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Visiting Jehan Prouvaire is always something of a covert operation for Montparnasse. The neighborhood Jehan lives in was the ritziest of the ritzy and Montparnasse had already been picked up by the cops there a few years back. He knows that getting caught here again—even on completely legal business—will do him absolutely no good, so usually he doesn’t go to Jehan’s house uninvited. Normally, he only comes to this part of town when he’s picking Jehan up for some sort of party or to drive into the city to visit Grantaire. And even then, he usually picks up Jehan outside his neighborhood because it doesn’t look good to have his car in Jehan’s neighborhood too often.
He knows they have cameras.
Smug rich bastards.
But today, he doesn’t have a choice. He’d been swapping messages with Jehan all afternoon, but a few hours ago, the messages abruptly stopped. Jehan hasn’t responded to any of his messages, nor has he answered his phone, and Montparnasse doesn’t like it. He knows too much about Jehan’s asshole of a dad—Jehan swears up and down that the man has never hit him, but Montparnasse isn’t so sure he believes it because Jacques Prouvaire is the kind of monster who was willing to send his gay son to a fucking reparative therapy “ex-gay” summer camp last year and people like that don’t have scruples about hitting. He knows he’s being a little paranoid, but in his line of work, a healthy amount of paranoia is an asset.
Besides, he’s cautious. He doesn’t leave until it’s dark and he takes his motorcycle instead of his car, even though it’s raining. He knows Jehan’s neighborhood. It doesn’t have street lamps. Instead, each yard has a tiny street lamp nestled up near the house that doesn’t illuminate anything more than ten feet of the front yard. Absolutely useless as a security measure. When he reaches the neighborhood, he turns his headlight off. His motorcycle is black and he’s wearing black—and even if he weren’t, he’s soaked through so his clothes would be dark at this point anyway—and beyond the occasional flash of lightning, there’s not enough lighting to see him on the street.
The houses in Jehan’s neighborhood are massive—big enough that Montparnasse is sure his entire apartment complex could live in one of them and still have plenty of room. If he weren’t so jumpy about being caught in this neighborhood again, it’d be the perfect place to…relieve some of the residents of some expensive personal items. All it meant now, though, is that it takes him a good fifteen minutes of driving passed massive houses on sprawling lawns until he reaches the Prouvaire residence right in the heart of the neighborhood.
The light on the front porch is on, and Montparnasse knows that he really shouldn’t be surprised to see Jehan sitting on the front porch watching the storm. This is exactly the sort of weird shit he’d get up to.
He turns off his bike and dismounts, walking the motorcycle up the Prouvaire’s driveway. He parks near the house, just on the edge of the driveway, so that if someone unexpectedly pulls out, his bike won’t get crushed. He bought that bike with hard earned drug money and he’s not going to let anything happen to it.
There’s a little path that connects the drive way to the front porch and he follows it until he can sit down next to Jehan, who’s got his knees drawn up to his chest and is sitting just far back enough on the porch so that he’s not getting drenched.
“It’s raining, bird,” he says. “What the fuck are you doing outside?”
“This is a thunderstorm,” Jehan replies. “What the fuck are you doing riding around on a motorcycle? And don’t call me bird.”
Jehan has been protesting the nickname since Montparnasse gave it to him more than a year ago. But the kid calls him Mont. No one calls him Mont. Bird is a fair trade, and he knows it.
“The bike is less conspicuous than the car,” he says.
“What are you even doing here?” Jehan asks. He stretches out his legs, getting his feet wet. He’s wearing shorts and a t-shirt—both of which match, always an impressive feat for him—and a cardigan that looks like it may have been stolen from some grandmother’s closet. If Montparnasse looks at just the right angle, he can see that Jehan’s eyes are red—and not a good just-smoked-a-joint sort of red. “I thought you tried to avoid this neighborhood.”
“I do, but someone stopped texting me for no rhyme or reason and wouldn’t answer his phone.”
“Did anyone ever tell you that you’re paranoid, Mont?”
