Love Saves the Day Read Free Page B

all-white and look much newer. I can tell by the little bumps in the tops of her sneakers that her toes are curled up, which means Laura is tense. She smells tense, too. Even more tense than she usually smells when she comes to visit us. The man with light brown hair must beable to smell her tension, too, because he sets down his own boxes and puts his hands on her shoulders. Sarah always strokes my back when I’m upset about something, like when I think I have a fly cornered but it buzzes out of my reach, or when a car outside makes an unexpected
boom!
sound and frightens me. Laura seems to relax at the man’s touch, but when he asks, in a kind voice, “Are you okay?” her toes curl up again and she says, “I’m fine.” Then she pushes her fingers through her hair the way Sarah does. “Let’s just get this over with.”
    “We could wait,” the man says. “I’m sure the super would understand if …”
    But Laura is already shaking her head. “Thursday’s the first of the month,” she says. “If we wait we’ll have to take over the rent.”
    My right ear turns forward so I can hear better when Laura says this. If Sarah’s not paying rent money to live here anymore, that means she’s decided to live someplace else. The anxious feeling in my belly gets stronger as I try to understand why Sarah would go and not tell me or take any of her favorite things with her. On TV, when two humans are living together and one of them decides to move away, first she tells her roommate why she has to leave (usually it’s either because of Her Career or The Man She Loves). The two roommates get angry and fight about it, until they start remembering all the fun they had together. Then they cry and hug each other and they’re friends again, and that’s when the second roommate, even though she’s sad to lose her friend, says she understands why the first roommate has to go and tells her she hopes she’ll be happy.
    Roommates have to tell each other before they move away. I’m almost certain it’s the Law.
    Laura has a way of moving that says she knows exactly where she’s going and wishes she’d gotten there earlier. That’s the way she tries to walk into our bedroom, but she doesn’t quite succeed. Her steps are the smallest bit slower than usual, and if she were something I was stalking, I’d probably think this was a good time to pounce.She tells the man that she’ll take care of the bedroom and he should start on the kitchen. She hands him some old newspapers, and at first I think maybe they’re going to play one of my favorite games, where Sarah crumples up newspaper and throws it for me to chase so I can practice my mice-fighting. But instead the man is using it to wrap up our dishes and glasses before putting them into the boxes. He even wraps up the big ceramic bowl that lives on the little table next to the front door. That’s the bowl I like to sleep in when my body tells me it’s almost time for Sarah to come home, so I can be right there at the door when she walks in. Once, when I was especially excited to see Sarah, I jumped out of the bowl so fast that it fell on the floor and broke. The sudden crashing sound drove me all the way into the bedroom and under the bed, where I stayed twitching my fur for a long time. But Sarah was very patient and calm as she glued the bowl back together. There were cracks in it after that, but Sarah said that was okay, because cracks are how the light gets in.
    Laura and the man work silently, except when Laura tells him that the Army is coming over later to pick up our furniture and kitchen things and some of Sarah’s clothing. I don’t know what the Army is going to do with a bed that smells like me and Sarah sleeping together under the covers on cold nights. Or a couch that smells like the time I accidentally spilled a glass of milk all over it (it was the glass’s fault; it was pretending to be shorter than it really was), and I got so startled because the