When I finished brushing, I made a cup of coffee and took it into the living room. Bushy was snoozing on the sofa, his head lying on a script. I removed the thin folder gently, but it woke him. He looked up at me, hurt, and then leapt to the floor to continue his nap on the carpet, groaning a bit at my incredible lapse of manners.
The script itself was only thirty pages long and bound into a strange-colored binder, a dull yellow. It had been sent to me by an old friend who taught at Boston University but who spent all his money and time on theatrical productions in the New England area. We had only one thing in common—we both craved, sought for, and aspired to theatrical pieces that were far outside the mainstream. We both wanted to explore the reality of the stage and the players and the relation of both to “what there is”—so we were both perpetually frustrated. I held the dull yellow binder in my hand with a kind of weariness. After all, I knew that the theater was so tyrannized by normalcy that even a Brecht play was not considered avant-garde.
My Medaglia d’Oro instant coffee, however, was black and sweet and bracing, and the breeze in the living room was truly delightful, so I opened the stiff front cover and began to read.
I burst out laughing when I read the title page: Rats: An Alternative to Cats.
The “Cats,” of course, being the long-running Broadway musical of that name.
It wasn’t really a script. It was a discussion of a performance. There are seven rats in the cast, part of an extended family which lives beneath the theater where Cats is playing.
The rats speak a kind of fractured Shakespearean English and they are hopelessly violent, oversexed, venal, and lunatic—a kind of murderous Marx Brothers.
A new litter is born, and this new litter, which lives offstage in large boxes among the audience, develops a decided taste for human flesh, particularly for the actors and actresses who play the cats in the musical of the same name.
It was a delicious, bizarre, very funny dramatic mess and I was just getting deep into the gory theatrics when I heard someone knocking.
At first I thought it was someone on the street. But no, someone was at my door. I approached cautiously and said hello through the wood.
“It’s me, Alice,” said the voice. Mrs. Oshrin.
I opened the door. She was standing there in a housedress, her arms folded, looking very clumsy and gloomy.
The sight of her unnerved me. I had forgotten all about Clara, the white cat, while reading the script.
Mrs. Oshrin marched in and sat down on the sofa. She seemed to be very upset but trying to control herself. I knew there was trouble because she was wearing a very bright and new housedress. That was one of Mrs. Oshrin’s sure signals that things were not going well with her. Another sure signal was the fact that she didn’t look around my living room with her usual critical stare. Mrs. Oshrin didn’t like my living room. The furniture didn’t bother her. She liked the large French sofa I had bought at Pierre Deux in the Village when I was temporarily affluent. She liked the long, narrow oak dining room table. She liked my three cane chairs near the window and my beat-up coffee table. What she never liked was the clutter. But there was nothing I could do about that. My kitchen was small. My bedroom smaller. The long, very narrow hall which ran the length of my apartment had to be kept clear if it was to remain passable. So everything ended up in my living room. I truly lived in my living room, and the clutter was just too much for her. Oh, there was no question Mrs. Oshrin was out of sorts.
“Can I get you some coffee?” I asked.
“No, thank you.”
I sat down on the sofa next to her.
“Is Clara giving you any trouble?” I asked.
There was no answer.
“I was going to bring you some more cat food this afternoon,” I said.
There was no answer. I could see that she was glaring at poor Bushy.
“Alice,” she finally said in a very peculiar voice, “I am going to visit my sister in Connecticut.”
“Well, that’s nice,” I replied happily.
She reached into her housedress and retrieved a single key attached to a rather large piece of wood.
Now she was staring at the ceiling. Poor Mrs. Oshrin; by this time I had surmised the visit had to do with Clara. Once again I silently cursed that young man who had caused all these problems.
“And when I come back,” she said firmly, “I would like very much if that cat was in its new home.”
“Of course, Mrs. Oshrin,” I said quickly. It was obvious that Clara was ruining our relationship.
“Has she been much bother?” I asked.
Mrs. Oshrin didn’t answer. She stood up, smoothed her housedress, gave me the key, smiled kindly, and just walked out, not letting me know what kind of horrendous behavior Clara had exhibited.
That killed my day. If she would be back in a day or two, I had to find someplace else for Clara to reside, very quickly.
In the next ten hours I must have made about fifty phone calls. The range and variety of excuses why these people could not board orphan Clara were mind-boggling. But they all said no. No matter how endearingly I described Clara, the answer was the same: no.
It was around ten o’clock in the evening that I finally made an intelligent move. I called John Cerise. Now, John has absolutely nothing to do with the theater. He’s a cat man, pure and simple. In fact, he was always a source of cat-sitting assignments for me. We met years ago when I first started cat-sitting for a rich lady on Central Park West whose passion was English shorthairs. Cerise was a cat-show judge and breeder who lived somewhere in New Jersey. He is a gentle, knowledgeable man, now in his sixties, whose love for cats is proverbial. We rarely speak to each other more than two or three times a year, but there is a genuine affection between us, and he has a special spot in his heart for crazed Pancho, who, he once said, is a reincarnation of one of Napoleon’s marshals.
