Vinyl Cafe Unplugged Read Online Free Page B

the length of the hall. She landed in a soggy and pathetic pile of wet fur in front of Sam’s bedroom door. She hit the ground running. They didn’t see her for another week.
    Sam was furious at his father.
    “I don’t know what was wrong with the pajamas,” he said. “I don’t know why you had to throw her like that.”
    Stephanie thought the whole thing was stupid.
    Morley didn’t say what she thought. Not directly. She did ask pointedly about the wallpaper—more than once. Each time she did, the conversation ended badly.
    I told you so . That’s what Dave heard. I told you so . From all of them.
    He threw in the towel. All he had to show for his months of patience was a sullen family and a resentful cat. He put the litter box back in the basement.

    Galway began flushing the toilet again in the autumn. She didn’t use it, mind you. Wouldn’t even get on the seat. She would hop onto the bathtub and jump onto the sink. From there she could reach over with her front paw, push the lever on the toilet and stare at the water as it went around and around.
    “She always liked that part,” said Dave.
    Galway’s fascination with the flushing toilet seemed harmless enough—until Arthur started getting into the act. Arthur and the cat would get in the bathroom together, Galway would flush and Arthur would bark his approval.
    Then the toilet started overflowing. They had the plumber in twice with his Roto-Rooter, but it kept clogging up.
    Stephanie blamed Sam.
    “It’s always after he uses it,” she said.
    Sam blamed Stephanie.
    Dave suspected them both. Until one night he went to brush his teeth and caught Galway red-handed. He watched her swat a sponge off the window ledge and into the toilet. Then she flushed, her head circling around and around following the sponge. Dave managed to scoop it out of the water at the last moment.
    It explained both the clogged toilet and all the little things they were missing: bobby pins, toothpaste tops, a bottle of Aspirin.
    He cleared off the top of the tank. And the window ledge. He instructed everyone not to leave anything on the edge of the sink.
    Then Arthur became her accomplice—bringing her things. One night after supper Dave caught Arthur mooching toward the bathroom with the TV remote hidden in his jowls.
    The family began closing the bathroom door. For a few weeks Galway sat and stared at the closed door in indignation. Sometimes, in the middle of the night, she would sit in front of it and yowl. But they didn’t give in.
    Eventually she forgot about it.
    So did everyone else.
    Which is why no one thought to tell Dave’s cousin Brenda that she should keep the upstairs bathroom door shut the one night she slept in the house alone.

    Like Dave, Brenda was born in the village of Big Narrows, Cape Breton. She came to Toronto in September, for the first time ever. Against her will.
    Brenda and her father, Ralph, drive the one and only cab in The Narrows. Ralph drives the morning shift, Brenda takes over in the late afternoon and will answer calls all night. In Big Narrows that means her last call can come anywhere between eight in the evening and dawn—which doesn’t bother Brenda. When she doesn’t have a fare she goes home and watches TV—or plays bridge on the Internet. Everyone knows where to find her if they need a cab.
    Brenda is famous in The Narrows because she played center on the town’s Bantam hockey team when she was in grade eight—something that no girl had ever done before. It was the last time the team had made it to the provincial championships in Antigonish.
    Brenda could do all sorts of things that other girls couldn’t do. Of course the other girls didn’t have the advantage of having their mother skip town with a member of the Norwegian merchant marine, as Happy McDougall did when her daughter was eight years old. Certainly the other girls didn’t have the advantage of growing up under the baleful eyes of the three McDougall boys—Collum,