He says, “Good morning.”

“Nooo.” She snuggles down into the covers and pulls them over her head. “Go away.”

Travis puts his arm under the pillow and lays his head back down.

Peeking out from beneath the covers, Melissa giggles. “I woke up at about four this morning and was halfway tempted to leave, but I didn’t know where the hell I was.”

Travis makes a face. “You were gonna’ ditch me?”

Melissa nods fecitiously, the comforter wrapped around her like a shawl. Then she smiles more sweetly and says, “I’m not used to just going home with complete strangers.”

“Oh, I see. I’m, like, totally used to that.”

“Oh really?”

“Oh yeah. I’m a slut.”

Melissa bats her hand out for a moment, long enough to make contact with Travis’s shoulder, and then slides back underneath the covers.

“What? I said I’m a slut. How can you possibly take offense?”

“You were implying that I was one.”

“I was not.”

“I was kidding anyway.” Melissa giggles again, and then brings her head up out from under the covers for a moment to listen more closely to a very strange sound emanating from the living room. Travis hears it too, and before Melissa can ask, he replies, “No, no. Hide, hide.” He slides underneath the comforter, and without really thinking about it, Melissa does the same.

“What are we hiding from?” she asks the darkness between their noses.

Travis can feel her breath, and replies in the general direction of the question, the Screamewling Fuzzfart. He can feel Absynthe leap up on the bed, make his way across the mattress, little bastard, walking up Travis’s leg. After a moment, Absynthe crosses the bed and tests his weight on Melissa’s thighs.

“Oh my god!” Melissa hollers and squiggles around in the bed, shifting up against Travis. She had thought Travis was kidding about something coming for them.

With all the sudden movement, Absynthe takes his cue to jump off the bed. He sits on the floor, and starts screaming his lungs out.

“Relax,” says Travis. “I was just kidding around. It’s just my roomate’s cat.”

Melissa looks around the bed for the cat, and hears it screaming from the floor. She pulls herself over the side to look at it. “I thought it was a rat or something.” As soon as she looks at the kitten though, the cat screams at her. “Aw…” Melissa replies, “I think we hurt it.”

“No, you don’t understand,” Travis says. “He does that every morning.”

Melissa looks perplexed as Absynthe screams again. She sits up in the bed and looks at Travis. “Are you serious?”

“For ten minutes, you watch. It’s a God damn ritual or something.”

By the time Absynthe screams a third time, Melissa catches on. “Oh my God. That’s awful.” She looks at the kitten as it claws its way back up to the top of the bed, sits down and lets out a disheartening, “Eeeeeeeeeeyyyyyyyaaaa-aaahhhhhhhhh!”

“Aw…” Melissa’s sympathy’s are renewed. “It just wants attention.” Travis just rolls his eyes as she reaches out to pick the kitten up. It promptly falls on its back and claws vigrously at the approaching hand with all four paws. Melissa pulls her hand back quickly. “Good Lord.”

“Told ya’.”

Absynthe rolls on his side and stretches lazily, using all of his relaxed muscles to push forth yet another scream, followed by two more quiet ones, a little unsure of something, directed at the opposite end of the bed. Travis sits up, bows his legs out underneath the comforter, picks Absynthe up despite protest, and folds his legs and comforter around the kitten. Absynthe screams from inside the soft bear trap, but the noise is pleasantly muffled.

“I only do this when I have guests or a hangover,” Travis reassures Melissa, who is already laughing. “What?” Travis asks.

“I’ve never heard anything like that.”

Travis rolls his eyes. “I’ve only been having to put up with it lately because Nick’s gone. He usually gets up before I do.”

“What did you do to it?”

“Nothing! I swear! It just started doing it one morning, and now it always does it.”

“Probably because you fed it, and now it thinks it has to do that to get fed.”

“No. Even when you give him food he won’t stop.”

“Really?”

“Really. As soon as he hears that someone’s awake, he starts, and then about ten minutes later, he stops.”

Melissa laughs again.

“It’s not funny,” Travis says desperately.

“It’s hysterical.”

“It’s punishment.”

“For what?”

“I wish I knew. I would fix it. I swear I would.”

Melissa shrugs.

“Watch this,” Travis says. He puts his hands on either side of the clam shell trap that he’s made with the comforter, and waits for Absynthe to scream again. As soon as the cat does, Travis pushes it back and forth, making the scream vibrate like an engine.

