A Place I've Never Been

by David Leavitt

  From the fireplace, now, I picked one of the andirons up. It was cold and slightly sooty, yet it felt heavy enough to kill. “Blunt instrument,” I said aloud to myself, savoring the words.

  My dog was sitting in the backseat of the car. Since the cat’s disappearance, this had become her favorite resting place, as if she feared above all else being left behind, and was determined to make sure I didn’t set foot out of the house without her being aware of it. Now, however, I was traveling on foot, and figuring that anywhere I could walk was close enough not to pose a threat to her, she remained ensconced. It was a bright, sunny day, not the sort of day on which you would think you would think of killing someone. As I passed each house and turned the bend toward Willoughby’s, I wondered when my resolve was going to lessen, when, with a rocket crash, I’d suddenly come to my senses. The thing was, it was the decision to kill Willoughby that felt like coming to my senses to me.

  Halfway to his house, a Jeep Wagoneer pulled up to the side of the road ahead of me. On the bumper was a sticker that read, THE BETTER I GET TO KNOW PEOPLE, THE MORE I LOVE MY DOGS, and leaning out the driver’s window was Tina Milkowski, the proprietress of a small, makeshift, and highly successful canine-sitting service. She was a huge woman, three hundred pounds at least.

  “How you doing, Jeffrey?” she called.

  “Not bad,” I said. “How are you, Tina?”

  “Can’t complain.” She seemed, for a moment, to sniff the air. “Where’s the Princess today?”

  “Home. She’s spending the afternoon in my car.”

  “Hope you left the windows open. Say, what you got there? Fire-dogs?”

  “They’re Willoughby’s.”

  Tina shook her head and reached for something in her glove compartment. “He’s a strange one, Willoughby. Never been very friendly. The dogs are nice, though. He give those firedogs to you?”

  She pulled a stick of gum out of a pack and began chewing it ruthlessly. I nodded.

  “I didn’t know you two were friends,” Tina said in what seemed to me a suggestive manner.

  “We’re not friends. In fact, I’m on my way to kill him.”

  Tina stopped chewing. Then she laughed—a surprisingly high, girlish laugh, given her hoarse, bellowslike voice.

  “Now why do you want to kill Willoughby?”

  “One of his dogs murdered my cat. Then he threw the corpse over the fence into the field. But he told me the cat was alive, that he’d thrown the cat alive into the field because he didn’t know it was my cat, and for three days now I’ve been searching that field for my cat when the whole time he was dead. At least I hope he was dead. It’s possible he threw the cat over injured and let him bleed to death, though I can’t believe, I honestly can’t believe …”

  I believed Tina had seen her fair share of the crimes human beings commit against one another; for this reason, perhaps, it was the crimes human beings commit against animals toward which she brought her harshest judgment.

  She narrowed her eyes. “Listen, honey, don’t do anything you’ll regret. Think of it this way. His dog kills the cat, he throws it over, he isn’t even thinking, probably. He figures it was a wild cat, pretends it’ll just disappear. Then you ask him, he never knew it was your cat, and he just makes something up. On the spur of the moment. Probably he’s over in that church right now saying a hundred Hail Marys and praying to Jesus to forgive him.”

  “It was worse than that.” I cleared my throat. “Look, there’s no point in going into details.”

  “The doggy probably didn’t know what he was doing. Sometimes they just act instinctually.”

  “I don’t blame the dog. I blame Willoughby.”

  Tina chewed her gum even more ferociously. For a few moments we were silent, her Wagoneer idling, until I realized what it was she was waiting for me to say.

  It was easy enough. I laughed. “Don’t worry,” I said, “I’m not really going to kill him. I’m just going to bring back his andirons and have it out with him.”

  “You sure you’re all right? You want to come by for a cup of coffee and talk it over?”

  “Really, it’s okay. Anyway, Tina, do I look like a murderer?”

  She smiled, and I saw how tiny her mouth was, lost in her huge face. “You don’t look to me,” she said, “like you could kill a deer tick if it was biting you on the face.”

