Temple of the Dog

David is still sleeping and the neighbor's cat is dead. We share the same blank stare reserved for apathy and the afterlife. My staff meeting started twenty minutes ago and my hair hasn't seen shampoo in days. I skipped my shower anyway, chewed my aspirin. I left you seven voicemails full of hopeless heavy breath. I'm sure you know my number. I'm not always quiet.

The cat shouldn't be here. Neither should I. My marriage is rotting and my molars are rotting and I hated this fucking cat almost as much as I hate you. Its fur is damp and flat, its eyes thick with mud.

I thought we were happy. It's your fault I know otherwise.

Now the way he smiles in our wedding pictures is the way he smiles when he doesn't know I'm watching. I cannot eclipse you. Your name lights his phone and your tongue is sweet and pink and he finds excuses to say your name while I fold his shirts into sloppy squares. You don't care that I made a beautiful bride. You have no way of knowing that he sleeps next to the ghosts of our youth. That in the photographs, my face is veiled and my mouth bows just like yours.

My husband broke our vows for you and I break bride-me free of her cheap frame like I can rescue her. I pocket the picture and plant the glass in the bedroom's carpet, where nothing else takes root anymore. When David wakes up he'll have to either find his way past the mess I've left behind or bleed to reach me.

Of course, that's nothing new.

Down the street a screen door slams and then slams again. Someone looking for this goddamned cat. It's more than anyone can say for me. Loneliness is the television's muted glow at four am, the gin in your belly hot as buckshot. The bathroom cabinet holds candy fistfuls of sky blue Xanax and canary Klonopin but I won't kill myself because I know that without me, tonight you could sleep easy. Poison is just the word for a truth we couldn't stomach.

Your perfume is more expensive than mine. None of your teeth are broken. Every night after dinner David cradles his phone and spells out his love for you while I suck grease from my fingers and wear away my lipstick on cigarettes.

I wonder why my father never calls. I wonder why you're doing this to me. Even this shitty cat had a name and a bell hung around its neck with velvet and a place that it belonged. But you, you don't care, you rub your stink on my husband and he spreads it to our sheets. You're nothing but a stray.

I deserve this, but you deserve me, and I press SEND on my phone while the neighbor singsongs HERE KITTY KITTY. I recognize the crack in her voice, the worry of a wife whose husband wasn't home at two am. This cat is all that woman has and it didn't know the first thing about love.

None of them do, I want to tell her. Get a husband and he won't either.

HERE KITTY, she bleats. She's pleading.

Meanwhile you don't answer and the cat doesn't answer and I leave voicemail number eight. Sweat writes a slow, steady map beneath the soft weight of my sweater. It's too hot out here. I reek of sweat and sadness. The cat will rot soon. It's not even a cat anymore, not really. Its neck is broken. What's left is just an altar of expired meat and soon the maggots will come. They come for us all. Meat is meat is a cat is a mistress is a corpse.

The ninth time, your phone goes straight to voicemail. You're awake. Maybe you're sitting at your kitchen table already, your coffee ruined by my inability to be ignored.

Good morning, says David and I turn guilt-fast. His feet are bleeding. Our carpet will need cleaned. In the light I see him clearly, his chest bruised with the fading purple halos of your teeth. I want to stack my own on top of them. I want to erase every mark you've left behind.

I bend my knees and lift the cat. Its head rolls loose to one side. The bell jingles, softly. My husband smiles at me. His arms are ringed in thin, desperate claw marks that weren't there at dinner and this empty little husk is my reward, my punishment, my penance. A gift from someone with hands as strong and sure as marriage vows.

Someone willing to kill to keep what he wants.

I could call out to the neighbor and confess.

You could answer your phone and feign remorse.

Or --

Or.

The garbage gapes its wide mouthed grin and it's no trouble at all to drop the cat down inside. Its body belches hot air at the bottom of the can. My phone follows it into the darkness: the screen glows briefly, then fades.

Easy.

And the neighbor is much too late around the corner when she dabs her eyes and says “Have you seen -”

My husband says no and I say no and we smile together. This time next week the air will be ripe with decay.

David's hand cups my elbow. His nails are dark with soil. My thighs grow tense and wet.

You wouldn't understand. You aren't like us. You thought you were the predator but you shut off your phone and now you're sitting somewhere, shivering, uncertain.

You know just the right amount of risk to keep from dirtying your hands. You're soft, and warm, and weak.

But me, I keep his secrets.

The neighbor dabs her eyes and stares at our feet. Her face is small and frightened. I don't know her name any more than I knew the cat's. It doesn't matter. They shouldn't have come.

My husband holds the door. The house is dark and familiar. Bride me remains in my pocket, her face hidden. Safe from all our sins.

The neighbor says, softly, "Please -" and I know hopeless when I hear it.

I turn and step inside.