by Jay HOLLEY

It’s late Au­gust; the tem­per­a­ture has topped 100 de­grees every day of the week. Oliv­er looks across the bal­cony at Mr. Lit­tle­jeans, a snow-pawed runt of a cat that walked in­to his Easy-Bake Liv­ing Room three days ago as he and his room­mate were eat­ing cold cut sand­wich­es. His cell phone’s in his Levis, revving and chirp­ing. “Who is it, Lit­tle­jeans?,” he says to the cat as if speak­ing to a mo­ron, “you think it’s Sylvie out­side with that tu­na she promised to bring over? Who’d’y­ou think it is?” He flips open the phone and sees ‘GREEN, SYLVIE’ in nine-pix­el-high let­ters on the LCD dis­play. “Guess who it is, Lit­tle­jeans, guess who’s call­ing from out­side,” he says while scratch­ing the black fur be­tween the cat’s ears.

He leaves the bot­tle of Pol­ish Spring min­er­al wa­ter and a smol­der­ing Dun­hill on the card ta­ble when he gets up to meet Sylvie at the front door. They chat in the kitchen as he hunt for a can open­er, then they come out to the bal­cony — she has­n’t met the cat yet and she wants to de­liv­er his tu­na fish Personally.

Filed under Fiction on September 5th, 2003

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