“No one needed to,” he says. “I figured that out on my own. And don’t call me Mont.”
That gets a flicker of a smile from him. He’s not used to seeing Jehan this somber. He’s seen him at some pretty low points, sure, but the kid wears a smile like a second skin.
“So are you going to tell me what happened today?” he asks. “If that asshole your father so much as touched you, he’s dead, you know. You don’t even have to ask.”
“You know, it’s really unnerving to listen to you threaten my family members,” Jehan says. “I’m never certain how serious you are about it. Besides, it’s nothing like that.”
Montparnasse raises his eyebrows.
“My cat died,” Jehan says in a quiet voice.
“Fuck,” Montparnasse says. He’s not much of an animal person, but he’s always preferred cats to dogs. Dogs…try to hard. They’re yappy and obnoxious and they bark at everything. But cats have a sort of confidence that he admires and an aloofness that he understands. Dogs like people unconditionally. With cats, you have to work for their affection and he likes that. He didn’t even known Jehan had had a cat. This isn’t something he knows how to make better.
Jehan nods. “His name was Byron,” he says. “An orange tabby. You’d have liked him—he was a bad ass thing, didn’t take crap from anyone, and he had the loudest damn purr I’ve ever heard from a cat. Like a motorboat. But my dad doesn’t—didn’t—my dad never liked him.”
Shit. His dad better not have killed his fucking cat. “Is there anything your dad likes?”
Jehan ponders on the question for a moment, then says, “Money. Anyway, he never liked my cat and he was rushing to get to a business meeting this morning and Byron was slinking around kitchen and my dad tripped over him. He got angry and he threw Byron out of the house—not a big deal, really. I’ve had Byron since I was little and he’s supposed to be an indoor cat, but he likes hunting too much and he’d always sneak outside on his own if given the chance. He’s left for days at a time before. But I was on a walk earlier—back when you were texting—and I found him by the side of the road.” Jehan presses his lips tight together and takes a few shuddering breaths before he continues. “He was still warm, but there wasn’t anything I could do for him. He was already gone. I wrapped him up in my shirt and brought him home. I couldn’t leave him on the side of the road.”
Tears are rolling down his cheeks at this point and Montparnasse throws an arm around his shoulders and pulls him close. He likes the kid—more than he should, considering he’s nearly twenty-one and Jehan’s just seventeen—and it pisses him off to see him like this. He can fix a lot of shit, but he can’t bring fucking cats back from the dead.
“I came out here to watch the storm,” Jehan says after a few minutes, still leaning against Montparnasse’s side. “But Byron would always join me when I watched storms—would run off in Mom’s flower beds, and then come back to me all sopping wet—half the time with a dead mouse or a chipmunk in his mouth—and he’d twined around my ankles. And I just—he’s never going to do that again. I’m never going to see him again. He was the only thing that made living here bearable half the time and he’s…he’s just gone. He wasn’t even that old!”
“Did you bury him already?” Montparnasse asks.
“Mom said my dad wouldn’t want him buried in the yard. He’s in a box on the back porch. She’s going to take him to the vet to be cremated in the morning.”
It’s painfully obvious that that’s the last thing Jehan wants.
“Well, fuck that,” Montparnasse says.
“What?” Jehan says, pulling away. Fat tears still run down his cheeks.
“You want to bury him, don’t you?” he asks. Knowing Jehan, he probably wants to plant flowers over his grave.
“Well, yeah, but—”
“Do you have a shovel?”
“Yeah, but my dad—”
“Is your dad here right now?”
“No, but—”
“Then I don’t see a problem,” Montparnasse says. “Besides, the rain will have made the ground soft and easy to dig up. It’s perfect.” He gets to his feet, pulling Jehan up along with him. “Where’s the shovel?”
