HOUND

vi

The cat and the dog will chase each other, endlessly. It's a cycle that's rarely broken, but sometimes instead of trying to kill the other animal, they grow tired and curl up in the same bed and eat in the same bowl. Coexistence isn't impossible.

The Cat and the Hound were no different. It takes a while before they adjust to the idea of each other, or it at least takes Jack a while. The way her body commands his eyes makes him uncomfortable and nervous, so any time spent alone or simply with Catherina, he asks her mundane questions. As if she was a mundane girl.

"What is your book on?" Jack asks on a rainy afternoon in his office. He's unwrapping a bologna sandwich that his wife had made. She had drawn a cute smiley face on the plastic Saran wrap, but he crumbles up the plastic and tosses it into his desk drawer, where a small mountain of mushy lunch-mementos are piled up. Smiley faces and notes. He had originally wanted to save them all, and maybe make a scrapbook to give back to his wife.

Catherina stares at him, doe-eyed. She smiles and says nothing, but instead crosses her legs, her skirt sliding up. She traces circles with a ringed index finger on her bare knee. Jack makes an effort to look at her face, but not into her eyes--which were equally provocative. He mistakes her thick silence for confusion.

"The one the headmistress said you were writing?" He bites into his sandwich. Why did it have to be bologna? He hated bologna, he had never liked it. Yet he ate it every day.

"Oh," Catherina's rosy lips form a tiny oval. "That."

"Yes, that."

"I don't want to...disclose any details." She raises a brow, and curls her face in such a way that her cheekbones cut the tension.

"But I thought you wanted my advice, my help?"

"Oh, yes," She shakes her head. "I want your help bad."

"How can I help you if I don't know what you're writing?"

"I'm embarrassed."

"Embarrassed?"

"Of the genre."

Jack waves a hand in the air, dismissing the idea. "Don't be embarrassed, Catherina. I'm a literature nerd, I don't mind anything unconventional or taboo." He winks. "I'm not like the headmistress."

Catherina relaxes into the chair. "It's a romance, erotic." She moves her legs, ungluing them from the leather seat. They make a sticky popping sound, and Jack begins to sweat. Is it really that hot in here?

Jack sets down his half-eaten sandwich, and decides to throw the remaining chunk away. He wipes crumbs off his hands into a filling trashcan, and turns back to Catherina, smiling.

Folding his hands together and resting his elbows on his desk, he leans forward.

"I don't mind helping you with that."