Jack Acid, Freelance Priest

by Miracle Jones

Yeah, it was a fucking mystery. Sometimes we get mysteries.

The first cat showed up mysteriously on an early Tuesday afternoon. Jack was going through Salamander Technologies mail whilst sitting in a lawn chair in the shade, and I was doing homemade tai chi on the roof of our dumpster. I’m not sure I was doing it right, but it was certainly a lot of fun. I pretended I was fighting platoons of unhinged time-traveling ninjas and I tried to breathe real deep and look serious as I shifted in slow motion to fend them off. After all, they were coming at me from the future and the past and this meant I had to concentrate if I wanted to land a blow.

I cracked each knuckle with martial splendor as I prepared to rain blows like needlepoint through the fabric of space-time. Leopard-print underwear was tied around my head (my own, thank you very much). I felt peaceful, but that could have been the pleasant spring day -- not necessarily the profits of my addled-ass dervish dance.

“Lookit Jones,” said Jack, holding up a computer printout. “Salamander is working defense contracts again.”

“What does that mean?” I asked, faltering slightly, but catching myself and keeping my balance on the ledge.

“It could mean anything. They could be making long-lasting soap for very dirty privates.”

“I’m going to ignore that,” I said, wobbling into a roundhouse kick.

“But what it probably means is that they are making weapons again. I doubt the government would hire Salamander for any sort of long-term infrastructure. They are a bit too pricey.”

“What sort of weapons? Guns? Grenades? Heat-seeking inflammable jellies?”

“That’s too confrontational. Think airborn HIV, stuff like that.”

“Senseless,” I said. “Preposterous.”

“Look at how well we control those rogue African states now that they all need our AIDS drugs to stagger forward into the future. Imagine what would happen if we could hook China the same way.”

“That’s pretty awful,” I said, slowly tearing the skull out of an imaginary assassin who had been trying to pin me with a forked, poisoned blade. I drop kicked his silk-covered head into the trees for good measure. “Wars should be fought in single, hand-to-hand combat,” I philosophized. “You should be able to look your enemy in the eye, and then bathe in his blood to get his awesome killing power.”

“We aren’t talking about wars, here,” said Jack. “Wars are fought for hot-blooded reasons. We are talking about control. Global domination. Twirly-mustaches, black briefcases, and six-course luncheons eaten on the backs of chattel slaves.”

“I am opposed,” I said.

That was when the ginger cat strolled out of the bushes and pounced into Jack’s lap. It stretched out its lanky limbs and scattered Jack’s computer printouts into the grass, quickly tearing the piece of paper Jack was holding into shreds.

“Fth, fth, fth,” said the cat.

Jack gently picked the feline up and set her down in the grass. She had no collar, and there were twists of brambles in her fur that she must have picked up in the brush.

“A stray,” said Jack. “We have to be careful about strays. If we feed them, they could lead interested parties straight to us. This would be bad for operations as it were, my ‘thentical pal.”

“Do you think she is lost?” I asked.

“Hard to say,” said Jack.

“Reeeaaaor,” said the cat.

Jack frowned.

“Reaaaerrrm. Reeeow, reeow, REEOW.”

“I see,” said Jack.

“Mew,” said the cat.

“Absolutely not,” said Jack.

“Reeeeeeeeeeooow,” said the cat. She yawned and then lay down in the grass, as if intending to sleep there. But she kept her eyes open.

“You speak cat?” I said, leaping off of the roof.

“Of course not,” said Jack. “That is senseless. Impossible, and absurd.”

Jack began to gather up his strewn papers, but he seemed shaken. He began to meditate.

“Absolutely not,” he said again quietly after awhile. “We have more important matters to attend to, if you dig. We have to be sensible in our aims, above all else.”

The cat began to lick itself. This reminded me that I had a deadline on copy for a “Lactating Yoga Instructors” photo essay, and I went back inside to get some work done. I forgot about the cat for the rest of the evening, even though I could hear it meowing periodically -- and pathetically -- right outside our door. Eventually, Jack came in and collapsed into his chair, mumbling something about the balancing act. He went to sleep, and eventually so did I.

