Chapter 16 - The Vanishing Half.

It was pretty clear to Justin that he’d lost track of his school friend, Bowie, for good. Way too much time had passed since he’d last seen the other boy and his chances of finding help from that source had dwindled from slim to none. He was still hopelessly lost, though, without any real idea what he should do next, but at least now he had Boss to keep him company while being lost. 

So, with Boss’ leash in hand, Justin led his new companion down the street, just wandering at random without any real destination in mind. Justin kept looking around himself, getting more and more upset when nothing looked familiar or reassuring. It was already pretty late and he was tired. It had been a long and stressful day. He’d given up on finding his way home to Brian for another night; all he wanted right then was to find someplace to rest. He could try again the next day to find his boyfriend.

Justin and Boss walked around for the next fifteen minutes or so. They rambled up and down the mostly deserted streets of downtown Pittsburgh. There were lots of tall, empty skyscrapers, brightly lit but empty streets, and dingy alleys in between filled with rubbish. The people he passed were almost as drab and dirty as the streets, but they seemed mostly harmless. Justin saw a few more shopping cart people, just like Possum Granny, but none of them seemed as friendly so he avoided them. The couple of times strange men appeared likely to approach him, Boss’ warning snarls caused them to retreat instead. Justin petted and praised the puppy for his protective behavior, feeling a little bit reassured. But since he still didn’t know where he and his new pet were going to sleep that night, the reassurance didn’t last for long. 

Justin and Boss had just rounded the corner of a block occupied by a large, seemingly abandoned, department store building, when the young man noticed a solo woman emerging from the alley behind the building. The woman was on the back half of middle age, a little bit thick through the middle, with flecks of grey in her dark brown hair, and dressed in mom clothes. What stood out when you looked at her wasn’t her appearance, though, but the fact that she was struggling to carry four very heavy-looking shopping bags. As Justin watched, he noticed the way the bags would bump against the woman’s calves as she walked, first on one side and then the other, as her gait carried her forward. It looked uncomfortable.

Justin rushed forward, startling both the woman and Boss with his abrupt movement. “Here, let me help you!” he insisted, trying to get hold of one of the bags. 

The woman startled and took several steps backward, trying to get away from the insistent stranger. “Let go! Get away from me. I have mace!” she shouted.

“Oops. Sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.” Justin stopped and held both his hands up in a gesture of surrender. “I just wanted to help you with those heavy bags. Please don’t hit me with a big, spiked club. Or any other kind of weapon, for that matter. I promise I didn’t mean anything. I just wanted to help . . .”

The woman dropped all the bags, which landed on the sidewalk with a loud clunking noise, and raised her hands to her heaving chest as she tried to catch her breath. “You startled me, young man.”

“I’m really, really sorry,” Justin repeated, biting at his bottom lip with worry. 

“That’s okay. I just didn’t expect . . . Well, I didn’t expect that,” the woman replied, letting herself smile a little at the sight of the charismatic young blond man even though she was still breathing hard. 

“Are you okay? You’re not having the vapors or anything, are you?” Justin asked with obvious concern. “My mother used to complain about having the vapors all the time and sometimes she would have to go lay down afterwards and she’d yell at me if I made too much noise while she was trying to rest. Do you need to lay down too?” He started to look around but there wasn’t any place to sit on the empty street corner, let alone somewhere to comfortably lie down. 

“No. No. I’m fine. You just surprised me is all,” the woman insisted, blowing out a deep breath before bending down to retrieve her bags. 

“Are you sure? Because when my mother got the vapors it could be really bad. Sometimes she didn’t get out of bed for days. And, when she died, I don’t know if it was the vapors or the voices that caused it, but she’d been really upset that day and I wouldn’t want you to get sick and maybe get dead too, and I’m not as scared as I was back then so I can help you if you need me to and I won’t hide like I did when my mother died - I’ll stay and help you - I promise . . .” 

Despite asserting that he wasn’t scared, Justin’s voice had elevated half an octave and he was breathing more heavily than the woman he’d surprised. She listened to him as he babbled on with concern for about half a minute before shaking her head and moving around so she could put an arm around his shoulders. Boss, meanwhile, was whimpering at Justin’s heel, unsure what was bothering his newly adopted person. It took Justin a minute or two to collect himself, but the kindness from the woman certainly helped. Slowly, the spill of words coming out of his mouth petered out and died away. Then he sighed and tried to smile at the woman with only a bit of remaining jitters. 

“Better?” the woman asked.

Justin nodded. “Yes, thank you.”

“Just take a couple of deep breaths,” she directed and he followed directions. “Good. Now, how about we start over, huh?” Justin swallowed and nodded. “Hi, my name is Xylia. What’s your name?”

“Justin. Justin Taylor. And this is Boss,” he pointed to the big puppy seated next to him. 

