The Bad Kitty Lounge

by Michael Wiley

  She turned the rest of the way and faced me. She shook her head sadly. “You sure don’t show it.”

  “I try,” I said.

  “No, you don’t. Or you don’t try hard enough.” She turned and opened the door.

  “Stay,” I said.

  With her back to me, she asked, “Why?”

  It was a simple question but again I had no answer. I said, “It would be nice.”

  She stood at the door, her back to me, and her body started shaking. A sound came from her that was part laughter, part sob. Her keys fell from her fingers to the floor. After a while, she turned and faced me again. “No,” she said. “It wouldn’t be nice.” But she closed the door and walked back to the kitchen table, took off her coat, and sat. She left her keys on the floor.

  I set the dining room table while she watched. She glanced doubtfully at the pile of rehabbing tools that I’d left out, so I carried them to the kitchen counter and made a new pile.

  Then I went and got Jason. He stuck close to me in the hall and pulled his chair close at the table. I served the chicken and we ate. No one said anything. Jason glanced nervously at me. I nodded at him and glanced nervously at Corrine. Corrine kept her eyes to herself. I waited for Lannie’s chicken to work its magic. When nothing happened, I waited for the latkes to do what they could do. Nothing. I didn’t expect much from the steamed vegetables.

  I said to Jason, “What did you and Corrine do today?”

  He shrugged. “Not much.”

  “Not much for eight hours?”

  “Nine and a half,” Corrine said without looking up. “Technically.”

  Jason offered, “We went to one of her landscape customers’ houses in Lincoln Park.”

  “Good,” I said. “Did they have a nice garden?”

  “I don’t know. She left me outside.”

  I looked at Corrine to see if that was true. She reached for a latke and said unapologetically, “There was a bookstore next door. Jason was perfectly happy waiting outside.”

  That wasn’t the point but I knew better than to say so. “Glad it worked out.” I spooned carrots onto my plate. I asked Jason, “What did you and Corrine talk about?”

  He shrugged.

  “Come on, you were together for nine and a half hours.”

  Corrine mumbled to her plate. “You’re pressing your luck.”

  He shrugged. “She taught me a song called ‘All Men Are Liars.’ ”

  I looked again at Corrine. This time she returned my look. “It’s by Nick Lowe. It’s a good song.”

  “I know you’re mad at me but taking it out on an eleven-year-old?”

  “Jason’s a bright kid. It’s not too early for him to hear the truth.” She gave me an innocent smile.

  “It might be true, but you don’t need to tell it to him.”

  Corrine turned to Jason. “Is your uncle making sense?”

  Jason shook his head.

  “It’s my house. I don’t have to make sense.”

  Still smiling, Corrine stood and carried her plate into the kitchen.

  Jason took a bite of latke, chewed slowly, swallowed. He sipped from his glass of milk and said, “I like Lucinda better.”

  A moment later the back door swung open and then closed.

  I jumped up from the table and went after Corrine.

  I caught up with her on the sidewalk in front of my house. I reached for her, but she stepped away. “You need to decide what matters to you, Joe, what you really want.”

  “I want you,” I said.

  She gave me a grim smile. “I know about you and Lucinda.”

  My face felt heat. “What? How?”

  “You think Jason and I really talked about nothing all day?”

  “I—” Since my night with Lucinda, I’d been thinking of how to explain it to Corrine. I still had no way to explain it.

  Corrine warmed a degree or two when she saw I was speechless. She touched my lips with a finger and said, “We’ve both screwed up, but I’m tired of that, you know?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I do.”

  Then she surprised me. She said, “I’ll leave my door open tonight. If you want me, you can come over once you get Jason to sleep.”

  “Really?”

  She leaned in and gave me a quick kiss. “Really.”

  Then she was gone.

  I stood for a couple of minutes in the cooling night. I stared up at a dark, starless sky and sucked a breath all the way in and blew it all the way out the way Corrine had taught me to. The air felt good in my throat, good in my chest, and according to the guide Corrine read to me I should have felt like I was living life at the fullest. But I felt confused. Corrine had given me a chance to have everything I thought I wanted—to have her. But I didn’t know what to do. I needed to decide what mattered to me, but I knew that more mattered to me than I could have.

