The Errand

(Author's note: I originally wrote this as an exercise in utilizing the flashback, but once I created the character I couldn't bring myself to send her to file 13.)

Maisie dug into her purse one last time to make sure she had her keys, and then glanced again at the knobs on the stove. Because they were old and somewhat worn, the knobs looked like they were pointing to the “high” setting, instead of “off”, so she waved her arm back and forth over the burners to be sure. Satisfied the house wouldn’t burn down in her absence, she turned in the direction of the garage door, and almost tripped over an extremely large black cat who had stolen into the kitchen silently.

“Lord have mercy!” Maisie exclaimed, as she did a little tap-dance to avoid stepping on the paws of the seemingly unconcerned feline. As she approached the door to the garage, the fat cat sprinted past her leg and pressed its nose into the crack where the door met the jam, flexing its hind legs in preparation for escape.

“Get back from there, Lucifer!” she scolded, probing with her right foot between the door and the cat’s chest to try to leverage the beast out of the way. Due to the fact that he had been de-clawed shortly after ruining the upholstery on the good couch, he slid rather easily across the heavily waxed floor. Once released, however, he scrabbled his way back to the door. Sighing heavily, Maisie set her purse down and bent over to pick up the potential escapee. With a grunt, she lifted her complaining burden to her ample breast, taking a few quick steps to regain her balance.

“I swanny, Lucifer. You’re just about the fattest cat that ever lived, do you know that?” After giving the cat an Eskimo kiss, Maisie carried him into the living room, placed him in his favorite chair, and then tucked an old baby blanket around him.

“Mommy’s got to run some errands, and she doesn’t need any help from a fat cat, so just go to sleep.” Plainly tired from his exertion, Lucifer’s eyelids began to slowly descend. Maisie made her way back to the kitchen; head turned slightly, in case the cat had been only acting sleepy. Even though he was nowhere in sight, Maisie only opened the garage door enough to squeeze through, closing the door on her dress in the process. After extricating the fabric and giving it a brief examination, she made her way to the driver’s door of her gargantuan Lincoln Continental and squeezed in behind the wheel.

Even though her husband Max had passed away almost ten years before, she could still smell a hint of cigar smoke coming off the upholstery. Max had loved the big old car. Every time he got behind the wheel and made the engine rumble into life, he would grin at Maisie and say, “Here we go!” As a rush of memories flashed through her mind—she and Max driving to the Outer Banks or weaving along the Blue Ridge Parkway—tears began to drip onto the patent leather of her purse, sounding unnaturally loud in the confines of the comfortable car.

After digging a Kleenex out of her purse and patting her face a little, Maisie reached into an outside pocket, extracted her keys and, with a whispered “please Lord”, pumped the gas three times and turned the ignition key.

While the Lincoln’s engine was in prime condition and purred like a big, predatory cat, sometimes the battery had a little trouble sparking it into action. At least that’s what her next-door neighbor Walter said the last time he gave her a jump start. He also asked her to “please back the car into the garage from now on”, because the last time he had to push the car out (so the jumper cables could reach), he wrenched his back something awful.

Maisie smiled in relief as the motor spurted and started thrumming. Turning on her headlights, she realized the garage door was still down. Sighing at herself, she climbed out of the car, walked the few steps to the kitchen door where the switch was located, and pushed the button. As the motor mounted on the ceiling whined in protest, Maisie looked up at it and immediately started feeling dizzy. Leaning against the car for support, she made her way back to the driver’s seat and shut the door. As she watched the sunlight increasingly brighten the musty garage as the door slowly raised, Maisie contemplated just staying home. She felt better after getting back in the car, but she was worried she may have been exposed to the exhaust vapors for too long in the closed garage. A friend of hers at church had told her a story about a man who had accidentally died the same way. Well, he had been drinking while he was working on a car, or so the story went. Maisie didn’t drink or work on cars, so she started to feel a little better.

