Mr Cat does not have friends, but he does have an entourage; a group of five to seven who inexplicably appear and then accompany him in a semicircle sort of arrangement the entire time he is out. They must think they’re all a tight knit group, but Mr Cat barely recognises most of them from day-to-day outfit changes and he certainly does not know any of their names. A couple of them he knows only joined because they’ve slept with him, or maybe they joined first and slept with him after – he doesn’t know, he doesn’t care, it doesn’t matter. They serve as his company while outside and even occasionally appear in his suite, but he’s not f*cking any of them right now. Based on behaviour there’s always at least two going at it, but again, it’s all inconsequential and Mr Cat could not care any less about them if he tried.
There are six of them tonight which is his preferred number because it means he is directly in the middle, the standout, the odd number – and seven is known to be lucky. Mr Cat, too, is very lucky to an almost supernatural degree, and where he is not, he is glad to cheat. Money doesn’t mean anything anymore, it’s the constant flaunting of it that matters, not even further acquisition is a goal because that’s just how much he has, he can take big losses and have it not affect him one bit, and there’s something quite powerful in that, in demonstrating it to a crowd of people in the casino who’ll never get to experience it for themselves.
To an extent, that is. Most people he comes across have to have some wealth in order to be here at all.
Something’s been off about the past few days for Mr Cat. He feels as though he is being watched, which is a stupid thing to think because of course he is being watched, wherever he goes people stare and admire him; everyone knows Mr Cat, at least in Monte Carlo. But this feeling he has is different to being gazed upon like an attraction, he senses an intense purpose to it, like the red light of a sniper rifle coming to aim on his head. It’s put him on edge. He has trouble sleeping to begin with, but this has only made it worse. He’s staying out less hours and spending more time by himself, he’s being paranoid and he knows it. If something were actually wrong it would have presented itself properly by now. These are meaningless suspicions and they’ll pass eventually. Hopefully.
He feels it especially strongly this evening, sitting at an outdoor table on the terrace of Le Bar Americain, surrounded by the entourage as always. The sea air is not a comfort – he’s not fond of water but the smell usually doesn’t offend him – nor is it that there are plenty of people around, too many for an assassination to take place. But what would he have even done to warrant one? Perhaps someone found how something sordid about his past, about who he is.
Well, whatever they know, Mr Cat would be interested to hear it.
And now it’s not just this feeling of being watched that’s bothering him, it’s that impenetrable blackness at the back of his mind, keeping the blank spots in his past locked away. And he’s had these thoughts so often, that there are memories in there and he just can’t get to them, it’s retreading all the same sh*t as usual, all the things he goes out to forget. Maybe being shot in the head would be a blessing. He downs his Merlot in one go and pours himself another.
The entourage is talking and he is not hearing, just vaguely looking through them, over the terrace railing to the glimpse of the beach and ocean below. The air is a warm chill, indicating a hot day has just ended and a cold night is beginning. The sky is an elaborate gradient of pinks, purples and blues, and some of the clouds still have a gold outline to them although the sun has descended behind the city buildings by now. It’s a lovely evening. It is wasted on Mr Cat.
There’s a piano out on the terrace and it is some employee’s job to sit at it for hours at a time, playing light background music as a soundtrack to the lives of every wealthy socialite in earshot. It’s the kind of thing one forgets about easily, perhaps doesn’t even hear or acknowledge it at all to start with, but when it goes away or changes, somehow that is very important. Somehow someone’s night is being ruined because of the lack of tinkling notes. Evidently it’s ruining the night of two or three members of the entourage, who are discussing amongst themselves if they’ll call a waiter to take care of this tremendous issue, an echoing tunnel of the same thoughts and opinions, asking Mr Cat to validate them all.
And the natural silence does bother him as well, so he raises a hand to the entourage and sits up straight, and suddenly they’re all relieved as if simply having his attention will solve the problem. Mr Cat turns in his seat, to the leftmost corner of the terrace where the piano is, and finds that it is being attended to at that very moment; two waiters and a hotel manager accompany a pair of guests, neither of whom Mr Cat can get a good look at, as one seats himself at the piano. Things start to make sense. Some rich idiot who fancies himself a musician is going to put on a little show. Hoping for disaster, Mr Cat directs his entourage to settle down and listen, with an affect like he is already preparing insulting quips to share, and they all fall into a shared sense of smug satisfaction. Some good will come from this disturbance, at the expense of the disturber.
The manager backs off from the piano and returns indoors. One of the waiters continues to attend to the restaurant guests, most of whom have worked out what’s going on and are expectantly looking to the corner; where the second waitress remains, obviously to act as observation for the two people over there.
It annoys Mr Cat that they’re both far enough away with their backs to him that he can’t begin to judge them by appearance. He squints and pulls his chair out, discerning that the one sitting, the one intending to play, is quite short and a little tubby, and the one standing, their elbow resting on the top of the piano, is taller with a body more difficult to pin down. Bulky and curvy, like they’re hard and soft at the same time.
The pianist starts in on a short, jaunty piece that isn’t half bad. The diners all respond positively, Mr Cat’s entourage murmurs in one voice, offering nothing of note. He just keeps straining to get a good look over there – did he put his contact lenses in before leaving the suite tonight? – and waiting for what comes next.
The pianist facetiously breaks out the first few bars of La Marseillaise to the divided delight and disapproval of his audience. His companion turns to face the crowd, saying a few words no one but those close by can hear. The pianist stops and waves his arms, shouting, “Alright, alright!”
He dives into Poker Face. Mr Cat can’t help it, he chuffs in mild amusem*nt, turning back to the table. In a few moments he hears a voice, faint over the magnified sound of the piano, singing the song, probably the companion. Then there’s another, and by the time they reach the first chorus at least a dozen people are singing along. Mr Cat finds it strange, not that people have broken out in song but that it’s happening so early, and swirls his wine glass in hand as he glances back.
Sure enough, people have gotten up from their tables and gathered as a proper crowd. Mr Cat looks back to his entourage and sees every person is either openly interested in seeing more or trying to hide it. He catches Pretty’s eye and motions to the scene, and that’s his permission granted, they all get up and go over, only Mr Cat and one other lingering at the table for a minute more.
The girl’s name flew out at him through some miracle, but he couldn’t put one to this guy if he had a gun to his head. He’s so unremarkable that it swings around and becomes remarkable, and the longer Mr Cat looks at him through the corner of his eye the more he feels the urge to break his face open. Insultingly placid, looking like he’s never had a thought in his life, or at least that’s how Mr Cat has always perceived him as long as he’s been around – not that Mr Cat could exactly say how long it’s been. Right now, however, the guy’s brain appears to function somewhat. He is quickly finishing his dinner so he can get up and over to the piano, like it is very important that he do so.
Whatever it is, it’s a stupid name, Mr Cat knows, not that he can judge too much because he is aware of the strangeness of his own. He’s observed that most people have strange names, not that he can think of many at the moment. It just feels right, feels true.
Poker Face finishes with an unnecessary flourish and the crowd likes it, they afford the pianist some applause for his effort, the same to his companion for leading a handful of them in song even if it wasn’t terribly audible. Mr Cat can’t see any of this, but the waitress guarding the piano has been passed a microphone by another member of staff, and she and the companion are plugging it in. While they do this, the pianist plays an extended opening to Voulez-Vous, the starting loop on repeat.
Quack-Quack stands and Mr Cat does the same. They go join the remainder of the entourage. Mr Cat’s appearance does well to get people moving out of the way, and he and his six followers find themselves in a good spot right at the railing, about two metres from the slightly raised platform on the deck where the piano lives. The pianist – a stocky little fella with buck teeth – nods his head emphatically to his companion, counting her in. She comes in a second too late in that way people do at karaoke, which is kind of what this is, isn’t it?
People sing along, others make waiters clear a space so they can dance. The entourage remain with him but four of them do start stand-dancing, nothing too embarrassing. Mr Cat stands with his elbows on the railing and one ankle hooked over the other, his back to the ocean and head angled to the piano; the spot isn’t as good as originally believed, because the piano is blocking the rest of the platform from view. He can see the waitress’ head because she’s so tall, but only catches glimpses of the companion.
She is a terrible singer, and to an extent she must be aware of this, because while she doesn’t stop singing she does pass the microphone to the waitress, who just breathes into it for a few painfully awkward seconds. At the piano, Stumpy urges her, “Go on!” as the second verse comes to a close, and even he starts to belt out the chorus with his companion and the few remaining members of the crowd who haven’t gone to dance. This is the push she needs, and Eugly sings – and she is not a terrible singer, she’s quite fantastic, actually.