  When I went back inside, Jason was gone from the table, his bedroom door closed. Above my plate he’d placed a gift for me, something he must have found at the bookstore while waiting for Corrine. It was a bobblehead of Mahatma Gandhi.

  THIRTY-TWO

  AT 11:45 P.M. I left a note for Jason on the kitchen counter. It included more promises that I would be back by morning to make breakfast and start giving him a stable life.

  Corrine lived in a new town house two miles north of me. The ceilings were low and the walls were thin, but she didn’t keep rehabbing tools on her dining room table. Her lights were off when I arrived but the front door was unlocked. I went in past furniture we’d shared when we’d lived together and through household smells that had been part of the air I’d breathed. I found my way up a narrow staircase to her bedroom.

  Candles were burning on her bedside tables. Corrine was lying in bed between them, her eyes closed. I sat on the edge of the bed and she stirred. A faint smile formed on her lips. “Do you want me?” she said.

  I kissed her. “I do.”

  She sat and pulled the sheet around her. She wore nothing else.

  “I’ve missed you,” I said.

  “Me too.”

  “I’m sorry about Lucinda—”

  She shook her head and said, “Shhh.”

  She got out of bed. Her body, which I’d held and which had held me for hundreds of nights but then had been apart from me for hundreds more, stood in front of me.

  I reached for her but she shook her head again. She said, “I’m going to take a shower.” She glanced at her dresser. “Put on some music and pick a nightgown for me.”

  “I can manage that,” I said.

  She kissed me, went into the bathroom, and closed the door. A moment later the shower turned on.

  I went to her stereo, looked through her CDs. Chaka Khan—too much beat. Verdi’s Requiem—no. Nick Lowe—definitely not. Chet Baker—just right. I put it on.

  Next I went to the dresser. A winter nightgown—no. A silk camisole that I’d given to her four years ago—yes. I pulled it out, and something heavy and hard fell against the inside of the drawer.

  A gun?

  Corrine didn’t like guns.

  I dug past the T-shirt and removed the object. It was sky blue and looked like a cross between a dolphin and a manatee. It had an on-off switch at the tail end. I tucked it back in the drawer as fast as I could and went to Corrine’s bed, sat, and waited. The shower was still running. I wondered if I should join Corrine. Maybe that’s what she wanted. But if she did, why did she ask for music and a nightgown?

  Too late—the shower went off.

  I sat and waited. I glanced at the dresser drawer, went to it, and looked over my shoulder at the bathroom. I dug through the nightgowns and pulled out the sea creature. How exactly did Corrine use the thing? It was none of my business. Her private life was hers, not mine. I should put it away.

  I pushed the switch. It purred like a kitten.

  I pushed the switch further. It purred like a sack of kittens.

  I glanced at the bathroom door, switched th
e thing off.

  It kept purring.

  I tried again.

  It sounded like an overexcited cat.

  I switched it all the way on and all the way off. It stayed on.

  Corrine was making sounds in the bathroom like she was about to come out.

  I stuffed the thing into the drawer, and slid the drawer shut. It rattled against the wood.

  “Shit!”

  “What?” Corrine asked from the bathroom.

  “Nothing!”

  As the bathroom door opened, I grabbed the sea creature and stuffed it into the top of my shirt. It slid down my chest.

  Corrine stood naked in the bathroom door. Her skin shimmered from the steam of the shower. She’d never looked more beautiful to me.

  “Wow,” I said.

  She stood waiting for me. I slapped my belly as if men always slapped their bellies when beautiful women offered themselves to them.

  “Are you okay?” she said.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Be right back.” I shuffled out of the room.