“Stop. Stop it.”

“He doesn’t mind,” Travis replies.

“That’s terrible. Quit it.” The request sounds genuine the second time, and so Travis stops in mid-shake.

“He really doesn’t mind,” he says, and opens his legs, revealing a much enthused Absynthe on his back, trying to claw his way out of the cave. Picking the cat up underneath the forearms, Travis lifts Absynthe whose body stretches down lazily beneath him, long and sleek. Absynthe blankly looks around the room with wide eyes and then screams at the wall near the bed. “See?” Travis offers. Melissa looks at the cat distastefully at first, but then, it’s a kitten and she pets him. Absynthe lets her this time.

Travis puts the kitten down and after accepting a few more friendly scratches, Absynthe walks out of the room without a sound.

“Is he done?” Melissa asks.

“Yup. That’s it. Next show’s tomorrow morning.” For a moment, he wants to ask her if she’ll be there, but then they both sit upright, facing the doorway, confused. Neither has any idea of what they are supposed to now. “You want some breakfast?” Travis asks.

Melissa hesitates, feeling that maybe she should just leave.

Seeing her reaction, Travis says simply, “It was just sleeping. It’s just breakfast.”

“All right,” Melissa replies and she starts to get up.

“No, no. My treat. Stay in bed and sleep some more. I’ll just be ten minutes.”

Facing downtown, buildings that sigh by leaning on each other—you know, old age—on the right side of College Square, Blue Sky coffeehouse sits, its rustic awning leaning over the sidewalk, oxidized iron dripping when it rains. At almost all times, when Travis can’t find Ian by cell phone, it can be assumed that he is hard at work on something in the basement at Blue Sky. Travis can see in his mind’s eye, entering the shop, turning left and walking down the loud iron-rimmed stairs, turning right and leaning down on the landing to peer out at all the tables spread out across the concrete basement floor. On the left side of a fountain in the center of the room, Ian would be at “his” table (though only Travis referred to it as that) scribbling away at letters or papers, or looking at slides, or sifting through stacks of photographs.

Today, though he just steps into the main room where a large corkboard sits to the right, every inch covered in stapled announcements. It is equivalent of geographic strata—dig deep enough through the hundred tattered flyers, thumb tacks and staples and maybe you’ll unearth an R.E.M. or Widespread Panic poster—and one of the first one’s he spots is unfortunately a show he can not attend. It reads:

“See Travis drink. See Travis play. Travis likes to drink and play. Friday August 4th, The Washington Street Tavern.”

Ian and Travis had written it up and typeset it on Ian’s computer a while back, with blank space to fill in the date and place with a Sharpie, and Nick had suggested a favorite painting of his by Picasso, a guitarist. Travis smiles at the bill. The face of the guitarist is long and distorted and seems possessed by the instrument he holds upright in thin bony hands, eyes closed. Though the guitar player in the painting looks nothing like him, Travis can see he own face in cubist pieces. Looking over the other bills and posters, Travis recognizes a few—doesn’t recognize most of them. A lot of shows had already passed. But after looking over the bulletin board for several minutes, Travis can’t find anything that interests him. He hits the street.

The lightposts prove to be more helpful. More recent flyers show up there, including two more copies of Travis’s poster. One other poster stands out, and Travis decides this is the band to see. Not because of the funny name, Elf Power, but because they’re playing the Georgia Theater, an old cinema house on the corner of Clayton and Lumpkin, which meant they must be halfway decent. Their press photo is goofy, too. They’re all smiling and laughing at something off-camera. Travis much prefers it to the oh-so-typical, pensive staring in different directions to the horizon.

The show doesn’t start until ten, though, so Travis figures he has an hour or two to kill. He realizes the possibilities are horribly endless. He can get a cup of coffee and watch people. He can get a drink and watch people. Or, if he wants to, he can just sit right there on the sidewalk outside in the summer evening and watch people.

He opts to wander aimlessly while a memory of Daphne drifts into the vacancy in his mind. The two of them had sat at the table by the window of the Athen’s coffeehouse watching the world going by. It was their freshman year.

“What do you want, Travis?”