In the morning, the cat had multiplied by a factor of ten. I opened the door to give the finger to the dawn and found eleven cats seated in a semi-circle, their tails twitching in time -- second-hands chasing the minutes.

As soon as they saw me, they jumped to their paws and began yowling in chorus like a set of demonic, leonine bagpipes. I fell back into the dumpster and cracked my bony ass.

“Jack!” I shouted. “We’re being invaded!”

The cats trampled in over my prone body, using me as a meaty bridge into our den, kneading my chest as if I were a welcome mat. Jack rose from his chair, pursed his lips, and regarded these uninvited guests with his hands behind his back. The cats bowed before him, stretching their ribs until they scraped the ground, and then they began to plead and yowl, snaking between his legs like eels in coral.

Jack could only endure so much of this before he grew…irritable.

“You must RESPECT my NEED not to get involved,” said Jack. “You have your own laws and councils, you kitten marauders. Turn to them if you seek satisfaction. Now. Hold the door open, Jones, and brace yourself.”

Jack began picking the cats up by the scruff of their necks and tossing them out the door. They landed huffily in the scrub -- turning, hissing, seriously pissed. Most of them did not land on their feet, but landed instead in fluffy balls filled with teeth and points. I shut the door in a hurry and peered through a hole bored in the wall.

“What the hell is going on?” I asked.

“Don’t worry about it. I’ve said my peace,” said Jack. “They’ll move along.”

They did not move along. In fact, as Jack brooded and I watched in horror, the cats began to rally. By mid-afternoon, every stray in Austin had gathered around our dump, fucking and fighting and periodically scratching the shit out of each other. But they persisted, as much as it annoyed them to be lumped in a herd.

To me, cats always appear peeved and agitated, unless they are asleep. I’ve never seen a cat smile. They just grimace.

The lawn grew too thick with feline flesh and fur to step outside or escape to the hills. The meowing was a constant ache in our ears. The stink of ammonia from all of the cat piss curled through the walls, pluming in pube-straightening tendrils through our possessions like stock-market stats on a coordinate plane. The dumpster began to rock as the cats circulated, rubbing against each other and churning -- sea foam with claws.

“What do they want?” I shouted. “What have we done? Did you step on some ancient crone’s monkey grass, and she has hexed us with her minions? Have they come to free the cat Barrabas and crucify the kitten Jesus? What have we done, and how do we make them happy?”

“This is extortion,” said Jack. “You are witnessing a cat protest in action.”

“Why are they protesting US? I love cats!”

“Because they think I can help them get justice. They think they can guilt me into helping them.”

“And why would they think that?” I said.

“I’ve done it before. I’m sure they could find somebody else with my…qualifications. But you know cats. They are lazy.”

Jack rolled open the door. Six cats clung to the bottom of the casters like desperate sailors on a pitching ship.

“GO AWAY!” he shrieked and then slammed the door back down.

“Maybe we should try and give them a hand,” I said. “Cats are generally pretty resourceful and independent. If they really require your services, I’m sure it’s because it is something they can’t handle themselves.”

“Certainly so,” said Jack. “Cats don’t have any mystical influence or anything. You are observing the full extent of their amazing ‘cat power’ in action. They are nature’s greatest slouches. Their ability to take up space in places where you would rather be is transcendent.”

“It’s maddening,” I said.

“Don’t let it get to you. We have to be strong.”

“We could die in here,” I said.

“Not of STARVATION,” said Jack to the door. “I’m sure we’ll find SOMETHING to eat. Something CUTE and DOMESTIC.”

“The smell alone will kill us,” I said. “Eventually, we’ll be poisoned by the spirochetes in all of the cat shit. The bacteria will burrow into our brains and start digesting our dendrites, turning our very thoughts into puke-drizzled effluent that will collect, like the yellow sweat of a tubercular fishwife, on the rails inside our skulls. Pus-holes the size of dimes will ooze infected lava all over our unfettered, ruined dreams. We’ll steadily go mad, and then we’ll throttle each other.”

“The cats will get sick of being a mob before that happens,” said Jack. “Trust me. We just have to wait this out.”