Which is cool and all, but absolutely not what Mr Cat is interested in here. At last, since passing the microphone along, the companion has stepped backwards into the circle of dancers and joined them, still trying to sing at the same time and laughing at herself, cheering for her friends up on stage.
She’s–
*
“–successfully restored the integrity of canon! Congratulations! Well done. Thank you!”
Panting heavily and drenched with sweat, Kaeloo can barely hold herself up on her knees. She hardly even hears the voice at first, having to take a minute just to breathe before she’s ready to process anything at all. She slowly lifts her chin all the way up, her neck cracking as it cranes and she stares up into the simple face on the glowing cube.
“I fixed it?” she manages to gasp.
“Yes!” chirps the voice of the Big Book of Destiny.
Shakily, she spreads her hands on the cold floor and pushes up onto one leg. “I fixed it,” she says. Her head swims, she feels faint. But it’s okay. It’s okay because Kaeloo prevented the events of the day, and hopefully that entire rotten future. It might take her all night to find the strength to stand, but it’s okay.
“Depending on the integrity of the AU created from this split, this reality may cease to exist between seven to three hundred and sixty-four minutes.”
That makes her jump to her feet in seconds. “What, what and what?” cries Kaeloo, her voice shrill with renewed distress.
“Canon has been restored,” the little impassive face explains, “rendering this timeline redundant. If the AU created by this split does not find a foundation, this reality may cease to exist between seven and three hundred and sixty-three minutes.”
Kaeloo bolts outside, and the world is just as dark and miserable as it was when the sun went down, when she saw it two minutes ago. She stands in the cold, tears filling her eyes, the chill causing goosebumps to sprout on her skin; feeling the muddy ground caking at her feet like it plans to hold her there forever, or swallow her up completely.
Which of those would be worse, she wonders? Would it be better than ceasing to exist?
She returns to the Big Book of Destiny, breathing deeply and with calculated steadiness, as not to let herself fall into a panic. “Everything is the same,” she says, more trying to verbally work herself through it than share any information with the Book, as surely it already knows. “But everything is also fixed – in canon, you said.”
“Yes!”
“This isn’t canon,” murmurs Kaeloo.
“No.”
“I’m not… I-I’m not the real version of me.”
“Nope!”
“The real me is…” She points at the blank computer screen. “The me I just saw. I fixed it for that me.”
The artificial voice keeps its cheery tone, “If you wish to run out the clock of your potential seven to three hundred and fifty-nine minutes, please do so elsewhere!”
Kaeloo lurches forward, grabs the sides of the computer monitor and shakes it, staring up at the face of the cube. “How do I fix it for me me?” she sobs. “I don’t want to die!”
“This timeline has been made redundant,” says the cube. “All that can be recovered of it is the AU, depending on its integrity.”
She shakes her head and covers her face with her hands, trying to keep from screaming. Not in anger, no – there’s none of that left. Maybe it all went to the real Kaeloo, she thinks bitterly.
“How,” she says through her hands, then inhales, takes them away from her face, and exhales. At the end of this, she opens her eyes, but does not look back up at the cube. “How does one do...what you’re saying needs to be done?”
“An AU finds its foundation and integrity through sheer force of will,” the Big Book of Destiny informs her. “To cement one into existence there must exist a strong conviction for a new idea with pre existing elements.”
Kaeloo feels like she is going to collapse. She presses her fingers to her forehead, positioning her thumb on her temple, and bows her head in thought. She cannot find her focus, her attunement with Smileyland. Her connection to the Heart has closed. Perhaps Guardianship is another thing only the real Kaeloo can possess. She shakes her head a little at this, trying to snap herself out of useless pessimism. So she’s not the canon version of herself. So what? That doesn’t make her any less worthy of existence...right?
After her mistake, after the trouble she’s caused, maybe she deserves to cease to exist.
“You do not have a lot of will to enforce,” comments the Book.
“Shut up!” snaps Kaeloo. “This thing you mean, it’s like...like an alternate dimension? A different timeline?”
“This reality is the result of a split from the canon timeline at a crucial point, one you have ensured occurs as it should. The AU is a creation of the split, a potential idea to be explored.”
“What idea?”
“If the version of Kaeloo who encountered the Big Book of Destiny successfully fixed canon but not their own reality, what would they do to make things right?”
“I don’t know,” she says imploringly. “What would I do?”
At that, the ground rumbles. She hears rain begin to fall outside, the clap of thunder. The cube and its little face comes down to be on her level.
“What indeed?”
Sometime between the seven to three hundred and fifty minutes that follow, this reality continues to disintegrate further and further until it does, as predicted, cease to exist.
But not before a foundation of will solidifies itself. Not before an AU is cemented, based on a strong conviction for a new idea with pre existing elements, and the thought of what would come next.
*
Meanwhile in canon, the next episode is starting.
*
–like nothing he’s ever seen before. Dark skin and toned, muscled arms; deep purple tattoos up her biceps, to her shoulders, down into her shimmery red top and continuing to god-knows-where. Her chest is sturdy, with little lumps of breasts that don’t stand out much against the bit of the tummy she has on her – and all of that leads down to the fattest ass Mr Cat has ever seen. A work of art. Her legs, her thighs, not very long but thicker than they have any right to be.
Bulky and curvy, hard and soft; with the clearest eyes and brightest smile. Mr Cat makes eye contact with her eventually – her dancing slows a bit when this happens, she’s noticed him back – and in a look he tries to convey just how much he wants her. And she smiles, a new smile, one just for him, all pleased and innocent, and Mr Cat immediately starts fantasising about how she has no idea what she’s just walked into, she’s never experienced something like this and won’t be likely to find it anywhere else, he’s going to f*ck her until sunrise and then probably f*ck her some more–
The snap of Pretty’s fingers in his face is a crack of thunder in a calm sky. And the worst part is it’s not even to get his attention, it’s to get Stumpy’s. She’s demanding that he play something specific, it doesn’t matter what, and Mr Cat turns his head to glare at her, which was his first mistake. When his eyes flicker back to the circle of dispersing dancers, she’s disappeared from their ranks. He whirls to the stage, where Stumpy has gotten up from behind the piano and is hopping down off the platform. The last glimpse Mr Cat gets of her is one of her strong arms reaching for Stumpy; they clasp hands and disappear into the sea of people.
Well, sh*t.
Reconvening at their table, Mr Cat notices that Quack-Quack has gone missing in action as well – and then it bothers him that he noticed that, since when does he pay any mind to what his poor excuses for friends do?
And it hits him not five minutes later, while thinking of her eyes on him of all things, that Mr Cat realises he no longer has that feeling of being watched.
*
The guy posted at the door to the main hall of the casino recognises him and starts sucking up right away. “Welcome back, Mr Cat, what can–”
“Roulette,” Mr Cat barks rudely, his entourage all agreeing behind him.
It’s a game with steep odds that are objectively stacked in the houses favour, but he wants that right now, that unpredictability, that chaos. Just f*ck it all – set the ball rolling in the wheel, toss a coin if you have to. Win big or throw it all away in seconds.
Mr Cat makes insider bets alongside the remaining entourage, and the modest gathering of other casino-goers around the table make outsiders. People interrogate the croupier about the wheel, about its activity before now, then discuss odds and probabilities with one another – and all being so incredibly wrong as they do it. It’s all part of the gambler’s fallacy, the players thinking they can outsmart the house and find ways to win based on faulty logic or superstition. Mr Cat is an addict like they are, but he allows himself a sense of superiority over them for understanding the truth; it’s all chance. There is nothing to intuit from cards that have already been pulled, or which face the coin has already landed on, or what numbers and colours the ball has previously visited. It’s all on luck, if one believes in such a thing.
Which he does, of course.
And perhaps that is why he’s drawn to the roulette table tonight. He needs to check in on his luck, make sure it’s decent – and he needs it to be decent, he needs all the luck he can get. It's gonna be based on luck and luck alone that he sees that person again. He can’t stop thinking about her, he’s fixated and a little freaked out. His interest primarily stems from how absolutely gorgeous he found her, and because it can’t be a coincidence that his unsettled feeling went away as soon as she looked at him. It just can’t.
Mr Cat is more superstitious than he thinks he is.
He wins 22k and gets up and leaves immediately for the bar. The entourage has the presence of mind to know to hang back, based on Mr Cat’s history of reactions to being followed after suddenly storming away. When he feels the need to remove himself, it is wise to let him.
Armed with a glass of Scotch, Mr Cat takes himself outside to the middle balcony overlooking the gardens. It’s quite dark out by now, it feels like hours have gone by when it may not have been very long – casinos are designed to keep the patrons confused like that, and Mr Cat finds it regrettable that he's not immune to this psychological trickery. He glances at his phone and it indicates the hour is about to turn to nine, not late but somehow like ages have passed.
