Page 21 of The Need to Know

“What?”

“Are we really at a club talking about cats right now?”

Ezekiel wasn’t fazed. “I’m sure stranger conversations have happened here.” To prove that he wasn’t bored by my turn of conversation, he grabbed his own phone and pulled up a picture of a beautiful tuxedo cat. “She just turned four. Her name Sadé.”

“She’s so pretty,” I admired. I showed him a photo of Scorsese. “Scor’s going to be four in September.”

Ezekiel took and studied my photo, smiling at my little pride and joy. “Scorsese, huh? Must be a big fan.”

“Oh yeah, I’m really into movies. I run a movie blog. He’s probably my favorite director of all time,” I said. “Are you a big Sade fan?”

Ezekiel appeared thoughtful, glancing up at the starry night sky beyond the string of lights. “That’s the thing, I live in this condo alone and I used to want to get a dog. One day I saw a commercial about adopting in Atlanta, and there was this cute little Border Collie puppy I saw. I drove here to just browse and think about it, and I don’t know how, but somehow I saw a volunteer at the center holding a newborn kitten and it caught my eye.”

He softened up at the mention of kittens and puppies, making me warm up to him more.

“I was still debating, but when I picked her up and held her in my arms Sade was on the radio. It just felt like kismet,” Ezekiel confessed. “Plus, she was a cute kitten.”

I could tell by the rhinestone collar around her neck that Ezekiel treated his cat like a princess. He said he lived alone, but that was four years ago.

“Do you have any kids?” I chanced asking.

“Besides Shah?” I loved that he called his cat his child. “Nope.”

Points for that. “Scorsese’s my only baby, too. I kinda want one more boy, though.”

“And to which director do we have the pleasure of honoring?” Ezekiel wondered.

I smiled. “Rodriguez.”

“Robert?”

“Yeah.”

“Grossly underrated. But, since you have Scorsese, why not Coppola?”

I shrunk, feeling exposed. “I still need to watch The Godfather trilogy.”

Ezekiel scrunched up his face and scooted away from me. “Never seen ’em?”

I hung my head in mock shame. “I know, I know, I’m missin’ out.”

“We gotta fix that. Can’t like Scorsese without Coppola.”

“So I’ve been told.” The Godfather trilogy had been on my To-Watch list for years, and I really needed to get to them.

“You ever seen Shawshank?” Ezekiel wondered.

I bit my lip, prepared for battle. “I have.”

“Good, right?”

“Y-yes.”

“Why the hesitation?”

I sat up straight, facing him and squaring my shoulders to stand my ground. “The Shawshank Redemption is a good movie, but I honestly think Life is the better wrongful imprisonment film.”

Ezekiel blinked, his brows pushing together as his forehead adopted a crease. “Life? With Eddie Murphy and Martin Lawrence?”