  I was learning something about murder. Before—that is, before the cat—I had always assumed that when the thought of killing someone enters the mind, a sudden knowledge of its consequences rears up almost automatically in response, saving the would-be killer from himself by reminding him, in glorious Technicolor, of all the cherished things he stands to lose. Today, however, no vision of jail cells or courtrooms or electric chairs entered my head. Nothing compelled me to replace the gun gratefully in its holster, the knife happily in its drawer, the firedog cheerily in its fireplace. The urge to kill had fogged every other feeling; walking down the street in its grip, I could see nothing but the immediate goal, and that goal was so clear, so obvious, it seemed so justly demanded, that the rest of the world, the world after the murder, the world of repercussions and punishments, receded and became dimly unreal. Indeed, as I approached Willoughby’s house and rang his doorbell, I felt as if I were no longer a person; I felt as if I were merely a function waiting to be performed.

  “Good afternoon,” Willoughby said automatically as he pulled open the door; then, faced by mine, his face sank.

  He looked down quickly. “I see you’re returning my andirons.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Please come in.” Willoughby led me into his living room. He was wearing a bright purple polo shirt and green shorts. I had one andiron in each hand, and what I hadn’t counted on was having to put one down in order to kill him with the other one.

  “I’ll just take those from you,” he said.

  I allowed him to remove the andirons from my hands and replace them in his fireplace, along with several other sets.

  “Have you found your little cat?”

  “Yes. He was dead. Just where you threw him over.”

  Willoughby seemed to do some quick thinking, then said, “Oh dear, how terrible. I suspect one of those roaming dogs must have gotten to him. You know, with no leash law, this town is full of roaming, wild dogs. Most irresponsible of their owners, but I’ve always felt the folk here were a cretinous brood.” He shook his head, turned from me, sat down on the edge of a settee.

  “The corpse was at the exact spot where you told me you set him over the fence—alive.”

  “It is possible the dog—the wild dog—brought the corpse back after killing him, or—or did it right then—right after I—put him over.” Willoughby coughed. “I am truly most terribly sorry about your cat. You know, Johnny really is very frightened of cats. He killed another—killed a cat once, another cat, that is. It was wandering in that field, and it attacked him. The cat attacked him. Viciously. He reacted in self-defense. With that cat, of course, the other cat, not with yours. In your case I interceded in the nick of time and removed the cat unharmed.” He looked up at me. “Are you sure I can’t induce you to take some libation?” he said.

  “I’m going to kill you,” I said.

  Willoughby stood. “I’ll call the police,” he said. “I’ll scream. My neighbor can be here in thirty seconds. My dogs are trained to kill. Believe me, I’ve dealt with thugs like you before and I know what to do. Many people have tried to take advantage of me, and not one has ever succeeded. There’s a gun in that drawer. There’s a knife in the kitchen. I was in Vietnam. I’m trained to kill. I know karate. I’m warning you. Stand back! Johnny! Johnny!”

  His eyes were bulging. He stood pressed against a sliding glass door, as if pinned back, as if he were waiting for knives to land in a pattern around his body. Then he pulled the door open and ran out into the backyard. The dogs came leaping to him. He ran past them, toward the side gate which opened into the field, and then he r
an out the gate, not bothering to close it. The dogs huddled around the open gate, but hesitated to follow their master through it.

  I turned around and left Willoughby’s living room. I closed his door behind me. I did not kill him, and I went home.

  I did not know my cat well when he died. I had had him just over a month. But I liked him, and I was beginning to look forward to our life together. Not much distinguished him from other young cats. He was orange and white, and looking at him always made me hungry for those orange Popsicles with vanilla ice cream inside. He liked to romp around the house, to play with balls of string, to climb trees, and to hide. For hours he and Johnny sat across the fence from each other, staring, not making a move. He climbed tablecloths, and the smell of tuna fish made him yowl with an urgent desire which I could not seem to talk him out of. At first he had been wary of my dog, but then they grew loving toward each other. He used to nip at her legs for hours, trying to get her to play with him, while she sat there, unreacting, an enduring, world-weary matron. Sometimes he’d bat her face with his paw, and his claws would stick in her wiry fur.