Whittling away at the Scotch, which he does not taste at all and barely registers, Mr Cat basks in the regal lighting of the casino as he looks down at the gardens below. People only ever hang out down there during the day, despite the lights placed at regular intervals to accommodate for nighttime admiration, and Mr Cat never goes there at all. Flowers, nature, whatever it is that draws people into that stuff – it doesn’t interest him in the slightest. It’s there in the same way the piano is played on the restaurant terrace; for decoration, for the background, for a passing thought at best. And just in the same way as the piano, it’s different tonight.
Having seen her from a reasonable distance, it is easy to pick her out from an unreasonable one. The sequins of her shirt that glimmer at every light that hits them also helps as an identifier, given this is a top-down view Mr Cat has of her now, though not the one he had in mind.
She is unaccompanied as she scampers down the stairs and takes herself over to the fountain, one of multiple to be found about the gardens. It’s bad enough that Mr Cat can’t see without little pieces of plastic under his eyelids – he did check and yes they’re there – and the distance and the darkness aren’t helping him any, but he can tell she’s leaning over the side and putting her hand in the water, reaching out to touch the spray jetting out from the middle. He enjoys the opportunity to admire her behind again, until she withdraws and proceeds further into the garden, the shrubs of camellias and all that lies beyond. Mr Cat watches, transfixed, like she’s some kind of siren and he’s a sailor – captain, he’d be a captain – about to jump ship after her. Something about that visual is enticing, but if he vaults over this balcony here he’ll just plummet to the terrace below and break every bone in his body. Not ideal.
He sets the unfinished glass down on the balustrade and takes a step back, a mental one as much as a physical one. He is not going to go down there into the gardens after her, because that would be stupid. No, if he has good enough luck that he could catch a second glimpse of her, then it’s good enough to guarantee a third time.
He hasn’t seen her before but he’s not likely to ever miss her now that he has, and no one is ever in Monte Carlo for just one night. And if she was with her friend at Le Bar Americain, it means she’s staying at the Hotel de Paris, which means he absolutely, one hundred percent will see her again. Mr Cat will speak to her then, sweep her off her feet and have her spending more time on her vacation at the hotel than originally planned. Yes. Good.
Kaeloo stops and looks back over her shoulder. She’s a distant figure about to disappear into the greenery, but there’s no mistaking it, she’s seen him, she’s looking at him. She has to be, he’s the only one out here on the balcony. Mr Cat exhales. She lifts her hand from its place at her side and gives a little wave, then turns and disappears into the garden.
He bolts.
Pretty is hanging out with a pit boss in the grand front hall of the casino. She starts trying to flag him down as soon as he starts passing through. “You left your winnings, Mr Cat. I picked them up, but if you want them you’ll have to–”
“Keep it.” He strides right on by, but she does try to catch his attention one more time.
“Can you just keep an eye out for–”
“No,” he throws over his shoulder, and slips out the front doors. As far as he’s concerned, he won’t be returning inside anytime soon.
The garden boasts a series of hedges in a pattern, designed to be fully appreciated from above, with strings of fairy lights woven through the bushes like they’d been grown around them. It’s not a maze, it’s designed for anyone to be able to reach the middle courtyard fairly easily, but there’s no escaping that it can be difficult for people to traverse when they’re not familiar with it.
Mr Cat has no idea where he’s going. But he’s going through the hedges anyway because that’s what feels right. Being led by his instincts, or intuition, a feeling in his heart or his dick – all the same sh*t.
He starts paying attention to the fairy lights, taking note of the constellations they most resemble and judging how he’s traversing the maze using them. A breeze starts up above, the hedges keeping Mr Cat out of it, but he can feel the extra chill in the air, and the leaves rustle around him as he goes on. The next thing he starts paying attention to is the manicured grass, as the plushness of it lends itself well to tracking recent weight that’s crossed it. With these two tricks up his sleeve Mr Cat soon recognises that he’s gone in a circle at least once, and he huffs with annoyance that he didn’t notice the footprint thing right away, because he’s probably walked all over hers.
There’s more rustling at his elbow, but it’s not the wind. It’s someone on the other side of that particular hedge, brushing by it, like a hint or a tease. Mr Cat strides onward, further projecting ideas onto the situation – she wants him to find her – and thinking of what he’s going to do once he pins this person down, either figuratively or literally. He sees movement, shadows changing with the fairy lights, and he’s definitely not been down this way yet and those light footprints definitely aren’t his. He grins to himself and stands still for a moment, puts his hands on his hips and looks around.
“Come out, come out, wherever you are?” he calls, and Mr Cat hears a laugh, not too distant, a little muffled, and very cute.
Certain that he’s almost through with her game, Mr Cat confidently follows the imprints in the ground until they get progressively heavier, like an effort was made into doing so, and then they just kind of...become his? Mr Cat stops again and frowns at the grass. There’s a corner up ahead and he sticks his head around it, and it’s the f*cking fairy lights that resemble Scorpio for what feels like the tenth time. She’s messing with him.
That’s so annoying, but Mr Cat is admittedly into it and chuffs a laugh of his own, turning back in less of a rush. One corner back, right as her footsteps start getting heavy, there’s an interchange he took no notice of because it looked like there wasn’t anything down there except more hedges and lights – but now he can see a big flattened part of grass a metre and a half down that path. She set up the loop for him to follow, then doubled back using her own footprints and jumped down a new way so he wouldn’t notice. He clicks his tongue against his teeth, goes down that way and turns the corner, and he’s reached it, the centre courtyard.
It’s an open space, relative to being in between the hedges, with more flattened grass that becomes a stone slab in the middle, and in the middle of that there’s a statue of the Virgin Mary standing on a big stone block and adorned with more fairy lights, surrounded by a shallow moat of water. It’s there, sitting on the block right at Mary’s feet, with her hands flat on the surface and her legs stretched out in front of her, that Kaeloo is waiting for him.
Mr Cat realises he’s been standing and looking at her for a few more seconds than is appropriate and he chastises himself for this; he’s supposed to be checking her out, not in awe of her. As he comes forward, however, he becomes less sure that that’s true. There’s just this kind of...everything about her.
“Found you,” Mr Cat says triumphantly.
“Congratulations.” She speaks with a lisp. She didn’t sing with one.
These are somewhat unusual circ*mstances, so it’s hard to think of an opening. “Casino’s not your scene, huh?”
“I don’t care for gambling,” she confesses.
“Then I’d hate to be the person to tell you what this town’s economy is based on,” says Mr Cat, then touches his chin in mock regret. “Oh, whoops.”
She hums a little laugh, the kind of reaction he was aiming for – but he doesn’t give her the opportunity to reply.
“So if you’re not in Monaco for the only thing it has to offer, why’d you come?”
At this she falters, like she had a specific answer planned but now that it’s come to saying it she’s lost her faith in it. But she still smiles, a bit shyly now. “I wanted to. It was time.” She goes to brush her hair out of her face despite none being there, tucks some behind her ear. Typical flirty move.
Mr Cat steps up to the edge of the moat and leans over it a little, offering her his arm and one of his most dashing looks, in his opinion. “Then there’s no time to lose.”
She looks at his arm with both her eyebrows raised, then her eyes return to his face. There’s a glint to them, a quirk to her mouth, and she rises from her seat at the stone. Then, at the height of looking like she’s going to take his arm, she hops over the moat on her own instead, deliberately brushing him with her hip as she passes by. Mr Cat whirls on his heel after her and catches her glancing back and trying to hold down a laugh. That minx.
“You didn’t say how long you’re staying.”
She stops and fully turns to him, her voice taking on a somewhat serious and definitely sexy tone. “As long as it takes.”
“Oh,” Mr Cat murmurs, closing the gap between them. “I like that.”
He circles an arm around her waist and gives it a second, allowing her an opportunity to refuse, because a part of him isn’t entirely sure if she’s really responding or if she is just that innocent. But no, she’s genuinely receptive, she leans into him with her shining eyes and pretty smile. Mr Cat can’t help but feel a mix of proud and relieved; he’s still got it. Although it wasn’t so much a case of not having it than it was just a dry spell he wasn’t making any effort to put an end to, until now of course.
He kisses her, mouth closed but still firm, purposeful. Her lips are soft and she again pushes into him, her hand coming to rest at his elbow, and she sighs a little before they part. Mr Cat has decided yes, now he is in awe. Crazy ideas start filling his head, not just of the obvious but of how right it feels to hold her, how good it feels to kiss her; how she looks at him and really sees him, not as an attraction or a target, almost as if she’s already known him for years. She was put on his path, or he was put on hers; they were meant to meet tonight. This is something different, something surreal.
Or, y’know – he could just be really horny, it has been ten months since he last had sex.
