Max and Pendulum II
Max's paw slid weakly from the doorknob and fell by his side. Wiping his watering eyes with his jacket sleeve, he walked briskly down the hallway and back to the stairwell. He could barely see through the tears. I should just go. I need to get out of this damn city.
He shoved open the double doors under an illuminated exit sign and ran out into the night. He wrapped his arms around him and looked up at the tall buildings and shining city lights. It was cold. Much colder than anything he was used to back home. For extra warmth, he raised his hood over his ears.
I don't have anywhere to go. I don't even know where I am. Max slowly began to walk towards the tallest structure in sight. Maybe I'll catch the subway. He noticed a young wolf smoking a cigarette near a run down shopping center and ran over to him.
"Excuse me, sir?"
The canine gave the up-and-down without physically turning his head. He said nothing.
"I was...I was wondering if you could point me in the direction of the subway system?"
Now he spoke, and his voice was deep. "It's a little late to be out and about with no sense of direction, raccoon. Luckily, I'm feeling friendly tonight. Walk two blocks left, and take the stairs underground."
"Thank you, um...sir."
The wolf flicked his cigarette and held out a paw. Max looked into his eyes and sensed a ferocity about them. As Max considered making a break for the alley, he noticed the tall alpha begin to reveal a row of sharp teeth that put his to shame. There's no point in making an already terrible night worse. He pulled out the last of his cash and slapped it disrespectfully into his outstretched paw.
"Thanks, little panda." He rubbed Max's hood as if he were a child.
Max pushed his arm away and walked as quickly as he could in the other direction. The wolf's eyes followed him, and two more sets emerged from the shadows. They watched him turn the corner and disappear.
I hate it here I hate it here I hate it here.
Upon rounding the corner, he saw the stairway that led underground accompanied by an arrow pointing downwards that read SUB STATION. He lowered his hood as he descended, fixing his ears and whiskers; however, he instantly regretted this as the disembarking passengers began to give him a wary glance.
Citizens tired from a long day at work passed him by as they deposited their change into the turnstiles and boarded the subway. He reached into his pocket, and his tail shot straight up into the air with fear. My money. I gave it to that good for nothing dog. I'm so screwed.
Max turned to leave, when he suddenly bumped into a hooded stranger. "I'm so sorry sir, I was just leaving." He looked up and realized he was looking into a mirror.
The other raccoon removed his hood and spoke. "Hey, watch where you're going! Wait, do I know you from somewhere?"
"No, no I don't think so. Sorry. I'm from Florida. I was just visiting a...friend."
He looked at Max's empty hands and inside out pockets, then back at his muzzle. "It looks like you are in quite the predicament. I guess it would be wrong if I didn't help a brother out. We raccoons gotta stick together. It's a harsh world."
Max smiled for the first time since he saw Pendulum's face answer her apartment door. He missed her already. Not only because of how she made him feel, but also because she was the only familiar face in the city. Surrounded by unfamiliar territory, he craved familiarity. He craved the moments he sat next to her on the couch during their Christmas adventure, and how they seemed to get along just moments after meeting. He enjoyed meeting her here in the Big Apple, but what he enjoyed most of all was her presence. Too bad I messed that up too.
"Um, hello? Kid? You still in there?"
Max returned to reality. "Yeah, yeah sorry. I kind of got mugged, I guess?"
The raccoon laughed, handing him two coins. "Big city, huh? You get used to it after a while, trust me. What's your name kid? I like you."
He chuckled. "I'm Max. And you?"
"Donovan."
Donovan extended a paw to formally introduce himself. They shook.
"Do you have anywhere to stay tonight Max?"
"Nope. My plans were...cancelled."
"Come stay with me then! I have a small place just a few stops from here."
Max thought for a moment. I really don't have anywhere to go for the night. I should probably take what I can get and figure something out in the morning.
"Alright, thanks so much Donovan. I'm glad I bumped into you. Literally."
Max knew as soon as soon as Donovan opened the door that his apartment smelled like drugs. It was unmistakable, and his nose twitched at the odor. At least it looks nicer than it smells. He thought of Pendulum again, and he wondered what she was doing at this moment. He felt the small glass he had taken from her home in the center pocket of his hoodie. He wasn't sure how it had made it through all his traveling throughout the city.
"I'm not home much, so cleanliness isn't my number one priority." Max turned to see him holding out a few blankets and pointing to the closest sofa.
"See you in the morning. I'll be retiring to my room to make some phone calls, and I'd rather not be disturbed. Have a good night, Max."