“Why don’t we just give in and give them a hand? You basically do nothing all day long, anyway. Maybe the cats are here to crown you their King.”

“I do exactly what I am supposed to do at all times -- no more, no less.”

“Tell it to the cats, Jack. The carpet of cats that has surrounded our squat. The living, breathing carpet of cat static.”

Jack groaned.

“There’s a balance that must be kept,” he explained. “An order. I don’t know. There are codes and procedures for this sort of thing. A calculus of responsibility. Next it will be dogs, or squirrels, or cockroaches, or public relations agents. We can’t help everyone.”

“What do they want, Jack? What do they want from us?”

Jack crossed-his legs sulkily.

“They want a murderer brought to justice. A child-murderer.”

Jack narrowed his eyebrows.

“The Kitten Tosser,” he intoned darkly.

“The Kitten Tosser?!” I interrobanged. “They think YOU can catch the infamous Austin Kitten Tosser? But that guy has been on the loose for years! The cops shut the case, and the ASPCA has given up completely. He’s a ghost! A cipher! A long string of question marks and then an ellipse…implying more question marks…”

“Evidently, these cats have inside information. And they want to pass it on to us. They want us to be their instrument of vengeance. Their…well. Their cat’s paw.”

“The Kitten Tosser, Jack! Think of it! We’d be heroes! Every nubile, sassy lass in the county would want to cover our prostates in gracious saliva. We would have to buy samurai swords to carve through the mountains of sex that would accrete from the ether like stink to cheese.”

“These cats want JUSTICE, Jones. They want blood. An eye for an eye. They may be small and cute to us, but deep inside every cat is a vicious jungle predator. They want to see the Kitten Tosser slaughtered, and they want to strap his guts like violin strings across the highway as an object lesson. And that is what they are hiring us to do.”

“I see,” I said.

“And that goes against my beliefs a bit,” said Jack. “I can’t kill. No killing.”

“No murder,” I said.

“Not even for fun,” said Jack, reclining glumly in his lounge chair.

“But what do we get in return?” I asked. Jack just glared at me.

If anybody deserved to be deleted from the world’s registry, it was the Austin Kitten Tosser.

His (or her) name was synonymous with evil in our happy, dopy town. The worst kind of evil. The arbitrary, hopeless kind that made you want to stuff razorblades in bran muffins and hit up the old folks home to stop all those ancient hearts a little early, to keep them from clotting and congealing with the fat of the world’s misery.

We Austinites have our problems: we are lazy, we are gullible, we have inconsistent personal hygiene habits, we do too many drugs, we don’t stick up for our beliefs as much as we should, and we universally lack the willpower to put together the grand plans that universally seethe under our greasy, knotted scalps. Every drag rat is a potential Napoleon. Our political theories are muddy and relentlessly impractical. Our artistic antipathies are reactionary and borderline pretentious.

Heh. Okay, they are ACTUALLY pretentious.

But we Austinites are hopeful, and we are pleasant. Dammit, we are NICE to each other. And we are nice to animals. Everybody that comes to Austin has been kicked out of somewhere else, so we know what it feels like to be a wandering freeloader. What Austinite can look in the eyes of a newborn kitten and pass a death sentence?

A true Austinite would instead make plans to cast that kitten in an earth-shattering independent film about corporate greed. And a true Austinite would forget about that independent film over the years and teach the cat to take bong hits through his earhole. The cat would grow up strong and lazy -- precisely as it ought to. God bless this stupid town.

I remember reading about the Tosser for the first time in the American-Statesman when I was still in school. I dug up the article for you. Let us share a moment of horror together:

Police Baffled by Recent String of Overpass Kitten Killings

AUSTIN, TX – August 11, 2003: Despite growing public concern, APD has closed their investigation on the Austin kitten tossing epidemic, pending new facts or evidence. Anybody with information leading to an arrest is encouraged to come forward and claim the $1000 award being offered by the Austin Humane Society.

“We just want this to end,” said Detective Marla Campos. “We have no leads, and we have no way of telling how much copycat killing is taking place. Pardon my pun. Ugh.”

