A motion-detector light came on and illuminated everything in grotesque shadow. But no alarm had gone off, at least no alarm had gone off. Carmen imagined what she’d look like if the police showed up, barefoot in a sweaty suit pressed up against the glass. She wondered if this was what the Bottom felt like, that undefinable point of addiction when it could get no worse.
She’d read it somewhere once: about someone dying, alone, and the house cat eating pieces of her dead flesh bit by bit. It was supposed to be a cautionary tale, a sad, morbid truth to be faced: Cats aren’t your friend, you pathetic, lonely idiot. And yet she remembered not feeling that way. She remembered thinking it a practical afterlife, to become useful finally, food not dust.
Carmen hadn’t expected the unlocked sliding glass door, really she hadn’t. Her hand traveled almost of its own accord and she was shocked to feel the levers give way, the door seamlessly slide to an opening of her size. She’d never done anything like this. The blinds rustled. A burst of cool air hit her face and before she knew it, she was parting the blinds, she was stepping into a stranger’s home.
She closed the door behind her. The living room was dark, illuminated by only the fuzzy trickles of fluorescent light from the patio. She could make out marble statuettes, a wrought iron bird cage, multiple glass menageries full of crystal and ceramic figurines. The walls were almost completely covered by painting after painting, a collection grotesquely mismatched—stoic Renaissance portraits, abstract linear sketches, tacky pop art à la Romero Britto. The living room, what she could make of it in the dark, was like a museum basement of cast-offs.
Carmen felt along the wall for a light switch and found one. The awful scene came alive before her in even harsher truth: brocade couch, oversized armchairs draped in velvet and silk tapestry, a swear-to-God actual bearskin rug with taxidermied head intact. Every square inch of the home was swathed in its own expensive and ugly décor. The panorama was so overwhelming that Carmen almost missed it: the huge metal cage nestled into a corner near the front door, reaching almost to the ceiling. Inside lay a curled, sleeping figure beside a water bowl and a slab of untouched still-bloody meat, beside a trail of blood drops leading to the front door.
Carmen’s hand went to her mouth in almost choreographed, cinematic precision. She crept toward the metal enclosure, nerves rattled, her whole body trembling in excitement and terror.
As if sensing her nearing presence, the creature stirred and sat up. Its lips curled and a long hiss escaped between needle-sharp incisors. A panther, a young one. She identified the panther almost immediately without knowing she held Florida panther in her mind’s encyclopedia of feline species. Carmen leaned closer, ignored the animal’s cautionary sounds. As if challenged, the panther’s hissing got louder. And then they just stared at each other.
Carmen marveled at the similarities between the panther and her cat Linda: the ears, parallel and curved back, the tight wiring of the whiskers, the way the nose slightly quivered. But there were differences too: the sinewy muscles that rippled the panther’s sleek skin as if readying to pounce, the way its long teeth glistened like ivory knives. Some part of her, almost against her will but perhaps not really, wanted to reach over and open the cage, wanted to smear herself in blood and feel the body give way in sacrifice. To be an animal, to carry nothing of the past, nothing past the immediate need to satiate a hunger. She wouldn’t take it personally if the panther attacked. She would understand. She would forgive. She was so caught up in the moment she almost missed the headlights that moved a spotlight over the cage, almost didn’t hear the crunchy, gravelly sound of a car coming to a stop in front of the house.
Carmen remembered herself. Remembered Jeanette, remembered her guests. She ran, the animal growling as she slammed shut the sliding glass door just as a key turned the lock of the front one, ran past the pool and around the corner, grabbing her shoes with one swift motion, crouching at the edge of the house, peering to her right, heart thumping thumping thumping, making sure the car’s inhabitants were inside, nobody there waiting to find her. She could not believe herself. Carmen as a cartoon, a Looney Tune, predator circling one side, she the outsmarting prey. Duck season, rabbit season. She nearly laughed. She nearly laughed as she ran in her stockings across the street. They would never know. They would never know.
Of course, she’d gather herself before she walked back into her own home. Bending to see herself in the side mirror of her car, she’d smooth her hair as best she could. She’d take off the jacket with the sweat stains blooming and stay in her silk sleeveless blouse, even though she hated her flabby upper arms and thought it imprudent for a woman over fifty to bare legs past the knee or arms above the elbow. She’d consider calling the cops once again, she’d even quickly search Miami animal control and report exotic animals on her phone, before deciding to keep the secret.