Max simply nodded. He curled up on the couch, his hindpaws slightly hanging over the other arm of the furniture. His ringed tail provided extra warmth beneath the thin blankets. As he drifted off into sleep, he heard Donovan's muffled voice from the other room.
"...listen darling...trying my patience..."
Max was curious. He stood up, arching his back and stretching before walking quietly over to the closed door.
"...Real sick of your shit...If you get in the way of my business I'll hurt you."
Max was really pressing his ear against the door now.
"I mean it. Don't test me Pendulum."
Max froze in place. Everything began rushing through his mind at once. Her face. The thought of anyone threatening her. His face became red with anger. He was then struck with realization. The thought made his eyes wide and his ears flatten. The sight of me...reminds her of him.
As Max turned to run, he slipped on an empty beer bottle and kicked it across the room in the process. Behind the closed door, he heard rustling. The door flew open to the sight of an angry raccoon lunging for him.
Without thinking, Max pulled the glass from his jacket and smashed it across his face. Donovan hit the ground in seconds, unmoving. Without wasting any time, he ran out of the apartment and into the darkness.
...
Unbeknownst to Max at this very moment, Pendulum was sitting on the very edge of her couch, her face buried in her paw, a trembling arm holding a quavering phone to her ear.
"Look, it won't work. . . Don't call me 'darling', that's over now. . . Losing your marbles, are you? Better shut up and let the mathematician do the work. . . Fine, you do it then, you crunch numbers all day and worry about whether we're going to have enough to get by while I sit back and moan and pull faces and--"
A small blip sounded. Her respondent had ended the call.
Pendulum's phone fell through her slackening fingers and hit the hardwood floor with a reverberating crack. Her other hand was clenched tight over bloodshot eyes, tears leaking at a frighteningly fast pace and drenching her paw pads. She made no sound, although her mouth stretched open in a silent scream of anguish. An empty bottle of liquor lay on the tiny table in front of her, dribbling the last of its contents down onto the polished surface.
Instinctively, the navy feline reached for a second, full bottle waiting innocently beneath the couch. She uncorked it with shaky teeth, lifted the rim to her jaws, uttered a string of swear words beneath her breath, and drained it in the course of a long two hours.
As soon as she had emptied the bottle, her phone buzzed. Paws clammy, hiccuping slightly, she read the text message, sent one, and passed out.
Max was racing through the streets with his paws over his head, not knowing where he was or where he was going. The only thing that mattered was to get away from this place as fast as possible. He had no money on him, he had nobody he could contact, he had no idea how to navigate a large city. He rammed clean through crowds and blasted straight over streets with screaming lungs and a screaming brain. Blood was streaming out from his inner wrist in ribbons of red, in which was embedded a shard of the glass he had broken.
Mutterings of "trash panda", "filthy immigrant", "basket case", and "rapist" chased him as he ran, ran from the truth of what he had done. Heart thundering violently and lungs apparently nonexistent, the raccoon collapsed in a thin alleyway with his back to a large building.
Breathing deeply, Max came to the conclusion that he was probably at the edge of the city, due to the decrease in traffic and pedestrians. A searing pain in his forearm caused him to notice the shard stuck there.
The raccoon employed several of his best swear words to the occasion as he proceeded to extract the triangular piece from his arm. It left a deep puncture wound in his fur, but he didn't mind: he had more pressing matters to deal with. Wiping his wrist on the inside of his pocket, Max stood on trembling legs and took a look around.
The streets were very quiet, there were few people in sight. He would have to make himself at home in this alley, he supposed. The night seemed that much more frigid when he thought about this.
It would have to do for now, however. He was lost in a city with nowhere to go, and this was the best idea he had. Curling up on the freezing floor, he attempted to feign sleep, but for a long hour he lay painfully awake, reliving what he had done.
The conversation he had heard; Donovan's quiet, accented voice that harbored so much anger. The way the he had spat Pendulum's name like it was acid on his tongue. The insane look in his bloodshot eyes as he had lunged at Max, hooked claws out and teeth bared. The crack of the glass as Max had hit the other raccoon across the forehead. The way the shards had blown apart with the force of a thousand suns. Donovan's crumpled body at Max's feet. The scream stuck in his throat. The way he had bailed from the crime scene faster than he had ran from anything.
Over and over he rewatched it, each reliving more gruesome and more terrifying than the last. Guilt and shame pulled at his stomach as he read his texts again.
