Lurking on the Tightrope

Chapter 1

Chapter 1

One Year Later

While looking out the car windows, everything is unfamiliar, yet Pari Malik is perhaps jolted by the glimpse of orange, or the small curved shape, out of place and in an impossible predicament, and she screams.

"Abby, please take an exit and loop back around, as quickly as you can. I think we just passed a cat stuck out on the median."

Abby Goodwin grips her steering wheel tighter. "Are you sure? It cannot be," she says, looking at vehicles ahead and in the opposing lanes, all at near full speed. "There is no possible way for a cat to get out there."

They take the nearest exit and head on the opposite side of the highway, back toward Honolulu International Airport.

Pari describes the location they need to find — a concrete platform holding a freeway street light, on an indentation a bit lower than the rest of the median wall. Both women look intently along the structure at the base of each street light. Just for an instant, both women see the perched cat at the same time, a tabby-striped tail unmistakably drooping down over the median. “There!” they cry out in unison.

Abby takes another exit, returns to the highway, and they are once again headed away from the airport and back toward the cat in peril. Abby’s hands shake with anxiety.

“You will have to get in the far left lane and pull over on the shoulder," Pari directs, and within moments their car is stopped about 30 feet ahead of the median indentation possessing the feline.

"He will leap into traffic if we scare him," Abby asserts, looking into the eyes of the much younger woman and trying to decide what to do.

Pari rummages through her carry-on bag at her feet, grabs a t-shirt, and swiftly, but quietly, exits the car. Abby sees Pari in the rearview mirror walking dauntlessly toward the cat. Abby flinches her eyes shut and involuntarily covers her ears.

Pari holds the shirt down casually at her side as she approaches. The tabby is kneeling with his head low and sees her coming. Pari makes brief eye contact. The cat's eyes are dull and hopeless. Pari says, "My dear baby, I am helping you. I need you to let me....” Before all of her words are out, Pari has scooped him up, using her shirt as a protective shield for her hands. The cat does not resist, but she scruffs his neck anyway for full control.

Abby opens her eyes just as Pari climbs in the backseat holding the tabby, who begins meowing loudly. At first, he appears to her as an apparition, as she had little faith he could be saved. The phantom, after a few moments, is finally seen as real, as an innocent, and Abby’s heart swells with relief while Pari touches and comforts him.

Before pulling back into the loud, zooming traffic, Abby looks at Pari with soaring awe, marveling that the tiny child she knew years ago, an acutely tormented soul for as long as she had known her, had nevertheless evolved into the determined and gallant young woman now behind her.

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“NEHA?” DR. MICHAEL Blake’s face pleasantly brightens as he looks up from the orange tabby in Pari’s arms. Instinctively, when opening the door to his veterinary office waiting room, he always first looks at the animals — his actual patients — then at the people who are escorting them. “This is a wonderful surprise. I did not know if I would ever see you again.”

“Sorry, I am not Neha.”

“Dr. Blake, this is Pari Malik and it is her first time in Hawaii. She has come to visit with me for the week. Her family and I were neighbors in Maryland before I moved to Oahu.”

“Pardon me,” he says, quite baffled. “Except for the way you are wearing your hair, in a pony tail, you have an uncanny resemblance to a young woman I met last year in Waikiki.” He cannot help but continue to scan her face, concentrating on her delicate mouth, naturally thin and soft-angled brows, eyes so dark chocolate they appear raven-black, and unblemished forehead.

Dr. Blake, with baby-face features, in conjunction with his enthusiasm and youthful, short-spiked hairstyle, seems far too young to be a veterinarian leading his own practice. He directs Pari and Abby to a small examination room and gestures for Pari to hand him the tabby above the steel table layered with a clean linen towel. “So, who do you have here?”

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“RAPHAEL,” THE TABBY, had a name and a safe plan by the time Abby and Pari leave Dr. Blake’s modest veterinary clinic in The North Shore’s Hale’iwa community. The veterinarian told them Raphael is nine years of age, in only fair health ("likely from years of neglect"), intact, and limping from an old hind leg injury. When asked whether she wanted to notify or surrender him to government authority, Abby refused. "No microchip, no ID tag or pet license, poor condition, found in danger, and not even neutered. Please,” she added, to emphasize how futile his inquiry was, “you know I am going to find him a responsible, loving, forever home.”

Dr. Blake was also perplexed about Raphael being on a highway median in busy traffic. He noted the traffic is always dense and it is unthinkable Raphael dodged cars in a sporty dash across the lanes. Instead, his most probable conclusion was that Raphael was thrown from, or fell from, a moving vehicle. Ultimately, that seemed impossible to him too. Dr. Blake agreed to Abby’s request to board Raphael at his clinic, monitoring his eating and health, testing him for diseases, and then microchipping him and neutering him, assuming his previous owner would not be found within 72 hours. Abby pays him a retainer to cover the range of services and asks the doctor to let Raphael temporarily live and heal in one of the clinic’s two comfortably decorated, glass-walled feature rooms near the lobby so that Raphael can watch visitors and not feel like he is in a caged setting.

Earlier, the afternoon drive across the center of the island looked familiar to Pari with rolling hills and wavy, open crop fields and old structures. She had not expected Oahu to resemble the midwest American states in any way. She was enthralled though when they reached The North Shore, the north coast of Oahu, with its stunning beaches, small neighborhoods, and quaint restaurants and shops.

After finishing a casual and relaxing supper near the beach during sunset, Abby and Pari wind along the coastal Kamehameha Highway. They make a sharp righthand turn on an unmarked lane, and pass an old, large sign reading, "Apapane Lane, Private Property, No Trespassing". The lane arcs to a small, oval park, surrounded by cobblestone streets and snug, one-story cottages and skinny street lamps. Pari remarks that the lamps look old-fashioned, like gas lamps, something she would expect in 1800s London. “Very close,” Abby says. “The inspiration was most likely Prague, believe it or not.”

Driving counter-clockwise around the circle, they park in front of the first cottage on the right. "Welcome to The Ring, my home sweet home," Abby says with pride. "Apapane Lane is really an Apapane Ring—a tiny hamlet or estate — whatever you would like to call it — a circle around a neighborhood park. All of us here just simply call it 'The Ring'. All of this—my home, The Ring—was created by Irene Lazar, the Irene Lazar, the movie star. Campbell—he lives next door—knows the particulars better than anyone. I hope you can meet him tomorrow."

As they step on the spacious front porch, Pari hears a dog crying with anticipation. Abby opens her front door and a large Malamute mix hops out, nestles against Abby’s legs, and vocalizes his joy with grunts and groans. "Halo is blind, but he gets around so perfectly you will usually forget he has any disability,” Abby says. Halo sniffs Pari without tension and smiles as he follows her into his home.