A Cat in the Wings:

by Lydia Adamson

  “Haven’t the slightest idea,” I said tersely. I wasn’t sure why, but I wanted to nip his nostalgia trip in the bud.

  But I did know why. I remembered.

  Basillio and I had entered the theater when the acting schools were still under the sway of the Stanislavki Method of acting. The major premise is simple: You construct each part out of the felt traumas and joys of your own life. If the role you’re playing calls for the character to cry, you cry, by remembering the pet who died when you were a child. In that way you infuse the part with authenticity. Obviously, then, you’re only as good as your experience. The more traumas the better. The more joys the better. The more you have suffered, experienced, the better an actor you are, and the wider your range.

  In short, a good actor has to be “wilder” than a non-actor. And believe me, we believed it. My determination at that age to live fully—highs, lows, sex, love, work, pain, empathy, scholarship—was awesome. I was going to be great.

  The American version of the Method is dead now, but the myths associated with it are still alive, if in a rather pathetic way. Hollywood stars who are making millions construct biographies of themselves to show how close to the edge they’ve lived—to prove that they were truly wild once upon a time. Whereas in fact the only wild thing about them is that occasionally they leave their Brentwood home with only one bodyguard.

  That had been the purpose of those endless walks of Tony’s and mine: to gather up people and things and feelings like bouquets. To see more, feel more, learn more, exult more. Everything we encountered on those walks was a memory to be stored away and used on the stage.

  I looked across at Tony, smiled at him. But I was surprised to see him glowering, head down, eyes boring into the empty plate in front of him.

  “Basillio, what’s the matter?”

  It was a long while before he raised his eyes and addressed me, with a disturbingly unfriendly look on his face.

  “There’s something I want to ask you . . . Alice.”

  I was stunned by his use of my given name, but managed to reply, “Ask away.”

  He didn’t ask the question right away, but idly picked up the utensils on the table and began arranging and rearranging them.

  Then he said, quietly, gravely, “Why don’t you love me?”

  I thought it was a bit. I laughed.

  “What’s so goddamn funny!” He slammed a fork down on the tabletop so viciously that wine from his glass sloshed out onto the little dish of sugar packets. “Sorry,” he said, straightening his back.

  “Tony,” I began nervously, “I don’t know what to say. I thought you were perfectly happy impressing your young actresses. A lot of men would love to have your success at—”

  He cut me off. “I pick up actresses, Swede, because you seem to have no interest in me anymore.”

  “Tony, that isn’t true and you know it.”

  He ignored me. “You have no interest in me, even though everything I’ve done these last couple of years has been because of you. If it hadn’t been for you, I wouldn’t have left my wife—well, maybe that wasn’t totally because of you. Maybe that was coming, anyway. But I left when I left because of you.

  “And if it hadn’t been for you, I wouldn’t have gone back into the theater. Which hasn’t exactly been easy, Swede. I have about as much chance of making it as a stage designer now as you have of finding Peter Dobrynin selling pencils on Columbus Avenue.

  “Plus, you give me mixed signals. On the one hand you like having me around to help out with your work. On the other hand you shut me out of other things in your life. On the one hand you sleep with me once in a while. On the other, I’m highly expendable. I can be replaced, and I know it.

  “So where do I stand? Huh? That’s why I want an answer to that one lousy question: Why don’t you love me?”

  But rather than wait for an answer, he went on making his case.

  “I’m a smart guy—right? Imaginative? Oh, I know I’m crazy, but I’m not dangerous, right? I’m crazy in an interesting way. We like the same things—the same actors, the same plays, the same food. And best of all, I . . . know you. I know how you feel, I know how you think, I even know what you’re thinking usually. So what the hell else is there? What’s missing?”

  He leaned close to me, the pain so clearly etched in his face that I had to look away.

  “So, Alice”—his voice was low and hoarse—“why don’t you?”

  “Because, Tony,” I said at last, “there’s love . . . and there’s love.” And that’s all I could manage. I reached across the table and took his hand. Nothing more to say. But I knew I would take him home with me that night.

  ***

  “I think that was the best night I’ve had since 1978,” Tony said sleepily.

  The early-morning light looked muddy as it came in through my small bedroom window, more like the residue of the sun than the real thing.

  “What happened in ’78?” I asked.

  “Oh, I don’t know.”

  He reached for me under the blanket.

  “It was great, Swede. We got it right, didn’t we?”

  “Um,” I said.

  I looked into Basillio’s eyes and smiled indulgently. I have never understood some men’s compulsion to rate sex, as if it were just another ball game with scores and hits and errors. Sure, it was good. But wasn’t it supposed to be? It was exciting and tender and all that. But there was no reason to quantify it, was there?

  His hands were warm against my skin, moving, tightening. “I think we’re on a roll here, Swede,” he said, mouth close to my ear. “Let’s start the day right.”

  I thought about it for a second. “Let’s not,” I said gently. “Time to get to work.”

  I felt a thump at the foot of the bed. Sitting up, I was astonished to see Pancho regarding us—more accurately, regarding Tony—closely.

  It would not have surprised me in the least to see Bushy there; after all, he often slept with me. And in fact, hurt that someone had supplanted him in my bed, Bushy had spent the night in the bathroom, next to the heating pipe. But Pancho! He had never sat still long enough to learn the pleasures of warm covers.

  “Panch, what is it?” I asked.

  His yellow eyes were fixed on Tony, gleaming madly.

  “Is he going to kill me?”

