Let’s be honest. It was that damn article that got me the job and, believe me, what the New School pays buys a lot of cat food.
“I haven’t had too many lovers who were actors,” I said to the class, “so I really can’t judge them. The ones I did have were medium-rare.”
Laughter in the class. The air-conditioning was breaking down again. One of the students had opened the window in the rear; a sticky, hot, and humid August air seemed to envelop us. It was a night class. The students worked during the day. They were paying their hard-earned money for insights into the life of the actress in New York, but they hadn’t given me a chance yet to explore it with them. They were fixated on bizarre things: Who did I sleep with? . . . Where did I buy my clothes? . . . How did I support myself between parts? None of them really relevant to the problem, which was the structure of the theater itself and how it destroys the actress like a sausage-making machine.
I stole a glance at the right rear of the classroom. That was where my nemesis always sat—the young man in the Hawaiian sport shirt who had accosted me in the funeral parlor. His classroom behavior had continued to be unbelievable. I seemed to irritate him severely. I seemed to lack the dedication he required. I seemed to be his ogre of a decaying theatrical class. He challenged. He emoted. He screamed. He wept. He was wearisome. But sometimes he looked at me with such a strange, fierce look, I had the feeling that he and he alone in the class knew I was a very good teacher when the time and place were right. And always, from the first moment he walked into class, I felt that he was watching me, studying me, waiting to pounce on me, and wanting very much to anticipate the things I would say and the movements I would make.
His seat was empty! Thank God! Maybe he had withdrawn from the course. It was a cheering thought.
I looked at my watch. Eight thirty-two. The class was supposed to run until nine.
How does one abort a class? Would the students be happy? Or would they feel cheated?
A middle-aged woman with startlingly gray hair raised her hand. I acknowledged her.
“I want you to address Portobello’s concept of Shakespeare.”
God bless you, lady, I thought. I was about to do it, but suddenly I became weary . . . very weary. I wanted to go home . . . I wanted to feed my cats.
I smiled at her. “Why don’t we quit early tonight, and I’ll start the next class with Portobello.” I was suggesting, asking, begging.
They leapt at the chance. Without another word, they gathered their packages, half-eaten sandwiches, carryalls, and paperbacks. They were as happy to leave as I.
One girl remained as the others flew out. She was an actress. I just knew it. I couldn’t handle her worshipful gaze, as if I had truly “made it.” I hadn’t. My income was still primarily from cat-sitting, from playing games with oftentimes borderline psychotic felines like the beloved Geronimo.
“At least,” she said, “that idiot didn’t show up.”
She was wearing a tank top. She had short brown hair and incredibly intense green eyes.
“That’s for sure,” I replied, smiling, thinking of the blessed absence of that young man who had tormented me maliciously during the first few sessions. Then the girl became shy and said nothing. An awkward minute passed. Then two minutes. Finally, she left.
I waited sixty seconds and was starting to exit when two men entered the classroom. They didn’t come all the way inside, hovering near the door and smiling at me. They introduced themselves. Cops. Detectives Felix and Proctor. They were attached to some task force with an incredibly bizarre bureaucratic name. Young men, clean-cut, vacant eyes.
“You are Alice Nestleton?” the one named Proctor asked.
“Yes.” I had no idea what they wanted.
They laid out on my desk in a scattered pattern about twenty photographs. I looked at them. In most of them the backdrop was the inside of the Frank E. Campbell Funeral Home, where Arkavy Reynolds had lain in state.
“You took pictures at the funeral home? Why?” I was astonished.
“Arkavy Reynolds was a good snitch. An informer. He helped us. We helped him. We don’t like it when one of our own gets blown apart by a semiautomatic twenty-five-caliber Beretta in broad daylight.”
Arkavy a police informant? My God! It was too bizarre. What did he inform about? Dressing-room sex at the Public Theater?
The one called Felix, who was wearing an old-fashioned button-down shirt, asked me to go over the photos. I identified myself. I identified the obnoxious student. I identified a few other people—theater people—whom I hadn’t seen in the funeral parlor because they arrived earlier or later than my visit. The detectives made notes on the backs of the photographs I had identified.
