“It’s good to be aware of time passing, you know. I mean, if I have an appointment I take extra care to leave in time to get there. I have to time the walk, the subway, bus, cab, whatever. It puts my feet on the ground. Not having a wristwatch is a way of being in touch. Of knowing what’s going on with myself.” I drank. “Sometimes I get tired, though.”
“Whoa, non sequitur!”
“Sorry. What was I talking about?”
“Well first it was this cool survey about the ubiquity of time and the various ways it’s displayed. Then there was a colourful survey of various clock sites around the city. Some kind of statement about human innate chronological awareness … Then suddenly you were getting tired of something.”
“Oh, yeah.”
“Were you just BS-ing?”
“That’s not nice.”
“Go on with what you were saying.”
“I was finished.”
“Darn. Just when I was beginning to fall for it.”
“Fall for what? The clocks?”
“It was fascinating. Your recitation and voice modulation were kind of creating this Zen-like verbal induction that I was finding sexy.”
“Whoa …”
“Don’t worry. I didn’t take it as naked seduction talk.”
“I should hope not.”
“Fully clothed seduction talk, more like.”
“Yeow! I’ve got to be damn careful what I say to you.”
“Feel free to do so.”
“Okay …” Despite my elation at surviving her disconcertingly accurate observational salvo, I was desperate to finish my thought. “But as for the found-clock business, it’s my thing only. I don’t know anybody else who does it. I think it only works for me.”
“I hope for the sake of your career and the sake of all us tardiness-intolerant career women that it does.”
We both took a drink.
I decided to strive ahead. “You’re pretty cool.”
“How do you mean?”
“You handle yourself with … aplomb. You’re immediate. Sharp. Alert.”
“Thank you.”
Her smile was laden. I took a moment to savour my view across the table and figure where next to boldly go.
“What, if I may be so cold”―I hardened my face― “is your internal mien?”
“What are you talking about? Cold?”
“You heard me.”
“I try never to be … mean.” She grinned. “To anybody.”
I mock-grimaced. “Touché.”
“Thought you’d like that.”
“I do.”
•
When the food came I forced myself to chew slowly. “Okay, cliché time.” I paused, glass in hand, and regarded her. “If you could change anything you wanted to change in the world, what would you change?”
“That lady’s perfume over there.” She rolled her eyes at a freshly seated foursome.
I couldn’t help but frown at her parry. Then, looking at her, I knew I’d made an even bigger mistake. She saw my expression and at the same time I understood that she was legitimately perturbed.
“It’s bugging you?”
She reached for her purse. “Among my complications …” She rummaged and held up an inhaler. “Asthma.”
She administered a quick-fingered twist of the instrument—a deft insertion into mouth and the audible suck of medicated vapour. She sat deadened for a few seconds. Mouth closed. Breath purposeful. I had scarcely known where to look during the procedure. At the end of it, as she smiled again and met me in the eyes, I also noticed for certain the offending scent. It was a nasty musk drifting deadly at us, moist and florid as mouldy curtains.
“Man. That is powerful.”
“I …” She broke off into scraping audible breaths. Seconds passed. Her eyes reddened alarm. She whacked at her chest with an open hand and then a fist. “I …!” She could not talk.
“Can I help in some way?” I dropped my napkin and put a hand on the back of my chair.
“No. No.” She waved me still. “I …” Coughing.
There was nothing to do but wait until the clatter abated. It was a long wait. Customers noticed us. The server did a swoop, a transparent check-out manoeuvre that further high-centred us as disrupters of the peace. She continued to have trouble and motioned that she would deal with it in the ladies’ room.
When she was gone, the server came by, eyeing the table unenthusiastically, offering no further assistance.
Then once left alone again I had the distinct sensation that I had become invisible. It took a considerable amount of time to get some attention. I gestured to the half-consumed meals. “Put these in a bag, would you please?” The server immediately started to collect the plates. “And gimme the check when you get a chance.” I was not offered a dessert.
