#popemira

His new fake documents said he was from Pennsylvania, there was a cheap apartment available, and there was no reason for anybody to suspect Pope Cody would end up in Pittsburgh. These three facts, combined, made it the perfect place to get away from his family once and for all.

The apartment itself was as shitty as the neighborhood it resided in- perfect to lay low in- with its leaking faucets and landlord special paintjob, providing him countless odd tasks to fulfill his overwhelming off time. Being in the apartment for too long without anything to do turned it into yet another imprisonment; Pope didn’t know who he was when he wasn’t tasked with something to do. So a broken lightbulb here, an in-unit dryer with a broken drum belt there? It was a small mercy amidst the hectic nature of his grand escape.

He missed his brothers. He missed surfing. He missed weather that wasn’t miserable or as everchanging as Pittsburgh’s. He missed Lena most of all. But, when he was free to do what he wanted, or not do something he didn’t want to? When he spent his first full day in a sparsely furnished apartment without a person in his ear treating him like an attack dog? The grief that came with the life he left behind melted into great relief. It was him and, sure, he was alone, but that was what he wanted and, most days, he felt it was certainly what he deserved. Alone, with more money than he knew what to do with, no threat to his life, and time to learn about himself. Time to live maybe, finally, in peace.

Peace was best found on the balcony. Of course, Pope enjoyed walks and runs through the parks as they crisped with late autumn’s arrival, or the serenity that came with a monotonous odd job around the apartment, or lifting weights and boxing. More than all that, though, he cherished the view the balcony gave him. It was the closest he got to reliving a shred of his before life. From the vantage point of the small, dilapidated balcony, he oversaw his domain in its entirety. He couldn’t help but memorize the cars that were there day after day, or start logging when one tenant might arrive versus another, or watch the process of the shops open and the nearby street parking fill up. He watched on more than one occasion as the landlord was handed rent in an envelope full of wrinkled bills of every denomination, making him thankful he wasn’t the only one to pay in that nature. He took note of every possible concern, anything of note; but, over the course of the month he had been living here, one balcony saga stuck out from the rest.

There was a stray cat. It was shockingly tiny, with patchy fur and, from his best guess at a distance, bald spots from being somehow mangled. It looked like it was a human’s doing. Pope felt bad for the cat, especially because of its apparent youth. Pope felt like any human that would hurt something so helpless deserved to be thrown into wet cement, alive, and left inside as it hardened. The little kitten was strong, too, if it was willing to come around a human street after whatever had been done to it.

The stray returned because there was also a woman. A doctor woman. A doctor woman who was always at work- made sense, with the whole doctor thing- and still made time, even after twenty four hours straight of working, to be the type of person who set small dishes of cat food in the alley outside their apartment building.

The doctor had big brown eyes and spoke a pretty language on the phone sometimes. She’d walk into the apartment with one hand holding the phone while her opposite arm carried a bag of premium kitten food indoors, still wearing scrubs because that was all she ever seemed to wear. On the days she was gone a full 24 hours that kitten would begin to linger in the alley, meowing around the 8 or 9pm point, until it would slink away with its head hung low. So, as his personal service to healthcare workers and not because it made him sad to think the kitten might not put on good weight despite the doctor’s best efforts, Pope ended up going to the grocery store and stalking the aisles until he arrived in front of a wall of brightly colored pet food. The next time the doctor wasn’t home by 8:30 he slipped outside and refilled it with the same kibble (the doctor had to know what was best for the kitten’s stomach, so he trusted her choice of food) and a slice of turkey breast from his fridge.

Then there was a week where she worked multiple double shifts. The hospital on her lanyard, the Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center, didn’t normally do 24 hour shifts for the emergency department according to the internet. So it had to be her covering extra shifts on top of her normal schedule, which he could only hope wasn’t the result of financial stress, since asking their landlord if he could secretly pay two month’s rent for her might put eyes on Pope that he didn’t want. Whatever the case, it left her unavailable to go grocery shopping, and it took her two weeks to go through the last bag and it had been three weeks since she’d brought one home. After several hours spent peeling the landlord’s flaking paint off of his electrical outlets he went back to the store, got a bag, and dropped it at her doorstep for when she returned.

Pope made sure to be inside at 7:30am when her car pulled into the lot, but he heard from below him the sound of her dropping the bag inside her apartment. Fifteen minutes later he heard the unmistakable creaking and squeaking of her shower turning on- an easy fix he’d handled his third day- and Pope took it as his cue to stop listening. He slipped outside and headed to the gym to work off the thrill in his chest.

Winter arrived early that year. Pope had been dreading it, considering that he was a California boy through and through- not one particle of the Codys was meant to be subjected to the snow. The days were growing drearier and the weather was taunting the city, approaching the point of snowfall on several occasions and then backing off just to leave layers of icy frost on windows and windshields. The first time sure enough, he woke up just before 6am in early November to a blanket of pure white covering Pittsburgh. He silently watched the weightlessness of the snowflakes as they gradually fell and covered the city in a blanket of pure white, but this wonder was rudely interrupted at 6:30am by an awful, grating sound coming from the parking lot.

Pope set down the jar of pomade he was about to finish running through his hair and stalked across the apartment to his window to see a horrible sight: the doctor woman, without gloves, struggling to scrape off her windows with a broken windshield brush. On top of that? There was no way her engine was warmed up and the car must’ve been even colder than outside, because he didn’t hear the car run for more than three minutes total before she drove off.

Pope Cody found all of these facts unacceptable. So, he went to the store and purchased two windshield scrapers with a brush on the opposite side, sidewalk salt, a snow shovel, insulated gloves, an animal carrier, and a cat collar with a bow. With the list acquired he did what he did best, and got to work until the sidewalk was clear. The snow had continued to relentlessly pile on as the day progressed so he went back out at 6:50pm to clear it again and his efforts paid off when the woman arrived to a reserved parking spot and walkway so clear of snow and freshly salted, she had half a mind to be suspicious. Pope watched, crouched and behind the safety of his bedroom window, as she slowly looked around and took in the fact that her sketchy apartment complex was the only place as far as the eye could see that was perfectly shovelled and salted. She shrugged after a few seconds, hugged her puffer coat closer to herself, and disappeared in the apartment below him. Pope even watched her traipse right back out to refill the cat’s bowl.

Pope finally pulled the curtain shut. He ate microwavable chicken and broccoli, showered, and smoothed his bed before pulling the comforter back so the corner became perfectly triangular. Finally, he climbed in, turned his lamp off, then on, then off again, and turned over to face the meowing cat carrier. Sticking a finger and rubbing the fun-sized, mewling animal, he said: “I’ll empty it in the morning, so she knows you ate. Then we gotta go get your shots at 9:30.”