  When I got home from Willoughby’s that afternoon my dog was still in the car. The paint on the driver’s door, I noticed, was scratched from her nails. I got in and pulled out of the driveway. From where she was lying behind the backseat she lifted her head like the stuffed dog with the bobbing head my aunt kept in the back of her car in my childhood. She jumped onto the seat. I opened the back window a little, and she nudged her nose through the crack, sniffing the wind. We passed the empty field next to Willoughby’s house, and I saw Willoughby on the side of the road, barefoot, red-faced, and panting. I honked, and his mouth opened, and he ran across the street. In my rearview mirror I watched him grow smaller and smaller until I turned a corner and he disappeared. Soon we were in open country—long fields where corn had been planted in narrow even rows.

  Once, on a snow-blind winter night, I had heard Willoughby whistling. I stood up and went to the back door. There he was, just on the other side of the fence. “Jeffrey,” he said, “are you really my friend?”

  “Excuse me?” I said.

  “I’m asking if you’re really my friend,” he said. “I must know, you see, because the Lord has seen fit to lock me out of my house, and I must rely upon the kindness of strangers.”

  “Wait a minute. You’re locked out?”

  “Afraid so.”

  “Have you lost your key?”

  “No, I haven’t lost my key.”

  “Is the lock broken, or frozen?”

  “There’s nothing wrong with the lock.”

  “Well, I don’t understand then—”

  “The Lord has seen fit to lock me out of my house. It is a test. I must throw myself upon the mercy of strangers, the kindness of strangers. I must be humble.”

  “Call a locksmith,” I said, and went back inside.

  A few hours later the phone rang. I let the answering machine pick it up. “Jeffrey, among the many things you may not ever forgive me for is calling you at this indecent hour,” Willoughby said. “It’s ten—or rather, two o’clock.” For a long while he was silent. Then he said, “Whenever you’re ready, I’ll be waiting. And my house is all alit by the Christmas tree.”

  When I got back from my drive that afternoon, the phone was ringing. “Excuse me,” said a voice I didn’t recognize. “Is this Mr. Jeffrey Bloom?”

  “It is.”

  “Oh, hello. You don’t know me, I’m your neighbor, Mrs. Bob Todd?”

  “Hello,” I said. I knew the house: a standard poodle, a children’s pool, and a sign in front which read, THE BOB TODDS.

  “I’m sorry to bother you in the evening, Mr. Bloom, but Tina Milkowski told me what happened to your little kitty and I wanted to extend my sympathies. It’s just monstrous what that Willoughby Wayne did.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Todd.”

  “Willoughby has been a nuisance ever since he moved into the Crampton place. Piles of money from his grandfather, and nothing to do with it. Now that was a man. Norton Wayne, he had character. But you know what they say, every family spawns one bad seed, and Willoughby Wayne is it. Always yammering on about his family tree. One poor couple, they were new at the club? They thought they had to be polite. I was at the next table, and I heard. Willoughby told them his family tree from 1612. Forty-five minutes, and he didn’t even pause to take a breath. And those dogs. They bark like crazy, annoying the whole neighborhood. Then one day a few years ago he was leaving the club, and he hit a woman. He was drunk.”

  “My goodness,” I said.

  “And he’s never married. I don’t have to tell you why.” Mrs. Bob Todd hiccuped. “Everyone says it’s the Jews that are wrecking the neighborhood, but if you ask me, it’s the old good-for-nothings like Willoughby. Nothing but trouble. Now I’m not rich, but I’ve lived in this town my whole life, and I can tell you honestly, I think you Jewish people are just fine.”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “Anyway, dear, the reason I’m calling is Tina and I have decided to take some action. This has just gone far enough, with Willoughby and those dogs, and we’re going to do something about it. I’ve already complained to the dog warden, and now I’m going to start a petition to have Willoughby thrown off the board of the Animal Protection Society. He has no business being on that board, given what he did, no business whatsoever.”

  “Mrs. Todd,” I said, “really, this isn’t necessary—”

  “Oh, don’t you worry. You won’t have to lift a little finger. Your kitty’s murder will be avenged!”

  I was quiet. “Thank you,” I said again.

  “You’re very welcome,” she said. “Good-bye.” She hung up.

  I looked outside the window. My dog was flat on her back, being licked by an elderly Labrador named Max, neither of them deterred from this flirtation by the fact that one was spayed and the other neutered. And suddenly I remembered that I had an appointment for my own cat’s neutering just the next week. I’d have to cancel it in order to avoid being charged.