Less than a minute later I was heaping money onto a chrome plate. During all this action she never reappeared.
I sat for ten minutes with the doggy bags in front of me, then went and took up a station outside the ladies’ room. Straining, I could hear little within, only the suggestion of a cough. When a middle-aged woman with an enormous handbag stepped past me, eyes averted, touching the door, I acknowledged an impulse to ask her to check on my date, but opted, in the three-quarters of a second available, not to. I measured things intently for several minutes. Defining my position. Timing for the return of the big handbag-woman—whom I thought I could hear closing a stall door. Opening again. Washing. Blow-drying. Then the silence of a hair-comb session. It was when I knew she would re-emerge in one second, inevitably re-seeing me standing there furtive and preoccupied in the hall, that the craven imagery of it all crumbled my insides.
Before the door could open—with a dispatch borne of raw embarrassment—I was gone.
•
In the cab the hockey game was on the radio. I asked the driver to turn it off, not wanting to know the score. All the way home I was calculating that if there wasn’t too much traffic, and no police sobriety roadblock on the bridge, and no other haphazard exigency to slow things up, I’d be home in time to watch the second period.
Hockey. Yes. That was where my presence was now. Away from the evening. Excused from conversation or contemplating true confession or reverting to bluntness or super-tact. No need for discussion of relationship distress, fast-forward sexual flirtation or brow-furrowed forewarnings of familial complications. All of it was just silly stage business in comparison to the rink contest. The ice-borne debacle of players with blades on their feet. Sticks in their hands. Velocity at their headings. Rifling the dangerous disk in an endless feature of shot upon shot upon shot upon shot.
At home it was the last minute of the first period, Rangers and Canucks. I watched respectfully. It was as important as anything.
Kitty
That year my castle was a studio under a three-story brownstone with good access to bars, music, and public transit. In back was the kitchen/eating area where I had my desk. There was the bathroom; razor, comb, soap, and nail-clippers by the taps on the sink. At the rear was a closet area large enough to be a sleeping space. My bed was a low futon you could fold into a couch if you wanted to. I never wanted to. The telephone lay on the floor within arm’s reach. There was no other furniture. In idle moments I’d stand at either of the windows and look up at birds in trees or spy on the feet and legs that cadenced by on the sidewalk. It was cozy and hidden and all mine.
Wine in the fridge. Snacks. Cocktail shaker.
Just what I always wanted. Needless to say, I entertained a lot of women. Aside from working like a madman during the day and drinking six or seven Jack Manhattans per night I made sure there was little else to do.
I ate out a lot. The office was ten minutes away by bus so I didn’t need a car. I would shower at night and dry off with my one towel. I enjoyed the body warmth under a duck-down quilt and the contrasting coolness across my face. Alone in the dark—despite the thrumming, troubled world that was low
ly sounding through the masonry walls about me—my contentment was titanic.
The only weirdness was that a number of cats had invited themselves in over the months. The place had a good-sized main room I would have preferred to keep empty, but in the corner by a window a ragged pile was building up with boxes from a former situation. I liked to keep one window open at least a crack, even in cold weather.
They would duck cautiously through onto the high sill, investigating the drop. Sometimes they chanced it, other times they opted to pick their perspicacious way down the dicey box ladder. Most only stayed a few minutes, long enough to find out there was no food and the sole human inhabitant wasn’t willing to leave his futon to give them the merest pat on the head.
•
One morning as I awoke in the grey early light a couple of cats sat watching me. Emerging from dream-state, for an instant I thought them porcelain. Sphinxian stare-creatures, still and stern. They seemed not the least concerned at my stirring.
One was a long-haired cutie—copper-coloured—with subtle whitish striping. I thought it was a she-cat by the neatness of her fur and perfect tail placement about her body. She was founded pertly on clenched bottom, staring me through with cold interest but just soft enough about it to be polite. The other one—a bullish silver tabby with markings so distinct the characteristic forehead ‘M’ appeared tattooed—sat with such lofty assurance that I subliminally assigned it masculinity even though I never got the chance to see what was between its hind legs.
