Harmless by Ernie Lindsey Read Free Book Online

in
my lawnmower shed or under the front porch where the dirt is cool, especially
when it’s ninety-five degrees out and I’m keeping the tan even.  He likes to be
near me.  Usually.
    I could’ve guessed the
correct set of lottery numbers every Tuesday and Friday for the next fifty
years before I would’ve guessed that Kerry’s bedroom had been his retreat.
    You would think that in
all of our fleeting discussions, Kerry would’ve mentioned that she’d been
harboring my cat.  She’d seen me with him.  I’d taken the time to
introduce them formally one day.  “Kerry, this is Sparkle.  He loves women.” 
Strange choice of words?  I didn’t think so.  Kerry didn’t, either. 
    But no, never.  Not one
mention of it.
    It might seem like such
an innocuous, petty, pointless thing to note.  My cat enjoyed her company, he
loves women, she’d been kind enough to get him a tall cat tree just like the
one he had at home.  So what, right?
    I suppose that last
detail didn’t stick out to you, did it?
    Just like the one he
had at home.
    Yeah, me neither. 
    And again, so what? 
There are twenty places around the city that sell cat trees, most of them in
some amalgamation of the same thing.  Tri-level, carpeted scratching posts for
legs.
    However, there’s only
one place—this hole-in-the-wall, entirely-out-of-your-way pet store over on
Waverly Avenue—that sells handmade, master craftwork like the ones in my house
and Kerry’s bedroom.  Their signature is the top level.  It’s in the shape of a
mouse.
    Coincidence?  Could
have been, easily.
    If I’d never looked in
her closet, I probably wouldn’t have given it a second thought.
    If I’d never looked in
her closet, the next few days would have amounted to nothing more than
answering police inquiries with a befuddled expression, wondering why they
found the following:
    Three of my shirts.
    One pair of my pants.
    A small stack of my Entertainment
Weekly magazines that I’d assumed I had thrown away.  I remember them being
on my coffee table one morning, and then they were gone that evening.  The
recycling had gone out that day, and rather than harping on the fact that I may
have a minor case of Alzheimer’s slipping in like my father, I chalked it up to
the fact that I’d tossed them out and simply forgotten.
    Lastly, a set of photo
prints—pictures of Sparkle and I in the bathroom mirror (selfies, I think
they’re called…but no duck lips), pictures of Smoke and Shade from a year
prior, pictures of Kerry smiling at me from the other side of a screen door,
and a single picture of Angry Shayna after I told her I was in the process of
moving on, that I’d found someone new, someone named Kerry.
    Pictures that could
have only come from my iPhone.
    ***
    I’m not under any sort
of delusion that there’s something on my iPhone that’s important enough to
protect, thus the lack of security.  One swipe and you’re in.  This cavalier
attitude came about as a result of my previous iPhone performing a perfect
somersault into the toilet after Shayna discovered a couple of unaccounted-for
phone numbers.  I learned that if I ever wanted something kept private, it
needed to be stored in a place that couldn’t be ruined by water, like my head,
supposing Shayna didn’t see fit to drown me at some point. 
    I play games on it.  I
take pictures.  I read the news.
    I would occasionally
call my old house, just to see if one of my children would answer the phone
before Shayna. 
    They never did.  It was
my assumption that caller ID was the culprit.  I assume that they’d been warned
about talking to strangers.  Stranger danger!  Dad bad!
    If the iPhone gets
stolen, it gets stolen.  I’ll lock it remotely and go buy another one when I
can afford it.  The only real loss would be all the photos that I hold on to
like Uncle Scrooge and his money.
    Never would I have
guessed that someone, Kerry most of all, would’ve stolen photos from it for the
lone