The first five kittens were found in the spring, dropped from the MLK overpass in the early morning hours of March 13th. There were no witnesses, no tags, and the kittens were not reported missing or subsequently claimed. Veterinarians speculate that the victims died instantly and did not suffer.

Every week has turned up more deaths around town, and local shelters have grown wary of giving their kittens away, choosing instead to raise them until their safe, teenaged years. No older cats have been found murdered, leading authorities to speculate that the “Kitten Tosser” is a psychologically unstable individual with a checkered past.

“This nutjob needs to be stopped,” said Campos. “But we simply don’t have the resources. What are we supposed to do? Stake-out every overpass in town?”

APD’s biggest fear is that the phenomenon will continue to spread, and more people will be inspired by the killer’s method and goals. To date, there have been 62 recorded kitten tossings in the Austin area. While there has been no property damage, the mayor’s office is worried that eventually someone will get hurt.

“What if one of those kittens busted through somebody’s windshield?” said Martin Calloway, the mayor’s press secretary. “It could cause a major accident. Also, it would be totally surreal. AHHH! A kitten! And with all the burnouts in this town, we really have to worry about our citizen’s mental health.”

While the investigation has been put on hiatus, APD is still hopeful that the Kitten Tosser will be brought to justice.

“If this is some guy mad about people not spaying their cats, then they are going about things the wrong way,” said Campos. “They should get a bumper sticker.”

Over the years, the Kitten Tosser has kept at it. It has been impossible to pin down a pattern. There have been whole months without a tossing, and in other months there will be fifteen a week.

They caught a couple of frat guys once with a sack full of kittens in the back seat of their Explorer, but these dudes weren’t even in town when the tossing started. Who knows what they were going to do with those poor cats? They claimed it was for some fraternity ritual. Anyway, the tossing kept going, even after they were “reprimanded.”

“Hey! What the dizzy dancing nun is going on here?” shouted a familiar voice from across the clearing. It was Beer O’Leary, the Salamander Technologies security guard. He sounded like he had just awakened from a weekend bender. His words pumped out of his mouth like some sort of congestive slurry.

“It’s cats, Beer!” I shouted back from inside the dumpster. “They are protesting us!”

“We can’t have all this business -- no sir, no deal,” he shouted. “You want me to clear a path? I got a wheelbarrow in the utility shed that I can fill with bricks. I can plow through these little punks like a damn juggernaut if you want.”

“He’ll do it, too,” I said to Jack.

Jack hung his head. He slid out of his chair and threw open the dumpster door.

“ALRIGHT, ALRIGHT,” he shouted. “I’LL HELP YOU CATS WITH YOUR DIRTY DREAMS. But I’m not killing ANYBODY, no matter how awful they are. That I guarantee.”

The cats meowed in frantic unison.

“I don’t know,” said Jack. “You’ll get some kind of justice. That’s my only offer: take it or leave it. Otherwise, the fat, drunk Irishman goes at you with the garden hose and wheelbarrow.”

Beer scratched himself.

“You want me to spray these cats with the hose? Like hippies?” he asked.

Jack thumped the side of his nose and winked.

The cats soaked this up silently. A ball of visible electric static crawled across their backs like a stage diver at a rock concert and slammed into a tree, shaking loose pine needles and a very surprised grackle that took one look at the throng of cats and flew off hooting into the upper atmosphere with a speed that should have been studied by scientists.

“See, I knew you could speak cat,” I said.

“Ridiculous,” said Jack. “Even if I were able to parse their insane animal yowlings, I would have to ‘meow’ back to make myself understood. Plainly, that is not what I am doing. The very idea that I speak cat is a fantasy that you should really rid yourself of if you don’t want to be locked up by your peers and pumped full of tricky neuroleptics.”

I just smiled.

The cat that had originally disturbed our peace snaked her way through the crowd. She circled Jack three times and then bowed.

The cats began to disperse. They were so quick and so sly and so lithe! It was like watching sand sift through your fingers. They were gone almost immediately, like butter melting into a pancake. All they left was their stink, their fur, and an implicit threat that they would be back if we didn’t hold up our end of the deal.

