My friend says that free will is an illusion, then lives as though Teddy Roosevelt and Indiana Jones both asked him to finish what they left undone. He reminds me that he values himself at the going rate of “hairy moose vomit,” then blows his cover by swashbuckling the suburb. He is not in on the secret that he believes in himself, no matter how many notes I hide in his desk. He indicts his neurotransmitters when I tell him that he has changed the world while refusing to revisit his own metaphysics.
My friend lost a cat to cancer, watching her cheek turn bulbous and cruel. He speaks as though death is sovereign, but he has held his boot on its neck for twenty years. When the cat died, he did not grieve like those without hope. He was almost famous at the time, a tech wunderkind when the internet was still wild with ferns and dragons. He sketched a shelter for cats too pocked for “shelters.” He decided this was what wealth is for. He has saved four thousand cats. He has raised an army of women in sweatshirts that say Blessed, and children who come for community service hours and stay for sacraments small enough to squeeze in the gap between species.
My friend calls me his consigliere, but he starts playing with the toys on his desk if I am incautious with adverbs. He once threw a 3D-printed octopus at me when I accused him of living his life tenderly. More often he lobs questions, that smart mouth a trebuchet. How am I so buoyant? He knows I am not an idiot. How are things going with my health? What’s up with my arms, looking particularly like pretzel sticks these days? Do I know how frustrating it is when I deflect?
My friend pretends he is half-listening when I don’t deflect, but he waits for this day all year. I can’t put it on my calendar. It just erupts. Yes, Neil, my capillaries are crowded with trolls and treacle. Yes, I need to speak of this in allegory. Yes, that is a choice. No, my Type 1 diabetes does not travel alone. My autoimmune insults invite friends who play metal all night. When I was nine, my mother told me, in the hospital with the hobgoblins and protocols, that we had just lost and gained choices. I could no longer stand in front of the jellies and choose apricot or raspberry. I could not accept invitations to a water park or a Wednesday without packing syringes. But we had new options. Twilight brought night vision. Our eyes opened to mercies jammed between hours. We saw friendly strays and shining strangers. We were enlisted in the peace corps of the observant, exulting over each “okay.” I learned everyone assumes they travel alone. Also, I bought him that damn octopus.
My friend says it sounds like I’m just good at gratitude, like I read a lot of Oprah, but not even he believes this. We agree that nature and nurture shout uneven blessings over the table. They heat up barmy single-serve casseroles. Serendipity sits in a highchair and cannot be counted on to eat, rather than throw, its peas.
My friend reminds me that I was not the architect of my arrival. I came as bewildered as the cats swinging in drop-traps from the hands of Animal Control. I came for an hourly job while I considered a doctorate in theological ethics. My friend asked me to become the Development Director, and I stayed two decades. I cannot envision escaping the shelter. I came with no qualifications. I am not leaving.
My friend has been at this for twenty years, so he knows where to find the cats who hide. He lifts the fleece by the fringe of my own language. I speak of grace. I can’t just tattoo that on the spray-tanned bicep of choice. Do I believe I hold the leash or not? Do I realize I am inconsistent? He knows I am not an idiot. I tell him I don’t know. He says I cannot have it both ways. I say arithmetic is overrated. I say neither of us have anything that we didn’t receive. I say I am pursuing my doctorate here. I promise I will get back to him.
My friend says he only promoted me because I sound like I am smiling when I pick up the phone. Neither of us has the patience to untangle that yarn. I tell him we are here because a cat outlived her life, and a genius built a parable about the things he won’t say he believes.
Angela Townsend is a five-time Pushcart Prize nominee, seven-time Best of the Net nominee, and the 2024 winner of West Trade Review’s 704 Prize for Flash Fiction. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Arts & Letters, Chautauqua, The Disappointed Housewife, Epiphany, Pleiades, and SmokeLong Quarterly, among others. She graduated from Princeton Seminary and Vassar College, laughs with her poet mother every morning, and loves life affectionately.