Sara creeps up to Bobo, one hand covered in a grooming mitt and the other holding scissors.

“Hey! What are you doing?” I ask. The cat looks up from his crotch, temporarily distracted.

Sara flashes a guilty smile and looks at the scissors.

“There’s a lot of hair behind the couch,” I grumble, getting up from the table. “I said I’d help you move it if you gave me a minute.”

Sara puts the scissors on a throw pillow and stands at one end, the one that requires more lifting.

“Take that other side,” I tell her. She stares at me a moment and walks over.

“Alright, are you ready?” I ask.

“Yeah.”

“I’m just gonna swing it out a little. You can fit in there close to the wall.”

“Okay,” she says.

We pick up our ends, shuffle a few awkward steps, and set the couch back down. It’s heavier than I remember, can’t be much lighter than those kinds with the bed inside. Sara groans from her lighter load.

It looks like a cat – maybe three – died behind the couch.

“Shit!” She gasps. “This is all Bobo?”

“Yep.”

“Damn! How does it get back here?”

“No clue,” I shrug. “It’s the El Dorado of cat hair, which makes Bobo some kind of South American king or something.”

“This is exactly what I need, Ape.” Sara laughs then. It’s good to hear.

“There’s freezer bags in the pantry,” I say, making my way across the room. Sara squats down to pet Bobo. He sucks loudly on the white fur of his belly.

“I think this cat could be a Guinness World record holder,” she calls out. “Or maybe one of those America’s Funniest Home Video show winners, you know?”

“Yeah.”

When I bring the freezer bags over, Sara’s got silken clumps in her left fist. She raises her arm triumphantly when she sees me.

“Power to the people!” Sara exclaims.

“Huh?”

“Power to the people!”

“What are you talking about?”

“Power to the people!”

“Dude,” I sigh. “Do you want these bags or not?”

Sara rolls her eyes. She lowers her arm and puts the fur on the carpet. I give her a bag.

We fall quiet, Sara crawling closer to the wall and raking up matted cat hair. She turns up some balled up tissues and loose change.

“I don’t remember you being such a slob when I lived here,” Sara teases, inspecting a bicentennial quarter and putting it in her pocket. “I kept you in line.”

She’s right, but only if she’s talking about those times between boyfriends. Those two, maybe two-and-a-half months between Nick and Dave. And then Jon with no ‘h’. Sara liked that about him.

“You collect one-syllable-named guys like some kids do action figures,” I told her once. She thought it was funny, and I later heard her repeat it to others as she looked me in the eyes, like, “Yeah, yeah. I know you said it first, but gimme.”

When Sara fell in love, the dishes piled up. Mine, mostly. Sometimes she’d leave a glass with just enough juice or milk in the bottom to make a skin. But no food. When Sara fell in love, she didn’t eat at home.

“So Ape, I was looking into this,” she starts to say, motioning at her now half-filled bag of fur. “Most people aren’t allergic to the actual hair. It’s the saliva.”

“No!” I deadpan in mock horror.

Sara smiles. “You knew that?”

“No.”

“Oh. Well, how old do you think this is?” Her brow furrows in concern. “Do you think there’s still enough saliva on it?”

“We could pry open Bobo’s mouth if you want…”

“That’s what I was thinking,” Sara says.

I pause. “Wait, you’re serious?”

“It wouldn’t hurt him!”

“No, Sara. I can’t be an accessory to feline abuse.”

We both crack up then, partly because neither of us really knows how serious the other is. It feels good to smudge outside our lines.

When Sara moved out, I never told her I was done being her layover en route to that final destination – John with an ‘h’ or no ‘h.’ Hell if I know. Maybe a Michael.

Three weeks ago, she called again. Heartbroken. Confused. Totally shocked.

I wasn’t.

From what Sara said, Jake had been nearly perfect. Not the most attractive guy, but that only made her feel more beautiful. When she told me that, I instantly wondered if that’s the same reason we’ve stayed friends.

Jake got distant and lazy. Comfortable, basically. Sara’s voice wobbled, and her eyes filled with tears. “He acted like it was work to love me,” she said.

I never met him, but I could tell we had something in common.

“I’m so angry at him, it scares me,” Sara confided. “I know I should be the bigger person and everything, but his fat ass is the bigger person.”

“You want him dead?” I probed gently. “Just say it. It feels good.”

“No, I’m not angry enough to say anything like that. Bad karma.” She paused. “But I could do brain dead.”

She’s settling for congestion and watery eyes.

We’ve got a full sealed bag of fur now. Sara’s wearing the grooming mitt again, picking errant strands from the rubber tips that cover her palm.

“How are you gonna expose Jake to all this?” I ask.

She strokes Bobo with the glove; he arches his back with pleasure. “I haven’t figured that out exactly. He did say he wants to get together and talk.”

Everyone always goes back to Sara.

I raise my eyebrows with reproach. “And you’re going to?”

“I’m not just gonna say yes or anything. But how else will I use all this?” She wiggles her mitted palm then. Bobo stalks off at the abrupt end of the massage.

I grab my bag of cat hair and stand. I can’t believe Sara talked me into this. Nearly two years since we last sat here talking for any real amount of time, and it’s all about her. Again.

“Ape? What’s wrong?” Sara stands, towering over me.

My chin quakes.

“April,” her voice goes soft like those two-and-a-half months of laughter and cooking. Sitting knee to knee on the sofa, I’d watch any shitty TV show she wanted. “April…”

I remember the crunchy heels of Sara’s feet against the top of my own, sticky and smelling of crackers. Her face without makeup before she had to start getting ready for nights out that turned into days gone.

One night all the bar scenes sucked or Sara got tired, and she brought someone back here. I was already asleep. I never met her guest, but I bet his name is Dan or Joe or Bob.

Maybe No or Stop. Because that’s what Sara called him from the other side of the wall, the bed bouncing violently. The flimsy headboard chipping away at the light blue she’d painted her room the first week we moved in.

I heard her scream “No!” but I waited for “April!” It’s hard to know what to do, how to be a good friend in a situation like that. Later, the quiet was deafening. I think only he went to sleep, whoever he was.

Sara spent the next day in bed. I wanted to ask if she needed to talk, and then wanted to tell her she needed to talk. But we just passed each other in the hallway. She ate at home a few weeks before meeting someone else so cute and so nice and I had to meet him, but I never did.

Sara’s hug hangs over me. I grab her tight like I would a bobbing life raft. In a sea of cat hair, I guess.

My voice wobbles now. “You know, the ultimate ‘fuck you’ would be if you got a cat.”

She steps back, hands on my shoulders, and laughs low and wise.

“But what if he comes back to stay?” Sara asks, and I know she has a point.

—

Amanda Green lives in New York City, where she’ll write just about anything for money. Her work has been featured in New York Press, The Guardian, and The New York Times City Room blog. Read about her misadventures in love, work, and public transportation at www.noisiestpassenger.com.