Nice to meet you, Justin. And Boss.” The woman held out her hand in a fist for Boss to sniff at and, when the dog didn’t seem to make any aggressive moves, she opened her hand and began to scratch behind one pointed ear. “Awww. Who’s a good boy?”

“Boss is! He’s a very good boy,” Justin replied, joining in to pet the puppy whose tail was waggling happily by that point. “He didn’t mean to bite the Demarcus Man; Boss just didn’t like the way he was yanking on the leash so hard and hurting his neck, poor thing. I tried to tell Mr. Demarcus that wasn’t the right way to train a puppy, but he didn’t listen. So, when Boss tried to come to me, and Mr. Demarcus pulled on the leash so hard, Boss didn’t have any other way to make him stop. That’s why he bit the Demarcus Man. It’s not because he isn’t a good boy. Because he is. He’s very good. And he’s not ‘ruined’ like the Demarcus Man said either. I’m happy that he thought Boss was ruined, though, because that’s why he gave him to me; he said it was all my fault Boss bit him and that the mutt was my problem now. Which is good, right, because I won’t hurt Boss and we get along just fine. Although, I’m not sure how my boyfriend will like having a puppy. He wouldn’t let me keep the baby skunk we met last summer. Or the baby pig either. But I don’t think a baby dog will be that bad. Do you?” 

“Oh, my,” Xylia replied, having got a little lost in that train of thought rambling. “Do I think your boyfriend will want a puppy? I’m sure I don’t know. But you probably should have talked to him about it first before taking the dog from it’s prior owner. Don’t you think?”

“Yeah, probably. Only, I don’t know where Brian is so it’s not like I could ask him,” Justin explained, getting a bit misty when he remembered his missing boyfriend. “See, I got a little lost the other day after school and I hit my head and now I don’t know how to get home to Brian, and this Skinny Boy I met, who said his name was Hunter, promised he’d help me get home, but then he went off with this man in a shiny black car and told me not to come back until I had enough money to pay the Big Angry Man to make him not do mean things to my rear end and . . . Well, I kinda got lost all over again and I still don’t know how to get home to My Brian.”

“Oh, my,” the woman said again, seemingly having lost any other means of response.

“Yeah . . .” Justin finally ran out of words too. “But it’s okay. I’m sure I’ll figure out how to find my way home to Brian tomorrow after Boss and I get some sleep. It’s sorta been a long day and all, you know, so we were just looking for someplace to stay for the night, only . . .” Justin scanned the vicinity, noted again the lack of anywhere even vaguely hospitable, and sighed again without finishing his sentence. 

“Hmmm . . .” Justin’s new friend, Xylia, answered, looking the boy over as if evaluating what she’d stumbled across. Seeing the slightly disheveled young man, who wasn’t wearing shoes but whose clothing was good quality, and who didn’t otherwise look like one of the unhoused street urchins she usually came across on the streets, she made a snap decision. “Well, Justin, I might be able to help you provided you help me too.” She nodded at the shopping bags she’d been carrying when he met her. “You think you could help me finish up my rounds for the night? If so, I might be willing to let you and Boss sleep on my screen porch for the night. What do you say? Do we have a deal?”

Justin’s face broke out into one of his biggest and brightest smiles - the kind of smile that totally transformed his face and gave the young blond an almost angelic aspect - before nodding. “That would be so super great, Ms. Xylia, Ma’am. I would be happy to help you. What can I do?”

“Well, if you still want to help me carry my bags, that would be a start. They are kind of heavy.” She picked up two of the shopping bags and handed them off to Justin, who took them both in one hand while retaining Boss’ lead in the other. “Okay, now, just follow me.” 

With his new friend leading the way, Justin trotted after Xylia as the woman crossed the street and headed into the alley behind the next block of skyscrapers. When they got a few meters down the dark and narrow passage, she stopped, reached into one of the bags she was carrying and pulled out two small metal canisters. It was pretty dark, so at first Justin wasn’t sure what the cans were, but when Xylia pulled the tab on the top of one and removed the lid, the pungent smell of moist meatiness wafting out gave away the nature of the can’s contents. 

“Hey, that smells just like Simone’s pate!” Justin laughed and scrunched up his nose at the memory. “Are you feeding someone pate? Because, it’s nice of you to offer, and all, but I don’t really care for that kind of thing, you know. My Brian explained that it isn’t really cat food, but I still think it smells like cat food, and I just don’t think I could eat it, even though I am kinda hungry . . .”

“Pate?” Xylia laughed while she opened the second can and then placed both of the opened containers on the ground, pushing them behind the nearby garbage dumpster with the toe of her boot. “Why would I be feeding pate to the neighborhood cats? Nope. They’re lucky to get any food at all, I’m afraid. This is just generic cat food that the local humane society gives me to help feed the feral cats out here.”

