His Cat Stole My Underwear, and He Kept Every Pair novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Red Briefs
At midnight Teddy chases a one-eyed cat carrying his best red briefs into his grumpy neighbor's apartment and finds every stolen pair washed, folded and dated in a basket, with the neighbor in the doorway, caught.
Admiral had Teddy's best red briefs in his mouth, and he did not look sorry.
The cat sat on the balcony railing with the whole pair hanging from his jaws.
It was midnight, it was raining, and Teddy was wearing a bath towel.
"Drop it," Teddy whispered.
Admiral looked at him with his one good eye.
Then he turned and trotted along the railing to the neighbor's side.
Teddy had been losing a pair of underwear a night for a month.
He had blamed the wind, the pear tree, the raccoons on Clinton Street, and once, in a low moment, a ghost.
The ghost had a one-eyed orange face and a torn ear.
"You're the thief," Teddy said, and his voice cracked on the last word. "You're a cat."
Admiral dropped neatly down onto Dr. Aldahl's balcony and walked through Dr. Aldahl's open door.
The red briefs went with him, trailing.
Teddy stood in the rain with one hand holding up his towel.
Those were the good ones.
They had been a gift from Poppy, who had said they were "for emotional emergencies."
He climbed over the railing.
The iron was cold and wet under his bare thighs, and he did not think about that.
He crossed the neighbor's balcony, because his neighbor was a man who owned a doormat and a sensible umbrella and had barely spoken to Teddy in two years.
Teddy had kept track.
Most of it had been "Excuse me" and "It's recycling day."
He stopped at the open door.
A lamp was on inside, low and yellow.
The apartment smelled like cedar and clean laundry and something warm, like toast.
"Hello?" Teddy called. "I'm so sorry, your cat has my underwear."
Nobody answered.
Water ran somewhere down the hall, a tap, steady and quiet.
Teddy looked at the balcony behind him, the rain, the dark.
Then he looked at the dining table, and he forgot that he was in a towel.
Admiral sat on the table beside a wicker laundry basket.
He lowered his head and set the red briefs on top of the basket as gently as he would lay down a kitten.
Then he sat back and licked his shoulder.
Teddy walked in.
He did not decide to.
His feet decided it, and the rest of him followed.
Teddy snatched the red briefs back off the top.
The basket underneath was full.
There were underwear in it, folded in neat thirds, stacked in rows.
Teddy lifted the top one with two fingers.
Avocados.
Little green avocados with little cheerful faces.
He had bought them at a gas station in Hood River on a bad day, and he had lost them in September.
There was a strip of masking tape across the waistband, and on the tape, in small square block letters, someone had written a date.
SEPT. 14.
Teddy put them down and picked up the next pair.
The blue ones with the whales.
SEPT. 15.
The black ones with the hole he had been meaning to mend.
The hole was mended.
It was mended with tiny, perfect stitches.
SEPT. 16.
He kept going, one pair after another, faster, his towel forgotten at his hip.
The plaid ones.
The holiday ones.
The ones that said MONDAY on a Thursday.
Each one was washed, pressed, folded, and labeled, all the way down to OCT. 13.
Thirty pairs.
Thirty nights.
Teddy stood with a handful of his own underwear in a stranger's dining room and tried to find a word for what this was.
Admiral blinked at him.
Behind him, the tap in the hall went off.
Teddy turned around slowly, holding the red briefs against his chest.
Dr. Magnus Aldahl stood in the hallway doorway.
His hair was wet.
He wore a gray T-shirt with the sleeves pushed up over his forearms, and in one hand he held a roll of masking tape, and in the other a black marker.
He looked at the basket.
He looked at Teddy, at the wet shoulders and the towel and the red briefs held against his chest.
His gaze dropped lower and snapped back up.
His throat moved once, and he did not say a word.
He looked like a man who had been caught.
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