I stuck my head out. Henry had a real kitchen with a microwave and a bowl of apples on the counter. He had a kitchen table overtaken by a computer and stacks of paper. We sat on the sofa and watched him type frantically, as if he’d forgotten Shaila was there. A bus passed. Its headlights flashed through the window.
“Where are we?” she asked. He looked up, dazed. “What part of Berkeley is this?”
“Kensington. North. Way up.” He picked up a metal mug and sipped from it.
“What’s with you and that mug?” she asked.
He looked at it, shrugged. “It’s my travel mug. It’s no-spill. Insulated. It’s extremely expensive.”
Shaila scoffed.
He stood up then, but didn’t move from the table. “You won’t steal anything, will you?”
“If I wanted to steal something, I’d steal it.”
He stood by his computer, processing this.
“I won’t steal anything,” she said. “Asshole.”
He straightened some papers on his desk, tapped them, looked out the window, at this moonless void called Kensington. He was much less sure of himself, now that she was actually in his house.
He disappeared into a back room and came out with a stack of blankets. “The sofa’s yours.”
“Where’s your roommate?”
“I don’t have one.”
She looked at the bay window, the spacious living room, the hardwood floors.
“Rent control,” he said.
She peered out the window. “The main house? Is that rented out too?”
“The owner lives there. Skye.”
She considered this. “I wonder when she bought the place. It’s probably worth about a million now. Do you think she has a mortgage?”
“You ask a lot of questions about real estate.”
She shrugged. “Bay Area kid.”
Shaila made a bed on the sofa and turned to him. “Thank you,” she said. “You didn’t have to do this.”
“I know. You’re welcome.” He smiled. “Good night.”
“Good night.”
“Sleep well.” He turned and left.
“Wait!” she called.
“Yeah?”
“I have a knife. Touch me and I’ll kill you.”
“Okay.” His bedroom door clicked shut.
Shaila pulled open her pocket.
“Hey you,” she said.
“Hello.”
“You’d better stay hidden, my friend. Grad student doesn’t know about you.”
“I realize that.”
She stood up and searched the corners, tiptoed into the kitchen, and opened, silently, a cupboard under the sink. “What do you think?” I hopped from her pocket and poked my head into the cupboard. I could hear the scratch and scuttle of rodent life. Mice. I could smell them.
She sighed. “I know. It’s small. I’m sorry.”
“It seems cold,” I said. “I’m not sure.”
“Okay. One night. In my pocket. And you’ll get up before sunrise and get into this cupboard before anyone sees you. Okay?”
“Yes. Yes.”
“You can get up that early?”
“Absolutely.”
I didn’t know how tired I was until Shaila lay down, grew still, and I could finally snuggle into the curve of her breast. Fatigue heaved me over its shoulder and I sank down and down, until it seemed I was upside down, eyes shut, the night somersaulting around me.
I first met Shaila at the Lothlorien co-op on the south side of campus. It had been a week since I’d left my home high in the rafters of a church. So far, no one had noticed me. You have to look down if you’re going to see me, and not a lot of people look down. I would have stayed there a good long while, I think, if I hadn’t met Shaila.
That particular afternoon, I had climbed atop the fridge. I hate heights. No. Hate is the wrong word. High places invoke nausea, dizziness, the hot breath of my own demise. But someone had left a cinnamon bun up there. I will do almost anything for a cinnamon bun.
I’d eaten my fill of the pastry, my gut wailing against its seams, when I heard Shaila enter. I glanced down and nearly fainted from the vertigo. I must have made a sound because she looked straight at me. She didn’t scream or whack at me with a broom. She gazed up for a very long time, her eyes squinting, nose twitching high in the air. Then she dragged a chair over, climbed onto it, and lifted me into her palm.
“Hi,” was all she said.
“Hi,” I answered.
“What’re you doing up there?” And I liked that she didn’t call me little buddy or little fella. She spoke to me like she respected me. “Are you a rat or a mouse?”
“I’m a rat.”
She nodded. “Not a bad place for a rat.” She stroked my head with one finger, just between my ears, and I fell relentlessly in love.
Shaila was brown like me but browner, human brown and so much bigger, with long black hair, tied that day into a swirl resembling the crown of a cinnamon bun. She slipped me into the front breast pocket of her jacket, a soft and dark home, redolent of rosemary. Eventually, I would chew a small slit in the fabric, a porthole to the world.
“I’m not supposed to be here either,” she whispered. She opened the fridge and from the blast of cold she grabbed a plastic container. As an afterthought, she leaped up and grabbed for the bun.
“Please don’t jump like that,” I called. “It’s very jarring for me.”
“I got you a little something too, Lothlorien.”
And now you know my name.
It was almost morning when I woke. Out on Telegraph, this was always the safest hour, when the street slept and cars were rare. In an hour or two, storefront grates would rattle open. Trucks would make their deliveries. Street vendors would set up card tables stacked with beaded necklaces and T-shirts.
Outside the window: a leafy vine, a lavender sky. Across the courtyard stood the main house, ivory-walled with a tiled roof, a majestic aloe plant beside its door. The fog had stayed away that morning, and the house bathed in sunlight.
I crawled from Shaila’s pocket to the kitchen. No feet to be seen. No grad student. In the living room, I found a small hole and slipped into it. I could see from there, at least. I would not spend this life in a cupboard.
Soon after, Henry shuffled into the kitchen and brewed some coffee. The smell did not wake Shaila. She’d learned on the street to sleep hard when she could. He poured his coffee into his metallic mug, gazed at Shaila’s sleeping form, and left. She and I would spend that day indoors, watching television and eating toast. The house was heat and light. I would never again feel her so at peace.
Henry came home in the late afternoon. At the sound of his key in the door, Shaila hissed and I ran for my hole. He bounded in, smiling wide, a stack of paper in his arms.
“Hey, honey,” she said flatly. “How was your day?”
He spread his papers over the dining table. “Decent. How was yours?”
They made dinner together, chatting easily, like roommates. I’d never seen Shaila like this: stepping lightly in bare feet, laughing and kicking him gently in the shins. Henry poured her a glass of wine, but stopped before he handed it over. “How old are you?”
“Nineteen.”
“Old enough,” he said, and poured himself a glass.
They had finished dinner, two heaping plates of pasta with red sauce and meatballs, when Henry asked, “Can I interview you? Would you mind?” He flicked his hair from his eyes and grabbed a pencil and notebook. “I’d love a woman’s perspective.”