Also, there was a shred of paper in the seat of one of our lawn chairs.

“I guess we’d better get started,” I said. Beer shuddered, muttered, and split.

Jack glared at me. He glared at the sky. He smashed his fists together, curled into a ball, and then exploded upward.

“Fine! We go! But we mustn’t make a habit out of this, Jones! Soon everyone will be knocking on our door asking for our help! That’s the sort of thing that makes a man into an icon; a soul into a corporation. We have too much life in us. Too many days left to squander joyfully. We can’t be forever serving our fellow creatures. Selfish meditation and solitude are vital to sustaining a reflective nature. The world isn’t changed by heroes gallivanting across the world righting wrongs and solving mysteries and generally making entertaining asses of themselves. That just changes money into novels, and novels into movies. The WORLD is changed by very wise people doing the correct thing at the perfect time. They are anonymous; they are crafty; and they are good to the very bedrock. They are good SOOO deep down that their roots hit lava.”

I pretended to be very interested in my thumb. This only made Jack more emphatic.

“The world makes some people great,” said Jack. “It makes them into great heaping slags that are whirled around by circumstance like galleons in a tornado. They crush nations, build empires, and force-feed innovation to the future. But the world also makes some people small. It makes them small like the central spoke of a wheel. The constellations buzz around them, dipping and diving at their every whim. These people are so small they are pivotal. We have to be pivotal; not great.”

“There’s nothing smaller than a kitten, Jack,” I said.

Jack threw his hands up in frustration and grabbed the piece of paper from the lawn chair.

“It’s just smears and scrawls,” said Jack. “But I think it’s directions. This means we are going to have to think like cats from here on out.”

“I’ve always wanted barbs on my cock,” I said.

“Why in the hell would you possibly want such an awful thing?” said Jack.

“I don’t know,” I said. “To open beer bottles and stuff.”

“You don’t get barbs on your cock,” said Jack.

“Cats have them, and if I were a cat, that’s all I would think about,” I said. “I would spend hours fiddling with my cock-barbs. Days.”

“All that obsessing would inevitably make you sleepy,” said Jack, closing one eye and frowning. “So you would have to scrunch up your eyes, if you were going to write a letter.”

Jack did this, holding the letter at arms length.

“But you’d be a cat, so you’d also be independent as hell. You wouldn’t give a damn about presentation or sense. Even if there are lives at stake.”

He wrinkled the paper up between his fingers.

“And you’d also be using claws, not fingers.”

He bent the piece of paper to the side.

“Aha!” said Jack.

I walked over and stood beside him. I scrunched up my eyes.

“It’s an address!” I shouted. “And not just any address, either.”

“Wow,” said Jack.

We looked at each other. Jack put the paper in his pocket, and then we were on our way.

It didn’t take us long to get where we were going.

We cut through the forest and then took a series of winding streets over to North Loop. We shunted down a lane whose pavement had been ripped into ribbons by an endless parade of corrupt construction projects, and then we cut through somebody’s overgrown backyard and fell headlong into one of Austin funkier pockets.

It was a shopping center. THE shopping center. There was a little vegan grocery store, an outdoor gelato café, a store that sold collectible shit from the fifties, an anarchist book hole, a dildo shoppe, and “Earnest,” the city’s most famous vintage clothing boutique. I think “Earnest” was originally intended to be an allusion to the Wilde play, except everybody pronounced it “ear nest.”

This was our unfortunate destination. As we slowly made our way out from the bracken of the adjacent neighborhood, fifteen twenty-year-old girls smoking appetite-suppressing cigarettes out in front of the clothing store narrowed their eyes like Cubans pulling switchblades and started judging the CRAP out of me and Jack.

When it came to steely glances, these guys were professionals. They had to be. This was where people came to be Young and Mighty. It was imperative to root out the cryptolame and the actually poor.

No square inch of space in this glowing shopping center was without some ironic statement of clever youthful detachment. It basically made you want to tear your clothes off and start furiously masturbating and singing commercial jingles until the police dragged you away. I’m not sure that everybody has this same response when confronted with the gilded, empty flotsam of the information age, but it was all I could do to keep my hands out of my pants. I gave my crotch a single hearty grab. I started whistling about hamburgers.

