just follow the cat

Part 3 - How to Assign Blame

Thursday, November 11

The most straightforward answer to this question is that it was Mr. Wilson's fault. And thus, the confusion (such as it was) can justifiably be laid at his door. On the morning after Cassandra moved into the Maryland Avenue Motel, she found The Cat Named 208 playing with a 3 by 5 index card. The card was pink. It was the kind of hot pink that's so bright that it makes anything written on it nearly impossible to read. And yet, there at the top of the card were the words, "Welcome to your new home." The only other words on the card where the ones that created all the confusion. They were, "Best of luck. AS, Room 902". And therein, lay the confusion. You see, the Maryland Avenue Motel has only two levels with only 14 rooms on each level. Each door has a 3-digit number screwed to the outside. From the beginning of time, the numbers have gone from 101 to 114 and 201 to 214. With no floor above the second and only 28 rooms in total, the idea that anyone could be living in Room 902 made no sense whatsoever. And yet, that's what the note said. The words were as plain as day.

Cassandra opened the door to her room, leaned outside, and verified that she and her tiny furry friend were (in fact) living in Room 208. When she stepped on the walkway outside her room, she could see no Room 902 to her left. Or to her right. She stood there for a long time and wondered what it could all mean. She waited and she thought. And why not? After all, she could afford to wait and to think at a leisurely pace because she was a wealthy woman now and she didn't need to rush from place to place to ensure that she got her fair share of crumbs. Those crumbs were delivered each month like offerings to some newfound goddess.

As she allowed her eyes to adjust to the dim light on the walkway, she finally saw that the straight (straight) catwalk outside her door wasn't as straight she first thought it was. In fact, it took a right angle where her room ended, but the November light had just temporarily hidden it.

That happens all the time, you know, because light in November is altogether different than light in any other month. It works in concert with our dreams to hide us from the truth of what is happening all around us. It casts shadows that are like an invisible fog hiding what we shouldn't see or what we aren't yet ready to see. They hold everything in place until Spring and they allow all those things that need to die (and decay) to do so without being disturbed. All the while, the days get shorter and we cling to the hope that an unexpected summerlike day is just around the corner. But if we hope too much, we miss what is actually around the corner. Like Room 902.

After waiting and thinking and allowing her eyes to adjust to the November light, Cassandra stuck her head around the corner and saw that the room next to hers wasn't #209. It was #902. What she couldn't know is that Mr. Samuel Greenock Wilson was the cause of this confusion. And thus, he was to blame.

Mr. Wilson was one of the motel's long-term residents. Years before, he had been hired to paint, patch, spackle, and generally fix everything that needed fixing. He started with the doors. To be precise, he started with the door to Room 209. As he stood in front of the freshly painted door, he began to replace the brass numbers. He held the two, the zero, and the nine in his hand and then paused. He thought about all the possibilities for renumbering the 3-digits when he replaced them. Those possibilities weren't exactly endless. In fact, there were only 6 possible combinations but the idea of changing their order amused Mr. Wilson much more than any single-digit number might suggest. Mr. Wilson, you see, had a mischievous streak.

He looked down at the numbers in his hand and asked himself whether the first number on the door should be placed last or if should it be in the middle or even at the beginning. The same question was applied to the other numbers. He also wondered if he could be bold enough to use a zero as the first digit. That would certainly be clever, but it might get noticed and Sam Wilson would only push his cleverness to the point where getting fired was unlikely. So, with a few twists of his nimble screwdriver, Room 209 became (from that day forward) Room 902.

When Cassandra saw the number, she realized for the first time that that someone with the initials AS was her new neighbor and that they shared a wall. Having real neighbors was a thrilling notion for Cassandra because AS would be next door tomorrow and next week, next month, and next year. AS wouldn't care about day-to-day changes in the weather or be nudged along by the police at 2AM to sleep on some distant corner or be so rude as to go off and die just when the two of them were getting comfortable with each other.

With these beautiful thoughts in her head, Cassandra danced back to her room. She picked up The Cat Named 208, pressed their faces together, and said, "I love being rich."

Then she smiled the friendliest smile that anyone on Earth had ever smiled and said, "I bet a cat named 902 lives next door. We'll have to find out about that, now won't we?"

And so it was that Cassandra and The Cat Named 208 began the work at unraveling the mystery of what was happening inside Room 902.

x = y = x