, but at some stage over the following week he woke with a cat curled up on the bed next to his right side. His fridge broke down so he dropped into the supermarket each night on his way home to grab something from the freezer section, to say hello to his favourite checkout chick, and buy a treat for Floyd. And he bought two easy chairs from the local opportunity shop. He was not short of money, but he did not see the point of buying brand new when he figured his life expectancy was so short. He struggled with the chairs to get them into the music room, being that his muscle tone was never great to begin with, and most likely deteriorating, he thought. But both those chairs had to be in that room – one for him and one for Floyd who selected the spot for said chair. Each night began with a Pink Floyd selection (not too loud though, Warren’s headaches deterred that), then onto some Santana, Oldfield, and finally one he let Floyd choose.

“You have eclectic taste,” he told the cat when the paw poked at a Reg Livermore album. “I haven’t listened to that one in years.”

The following weeks were busy. Everyone who forgot to do their tax by the annual cut off for the second time was booking in for their bi-annual returns to avoid a fine. Warren did not mind this particular routine. It was easy money and people were usually so relieved to get it done they seldom balked at his fee. Most of his clients’ returns were relatively straight forward and without much variation from previous years. His office managers were flat out too. Not partial to office chat usually, Warren began to bring in donuts. The girls objected as they picked out their favourites for morning tea, but they still enjoyed this new man in their old boss’s body.

“Any plans for the weekend, Janelle?” he asked the supervisor. She raised an eyebrow. “Asking me out on a date, Warren?” He blushed a tad. “No, no. Just making small talk.” She laughed and flashed her engagement ring at him. “You never noticed, did you Warren?” In truth, he knew next to nothing about them. It was time, he decided, that he take a bit of an interest in who he had working for him. Carol interviewed them and employed them for him so he was not really privy to anything other than their skills.

A sharp pain stabbed at his left eye which drooped a little. He covered it with his hand and backed away from the reception counter.

“Are you okay?” his receptionist asked.

“Just a bit tired,” he said. “Better get back to it, I suppose. Um, is there any painkillers in the first aid box?” The receptionist picked up her handbag, fished out a green box and handed it to him. “That’s okay. Working too hard, boss? I hope these help.”

He thanked her and retreated to his office.

At home, out on the deck, he told Floyd about the drooping eye. He checked it in the office bathroom, but it was back to normal. He checked it when he got home – still normal. But he still thought he could feel the pain.

“Here,” he said and put a piece of his grilled fish on the deck in front of Floyd. The cat ate the fish with gusto and looked up at Warren, hoping for more. And there it was! His drooping eye. But on Floyd’s face! And then it was gone.

“Imagined,” he said. “Imagined! I have it, not you!”

He lit up a cigarette, pulled the coffee tin over to where he sat, and smoked while lost in thought. He went to light up a second, as was his habit, looked at it strangely, then popped it back in the box. “How about some music, Floyd.” The cat immediately jumped up and headed for the door.

A few Fridays later Warren realised, while sitting on the edge of the deck, that it had been two months since talking to his doctor. He still had not decided about treatment. Or perhaps he had decided to just let nature run its course? He was not one hundred per cent sure about that, but he was sure the headaches had begun to recede. His hands did not shake, his vision seemed back to normal (which he was genuinely surprised about because he no longer needed his glasses), and when he woke each morning, he was sure he had not experienced any fits in his sleep. He could just hear Floyd purring next to him.

He reached for the coffee tin, pulled it next to his leg, and pulled the cigarette packet from his breast pocket. Floyd meowed weakly next to him. Warren looked at the cat, then at the packet. “You know what, Floyd? I don’t think I want to do this any more.” He threw the packet of cigarettes into the tin and stood up. “Let’s go and listen to some music.”

The cat stood up a little unsteadily. He ran to the door but missed the gap and ran headlong into the glass.

“Hey matey, are you alright?” Warren scooped the cat up and patted his head, looked at his eyes, and noticed the animal’s left eye was drooping. “Are you alright?” he asked again, worried. The cat purred and licked his hand. “Yeah, you’re okay.”

Half way through the next day, while Warren talked to the girls in the office, his phone rang. The doctor berated him for not consulting him about treatment. “I’ve made an appointment for you to have an MRI on Monday and I want to see you as soon as it's done. Just come in, I’ll make time for you,” he said. “No rush Doc,” Warren said. “Yes, there is a rush. I told you not to wait.”

The girls listened to the conversation curiously. But Warren put his phone in his pocket and shrugged it off, then went back to chatting about his amazing boy, Floyd. He didn’t seem concerned, so they weren’t, but still curious. Then again, the weekend was upon them soon and the phone conversation was forgotten quickly.

That night Warren ate dinner inside at a card table he dragged out of the garage. No more sitting on the deck to eat. Floyd sat on a foldable chair opposite him and ate from a bowl on the table. Warren chatted to the cat, looking at his drooping eye but noting that Floyd had not lost his appetite. Instead of his post-dinner smoke, Warren washed up and went straight into the music room. Instead of sitting on his own chair, Floyd painfully climbed up onto Warren’s lap and promptly fell asleep. He began to shudder and shake a little. “Chasing rabbits, Floyd? I hope you catch one,” he whispered.

