A handsome young man seated at a table with his growing family kept looking up to the stairs to the attic, where his pretty young wife sat with another woman, perhaps her sister. Teasingly, yet meaningfully, the wife would tell him to mind his dinner. Like me, she knew he was interested in the woman. I sensed a playful but real tension. The next time I looked at the women, I realized the companion was just a girl, perhaps even an older teenager. It came to me, too, that the man supported his family through petty crime.

The man left to meet another man; together they went in search of a particular cat. But the cat eluded them, and they became transfixed by a different cat, which they caught. It did not seem to mind. I doubted that either cat was really an animal and wondered what their game was. They knew what they were doing and had something in mind. I was a little afraid for the men, for although they were petty criminals, they were not evil at heart.