Have You Seen Marie? (5 page)

“May La Virgen look over you, honey bunnies, and your kitty cat, too.”

“Marie, Marie,” we shouted. But, inside, my heart wheezed,
“Mama, Mama.”

The sky let out a sigh and soured into a bruise. Wind whirled the flyers we had left in dry hot circles, and big, sad drops of rain began as if to say, “Despair, despair.”

“Oh, Marie,” Rosalind said out loud, “I miss you.”

I said nothing, but swallowed.

A woman named Beverly called out to us from the corner house on Crofton, the one with the five palm trees. “Hey, I think I’ve found your Marie!”

“Hallelujah and amen! Bless the Reverend Chavana,” Rosalind said.

But when we went to look, it was a big male cat with a white face and black body. Who knew there were so many tuxedo cats in the neighborhood?

“Aw, sweetie,” Beverly said, “I’m so sorry,” and hugged Rosalind. I felt like asking for a hug, too.

The evening smelled of skunk and jasmine. Rosalind let out a “Have mercy!” We walked and walked and said nothing, our long shadows dawdling behind us as if they were tired.

A house like a black eye, haunted with rusty vines, a pickup sagging beneath refrigerators. The door opened a crack and a voice behind a raggedy screen said, “Can’t help,” slamming the door before we could say what we came for.

A girl in a fiesta dress and sleeves of tattoos got out of her pickup and said she’d give us her landlord’s number so we could look in the back shed. “I have his phone number on a magnet on my fridge. I’ll be right back.”

She disappeared into the sad apartment house on South Presa, the one with a light-bulb always on, and the front and rear door open like a mountain tunnel. But she never came back, and we didn’t know which apartment door to knock on.

Someone sent us to the Cat Lady on Pereida Street across from the Family Dollar store, but there was no one at home except for eleven cats, who looked spooked when we asked about Marie.

On Wickes Street, my friend Craig came out in his plaid boxers, his pale chest sprouting white hairs, the blue light of the news in the living room, the smell of fried pork chops.

“I’m having my supper, sweetheart. I’ll come and help you look later.” But later came and went and he forgot.

We consulted with the wise neighbor-lady Blanca on Barbe Street.

“Well, I haven’t seen a cat, exactly, but I dreamed just this morning of a black iron fence. Does that mean anything to you?”

We shrugged and said thank you.