Maisie had never really enjoyed driving, even when she was young. She and Max would go on car trips, sometimes as far as Florida or Oklahoma, and he would offer to let her drive frequently, even though she knew it was one of his favorite pastimes. Max thought she was letting him drive because he liked to, but, in reality, driving made her neck sore with anxiety. It was all she could do to keep going for an hour or two, and then she was exhausted. Plus, when she was driving, she missed enjoying all the scenery. Back then there weren’t that many cars on the road, and total strangers would wave at each other when they passed by, like they were kindred spirits. Maisie liked to count the people who waved back at her, each one making her happier as the miles rolled by.

Being a widow gave her little choice, so she had gotten used to driving, but she still didn’t like it. These days there were so many cars on the road it was unbelievable. Just making a trip to the store was a dangerous journey. The way people drove nowadays, it was a wonder they didn’t run into each other constantly. And the young people with their hopped-up stereos, the rhythmic booming loud enough to rattle her windows.

With relief, Maisie pulled into the parking lot of the grocery store, and found a reasonably close parking place. She always parked close to one of the shopping cart collection points, so she wouldn’t have to push the empty one too far when her shopping was done. The nice bag boys always offered to load her car if she wanted to drive up, but she had never been the type of person who could abide such personal service. She also liked to get a cart from outside and push it into the store. If everybody did that, the poor boys wouldn’t have to push the long train of carts back inside. This was her reasoning for the act; but another part of her brain knew she found comfort leaning on the cart as she walked, helping her to keep her balance and forward momentum.

As the door whooshed open to beckon her into the store, a cool blast of air washed over her as she hurried through the opening. While she had never witnessed anyone getting pinched by the premature closing of an automatic door, she always worried that she would be the first. Stranger things had happened in this fully automated world, and she didn’t trust anything that did not have an actual person operating it. The bathroom at her church had an automatic flushing system on the commodes, and Maise hated lifting up her dress to do her business with some mechanical eye watching to see when she was done.

Max had had a totally opposite viewpoint about scientific achievements and modern conveniences. Every time some new-fangled invention popped up in one of his Popular Mechanics magazines, he would sit her down at the kitchen table and explain it to her in detail. Knowing how much he cared about such things, Maisie would always pay rapt attention during these sessions, even if she thought the new invention was useless or impractical. Max even fancied himself an amateur inventor; the garage was still littered with complicated and incomprehensible objects assembled with metal, plastic and rubber. The first time Walter had entered her garage to hunt down a rat that had terrified Lucifer; he ended up spending two hours in a failed effort to figure out what Max had been up to— finally promising to bring an engineer friend by to take a look. That had been almost three years ago, and the engineer friend had never been brought, so Maisie determined to bring the subject up again the next time she needed a jump.

Maisie made her way past the commotion at the check-out registers, and headed into the produce section. Very seldom did she actually buy any vegetables, because she and her church friends had developed an intricate network for growing and sharing enough vegetables to feed an army. Her specialties were Beefsteak tomatoes and squash. She didn’t really care too much for squash but, for some reason, her garden produced what her friends claimed was “The best squash this side of Squash Town”. Only after she asked was Maisie advised that this was an imaginary town, since no town could actually claim the title as long as Maisie’s garden kept producing.

Shaking her head at the poor little squashes on display, Maisie pushed her cart over to a table stacked with little vacuum-packed baskets of strawberries. As she lifted one up to scrutinize the ripe but rather small fruits, an image of her daughter Vicki, at age eleven, flashed vividly into her mind.

The late spring of 1965 it was, sometime towards the end of May. The kids had just a few days of school left, with no more homework to do, so Maisie took Vicki and her little brother Jeremy out to the country one Saturday morning. The Friday paper had an article about local strawberry farmers in it, and Maisie recognized one farmer and his wife who sporadically attended the Methodist church she and Max took the kids to every Sunday. Leaving Max to mow the lawn or tinker in the garage, she piled the kids into the Lincoln and headed off.

