I sit on my couch with the pistol hidden between the cushions. Rufus is at his usual spot, staring out the big window in the middle of the front door. He doesn’t move much. The occasional flick of an ear, that lickfacebrush thing cats do with their paws. Other than that, he’s an attentive soldier at his post, wary and watchful.
The sun is rising, and I’ll start getting visitors soon. Rufus’ll tell me if they’re good, or if I need my gun. He’s never been wrong.
I get up and make a cup of coffee. I haven’t slept in days. Too dangerous, even with Rufus standing guard. For now, I’ll have to rely on caffeine. If that doesn’t cut it, I’ve got a few grams of coke hidden under my bed.
I sit back down and drink my coffee. My first visitor comes at 9:00 A.M. It looks like Jason Hendricks, who’s been delivering my mail for the last ten years, but no human eye can perceive them. Not really. They’re too good at hiding, too good at appearing to be someone you know or love. That’s why you need a cat. They can tell.
“Hey, Barry,” Jason says. “How’s it going?” He peers through the window in my front door, into my living room, and frowns. I know how I look: ten days of stubble darkening my face, clothes I haven’t changed in a week clinging to me like a wrinkled shroud.
“Rufus?” I say.
We’ve developed a system, a series of signals that Rufus uses to communicate. He stares intently at Jason, and after a few seconds, he gets up and rubs the length of his body across the front door. That’s the allclear. Jason is really Jason.
I plaster a smile across my face and try to break the awkward silence. “Hey, man, doing fine. Just push the mail through the slot.”
He clearly senses something is wrong. I don’t give a fuck. He doesn’t know what’s going on, but he should thank me and Rufus for the service we’re doing for him. For everyone.
“Okay, man, uh, see ya later.”
I nod and keep smiling as Jason departs. “Good job, Rufie. I like Jason. Glad I didn’t have to shoot him.”
Rufus gives me a long, drawnout meow. It sounds a little like “yeah, I hear ya.”
At noon, I feed Rufus his favorite. Fancy Feast. It’s not good for him, but he loves it, and with the service he’s performing for humanity, the little fuzzball can eat whatever he wants.
Rufus devours his salmon and shrimp in gravy, then spends the rest of his break grooming himself. I watch him, keenly aware that I smell a little like Rufus’s Fancy Feast after a week in the sun.
Rufus and I resume our vigil at 1:00 P.M. By three, I haven’t had another visitor, which is odd. Since I found out about them, I’ve been getting guests aplenty. By four, still nothing, and I notice Rufus lashing his tail back and forth, ears flattened against his slender skull.
“I don’t like it either, Rufie.”
I pick up my phone and consider my options. I decide to push the issue and pull up the DoorDash app. I put in an order at Wing Stop. Maybe this’ll force their hand, but if it doesn’t, at least I’ll have chicken wings.
DoorDash says it’ll be fortyfive minutes, and it’ll be dark by the time the driver gets here. I take a risk and run to the bathroom, have a quick piss, and grab my bathrobe. I pull the pistol from between the cushions, check the magazine, and attach the suppressor. Then I stuff the whole rig into one of my robe’s giant pockets. I’ll have to get up when the DoorDash guy gets here, so I’ll need the weapon handy.
At exactly fortyfive minutes, the delivery guy shows up. He’s a white kid, early twenties, and he’s got a goofy grin on his face as he approaches my door. I don’t like that. Rufus doesn’t like it either. He arches his back and hisses. That’s the go signal.
I can’t just plug the dude in front of God and everybody, so I get up, smile, and open the door. “Hey, man, come on in. I gotta find my wallet so I can tip you.”
The driver gives me a wary glance but steps inside. I close the door and lead him into the kitchen. I have half a second of doubt that Rufus might be wrong this time, and this is just some poor kid in the wrong place at the wrong time. I can’t hesitate, though. Too much at stake. So I get down to business.
I yank the pistol out, aim, and fire. The suppressor reduces the shot to a brief cough, and the slug hits the DoorDash driver in the forehead, spraying blood out the back of his skull in a red mist.
He goes down, but the sound is thunderous—so much more than a human body should make. Relief washes over me as I walk around the kitchen counter and find Rufus sitting next to the corpse of an eighthundredpound manatee. That’s a first, but they’re always aquatic mammals of some type: walruses, seals, dolphins.
Rufus bats at the dead manatee’s prodigious whiskers with a low growl.
“That’s right, buddy. We got him.”
The body will be gone by tomorrow, like usual, but for now, I pull the shades and Rufus curls up next to me on the couch while I eat my chicken wings. I’m still afraid to leave my post. I’m even more afraid because my brother, Mark, is coming over tomorrow. He said he’s worried about me. He said he thinks I’m having another episode.
Maybe Mark’s one of them.
Rufus will know. He always does.