“What time was he murdered?” I asked.
“Late morning,” Proctor answered.
“Were there any witnesses? Do you have any suspects?”
“We’re working on it, lady,” Felix answered testily.
“Did you check out his room? I think he lived in a seamen’s shelter downtown.”
“We know where he lived.”
“Did you check out his coffee shops? He used to go to one on Fifth, just east of Second and the Polish coffee shop on Tompkins Square Park.”
“We know where he hung out,” Proctor replied.
I was about to ask another question when Felix exploded: “What the hell is going on here? Are you a cop? Who is interrogating who?”
“No one is interrogating anyone,” I replied softly, then let the dust settle before I asked another perfectly plausible question.
“Why would the murderer show up at the wake?” I asked.
“You never know,” Detective Felix said, then gathered up the photographs, thanked me, and left. I had the sense that the two men were oddly foreign . . . like they were from Belgium or someplace like that.
One of them stuck his head back through the door. “By the way, we found you because one of the ushers at the funeral home saw you once in an off-Broadway show. He said you were very good, but he didn’t remember the name of the play.”
It was almost ten when I finally began climbing the five flights of stairs to my apartment. I was carrying a large bag of groceries, which included various tidbits for my Maine coon cat, Bushy, and my nearly tailless ASPCA contribution, Pancho.
The hallway was stifling. But there was only one more landing to go. The stairs were so familiar that I had lost my sense of climbing and thought only of the cats waiting for me . . . waiting in the darkness . . . each doing his own thing. Bushy was probably stretched out on the sofa, one eye open, his stomach purring softly at the thought of the coming food. Pancho was probably just finishing one of his lunatic dashes from cabinet to cabinet in the kitchen, running from shadowy enemies.
In fact, I was so wrapped up in the cats, I never saw the figure sitting at the top of the landing until he said: “Happy Birthday, Professor.”
I froze in fear—staring through the dim light.
“Happy Birthday, Professor,” the voice repeated in a mocking tone.
The outline of a man, a young man, sitting calmly.
Next to him on the stairs was a large carton wrapped in paper, with ribbons hanging from it.
A thief? A rapist? A psychotic derelict? I didn’t know. I wanted to run, but my feet remained rooted.
My grocery bag, I thought. I can fling my bag at him and run down the steps. But I didn’t.
“Who are you? How did you get in? What do you want?”
“Theater!” he shouted dramatically.
Oh, God! My fear abated for the first time. It was my nemesis: the obnoxious student from the back of the class who had not showed up for the most recent lesson, thankfully—the same one I had met in the funeral parlor.
“What are you doing here?” I yelled, anger replacing the initial fear . . . anger at his arrogance and stupidity and craziness. I was so weary of him.
“I brought you a birthday present,” he replied.
“It
’s not my birthday.”
The young man stood up for the first time. Even in the bad light I could see that he was wearing one of his ghastly loud sport shirts. He was taller than I had remembered, and older. He had a small blunt nose and his large eyes seemed green in the hallway—not blue. His skin was very white.
I was tired. I was angry. I snapped at him: “Please move aside with your box and let me get into my apartment.”
I had spoken to him as if I was a kindergarten teacher and he was a recalcitrant tot.
He didn’t move. He didn’t speak.
The clock was ticking. Tick-tock. His shirt was drenched with sweat; large stains moved from his arms to the center of the fabric.
Then he moved quickly, down the steps, toward me—so quickly I couldn’t respond at all.
At the last moment he sidestepped, just brushing me with his face, whispering: “I love you.”
And then he was gone to the next landing below. His steps were like a receding train . . . quicker and lighter in the distance.
“Your box,” I yelled out after him, pointing at the item he had left behind on the top of the landing.
But it was too late. He was gone.
Oh, God, I thought. All I needed now was a crazy student who had fallen in love with me. But there was a more immediate problem. I had to open my apartment door with an extra-large package in addition to my shopping bag—without the cats getting out.
