Furry Denny's

Little Couple

Snow continued to build up on the window as Coze cared for Renee's head. Her scalp was bruised and she complained of a headache, but that seemed to be it. She was lucky.
Kai had sat down in the booth where moments before she'd stormed out. She looked at the empty bowl in front of her. I split my attention between Kai and Renee, glancing back and forth, sitting on a chair of my own.
Trot and Genie went back to chatting at the bar. They had turned the TV volume down but the same weather lady in a red dress continued to ramble about forecasts and expected hailstorms in the coming hours. The two cooks, Helen and Fuego, set out in cooking food. They were preparing for the worst.
Kai slumped down onto the table in front of her. Coze and Renee were in a world of their own, Coze keeping Renee's mind active with questions about herself. Perhaps it was curiosity or my innate nosiness, but something drove me to go sit down across from Kai.
She was a classically printed cheetah, with the yellow fur and brown spots. She wore a gray hoodie over a black tank top and jeans. As I slid into the booth, she sat up.
"Hey, how's it goin?"
She looked at me, emotionless.
"My name's Skiddish. I'm a traveler. I drive that truck out there."
"Why are you talkin' to me?"
I hesitated a moment, knowing there was no good answer. "Well I figure we'll be here for a while. No use in sitting alone, right?"
Kai thought about this, accepted it, and relaxed.
"Quite a fight y'all were in."
"Yeah, sorry about that. Things got heated fast."
"Oh, it's all good. Just makin' sure everything's okay."
Kai glanced at me, before looking out the window.
"Everything's okay, right?"
There was another moment of silence. We could hear the murmurs of Coze and Renee's conversation and the drone of Genie and Trot's, but here, amongst two strangers, there seemed to be very little.
"You drive that thing?" Kai broke the silence.
"Yeah, she's mine. I'm on the road three weeks of every month, hauling things up and down hurricane alley."
"Interesting. Is it a fun job?"
"Yeah, I enjoy it. I suppose if I didn't, I wouldn't be hauling, would I?"
"What about family? You got any of that?"
It was now my turn to go quiet. Yeah, I had family. Family doesn't always mean people who want to see you, though. Kai observed my reaction and cracked a smile.
"I didn't cheat on her, if that's what you're thinking."
Kai sounded sincere. Of course that was what I was thinking. A cheetah who cheated is a little on the nose, though.
"So what happened?"
Kai shook her head and looked down at her lap. "It was complicated. Renee has a brother. He's older than her, turning thirty next month. He's not—"
Kai stopped talking for a moment, choosing her next words carefully.
"He's had a streak of violent behavior. Induced by parental neglect or societal trauma or whatever the fuck he calls it. Either way, he hurt her last Monday. So I did what I had to do. Something I thought her parents didn't have the guts to do."
"You killed him?"
"What the fuck? No. I called the police. What the fuck?"
It occurred to me that I had become invested in the story and detached the narrative from reality. I apologized and Kai shook her head.
"No, that's not me. I called the police on him. They showed up at her family's house yesterday and took him to a holding cell for a mental health evaluation."
"Ah, I see. And she's mad that her brother is gone now?"
Kai's posture shifted again. "Sure. She wants me to pay bail, but I don't think he deserves it. Not after what he did to her..."
Her words trailed off. I could see a year beginning to form and she sniffled. Her gaze returned to the snow outside. The footprints from Renee's and my attempted escape were no longer visible, and the snow fell in large clumps.
"We met at the airport two summers ago. She's an excellent piano player. There were one of those pianos in the terminal. The ones that are there mostly for decoration, but sometimes someone sits down and begins to play. That was her. I remember being bored out of my mind, scrolling endlessly on my phone, waiting for my flight, when I heard Drops of Jupiter. I looked up and there she was: the only other furry in the airport."
Kai sniffled again. The tears were streaming down her face. I handed her a red cloth Denny's napkin.
"There's something so beautiful about those pianos, you know? So much potential sitting there, just waiting for someone to pick it up and help it achieve what it was made to. So many can't— I can't, I know that— but Renee could. She still can."
I glanced at Renee and Coze, who had moved towards the bar with Trot and Genie. The four were watching the TV. Renee was obviously trying not to look at Kai.
"I listened to her play for an hour and then what would you know, we had seats right next to each other on the plane. And then we find out we only live thirty minutes from one another? It was perfect. We talked on the flight, and then she began helping me with my art. Then we started developing feelings for each other."
"You were the piano."
Kai nodded, holding her breath, trying to stop the quiet, somber tears.
"I was the piano. She's helped me with so much. My mom and dad both hate furries. She encouraged me to ignore them and keep painting."