What made me think of John Cerise was the fact that when I first saw Clara I had thought she was an Abyssinian, and Cerise, I knew, was breeding Abyssinians. He loved Abys, as he called them and, while normally a quiet man, would immediately discourse on them if given the chance. About how they are the true descendants of the sacred cats of ancient Egypt. About how they are the only breed with a close wild relative still extant—the North African desert cat, Felis libyca. About their wild looks but gentle affectionate nature. About how difficult they are to breed. About the strange fact that they produce predominantly male litters. About what excellent swimmers they are because they actually like water. And on and on.
I didn’t lie to him when I called. But I didn’t quite tell him the truth either. I concocted a gentle, imaginative story. There was this very strange-looking Abyssinian staying at a friend’s apartment. Could he stop over and check it out, and if he didn’t want it, recommend someone who would like it? I told him nothing about the deranged romanticism which had brought the cat to me and Mrs. Oshrin. He agreed. He laughingly asked for clarification of my phrase “a strange-looking Abyssinian.” I got off the phone fast.
He arrived at seven thirty the next morning. It was very good to see him again. He was wearing one of those elegant white linen suits, a blue silk tie, and a lighter blue silk shirt. His still-black hair was slicked back. John Cerise always looked exotic—an ageless relic from another time and another place. It was fitting he was a cat man. He seemed to be perfectly and easily androgynous. He reeked of a kind of cool sensuality which was quite pleasing to watch, although one could rarely identify the object of his passion.
We walked down the hallway to Mrs. Oshrin’s. I opened the door with her key and stepped inside, closing the door behind us.
“She’s white,” I whispered as we waited in the living room for Clara to appear. Why was I whispering?
“White?” John asked, astonished.
I nodded. Clara did not appear.
“Maybe she’s in the bedroom,” I said. We walked into Mrs. Oshrin’s bedroom. Clara wasn’t there either.
She wasn’t in the kitchen. She wasn’t in the closets. She wasn’t under anything.
We were puzzled.
“Make some noise,” John suggested.
I banged one of Mrs. Oshrin’s bronze bric-a-brac against a table leg. It made a dull thudding noise. Clara was not interested.
“The bathroom,” John said.
We walked there quickly and found Clara in the bathtub, staring malevolently at a slow drip from the bath faucet. Our presence seemed to make absolutely no difference to her.
“Get acquainted,” I said to John in an incredibly patronizing tone, and then ran off before he could say another word.
My plan was to leave them alone for two hours. I went back to my apartment, retrieved a shopping list, and went to the supermarket.
I lolled down the aisles. Now that John Cerise was on Clara’s case I had a tremendous feeling of confidence that everything would be all right. In fact, I was so confident I bought a Sara Lee chocolate cake to serve John when I got back.
When I finished my shopping list I took a slow walk around the neighborhood, luxuriating in the suddenly pleasant weather.
Then I headed home, pulling my shopping cart lightly.
When I turned the corner of my block and could see the stoop of my building, I knew something was wrong.
Police cars and an ambulance choked the street. A crowd had gathered.
As I reached the building, pushing my way through the onlookers, I saw the stretcher coming down the steps.
A leg with a white linen covering stuck out from beneath the EMS sheet.
“John,” I screamed, letting go of my shopping cart and rushing to the stretcher.
It was him. His face looked like hamburger meat streaked with red dye number nine. There was blood splattered all over his body and clothes.
He smiled at me weakly. He reached up and patted my hand.
“Who are you, lady?” a burly man in an open blue shirt asked.
“I live up there,” I replied. “What happened?” My composure had returned but I really couldn’t comprehend what I was seeing.
Then I saw the badge hanging around his neck like a charm.
“Someone broke in. Your friend on the stretcher got in the way. But he’ll be all right. He looks worse than he is. The thief got away.”
“What about Clara?”
“He was alone.”
“No, Clara is a cat. A white cat.” I held my hands out to show him the size; to show him that Clara was a small animal.
“There was no cat in the apartment, lady. Listen, you don’t look so good. Why don’t you sit down on the steps for a minute? Your friend is going to be all right.”
I sat down and watched them load poor John into the ambulance.
6
John Cerise grinned when he saw me at the door of the hospital room. Once again he was dressed in white. The left side of his face was discolored and there was a bandage over his left eye. He looked smaller in bed, much, much smaller, like a kitten in a high chair. He made a motion with his hand and I approached.
“Did you find the cat?” he whispered. The discoloration was like a brilliantly painted bruise—red and black and purple.
I shook my head. The cat had vanished. The detective had surmised that the cat had run out of the apartment, down the steps, and onto the street.
An old man in evident pain lay on the other bed in the room. He made a valiant effort to wave at me. I patted him gently on the arm as I made my way between the beds. What else could I do?
“I’m sorry I got you into this mess,” I said to John.
He shook his head with as much vigor as he could summon, to assure me he bore me no grudge. Then he seemed to gulp air. He finally said: “Alice, Clara is not an Abyssinian. But she is a lovely cat. She looks like an Abyssinian. She walks like an Abyssinian. She talks like an Abyssinian. . . .” He sat up with some effort, raising his hand for emphasis. “But there is no such thing as a white Abyssinian.”