In a quiet corner of the parking lot, there was a hubcap gathering rust. Jack walked over to it and nudged it with the toe of his shoe.

“This means we are in the right place,” said Jack.

“How do you figure?”

“The hubcap is cat code. It means that this is a place of significance. If the hubcap is upside-down, that means it is a good place – free food, cool shade, dumb birds, slow squirrels, no dogs, maybe some crazy old lady who takes every stray she finds to the vet. But if the hubcap is rightside-up, like this one, it is a warning to stay away. Could be some nut with a pellet gun. Fast cars. Animal control. In this case…”

“The Kitten Tosser,” I said.

“Precisely,” said Jack.

“But which one is she?” I pondered, looking at all of the girls lined up in front of Earnest like penguins on an iceberg.

“We’ll probably have to go inside,” said Jack. “Truly, this is a test of courage and moral fiber. Don’t make an ass of yourself. I know how you get around young girls.”

“Not these kind of girls,” I said. “I imagine they are all sealed up down like Barbie dolls. It’s possible that they enjoy sex, but only as a way to express deep truth. Plus, I’m not moody enough to get them sufficiently frothy for a frictional tumble.”

“You are pretty moody,” said Jack.

“Trust me. I am not even in the same league as the emotionally disturbed and abusive men of their dreams. The only scars I have are from sports. The only self-inflicted pain I enjoy comes in a bottle and burns your throat, not your bicep or your testicles.”

“Well, try and pretend like you belong,” said Jack. “Think vintage.”

“Like old mayonnaise,” I said.

We puffed up our chests and walked the long gauntlet of silent frails to the glass doors. There were whispers behind us and sucking, gasping giggles. Ehhhhaaa-huhhhh-huhhh-huh.

As the doors swung shut, I felt something brush against my leg. It was a grey mouser. The muscle of the alley cat castes. Surly, stoic, and tough. He was missing an ear, and had a twisted scar that ran from his nose to his belly.

The cat looked up and blinked, evidently not impressed with either of us. I guess this was our appointed liaison to our feline employers.

Inside, it took a minute for our eyes to adjust. The store was nearly empty, which surprised me. I figured there would be more bustle. Instead, there were only a few customers, mainly middle-aged women, and maybe ten employees putting clothing on racks and folding things.

They seemed pretty absorbed with what they were doing, unlike the girls outside. Their style was to ignore everything but the clothes -- as opposed to the constant, unrelenting scrutiny of the welcoming committee.

The store was laid out in swoops and swatches of light and darkness. It was a chiaroscuro mess, and the whole place reminded me of a line of mottled cellulite right above a leather boot. Moldy clothes that cost more than my organs lined the walls on shower curtain rods, and were draped like corpses over display units and steel girders bent into hoops. Mannequins haunted us from the corners. Their blank faces made me want to grab a magic marker and do some cultural editing. This one would be Groucho Marx, that one would be Fu Manchu, and the glittery gold one would get a nosejob like a hatchet handle.

“What do you think, Jack?”

Jack shrugged.

“When you are trying to find the sourest pickle in the jar, you have to take a bite of every single one,” he said. “You can’t just drink the juice.”

“What the hell does that mean?” I asked.

Jack picked up the mouser, and slung him over his shoulder as if he were a water skin. The cat hissed, but what he could he do?

“We must be scientists,” said Jack.

He took off across the store, and I followed reluctantly. He headed for the changing rooms, where a sullen-looking mod was tagging things with some sort of pricing gun. She looked out from under her bangs as we approached. When she saw the cat, she gave us the faintest suggestion of a smirk. This smirk, this ghost of a facial expression, was to a smile as a matchbox car is to a battleship.

“Uh-oh,” she said quietly to herself with a pissy flip of her head. “Look what the cat dragged in.” We could hear her, obviously. This was exactly the sort of senseless, passive solipsism that made me go all stiff and throbbing with rage. I kept it together, though. For the mission. For the kittens.

“I wonder if you can help me,” said Jack diplomatically.