Mr Cat asks, “What’s your name?” and she goes to answer him when–
“Kaeloo!”
Of all the times, of all the places, of all the people. Pretty has appeared in the courtyard, availed of the pit boss but now accompanied by the pianist, and Kaeloo turns her head back to see them and jumps away from Mr Cat.
Marching to meet her, Pretty holds out her arms, more like she’s displaying herself than going for a hug. “Kaeloo, you bitch!” She cries this with great affection. “I knew it was you. Get the f*ck over here!”
Kaeloo laughs and hugs Pretty when she comes to a stop before her, heartily patting her on the back and taking her hands in hers after withdrawing. “Pretty!” she says with excited fondness. “I’ve missed you so much!”
Mr Cat stands there, dropping his arms to his sides. They know one another. f*cking fantastic.
Stumpy sidles on up to him, trying to be casual when really he’s kind of uncomfortable. He keeps his hands in the pockets of his jacket and doesn’t make full eye contact, just sort of looks at Mr Cat’s ear and pretends it’s the same.
“Hey, man,” says Stumpy, solely as an acknowledgement and not an invitation to conversation.
Mr Cat is glad not to take it. He briefly grunts as an answer and that’s it, the rest of his attention stays glued to Kaeloo and Pretty as they chatter with each other.
“I’m going to take you everywhere,” Pretty is saying. “There are so many good shops and boutiques here, I’ll find you something decent to wear.”
“Oh! Um, thank you.” Kaeloo sounds eager, but not committed, so she’s probably well aware that their styles are so completely different that Mr Cat truly can’t imagine what Pretty intends to put her through. “You don’t have to.”
“No, I want to.” She links her arm through Kaeloo’s and Mr Cat feels an absurd spike of jealousy. “But first, drinks! Dancing! We’ll pick up Eugly on the way, we’ll be queens of the night.”
And with that terrible announcement made, she starts taking Kaeloo back to the hedge path. Stumpy easily falls into step but Mr Cat has to shake his head before following – and then Pretty stops and points at him.
“That’s far enough for you,” she says sharply at first, then her tone gets all smug. “Thanks for the winnings, they’ll do well to pay for our girls only night.” That last part has so much emphasis put on it that Mr Cat can see the italics.
“Thank god,” exhales Stumpy, putting one hand on his hip and gesturing skyward. “I’m going back to the hotel where no one can bother me!”
“Sorry, Stumpy,” Kaeloo says sincerely. “Thank you for making an effort tonight.”
“Get lost,” Pretty snaps.
Stumpy grumbles and grouches, pushing past them and making his way back through the maze; Pretty bumps Kaeloo for her attention and shimmies her shoulders.
“Ooh, we’re gonna have so much fun.” She turns the corner and drags Kaeloo after her, who stumbles a bit but has no choice but to follow. Before disappearing from sight she shoots one last look behind her.
“Goodnight, Hector,” calls Kaeloo, a slightly regretful tinge to her voice – so at least there’s that.
Mr Cat stands there in the courtyard for a minute or so, baffled by what has just transpired and heavily irritated for the interruption. It was going to be so much fun, but then the worst member of the entourage had to show up and ruin it all. How would she and Kaeloo know each other anyway? What’s the deal with that nutcracker pianist, where does he fit into all this?
But it’s not so bad, he supposes. That kiss was a promise, one he’ll be sure to keep. And Kaeloo, that gorgeous amazon; there’s something very special about her, and he’s going to enjoy every intoxicating moment he spends with her – without the company of anyone else.
Mr Cat looks at the statue of the Virgin Mary draped in fairy lights one last time, giving her a nod, as if she would ever bless him of all people. He makes his own way out of the hedges and the garden, and it’s only when he’s approaching the fountain that he realises he didn’t tell Kaeloo his name.
*
If you were to experience your life differently, to miss certain events that shaped you and have them replaced with different ones, would you still be you? Is it possible to retain what makes you the person you are without having gone through the things that made you what you are? At what point do you become a different entity, how far removed can you get from yourself before you become unrecognisable?
Is the canonical version of you the only one with any worth? Is it pointless to pay heed to alternate selves to begin with; is all of this a waste of time?
“As long as someone’s interested in your AU,” says Stumpy, “it’s not a waste of time.”
“But what if no one is interested?”
He shakes his head and speaks through mouthfuls of burger. “Not possible. Just by having the AU in the first place, it means you’re interested in it. Therefore.” He waves his hand. “Not a waste of time.”
He dispenses his wisdom from the end of the table, eating to what seems like no end. He doesn’t ever run out of burgers, and they’re never anything less than hot and tasty when he gets to opening their individual boxes. Smileyland is providing the best it can in the face of the apocalypse. Kaeloo sits opposite to him with her fingers going white as she grasps the table edge.
“What about what I was saying about you? Are you really you if you’re not the normal you?” Her hands go to the sides of her head. “Am I even making sense?!”
Stumpy thinks on this but for a second, rustling around and producing a pile of his comics. “Changing circ*mstances for characters is just a part of fiction, Kaeloo! Even in canon, people go from being one thing to being totally the opposite and they’re still them – and fanwork is the same.” He opens up one from the pile and slides it down the table to her. “This is an AU issue of Mister Coolskin where he never gets his powers.”
Kaeloo scoffs. “Then he’s not Mister Coolskin, is he?”
“No!” Stumpy waves his hands emphatically. “No, he’s still himself, but not in the way we know! That’s what’s fun about AUs – seeing just how much of themselves characters can still be even when they’re where they don’t belong! I don’t get why this is so hard for you!”
She flips through the comic with her brow furrowed. “I just… I’m sure it’s a nice story, Stumpy, but what’s the point if it’s not canon?”
This gets him to stop eating. He sets his hands down on the table and gives her a very serious look. “I’m gonna level with you, Kaeloo. This may be hard to hear, but, sometimes...canon…is bad.”
Kaeloo gasps.
“Or not even bad,” Stumpy tries to explain, “it just misses an opportunity, or opens up an alternate possibility, raises questions that don’t get answers. Canon makes you ask ‘what if’ and fanwork and AUs gives you answers! And it’s so cool and compelling! You can love canon, but you can love AUs, too! Look at this.”
He passes on another comic. The cover advertises it as the ten-year-anniversary remake edition of the first issue of the Coolskin Saga.
“This,” says Stumpy, “isn’t canon. It’s a reimagining of Mister Coolskin’s origin story with edgy twists and turns; the characters swear now! The plot explores stuff the original never did, or would, or could!” He jabs his finger against the cover to punctuate every following word, “I love this. I love this version of Mister Coolskin as much as I love the original, because even though they’re not the same, they’re still the same. In the AU where Mister Coolskin is working with the bad guys–”
“What? Why?”
Stumpy cries out in frustration. “Because it’s interesting to explore what would happen! You’re interested to see what would be different, how he would be the same, how the relationships are affected! Yeah, canonically Mister Coolskin would never join the bad guys, but if he did – wouldn’t you want to know what would happen?”
Kaeloo looks at him as her expression softens somewhat.
“What if we lived in a different time, in a different place, and we were doing different things? What if we met at different points in our lives? Don’t even worry about not being you, cuz you just are. You’re as you as you are, you’re the you of this alternate reality, getting into all sorts of jams that I’d wanna hear about. I’d care about that you like I care about you you. That’s what gives an AU it's worth! Do you get it now?”
“It’s a lot to take in,” admits Kaeloo. “You’re a lot more knowledgeable in this study of fiction than me, Stumpy.”
“There’s a version of me where I’m not,” Stumpy points out. “Is that me still me? Is that me worth caring about?”
She puts her hand over his comfortingly. “Of course!”
He grins, pulling away so he can lean back in his seat and throw up his hands like the matter is settled. “You get it.”
*
As he thought, Mr Cat does not re-enter the casino. He returns to the Hotel de Paris, the Princess Grace Diamond Suite that has served as his dwelling for what must be coming up on four years now. Is that an absurdly long amount of time? Yes. Is it very expensive? Absolutely. But does he intend on leaving?
The Princess Grace has two floors, each with generously-sized balcony terraces that look out to the Prince’s Palace on the southwest and the ocean at the northeast. It has a spiral staircase, an elevator, and a pool, the latter of which Mr Cat does not use. The space is entirely too large for him yet he still finds it to be somehow small and restrictive; after many afternoons of considering this dilemma he’s long since come to the conclusion that he doesn’t like walls. If he could he’d have them all knocked down so he can be in one open area he would, but he can’t. That’s fine, though, it doesn’t bother him at the front of his mind anymore, just exists as a petty discomfort right at the back. He has many of those.