I reached the top landing and began to push the large birthday box toward the door of my apartment with my foot.
Halfway there the box began to vibrate furiously, ribbons flapping and unraveling.
I stepped back, startled.
Before I could do anything, the box turned over on its side.
Out leapt a very large and very beautiful snow-white cat with a black-spotted face and a black-spotted rump.
The cat leapt onto the banister and stood there—eyeing me malevolently.
4
I stared at the creature from the box with a kind of shocked disbelief.
It was one of the most beautiful cats that ever hissed at me. My first thought, as I moved toward it slowly, was that it was an Abyssinian; it had that long-legged cougar look which so distinguished the breed.
But then I realized my identification was nonsense. There is no such thing as a white Abyssinian. And, to make matters even more absurd, this cat, now elongated against the banister as if it was about to spring, had black spots on its face and rump.
“Now, be reasonable, Clara,” I said to her as I inched my way forward, not having the faintest idea why I called her Clara. She wasn’t impressed. When I was about ten inches away, she leapt lightly off the banister and came to a stop in front of my door. She sat and stared at me.
Inside my apartment, my cats were scurrying. I could hear them through the door. Reality dawned on me. I could not take Clara into the apartment with my own cats. It was too dangerous . . . too problematic—God knows what would happen!
I stood still and silently cursed that idiotic young man who had left me Clara. Was this the way he expressed his adolescent love? God help me if he falls out of love, I thought—he’ll deposit a real cougar on the stairs, gift-wrapped also.
What were my options? Well, I could just leave the cat in the hallway and hope that it would wander to a different floor and someone kindly would give it a home. Or I could take it to an animal shelter. But that was dangerous—cats in shelters are two cans of tuna fish away from the gas chamber. No, Clara couldn’t go there.
Clara stared at me. I stared at Clara. The solution was obvious. Board Clara out until the next class at the New School, when I could demand that the retarded Lothario retrieve his poor cat.
But with whom could I board her? I knew only one person close by . . . only one person well enough for me to have the audacity to ask.
I walked quickly down the hallway to the last door on the left and knocked, calling out: “Mrs. Oshrin. It’s me, Alice Nestleton. It’s all right. It’s me.” I had to talk loud because Mrs. Oshrin was a bit hard of hearing. She opened the door. She was a very stout woman, about sixty-five, a retired teacher. We always went shopping together on Saturday mornings, to the farmers’ market at Union Square Park. For some reason she called me Alice and I called her Mrs. Oshrin. Maybe she intimidated me a bit. She used to be a minor Democratic-party official and she still talked incessantly about city politics when given the chance.
“What is the matter?” she asked, frightened. She always thought something was the matter. I pointed down the hallway, where the white cat still sat.
“Who is that?” Mrs. Oshrin asked. As if it were a distant relative who had suddenly arrived and was about to ask a favor. She was right.
“Her name is Clara,” I said.
“Clara,” Mrs. Oshrin repeated, as if the name rang a bell in her memory.
“Yes, Clara, and she needs a home for just a day or two.”
My voice was pleading. Mrs. Oshrin could never withstand my needs. She was a very nice lady. She stared out down the hallway again.
“But what do I do? I never had a cat.”
That was all I needed. I rushed to my shopping bag, took out a can of cat food, ran into Mrs. Oshrin’s apartment, opened it, strolled down the hallway to Clara so she could get a whiff, then carried the can back to Mrs. Oshrin’s apartment. I left the door open and placed the can about ten feet inside.
Then Mrs. Oshrin and I sat down on her sofa. We waited. We waited. We chatted.
Then we saw one white ear. Then a black-and-white nose. Then a long lean body flitted through the doorway.
Clara was inside. We beamed at each other. Mrs. Oshrin watched Clara inspect the food and then walk regally away. The cat was beginning to explore.
“Why doesn’t she eat the food?” Mrs. Oshrin asked.
“She will,” I said.
We watched.
“My sister had a cat,” Mrs. Oshrin noted.