“So it IS cat food? I guess that makes more sense than feeding them pate. Simone said her pate costs $300 a plate so I guess you wouldn’t be putting that on the dirty ground. Although, I’m still not sure how you’re supposed to tell the difference.” Justin smiled as he noticed a scruffy-looking alley cat slithering out from behind a pile of moldering cardboard boxes a few meters away and then sidling up to slink under the dumpster where the food was waiting. “But why are you feeding your cats out here in the alley? If I had a cat I’d feed it inside so other animals couldn’t get to it’s food. By the way, did you know there are possums around here, I met one earlier today and she was so sweet and she let me feed her pizza and touch her tummy where the possum babies were squiggling around. I left her with her Granny in the shopping cart.”

“Oh, my. You do talk quite a bit, don’t you?” Xylia commented as she moved down the alley a few more meters and set out another can of opened cat food. 

“I guess so. My Brian says I babble when I’m excited. I think he secretly likes it though. I make him laugh all the time and he really needs to laugh more. Otherwise, when he’s not laughing, he gets all serious and upset and that’s not good for him. He needs to laugh more. It makes his eyes sparkle with little green specks. But, yeah, I guess I do talk a lot sometimes.” Justin paused long enough to watch three more cats come scampering down the alley to join in the feast. “Wow. You sure do have a lot of cats.”

Xylie set down the last can of food she’d opened and then picked up her bags again. “They’re not my cats. They’re feral. They don’t belong to anyone any more. But, since nobody else feeds them, I do.” 

Justin pulled Boss - who’d been straining at his lead in an effort to get closer to the cats and their intriguing-smelling food - trailing Xylia down the alley and then across the street until they came to another alley. As they went, Xylia opened additional cans of cat food and left them in out of the way nooks. Justin was surprised at the vast number of strays that came out of hiding to run up and greet the woman. Some of the less skittish felines even let Xylia and Justin pet them. Boss was quite curious about what was going on until he nosed a little too closely at a big orange male tabby who decided he wasn’t fond of dogs and reached out with one deadly claw to swipe at the puppy’s nose. After that, Boss kept his distance from the scary pussy cats. 

As they went, Justin’s new friend told him little stories about some of her kitty friends. She pointed out the mother cats and the kittens she’d watched grow up over the past seasons. She introduced him to Bianca, an all-white female cat who was almost completely blind but still managed to be one of the best mousers out there. She told him the story about the time she’d found a stray dog nursing not only her own litter of three pups but an additional two newborn kittens. Justin laughed at all the endearing stories, sharing his own tales about the animal friends he’d made the summer before during his cross-country trip with Brian. And, slowly, as they wandered from alley to alley, the bags full of cat food gradually emptied.

The last stop was a vacant lot at the northern edge of downtown just next to some railroad tracks. Xylia led her followers over to where a pile of broken wooden pallets were stacked against the back fence. When they got there, the cat woman pulled out a full bag of crunchy cat food, used a pocket knife to slice up the packaging, and then set the whole thing out on the ground. Within seconds there were at least two dozen felines running up to them from all sides, eager to get their share of the bounty. Justin opened up the last of the canned food and offered those to the feasting beasts as well. Cat Lady, as Justin had come to think of his new friend, spent a few minutes chatting with and petting some of her favorites while Justin and Boss held back. These pussy cats sure did seem to like their Cat Lady.

When Ms. Cat Lady seemed ready to go, though, she made one last detour, stepping around the stack of junk wood and trash, to peek into a dark nook at something. “Aha! Gotcha!” Xylia exclaimed happily as she pulled a contraption of some sort out from behind the junk pile. “Oh, poor baby. Look at you.”

A curious Justin inched closer so he could figure out who it was the Cat Lady was talking to. Xylia held up the metal cage she’d extracted from behind the pile of refuse so he could see that it was an animal trap with a small calico cat cowering inside. The kitty’s fur - what there was left of it - was bedraggled and patchy. The animal’s face had several open wounds on it and both the cat’s eyes were swollen almost shut. Along the cat’s left side, almost all the fur was gone and the skin that was visible was red and raw and oozing in spots. This was obviously not a healthy cat. 

“I’ve been trying to catch this poor baby for a couple of days now,” the Cat Lady explained. “I saw her last weekend and tried to get her to come to me but she’s too scared.”

“What happened to her fur?” Justin asked, bending down so he could look more closely into the cage. 

“I’m not one hundred percent sure, but it looks like someone’s abused her pretty badly. Once we get her to a vet, they can tell us more,” Cat Lady asserted, bending down as if to lift the cage up.

“Here. Let me get that,” Justin insisted, handing off Boss’ lead to the woman so he could hoist up the cage full of scared cat. 