He gets pissed off when he sees his reflection in the bedroom mirror because it makes him think back to the previous segments of the night with added negative insight. He went out like that. Of all the nights to neglect a tie, to go for the top-buttons-undone look; what must have felt like an acceptable choice before now strikes him as sleazy. And Mr Cat will be the first to say it, he is sleazy, he just doesn’t like looking like it. He doesn’t like looking bad because he knows how good he can look, objectively the better option of the two. He realises with some dawning horror that he’s gotten lazy; the scruffiness that lends him a rugged quality has gotten to be too much, there is an art to maintaining his facial hair and he let it fall by the wayside.
What started as the noticing of a subpar appearance quickly becomes a venture into dysmorphia and eventually this does occur to him and he looks away, at the wall. It’s a cream off-white, like a fancy blank card; at some point someone will draw intricate ink designs at the top and bottom and it will be used as an invitation to a wedding or something. He pictures the hypothetical card very clearly, then goes back to the mirror, and he sees himself just looking a little shabby, not his best but certainly not his worst, his charm still shines through.
First impressions are never perfect, Mr Cat tells himself, vowing to knock this lapse in looks on the head; but not before he reminds himself that Kaeloo let him kiss her, so obviously it was still a good first impression. Once he has himself in top shape they’ll be the hottest pair this side of the ocean, and that thought really pleases him, probably too much considering he just met her, but – y’know. Lust can make you kinda crazy.
Ah, and that’d be why he let himself lose track of himself, wouldn’t it; Mr Cat hasn’t had a reason, a motive, a person to scrub up nice for. Well, now that he’s made these observations he’ll be sure to keep on top of that sh*t, for himself as much as her. They’ll look so good together, he can see it – and then he gets caught up in just seeing her, she’s very distracting.
Very. And though she shouldn’t have known his name, she did and she said it, and that’s a mental soundbyte he’ll make good use of. He gets off and goes to bed.
Mr Cat does not dream often, if ever, and he’s not entirely sure if he does tonight, but when he wakes he is left with some bizarre images lingering about his mind, indecipherable and meaningless. An injured juvenile cat making its way into the great beyond, the journey unclear but for the certainty that it’s leaving; and the image fades into an empty void that soon becomes occupied by a heart, but Mr Cat cannot be sure if it’s the shape or the organ. At some point they kind of start to look the same.
Indecipherable as a description is a bit of a lie. Mr Cat knows the cat is him, it’s pretty on the nose. Like, a cat? Yeah, big mystery as to what that represents. But he finds it strange – and possibly significant – that he would dream such a thing; leaving his home and his family is one of his few complete memories of being young. As for the heart, that certainly means nothing.
Well. He got a few hours of sleep at least. And now that Mr Cat is wide awake once more he figures there’s no better opportunity to get started on himself. It’s time for a total cleanse.
It starts simple; he takes his nail polish off. It’s not in bad shape or chipped, he only reapplied it a couple of days ago, but it’s good to start fresh every once in a while. With bare nails, Mr Cat gets into the shower – an enormous thing, with raised edges that makes it like a basin, which is weird because there’s a bathtub right there – and takes his time washing. Running his hands through his hair, he thinks of Kaeloo again; he literally can’t not, she just appears in his mind like a resident. An extremely attractive resident who goes around in very little clothing; and Mr Cat imagines her in the shower with him, all slippery and suds up with soap, how especially soft she’d be, and he’d grab her pretty tit* and grope her perfect ass and flip her and f*ck her roughly against the tile wall–
This feels like it’s getting out of hand. He can’t recall ever wanting a stranger so desperately before. Mr Cat jerks off a second time and finishes up in the shower.
The way he likes it for himself is to have a little hair, but not a lot. He trims his beard and whiskers to his satisfaction, does the same for the little patch on his chest, under his arms, his legs. He repaints his nails, two coats for his feet and three for his hands until they’re nice and shiny and black; and while that dries he lounges about the pool patio, watching the water reflected on the ceiling and almost shocked at how banal he’s becoming.
He supposes it’s a part of being twenty-seven – and then he thinks, Oh god am I really that old? and is left unsettled. If he were an actual cat he’d definitely be dead by now. Has he truly been around for that long a time? Has he really let himself remain in Monaco for a four-year chunk of it? In the early days – he’s nineteen when his memory starts up again, starts being reliable – he jetset all over the world, he’d be in a new hotel every second night, he saw every beautiful city and every filthy underbelly, and he loved it. Of course he did; he was a kid with more money than anyone could realistically spend in a lifetime, not that that stopped him from trying.
Mr Cat has always been lucky. Things have always seemed to fall into his lap. His initial fortune was made with TV lotto numbers, numbers he’d known would win, like he’d had a vision of the drawing a day early. He used to let himself think he really did, but in time he convinced himself of the impossibility of it. He may have let the idea slide if it ever applied to his other financial escapades, but it didn’t, it was just that first time. So it was all luck, right from the beginning.
Mr Cat wanted to remain in Monte Carlo because it was one of his favourite places. It was close to home but not too close, and he could game the system of Monaco residents not being allowed the pleasures of the casino by not being a real resident. He dropped himself here and stayed put, never deigning to move on. He still doesn’t now, but, there’s just a little feeling he has, deep in his guts, that maybe, just as a suggestion, he could.
If only it would mean anything.
Because nothing really does, not to Mr Cat. He hasn’t been living for a while, only existing on autopilot, making no connections and feeling no joy. That feeling of being watched, the feeling that a clock was ticking down, the vague unease and fear that something awful was about to happen was almost welcome. More welcome than that, of course, is Kaeloo.
He knows it is wrong to hyperfocus on another person the way he‘s doing now; it’s wrong to be immediately enraptured and to barely fight the thought that it’s different, it’s real, it’s fate – but Mr Cat has been wrong before and he’ll gladly be wrong again.
Kaeloo has her own private purpose here in Monaco, he knows that for sure. Mr Cat glimpsed a piece of her conviction, her determination, in the garden. She's something else. She’s driven by something he doesn’t yet see or understand, but by god how he wants to. A whirlwind romance is always more interesting with a mystery mixed in there.
But man, how the f*ck does Pretty know her?
At dawn, Mr Cat takes another long look at himself in the mirror, and this time he is much happier with what he sees. He’s a handsome young man – yes, young, for there is still so much time to do something with himself, to move on from this pit he stumbled into. He can do it. He just needs to get his hands on Kaeloo first, and if after Mr Cat has his way with her it turns out all this sh*t about her being special was just brought on by a haze of lust, so be it.
*
There’s a knock at the door at 2pm, and the person responsible is Quack-Quack, with his watery eyes and punchable bird-like features. Mr Cat accurately recalls his name once and for all when he starts communicating in sign language; Quack-Quack is the mute one.
Mr Cat understands BSL all well and good, but he only started paying attention more than halfway through the sentence so all he knows is that there’s something “out on the beach”.
With a preference for living in ignorance over asking this idiot to repeat himself, Mr Cat coolly leans against the doorframe and says, “What for?”
Quack-Quack shrugs, offering up, To hang out.
Praying to every known deity that it’s not going to be just the two of them, which he would know if only he asked, Mr Cat scratches his cheek nonchalantly, replies, “Be down in five,” then shuts the door in Quack-Quack’s face.
He expects his company to be the entourage and whoever it was that caught Quack-Quack’s eye last night – that’s the only reason Mr Cat can think of for his disappearance. It’ll be a social gathering and they’ll all have fun and he’ll have an awful time and it’ll be another day in the life of Mr Cat. But he has his luck, so Pretty will be among the selection again today, so he’ll be sure to try and get something out of her; be it a smug anecdote about her girls night or the all-important room number of a certain individual.
Mr Cat resorts to further prayer as he hopes, cringing, that Pretty has not fed Kaeloo any stories of their past dalliance – he is aware that no amount of luck can protect him from the strength of that woman’s gossip mongering.
He picks up his phone and goes into his texts, to Pretty’s contact, which he has had muted for the past eighteen-or-so months. Lack of response, however, hasn’t discouraged her from messaging him any, and there’s thousands of backlog he could feasibly spend a whole weekend getting though, but he won’t do that. It’s only last night that interests him, and sure enough, Pretty sent along a handful of images.
The first is just Pretty with a wad of bills in her hand, arranged like a fan that she holds up to her face. Mr Cat barely sees it, because the next two are of her and Kaeloo, and the one after that is only of Kaeloo. The first of the two together is mid-action, but Pretty judges the qualities of her pictures by how good she looks in them, therefore this one was worth sharing because she does indeed look good.
