An Unexpected Visitor

A Story by Caity Jay

Jeffrey doesn't get many guests. He gets even fewer guests of whom his cat approves.

Jeffrey was tinkering. Jeffrey loved tinkering. It was his favorite summertime activity. It also happened to be his favorite wintertime activity, and springtime and fall-time activity. He hummed a tuneless little ditty while he tinkered, his skinny gray tabby butting her head against his shins and grumbling quietly. Jeffrey ignored her. There was plenty of good hunting for her out on the mountain; even now he could hear the chittering of dozens of little birds from the propped front door.

“Bet you can’t catch one of those, old girl,” he teased the animal, lifting one bare foot slightly to scratch behind her ears with his toes. The cat grumbled again (it was almost a purr this time), but bounded out the door into the meadow beyond.

Jeffrey returned to his tinkering.

The day had progressed far enough to be uncomfortably warm, and Jeffrey turned a few cranks on his as-yet-unpatented Wind Machine III to stir up a breeze from the south window through the front door. He was just settling back into his work (his current project the as-yet-unpatented Stay-Cool Perishable Preserver VI) when he heard a sound he hadn’t heard in a very long time.

A knock on his door.

“Erm, excuse me,” the tentative voice had Jeffrey jumping five feet in the air, toppling his stool and scattering bits of metal and tools every which way. He spun around, blinking at the silhouette in his open doorway.

“Oh, sorry,” the figure continued. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”

The stranger trailed off, glancing around uncomfortably. Jeffrey stared at him.

“How did you get here?” he asked finally, awkwardly breaking the silence.

“Um, well,” the other man shifted uncomfortably from side to side. “I was... well, I was tracking this energy, see, and... well, I’m a wizard, and... and it was heading up this mountain, but... and then I found this cat.”

To Jeffrey’s continued surprise, his old cat took that as her cue to wind her way through the stranger’s legs and bound back into the house, leaping up onto his worktable and shooting Jeffrey what he took to be a meaningful glance.

Jeffrey blinked.

“Aggie likes you,” he deadpanned, looking back and forth between the cat and the man in his doorway.

“Well,” the stranger began again, “she does seem pretty friendly. I thought maybe you could point me back in the direction of town...”

“Aggie doesn’t like anyone,” Jeffrey interrupted, barely having noticed the other man’s response. He was still blinking uncomprehendingly at his cat and the curious shadow she’d seemed to have taken a liking to. For each of the few visitors he’d had over the years, the old cat had only had hisses and scratches. Jeffrey didn’t mind; if Aggie scared them away, he didn’t have to deal with the unpleasantness of shooing them off himself. “Well,” he amended, “anyone besides me. Most of the time.”

“Oh. Well.” Silence stretched between them. The stranger took half a step back from the doorway, allowing the summer afternoon sun to illuminate his features. Jeffrey blinked. The stranger was... attractive. He blinked again, and suddenly glanced around, feeling what he only vaguely recognized as embarrassment at the cluttered state of his house. He dug around frantically in his memory for proper ways to treat strangers who showed up randomly at his door and whom his cat actually liked. Guests.

“Sorry,” he managed, sweeping bits and pieces of unfinished projects off the center table and locating a second stool from beneath a pile of leather strips and strings. “I don’t get many visitors. Please come in, have a seat, would you like some lemonade?”

“Um, yes please, actually,” his guest replied, making his way to the offered stool and seating himself gingerly upon it. “Thank you.”

Jeffrey pushed at a pile of scraps with a foot to open the door of his as-yet-unpatented Stay-Cool Perishable Preserver IV and pulled out a large jar of lemonade. It wasn’t as icy as he’d have liked (he was working on lowering the temperature in his newest model), but it would certainly be refreshing.

He managed to find a clean beaker and filled it, offering it to his guest. “I’m Jeffrey,” he finally remembered to introduce himself. “You’ve already met Agatha.” The cat made herself known again, rubbing her head against the stranger�"guest’s ankles as they dangled from the stool.

“Oh. Yes. Erm. I’m Lawrence. Nice to meet you.” He took a tentative sip from the beaker and blinked down at it. “You haul ice up all this way?”

“Oh, no,” Jeffrey beamed. At last a subject he was comfortable with. “This is my as-yet-unpatented Stay-Cool Perishable Preserver, fourth model.” He babbled on for a while about the mechanism which pumped groundwater through small pipes within the insulated box, keeping the interior significantly cooler than room temperature. He demonstrated how he wound it daily while Lawrence looked on in awe.

“Fascinating,” he said at length. “It’s like magic.”

“I assure you there is no magic involved,” Jeffrey said, somewhat proudly. “I’ve never had a lick of the stuff.”

“It’s extremely impressive,” Lawrence offered, his freckled cheeks reddening. Jeffrey assumed it to be the effect of the sun. “You... you wouldn’t perhaps be willing to teach me? I could pay you, of course. Or offer services in return.” He definitely blushed a moment after that, although Jeffrey couldn’t seem to puzzle out why.

“I would love to!” he startled himself by saying. “Well,” he continued, “I would be happy to have a student. That is, well. I would have to tidy up a bit... well. Quite a bit. I’ve never had a student. I don’t often have guests at all, really.”

“So you’ve said.”

They looked at each other for quite a few long moments.

“Shall I walk you down the mountain?” Jeffrey offered at length. “I can show you the best path there. And back.”

Lawrence granted him a small smile. “I would like that.”

Agatha purred, satisfied, and leapt gracefully out the window.