Tangerines

Yesterday I killed my girlfriend’s cat.

“Dinner at my place”, she had said, and I had consented, forgetting in the spur of the moment that meeting her family was not part of my original plan for the Winter Ball. I wanted to dance with a good-looking girl, show her off to my friend circle, and maybe see some action in the back of my decrepit ’98 Ford Focus. But somehow I found myself at her house on the night of the dance, parking my car in front of her two-door garage, her white picket fence, and her two-and-a-half-children perfect American family.

Dinner was spaghetti and a salad that her mother had prepared. The food exceeded expectations; the salad had bits of some citrus fruit mixed in and the spaghetti was home-cooked and the china was decorated with a tasteful floral pattern. I engaged easily in the parent-friendly banter, said all my thank you’s, my please’s, even complemented the room decor (“What a lovely painting, is there an artist in the family?”).

When it was acceptable to do so, I excused myself from the meal, and went to start the car so that my date wouldn’t freeze in her dress. She looked good. The dress was blue, but of course you couldn’t call it that to her face; it was one of those pretentious garments with color names like “Sparkling Sky” or “Midnight Azure” or “The harbor of Toulon, France, on the Mediterranean Sea during a sunny mid-afternoon in April”.

The keys were sliding into the ignition when I decided to turn the vehicle around so that I could make a clean get-away after snaring my prey. I turned down my music to a respectable volume, turned up the heat, shifted into reverse, released the brake, felt my wheels glide over a small bump; I parked the car.

It was only when I had nearly reached the door that I saw my fatal error, the little pile of something hairy between my front left tire and my back left tire. After muttering a string of expletives, I shuffled over for a closer look.

A cat, I thought to myself, most definitely. I had seen enough cats in my day to recognize the mangled mess as such a creature, though their backs did not usually have such a deep, flat valley and typically all of their insides remained inside. My eyes darted to the door; she wasn’t there yet, and no one was watching. No one had seen my kill.

Quickly, I popped open the trunk to look for a blanket, or a tarp, with which to scoop up the flattened feline; no such luck. I grabbed my schoolbag, dumped its contents into the trunk, and replaced them with the cat. A bit of him got on my sleeve in the process, but mostly he fit okay and he didn’t stink yet.

When I got inside I placed my coat on the counter (next to a food bowl which could only have belonged to the poor flat bastard in the boot of my car) and excused myself to the restroom. I washed my hands and tried not to notice the litter box beside me, cat turds pulsating in my mind like Poe’s telltale heart. I was a guilty man.
Guilty, guilty, guilty as I opened the car door for her and she attempted to be witty with some remark about chivalry, guilty as I changed the station and she dabbed at the “spaghetti sauce” on my sleeve, guilty as we danced so close to each other that I knew she was wearing more perfume than usual and I caught a whiff of something different in her hair. Guilty, guilty, guilty as we drove home and kissed goodnight and I threw the cat, back-pack and all, into the dumpster at the end of her street. I thought about telling her, maybe sending her a text explaining the situation, but I knew that it would be a while before they noticed his absence and then more time before he was officially “missing” and even more time before they started searching and drawing conclusions and making accusations. Guilty, even though I knew I would have plenty of time to craft a messy break-up with her and avoid the pet confrontation. Guiltiest of all as I coaxed cat guts out of a rented tuxedo.

When I got home I asked my mum what the citrus fruit in the salad might have been, and she guessed it was a tangerine. I quite liked it, whatever it was.