The unwritten rule in picking strawberries is: you can eat as many as you want in the rows, but you have to pay for whatever you take with you. This revelation caused eight-year-old Jeremy to laugh with glee as he trotted towards the cultivated rows, little baskets lined up on each arm. As children always seem to do, Vicki and Jeremy began a contest to see who could find the largest strawberry. The quickly established rules stated that the person who found the larger strawberry got to eat the smaller one, regardless of whoever had originally found it. Even though Maisie refused to take part, whenever she came across a potential King Strawberry replacement, she would stealthily motion to the child who had just been upstaged.

The image that flashed into her mind many years later was Vicki triumphantly cramming a huge red strawberry into her mouth, eyes sparkling as the juices ran down her chin. The last time Maisie saw her daughter alive was at her bedside, at age thirty three, the night before leukemia finally took her away forever.

Hands shaking, vision blurred from tears, Maisie tried to replace the basket of fruit on the display table, dropping them on the floor in the process.

“I’ve got them, ma’am.” A clerk materialized out of nowhere, smiling as he set the strawberries back with the others.

“I’m so sorry, young man,” Maisie sniffed, patting the boy on the arm. “I really should buy them, since I dropped them like that.”

“Nah. It’s good for them. Softens ‘em up, if you know what I mean. Sometimes I just drop them myself, so you actually helped me out some.”

“You’re a card, do you know that?”

“Yep. I’m a Jack of Hearts, so you better watch out, pretty lady.”

Maisie tittered as she wheeled away, her heartache temporarily forgotten. As she was about to leave the haphazardly placed tables of the produce department, she spotted some huge watermelons resting on a bed of ice against the wall. As she lightly thumped one with her knuckles, she tried to remember the last time she had tasted the refreshing fruit. The previous summer her church had had a homecoming barbecue, and Maisie’s best friend Alice had demanded that she try a slice of seedless watermelon that Alice’s husband had bought at the Farmer’s Market up near Asheville. Although she would never say anything, Maisie had found the fruit rather bland, but she told Alice it was very tasty.

As her hand rested on the chilling fruit, Maisie recalled another hot day, this one from when she was a little girl of eight or so, when she and her family visited relatives in Rome, Georgia.

Some great aunt had died, her name forever lost in Maisie’s memory, and scores of relatives had come together to pay her homage. Right after the funeral, everybody congregated on an ancestral farm to spend the day together, knowing the odds were against a future gathering of such magnitude.

At first, Maisie was bored to death. The more the adults enjoyed themselves, the more she wished she was back home in North Carolina, taking advantage of the waning summer vacation. To make matters worse, her mom had pulled a tick off Maisie’s left sock, so now she wasn’t allowed to wander anywhere near the woods. Since it was barely noon, if she was reading the sun correctly, that meant several more hours before they would even think about leaving. Maisie had tried to motivate her father by asking how long the car trip back home would take, but her dad had merely laughed and said, “You leave that to me, kitten.”

Crunching gravel indicated yet another group of adults who would pat her head, pinch her cheek, and ask her how well she was doing in school. Studiously looking away from the new arrivals and hoping she would be overlooked, Maisie was not surprised when her father yelled for her.

“Maisie! Come here, I want you to meet some folks!”

Up to this point, Maisie had little patience for boys in general, and actively hated several of them enough to wish them bodily harm. She had never “liked” any of them, even though she had received more than her share of love notes in school. As she trudged desultorily toward the waiting group, however, she noticed that not all of them were adults. There hadn’t been any kids her age at the funeral or the farm, so these people must have been late in arriving. Maisie could feel her face flushing as she approached the group, so she took a deep breath and tried not to look at the boy, who had to be no more than a year or so older than her, with deep blue eyes and sandy blond hair.

People spoke to Maisie and she answered in turn, but the only thing she remembered from the conversation was, “This is Edward, but everybody calls him Eddie.”