“No,” said the girl, laughing.

“Are you sure?” said Jack. “It appears as if you work here.”

The girl just rolled her eyes.

“I’m looking for somebody, you see. I’ve got this cat and I was supposed to give it to them.”

The girl blew air out of her mouth and made a vaguely threatening farting noise.

“I’m trying to give it a good home,” said Jack.

The girl shut her eyes and mumbled to herself. It sounded like she was quoting Gandhi.

“Do you know anybody here who would want this cat?” Jack asked again, patiently.

“I don’t know. Selena is always picking up strays,” said the girl, scraping hanger hooks aggressively against a clothing rod to make a harsh, metallic rasp that cut into your teeth like chewing on a bottle cap.

“Stray cats?” asked Jack.

“Yeah,” said the girl. “I GUESS.”

“Kittens?”

“I don’t know,” said the girl. “I’m not your secretary.”

“Does Selena work here?” I asked, trying to get into the game.

The girl narrowed her eyes at me and slung all her weight to one hip.

“Is she working here today?” asked Jack.

The girl looked like she was about to slap him. Instead, she cupped her hands over her mouth, arching her fingers backwards behind her hands in a way that looked painful.

“SELENA!” shouted the girl. “SELEEEE-NAH!”

“WHAT?” shouted somebody from the counter near the front door.

“Nothing,” said the girl quietly.

The girl smiled big for a second and then instantly resumed frowning. I don’t think her apparent momentary happiness was genuine.

“Thank you,” said Jack. “You have been very helpful.”

“Yeah, right,” said the girl with a wounded shriek. “You don’t have to be a jerk.”

Jack and I turned around slowly and headed back to the front of the store. Waves of hot resentment flowed over us from the little kit and a few of the other patrons. Being in this clothing store was like being a sixth-grader and having somebody pull your pants down in the cafeteria over and over again until the shock and despair made you sort of numb; sort of beaten into cheerfulness; the way a bell must feel on hanging day.

Selena had red hair in front and black hair in back. There was something hollow about her eyes, but no more hollow than any other fashion femme in town. There was dark eyeliner in a star pattern jutting from the corners of her eyes, creating massive crow’s feet on her placid, powdered cheeks. She was pretty. She certainly didn’t look like she killed kittens.

“Hello,” said Jack, holding the mouser up for inspection. “We brought you a cat.”

Selena frowned, and then pulled a pack of cigarettes from her bra.

“It’s too old, but it’s a good try,” she said. “Let’s have a smoke and I’ll tell you what I’m looking for.”

She fled the store with brisk determination, flipping her hand up in the air and giving the rest of the girls in Earnest the middle finger. There was one loud, mirthless laugh and a whole lot of puffs of fashionista “whatever.”

“You look familiar,” said Selena to me as soon as we were alone in the back parking lot and she had lit up a clove.

“I think we dated the same girl once,” I said. “You ever go to Veronica Jones’ Sexarium?”

“On occasion,” said Selena, her eyes twinkling.

“That probably where we’ve seen each other then,” I said. “I look different naked. Like a gasoline pump that’s been painted with arctic camouflage. Lot of knobs and squirty parts – all blazing white and self-service.”

Jack nudged me. No flirting. This chick kills kittens.

Selena took a look at the mouser in Jack’s hands.

“Who told you I was looking for cats?” asked Selena. “Was it Two-Fingers Hogan?”

“Yeah, Two-Fingers Hogan,” said Jack.

“Well he should have told you I wanted them younger,” said Selena. “This cat is ancient. His whiskers are too long.”

“So you only want kittens?” said Jack.

“That’s right,” said Selena.

“What do you do with them?” I asked.

“Does it matter?” said Selena with a huffy laugh. “A hundred dollars a tail will buy you bums a lot of popskull.”

“We aren’t homeless,” I said. “We live in a dumpster.”

“A big dumpster,” said Jack.

“With windows,” I said. “And electric lights.”

There was a squeak behind us. A swarthy, middle-aged man in Bermuda shorts, a suit jacket, a torn red tie, and what looked to be rather expensive Italian loafers (black socks) was pushing a shopping cart full of mewling kittens towards us.