I realized that Mrs. Oshrin and I were about to lapse into one of our constant Pinteresque dialogues that went on and on and nowhere at all. Usually I enjoyed them, but now I wanted to feed my poor cats.
“Everything will be all right, Mrs. Oshrin. Just talk to her once in a while. I’ll call you tomorrow.” And then I was gone, leaving the bewildered woman with a new companion.
I called Mrs. Oshrin five times the next day to make sure she and Clara were getting along. Mrs. Oshrin did not seem to be enjoying the stranger but she was calm, stoic, and asked me only three or four times when I would get Clara out. Soon, I said, soon.
I discussed the problem with Bushy, my Maine coon cat. He was noncommittal. As for Pancho, he never stayed still long enough to listen.
As the hours passed and I came closer to my class, my anger toward that young man grew to truly monumental proportions. I envisioned an almost Elizabethan scene of vengeance and condemnation. Then I mellowed somewhat—after all, the young man was in love with a forty-one-year-old actress with long golden-gray hair and a reputation for dramatic innovation—me. I was, to be truthful, just a bit vain. And it had been a long time since I had elicited that kind of passion from anyone. Besides, that kind of crazy young man was what kept the theater alive. No wonder he had gone to Arkavy Reynolds’ funeral. The young Arkavy had been a bohemian firebrand. Theater or death! It wasn’t a game. It wasn’t an art. It wasn’t a pastime for speculators or dilettantes. The theater was life itself. Did I still have any of that commitment?
I arrived at the class earlier than usual and sat at my desk doodling. The students straggled in. The heavyset woman who had asked about Portobello smiled at me. I nodded to her, signifying that yes, indeed, I would deal with her inquiries in this class, this evening.
The young man never arrived. As I was giving my disjointed lecture, I kept anticipating the door opening and a lovesick young man with a ghastly sport shirt flitting in.
Thirty minutes before the class was about to end I abandoned the lecture, which they were a
ll obviously finding boring, and asked point-blank if anyone in the class knew the missing young man who wore loud sport shirts and wisecracked all the time. Did anyone know his name?
The students looked at each other. They were perplexed. Curious. This was the New School. In Manhattan. No one asked or gave names in a formal sense. No one called the roll. At most, one student would say to another, “I’m Jo Anne. Hi.” As for me, I had been given a list of the names of all the students who had signed up for the course—but I had discarded it immediately.
“He left something in the classroom,” I told the class, a gentle half lie. No one in the seats in front of me uttered a word. I dismissed them early and angrily.
As I was gathering my things from off the desk, that ingenue in the tank top said: “He told me his name was Bruce. He asked me to have a cup of coffee with him after the first class. I said no.”
I smiled my thanks. She waited to see if I was willing to talk theater with her. Then, seeing that my thoughts were elsewhere, she left. My thoughts were indeed elsewhere. The name Bruce didn’t help me. What was I going to do with poor Mrs. Oshrin?
5
There was a new line on my face, on the left side, going from the edge of the mouth to the chin. It was ever so gentle and straight—but it was there.
“You are getting old, Alice Nestleton. And you are getting quirkier. And you are . . .”
I stopped speaking to myself in the mirror and concentrated on my brushing. Pancho was on the high bookcase, his rust-colored whiskers quivering just a bit, and his gaunt gray body with the scar on one side in a state of extreme alert for the unseen furies which were always chasing him. I raised the brush slowly and, in the mirror, watched his eyes follow the movement.
It was ten o’clock in the morning. I had overslept. Several times during the night I had awoken with a start from the same nightmare. In the dream I was lying in a coffin in the Frank E. Campbell Funeral Home on Madison Avenue and Arkavy Reynolds was paying his last respects to my body. But then my grandmother appeared and she and Arkavy got into a terrible row. And I kept waking up to stop their fighting. It was not just arguing—it was something horrible they were doing to each other. Each time I awoke, my heart was beating fast. But now the fear was gone. For the first time in days there was a cool breeze moving through my apartment; a promise of the autumn soon to come.
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