The rest of the day was a blur. She and Eddie barely spoke to each other at all, but every time Maisie looked at him, which was constantly, he was also looking at her. Looking back now, she could only assume that everybody at the picnic was aware of the love spell that had descended upon the two of them. Before he had arrived, the girl had been nearly immobile with boredom: after his arrival, however, she laughed and blushed and gobbled her food like she was starving. When the homemade ice cream and watermelon wedges were dished out, Eddie used the opportunity to bring her some and sit beside her. She had never tasted anything so good in her life. She almost cried when her dad said it was time to go. She did cry, silently, in the back seat of the car, after her mother explained that Eddie was her first cousin, and they could never get married.

The chill seeping into her hand brought Maisie back to the present, so she blew into her closed fist to warm it up, and began pushing her cart again. Soon she found herself standing in front of the microwave popcorn section, trying to decide if she should get the Movie Theater flavored type, or the Kettle Corn. She liked them both, but she also liked to alternate the flavors. As she was trying to remember which one she bought the last time, she began to wonder how popcorn was discovered in the first place. She laughed as she pictured a scantily clad early American Indian, shivering in the lee of a glacier, as he tossed a dried ear of corn onto a fire for warmth. Then she remembered where she had first heard that funny story.

Shortly before her seventeenth birthday, she and two of her friends had gone to see a movie at the Paramount Theater in town. It was only a few weeks after the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor, but it seemed that soldiers and sailors were everywhere. Maisie had already scolded Patsy and Charlotte twice about flirting with the guys in uniform. At least three girls she knew at school were in the family way, and there was no way she was going to lose her virginity to some guy she would probably never see again. Besides, she had plans to go to nursing school when she graduated, and Maisie had no desire to try to maintain a relationship at this stage in her life. Charlotte was a senior and on the A honor roll, which almost guaranteed a scholarship to State, so she didn’t argue too much when Maisie dragged her away from a couple of sailors. Patsy, however, was going to be a problem. Even though she was only a junior, she looked every bit of twenty one, her golden locks drawing eyes down to her tight sweater. By the time they sat down in the theater, both sailors were competing heavily for her attention, the friction building by the minute. Knowing the probable outcome was a fistfight, Maisie excused herself to go and get some popcorn. Relieved that Charlotte got up to follow her, Maisie tried to get Patsy’s attention but was studiously ignored, so the two girls made their way up the dark aisle.

“I told you this would happen,” Maisie complained. “Just like the Homecoming game. She does this on purpose, I swear.”

“I’m sorry. She begged me to let her come. Plus, she’s spending the night with me, so I couldn’t just leave her there at my house.” Charlotte explained.

After buying a bag of popcorn, Maisie sat down on a bench in the lobby, methodically munching the popcorn with a dark look on her face. After a few minutes of silence, Charlotte reluctantly headed back to keep an eye on Patsy, leaving Maisie to fume by herself. Jolted out of her reverie by the sudden displacement of air in the vinyl cushion she was sitting on, Maisie gave an icy look to the man who had rudely plopped down beside her.

“Hey there, gorgeous. My name is Max.” Upon closer inspection, he appeared to be in an Army uniform, but the terms “spit and polish” apparently weren’t in his vocabulary. He was also in need of a shave, and when he reached into the inner pocket of his jacket, pulled out a pint of whisky and offered it to her, Maisie just stared at him until he shrugged and took a drink.

“You gonna eat that popcorn, beautiful? I bet you don’t know how that stuff was discovered, do you?”

Shaking her head, Maisie tossed a box of Kettle Corn into her cart and moved along. Determined to give the entire candy section a pass, she began to pick up her pace a little. Dr. Janelski, normally very polite, had scolded Maisie severely for gaining seven pounds within a six month period. Even worse, he had followed her to the receptionist’s window and told the bespectacled Mrs. Gibson to make an appointment for Maisie with a dietary specialist. Of course, there were at least seven people in the waiting room that overheard, not to mention the fact that Ellie Gibson was the organist at Maisie’s church, with a deserved reputation as a gossiper.