"I'm on the flight, on my way!" - Max, 7:23 PM
"k. room number is 725. the stairs are faster than the elevator." - Pendulum, 7:25 PM
"Do you want me to bring you anything?" - Max, 7:26 PM
"not the airline food pls" - Pendulum, 7:28 PM
"I'll keep that in mind, LMAO." - Max, 7:29 PM
"eww don't capitalize it that makes it look unprofessional" - Pendulum, 7:30 PM
"Look who's talking." - Max, 7:31 PM
"yeah yeah. practice what u preach n stuff. but still." - Pendulum, 7:31 PM
"Taking off, see you!" - Max, 7:32 PM
"cya" - Pendulum, 7:32 PM
"keep it." - Pendulum, 9:54 PM
Max realized he was crying as he stared down at his phone screen, and not from the brightness either. Hastily wiping his eyes and nose on his sleeve, he made to turn off his phone when he heard a noise close by. A soft scraping was drawing closer to him, accompanied by the muffled taps of paw against stone.
"Hey, you!"
The raccoon raised his head to face the newcomer. A short, bright red animal stood there, looking stuck somewhere between cat and squirrel, with pointed ears and a thick rodent tail, slightly puffy cheeks and large eyes. She wore a tank top with a missing right strap causing it to resemble a toga, which, when he cast his phone's light upon it, he discovered to be a perky sky blue.
"What are you doing, sitting outside at this time?" There was a certain upbeat twinge to her voice that made Max's hair stand on end. She sounded positively delighted to see him.
"Lost," he mumbled quietly, averting his eyes and staring down at his phone screen again, where the text conversation lay malevolently.
"You aren't from here, are you, trash panda?"
"No." He didn't react to being called a trash panda, even though every other time he would always get defensive. He remembered Pendulum jokingly referring to him as that, and the "keep it." at the bottom of his screen stood out even more excruciatingly.
The newcomer let out a great sigh, although there was delight evident in her voice. Not a sinister, evil delight, a genuine happiness that made Max's spirits rise by a fraction.
"Weeeeeell, I guess you're gonna have to hole up with me tonight!" she announced joyfully.
Max found himself sitting on an ivory-colored couch next to the scarlet cat-squirrel, who he had come to know as Raz. She was jabbering away animatedly, waving her paws to emphasize her words. The dark blue eyes perched on her grinning face shone jovially. The raccoon that sat at her side saw himself reflected inside her massive pupils, looking as disheveled as Pendulum had. He was not listening to a word she was saying, he was simply staring into her face while his brain worked on its own.
Why was he so upset over Pendulum? He had other friends back in Florida. He had gotten into rows with several of them, some female, but he had never been as upset over those. Why did he care more for a cat he hadn't spent twenty four hours with than the friends he had had since grade school? His female acquaintances were definitely as sexy as Pendulum but whenever he fought with them he always felt unbridled rage, not the crippling numbness he felt now. Was it possible that--
"Hey, trash panda?"
This snapped Max out of his reverie. He looked properly at Raz for the first time in an hour, who was looking rather annoyed, but amused all the same.
"Yeah?" he stammered, a wild excuse already halfway complete in his head.
"You got something on your mind, there, brother. Spill the beans." This was not a request. This was an order. Max knew he was going to be forced to oblige.
"Well..." he began in a syncopated manner. "There's this girl--"
Raz's eyes began to twinkle like Christmas lights, like those flickering, broken ones he and Pendulum had set up together--
"A girl, is it? So what will it be? Breakup? Asking her out? Proposal?"
"I-I think she's mad at me."
"Details, details!" the crimson hybrid chimed airily. "Give me the lowdown."
"So, um, I met this girl a couple weeks ago on Christmas, we set up a tree together and stuff and we stayed in contact, and, um, she invited me over today and we were talking, and, um, well, I think I said something and then she got really salty about it and she wouldn't talk. . . she was kind of ignoring me, and she was getting these phone calls, too, by her business partner or someone. . . and she sounded kind of mad about them. . . and then I just got up and left when the tension was really high, and I took one of her glasses, and she said to keep it, and, uh, I think I met her business partner cause he was yelling at her on the phone. . . said, 'I mean it, don't test me, Pendulum' or something, and I bailed out of there and I think he's unconscious cause I hit him with the glass. . . and-and I think I remind her of him and that's why she's mad," he finished unceremoniously.
Raz's eyes were even brighter now. The corners of her mouth were shaking with an effort to not grin.
"Is this woman, by any chance, Pendulum Caeli?"
"You know her--"
"Yeah, I know her. She's my friend and she's told me all about you, Max. She's real fond of you, you know. When you were arranging to come over she wouldn't stop talking about it." Raz grinned widely. Max felt something in his stomach soar very high into the sky.
"She was. . . excited?" Max found it unbelievable that such a high-class woman like Pendulum would be excited to spend time with a dirty street animal like himself.