Pretty has earned her name; her conventional attractiveness is off the charts, she grabs the attention and admiration of all who see her – but she does nothing for Mr Cat. Perhaps she did early on, however he finds her personality actively unattractive. She is the worst of the entourage. And yet, she performatively quirks her lips at the camera like she isn’t. Beside her, Kaeloo is mostly a blur, but the flash of teeth is unmistakable. In the second photo of the two of them she’s perfectly clear, her grin wide and her eyes crinkled pleasantly, a part of her hand appearing in the bottom frame as she makes a peace sign. Pretty has her arm draped around her shoulders. The photo being well-lit and close to their faces, Mr Cat can see the scar that runs down Kaeloo’s right eye.
Those two are horizontal, but the picture that’s just of Kaeloo is vertical, as was the first one of only Pretty. Mr Cat can’t tell where they are specifically, but it has to be a store as Pretty made mention of last night; Kaeloo has very clearly been captured in the middle of her emerging from a changing room, trying out a dress that Pretty picked for her that gets Mr Cat his first look of her bare legs, and they are wonderful. There’s a lot of meat on her bones, and to complete the analogy, Mr Cat is hungry.
He saves the pictures with Kaeloo and crops out Pretty where applicable, throws on one of his fifteen pairs of sunglasses and leaves. Quack-Quack stands waiting for him in the front lobby, one arm crossed over his middle and his foot tapping as he gazes out into the middle distance, as absent as ever. He is certainly the second worst of the entourage after Pretty. Mr Cat thinks he’ll make an announcement about it to them today.
Larvotto beach is a long stretch of pebbly sand generally occupied by plenty of lounge chairs and umbrellas, where people don’t go to swim or do anything so much as they do to show themselves off. Mr Cat is too busy keeping an eye out, waiting for the rest of the entourage to emerge from wherever it is they emerge, to notice at first just how few people are around, the beach-going population all preferring to keep down another end today. Not that there would be too many people in this area on a crowded day, either; their journey comes to an end on the private section of the beach occupied by La Note Bleue.
The water keeps fairly shallow as far out that the dock stretches, and it’s the water that Mr Cat’s eye is drawn to first because it’s empty but for a purple inflatable ring, where Stumpy the pianist has planted himself with no intention of moving any further than the small waves are willing to push him. A woman stands right at the shore, her feet washed over by the waves at regular intervals as she looks out at the ring. She’s exceptionally tall and just as fat, and she must feel bad about it because she’s wearing a t-shirt and sarong over her swimsuit. She glances back and twiddles her fingers in a shy wave, and Mr Cat is highly confused, at least until at his side Quack-Quack waves back, and he recognises her now not just as the waitress with the fantastic singing voice, but Pretty’s sister. They tend to keep separate in public.
Away from the water and closer up to the restaurant, a net has been set up. Pretty’s over there, all skinny and small in a pink bikini, hair and makeup fully done with sunglasses resting on her head like a tiara, hailing someone from La Note Bleue to come refill her glass. On the other side of the net is Kaeloo, palming a volleyball between her hands. No one else in sight; this is the entourage today. Mr Cat hits Quack-Quack on the shoulder.
“Hey, you’re alright,” he says, to which Quack-Quack smiles and shrugs, then heads down to meet Eugly at the water.
As he approaches the net, Mr Cat doesn’t pay one second of mind to anything that isn’t Kaeloo. She wears board shorts that barely cover her thighs and a one-piece swimsuit, a mossy shade of green with an oval of yellow going over the torso and stomach. Paired with her hair, a darker shade of green, she invokes the look of a frog. Her tattooed skin shines back at the sunbeams that hit it. When she looks up from the volleyball her eyes go directly to him, there’s no brief moment of searching, so he knows she saw him before he saw her; she was waiting for the right moment to snap her gaze on him. Her smile is slight and restrained – she wants to grin at him but won’t let herself yet.
Mr Cat is happy to work for it. He accounts for his sunglasses and makes sure to move his head as he looks her up and down, keeping his expression as impassive as possible for now.
Fresh drink in hand, Pretty stands at his elbow. “You want something?” she asks haughtily, as if offended that he’d come over.
Mr Cat hums and does a little nod to Kaeloo. She blinks and her shoulders tense and she looks out to the water, turning the volleyball over in her hands. Cute.
“Oh, you trimmed your hair, thank god.” Pretty goes to touch him and he jerks out of her reach, but her reaction to this is only a mild scowl, her acrylic nails curling in on her palm. “You were so scraggly.”
“I’m so sorry I wasn’t meeting your standards,” snarks Mr Cat.
She nods sagely with closed eyes. “Well, I forgive you. You see, Kaeloo,” she throws her voice over to bring Kaeloo into the conversation. “I told you looks are all he cares about.”
He can’t help but bark a laugh at that. “She said from the comfort of her glass house!”
“I, er. I’ll sit out of this argument, if that’s what it is,” Kaeloo says, ducking underneath the net to join them on their side, looking between them. “If it’s worth anything, I think you both look very nice.”
Pretty playfully shoves her on her arm. “You suckup.”
Mr Cat takes off his sunglasses and sets them on his head, fixing Kaeloo with an intense glower. “I’m not nice,” he warns.
She smiles a bit more freely at him. “If you say so, Mr Cat. Lovely to see you again so soon.”
And she sounds so earnest that it makes him crack, and he tries to turn it into a smirk. “Not soon enough.”
Kaeloo doesn’t let the volleyball and net go unspoken of forever, and she soon suggests a game. There’s something oddly familiar about it to Mr Cat, and he can easily identify and understand that games are very important to her. It’s weird but endearing how she gets really into it, shouting and encouraging Stumpy on their side of the net as Mr Cat and Quack-Quack operate on the other. Pretty and Eugly watch all this from the sidelines.
Stumpy is unathletic but by god the kid has gusto. He possesses a strange energy, a sharpness, and he would probably make for a formidable foe if only he could focus properly. He eventually enters a zen sort of state that is not zen at all, where he screams and hits the ball and the pure chaos of it lends him power. Kaeloo tries to reign him in at points but isn’t averse to his methods, and she too as the game progresses gets more and more aggressive; having a blast the whole time but with an intensity that people don’t bring to games or sport unless they’re Olympic-level.
Hell, she could be, with a body like that. Mr Cat stops doing well at an indeterminable point, always succeeding against Stumpy but just not her. Quack-Quack helps him save face by dominating their side of the net, also focused and skilled in ways Mr Cat would not have predicted otherwise. As it happens, Quack-Quack is not entirely empty-headed. He coordinates with Mr Cat and the two of them do make a good team.
And amazingly, Mr Cat does have fun, even when they start switching teams and incorporating the sisters. Something that is especially strange is how comfortable he feels in this group of six; while here, he feels he understands Pretty and Quack-Quack a little better, still feeling animosity towards them, just a more friendly one. Which makes no sense. Likewise how he feels as if he knows Stumpy well, that he likes Eugly even though the two of them have never once spoken to one another; and most of all he feels like Kaeloo knows him better than anyone in the world. To be with these people is right, and it doesn’t matter where they are or what they’re doing. It’s right.
What the f*ck is up with that.
Mr Cat sits at lunch with them and looks from face to face, in disbelief at himself and at them. It’s like he’s been put under a spell, and he keeps trying to be upset by this, to feel enraged that something has changed him and made him think he’s actually friends with this mix of strangers and unwelcome acquaintances, but he can’t. It feels too real. And as time goes on it becomes clear, they all feel comfortable like this as well. In a literal sense, this is the first time the whole group has come together, have shared a space and known everyone else present. But it’s not. It’s not the first time, it can’t be.
Maybe they knew each other in a past life.
Mr Cat looks in his glass to see what’s in it, if there’s some f*cked-up substance in there he hadn’t realised he’d been drinking. It’s just water.
“Are you alright, Mr Cat?” asks Kaeloo, leaning across the table to him – Stumpy separates them – to put her hand on his wrist. It sets his heart racing.
Bewildered, he just looks at her. “I think I need some air.”
“I’ll come with you.”
Hours have passed and he didn’t notice. It’s sunset once more, a full 24 hours since the six of them first converged on the terrace of the hotel restaurant. With the blessing of three of the four in their company – Pretty almost demands that they stay – Mr Cat and Kaeloo leave La Note Bleue and head down the beach to the pier.
The chill is coming over again. Kaeloo has produced a jacket from Eugly’s beach travel bag, and as far as her top half is concerned she’s very cozy. Mr Cat keeps track of her legs; she’s probably fine now but it’s only gonna get colder, which is promising – she might want to go to him for warmth. His gaze keeps falling to her hand at her side, and Mr Cat is not a hand-holder so the urge to take it disturbs him.
Kaeloo spends a minute or so gazing out to the water before sharing her thoughts. “Monaco is so beautiful. I can’t imagine how nice it must be to live here.” She pulls a face. “Or how expensive.” Looks at him now with her happy expression restored. “You’re very lucky, Mr Cat.”