Travis was surprised by the question. In those days, Travis and Dizzy had been content with sitting in coffeehouses discussing the inane, the political, the metaphysical even, but it was never too personal, never too serious. The question was evidence of changes. The future, as distant as it still was, life beyond the boundaries of their then-new little town, was slowly coming into focus.

“What do I want?” Travis had repeated. “I want what I’ve got, really.”

Daphne disapproved, so he added a postscript, “and a motorcycle.”

“What do you want?” he asked Dizzy.

She wrapped her strawberry blonde hair around her finger and gazed out the window, too. “I don’t think I know just yet.” Then she turned to him and scrunched her face, dissatisfied with her answer. Glamorously, she posed, “I wanna’ be famous.” Spreading her arms out widely, like a Scarlet, she said, “I just want them to love me.”

Back in the past, the pair had moved away from the conversation like gazelle shifting lightly away from an unseen predator, joking about it, too. A predator, Travis thinks, sipping his beer in August, 1995, that is still out there somewhere—and now he knows it’s a man in a gray suit, with obsidian eyes. He was the man who took your ticket for the ride. Somewhere amongst screaming and kicking purple, orange, and green horses there is the hint of fear that something terrible is coming for them. Maybe it has already come, arrived on the day of their birth. It is not just that they cannot move freely that terrifies them, though that much is hard to bare; it is that they cannot run away from him, and they know he’s coming for them once they’re tired and worn out. Travis knows, because he feels it too, even though he isn’t on the ride. Just then, an old lyric comes back to him— “Life’s a carousel / we’re all chained to the movement.” And it dawns on him that he’s kidding himself. He looks around, not so much at the bar, as around at the world, the people and things in it. He gets up and walks over to the window and looks out at the street. There it was, the ride. The whole thing was a ride.

He walks back to the bar where he finds Phil standing, unoccupied. Phil says, “Hurry up and order another so I can have something to do.”

“That’s all it is, isn’t it?” Travis asks, wistful. “We all just want something to do.”

“Jesus,” Phil says. “I didn’t think you’d get all deep on me.”

“Sorry.”

“Naw. I keed! I keed! I expect Travis Fleeting to be a philosophical guy.”

Travis is confused now. He knows Phil, but not outside of Mean Mike’s. “How’d you know my last name?”

“You think all I do is work here? I’ve seen you play at DT’s.”

“No shit?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, you’ll have to excuse me, man. I thought all you ever did was work here.”

Phil smiles. “How’re you doin’?”

“You wanna’ know the truth?”

“Yeah, actually. I got time.”

“I feel great. Really great.” Travis pauses. “But… I don’t know if I’m just bored, or if I should stop being bored, or… I don’t know.”

“Well, I guess you’ll have to get over that.”

“It’s just that nobody seems to want to be happy, and I guess I am, and I guess it ticks me off. It’s kind of hard to be happy when it seems like so few other people are.”

“You know what?” And Phil leans on the bar, eyeing Travis’s half-full beer, “Another beer will solve that problem.”

“Here’s to that,” Travis raises his glass and Phil toasts it with his meaty fist.

“I don’t know,” Phil sighs. “It’s cliché man, but I say don’t sweat it.”

Travis nods, but really, sweat what? Fame? Money? He had neither. The future? The music? How could he ever worry about that unless he just stopped playing? How would that ever happen? It was as unthinkable as amputating a limb. I want what I’ve got. He still doesn’t feel assured. Phil has wandered off again, so Travis goes back to the table by the window.

Something new, something new. Travis travels a loop to the very thought that had sent him out into the damp evening. He sips his beer, his Paps Blue Ribbon, then looks at it and laughs. Apparently, his curiosity only went so far. But then, beer was beer and yet there were a thousand kinds. And surely the first didn’t taste like the last. After years of playing his guitar, he’d learned to create sounds that before, he could not have even distinguished, let alone generate. This is what he wants: the comfort of finding elegance in the minutia, in the absolute infinity found between every inch, every second. Let someone else find the next big thing. He sits quietly and finishes his beer, finally free of nuisance thoughts.

And then, he orders another.

When he wakes up, his clock is blinking—the result of a power outage. Lazily, Travis rolls over on his other side, shoving Absynthe over. The cat just stretches its body into a long arc and yawns. But after a few minutes of yellow eyes blinking in the gray light, and a few smacks of the tongue, the screaming begins. Absynthe sits up straight, almost looking proud, and releases a high-pitched howl.