  I made my way to the kitchen and yanked the creature out of my shirt. Where the hell should I put it? I opened the refrigerator. The vegetable compartment? Jesus, no. The freezer? The microwave? No no. I put it in the kitchen sink. It rattled against the stainless-steel basin. I grabbed it and stuffed it into the garbage disposal. The rubber back-splash seals held it firm and quiet.

  I stumbled back into Corrine’s room. She was sitting naked on her bed, the camisole beside her, and she didn’t look happy.

  “What are you doing, Joe?” she asked.

  “I needed a glass of water,” I said.

  She rolled her eyes but didn’t question me.

  So I went to her.

  She hesitated but then she stood and faced me.

  I touched her neck and her breasts. I let my hands slide down to the inside of her hips. All my troubles seemed to recede.

  “You’re sweating,” she whispered.

  “Yeah,” I admitted.

  She stepped closer and kissed me. I held her to me and breathed in the scent of her newly bathed skin. She unbuttoned my shirt and reached inside, running her fingers over my shoulders and chest. She whispered, “I’ve missed you.” Chet Baker sang “Let’s Get Lost.” I let my shirt fall from my shoulders to the floor and pulled her to me.

  A grinding noise erupted two rooms away. Plastic snapped and crunched. Metal clashed against metal.

  We ignored the sound.

  Chet Baker sang.

  The grinding got louder.

  Corrine pulled away. “What the hell is that?” she said.

  I shrugged. “I’m not sure, but I think your vibrator just turned on your garbage disposal.”

  THIRTY-THREE

  AT 2:00 A.M. I was back at home in bed, with the bobblehead Gandhi next to me on the bedside table. The wind hissed through the branches of the elm tree outside my window. I tried to steer my thoughts from the hundreds of ways I’d blown it with Corrine. If Gandhi could handle the life he lived, why couldn’t I handle mine? If the elm tree swaying outside could face the cold wind year after year, why couldn’t I face myself?

  I turned the bobblehead so it would watch over me while I slept.

  I didn’t sleep.

  Images of Corrine shook me when my mind started to drift. Thoughts of other women only made things worse. Cassie Stone’s wiggling skirt spiraled me outward when I slipped from consciousness. Louise Johnson’s fingers reached like a creeping vine and touched me. Lucinda looked at me searchingly as she got out of my car. I wanted Corrine with me. I wanted Lucinda. I wanted Cassie Stone’s wiggling ass. I wanted an eighteen-year-old wild child who grew up to be a famous nun and then died. I wanted Louise Johnson’s fingers touching my skin—

  I shook awake, sat, and turned on the light.

  Gandhi leered at me.

  My phone stood on the night table next to him. I wanted to call someone to save me from myself.

  But it was late. Too late to call Corrine and tell her—what? I was sorry? I wanted her? I loved her? I would buy her a new vibrator?

  Too late to call Lucinda.

  I picked up the phone, dialed, and listened to two rings before an answering machine picked up. Terrence’s recorded voice said he wasn’t home, but I could leave a message and he would be glad to get back to me. I said, “Hey, it’s Joe, calling to see how the visit to Stone Tower turned out. Thanks for springing Lucinda and me.”

  I hung up. I figured he was out hustling or partying or maybe he was lying in the dark with his girlfriend in his arms, listening to his phone ring without the least desire to pick it up.

  I looked at the phone. I had no excuse to call anyone else. I turned out the light and let imaginary women do what they wanted with me until they got tired and left me alone. When they did, I dreamed of a tall building swaying in a huge wind. No one seemed scared that it would fall. Men and women sat at their office desks while the building rocked like a tree in a storm wind. Mothers and children walked on the sidewalk below, blanketed by the shadow of the swaying building, exposed to the sun as the building tilted away, then shadowed again. The elevator knocked against the sides of the shaft like a pendulum trying to break free. The men, women, and children went about their business unconcerned. No one was scared. No one but me.

  IN THE MORNING JASON and I signed a sheet of paper he’d brought home from school. On it, he promised that he understood the school’s zero tolerance policy toward violence and that he would behave peacefully on all occasions. I promised that as his parent or guardian I understood my responsibility to help him follow school policies.

