Love Saves the Day

I was nervous at first about eating my breakfast where Josh and Laura eat theirs, because of what happened that night of the Seder dinner. But it turns out that it isn’t so bad. I’ve learned that if I gently remind them—by standing next to the kitchen counter and meowing—to let me have little bits of milk or eggs or the cheese they melt on top of bread in the toaster, I’m more likely to get to try new things. Sarah says my meows are irresistible. Actually, what she says is that some cats have meows that are almost musical, but I, sadly, am not one of them. I have a voice like a Lower East Side fishmonger, according to Sarah, and nobody can listen to that for too long before giving in. I think Sarah was afraid I would be offended whenever she called me a fishmonger, because she would always scoop me up in her arms and kiss my nose and say, Don’t worry, Prudence. I love your lovely atonal meows. I don’t know why she thought I’d be insulted, though. I’m not exactly sure what a fishmonger is, but it sounds like a wonderful thing to be.

Josh goes over to the counter now to get some more coffee, and when I meow at him he also pours a little of his coffee cream into my Prudence-bowl to mix with my breakfast. Just as I suspected would happen, Laura hardly mixes any of my old food in anymore with the “organic” food Josh buys for me. But I’m not as nervous about eating as I was that first week, and mixing the “organic” food with coffee cream makes it taste much better. Still, I use all the toes on my right paw to tilt my Prudence-bowl and spill just a little cream onto the blue rubber mat with all the cat drawings, because I hate that stupid thing.

Josh returns to the table and sits down again across from Laura, who drinks her coffee black with no cream or even sugar. I follow and rub my head against his ankle, as a reward for good behavior, and note with satisfaction that along with my scent I’ve left a few strands of my fur on the bottom of his jean leg.

“So what’s on the agenda for today?” Laura asks him.

“The usual,” Josh replies. “Phone calls, emails. And I guess it’s time for me to break the news to Abe and Zelda.”

Laura makes a sympathy-face. “Yikes.”

Josh shrugs. “I don’t think it’ll be so bad. I’ve been working since I was fifteen, and this is the first job I’ve ever lost. They’ll probably tell me I was overdue.” He sips from his coffee mug. “And I have a call with that headhunter who tried to recruit me a couple years back.”

Sarah and Anise used to talk about losing jobs. Back in The Old Days, they had something called Day Jobs, which was where they worked to get money in between doing something else called Gigs. Sarah had lots of Day Jobs, like selling fruit at a farmer’s market that traveled all over the city and made Sarah show up for work before the sun was even up, which was especially hard when Sarah’d had a Gig that lasted all night. She also waited for tables and clerked at a record store. Anise only had one Day Job, as a bartender, but she ended up having to do that same job in lots of different places. The reason they changed Day Jobs so much was because sometimes Gigs happened at the same time as Day Jobs, and if they had to choose which one to go to, Sarah and Anise always picked Gigs—even though lots of times Gigs didn’t even pay them. That’s why Sarah and Anise were Flat Broke almost all the time. Sarah finally stopped doing Day Jobs and Gigs when Laura was three and Sarah’s husband went away. That’s when she knew she really had to get serious, so she opened her own record store. By then, Anise was famous and getting Gigs all the time. She didn’t have to worry about Day Jobs after that.

It sounded like Sarah and Anise spent more time losing jobs than keeping them, so if it’s true that this is the first time Josh ever lost a job then he really has been lucky.

Laura reaches across the table to take Josh’s hand, and even though there’s a slight crease in her forehead from tension, she smiles. “Something’ll turn up,” she says softly.

“I’m not worried.” Josh is built with eyes that are turned just a little bit down and a mouth that’s turned just a little bit up, so it always looks like he’s right on the verge of being happy and also right on the verge of being sad. Now he turns the corners of his mouth all the way up until he’s smiling. But his eyes don’t smile at all.