by Adam Jeffries Schwartz

Lucca sits on my shoulder. This is not her favorite position, she prefers to rest beneath my t-shirt, nursing on my neck; she was taken away from her mother too early and I’m doing my best as a replacement. We’re in Argentina, where this arrangement seems perfectly natural. We're on the way to buy medialunas, which are the important pastry here, they’re crescent shaped and come in two flavors: vegetable oil and butter, and taste pretty much the same. The pastry ladies, who look like mafia enforcers, are crazy in love with Lucca; they’re a cadre of grandmothers, massive upper arms swaying in the breeze ready to hold her, hands full of treats. Back into the apartment, Lucca jumps down, bounces off my chest and runs to the balcony where she waits for me to open the glass door. This, as it turns out, is no small request. You need a screwdriver to pry the door open. La Princessa, the other cat, is outside, lounging in the sun. We call her La Princessa but her real name, the one she calls herself, is Mistress of the Universe, Destroyer of Plants, Eater of Insects. Somehow she is the only one of us four who can open the door without a screwdriver. Pablo is in charge of the plants, for which, I have to admit, he has a talent, and I am the true Mother to the cats. Since La Princessa loves to destroy plants, Pablo and I have, inadvertently, fallen on opposing sides. Pablo is also good with broken things, which come in very handy because on a macro level we live in Argentina and on a micro level we live in this apartment, which is owned by an ancient woman, almost a hundred, who lives upstairs. She can't see or hear or walk. She sits in a chair and smiles. Her son, already old himself, is waiting for her to die so that he can kick us out and sell the apartment. So the doors are knob-less. The windows are un-openable and once opened un-closeable. Anything you touch too long will stay in your hand forever. It's August, winter here, cold but sunny, which is good, because there's no heat, either, just a small space heater which doubles as a clothes dryer. That's a fire hazard, probably. The apartment looks warm though. Pablo painted the walls deep orange and deep yellow so that they resemble adobe. The sun fills the living room. I put the medialunas and the newspapers on the coffee table and the kitchen to make an espresso. Lucca stalks the medialunas. On the balcony La Princessa is salivating over a pigeon. Her tail bumps against the astro-turf. She's low to the ground, drooling. And Pablo watches bang bang cartoons. It's odd that you can live together and be so different: La Princessa and Lucca, Pablo and me. Pablo yells through the closed bedroom door, "You still love me?" "Si, mi amor." But I'm not at all sure that I do. But that's the trick to a second language; the words have value but little weight. I used to. I might still. I want to finish my coffee first. Lucca has no such doubts, she has done a marine belly crawl up my t-shirt and is purring—loudly—as she sucks the nutrients straight out of me. And out of love—I suppose it is a kind of love—I let her.