He’d win more of her favour if he agreed, but he’s possessed to be honest instead. “It’s fine. Nothing special.” He squints at the horizon behind his sunglasses. “I hardly see beauty in it anymore.”
“That’s so sad,” Kaeloo says softly, sincerely. “If I lived here I’d wake up grateful every morning.”
As they come to a stop at the end of the pier, she clasps her hands together reverently while she leans over the railing keeping them from the deeper waters below. She adjusts her legs a bit, not sure if she wants one to be bent – either way her bottom sticks out all the same. Mr Cat leans one elbow on the railing, looking out as well but still at an angle that he can get a good look at her, setting the sunglasses back atop his head.
“Where do you live, then?” he asks.
“Oh, everywhere and nowhere,” Kaeloo tells him somewhat flippantly, apparently unaware of how much this surprises him. Mr Cat never would have imagined that answer from her. She goes on, “These past few months I’ve been going all over the Americas, seeing, exploring, keeping away from New York.”
“New York,” repeats Mr Cat in undisguised disbelief. “What do you do there?”
“That’s where I work.” Kaeloo turns her head to meet his eyes, her expression blank. She’s left that sentence hanging deliberately. Mr Cat smirks at this and puts more weight on his arm, tilting his head at her.
“And what do you do for work?”
She looks at him with that cute face of hers, eyes wide, lips pursed a little. It takes her a minute to admit, “I’m a stock trader.”
That is absolutely the last thing he ever thought he would hear and he can’t help it, Mr Cat bursts out laughing. “No you’re f*cking not!”
Kaeloo stands up straight and frowns at him. “Yes, I am.”
“No you’re not!” He wheezes in a breath and waves his hand up and down her figure. “You expect me to believe you’re some Wall Street type? Come on!”
She doesn’t say anything to this, just sort of scowls at him while he tries to stop laughing at her. It’s difficult.
“What do you do, sit in a little cubicle cold-calling people all day?” Mr Cat cackles. “Wall Street’s sweetest scam artist?”
She’s getting annoyed with him and he can tell, but it’s just too outlandish an idea, too funny for him to stop. It’ll only be later that he’ll even consider that she had not initially told him what she did for work not as a dare for him to ask, but because she genuinely did not want to discuss it. Kaeloo bristles, folding her arms, and snaps, “I ran Wall Street.”
Mr Cat stops laughing immediately and stares at her, seeing her in a different light. There must be more she could say, but she keeps her mouth shut tight, just glaring at him. The way she holds herself now, the conviction with which she said it, he’d almost believe it. “f*ck off,” he says.
“Very well,” replies Kaeloo with a blasé shrug, turning and starting to go back down the pier – he grabs her by the arm and she stops.
“It explains how you’re here,” Mr Cat says thoughtfully, having to keep how impressed he is under wraps. “You must be loaded.”
She pulls out of his grip, but not nearly as violently as she could have. Kaeloo folds her arms again and pointedly looks away from him, out to the ocean. “Money disgusts me. That life disgusts me. Every moment I was living it I was lost.” She looks back at him, a very serious look in her eyes. “My coming here is the first step towards saving my future.”
He blinks at her, dumbfounded. When he speaks, his voice is oddly faint, powerless. “I don’t understand.”
For whatever reason, Kaeloo softens and offers him a little smile. It is filled with regret. “How could you?”
By rights that should come off as pitying or condescending, but Mr Cat doesn’t feel that she intends either of those things – and she’s right, anyway. Kaeloo is further along in her journey than him; she’s surpassed what he thought was the final stage, where he thought he was. He knows what it is not to care for money, but not to not want it and all the power it can provide. He can’t fully imagine what it’s even like. As above it all as Mr Cat likes to think he is, he sees now that he is caught up in that life. Maybe not exactly as Kaeloo has experienced it, but greed in whatever form always takes people to the same places. She’s been where he is.
Mr Cat looks at her, drifting away from his initial idea of an innocence within her that excited him so much. She’s far from innocent; her past disgusts her. Kaeloo fought her way through her own corruption to earn this kinder self, and on top of it all she can make it seem like she always had it. And this depth is so much more enticing than anything Mr Cat had imagined for her before.
Kaeloo puts her arms down to her sides, rubbing her thighs and shivering a bit. She chews the inside of her mouth and when she looks back at him she can’t fully meet his eyes, her gaze flickering about his face and upper torso.
“Sorry,” she says with accommodating cheerfulness. “I was hoping to hide my crazy from you for a little while longer.”
Mr Cat’s expression is gentle. “It’s okay.” He steps closer to her, seriously considering taking her hand once more. Still, he does not, but tries to open himself up as much as he can anyway. “I like crazy.”
“Oh, Mr Cat,” sighs Kaeloo, slumping her shoulders. With the sun gone by now, stark shadows stretch across her face. Their surroundings aren’t so beautifully picturesque anymore. “I don’t know what to do with you. Maybe...I was wrong. I think...maybe we should just be friends.”
He puts one hand on her waist and leans in. “Good friends,” he says right against her cheek, but doesn’t make contact, and she shivers again.
“You won’t like me as much as you think,” she says. “I don’t think I’m right for you.”
“Whatever Pretty’s told you about me…” Mr Cat trails off, realising that he has no idea how to finish the sentence. He doesn’t know what to say, because he doesn’t know where to begin with what Pretty could have said. Anything he says here could end up being a lie, and for the first time in a courtship he doesn’t think he could bear lying. He restarts from a different angle, “Kaeloo, from the moment I first saw you I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you.”
She smiles a little and tries to make herself stop. It occurs to him this is the first time he’s spoken her name; maybe she likes him saying it. He knows he does.
He confesses, “I don’t feel this way about people. I meant what I said, I’m not nice.” Mr Cat’s hand falls from her hip down her arm, and he links their fingers together. “But I want to be nice to you.” He hopes the implication is clear; you are special, I like you, I can see myself with you.
When she looks at him he expects to see tears, but instead is met with determined eyes; she really is not as emotionally fragile as she looks. Her mouth is pressed into a hard line, her brow creased in deep thought and consideration. “I’d like that,” says Kaeloo. “I’d like that very much.”
So it’s clear; he wants her, she wants him, but a barrier still remains. Mr Cat can’t entirely work it out, but it’s probably to do with their comparative lives and all the other dark things he can sense, that he knows as surely he does his own name. Kaeloo has a mission that ranks above romance and sex; her mission to save her future. There’s a lot of involved sh*t going on in that head of hers, the kind of thing that’d scare any other potential suitor away. It doesn’t frighten Mr Cat at all.
“This isn’t to say I‘m not tempted, but I’ll hold off from jumping in with you too much too fast,” Kaeloo says, almost like she’s ordering herself. “But I am coming in the water. Is that okay?”
Absolutely not, it’s taking all Mr Cat’s willpower to keep himself from throwing her onto the deck right this second. “As long as it takes, right?”
She’s pleased by him repeating her own words back at her, like he hoped she would be – so it does help soften the blow a little. Yes. He can wait. As long as it takes. It’ll be fine.
He’s gonna die.
She brushes her thumb against the back of his hand, then pulls hers back to her side. His palm already feels cold and empty. “Take me somewhere tomorrow?” suggests Kaeloo.
Okay; the prospect of a date does actually delight him beyond belief. Mr Cat grins at her, unbidden affection crossing his face. “You got it.”
She smiles at him, a bit timidly at first as she ducks her chin into her shoulder; but then she shakes herself, forcing herself to snap out of it as she looks at him with renewed vigour, a lack of fear of being open. She is perfect. “Thank you. Let’s go back.”
But not before Kaeloo kisses him, on the corner of his mouth as first before she moves her lips over his. The urge to escalate is so strong but somehow Mr Cat makes do with tilting his head, putting his hand at the back of her neck, just so he can hold her there a bit longer. He can feel her smiling, and when they part she smirks and whacks him on the arm.
“You’re too much, Mr Cat.”
He ignores this and traces his fingers along the back of her neck. “I like your hair,” he murmurs.
“Oh? Thank you.” Kaeloo disentangles from him and takes a step away, tossing her fluffy green bob as she does so. “I was a frog in a past life,” she says matter-of-factly.
And this above everything gives Mr Cat hope that his feelings for her are pure, more whole than just sexual attraction, because that is such a weird thing to say yet he likes her all the better for it.
*
He, Quack-Quack and Stumpy end up hanging out in the latter’s suite at the hotel for a couple more hours; kind of like a boys night. Surprisingly, Mr Cat wanted to come and hang out, so he did; he only drinks recreationally, doesn’t get piss drunk like he would in any other situation.