  I put the phone down. I was sorry I’d mentioned the whole thing to Tina Milkowski, and thus inadvertently begun the machine of vengeance rolling. Revenge anticipated is usually better than revenge experienced. (Then again, when I had wanted to kill Willoughby, it hadn’t felt like revenge, what I’d wanted—or had it?)

  I decided to clip a leash onto my dog and take her for a walk. It was the dog-walking hour. The Winnebago of our local mobile dog groomer was parked in Libby LaMotta’s driveway, Libby pacing nervously alongside while within that mobile chamber her cocker spaniel puppy, Duffy, was given a bath. We waved. Across the street Susan Carlson had Nutmeg, her Manx cat, on a leash. We waved. Further down the street Mrs. Friedrich was watering her plants. She often spoke wistfully about the “big, velvety balls” of which her cat, Fred, had finally to be deprived, once he’d sprayed too many sofas. We waved. Then I passed Mrs. Carnofsky, quite literally dragging her resistant Dandie Dinmont terrier behind her, unmoved by the scraping sounds the dog’s paws were making against the pavement, the wheezing and choking as he gasped against the tug of his collar, determined to pull her back to a pile of shit a few feet down the sidewalk. “He won’t budge,” she said. Her blue-gray hair was exactly the same tint as her dog’s. We did not wave.

  As for Willoughby—just past midnight that night there was whistling at the fence. There he stood, in his elf suit, having somehow climbed through or over the privet hedge.

  “Jeffrey,” he said.

  “What is it, Willoughby?”

  “Why do you hate me so?”

  “I don’t hate you,” I said honestly.

  “If you don’t hate me, then why are you persecuting me?”

  I crossed my arms, and turned away from him. “Look, I’m sorry I said I wanted to kill you. I was just angry. I’m not going to kill you. I apologize.”

  “Nadine Todd called me this evening and she said the most horrid things. She called
me a monster and a drunk and worse. She’s going to have me thrown off the board of the Animal Protection Society.”

  “I really didn’t have anything to do with that, Willoughby—”

  “The Animal Protection Society is one of my great loves. Disregarding the humiliation for the moment, you’ll be taking away one of the few ways in the world in which I’m able to feel truly useful.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “Really, I have nothing to do with it. Mrs. Todd is acting on her own.”

  He looked away. “I am lost and forlorn. I have nowhere to turn. I throw myself upon your mercy.”

  “Good night, Willoughby,” I said, and went inside.

  A few minutes later there was a knock on the door.

  “Do with me what you will,” Willoughby said, and threw his arms out at his sides, like Christ.

  “Willoughby, it’s past midnight.”

  “The Lord has directed me to you, Jeffrey. He has told me to throw myself upon your mercy. I must learn to be humble, to act humbly.”

  “Is it humble to barge uninvited into someone’s house in the middle of the night? Is that humble?”

  “I am a pathetic and desperate man,” Willoughby said. He hung his head in shame.

  “All right,” I said. “Come in.”

  He smiled, then, came through the door gratefully, and sat down on the sofa. My dog ran up to him from where she was sleeping, barked, sniffed at his haunches. He reached down and stroked her neck. There was something incalculably gentle and expert about the way he stroked her neck, and I wondered, for a moment, if he suffered from a kind of autism; if, in lieu of his clumsy and imperfect relations with humans, he had developed an intricate knowledge of the languages and intimacies of dogs. There were people who, for all the affection they felt, hadn’t the foggiest idea how to stroke a dog. They pushed the fur the wrong way, their hands came down rough and ungentle. I suspected Willoughby was like this with people, and always had been.

  I brought him a cup of tea, which he thanked me for. The dog had crawled into his lap and gone to sleep. “This is not, of course, the first time that I’ve been the object of persecution and derision,” Willoughby was saying. “Even when I was a little boy it happened. My parents for some reason insisted I attend public school. Another child circulated a petition which read, ‘We, the undersigned, hate Willoughby Wayne.’ I didn’t understand why. I had tried to ingratiate myself with those children, in spite of the enormous gulf which separated us.” Tears welled in his eyes. “The ancient Hebrews were cursed with the vice of avarice, and often I have felt the modern Hebrews have inherited that vice, yet in spite of this I feel deeply for the persecution they suffered at the hands of the Nazis, for I too have suffered such persecution.” And like a litany, he incanted: “I am a pathetic and desperate man.”