Amos woke with a start. The sound of the gun in his dream was echoed by the storm outside his apartment. He turned on the lamp at the bedside and rolled over. The clock said 9:15 pm. He’d overslept. No matter, she was late again anyway. On the chair across the room Mata Hari lifted her head and stared. The cat’s eyes glowed green with reflected lamplight. She stood, arched into a feline stretch and yawned. Amos likewise stood up and stretched. He ran his hand through his short dark hair, watching the lightning dance across the clouds outside the window. The smell of rain was heavy like sleep. He remembered a Tom Waits quote: “The sky turned black and bruised and we had months of heavy rain.” He moved to the window and shut it, then went to the kitchen. Mata Hari hopped down from the chair and followed.

In an effort to shake the heavy feeling in his head, Amos started a pot of coffee. After a trip to the bathroom to piss, he went to the living room and turned on the stereo. “My Funny Valentine” by Miles Davis drifted into the apartment against a backdrop of rain, punctuated by thunder. Mata Hari jumped up to a perch upon one of the speakers. Amos wandered back to the kitchen, searching through the refrigerator. No use trying to go out in this weather, he thought, I’ll have to fix dinner. He glanced at the clock. Maybe he should try to call her, see when she’d get there. Instead he took out the cutting board, grabbed some green onions from the fridge, and pulled a bag of frozen salad shrimp from the freezer. He set a pot of water to boiling, then sat down in the living room and lit a cigarette.

Amos met Kaiya just a month after moving into his new apartment. One of his co-workers had talked him into going to an office party one Friday after work.

“C’mon, Amos, you need to get out and live a little. You’re like a woman that can’t get a date, living alone with a cat. It’ll drive you crazy if you let it. Come out with the rest of us and have a few drinks.” The guy wouldn’t take no for an answer.

He’d gone, figuring that he could use a drink and he could always disappear later. He had more than one drink, speaking when spoken to, most of the time just sitting there. He ran into Kaiya, literally, on the way out of the men’s room. She stumbled back into the wall and her drink splashed onto his shirt.

“Sorry,” they had both said at the same time. Then they laughed at the same time. “My fault,” they said together. Then they laughed again. She invited him back to her table and they stayed until the bar closed, talking. They had quite a bit in common. They had lived within six miles of one another in Oregon as kids. Both watched old black and white movies. They liked the same types of music, but often argued over who was better—Beethoven or Liszt, John or Paul, Louis Armstrong or Miles Davis—neither one giving ground on their opinions. Within three months she’d moved into the apartment with him. They spent every evening together from then on, sometimes going out to dinner and movies, other times staying in and listening to music, having sex, watching life go by on the balcony of the apartment. Life had gone on this way for a year, with Amos working his job as a manager of Rising Sun records, a vintage vinyl and hard-to-find import shop, and Kaiya working at an investment firm.

About a month ago she’d clinched a new job, one that put her on the fast track to success, as she put it, so long as she kept herself open to opportunities. It had been nice at first. Her starting pay was higher than her old job and they had money to buy new things for the apartment. They got a new stereo, cookware and knives for the kitchen, and expensive, comfortable sheets for the bed. Then she’d started going to business dinners, stayed late for management meetings, and other things. She’d invited him along to some of the dinners, but it just wasn’t his scene, talking business with people in power suits drinking highballs. So he stayed home, kept Mata Hari company, and waited.

He wandered back into the kitchen and found the water boiling. He grabbed a package of ramen from the cupboard and placed it in the pot. Then he took a knife from the block and began to chop the onions. Mata Hari had followed him in. She hopped with silent grace onto the counter by the phone, watching the movements of the knife with mild interest, sniffing at the package of shrimp with a bit more.

Thunder grumbled warningly across the sky outside. Amos heard her key turning in the lock. Kaiya came in making noises of relief. She set her umbrella down in the hall and began to remove her coat.

“Hey hon,” she called into the living room.

“In here.”

He heard her heels clicking down the hall toward the kitchen and smiled. Although she dressed in conservative business wear for work, all her shoes had very high heels. Her hooker shoes, he called them.

Kaiya came into the kitchen, her shiny black hair piled on her head, gracefully messy from under the hood of her raincoat. Her suit was untouched by the downpour. Amos admired her well-shaped calves, accented by the high heels of her hooker shoes, and her cute toes peeping through the open fronts.

“You’re late.” He slid the onions off the cutting board into the water with the back of the knife.

She picked up the bag of shrimp from the counter. Mata Hari sniffed, looked offended, and leapt from the counter, stalking towards the bathroom.

“You didn’t say you were cooking a gourmet meal tonight. If I had known, I would have only had salad at the restaurant.” Kaiya giggled. She looked a bit flushed. Amos figured she’d had too much wine with dinner. She opened the package and helpfully dumped the contents into the pot. Amos closed his eyes and breathed in deeply. Over the smell of cooking ramen, he could smell her. She smelled of temples, of jasmine and sandalwood. He imagined a street of noodle shops, with neon signs, leading to a Buddhist temple on a hill, all crammed into their little kitchen. His fantasy was intruded upon by an out of place odor, something unfamiliar and faintly masculine. Suddenly all the noodle shops on the street were full of businessmen.

Kaiya wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him. He could taste the wine. He opened his eyes and looked into her heart-shaped face, at her bright root beer eyes and small, shapely nose.

“You haven’t said hi to me yet,” she said accusingly.

“Hi,” he said. Then he kissed her again. He half-led, half-dragged her out of the kitchen and into the living room. Clothes were dropped along the way. He let go of her long enough to open the button and zipper of his jeans. She had now stripped of everything but a black lace bra, pantyhose and shoes, took the time to change the CD on the stereo. As he led her out onto the balcony, into the storm, strains of Mendelssohn’s Scottish symphony mixed with the sounds of the rain. As he removed her bra, the wind gusted, tearing it from his hand and carrying it away. He tore open her pantyhose and entered her from behind as she stood leaning over the railing. His fingertips dug into her slim hips. Her small white breasts rested on the cold metal, her moans and cries carried away by the wind, drowned out by thunder. The taint on her was washed away by the rain. Each thrust pushed her forward a little over the edge, over the lights of the street below. Amos imagined this going on for days on end. Him inside her like this while the rains filled up the gulf below. His orgasm came quickly, but not before she had one of her own. Then the sudden passion was gone, quenched by the storm.

Kaiya made her way back inside, dripping rainwater. Amos followed her. She found her cigarettes and lit one. She took a deep drag, holding in the smoke. As she exhaled she fixed Amos with a strange look. Her mouth opened as if to say something important. All that came out was: “I’m going to take a shower”. She pulled off her shoes and the ruined hose and padded off toward the bathroom.

Amos sat down on the couch and closed his eyes. He heard the bathroom door close and the water start running. A hissing from the kitchen reminded him of the ramen, left to boil over on the stove. He didn’t bother to attend to it. It felt like a stone lodged in his chest.

“She’s sleeping with someone else. I can’t live with that. I need to do something.” He opened his eyes and looked around.

Mata Hari sat upon a speaker, leg thrown over her head like a dancer as she preened herself.

“Then you’ll have to kill her,” said the cat in a matter-of-fact tone.

A good read, nicely structured. It felt warm, inviting - I just knew something strange had to happen to change that.

I look forward to seeing where the tale is going.

enticing...it has a nice flow.

pretty good bro. keep it coming, i anticipate the rest of the story

Thanks for the comments. I'm not sure how soon I'll be able to get back to this...I've got one more writing assignment in that class to do in a completely different style, and two final papers to bang out. It'll be sitting on the back burner at least a couple of weeks, at any rate.