just follow the cat

9th Data Point: shifting things a fraction of an inch

9:00AM (82°F), Thursday, February 18th

Louie's Bookstore and Café

Baltimore, Maryland

The doors to Louie's Bookstore and Café opened 15 minutes late that Thursday. As Bob Juet saw the line of people forming outside, he enlisted Catharine Huntington into service. Together, they hurried to make coffee, fold napkins, polish flatware, stack newspapers, and arrange piles of pastries under plastic domes.

Though Catharine was busy, she still had time to look at her surroundings. Just one day before, the scratched-up tables, chipped coffee mugs, and dog-eared books had looked quaint. Now, they just looked scratched, chipped, and dog-eared. Louie's was surely an odd place to find true love. A love that would last a lifetime.

Catharine also let her eyes focus on each of her potential lovers, but they weren't much to look at. They were the kind of souls who hang around anyplace well after the rush is over – the souls who are undaunted when no one laughs at their jokes or hears the ends of their stories. But still, they wait forever as their coffee turns an icy brown.

Bob Juet called them his regulars. There was Mr. Woodhouse who was angry. Mr. Motter who was sullen. Mr. Greene who spent the morning confirming his intelligence by examining yesterday's horse races. Mr. Wilson, the owner, who was like a king on an undersized throne. Then there was Mr. Staffe. He seemed like a happy man but in a way that became progressively more cloying and annoying as time dragged on. And, of course, there was also Bob "Just Bob" Juet, but he was already taken. Bob was in love.

Or maybe the names are all wrong. Maybe Mr. Staffe was angry and Mr. Greene was taken. Or Mr. Woodhouse was on the throne while Mr. Wilson became cloyingly sweet. Or maybe all of them were sullen and angry and joyful and taken – all at the same time.

It didn't matter.

It never had. It was 9:00AM and there was no lover to love. Not in the bookstore. Or in the café. Or anywhere on Earth. Not for Catherine Huntington, there wasn't. So, she reached under the table where she had stored her coat and suitcase. She paused there for a bare fraction of a second when she saw a thin shaft of light poking through the floor. It was coming from the basement of Louie's and it cast a grayish glow in the shape of crescent moon on her suitcase.

"So, this is the Lover's Moon," she said to herself. "I guess that's all it ever was."

But then she paused again and held her coat against her nose and took a deep breath. "Is that mint I smell?"

It was. And just like the million monkeys who had been busily typing all over Baltimore, Catharine stopped and sat back down. "I guess I can wait a bit longer," she said under her breath.

Then she counted to one hundred and got up to leave for good.

> = <

At the top of the hill two blocks north of Louie's, a city bus waited at a traffic light. The hill was not especially steep, but it was certainly steep enough to allow gravity to propel the bus down its slope. That's all that was required. Nothing more and the universe would be back in its proper order.

It was an elegant plan. A simple plan. And everything should have worked out. Unfortunately, the driver, a woman so short that she often had trouble seeing out the front window, saw too much that day. And she also became distracted.

Through that jumbo-sized front window, the driver saw a woman hiding behind a tree. Or at least, she thought she saw a woman, but this person was wearing so many shades of brown that she blended almost perfectly with the brown grass, leaves, trees, and buildings that make up Baltimore in the middle of winter. It was only those faint (very faint) hints of green from the plants fooled by the unusually warm air that convinced the woman otherwise. But still, it took a little while for that knowledge to sink in. And in that time, the traffic light turned from yellow to red.