A Noise that Won't Go Away

"Shhh! Taddy! What's that noise?"

"I don't hear anything."

"You gotta hear it." Jumbie got up from her overstuffed chair and hovered near the window, ears turning like satellite dishes, straining for the sound. "It's sorta high pitched, sorta like squealing. Don't you hear that?"

"No, I don't." Taddy got up off the couch and went into the little kitchen to pour more coffee into his big grey stone mug. "If you'd maybe sit down and read your book, maybe you'd not hear noises that aren't there."

"But it IS there." Jumbie moved away from the window and closer to the lamp, head swivling. "It's like an electric noise, like a hum, like that noise the alarm at the office used to make, only quieter. Lots quieter."

Taddy poured half-and-half into his coffee. "It'd have to be quieter. That old alarm was so loud you couldn't breathe." He sipped, wrinkled his long nose, and added sugar. "Just sit down and don't worry about it."

"Shhh! Shhh!" Jumbie flapped a hand at him, her head now moving away from the lamp toward the radio on the bookshelf.

Taddy tasted his coffee again and carried the mug back to the couch and the newspaper. "I just don't know about you, old woman." He shook his head slowly from side to side, carefully setting the cup on a coaster and picking up the paper from the cushions. "Now you're hearing things."

"Would you hush up?" Jumbie tapped the radio, testing the knobs, turned it on and off again, making a quick burst of music and static. From the bookshelf she circled around her chair, lifting the cushion completely off and checking in the crevices. "You don't know what it could be."

"I know I don't hear anything."

"That's 'cause you are stone deaf most of the time." Jumbie was down on her knees, peering under the chair and under the table next to it. "I can hear it, sure and certain. It's right here somewhere."

Taddy flipped open the paper, making a loud rattle of pages. "Sure is. Right there in between those ears of yours."

Jumbie froze, one hand raised, head cocked. Taddy watched her over his paper, for a moment still. Then she lowered her hand and shook her head.

"It stopped."

"Did it now?"

"Oh, you." Jumbie smoothed her chair cushion as she stood up. "I did hear something, I tell you. I heard it."

"You are always hearing things. What about those sneakthieves you heard in the downstairs last week?" Taddy turned a page in his paper.

Jumbie stood with both hands on her broad hips. "There was something in that dining room pushing the chairs around. The chairs were all pushed away from the table the next morning."

"Cats."

"Hmph." Jumbie flumped into her chair. "Cats wouldn't ever push those chairs around."

"Sure they would." He reached for his coffee. "Jump from them all the time. Push the chairs back when they jump."

"Well, you don't hear anything except a dinner bell. Phone rings all day and you won't pick it up once."

"I hear the phone perfectly well. I just don't want to answer it."

"And you just don't want to answer the doorbell or open the microwave either, hm?" He rattled the paper and didn't answer. "And you don't hear me when it suits you not to."

"I've heard nearly every word you've said for the last 32 and a half years, Mrs. Prater. Every word and then some."

She glared at him. One of the cats, a big, long haired, black and white creature with an air of ownership, sauntered into the room. It walked under the coffee table, it's long tail dipping like a flag, then hopped up onto the couch, taking a route directly over Taddy, to the empty cushion. Taddy rattled the paper at the cat, but the cat only blinked yellow eyes as it circled and settled.