Luckily, there was a vet clinic only four blocks away where the night attendant seemed to know Justin’s Cat Lady pretty well. He led them into the clinic and directed Justin to put the cage up on a raised examination table. The vet put on some heavy gloves to protect his hands and then reached into the cage. The frightened cat hissed and tried to scratch but the vet managed to grab hold of her anyway, lifting the injured animal out of the cage. Once she was on the table, she tried to scramble away, seemingly desperate to escape from the humans who only wanted to help her. 

The sight of the poor, scared, wounded animal almost broke Justin’s heart. “Awww. You poor thing. You’re so scared. But it’s going to be okay. This nice man is going to help you and make you feel all better, Honey.” The empathic blond reached out to pet the cat’s head while he crooned comforting nothings to it. “That’s right. You just settle down and let us fix you up. Okay? That’s a good girl . . .”

Surprisingly, Justin’s technique seemed to work, and the calico calmed down almost instantly. As soon as she wasn’t struggling, the vet was able to examine her completely. It was readily apparent that someone had tried to dunk the cat in chemicals of some kind, resulting in nasty burns to the animal’s skin, most of the affected fur falling out, and multiple skin infections. You could still smell the acrid chemical odor coming off the patches of fur that remained. Cat Lady opined that it smelled like paint thinner and the vet agreed. It was a miracle the poor pussy had survived. 

With Justin helping to keep the cat calm, the vet gave the reluctant cat a bath using dish soap - because it was known to cut through petroleum products better than almost anything else - and then treated each individual wound. They gave the cat, whom Justin had dubbed ‘Patches’ a sedative to help her relax, and then the vet stitched up a couple of gashes that were too large to heal without getting further infected. Then Patches was put in another cage to wait and recover. The vet told them he was hopeful Patches would be fine with time but it would take at least two weeks before they’d know if any of the burned off fur would start to grow back. 

“Thanks, Vince,” Cat Lady smiled at the friendly vet as she picked up her bags and started to head out. “You can bill me for this one like usual.”

“Oh? And when, exactly, would you be making any payments on that bill of yours then?” Vet Guy asked, joking but only barely.

“Sorry. Things have been a little tight lately. But I WILL pay you back, Vince. I promise. It might just take me a while, you know?” Cat Lady answered with a sad shake of her head. 

“You know I don’t mind helping out with all your strays, Xy,” Vince the Vet replied, patting his friend on the shoulder. “And I’m happy to donate my time. It’s just that sutures and sedatives and all the rest cost money . . .”

Ms. Cat Lady heaved a sigh and started to reach for her purse. Justin beat her to it though, digging the wad of money he’d made while drawing that afternoon out of his pocket and holding it out to the vet.

“Will this be enough to pay for Ms. Patches’ care? I know it’s not much, but I can get you more as soon as I find My Brian. He’s keeping all my money safe for us right now.”

Xylia tried to push the fistful of money away. “Oh, Justin, I couldn’t let you pay for me. Vince and I will make an arrangement. Don’t you need that money for yourself?” As she said the words she glanced down at the boy’s dirty, battered, bare feet.

“Not really,” Justin smiled and shrugged and pushed all his money into the woman’s hands again. “I was going to give it all to the Big Angry Man because Hunter said he’d do mean things to my rear end if I didn’t give him money. But, since you’re going to let me stay with you tonight, I don’t have to go back to the ‘Tarlight and stay with him. And I can get more money tomorrow if I have to; I’ll just draw some more pictures. Although, I hope I’ll be able to get myself un-lost and find My Brian and then I won’t need any money for the Angry Man. So, you can take this money now. It’ll be fine.”

“Well . . . If you’re sure,” Ms. Cat Lady finally accepted the money and handed it off to Mr. Vince The Vet and everyone was happy again. 

Justin said goodbye to Ms. Patches and promised to come visit her again when she was feeling better. Then he called Boss, who’d been watching quietly from a spot in the corner of the room, and they followed the Cat Lady as she left the vet clinic. It was only a short fifteen minute walk from the vet’s to Xylia’s home. The house was only a small, two-story, clapboard-sided structure on a hilly side street; it had peeling yellow paint and a front porch that sagged ominously to the left, but it was homey nonetheless. The Cat Lady led Justin and Boss around the side and let them in through the screen porch on the back. It was fully enclosed and out of the worst of the chill of the night. It was also  furnished with a fairly comfortable wicker patio couch. 

“I hope this will be okay for the night,” the Cat Lady offered, handing him a blanket. “I don’t think my cats would appreciate your Boss coming inside, even if I knew you two better.”

“No. This is great!” Justin assured her as he settled himself on the couch and tested the cushions with his weight. “Much better than the ‘Tarlight. And I won’t have to share the bed with Hunter and Beauty, so that’s good. Hunter snores, you know?”

And, after the busy day of adventures he’d had, it wasn’t surprising that Justin was out like a light within seconds after Boss had crawled up on the couch with him.