Face burning from the memory, Maisie was startled when her cart came to an abrupt halt, the left front wheel skidding on some floor debris. Sighing in frustration, she backed the cart a little to try to go around whatever it was, but the cart stopped going backwards, too. Walking around to the front of the cart, Maise began to push it back and forth, until the object became visible. Knocking it off the wheel with the toe of her shoe, she realized the culprit was a little candy corn, in the shape of an Indian teepee. Looking to her left at the bottom of the candy shelf, she noticed a bag of them which had been accidentally cut open by a stock boy. Seeing that several more of the candies were about to escape, she bent over to stand the bag up again; in the process, one of them fell into the palm of her hand. She popped the candy into her mouth without thinking, and then slowly looked around to see if she had been seen. As the candy began to dissolve releasing its flavor, Maise smiled as another memory slowly came back to her.

As Halloween approached, the now ten-year-old Jeremy was forced to perform favors for his sister in return for her promise to accompany he and his friend Greg trick-or-treating on Halloween night. In addition to taking her place when it was her turn to do the dishes, Jeremy had to sit still while she applied and removed make-up on his face for two hours the night before Halloween. The boy had complained loudly when first told of this outrage, but when Maisie offered to take Jeremy and his friend herself, he readily agreed to his sister’s demand. The beauty session abruptly ended when max snuck up and snapped a few pictures of his gaudily painted son.

Although Vicki seemed put out when the two left the next evening, by the time they returned at 9:30 she was giggling like a little girl. She had even procured a Cat Woman mask and her own bag of goodies somewhere along the way, and she and Jeremy sat up comparing, trading and eating candy until they were shooed off to bed at almost midnight. Unable to go to sleep from all the sugar they had consumed, Jeremy had snuck into Vicki’s room where they told each other ghost stories. After Max failed to return from his mission to scold them, Maisie snuck down the hallway and observed her husband sitting on the floor between his children, face lit up with a flashlight as he told them something that had them both listening intently, mouths open in concentration.

“Excuse me! Just need to get by!” A young mother smiled at Maisie as she squeezed her cart past. A little bald baby riding in the cart laughed at something in the air above his head, and a quiet little blonde-haired girl followed dutifully behind her mother as they made their way down the aisle. As Maisie stared after them, the little girl stole a look back, her tear-stained face the picture of sadness. Maisie wondered if the little girl had done something wrong and had been punished. She hoped so, for that would mean the sadness would be only temporary. Maisie found herself once again on the verge of tears, this time for a child she didn’t even know.

Trying to shake off the feeling, she decided to get her shopping done and get on home. She had planned on baking a chicken casserole for her pastor, since his wife had just come home from having hip replacement surgery. In years past Maisie would have baked an entire chicken and spent an hour selecting morsels for the dish. Here lately she just didn’t have the energy, so she just bought a package of chicken breasts and some Campbell’s soup, with some Bisquick over the top. She had to admit it was pretty good that way, and a lot faster.

After making her way back to the meat section, Maisie began searching for a suitable package of breasts. She really only needed 3 or 4 good sized ones, but, all she could find were the kind that came already marinated with some flavor, like lemon butter or barbecue. Moving along a little ways, she came across some huge packages with what seemed like dozens of chicken legs in them. All at once Maisie could smell roasting chicken, hamburgers and hot dogs, and hear the annoying yet pleasing sound of children screaming as they chased each other.

A few times each summer, Max would get it into his head to have a cook-out. He claimed it was done to give her a break from the drudgery of cooking all the time, but Maise knew he loved the occasions. He always began the planning by saying he was only going to invite a few people, and he would write the names down on a list taped to the refrigerator. The list grew daily, and so did the amount of food that would be needed. As was tradition in the neighborhood, all of the invitees would bring something, whether it was baked beans, potato salad, chips, drinks, etc.