Jehan leads him to the back of the house, where a garden shed is attached to the garage. It’s a musty, dark place, but it’s dry and there’s a good-sized shovel hanging on the back wall. Montparnasse doubts that either of Jehan’s parents actually use the tools that are back here or spend any time tending their own yard. He regrets that he’s probably going to cause trouble for some lawn-care worker, but not enough to make him reconsider this. He hands the shovel off to Jehan and goes to the back porch to collect the cat. He cradles the box in his arms, not wanting Jehan to feel like he’s disrespecting the deceased cat.
“Your yard is huge,” Montparnasse says. It’s got to be at least two acres, one of which is a wooded lot. “We probably can’t bury him in the woods—too many tree roots and rocks and shit—but there’s got to be some space where your fuckwad father won’t find him.”
Jehan nods towards the line of trees. “I’ve got a little flower bed back there,” he says. “Just before the woods start. I think that’ll be a good place for him.”
“Flower bed it is,” he says, and he lets Jehan lead him to the right part of the yard. It’s nearly impossible to see anything in the dark until Jehan pulls out his phone, turns on its light, and hands it off to Montparnasse while he quietly uproots his flower bed. Jehan is silent as he works, the subtle shaking of his shoulders the only indication that he wasn’t well. Any sounds of his tears are masked by the rainfall. As soon as Jehan is done with the flowers—having gently set aside every plant like he didn’t want to hurt it—Montparnasse takes him by the shoulders and pulls him away from the dirt so he can dig a proper hole. He makes quick work of it—digging when the ground is this soft and wet can hardly be considered work, really—and he doesn’t miss the way Jehan’s expression tightens every time he looks at the box that houses his dead cat.
He digs the hole deep enough so that they’re not at risk of any animals digging the cat up and he plants the blade of the shovel in the dirt to hold it upright while he bends over to get the box.
Jehan beats him to it. “I’d like—I want to put him in,” he says.
Montparnasse nods and watches Jehan tenderly place the box in the ground.
Tears mingle with rain water on Jehan’s face.
“Do you want to say anything?” Montparnasse asks.
He shakes his head. “I don’t think I could,” he says, voice thick.
Montparnasse nods towards the pile of wet dirt. “Do you want to do the honors?”
Jehan scoops up a handful of dirt and sprinkles it over the box. He presses his lips together tight and steps back to allow Montparnasse to shovel the dirt back in the hole. Jehan is practically trembling by the time he’s done and Montparnasse drops the shovel so he can pull Jehan up against him. He doesn’t say anything—wouldn’t know what to say even if he wanted to. Jehan’s the poet, not him. So he just holds on until Jehan is ready to let go and he tries to communicate compassion through the hug even though compassion is rarely something he needs to communicate. But Jehan seems to understand and eventually he pulls back. He wipes his face off with his sleeve and only succeeds in smearing dirt across his face.
“Could you help me put the flowers back?” he asks. “I think my mom would notice if the bed was all torn up in the morning.”
Montparnasse drops to his knees and helps Jehan replant his flowers. Jehan is meticulous in making sure that they’re all taken care of, but when he’s done, he doesn’t stand up. He just looks at the flowers.
“He really was the best cat,” he says quietly.
Montparnasse nods because he refuses to say something trivial about Byron being in the great kitty paradise in the sky—especially when he doesn’t believe all that shit about heaven and the afterlife in the first place. He doesn’t want to cheapen Jehan’s grief with cliches and half-assed fairy tales. He lets Jehan have his moment of silence with the cat and he swears that when Jehan starts writing poetry about this—and he knows Jehan will because Jehan uses words scratched out on paper to process everything—he’ll listen without his usual grumbling about poetry.
After a small eternity, Jehan gets to his feet and he walks Montparnasse back to his motorcycle in the driveway.
“Thanks for coming,” he says. “And sorry I got your clothes all muddy. I know how you feel about that.”
Jehan offers up the smallest of smiles, the smallest of reassurances that this is just one more thing he’ll face and handle and tackle with his usual understated strength.
“Fuck the clothes,” he says. “This was important.”
Jehan closes the space between them and wraps his arms tight around Montparnasse’s waist. For the first time all night, he feels like he’s said the right words.