Vinyl Cafe Unplugged Read Online Free Page A

optimist.
    “Not in my bathtub I don’t,” said Morley.

    But Dave didn’t give up. By mid-June Galway had stopped over-grooming. By the end of the month most of her hair had grown back and, to everyone’s surprise, she was jumping, albeit resentfully, into her litter box, which by then Dave had perched on a stack of books, beside the toilet, at seat height.
    “We’re almost there,” he said one night. “On July 1, I’m going to tie the box onto the seat. I didn’t really believe we would get this far.”
    When July began, Dave had the box resting on the toilet seat with a hole cut in the middle and, to everyone’s amazement, Galway was climbing into the box and doing her business through the hole. She was also scratching the wallpaper off the wall next to the toilet.
    “It’s instinct,” Dave explained patiently one night to Morley. “She’s wired to cover up her business as soon as she’s through.”
    So Dave tried to be there for her—to be there to flush as soon as she was done. It seemed to be the least he could do. He tried to impress on everyone how important this was—to be there to flush when he couldn’t.
    Before long Galway stopped scratching the wall.
    Then one evening they were downstairs eating supper and the upstairs toilet flushed. Everyone stopped and looked at one another.
    Morley said, “Who was that?”
    Dave said, “Sweet Jesus,” dropped his cutlery and lurched upstairs. There was Galway, standing in her litter box with her head at the hole, watching the water swirling around in the toilet below her.
    Who would have believed it?
    Dave was ecstatic.
    He was home free.
    He would keep enlarging the hole and trimming the sides of the box until all that was left was a cardboard toilet seat cover. Eventually he could do away with that. Then maybe he would write a book. A bestseller. Get rich. Who would have guessed?
    Then, out of the blue, disaster struck.
    It struck at ten one night while Dave was watching the news on television. The toilet flushed and Dave looked around. Morley was beside him. Sam was in his room. Stephanie was out. The small smile that was tugging at the corner of Dave’s mouth widened.
    Pride before the fall.
    As Dave sat in front of the television feeling prideful a hideous shriek filled the house. It was a piercing shriek of desperation unlike anything Dave had heard in his life—a howling, yowling, wailing wall of terror. Morley reached over and gripped Dave’s arm. The shriek was so horrifyingly loud that it lifted the hair off both their necks. Dave thought, There’s a maniac loose upstairs hacking someone apart with an axe . Except it sounded worse than that, worse than murder. So desperately worse that it was no longer the sound of murder—it was murder itself. Murder was in his house and it sounded just like someone trying to flush a cat down the toilet .
    Dave said, “Oh my God.”
    He pried Morley’s hand free and flew up the stairs.
    Sam was on his way down. His eyes bulging.
    “THERE’S A HUGE SEWER RAT CLIMBING OUT OF THE TOILET,” he shouted as he pushed past his father.
    Dave threw himself through the bathroom door.
    He had to look twice to be sure it was Galway. The bottom of the cardboard litter box had given way just as the toilet had flushed. Galway had fallen into the toilet at its fullest. She had plugged the hole so the water in the bowl couldn’t escape. She was drenched, her wet, matted hair pressed to her rat-thin body. The toilet was slurping and sloshing and overflowing. Galway was yowling and clinging to the rim as the centrifugal force of the water slowly dragged her around the bowl.
    Dave watched her make one complete rotation, and then—without thinking—he reached down to pull her out.
    He had heard all the warnings about going near drowning people. He had missed the ones about drowning cats. When he reached into the toilet, Galway sank her claws into his wrists. Dave screamed and flung the cat over his head, launching her