Stumpy is annoying and hyperactive, and Quack-Quack is placid and not entirely there, and Mr Cat likes them both for it. Not in a way that makes him feel superior to them or better about himself, just in the way anyone likes their friends for their weird and abrasive qualities when they’re used to them. Even though he shouldn’t be. He shouldn’t find himself enjoying listening to Stumpy ramble on and on about music and video games, he shouldn’t be entertained by Quack-Quack eating an entire tub of ice cream by himself and encouraging him to go on.
The three of them sit around in the living room and lazily throw darts at the board between their conversations. And these conversations are all easy to have. They are not deep or shallow, they just are.
Stumpy describes getting into internet battles over the meaning of video game elements, over whose theme music a particular track truly belongs to. Quack-Quack asks for context and gets the entire plot and all the different timelines explained to him, Mr Cat offering his comments all the way. The three of them end up around the piano as Stumpy bangs out different songs, all memorised, excitedly explaining leitmotifs and how the music is all connected.
Quack-Quack discusses renewable energy, using Monaco and other cities as examples of areas at risk if they don’t take it up, and Mr Cat cynically questions him at every turn. Stumpy demands proof, evidence. The three of them end up around the kitchen bench as Quack-Quack tinkers with a potato battery, proud to share his theories, prouder still when the trio goes on an excursion to shut down the hotel’s generator. The vegetable with the wires and metal sticking out of it kicks in and powers the whole building.
They sit down around the dining table with a drink each – soda, milkshake, bottle of beer – and spend a few minutes in silence, contemplating themselves and one another. Then finally, Mr Cat finds a deck of cards. He shuffles them and deals a hand to all present.
“In 1913, in that very casino,” he nods out the window, “something very unlikely happened.”
Stumpy looks at his cards and makes a face, clicking his tongue against his teeth. Mr Cat will have to teach him not to do that.
“One of the roulette tables landed on black 26 times in a row.”
“No way,” scoffs Stumpy.
“No, it happened. And a lot of people f*cked themselves over that night, too. They kept betting red, with more conviction every time it hit black.” Mr Cat puts down the house cards. “Why’s that?”
Gambler’s fallacy, signs Quack-Quack.
Stumpy squints. “What’s that?”
“Gamblers tend to believe in a balance,” explains Mr Cat. “Sort of like, the will of the cosmos or the universe or whatever. Mystical bullsh*t. They think everything is gonna end up being equal, and through that they think they can outsmart their games.”
“What’s this got to do with the roulette?”
“Because of the black streak, they thought a red streak had to come to make it equal again. People went nuts every time it still landed on black; they couldn’t make sense of it. And that’s where they f*cked up.” Mr Cat puts both his elbows on the table, pointing across at Stumpy and Quack-Quack. “There was no sense to make. It was a really weird thing that happened, but it happened, and there’s no explanation or mathematical equation for it, only luck. It’s only luck, you get that?”
Quack-Quack nods, Stumpy furrows his brow.
“So like gacha. You can, like, fool yourself into thinking you’re playing the system when you’re not.” His eyes widen as he dramatically splays his hands. “You’re a slave to the system.”
“Basically,” says Mr Cat, not knowing what the f*ck gacha is.
How does anyone ever win, then? asks Quack-Quack. If it’s all chance, then almost no one at the casino should do well. The odds are never in their favour.
“Yeah, well. That’s the thing.”
They finish the round, the house winning. Mr Cat then unveils the spare hand he drew for himself but had not played; it could have beaten the house easily.
Stumpy is baffled. “How did–”
“I’m gonna teach you to play for real,” says Mr Cat, “to make sure you really get it. And then,” he takes back all the cards, shuffles them thoroughly, throws down the card on top of the pile to show them it’s an ace, “I’ll teach you how to cheat.”
His friends are highly receptive to this.
*
The metal construction in the void of space was heart shaped, but then within it contained another structure, one of rock that seemed to be alive, and that one was the heart as an organ. Four animals travelled here together because this heart had the power to recreate the world, and they had destroyed theirs.
Each animal had their own demons to face, ones they could and would succumb to easily. They did not always treat one another well, nor themselves. But ultimately, they did love and care for one another, and it was by rallying that love and care that they were able to return home.
Some time later, they travelled to another mysterious and powerful contraption. It was both organic and mechanised, another object with sentience like the Heart – and just as dangerous. It had the ability to show them whatever they asked to see, be it in the past or the future.
It was a final temptation that not one could resist. It was the beginning of their end.
Mr Cat wakes from his dream haunted by the image of a helicopter and a voice begging him not to leave.
*
There’s no future but what you make, and so Kaeloo made it, as thoroughly as she could. She tried to prepare her friends as best she could for what would come next, but how could she do so when she didn’t fully know herself? In the end, she had ninety minutes in total before her reality ceased to exist, and when it did she didn’t feel a thing.
She was dropped into her new world, her new life, as herself but different. Herself but not an amphibious guardian of a strange land that ran on cartoon logic; a human being, a farmhand on the rural French property of her almost-immediate family. Nineteen and suddenly detached from what should have felt normal, a checklist in her head that laid out these grand plans for the rest of her life. There were things she needed to do, places she needed to go, people she needed to meet. She’d had a vision of an unhappy future, and dreams of what might have once been.
Kaeloo was more than willing to follow these divinely conjured instructions to save herself and others, none of whom she even knew, from their doom. She didn’t need to know them; her heart told her they were her friends, it was her duty to love and protect them. And Kaeloo always followed her heart.
She went to live with an older Russian man and his chronically ill wife for a time. It was through them she came to know a more elderly woman and her grandson; he had a creative yet unfocused mind, constantly active, suffering from anxiety and an eating disorder, stemming from something traumatic he swore he’d seen, a dark future of death and war, that no one believed in before Kaeloo came along. Their bond was immediate – after all, they’d known each other in a past life.
It was the same with the twins, there was this strange connection that was immediately made between all of them, an unspoken agreement that they belonged together. Kaeloo ticked off box after box on her list.
But the future as she’d seen it started to slip from her memory, for it had only been a brief vision and time was passing, and in forgetting that future it became easy for it to recreate itself around her. She’d sought a well-paying career, knowing that she would need to be able to fund her mission, not knowing that she was falling into the trap of wealth and greed. Her right mind was in stasis and she swerved from her path, coming to a cul-de-sac – and the entire time, she felt fine. She thought she was still operating correctly, that she was doing what was right for herself.
The friendship with the twins, as strong as it was while they were together, faded the more time she spent apart from them. The last she knew, they moved down the coast to the border of France. Stumpy isolated himself to work on things of his own, and to begin to lose himself just the same. At least they never lost touch, even if as time went on there seemed to be less reasons to spend it with one another. What had made them friends in the first place? He was an indie dev composing in his little apartment and she was...
She was...
Kaeloo looked in the mirror one day and did not recognise herself. Then she looked a little harder, and it started to come back to her, and that was much worse than not knowing. She saw herself in this office, at this desk, in this building, heartlessly controlling corporations and treating people like pieces in a board game for the rest of her life. She saw rain against the window, she saw herself in a deeply manic, tragically lost state, and she turned around to look away from herself, expecting to see a red squirrel behind her – but she did not. Because there was no vision to turn away from, no potential future laid before her; it was her life. Kaeloo could never say how she knew, but she unquestionably did know: she was failing herself. She was supposed to stop this. She was supposed to bring him back.
And this thought above all others snapped her out of it, because who was “him”? Kaeloo knew who it wasn’t; it wasn’t Olaf, or Stumpy, or any other man she had encountered in her life. Whoever he was, he left her a long time ago, wilfully abandoning a doomed world, leaving behind everyone he supposedly cared about, the family that he had found for himself after escaping the one of his birth. He left everything, including her, for money. His fur had been orange.
Kaeloo knew no man or beast who fit this description. But she knew that she never ticked off the boxes of the last two people she needed to find, needed in her life. The friends she’d made and the ones she had yet to make, they needed her just as much, especially the ones she hadn’t yet found. She had failed not only herself, but them too.
Kaeloo was twenty-seven years old and five months when she nearly flung herself from the office window that she shattered with her face.
Kaeloo is twenty-eight and three days when she and Stumpy set off together to reconnect with Pretty and Eugly. She is twenty-eight, three days and ten hours when she lays eyes upon Quack-Quack – and him.
*
I'm really glad you came, you know the rules, you know the game
Master of the scene
We've done it all before and now we're back to get some more
You know what I mean
![Gambler's Fallacy - volcanicglass - Kaeloo (Cartoon) [Archive of Our Own] (2024)](data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAEAAAABCAQAAAC1HAwCAAAAC0lEQVR42mP8/h8AAvMB+NzmkbcAAAAASUVORK5CYII=)