I pushed his arm down to his side and helped him back down.
“The police told me,” I said, “that a thief must have known Mrs. Oshrin went away, and then broke in, not knowing anyone was there. It was just one of those odd coincidences; you being in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
He nodded. He twisted in the bed. He started to get up again, thought the better of it, and said pathetically: “I never saw who it was, Alice. I was in the living room. Clara was on the rug. We were getting to know each other. I heard a noise. It sounded like someone was fumbling around near the door. But I thought it was you. I didn’t even turn around. And then I felt a terrible pain here. . . .” He gestured to the side of his face. “And then everything went black.”
“You were hit with one of Mrs. Oshrin’s antique candleholders,” I told him.
He closed his eyes.
“It could have been worse,” I quipped. “You could have been hit with Mrs. Oshrin.”
He grinned, his eyes still closed. The sun was streaming into the room.
“I’ll be out of here tomorrow,” he said.
“Do you want me to come here tomorrow to help you check out?” I asked.
“No need. I’ll be fine.”
I walked around his bed and sat down on the chair by the window. Cerise seemed to doze. A painkiller, I thought.
It was bizarre how things got out of hand. A stupid young man falls in love with a teacher. He gives her a cat. The teacher places the cat with a neighbor. The neighbor is unhappy. The teacher calls a friend to look the cat over. A thief breaks in and almost murders the friend, who has absolutely nothing to do with anyone or anything in that apartment.
The absurd chain of events horrified me. But something else about the whole mess was just plain peculiar. The detective had said that the thief panicked when he saw Cerise, hit him, and fled. That’s why nothing had been taken from the apartment.
I had the nagging doubt, suspicion, feeling—call it what you will—that the thief had broken in to steal Clara. That is what I felt; but the logic escaped me.
Sitting on the hospital chair, thinking those thoughts, I did feel stupid. Clara was a lovely cat, but why would anyone break into an apartment to steal her? No, the detective was right: it was simply an aborted breaking and entering, aborted by an unexpected guest in the apartment. So then why did I have that feeling? Oh, glorious, delicious, irrelevant paranoia. Alice Nestleton, the quirky out-of-work actress, the New School lecturer, the well-known cat-sitter, the obscure crime solver—getting delusional once again over a rather dim-witted feline.
Cerise was talking to me. I had been so lost in my thoughts that I hadn’t heard a word he said. Then I realized he was asking me where I really got the cat. He had known all the time I wasn’t telling him the unvarnished truth.
“From a lovesick student,” I admitted.
“Still breaking hearts?” he asked.
“The young man isn’t old enough to be my nephew. I’m teaching a class at the New School. And there he was, an obnoxious young man of about twenty-odd years with a very bad case of arrested adolescence.”
“You didn’t want the cat?”
“John,” I explained, “he dumped it on my landing in a box—his conception of a love offering, I suppose. I didn’t even know it was a cat. I thought it was just a large box with a muffler or something like that inside, or maybe an extended love poem.”
“Cat in a box,” he mused, and then winced. Too much talking obviously hurt the side of his face.
“John,” I said, “stop talking. Anyway, what is there to talk about? I don’t even know if it was his cat. Maybe he found it on the street.”
“Poor Clara,” he whispered.
I leaned back in my chair. The next class at the New School was in forty-eight hours. If that young fool Bruce Whateverhisnameis didn’t show up, I was determined to find out his last name even if I had to pester the New School’s administrative staff. He had already caused the pain of a dear friend, the al
ienation of a treasured neighbor, and the disappearance or even worse of a lovely white cat with black spots on its face and rump. His only redeeming trait seemed to be that he had taken the time to pay his last respects to a pathetic New York theatrical legend named Arkavy Reynolds.
7
The lovesick troublemaker, again, didn’t show up in class. I waited twenty minutes, then told the class to keep itself busy, and walked resolutely to the administrative office. Only a clerk was at the desk, usual in the evenings.
I asked to see my class roster. She refused. I demanded. She waffled. I cajoled. She averted her eyes. I begged, hinting that I was only asking because of a health emergency. She didn’t ask me to elaborate. That was sufficient. She showed it to me.
His name was Bruce Chessler. He lived at an address on East Fifth Street between First Avenue and Avenue A.
Then, armed with this information, I went back to the class and gave one of the most boring and irrelevant lectures in the entire history of adult education. At the end of the class I felt ashamed of myself, cursing Bruce Chessler again because it was his fault . . . everything was becoming his fault.
I went home and conversed with my cats. Bushy seemed quite understanding, even favoring me with four or five paw swipes.
There was no Bruce Chessler listed in the Manhattan phone book at that address. I called information. There was no phone of any kind listed to any individual with that name.
Was I being obsessive? The thought occurred to me. Why didn’t I just leave it alone? The cat was gone, God knows where. John Cerise would be okay. Mrs. Oshrin would forgive me. Yes, indeed—why didn’t I leave it alone!
A Cat Tells Two Tales Page 16