“Great,” she muttered to herself, grabbing a beer as Niles sat on the window sill over the sink.
“So now I’ve got to get up at eight-thirty.
Can you believe that? ”
She tried to figure out what Niles was staring at. From I this section of Dilworth, West would have no reminders of the city she protected were it not for the top thirty stories of US Bank rising brightly above West’s unfinished fence. Niles had gotten really peculiar lately, it struck West. He sat in the same spot every night, staring out, as if he were ET missing home.
“What are you looking at?” West ran her fingernails down Niles’s silky, ruddy spine, something that always made him purr.
He did not respond. He stared, as if in a trance.
“Niles?” West was getting a bit worried.
“What is it, baby? You not feeling well? Got a hairball? Mad at me again? That’s probably it, isn’t it?” She sighed, taking a swallow of beer.
“I sure wish you’d try to be more understanding, Niles. I work hard, do everything I can to provide you a secure, nice home. You know I love you, don’t you? But you gotta try and cut me a little slack. I’m out there all the live-long day.” West pointed out the window.
“And what? You’re here. This is your world, meaning your perspective isn’t as big as mine, okay? So you get pissed because I’m not here, too. This isn’t fair. I want you to give some serious thought to this. Got it?”
The words of the owner were chatter, the buzzing of insects, the drone of sounds drifting out of the radio on the table by the bed.
Niles wasn’t listening as he stared out at the forlorn King Usbeecee staring back at him. Niles had been called. There was disaster looming in the land of the Usbeeceeans, and only Niles could help, because only Niles would listen. All others looked up to the mighty King and mocked him in their minds and among themselves, thinking the benevolent monarch could not hear. They, the people, had wanted His Majesty to come. They had wanted his child-care centers and frescos, his career opportunities, and his wealth. Then they had turned jealous of his omniscience, of his all-powerful and praiseworthy presence.
Those here and from distant ports were lustful and plotting a takeover that only Niles could stop.
%9 “Anyway,” West was saying, popping open another beer as her weird-ass cat continued staring out at the night.
“I’m chasing him south on Seventy-seven at about ninety miles an hour? Can you believe it? He should be in jail right now, you ask me.”
She took another swallow of Miller Genuine Draft, wondering if she should eat something. For the first time since she’d had the flu several years ago, West was not hungry. She felt light and foreign inside, and awake. She thought back on how much caffeine she’d had this day, wondering if that might be the problem. It wasn’t. Hormones, she decided, even though she knew that the beast was no longer raging, and in fact had been quiet most of the day, on its way back to its cave until the moon was in position again.
King Usbeecee was a potentate of few words, and Niles had to watch carefully to hear what the King was saying. Sunrise and sunset were the King’s most chatty times, when windows flashed white and gold in a firestorm of pontifications. At night, Niles mainly studied the red light winking on top of the crown, a beacon saying to him, repeatedly, wink-wink-wink. After a barely perceptible pause, three more winks, and so on. This had gone on for weeks, and Niles knew that the code was directing him to a three-syllable enemy, whose armies this very minute were marching closer to the Queen City that the King ruled.
“Well, since you’re so friendly,” West said in a snippy tone to her cat, “I’m going to do laundry.”
Startled, Niles stretched and stared at her, his eyes crossed as a similar firestorm flared inside his head. What was it the King had said? What, what, what? Earlier this evening, when Niles had been watching the King send him signals with the sun, hadn’t the King flashed an agitated pattern, light going round and round the building, back and forth, back and forth, very similar to how the owner’s big white box worked when she did laundry. A coincidence? Niles thought not. He jumped off the sill, then the counter, and followed his owner into the utility room. The fur stood up on his back when she dipped into pants pockets, pulling out money before wadding clothes and dunking them into the machine’s basket. Other flashes of insight exploded in Niles’ brain. He frantically rubbed against his owner’s legs, and nipped her, sharpening his claws on her leg, trying to tell her.