One Saturday Afternoon

I walked back and forth in the dark. Stealthily. I was angry. Angry at her for leaving me behind, alone and defenceless. I can not tolerate being defenceless. Not me. Yet, everything was difficult, alone in that dark apartment with no-one to care for me.
The food was horrendous now, the water stale. Can water be stale? And yet it was. I moved around the room. Her smell was everywhere.  
When would she come back to me? When? When would she sleep with me again? When?
I lay myself down on the floor. Tired from all the thinking. I assumed a foetal position. Why had she gone? Why had she abandoned me? I wanted to tear at things, destroy what was hers. I wanted to yell my anger, but I lay still. I composed my thoughts.
The sunlight created thin lines on the floor next to me as it filtered through the closed shutters. Closed. Everything was closed, abandoned, like me.
I tried to remember when it had all started falling apart. The fall, maybe. The time she lost her balance and fell hurting her leg. Yesterday, maybe, last week? I can't remember. It seems so long ago.
That neighbour, he came. She called him. He was everywhere touching and making noises, taking away my space, sitting on my sofa. Was he the one to have taken her away from me? Was he my rival? No, he could not take my place in her heart. 
I couldn't imagine such a thing. She would come back to me. She had to.
And yet, that must be when it started. That was surely the beginning of it all. Someone blamed me, I think. The neighbour, not her. He blamed me. He said I had left a watery mess on the floor, but that is not how it went at all. 
We were watching TV together. She was sitting near me, her hand resting on my shoulders. I was kissing her hands softly, nibbling at her knuckles. And she was laughing as she took my face in her hands ans said, “Oh, Seanny”.
I then lay closer to her, snuggling near her, shivering with happiness.
“Are you cold?” She asked. “I'll get you a blanket”. 
No, don't go, I thought, but I said nothing. Nothing. Selfish. I was selfish and she got up to get a blanket for me and fell.
My god, it was my fault. All my fault. 
After the fall she was not herself again. At first she limped and cringed in pain. Then came the bed rest. She was confined to bed, I remember that well. She had something wrong with her leg and wouldn't let me touch her there. And so many small bottles on her bedside table. Pills and drops and numerous other things. They would make her better, she told me. 
And I believed her. How stupid of me to believe her. They didn't make her better and now she has  left me. Nothing would ever be the same again. I would be condemned to bad food and stale water and that neighbour friend reluctantly serving me twice a day without even a sideways glance. Some friend, I thought. A friend to her, maybe, but certainly not to me!
My god, my life as I knew it has ended, I thought.
A key in the lock disturbed my thoughts. I stood up quickly, composing myself. That neighbour would never see me lying defeated on the floor. Never.
“Seanny...”
A smiling face searched the room for me. It was Gianna. She had come back to me. I ran to her, circled her legs, one cold and white, brushed up against her skirts, lay down and rolled for her. Twined my legs in hers.
“Stop that Seanny. You'll make me fall! All I need is to break the other leg, too!” She bent down slowly on one knee and picked me up in her arms lovingly, “Did you miss me you silly cat?”


Matilde Colarossi