I smiled at the orange one. Her eyes narrowed and widened again and then avoided mine. She yawned and looked to where her partner was now nosing about the springy regions of my swivel chair, then further under the desk. He went out of sight rummaging in the storage carton where I kept scrap paper.
My sentry turned back to me but then her partner tipped the box over—it plopped loudly, spilling slippery magazines across the floor—shocking her to arched alertness. They meowed to each other one time, then, in unison, moved away from the bedside and continued their patrol. A wander-about in the kitchen. Nosings at the garbage can and stove. A gentle sidle back to the centre of the apartment. They stood. Sat. Mewled softly to each other. Stood, wandered, sat again.
The clock by my head read 6:10. Another hour at least before getting up. I turned to the wall and closed my eyes. A noise woke me in time to see a grey tail levitate through the window and disappear. There was a faint scratching sound somewhere out of sight. I slept again.
The rasp of violent claw-work got my eyes open and focused just as the orange cat leapt from a teetering box she had been traversing. She did the acrobatic moves necessary to land upright and stood on the hardwood with claws clenched, looking acidly up at the stack of cartons. The column teetered from the wall and fell like a reaching arm toward the feline. She dodged, wailing, hightailing it from the noise and scatter of my packed-up books, kitchen things, clothes, keepsakes, and the trumpet I had kept since high school (never played but always kept). She scrabbled along the floor in a straight line for me. Our eyes locked, I had a moment of fear. But she merely galloped the last few feet—ears tensed low—and vanished under the futon frame, an orangey disappearing blur across my sleep-thickened consciousness.
I was momentarily astounded at her magic trick, sure that the scant clearance between the floor and the bottom of the frame wouldn’t let a mouse flee into there, let alone a cat. But she disappeared anyhow. In the calm of morning, with the fallen boxes still and the noise thus abated, I remained in bed, propped on an elbow, contemplating what I might best do.
I peered over the side of the futon, shielding my face with a hand in case of a panicked lashing, contacting the cool floor with my forehead. Nothing was visible beneath the frame except lint and darkness.
“Here, kitty.”
I breathed and then sneezed into the ridiculous dust, cursing myself for being such a bachelor. There was no indication that either my call or nasal outburst had had any effect on the cat. In fact, it felt like I was alone again. I shook my head to make certain I was awake and wondered when my bourbon-with-vermouth nightly habit was going to make stuff like this—real or imagined, taken care of or ignored—reduce me to a groaning breakdown. A spell of dizziness lingered, then went away. I knew I was awake alright, if hungover. But try as I did in the silence of the morning with just the lightest hum of traffic outside and only the subtle ticking of the bedside clock marking a faint rhythm in my ears, I could hear nothing of the live creature below me.
I lay sighing back onto the bed. Gentle scrabbling from below, more sensed than heard. It went silent. What to do?
I had no inclination to reach into the murk and try to apprehend a clawed, anxious animal, no matter how small and cute. Crouching like a feline myself—stealthy as I imagined they saw themselves to be—I crabbed sideways off the bed and squatted low on the floor. With particular care I surveyed each possible cat opening below the bare two-by-fours of the frame. It occurred to me that the whole bed would have to be lifted to free the cat. I stood straight and reasoned that before I did anything I should get some clothes on. Vanity aside, I could not banish the image of unsheathed claws and bared teeth launched in either aggression or play at the first available dangling object. The sticky-sharp pins at the ends of her paws. The gnashing needle-teeth. I pulled on a pair of sweatpants.
It had been near a half-year since I’d moved in. Just long enough to have forgotten how heavy a double futon and frame weighs. Especially if you’ve just gotten out of bed. I hefted once, let it back down to improve my grip, then heaved again. I held the bed aloft, not breathing, expecting maybe an orange bolt—a smoking cartoon bullet—to fly past my ankles and out.
