trying to tire him out. Sometimes he’s given me a beating, because it’s obviously my fault if he can’t get a hard-on, but this time fortunately he just growled and told me to suck him off, and I drained him so thoroughly I knew he’d sleep like the dead for the next two hours.
My hands have to be feathers so the door won’t click when I shut it. I fly up the stairs without a sound. His door’s just about to swallow him up when I whisper his name.
ANGEL
“Mikael.”
I hear someone breathing my name on the stairs behind, and I turn in surprise. It’s the mail-order bride from downstairs. She’s waving something cylindrical, and she’s in the doorway before I can react properly. My mind races for a moment but then calms down. It’s daytime, Pessi’s sleeping, and besides he’s becoming so feeble it makes me weep. Some days he’ll only lap up a little water, even if I’ve bought him a gerbil or hamster, and the sparkle has gone out of his eyes. The living room door’s closed, so I let the woman into the hall, because clearly she doesn’t want to stand on the stairway: she almost pushes in past me.
The woman—Palomita, she says—explains something in poor English. It takes a moment before I can make any sense of it. She wants to thank me for the magazine I gave her, and this is a gift in return, something for my cat.
For my cat? Quite.
I thank her, smiling more from a wretched sense of the ridiculous than pleasure in the gift, and she stares movingly up at me with her big brown roe deer’s eyes. Then she suddenly gives a start, and her eyes widen.
There are footsteps on the stairway.
They’re obviously coming up. My apartment’s the only one on the top floor. The original two-room unit next door is now my studio, so that someone, whoever it may be, is on their way here—nowhere else.
PALOMITA
The footsteps come up the stairs like blows. They strike through the door into my ears and face. The worst moment is when they reach Mikael’s door. The pain when it actually hits you isn’t nearly so bad as dreading it coming.
I’m a lizard seeking a hole behind Mikael and then behind a coat. The footsteps stop, and the no-sound now is a lot more frightening than the sound was.
I don’t want to breathe. Soon there’ll be the buzz of the doorbell. Soon Pentti will be hammering on the door with his fists. He’ll shout and swear—words with sharp corners—and his face’ll go from red to blue. My legs throw me out of the coat—somewhere else, to a door, I’m hanging on its handle, I’m deep in another room that’s flooded in light.
ANGEL
There’s a cough and an almost inaudible bump of a plastic bucket, showing that it’s the old woman from the ground floor, cleaning the stairs. But the sound of her steps has turned Palomita into a hyperactive whirlwind. First she jumps behind me to hide, then she conceals herself among the coats hanging in the hall, and then she takes a hopeless dive toward the living room door, and “Hey, don’t go in there” is the only thing I can get out, before she’s opened the door and come to a stop on the threshold, her mouth open.
PALOMITA
It’s very quiet. My own breathing’s like a breeze going through my head. Then I hear footsteps starting again and fading away. It can’t have been Pentti. Pentti would have come right in through Mikael’s door.
Mikael’s standing in his hall, holding the cat food. His face seems to be saying I’ve done something that’s not right. Or he has. Now that I know the steps can’t have been Pentti’s I can take in what I saw before. I go closer to the white leather sofa, which is like a pale smooth-skinned mushroom that has bulged up out of the floor. The cat’s really big and pitch-black all over. It’s bigger than most dogs. It’s not asleep, its eyes are open and its ears are moving, but it doesn’t even raise its head.
I go closer still.
“It’s sick, real sick,” I say.
At home in Malayali there were a lot of dogs
My hands have to be feathers so the door won’t click when I shut it. I fly up the stairs without a sound. His door’s just about to swallow him up when I whisper his name.
ANGEL
“Mikael.”
I hear someone breathing my name on the stairs behind, and I turn in surprise. It’s the mail-order bride from downstairs. She’s waving something cylindrical, and she’s in the doorway before I can react properly. My mind races for a moment but then calms down. It’s daytime, Pessi’s sleeping, and besides he’s becoming so feeble it makes me weep. Some days he’ll only lap up a little water, even if I’ve bought him a gerbil or hamster, and the sparkle has gone out of his eyes. The living room door’s closed, so I let the woman into the hall, because clearly she doesn’t want to stand on the stairway: she almost pushes in past me.
The woman—Palomita, she says—explains something in poor English. It takes a moment before I can make any sense of it. She wants to thank me for the magazine I gave her, and this is a gift in return, something for my cat.
For my cat? Quite.
I thank her, smiling more from a wretched sense of the ridiculous than pleasure in the gift, and she stares movingly up at me with her big brown roe deer’s eyes. Then she suddenly gives a start, and her eyes widen.
There are footsteps on the stairway.
They’re obviously coming up. My apartment’s the only one on the top floor. The original two-room unit next door is now my studio, so that someone, whoever it may be, is on their way here—nowhere else.
PALOMITA
The footsteps come up the stairs like blows. They strike through the door into my ears and face. The worst moment is when they reach Mikael’s door. The pain when it actually hits you isn’t nearly so bad as dreading it coming.
I’m a lizard seeking a hole behind Mikael and then behind a coat. The footsteps stop, and the no-sound now is a lot more frightening than the sound was.
I don’t want to breathe. Soon there’ll be the buzz of the doorbell. Soon Pentti will be hammering on the door with his fists. He’ll shout and swear—words with sharp corners—and his face’ll go from red to blue. My legs throw me out of the coat—somewhere else, to a door, I’m hanging on its handle, I’m deep in another room that’s flooded in light.
ANGEL
There’s a cough and an almost inaudible bump of a plastic bucket, showing that it’s the old woman from the ground floor, cleaning the stairs. But the sound of her steps has turned Palomita into a hyperactive whirlwind. First she jumps behind me to hide, then she conceals herself among the coats hanging in the hall, and then she takes a hopeless dive toward the living room door, and “Hey, don’t go in there” is the only thing I can get out, before she’s opened the door and come to a stop on the threshold, her mouth open.
PALOMITA
It’s very quiet. My own breathing’s like a breeze going through my head. Then I hear footsteps starting again and fading away. It can’t have been Pentti. Pentti would have come right in through Mikael’s door.
Mikael’s standing in his hall, holding the cat food. His face seems to be saying I’ve done something that’s not right. Or he has. Now that I know the steps can’t have been Pentti’s I can take in what I saw before. I go closer to the white leather sofa, which is like a pale smooth-skinned mushroom that has bulged up out of the floor. The cat’s really big and pitch-black all over. It’s bigger than most dogs. It’s not asleep, its eyes are open and its ears are moving, but it doesn’t even raise its head.
I go closer still.
“It’s sick, real sick,” I say.
At home in Malayali there were a lot of dogs
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