Love Saves the Day

His father sighs and then he sets the papers and photos down on the little table. “I never really understood that job you had. I could see it was making you money, but it never seemed like real work to me. But this is something I understand. Helping people who want to keep their homes, I understand. And all this work you’ve done”—he gestures at the papers—“this is something you can look at and touch and hold in your hands at the end of the day. I’m sure all those people you’re calling now think of you differently because you’re coming to them doing work, not asking for work.”

“It’d be nice to think so.” Josh’s smile is lopsided.

“Trust me,” his father says. “People always respect a man who works hard and saves his money.”

“It’s tough to save money when you aren’t making any.”

“The money will come.” Josh’s father says it very firmly. “It wasn’t always easy for your mother and me, you know. She had to get that job at the jewelry counter so we could send you and your sister to college. But we worked hard and, one way or another, the money always came.”

Abbie and Robert come running back with a glass for Josh’s father. As he drinks from it, Robert says, “Hey, where’s Prudence, Uncle Josh?”

“I think she’s hanging out under the desk,” Josh says, bending over to check. His sideways eyes look into mine. “Prudence, do you want to come out and say hello to my father?”

I don’t, really. But Josh is (finally) trying to introduce me the right way, which means that not coming out would be bad manners.

“Well, hello there, Prudence.” Josh’s father pats my head awkwardly, and I’m relieved when it seems like that’s all he’s going to attempt to do. “Remember Sammy?” he asks Josh. “You and your sister were crazy about that dog. He could chase cats all day.”

I continue to stand there and let Josh’s father pat my head, even though I can’t help liking him a little less for having one of those wretched dogs that thinks it’s fun to chase cats just because they’re not smart enough to think of anything sensible to do. Josh’s father doesn’t know as much about cats as I do about humans, because he says, “I think Prudence likes her Pop-pop.”

Josh laughs out loud. “So Prudence is your granddaughter now?”

“She’s the closest thing you and Laura have given me so far.” His father sounds stern again.

Josh’s smile shrinks. “We’re working on it, Dad.”

“I may be an old man, Josh,” his father tells him. “But I can still remember that if you think of it as work, you’re doing it wrong.”

Josh is in a good mood after his father leaves. He walks around the apartment, humming music under his breath and snapping his fingers. He goes into Home Office and bangs away on the cat bed/keyboard for a little while, but I can tell he has too much energy to sit still for long. Pretty soon I hear what sounds like heavy things being moved around in Home Office’s closet, and then Josh comes into my room, carrying a big stack of black disks. I can tell by their scent that these were never Sarah’s—he must have had more black disks than I realized, living inside the closet of Home Office all this time.

Josh sits cross-legged and starts spreading out the black disks all over the floor, arranging and then rearranging them in ways that must make sense to him, although I can’t tell what the pattern is. I jump on top of one of the Sarah-boxes, to get out of his way, and soon the whole floor is colorful with the cardboard holders for black disks. Then he scooches over to the boxes of Sarah’s black disks, and starts pulling out some of those and putting them on the floor, looking at the word-writing on each of them and then deciding which ones should go where.

Sarah used to do this sometimes, take out all her black disks and spread them over the floors of our apartment. She was always coming up with new ways to arrange them on their shelves—by what year they came out, or by things she called “genre” or “influence.” Once—this is the last way she did it while we lived together—she put them all in what she said was alphabetical order. I can understand Josh wanting to do the same thing with his own black disks, but it’s making me nervous to see Sarah’s all spread out this way without her being here to supervise. Cautiously, I climb out of the Sarah-box I’ve been lying in and try to step into the small spaces between the cardboard covers on my way out, but there aren’t any, really. Sarah would never let me walk on her black disks! The covers feel smooth and slippery under the pads of my feet, but I’m afraid to use my claws to try and get more traction.

While I’m trying to find a good way out, I hear Laura come through the front door. “Josh?” she calls out.

“Up here,” he calls back.

The sound of the feet-shoes Laura wears to work comes clicking up the wooden stairs. Her face seems to draw inward when she gets to the doorway of my room and sees what Josh is doing. “What’s all this?”