“Oh Jesus,” Travis says and jams his head under the pillow. His voice muffled, he yells at the cat, “Shut up!” And he just hides. He can never be sure if the cries are like a wolf’s howl in despair or the joy of a cock’s crow. Travis peeks his head out from underneath the pillow only to find that Absynthe is right there. As soon as he looks, the kitten is in his face, screaming with kitten breath. Aghast, Travis jams his head back under the pillow and pulls it down on himself.

Finally, Travis sits up and picks up the cat underneath its forelegs and holds it out at a distance like a soiled baby. Absynthe absently looks at Travis and around the room, his screaming unabated. “Money?” Travis asks. “Do you want money? Just say it. It’s yours. As much as you want!”

“Eeeeeeeeeeyyyyyyyaaaaaaahhhhhhhhh!”

Absynthe’s baby teeth show white from underneath his black furry lips that pull back as his jaw opens wide and his tongue rolls out its full length.

“Eeeeeeeeeeyyyyyyyaaaaaaahhhhhhhhh!”

“Christ. You’re impossible.” Travis drops the cat to the floor where it immediately dashes into the living room ahead of Travis, suspecting breakfast, its screams dropping in pitch with a Doppler effect as it goes. “I thought this was Nick’s curse. What the hell did I do to deserve this?” he asks out loud and makes his way to the kitchen where Absynthe sits patiently beneath the sink, screaming. “Shut up,” Travis says without emotion as he enters the kitchen.

Reaching in to the cabinet underneath the sink, Travis fetches cat food. Absynthe sniffs it, and sits on his haunches, screaming at the food now. “It’s just a phase,” Travis says, imitating Nick’s motherliness. He puts his hands on his face and dances in front of Absynthe. “Oh look!” he cries, “The cat’s screaming again. How cuuuuute!” He stands up straight and watches Absynthe rear his head back and yowl with increased volume. “It better just be a fucking phase. Or your dead.”

As Travis pours the last of his milk on some cereal though, Absynthe stops his racket and begins eating quietly, purring. Travis shakes his head in disbelief of the quiet and takes his cereal into the living room where the television reveals nothing but static on all fifty-two channels. He’s unsurprised. Rain frequently knocked out the cable. He turns and opens the window shades and pulls the armchair over in front of the world. Eating his breakfast, he watches his neighbors scurry to work through the rain. They run with umbrellas and newspapers over their heads as the sky above them thunders. On occasion Travis gleefully spies an act of folly as one of his neighbors soaks their shoe, stumbling into a deep puddle or tripping in a hurry to get to their car. Their mistakes, of course, illicit obnoxious laughs from Travis in his velvet throne, his mouth full of oats and milk. The whole of industrial society is his comedy hour.

For a while the boys had assumed that something was wrong with the thing. Nick took it to the veterinary school on campus a couple of times to consult the students there. He only ever received a patient reply that the cat was healthy, and was probably “just vocal.” No matter how many times he pedantically no-you-just-don’t-understand explained that “vocal” simply wasn’t the word for it, he got no sympathy. No one could believe that such a small creature could cause such a din until they were witness to it. Instead, he simply decided that the kitten represented some sort of karmic retribution for some forgotten sin he’d committed (or a remembered one for that matter), and the roommates had no other choice but to peacefully live with the clearly insane animal as best they could, hoping the epileptic throat fits were just a phase.

“Hey dude,” Ian says.

“Hey,” Nick replies curtly, out of breath. He steps lightly over to the couch, sneaking on his toes, and sits down next to Ian, looking nervous still.

“What’s up?” Travis asks, smiling.

“Yeah, what the hell’s with you?” John asks.

“Nothin’.”

Ian looks over at Nick beside him and asks, “What’s in the bag?”

“Nothin’.” Nick cradles the bag closer.

Ian, Travis and John all lean their attention. “Nothin’ huh?” Ian asks.

Nick just nods, looking more nervous now that they’re all paying attention to him. He tries to whistle for a moment, and gives John a polite wave from the wrist—perfectly innocent, nothing to see here.

“Why don’cha open it up then—” Travis asks.

“If there’s nothin’ in it…” Ian finishes for him.