This line of thought brought with it a brain-clearing of sorts, enough for me to understand that simply lifting the bed without creating a further escape route was not going to cure a frightened cat of agoraphobia. Sure enough, from what I could glimpse, the cringing kitty crouched pasted to the floor at the very far edge against the wall, glaring immobile. I held the bed for a few more seconds, then gently lowered it back down. I stabbed on slippers and threw a T-shirt over myself and went through the kitchen to the big room, unlocked the door and left it wide open.
I perched on the desk. The time was 6:56. A coffee would go good now was all my mind could produce. The cat did not appear, though the draft from the door would have penetrated even the furthest reaches of Lower Futonia to beckon the feline with its promise of freedom. I tried lifting the bed again. Nothing. It was now 7:05. Time to get going.
I closed the door and re-stacked the box-ladder to make an easy-for-a-cat-to-climb escape route to the window. Then I shucked my clothes and went for the bathroom, reasoning that if the kitty had any sense she would come out once alone and leave. For some odd reason I sensed that, like me, she would have an instinct to move on.
Nine minutes later the phone rang. It was work. I took down some notes and hung up. Then I threw on underwear and slacks and shirt and socks and jacket. I got my briefcase together and made sure my iPod and cell phone were charged and planted at handy places on my person. I rushed out the door.
•
During the morning I thought no more of the cat. It was only at afternoon coffee when somebody in the office mentioned vet bills that I remembered my visitor. I remembered, then forgot again, remembered once more, then the cat left my mind completely.
Not that I had any idea at all about what I might do about her, preoccupied as I was. For weeks I’d been trifling with a recent hire named Wei. Smart. Serious. A twentysomething sweetheart who clerked in administration and with whom from the first I’d detected a glowing mutual spark. I planned to get her back to my refuge as soon as I could and had arranged a six p.m. date for drinks and dinner. Later on I walked her through an art exhibit.
Wei’s English wasn’t steady. I don’t know a word of Cantonese and alas, my forte has always been repartee. Still, with a makeshift pidgin we conversed, nearly giggling with the ef
fort it took to bottle the rampaging carnality burbling between us. I kept a light hand at the small of her back. She swept her hair across my cheek. At the gallery, in the back of a darkened video installation transmitting an endless loop of two guys fighting, reconciling, arguing, and fighting again, Wei let me kiss her.
Inside the door at my place we necked standing up and as soon as clothes could be shed occupied the bed. Though normally more a man of action than words in this situation, I inexplicably felt it flighty and entertaining to make small talk. I quickly mentioned the cat.
“Kitty?”
“Under the bed.”
Her face annealed toward menace, a state rigidly conflicting with her condition of naked and my condition of being, just at that moment, poised to immerse. Thus I knew that before we could go on I would have to say something.
“It’s gone, Wei.” I spoke from the firm certainty that if I were the cat I most assuredly would be.
“Gun?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Sure?”
“I’m sure, yes.”
I knew that if this had been any other circumstance—if we were riding in a car or talking over a café table—I would have had to substantiate my answer. Here, I hoped I was excused.
But no. Things were not the same. The mere possibility of cat-under-bed seemed a tangible factor even as we resumed mutual movement. Intercourse morphed into a conjoined standoffish anomaly. My fingers rasped upon the mannequin indifference of her skin. Her refracted resolve to carry on manifested itself as an odd facial grimace neither erotic nor disdainful.
Thus, though we ground together in the accepted fashion, I struggled to concentrate, could not make my brain remain still and rid itself of the notion that if I were a cat I would be gone but that the cat was not me and I was not the cat. Moving inside Wei but thinking inside the feline, I nearly shuddered from the effort to detach and enjoy. Might the cat actually let fear and disorientation keep it in a dry tense place for who knew how long? Might I ever again enjoy Wei’s perfect body after this ragingly imperfect coupling?
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