#like… cats can smell cancer. i’m sure they can also smell chemo. she probably DID carry a stench of death on her. yknow. to her cat.

[snarltoothed]

proud girlcat mommy for 16 years now!!!

ou they doing cat misogyny on tiktok now

[ecotone99]

[MF]In the Shape of the Big Dipper

Celine had eyed me curiously while I paid for our lunch at the little grille we found in Charleston. I did spend a lot of money that day, but Celine acted like I was a drug lord or at the pink Caddy level of a pyramid scheme. I simply paid cash to keep better track of my spending, that’s all. Money, much like life, doesn’t last. You can’t keep either, so you must learn to spend both the way you want. I never had a red cent to theorize about until recently, much less a fortune of dirty money to move twelve hours away to avoid confronting. Here I was, though, hiding out in the boonies with nursing students, numbing myself with crab cakes and sweet grass baskets. Trusting Celine wasn’t the hard part— she was a good, Christian girl who didn’t believe in strangers, white shoes after Labor Day, or mole people. The problem was I hadn’t told anyone the truth yet— my parents are thrilled; they think I left to go to school. School is a joke, but I enjoy the curriculum and making my folks happy. I owed them that much; they left the beauty of Palermo, the Catholic Church, and the 20th century behind for me. My ex-fiancé, Rob, was just fine with it. He doesn’t know that I know he had an affair and isn’t so excited I’m moving on to bigger and better things. He screws his next-door neighbor every Saturday, the 35-year-old named Judy, with a hideous affinity for vintage bobble head Dobermans and flesh colored lipstick. His mother told me on my way in the night I left, told me I needed to kick the little bastard to the curb, so I obliged her. She was a wonderful mother.

As important as they all were, I didn’t belong to the Maple Street gang anymore. Diana was the catalyst to my new life. We got to know each other during her monthly check-ups. She

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was a patient of Dr. Hales, a sweet old man who’d traded Scarsdale balloon boobies, expressionless faces, and ski-slope noses for his beach house. Diana’s favorite thing was to make me uncomfortable, and if she could encourage my wild side, all the better. She often brought me coffee, offered me cocaine a time or two, and told Dr. H he wasn’t paying me enough every time she visited.

After Celine went home, I had some time to myself, so I began to tell myself the truth. Diana had come into the office for a checkup, after which I relented to a long-standing rain check to visit her apartment. She was a fine thief, something she had no doubt spent a long time perfecting, but I worked with the public.

“Please don’t steal the magazines,” I urged her.

“I paid for these, baby, this doctor charges me $500 just to talk,” Diana said.

“Well, they’re going to ask me what happened to them—I’ll be responsible for replacing them.”

“No, not okay, that’s arrogant and unfair. You’re just a kid and cannot possibly be expected to answer the phone, file papers, take a lunch break, then do the same thing until 5 o’clock while corralling unruly patients.”

“Are you making fun of me? I’m not stupid. I choose to be here and interact with the unruly patients, do my job, and find time to craft 200 Christmas cards by hand.”

“Big shit, I bet you never made a croquembouche while glancing up to make sure Pierre’s boogers didn’t fall into your nearly burning glaze.”

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“Is Pierre your boss?” I asked.

“Nobody has ever had that displeasure—he was my mentor and my friend. He died when AIDs had us all too scared to swap spit with anyone but WASPS.” Diana answered.

“The Princess of Wales wasn’t afraid. Have you seen Dallas Buyer’s Club?”.

“No, I refuse to see Matthew McConaughey in such a state.”

“It was pretty graphic—what are you always seeing Dr. Hales about anyway?”.

“That’s for me to suffer through and you to look at later when I leave, and you file it away.”

“I can’t look at your medical records, they’re all online now.”

“All the juicy stuff is. Since we’re doing personal questions, how long have you been married?”.

“I’m not, well, I hope he proposes soon. We’ve been together for a year, and I do everything I can to make him happy. He just seems so disinterested in me these days; I’m not really sure what to do if he doesn’t.”

“You’re making 200 Christmas cards and have no husband? You never fail to disappoint me, Greta. Come have a drink and read this Cosmo I’m taking home. You’ve been avoiding my invitation for years.”

I took a cab with Diana back to Manhattan after her appointment while my conscious and Changes by 2Pac blared in my head. We pulled up to a gorgeous brownstone that smelled like leather and rain. The first floor was all tile hallways lined in thick, pastel rugs with shiny, mahogany stairs-- her actual house was the next story up. Once we got in there, I sat down with my pack of smokes and decided I was going to stay for an hour, have a drink, and take 1 aspirin when I got home.

