After I died many things troubled
me, for I had been unprepared, besides being, at my best, of an uncertain
temper. What bothered me most often, though, was something trivial – the fact
that I had no pockets.
As a child I had delighted to stuff
my pockets full of oddments, including marbles, strange rocks, small pieces of
metal, and the keys to doors long since gone to dust. Older, I spent much time
with my hands in my pockets – self-contained and self-sufficient, a small,
sulky universe which had set up business in defiance of the larger ones around
him.
For some reason, all the newly dead
are given cats. A ghost’s cat is much like any other save that it needs no
litter box and can speak. Now that I think of it, it may be that I was given to
the cat, and only my egotism makes me see it as having been the other way
round. In any event, the cat with whom I was associated called himself Braggi; he was unsympathetic about my need for
pockets. “They only make you lazy,” he said.