"You should've seen her. Wouldn't stop grinning the entire day. Asked me to come over and help clean. Probably had at least fifteen breath mints. Would jump and smile real wide every time her phone buzzed 'cause she thought it was you."
Max found this even more unbelievable. Pendulum, taking mints and ferociously cleaning, for him? Pendulum, getting excited at notifications, for him? Pendulum, genuinely caring about him?
The thought of what he had done to offend her made him feel even worse. She had spent hours getting ready, and for what? Ten minutes' conversation and one of her glasses broken.
"I made her mad," he blurted without restraint. "I made her mad and I want to fix it. You know her, Raz, you need to help me, I. . ."
"Love her?" Raz asked cheekily.
"No!" Max improvised wildly, feeling his face grow hot. "She's--she's my friend and I need to--"
The little red mixed-breed was in hysterics. Her ears were flat against her scalp, her eyes watering and her nose buried into her paws. She was trembling head to foot; it took a painful minute for her to stop laughing long enough to talk properly. Max felt very, very hot all over, as if he had been scorched by fire, and his fur was itchy against his skin. He longed to kill himself.
"Okay," Raz said in between giggles. "Here's the thing. The one thing that makes Pendy get triggered like that is bringing up her past relationships. Did you do that?"
"I. . . asked her if she was dating the guy she was calling," the raccoon replied softly, feeling extraordinarily stupid. Of course that had offended her, it would have offended anybody, he was such a stupid, dumb fool. . . didn't even know how to properly socially interact with anyone. . . could easily be considered retarded. . . filthy trash panda indeed. . .
"Yeah. Rule of thumb, don't ask people if they're dating the guy they're on the phone with. Makes you look desperate." Raz replied without s change in her amused tome. Max loathed himself tenfold when she said this.
"Hold up, trash panda. She doesn't like to talk about her relationships at all. She wants to pretend they never existed. Tries to shut them out. It's pretty unhealthy, I've told her, but then again, this is the woman who can chug five gallons of hard beer and still be alive."
"Why doesn't she want to talk about them?" Max asked. He understood being offended at an obviously desperate attempt on getting picked up by someone, but he didn't understand why she didn't like to discuss relationships at all. He had dated a bit himself, and while he wasn't very proud of the things he had done, he was open to discussing them with a trusted individual.
Raz leaned close to Max, so that their faces were inches away. The raccoon could see every detail on her face; the sleekly brushed fur, the wide, dark eyes shining like a child's, the little cotton-candy pink nose and the amused smile, the two little fangs poking out from beneath her lip, the pencilled eyebrows, the white, stubby whiskers, the inflated cheeks. . .
"Now, don't tell anyone I told you this," she began. Her tone lacked any amusement now, it was strict and serious. Max, who had become used to the cheery tone, was shaken severely by this abrupt change.
"Pendulum used to date a guy, raccoon like you. Lost her first kiss and virginity to him. They were pretty serious about it, too. People told her not to date a disgusting trash panda but she didn't listen, did she, no, she's not one to follow the crowd. Got cheated on, saw them making out on her own bed when she got home from work, she was shook really bad. Yelled her ass off at her man, got her things, and blasted about halfway across the country, got addicted to beer. Eventually became his business partner, they deal drugs now. Mutual respect for each other, but rows all the time. She doesn't like it any more than you probably do, having to put up with that"--Raz used swear words so bad they profusely startled Max--"every damn day. Turns out he married the slut he was cheating on her with, she hates him totally but needs the money. I'd offer her mine but I barely have enough for myself."
Max stared at Raz for a moment as he slowly processed this. This new information made him despise Donovan even more than he already did. He found out that he had balled his fists and gritted his teeth in anger when he unclenched them.
"Pendy loves you," Raz said softly, breathily. "She really does. I know her, she's weak for the people she loves. She doesn't want to stay mad at you. Apologize to her, bring her a present, and she should be okay."
Max felt his phone vibrate against his thigh. Hastily, he ripped it out of his pocket and looked at it. Pendulum had sent him a text.
"help, hes cming" - Pendulum, 11:46 PM
Raz read the text upside down. When she met Max's big eyes once more, there was no life in her face. She looked dead serious, her eyebrows furrowed and her jaw set.
"Pendulum is blackout drunk and Donovan is coming to her place to have a 'talk'. In this case, a talk means he's going to yell at her. She can't even stand up right now and she's probably going to pass out. You can work out what might happen from here, you've checked her out before. Unconscious and beautiful isn't the ideal state to be in when confronting an angry man. We need to get her out of there."