“Okay,” Nick replies, suddenly casual. Opening the bag, Nick sits watching it in awe. For a moment nothing happens. Nick says, “C’mere,” in a high-pitched voice, precisely the way people talk to children and small animals. Travis, Ian and John all simultaneously wonder if they are being duped, staring at Nick’s bag. But after a moment, a tiny fuzzy black head pokes out of the bag and mews.

“What the hell?” Travis asks.

Ian leans over on the couch and pets the kitten as it steps out from the confines of the bag.

“Hey there,” he says, scratching the kitten’s ears.

John looks on apprehensively as Nick picks the little kitten up and holds it out towards him.

“See?”

“Are you planning on keeping that here?” John asks.

“Well… yeah.”

“I’m allergic to cats, dumbass.”

Nick looks surprised. “Really?”

John rolls his eyes.

“Shit.” Nick looks at the kitten in his hands disappointedly. “I didn’t know that.”

“That’s all right,” John says.

“Well, how bad?” Nick asks.

“Eh. Just keep it out of my room. We’ll see.” John rolls over again to face the back of the love seat.

“Well, I could take him back—or let my parents hang on to him for little while.”

“No,” John says to the cushions. “It’s got short hair. I’ll be all right.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, we’ll keep it out of your room and vacuum a lot.”

“Just be sure you keep the litter box clean.”

“I’ll keep it in my bathroom,” Nick offers.

Travis reaches out and grabs the animal from Nick, pulling it back to the armchair with him, and holding the kitten close to his chest. It cuddles up to him. “My kitty,” he says childishly.

“You can hold it,” Nick says, playing the father figure.

“My! Kitty!” Travis argues, sinking back further into the armchair. The kitten is now visibly disinterested in being in such close proximity, and begins to squeeze itself from out of Travis’s grasp. He lets it, and it begins exploring his lap, walking out to his cliff-sized shins to peer over the edge. All the boys are equally mesmerized by the animal, its faltering gait.

“What inspired you to go get a cat?”

Nick rubs his face. “I went over to Mark’s to borrow his pasteboard, and they had found all these kittens living behind their garage.” Nick shrugs. “He asked me if I wanted one.” After a moment, Nick leans over and picks the cat up. “Don’t hog him,” he says. “Let John have a turn,” he offers politely, shoving the kitten towards John.

“Get—” John starts angrily.

Nick pulls the cat away and smiles, happy to have something new to annoy John with. John points menacingly in reply and whispers with his eyes squinted, “Daddy giveth and Daddy taketh away.”

At this, Nick holds the kitten close to him and bolts out of the living room into his own bedroom, slamming the door loudly behind him.

Ian looks questioningly to Travis for an explanation.

Travis just shrugs. “You probably don’t want to know,” he says as the sound of things being thrown around in Nick’s room emanate into the hall. From the living room, they could hear

Nick yelling, “Ah! The voices! Make the voices stop!”

The door to Nick’s room opens, and the kitten comes running through the living room at full speed, its yellow eyes wide, its ears flattened back against its head. Running between Ian and Travis, it dashes into the kitchen. Travis laughs out loud as Nick comes back into the room, looking haggard.

“Feel better?” John asks, smiling.

Nick sits down on the couch. “Where’d he go?”

Travis and Ian simultaneously point over their shoulders toward the kitchen.

“Aw, poor guy. I didn’t mean to scare him.”

“Having a kitten here is like raising a kid in a dysfunctional family times three,” Travis offers.

“True,” Nick admits.

“Get me my bottle, bitch!” John says in his perverted uncle’s voice into the couch.

“Now, honey,” Nick says in a feminine southern accent, “I—I think you’ve had enough tonight.”

“Don’t tell me when I’ve had enough, woman!”

“Hey, Dad,” Travis adds. “Why don’t you try getting a job instead of suckin’ on a whiskey bottle?”

“You shut your mouth. If I get up off this couch—”

“What?” Travis asks. “What’re you gonna’ do, you worthless shit?”

“That’s it. Liza!” John says, speaking calmly to Nick and sitting up, “get me my bat.”

“I’ll take you on, old man!” Travis says, frightened but stern.

“Boys, now,” Nick stutters, “just calm down—this ain’t Christian.”

“Shut up, bitch!”

“Don’t tell her ta’ shut up again!” Travis yells.

Ian nods. “Oh yeah. That cat’ll be fine.”