“Objection!” said the man drunkenly. “My client demands due process.”

“See, THIS is what I’m looking for,” said Selena. “Look at these beauties. Sleek little heads. Absolutely no drag.”

“Two-Fingers Hogan eats steak tonight!” said the man.

“You’ve done well, Hogan,” said Selena. “Where’d you find them?”

“I plead the fifth,” said Hogan, turning to face us. “And plus there’s attorney client privilege. To think about.”

He poked me in the chest with a yellow, grizzled finger. His breath smelled like Parmesan cheese.

“I’m a lawyer,” he explained.

“Oh yeah?” I said. “Let me see your license.” He cackled and fished inside his Bermuda shorts. He brought out a filthy laminated card and presented it to me triumphantly. Inexplicably, perversely, insanely – the thing was valid! The license even said “Two-Fingers Hogan” in the name blank. It was either genuine, or a really damn good fake. Why would a person have such a thing?

“I see,” I said.

“I represent all the bums in town,” said Hogan. “That way, the state don’t gotta pay no public defender. I work for a chicken salad sandwich, most days.”

“Haven’t you guys met before?” said Selena suspiciously.

“I’ve never seen these suspects before in my life,” said Hogan, bored. “Your honor, I move to go take a piss.”

“So how did you know I was looking for cats then?” said Selena, curling her lower lip.

“Grab her!” said Jack. “Time for justice!”

As Two-Fingers Hogan looked on in blank fascination, I grabbed Selena and pinned her arms back. Jack took a kitten from Hogan’s basket and smacked her in the face with it.

The kitten meowed. Jack set the kitten back in the cart, where it hissed at him, hackles high.

Jack peered into her eyes.

“What the hell are you doing?” she shouted.

“Hmmm. That didn’t take,” said Jack, reaching for a different kitten. As Selena sputtered and choked and wriggled, Jack whacked her again with a golden manx. This time the kitten spazzed out like it was being electrocuted and so did Selena. It appeared as if they were both having a seizure. She went limp in my arms.

“There!” said Jack. “Now we’ll let the cats deal with her.”

Jack put the mouser in with the kittens, and the mouser grabbed the golden manx by the scruff of the neck, hopped deftly out of the cart, and took off down the street, dodging cars, and snaking between telephone polls.

“What just happened?” asked Two-Fingers Hogan.

“I switched their consciousnesses. Now the kitten is in her body,” said Jack.

“You can do that?” I said. “You just whack somebody with a cat and they trade places?”

“Only when it is cosmically expedient.”

“What if a cat just leaps at you while you are sleeping?”

“It’s been known to happen,” said Jack. “Many people are actually cats and don’t even know it. And vice versa. Ever have a cat steal your wallet and go to Vegas?”

“Not that I know of,” I said.

“Like most maladies, cat switching is most common with children and the elderly,” said Jack.

Selena was now licking the top of her nose and mewing. She tried to take her pants off, but she couldn’t work the belt. Eventually she gave up and began stalking a frog that had jumped out of the gutter. She made it halfway into the street before I was able to coax her back by waving a sweater at her.

“I plead insanity,” said Two-Fingers Hogan, muttering to himself. “But whose gonna pay me for these cats?”

“A man could get disbarred for selling cats without a permit,” said Jack.

“Really?” said Hogan suspiciously.

“Better take them back where you found them,” said Jack.

“A whole days work,” said Hogan, shuffling off. “Wasted.”

“Won’t people be able to tell that Selena is suddenly a cat? Won’t they haul her away to an insane asylum to be brutally mocked and abused by crooked guards? What about the poor kitten in her mind now? Won’t she stand out like a rat at a pony show?”

I looked over at Earnest through the window. Two girls were speaking animatedly to each other while putting clothes away. A third was watching them with one eye. Each kept looking at a fourth girl who could be considered in some universe to be slightly overweight. Every time this tomato bent down to pick up a dress, the girls laughed like loons. Meow.

A vintage boutique. It was just one big ball of yarn.

“No, I guess not. She’ll fit right in, won’t she? She’ll be fine.”