How The Cream Soup Spoon Ends

 

A cheer that could only be heard in their heads arose to the skies and down to the visceral parts of all that is.

Peter momentarily lost his grey pallor and glowed pink.

“Living by the directives is hard, but rewarding in the end”.

Celine came across the room to Karen.

She put her hands out; Karen put hers out and grasped each other.

They chanted in unison.

"I am he as you are he, as you are me and we are all together

“See how they run like pigs from a gun, see how they fly;

I'm crying"

“But not crying for Peter”.

And another silent cheer shattered the multiverse.

And all was good for a moment.

There were, in that instance, a muskrat, five cats and three humans.

Whoop, Whoop, Whoop echoed out into the soundless fastness of soundlessness.

But all was good, just then.

They were in the living room strewn across the two couches that sat at right angles to the fireplace.

The fire had died down.

It was late enough for the room to be dark except for the dying glow of the fire.

It was, however, late enough in the spring for the sound of frogs to be penetrating the windows and sound hopping and sound flowing into the room.

The cats – all three - had their ears pointed toward the sound.

Cats like frogs.

Luke got up and added a couple of chunks of wood to the dying embers.

Alfie was lying snuggled close to Karen.

Karen had little glass of sweet vermouth with a cherry in it.

That drink sat on the Chinese dope bed that Karen and Peter had used for a coffee table.

Rose was stretched out atop the couch on the back cushion closest to the fire.  She stretched with a purr and an extension of all ten toes and claws to their maximum reach.

“I do wish someone would brush me”.

“OK.  Let’s go get brushed.” 

Peter got up and headed to the bathroom where Rosie had already taken a position on the ledge of the linen closet above the drawer where Rosie’s brushes were kept.

Jolene broke the human silence.

“It seems as if he is still here”.

“In most ways he is”.

Bert was just coming into the room from the gloom of his corner over by the region of his grave.

“And really, that’s the best one can expect out of life. To be remembered in such a way that one continues to cling to whatever it is that got us all here in the first place.”

“Yeah but …” Luke started.

“No yeah buts; he might as well be real; you can go see him brushing Rosie right now; she knows he’s gone, but she’s getting brushed anyway; that’s the thing that cats know that humans don’t; it’s called staying around so you can still brush Rosie.”

“Yeah but …

“You better have something to say; I’m not going to interrupt and bail you out again”.

“I guess I was going to say that it’s easy for you guys.  You were all there through all the things and times and, what is it –instances - you have told us about.  You all know each other in a way that creatures usually don’t know each other”.

“That’s fair”.

Cinq had been lying on the couch across from Karen staring at the distended toes of his left front paw and claws through all of this.

“We still have the memorial to do”.

“Paris”?

“Paris”.

Karen took a sip.

“We worked that all out yesterday”.

The years that had passed since “yesterday” had been forgotten.

“It’s a simple sunrise ritual with the wind at our backs in the middle of Pont Neuf in October”.

“With Poles Apart playing”.

Luke went to the dining island to get his drink.

“My Beatspill will be fully charged. But, seriously, it seems as if somebody should say something”.

Peter came back with Rose slung in front of him through his two arms joined.  She rode with her head up, held at her middle by Peter’s arms looking like a chubby furry serpent.

Or a queen.

“I wish someone would brush me; I heard what Luke said about he seems like he’s here, but he isn’t – here, so I obviously need brushing; I haven’t been brushed today; by anybody real”.

Cinq spoke.

“Maybe not.  But maybe. If maybe, how about this?”

 “Imagine yourself in the ultimate dream.  It is ultimate for its strangeness.  It is ultimate for its familiarity. It is ultimate for its feeling of urgency and proximity.  A series of sights and sounds have flown past your view and you have almost lost yourself into each as it has passed.  But you have remained immobile and unmoved by the visions.

“And then everything folds backwards upon itself.  The time of a clock that appears from nowhere is at hyper speed even as it stands still, even as its hands pass one another intermittently backwards, even as it blurs, even as it disappears. A sense of mortality blends with the realization of boundaries. The dream is not a dream.  The dream is reality.  And reality is a dream.  And the boundaries fade and opportunities lost and achievements unattained loom and overwhelm. Whatever it had been that one had ever thought that one might be or might have been is becoming a neatly wrapped package; it is becoming a sleekly designed capsule.  And then some infinite unseen and unseeable facility or force compresses it all – the hopes, the dreams, the illusions, the achievements, the misses and near misses, the loves, the hates, the intentions good and the attentions bad - into an expendable portion and inserts it into infinity.”

“And then think about the mirrors, the matrixes, the scutes and the slime of time across and intersected with all of that: the mélange of what is, or could be”.

Cinq jumped to the floor and went to Peter’s feet and sat.

“That pretty well sums it up”.

Peter nodded.

 

Alfie, Rose and Cinq were gathered by the counter where Peter had prepared their breakfasts for so many years.

They all had that same hopeful look they always had had; but Peter was gone; and they knew it; but they had gathered anyway.  It was rather like a wake.

Karen appeared just as they were about to disperse.

“I’m sorry Peter isn’t here; I’ll feed you; just give me a minute”.

She started to move toward the cabinet with the cat merry-go-round and the cases of fussy cat.

But she stopped abruptly.

On the counter where the cat bowls would soon be placed was one of the basket weave hand towels. 

On it was a single shiny cream soup spoon.

The cats heard Karen suppress a sob.

Cinq turned toward the direction that Karen was looking and saw what she saw and kept it to himself.

“Do you think humans have souls”? He asked.

Alfie snuggled over to Cinq and gave him a few licks of brotherly cleansing.

“Souls – the human word for ‘here-now-this-time-that-time’ transmute; they don’t identify with specifics. Why did you ask that”?

“Because Peter is over in the corner.

“He’s over there by the window that looks out on Bert’s grave.

“That’s where we last saw him, when he jumped into that thing that was over there.”

Rose chirped.

“I haven’t been brushed yet today”.

Peter walked over and said “let’s get brushed, Rosie”.

And they both went to the cat tree that doubled as a brushing station.

Rose jumped up through the access portal to the top.

That's the brushing station.

When the brushing was finished Rose jumped down and went back looking hopeful about Karen dispensing the morning’s ration.

But Alfie ran over to Peter.

He jumped up into the top of the cat tree.

The brushing station.

He sat and put his paws on Peter’s shoulders.

“That’s great writing, Peter.

“I like what you’ve done since you’ve been gone”.

“Yeah, and we are headed out again, imminently”