  We shared a breakfast of frozen waffles and stepped out the back door into the swaying shade of the elm tree. During the night the temperature had dropped below freezing. The morning air felt sharp and clean. The sun shined bright through the swaying branches but I kept my eyes on the ground.

  When I drove Jason to school, the Gandhi bobblehead bobbed on the dashboard. I positioned him so he leered at Jason instead of me. Jason socked me on the arm as he got out of the car. “Fists to yourself,” I said, and he laughed.

  I drove downtown and dialed Lucinda on my cell. She sounded like her night was as rough as mine. She didn’t mention Corrine and I didn’t either, but her voice was cold. She said she was heading back to the newspaper archives to keep digging.

  Next I called the District Thirteen police station.

  When Stan Fleming came to the phone, he said, “Let me guess. You found another dead priest.”

  “None this morning.”

  “It’s still early,” he said. “Keep trying.”

  “How’s the case against Samuelson looking?” I said.

  “Fuck Samuelson.”

  “That bad?”

  “Worse. Examiner sees nothing linking him to the nun or to the priest in Terrano’s bathtub. Plenty of fibers on Terrano but they match her clothes and rugs. And now Samuelson’s got a fancy lawyer shaking his head every time we try to interview him and arguing with the judge to get him released from custody if we’re not charging him. The lawyer’s got a high price and a record of getting what he wants.”

  “Where did Samuelson find money to pay for a lawyer like that?”

  “Didn’t need any of his own. A community group stepped up and is paying the tab.”

  “Why?”

  “Hell if I know.”

  “Who’s the group?”

  “That’s enough from me. Why should it matter to you?”

  “Are they led by an old chunk of Chicago history named William DuBuclet?”

  “Damn it, Joe! How did you know that?”

  I thought about the cost of telling Stan everything. I told him a piece of it. “DuBuclet’s son was friends with Judy Terrano in the late sixties. It ended badly.”

  “Yeah? So what?”

  “So DuBuclet and the nun shared a secret from back then. A big secret, I think—one worth killing for. I think Greg Samuelson figured it out and t
hreatened to go public with it. So the killing started. Judy Terrano. The priest. Samuelson took a bullet in his face—not enough to kill him, but enough to keep him quiet for a while.”

  “You know, I really could use specifics—like what this secret is.”

  It involved the fire at the Bad Kitty Lounge, I figured, and the millions of dollars committed to the construction of Stone Tower forty years later on top of the ashes of the old building, but I didn’t know what else.

  I said, “I’m working on it.”

  THIRTY-FOUR

  I FIGURED SAMUELSON KNEW the details about the fire at the Bad Kitty Lounge, details that could shake the Stones’ hold on the land where they were building Stone Tower.

  But he wasn’t talking.

  Who else knew the details?

  Judy Terrano had known.

  But she was dead.

  DuBuclet probably knew.

  But, like Samuelson, he wasn’t talking.

  Judy Terrano’s old friend, Louise Johnson, seemed to know more than she’d told me.

  But she wasn’t talking either.

  The priest I’d found dead in Judy Terrano’s bathtub might have known at least some of the details, enough to draw him into her room.

  Dead.

  Who else would know?

  Maybe someone at Holy Trinity.

  The crime scene tape was gone from the church entrances. The forgiving and forgetting would take longer, maybe a lifetime or more. I opened the heavy steel doors to the sanctuary and stepped into the end of morning Mass. A couple dozen parishioners—all women—sat in the pews, some still bundled in the dark wool coats they’d put on against the cold, though the inside of the church was warm enough. A priest stood at the front. He was in his young fifties and dressed in black, swinging a censer, chanting in Polish. I sat in a pew in the back and closed my eyes.

  When the priest finished the service, he came down the aisle to greet the parishioners. The women, some with tears in their eyes, got up and clasped his hands, and he seemed to reassure them that the hardest days at the cathedral would pass. They shuffled out through the steel doors until only the priest and I remained. He considered me, then came and sat by my side.