The morning of the cook-out, Max would steal away to an unknown, distant grocery store to purchase the ingredients for his ultra-secret barbecue sauce. Upon his return, he would shoo everybody (including Maisie) out of the kitchen until it was fully mixed and unrecognizable. The meat was always ready at 5:30 p.m., but you really didn’t need a clock because the luscious smell pervaded the entire neighborhood. On one of these occasions Vicki counted fifty seven people in attendance, including three on-duty policemen, one mailman, and two bicycle-riding, black-tie-wearing, young male evangelists. As soon as it was dark enough, all of the pre-teen children (and some of the older ones) would play flashlight tag until the adults ran out of gossip and headed home.

The last time Max attended a cook-out was three weeks after a sudden stroke had left him nearly comatose. Maisie could only occasionally coax him into eating a few morsels, and he didn’t bat an eye when a dog drug the paper plate right off his lap and proceeded to lick the baked beans off his shoe. Once, when a group of children ran around him for a few seconds, he seemed to be trying to smile, and then tears started dripping out of his eyes when the children ran off to play elsewhere. He died of pneumonia on Thanksgiving Day of that year, leaving Maisie all alone for the first time in her life.

Tears flowing freely, Maisie realized someone was speaking to her.

“Hon, are you okay?” A heavyset lady with a blood-splattered apron was leaning over Maise’s cart, genuine concern creasing her face.

“Oh no, I’m okay,” Maisie sniffed, trying to smile. “Just wool-gathering here, and got to thinking about my poor Max. He passed away about ten years ago. He would have danced a jig if he’d seen all these chicken legs just waiting for the grill.”

“Lord, you did scare me. I saw you holding your chest and struggling to breathe, and I thought you was having a heart attack. It happens more than you would think.”

“Thanks for your concern. I’ll be fine.”

Burning with embarrassment, Maisie headed down the first aisle she came to, dabbing her nose with a tissue she had pulled from her purse with shaking hands. Stopping for a second to collect herself, Maisie noticed she was standing in front of a section with several different flavors of ready-to-eat pudding. After a few moments of scanning, she picked up a four-pack of butterscotch and put it into her cart. She liked butterscotch better than the others, and then she remembered who had got her to try it for the first time.

A few years after Max had passed away, Jeremy and his wife Amy decided to go to Europe on a second honeymoon. From the tone of a few previous phone calls, it was apparent to Maisie they were not getting along, and probably hadn’t been for some time. The couple lived in California with their twelve-year-old daughter Brittany, who Maisie had only met once when they visited one Christmas when the girl was only four. When Jeremy hesitantly asked if Maisie would watch their daughter for two weeks, she happily agreed. She even suggested she meet them at the airport to keep them from having to rent a car, so the plan was set.

Knowing the traffic would be horrible, Maisie left early enough to not be late. As it was, she barely made it in time. After a brief round of hugs, she said goodbye to a son who had developed a touch of grey in the eight years since she had seen him, and walked beside a dark-haired, silent and brooding granddaughter back to the Lincoln. After failing in her few efforts to strike up a conversation, Maisie finally asked the girl what was wrong.

“Nothing. Everything,” the girl huffed. “My teeth are killing me. I just got these stupid braces on a few weeks ago, and every time I eat something it hurts. Plus, my mom and dad fight over the stupidest things, and they don’t even care anymore if I’m around when they do it. Plus, they’re going to Europe, and I have to stay with my grandma in stupid North Carolina.”

Maisie was struck speechless by the young girl’s outburst. She had assumed the girl would be pleasant and respectful, and they would get along grandly for the brief time they had together. Maisie thought the girl might be a little nervous with the situation, and would need only a nudge or two to brighten her up, but it was apparent she had sorely miscalculated. In reality it was Maisie who was uncomfortable, her sweaty palms clutching the steering wheel while her mind examined and rejected numerous statements before they reached her lips. It wasn’t really the words her granddaughter spoke that gripped her so; it was the tone of their delivery. The hatred and contempt in her voice was palpable, turning the very air they were breathing into something almost repulsive.