"You paint?"
Kai nodded, the tears slowing down. "Yeah."
"Can I see?"
She nodded again and pulled out her phone. I didn't want to press any more. This was already so heavy. The yellow light from the hanging lamp shone down on the table between us as I waited patiently.
The first image she showed me was a beautiful painting of a lion sleeping in a tree.
"This was my first fursona. I changed it when I began running track my senior year of high school."
The next image was a pot of hydrangeas, resting in a grass field. The blue sky around it was beautifully crafted. The image after that was of a black piano, sitting in front of a glass pane. Behind the pane was an airplane. I knew what this was.
"This is one of my favorites." She said, turning the phone back to look at it.
"You're good at that."
"Thanks. I, uh, wouldn't have been able to even scratch this kind of skill if I hadn't practiced so much."
I saw what she was getting at and nodded. She took a breath, regaining her composure.
"You never answered my question about your family."
"There's not much to answer with. I have family, just haven't seen them in a while."
"How long is a while?"
Once again, I didn't answer. She examined my face, looking for answers.
"You have a strange look in your eyes, Skiddish. I wouldn't call it sadness, but it's not happy either. It's almost a nostalgia. A somber appreciation."
I took a moment to consider her words. I knew what she meant. I'd looked in the rear view mirror every day since I'd started trucking. I'd watched the lines around my eyes deepen, the light in them become more defined.
"I enjoy things that are innate to life. I appreciate things that are fleeting. Things that I know will be gone soon. Conversations are one of those things. There is nothing more fleeting than spoken word. Interactions with no record, no permanence. I appreciate things like that."
Kai smiled. She nodded and looked out the window at the snow.
"I don't think any of that is going away soon."
"No, I don't think so either..."
The two of us stared out at the almost solid white scene.
"Some things are worth recording when they were meant to be fleeting, though. A strange contradiction. It wasn't meant to last and yet, it does."
"Do you record those things?"
"Yes."
Our conversation was suddenly interrupted by the sound of a clattering pan hitting the ground in the kitchen. Our heads turned fast to see Helen, the chicken, cleaning up a mess of sausages that fell on the ground. They apologized to Genie, who had been standing there speaking to Trot.
I smiled and nodded at Kai before heading over to help clean the sausages off the ground. Kai smiled back and opened her phone again, looking at her art.
"Damnit, I'm so sorry, Genie."
"It's alright, Helen."
"I just need a smoke, is all. I'm shaking so much."
"I get it. Go take a break."
"Thank you."
The three of us got the sausages up and into the garbage, and Helen disappeared into a back room.
"Hey, do you guys have a wifi network in here?" a voice came from the bar. Trot had pulled out his phone and was looking at the screen blankly.
"Uh yeah, it's Furry underscore Denny's. Password is grand slam-yiff. No spaces, all lowercase." Genie stood up from the ground.
"Thanks. I can't get any damn service in here suddenly."
Service. Phone. My boss. I remembered what I'd set out to do but forgot about in the chaos.
"Hey Trot, can I borrow your phone when you get a sec?"
He looked at me funny.
"I left mine out in my truck and—" I glanced at the white window. "I don't think I'm gonna get out there any time soon. I need to call someone. It's alright if not."
"Yeah, you can use it. Just not too much, it's only on 15%."
"Oh, that's alright. I'll ask Kai."
I thanked Trot and made my way back over to the table I was at a second before. Kai welcomed me.
"Hey, sorry about this. Do you mind if I use your phone?"
"Sure, what for?"
"Gotta call my boss and I left mine out in my truck."
She handed her phone over.
It rung five times before I got the annoying automated voice mail.
"Hey, Darryl, this is Skiddish. I'm just calling to let you know that I am currently stuck in a Denny's off of the interstate in Tailville. The storm's gotten pretty bad, I don't think I'm gonna make this load on time. I apologize but the ice... this ice really isn't safe to be traveling in right now. This is a civilian's phone I'm borrowing because I left mine in my truck. I'll call you if I get mine back, but until then you can call me back here. Awesome. Hope everything's going well for you. Bye."
I handed the phone back to Kai, who chuckled.
"What?"
"You sounded so fake."
"I was fake. That was my business voice."
"Your business voice?"
"Yeah, the voice I use for business."
She laughed, leaning over the table, then fell back against the seat. I chuckled too.
"Good lord, it's coming down out there." I could hear Trot's epiphany from where I was. Kai and I followed his gaze to the restaurant's glass door, which was buried in about three feet of snow. That was a lot.
Kai frowned and I turned to Trot.
"Let's just hope it stops soon or we're gonna be eating a lot more pancakes tonight."