Sherry Chandler

He couldn’t see the clock face from where he was sitting, but he guessed it was somewhere between half-two and three. Low, from the stereo, the song of Johnny Hodges’ saxophone, the note held, rising, while the rhythm pulsed beneath it. On the label he was using an alias, but his was the perfect print, the impossibility of disguise. “You’d Be So Nice to Come Home To.” Resnick shifted in the chair and, implanted half-way up his chest, Bud complained, somewhere between a hiss and a whimper…”Come on, sweetheart,” said Resnick, “time to go.” He cupped both hands beneath the cat’s body and lifted him to the floor; felt against his thumbs, the ends of his fingers, the animal’s bones were likethe spars of a model mast, matchwood and hope.
         …He measured dark coffee into the percolator, tamping it down. At first, when he had ceased being able to sleep through, he had made himself cut back on caffeine…All that happened, his team suffered.
         …He had restored his usual ten cups a day or more…If he managed three or four hours, unbroken, he counted his blessings. Better than sheep, Bud purred encouragingly and Resnick opened the fridge for a tin of cat food: one gain from these sleepless middle nights he and the runt of his litter had shared together – free to eat alone and unpestered, Bud was at last beginning to put on a little weight.
         …In the other room the record had come to an end and all he could hear was the thin scrape of the cat’s collar against the edge of its bowl and the slow drip of the coffee falling through.
         …He saw her then, clearly, not that last time but the one before, standing in the garden at the front of this house so still, and Bud cradled in her arms. When her eyes closed on his, they had been opaque with fear.

— from John Harvey’s Rough Treatment (Henry Holt and Company, 1990)