***

The long miles slipped slowly under my tires, as I knuckled the tears away. What is the nature of romance, anyway? Lust, procreation. While swans might whisper of soul mates, tigers never do; they scratch, scream and fuck, and then, swishing striped tails, slink away. And perhaps, in the heart's strange jungle, there are only two genii of animal: the constant swan, pining on the pond for the lost partner, and the fuck-and-run tiger. In the balance of nature, the tigers always lay waste to the swans, peppering white feathers with red blood. It's their nature, the players say and shrug, before lapping at the heels of another short skirt.

The rain still splattered the hood with diamond drops, sparkling in the headlights of passing cars. And as the driveway spread black before me, I heard the unpleasant twanging of Phish, blaring from the parlor window. An unfamiliar red pickup and a powder-blue station wagon prowled on the roadside. Sighing, I pushed through the door, into a maelstrom of a bad Grateful Dead knock-off and patchouli incense that desperately tried to conceal a massive mushroom cloud of pot smoke.

Garbed in tie-dye with his gut hanging out, James was propped up against the couch as Jill lay on her back on the floor, dark hair fanning around her on the carpet. A swarthy fat man in a badly-made hemp shirt failed to keep up with Phish on a cheap pair of bongos. A man in a gray ponytail was gesticulating wildly as his speech crackled, like static.

" � and it was like, every morning I'd get out of my tent and stick out my tongue, like mmmmwaaaah!" A red slab of tongue stretched to his chin, while he flung his arms outward in a faux hug. Finally, the slab slipped back between yellowing teeth. "And then they'd put a tab of acid on my tongue, and they'd go around to the other tents and they'd all be there with their tongues hanging out, mmmmmwaaaah!" And again, that pink slab glistening as the arms flailed like a drowning man. "And they'd all get acid. And we'd be tripping all day, every day, for four days. Shit, man, it was way too much drugs, even for me. You should go sometime."

"Mmmmm," Jill hummed tonelessly from the carpet. "Sounds good, man."

The doorframe half-hid me, as I desperately tried to formulate a secret passage from the parlor to the kitchen, and thus the sanctity of my bedroom, without becoming caught in the snare of interwoven pot smoke and drug dream. But a slip of foot stuck out, and James exclaimed, "Look who's here! It's Jaaaaasmine," drawing out the vowel as if it represented an orgasmic alphabetic experience.

"Um, hi," I said, resigning myself to full-view. I took a lightning-strike at the stereo knob, wrenching the wretched twanging crap to a reasonable decibel level. "Sorry to interrupt."

"Why don't you sit down, Jaaaaasmine?" James beamed, his pink fleshy lips drawn wide in a cannibalistic grin that sent shivers climbing down my neck nape. An absence pricked my ankles; I couldn't quite place it.

"Thanks," I said, assuming a formal schoolmarm tone. "But I had a bit of a hard day." And then, the absence acquired an image: Squashblossom, twining about my ankles and nudging my leg. I glanced about. Illicit cigarette butts blanketed the incense holder and spilled over onto the carpet. My head poked in the kitchen, but I only spied a miraculous mountain of dishes � that had mysteriously appeared like a volcano in my brief absence � thrusting up from the belly of the sink.

"Squashblossom," I called softly, looking about. Not a tail-puff to be seen.

James was still piecing sentences together, like a foreign student proud of his guidebook English. "Why, why do you keep a cat, Jaaaasmine? Don't you think it's a bit cruel to keep an animal incarcerated?"

My eyebrows drew down, pale thunderheads, in sheer annoyance.

"Squashblossom's a pet, not a feral. Come on, he plays and eats and sleeps. He leads a better life than some kids." My mind flashed back to the Wilsons' son, bobbing face-down in the pool. A quick headshake, and the image faded.

"But aren't you incarcerating the animal? Forcing him to adopt human ways and taking him from nature?" The dumb grin turned devious, the smile of a champion debater, albeit a punchdrunk one bating his girlfriend.

"No. Squashblossom was a shelter adoption. He was happy, really happy, to get a home again." The neck-nape prickling renewed, and an eerie silence emerged, a small invisible egg in between the strains of Phish and the sniggering of the man on the bongoes.

"Just tell her, dude," he said, finally, then resumed his arrhythmic drumming, a lopsided staccato.

"Tell me what?" I glared at Jill, but she turned her head to the radiator. James fluttered his fingers outward, toward the window.

"I liberated him, man. He was looking out the window all day, so I liberated him, so he can be free and go back to nature."