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Once I was settled, I rammed the business end of my flip-top box into the leg of Diana’s white director’s chair. I inadvertently bounced my curls and breasts, the latter nearly out of my shirt. I flipped the first cigarette I touched upside down, placing it back inside to pick another one, just like Pop- pop showed me. Diana noticed my ritual and nodded in approval.

“What’s up D?” I asked, sucking out my first draw.

“Well first, nice tits. Second, your options are now a sex lesson from me instead of the daft editors at Cosmopolitan or the greatest adventure of your young life.” Diana said.

“What’s more interesting than sex?” I responded, carefully tugging up my dress.

“Stamp collectors, the price of bananas, warts.” Diana said.

She walked over to the left of her living space, squinting to see the sunset out of the bright stained-glass window.

“I’m disappointed you didn’t pick the second option, Greta.”

“I don’t need another adventure, D. I’m already uncomfortable.”

“Your coming here is part of it, so just calm down. You won’t have to actually do much more, sweets.” Diana cooed.

“That croak in a bush thing you mentioned earlier sure sounded interesting.” I said as I surveyed her true crime selection. I noticed most were stolen library books, which seemed overly fitting.

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“You need professional help. Maybe this was a mistake.” Diana said.

“I don’t mean to be rude--I joke when I’m nervous.” I was enjoying myself more than I thought, but it was getting late. I’d had enough of deciphering these interactions for one day.

“I brought you here to give you something.” Diana turned on her heels and walked over to me. “Something I would give to my kid, save only for two facts: I cannot track him down, and I don’t have enough time to track him down. Either way, it will get passed on just as I received it: from strangers.

“You have a kid?” I asked.

“Yes, and I left him just like my parents left me, no family and no explanation but lots and lots of dough. Any more questions?” she said.

“Not right now. Except maybe for what exactly you want to give me?” I asked.

“More than you bargained for.” Diana said as she walked back to her window. She was squinting harder now, to see the stars through the thick smog.

I had worried when I got there that she was either going to kill me or seduce me. Although I think she could have easily done one, and certainly managed either, Diana didn’t bother me again until 2 days later: the Sunday after my visit to her, when I picked up the Times. She was dangling from a gaping hole where that stained-glass window had been, for all the world to see. No cat eyeliner, no hair, and wearing a suit. The glass on the ground below her had shattered in the shape of the Big Dipper.

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I excused myself from my parent’s breakfast table, taking page 6 and a lox bagel with me to my room. I wondered about a lot for the rest of the day, but the most unsettling of my ponders was the way D had looked. I knew she probably hadn’t started off as a lady, but I figured her masculine days had to have been far behind enough to disregard. I guess it made sense we got along, I was a sucker for complicated men.

I arrived early to work on Monday. Dr. Hales was also surprised that she’d killed herself, although he did admit he was not a psychiatrist. He’d spent Sunday much the same way I did as he had known her for a long time. Apparently, Diana used to be a Mr. David Dawson; her transition required hormone therapy when those medicines were not yet regulated. They caused a rare and aggressive cancer that would have killed her no later than Valentine’s Day. Dr. Hales was trying to reverse her damage, begging her to do chemo, but D had insisted on more hormones: male ones. My best guess was that D had too many regrets about transitioning, perhaps because it made her so sick. When it didn’t work, she killed herself. This was what I resigned myself to believe, and it made me feel better as well as it explained her strange behavior every step of the way.

For the first few weeks after D’s death, I worried about being questioned. I was the last one there, surely someone else knew that. The papers even called it a most unusual suicide, updating the public every so often on the charismatic chef who’d met a gruesome end before they eventually began to lose interest. On St. Patrick’s Day, I got a call from a guy who told me he was a lawyer who wanted me to meet him outside of Bay Ridge about a patient of Dr. Hales. He wouldn’t give any details, but I knew who it was about. Worst case scenario it was a setup to

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interrogate me about D’s death, best case it was information about her that further explained my narrative. I decided I would make an appearance, no matter how it shook out.

Finally, after 3 hours in gridlock, I arrived at a small, but clean hotel. The concierge handed me two credit card style keys. They unlocked the door to room 340, where I found no lawyer and no cops, but a short letter accompanied by a bank card, checkbook, and briefcase. The letter is where I learned of the more-than-I’d bargained-for gift D had set me up with.

Dear Ms. Cannuciari,

We thank you for your assistance in the removal of D.D., simply some of the most extraordinary work we have seen. He was our most beloved detective, but the betrayal we experienced was far too great. The sum is broken down into 1 million USD in $100 bills, which are lining the briefcase. A secure account with our financial institution will house the remaining 76 million USD until either the day you die or the day you speak of our transaction to anyone, for any reason. Mr. Dawson chose the option that’s no longer available, which is to have your genitals cut cleanly off with a Jian--we greatly implore that you do not Google that.

Thank you again, madam. We do hope you will work with us again sometime.

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