When Maisie’s children were small they would occasionally have temper tantrums, which abruptly came to a halt when Maisie popped them on their behind with a wooden spoon, which she kept for that sole purpose. All Max had to do was start to unfasten his belt, and whatever the problem was went away in the blink of a teary eye. Brittany was definitely too old for that and, besides, Maisie had no idea where her old wood spoon was.

Unable to think of anything to say, Maisie just drove in silence, feeling more like a chauffer than a grandmother. Realizing she was already wishing the two weeks were over, Maisie experienced a feeling of loneliness so profound it was almost unbearable. As they pulled into the driveway, Maisie finally broke the silence that had lasted for over an hour.

“Well, we’re here,” Maisie sighed with resignation.

“Thank God,” Brittany exclaimed, squirming in her seat. “My left butt cheek is totally asleep, and my right one is drowsy.”

Maisie burst out laughing, and the sudden release of tension swept away most of the dark thoughts that had pervaded her mind. “I’m going to have to write that down.”

Even though the ice had cracked a little, it took time and a tiny black kitten to break it up. Maisie had been browsing at a yard sale the previous Saturday, and had walked away with a slightly used iron skillet, an omnibus of Arthur Conan Doyle mysteries, and a free kitten. She had read half the book, used the skillet twice, and had contemplated giving the kitten away at least thirty times.

“What’s his name?” Brittany asked, as she sat on the couch rubbing noses with the trembling creature.

“Well, I was going to call him Max after your grandfather, but that seems a little disrespectful. He sure is a little devil. Maybe I’ll call him that.”

“Lucifer.”

“What was that?”

“You should call him Lucifer. Look at his face.” The girl turned the kitten around and, for the first time that day, smiled in happiness.

“I believe you’re right. Lucifer he is.” Maisie smiled back.

As the hours and days progressed, the three became closer and closer. Sympathetic to her granddaughter’s discomfort, Maisie stocked up on orthodontia-friendly foods, including the butterscotch pudding that Brittany adored. They ate scrambled eggs, several different flavors of oatmeal, chicken and dumplings, and immeasurable volumes of butterscotch pudding.

They say that time is linear; it’s our perception of the passing of time that is at issue. The closer Maisie and Brittany became, the faster time passed, until it seemed to be racing towards their separation. The night before Brittany’s parents were due back from Europe, they stayed up until four o-clock in the morning; watching old movies with their feet touching under a blanket, Lucifer coiled up in one of the folds.

Brittany, now a sophomore at UCLA, called Maisie a few times a year, always begging her grandma to come out to California to visit, but Maisie had yet to make the trip.

Back at home, Maisie was determined to put away her groceries and feed Lucifer before resting her aching legs. As she opened the cabinet to put away the cat’s food, she was amazed to see what had to be over a hundred little cans already in the cabinet. Shaking her head in wonder, she started opening one of the three cans she would feed to her already fat cat. By the time she had opened the second one, Lucifer casually entered the kitchen, stretching as he walked. The big cat hunched over the bowl and began to eat vigorously, bolting the little chunks as if he hadn’t eaten in days.

“Lucifer, you need to go on a diet. Maybe I’ll take you with me to the dietician tomorrow.” After dropping the empty cans into the trash, Maisie continued, “We should go visit Brittany in California. Lord, I haven’t been out of town in months, much less out of the state. What do you think, Lucifer? Do you miss Brittany? I know you were just a tiny little thing when she was here all those years ago, but I bet you would remember her if you saw her.”

Lucifer stopped eating, sat up straight and began to meow loudly. Before she could talk herself out of it, Maisie picked up the phone and started dialing.