The Last Lovely City by Alice Adams Page A

she can with the probable factof Linda’s death (later she does not understand how she did this). Linda must be dead, killed by horrendously ugly, murderous raccoons; if not those, some others, equally hideous. Mary only hopes that it was quick, as one hopes for air-crash victims. Poor crazy fearful Linda could well have died of fright before she was hurt, Mary thinks.
    She tries to sleep, and at last she does, and she wakes in the morning very calm, and much, much more sad.
    And although she has more or less accepted the fact of Linda’s death, she continues in a minor way to look for her, and she still puts out the food.
    “What you need is another cat,” the few friends in whom she has confided begin to say, and in theory Mary agrees; she does need another cat.
    One day (it is now September, Linda gone for a week) the sun comes out earlier than usual, burning through fog and leaving only a few white mists that hang above the tall dark trees, above the town of Larkspur. Mount Tamalpais is sharp and clear, less distant, more inviting. And Mary’s mail comes earlier than usual, just before lunch. In it there is a check that she has been owed and has needed for some time, from her agent in L.A. These are all good signs, she thinks; Mary has certain unvoiceable, eccentric superstitions. Perhaps this should be the day when she goes to the animal shelter and finds a new beautiful cat.
    She cannot resist the further superstitious thought that
maybe
getting a new cat will bring Linda magically home to her, rather in the way that couples with a fertility problem at last adopt, and then become pregnant.
    In the animal shelter, which is encouragingly clean, well kept up, and staffed by very nice and cheerful young women, Mary looks through the rows of cages, all containing cats with one oranother sort of appeal, any one of whom she would no doubt in time learn to love. But no cat there is as beautiful as Linda is (or was); there is no one whom she instantly, totally loves. In the last cage, though (of course the last), there is a thin, lithe, graceful gray cat named Fiona—to Mary an appealing name; years ago she had a friend, an English actress, Fiona Shaw (just as she once had a friend named Linda, years back). A small typed notice states that Fiona has just been spayed; she is fine, but not quite ready for adoption—a few days more. Mary watches Fiona for a little while; she is an exceptionally pretty little cat, shy and graceful. (And if Linda
should
come back, they might get along?)
    On the way home Mary sees some new neighbors, a nice young couple, both architects, who have heard and been kind and sympathetic over Linda.
    “I saw this very pretty cat in the shelter,” Mary tells them. “A small gray one. She’s named Fiona.”
    Almost in unison they say, “But Linda might come—”
    “No,” Mary tells them, very firmly. “The raccoons got her. They must have.”
    At which the young man frowns. “I’ve seen a couple around. Mean-looking little bastards.”
    And the woman, “I think they’re sweet. And I could have sworn I heard a cat outside last night.”
    “Well, you’ll have to come for tea very soon and meet Fiona,” Mary tells them.
    Every return to her house, which now does not contain Linda, is sad for Mary, and as she walks in, the raccoons now return to her mind, unbidden; she sees them vividly again, their hideous claws and their small mean shining eyes. Firmly she forces herself instead to imagine pretty Fiona as she walks through her house to the deck, and down the steps to her garden.
    Where she is just in time to see a flash of brown fur, a plumey tail—Linda!—who tears across the grass and into Mary’s basement, which contains a clutter of broken, discarded furniture, empty boxes, old luggage. Where Linda instantly hides herself.
    The basement entrance is wide, with no door; there is no way to block it off, to prevent a bolting Linda—except for Mary herself to stand across it, or to sit