Love Saves the Day полностью

Josh settles into the chair that lives in front of the desk in Home Office. I follow and squeeze behind the desk to bat at some of the dangling wires that live back there. Josh doesn’t like when I do this, either, but he’s too distracted right now to notice, and it’s important for me to practice my mice-fighting skills. (I got used to practicing them at exactly this time of day long before Josh started spending all his time in the apartment, and I’m trying to keep my routines as close as possible to what they’re supposed to be.) He presses a few buttons on the telephone. It rings a few times and then Josh’s mother answers. After they’ve said hello to each other, she says, “Do you have me on speaker? You know I hate being on speaker.”

“I’m sorry, Ma,” Josh says. “I’ve been on the phone all morning and I think my hand has stiffened into a claw.”

Josh’s hand doesn’t look even a little like a claw, but his mother can’t see that from the other end of the phone line. So she laughs and says, “Why are you calling from home in the middle of the day? Are you sick?”

“That’s actually what I called to tell you.” Josh takes a slightly deeper breath. “I lost my job last week.”

“What happened?” She sounds alarmed, and instinctively my left ear turns in the direction of the phone, listening for any hint of sudden danger.

“Nothing, really,” Josh says. “The company was having financial trouble and they made staff cuts. I was one of them.”

There’s a silence. “You’ve never lost a job in your whole life,” Josh’s mother finally tells him. “You’ll find something else again before you know it. A smart boy like you has nothing to worry about.”

“Thanks, Ma.” Josh is smiling a little.

There’s a muffled sound, and what sounds like a conversation in the background, and then Josh’s mother says, “Hold on. Your father wants to talk to you.”

“Josh?” his father’s voice shouts from the speaker. Josh’s legs shift slightly and he sits up straighter in his chair. Suddenly I’m trapped behind the desk with no way to get out until he moves. “Sorry to hear what happened. Listen, you’ve been putting away fifteen percent of your take-home every month like I told you, right?”

“More than that until this past year.” Josh runs one hand back and forth over the top of his head. “Although I took a big hit back when the market tanked. I haven’t fully recovered yet.”

“Don’t worry about that now. You just keep that money right where it is. Laura’s job is still good?”

“Oh yeah. Laura’s busier than ever.”

“Good, good,” his father repeats. “The two of you will be fine.” Then there’s another muffled pause, and he says, “Mother wants to talk to you again, so I’ll say good-bye. Give Laura our love and try not to worry too much. You’re a smart kid. You’ll find a new job in no time.”

Josh’s mother’s voice comes out of the speaker again. While the two of them talk about Josh’s sister and how she’s hoping to send the littermates to a place called Summer Camp next month, I try to figure out exactly how long “no time” is. It’s hard to be sure, because the way humans think about time is so different from the way cats do. Waiting for someone to feed me tuna from an open can, or standing on the metal table at the Bad Place while they stab me with needles, is a long, long time. Sitting in my ceramic bowl in our old apartment until Sarah comes home from work to play with me is longer than anything. But sleeping in Sarah’s lap while she brushes my fur or sings to me is always too short—even when Sarah says something like, I’m sorry, little girl, but I have to stretch my legs. We’ve been sitting like this for four hours. (This just proves again how made up human hours are—because if hours were real, sleeping in Sarah’s lap for four of them wouldn’t go by so quickly.)

“No time” sounds like it should happen right now. But when Josh and his mother say good-bye, it doesn’t seem like Josh has found a new job yet. “I’m supposed to call a headhunter in a few minutes,” Josh tells her. “I’ll talk to you and Dad later.”

There’s a difference between saying things that aren’t true, and saying something that’s part of the truth but not all of it. Josh tells Laura how he’s looking for a new job, and that’s true. He also says he doesn’t want her to worry, and I can tell that’s true, too.

But the whole truth that Laura doesn’t know is how nobody Josh talks to will ever be able to give him a new job. That’s because Laura isn’t here all day like I am and doesn’t hear the phone conversations that Josh has.