There was no further sound from the woods, but after a few moments of hell as she sweated with all systems on alert, she saw a faint flash of light in there and with that, risked bolting to the workshop with the speed of an Olympic racer. The door was locked! She banged on it, bringing Douglas running.
“LET ME IN!” she screamed, then fell on the floor as he did.
“What the hell is the matter?” His face contorted with concern.
She scrambled to her feet and grabbed him by his shirt. “Brodsky isn’t really a cat and he’s talking to aliens!!!”
Okay, after she said it, she realized how it sounded.
“Honey,” crooned Douglas as he crushed her in his arms. “I know I’ve been neglecting you. It’s only for two more days, just till Rhys gets here — then I give him my results and get paid. How about you and I take a little trip then, down to the islands? Some sun and sea would do us good!”
She struggled to push him away. “No, no, Douglas! I am not crazy. I know it sounds crazy, but believe me I’m not. It’s all coming together now, I’m seeing the big picture. You’re working on the cloaking device, which when Rhys puts it into use, even if he does have a patent, eventually the whole world is going to know how to do it. Don’t you see? And if people know how to cloak, they’ll figure out how to uncloak and once that happens —”
He interrupted, looking at her now not as one scientist to another, more like a psychiatrist observing a patient newly checked into the hospital. “Honey, listen, you need to lie down. Remember last time you had a migraine, you had that aura thing. Maybe this is —”
She was livid. Apparently, there was going to be no way anyone would believe her. She saw that now, how ridiculous the whole thing sounded, all at the same time as she understood the precariousness of her, no their, situation in general. In a wild, full flash of insight, she grasped that Brodsky’s “associate” there in the woods was concerned that once humans knew how to “uncloak,” they would perceive what was cloaked! They would suddenly see what was flying around in their own skies that all this time that they could not see, except for the occasional slips, what were called “UFO sightings.”
In a fury, she turned from Douglas and snapped, “Don’t believe me then. Keep working in your ignorant little bubble of scientific happiness, Douglas! Meanwhile, I’ll hold down the fort!”
“Just two more days,” he said weakly, looking utterly befuddled. “Do you think you need a doctor?”
Ignoring that, she raced to the house, whipped open the back door and flicked on the kitchen lights. Where was Brodsky, the supposed “cat”? Hadn’t he been at the back door, waiting?
To think that all this time, she’d been leaking secrets to him. Was he really a robot? Some kind of android?
He thumped his paws at the door now and, opening it wide, she let him in.
“So,” she said to the apparently oblivious cat, her voice sounding a bit like a Nazi interrogator toying with his victim. “I suppose you want some cuddling?”
Her apparent sang-froid was only a front, being that he now actually terrified her.
She scooped him up and carried him to the dining room, flicked on the overhead light, and placed him on the table, planning to perform an examination. But wait… he had been to the vet! Surely, the vet would have noticed anything abnormal about his physiology.
“Look at me, Brodsky!” she snapped. The cat wiggled halfheartedly. She managed to make him lie on his back and bent to stare into his eyes.
“What’s the deal? You have some kind of implant in there? And why have you never meowed to me?”
She had not heard Douglas come in, and he startled her. “Honey, what are you doing?”
She let the cat go and straightened up. “Just checking him over,” she mumbled.
“Uh huh,” said Douglas. “Hey, why don’t we have a glass of wine and relax a bit? I could really use one.”
Reluctantly, she walked with him to the kitchen and watched him pour the wine. It crossed her mind, once they were seated in the living room, to explain why she had acted the way she did, but she could tell by Douglas’s earlier reaction that he would never believe her. Besides, she now had to get rid of Brodsky, and if she kept bringing the situation to Douglas’s attention, this would be more difficult to accomplish. As for UFOs and aliens, in spite of her husband’s finesse in physics and his adoration of the Star Trek series, he had always pooh-poohed the idea. No, better to keep her mouth shut.
“Are you feeling better now?” he asked warily.
“Oh yes,” she lied. “I think I dozed off and was having an awful nightmare. I think when I woke up, it was still going, a form of sleep walking, kind of.”
He patted her hand and looked relieved. Douglas, sweet man that he was, did not have time for hysterical women. At least not until he finished the project.
They made love that night, but Catherine’s mind was busy the whole time. The question was… how to get rid of Brodsky? The next morning, she considered the situation.
About Margaret Karmazin