The red cord of rage broke with an audible snap, and pot smoke and Phish and patchouli swirled maddeningly as I dove toward the motherfucker's throat. Bongo-man and long-ponytail caught my limbs mid-air and pinned me to the carpet, but not before my foot sent Jill's best bong into the wall. Jill shrieked as the glass orb cracked against the paneling, bolting upright. They were all gibbering, yelling at once.

"Crazy fucking bitch!" bongo-man exclaimed.

The ponytail man placed the flat of his palm on my head. "Peace, sister. I'll send you peaceful energy."

"Fuck peaceful energy!" I howled at the ceiling fan above me. "You lost my fucking cat! You lost my fucking cat!" With coiled force, I slid backward and clambered to my feet, wagging a violent finger at James and Jill.

"You and you are out of here. I'm going to tell Bob about your little pot parties. Mark my words."

James wiggled his fingers and grinned, still immersed in the fuzzy peach of feeling.

"You're going to tell on us to mommy? How juvenile."

I stepped toward the kitchen door.

"No. What's juvenile is a bunch of 40-something unemployed adults smoking pot in a goddamned living room in the middle of the afternoon. Maybe when you're out on your ass in a cardboard box, you'll see how fucking juvenile that is."

In a blur, I snatched the cordless and bolted back out into the gray day.

***

Six hundred miles a phone rang, unanswered. A machine clicked. And I left a detailed message for Mom and Bob, fraught with choking tears, before opening the door and throwing the phone into the shadows there. The drizzle renewed, a light percussion pounding my skin. My head ducked under neighbor's porches, and my fist knocked on doors, all asking about a little orange cat. "Oh, I see him in your window all the time," one neighbor said. "I'll call if I see him."

Down the street I plodded, straining my eyes behind the rain-splattered glasses, looking for a streak of orange. "Squashblossom! Squashblossom!" The rain-stream gurgled down the sewer in answer. A crow called in the oak above my head. Frantic, I darted down side streets, howling, "Squashblossom!" A wrinkled hand pushed back white lace curtains, and an old woman frowned. Behind a gray shroud, the sun lowered, and sunk into darkness without setting. Blisters gnawed my feet. And then, I slogged into the middle of my garden to the outdoor altar, the flat gray stone with the holed stone on it. The mud oozed around my knees, staining my harem pants as I plucked another gold trumpeting squash blossom, and laid it on the altar.

"Bast, Lady of Cats, keep him safe," I whispered. "Bring him home to me."

And then my ass landed in the liquid mud, good and brown fertile dirt. It pooled around me as I sat, arms drawn over my knees and head hidden, as the rain streamed down my arms and soaked my hair into long thin strands. Somewhere, a pick-up and a station wagon rumbled into life, fleeing with the faint repetitive chant of the swishing wiper blades. And then a hand pried mine from my knee. I opened a single eye.

Jill stood, her soaked dark hair hanging in her face.

"Come in, Jas. You'll get sick."

"I'm sick already."

"More reason to come in."

The rain clinked, heavy on the car roof. My gaze slowly climbed her feet, up to her eyes.

"How could you? I loved that cat more than anything." The words quivered, a struck tuning fork. She leaned back as she pulled me up.

"I know," she repeated, a chant. "I know." With shaking fingers, I stripped naked at the door. The old woman's lace curtain swished shut as the pink nipples stared out at the street, ludicrous eyes. And then I was under my blankets, the mud on my feet staining the sheets.

***

It resembles a bad biker's tattoo, done in one of those ramshackle shore shops, where the displays all feature skulls and demons on Harleys. A simple red heart, almost a child's drawing, a valentine heart, impaled on three long swords, flat and blue-silver. Gray clouds gather and rain streaks and patters, falling through the void to the unseen ground. And the heart itself is disconnected, a valentine floating midair, unsent, a heart hovering in the rain.

Three swords shredding a valentine. The inevitable rain. What more can you say?

But that gray sky is key to loss. The rain patters the blackboard slate, stripping the chalkdust from its black, dissolving words. It wears the ink off the parchment, streaking it, a widow's mascara. It strips the sheet back to emptiness, that pure blank slate upon which a word, the word of creation, has yet to be written.

It's the little deaths that bring tears, the nicked hearts. The big deaths � ten of swords, the body impaled and the blood pooling red � pour tears into the chasm, where they plume into mist, approaching the heat within. When my father died, my eyes were the Sahara, and my heart a piece of slag. Vesuvius didn't come later, until I saw my mother tearing chunks out of her graying hair.

The little deaths, lost cats, lost lovers, trinkets all � they dangle, a toy just beyond an infant's fat grasping hand. We let out a redfaced wail. And no one comes, only the downpour on the asphalt, madly drumming. We watch the ink of ourselves smear, and run in black eddies down the walk.