The next morning, Warren woke but there was no purring. He rolled over to pat Floyd but although curled up in his usual spot, the cat was cold to his touch.

“Floyd? Floyd!” Warren spoke, a rising panic in his voice. There was no response. His friend was long-gone and all that remained was a cold ball of fur. Trembling, Warren got out of bed and lifted his feline friend off the bed gently. Rigour had set in. The body remained with a paw planted firmly over Floyd’s face as though he were still sleeping.

For the first time in as long as he could remember, Warren felt real anguish. While upset when Carol left him, he did not feel this level of grief. Tears rolled down his face as he took Floyd out to the deck. He placed him next to the steps and sat down with his feet over the edge. He reached for the coffee tin, the packet of cigarettes still inside. But he changed his mind and left it where it sat. He stared at the body of his cat, wishing he could see the chest move with breath, but there was nothing and there was no doubt the cat had died some time through the night.

There was no choice. Warren went to the garage, grabbed a shovel, then headed down to the back of the yard. “I’m digging this deep for you so you can sleep in peace, he muttered to the body next to the hole. “You know what? This is the hardest thing I’ve had to do for a long, long time.” Tears welled again as he placed Floyd into the hole and slowly shovelled soil on top of him. He looked around the yard and spotted a large basalt rock which he rolled over and placed it on top of the freshly dug earth. And then he just sat, dumbstruck, and stared at the rock for some time.

“I guess I’ll be following you soon anyway,” Warren said. “You were my first pet. Did you know that? I’ve never had a pet before, I don’t think or at least I don’t remember! And you were a great listener, but mate, I’m not sure about your taste in music. Then again you did like Pink Floyd so not all bad.”

He walked away from the grave reluctantly, scanned the back yard critically, then decided the long grass did not do Floyd justice. He spent the day mowing, raking, tidying up. In the process, he found neglected garden beds and a concrete path. “I’m going to spend a bit of time out here for you mate,” he muttered. “I want you to like this place. Well, at least as long as I live here anyway.”

Warren lay on the cold, steel bed as it slid inside the machine. He kept his Monday appointment. He figured he had nothing to lose.

“Lie still now, Mr Mason,” came the voice over the intercom. “Not going anywhere,” he answered. The machine clanked into life and whirred for a few minutes. “Can you roll onto your right side please.” Warren complied and waited. “Now your left side, please.” After the machine fell silent, Warren waited … and waited. “Mr Mason, can you roll back on your right side,” came the voice, a little uncertainly. He did as he was told. The machine clanked again for a few minutes then stopped. “We’re all done. Do you have an appointment with your doctor?” “Yes, I’m seeing him as soon as we’re finished here. Is there something wrong?”

The steel bed rolled back out of the machine and the technician came into the room. “All good. But I suggest you see your doctor as soon as possible. We’ll send the results straight over to him.”

The technician wouldn’t be drawn on what the scans showed.

“Well, this is strange,” the specialist said once Warren sat in front of him. “Have you continued to get headaches?” He shook his head. “Nope. They seem to have stopped. And I don’t need my glasses any more. I figured that was something to do with pressure behind my eyes or something,” he answered.

“The tumour has shrunk!” the doctor said. Warren stared at him, not comprehending his words at first. Then eventually “By how much?”

The doctor shook his head. “By at least fifty per cent. This just doesn’t happen. Have you changed anything lately? Diet, exercise?”

Warren thought for a moment. “Well, I guess I’ve been eating better. No exercise though. Oh, I gave up smoking. It stopped being relevant. Oh, and I got a cat. But he died a couple of days ago.”

It was the doctor’s turn to stare at Warren as though he had said something strange. “I doubt the diet, even the smoking, in the short term would have had this kind of impact. I suggest we leave it for a month, then I want you to have another MRI. If it continues to shrink we’ll monitor it, but if it stays the same, I suggest surgery because it’s no longer in that sensitive area of your brain. It’s like it has pulled right back. There really is no explaining this but I think we just thank our lucky stars, hey.”

Lyn browsed the shelves and finally selected three bottles of red. She didn’t really care about the brand. They were cheap and palatable. She took them to the counter and pulled out her purse.

“Back again so soon,” the man behind the counter asked. “You must do a lot of entertaining,” he added cheerfully. Lyn nodded and waved her card over the eftpos machine. The clerk put her bottles into a sturdy paper bag then turned to the customer behind her.

She could barely wait to get home and pull the cork. She hated being sober. Life was just too harsh and now it was the weekend she didn’t have to worry about going anywhere or doing anything. She still had a bottle at home, so her weekend was all mapped out.

As she made her way to the car she looked up and down the street scoping for cop cars. She wasn’t sure her blood was clear of the last binge and she didn’t want to risk it. Forgetting where she had parked her car, Lyn pulled her keys out of her pocket and hit the unlock button. She heard the blip blip and headed for the sound.

Just as she reached her car, she heard a meow and a purr. She looked up and there, sitting on her bonnet near the driver’s door, was a half-grown ginger cat staring right back at her.