  “Don’t be silly,” I told Basillio. But Pancho did look almost lethal sitting there, the muscles in his flanks and shoulders twitching from time to time. Is it possible, I found myself musing, that Pancho believes Tony to be the enemy who has been pursuing him all his life in my apartment? The cause of his perpetual flights through the house? Is it possible that, having cornered his pursuer at last, he’s going to turn the tables on his enemy?

  “Tony’s a friend,” I assured the cat, and reached out to stroke Basillio’s head.

  But whatever Pancho had been planning, my sudden movement spooked him out of it. He flew off the bed and went zooming down the hallway.

  “Your apartment is getting dangerous, Swede. Wonder how many guys have been trapped in here and eaten alive by that monster. And what does the vain one do—watch?” I made coffee and brought it to Tony in the shower. Over breakfast, we laughed a lot.

  ***

  By nine o’clock we were at the Seventy-second Street entrance to Riverside Park. This ribbon of a park, which stretches four miles along the Hudson River, from where we stood up to Trinity Cemetery on One Hundred Fifty-third Street, has long been a haven for homeless people. They tend to congregate at the intersections where the park widens to absorb traffic circling onto Riverside Drive: at Seventy-second, Seventy-ninth, Eighty-sixth, and Ninety-sixth streets. In these sections of the park, there are labyrinths of tunnels and slopes and rock outcroppings.

  The first two hours of our investigation that morning were futile. We talked to ten or twelve of the homeless, most of them staying warm in cartons or lean-tos under the viaduct at Seventy-second Street. None of them recognized the photos we s
howed them.

  Our luck changed as we walked north on Riverside Drive. A fat man was panhandling at a bus stop around Seventy-fifth Street. He was doing it in a unique fashion. He had propped himself up against the bus shelter with the help of a single crutch, the better to expose one very ugly, swollen, and battered leg to the passersby. In his hand he held a styrofoam coffee cup, which jangled with change as he shook it. The exposed leg was supposed to induce sympathy, and it couldn’t have done otherwise—it was truly a horrible sight to behold.

  The portly man was wearing one of those woolen stadium caps, on which was printed SAN DIEGO CHARGERS. He was a long way from San Diego. His beard was ragged and dirty and he wore several vests, randomly buttoned. His eyes were bloodshot, and there was a stench of sour wine about him.

  “Excuse me, do you know this man?” Tony asked him, trying to keep a safe distance from the infected leg while still getting close enough to let the man get a good look at the photos. The fellow plucked one from Tony’s hand, turned Dobrynin’s face upside down, then said “Nope” and grinned nastily.

  Angry, Tony pulled the photo away from him, righted it, and gave it back—this time accompanied by a ten-dollar bill.

  The fat man stared at the money for a minute before pocketing it. “Lenny used to give me a fifty,” he said contemptuously.

  “What?” Tony said, foregoing caution and edging a bit closer to the man and his leg.

  “You knew Lenny?” I asked.

  “He even used to give me a hundred sometimes.”

  Another crazy turn in this crazy case. When Dobrynin had dropped out, he might or might not have gone around the bend. We didn’t know for sure. But everyone agreed that he had been broke. Yet if this man was to be believed, our “Lenny” had gone around handing out hundred-dollar bills.

  The fat man only sighed when we pressed him for more information about Lenny. “Don’t ask me,” he dismissed us. “Talk to Fay. She knows more than I do.”

  Fay, it turned out, “lived” near the boat basin. He pointed us in that direction, telling us to say that Harry had sent us. “Yeah, Harry,” he repeated impatiently. “That’s me. Just ask Fay.” And he went back to rattling his cup, the vile, puffy leg still shamelessly exposed.

  We hurried along. Because it was winter, the only boats moored at the basin were houseboats. On the benches that lined the walkway to the water dozens of men lay sleeping, eating greasy lunches, smoking, drinking from bottles in paper bags. They all knew Fay. One directed us right to the hillock on the northern limit of the docking basin.

  She was seated on the frozen ground, on folded newspapers. Next to her was a banged-up shopping cart filled with her possessions—or at least that’s what I assume they were. The sheer bulk of the cart’s contents was overwhelming. I didn’t study them very closely.

  In fact, seeing Fay in another context, one might not have known immediately that she was one of the army of homeless. She was clean, quite presentable, but there was something discombobulated about her appearance nonetheless, and she wore a frightening amount of rouge. Her coat appeared to be a real fur, in decent shape, but upon closer inspection I could see that its collar had been taken from some other garment and haphazardly sewn on. On her feet were plush-lined bathroom slippers—odd enough in itself, considering the temperature—but under them were wildly mismatched men’s socks.

  There was no question that Fay had known Lenny. The minute Tony flashed Dobrynin’s photograph, her eyes lit up in recognition. And in something else—love, perhaps. She took the photo and held it close to her cheek, almost cooing his name.

  “Lenny! I’ve been waiting for him,” she said breathily. “Where is Lenny?”

  We lied to Fay. Tony invented a story about Lenny’s having been hit by a car. We were old friends of Lenny’s, trying, he improvised, to gather some background information to help an attorney sue the driver of the automobile. Lenny would be well in a few months, Tony said. He was on the mend.

  Fay’s distress at the news shamed me. But I couldn’t tell her the truth.

  “I hope he gets back soon,” she finally said. “His babies are hungry. I don’t have the money to feed them.”

  That one really stumped me.

  “What babies are you talking about, Fay?” I managed to ask.

  “His babies!” she replied brusquely. “He always gave me the money to buy food for them. Delicious food. Oh, he takes good care of those babies. Sends me over for the best stuff. Chicken Kiev’s their favorite.”

  Basillio was taken with a violent coughing fit. He turned his back to us for a minute.

  “Lenny gives me the money,” Fay continued, “and I go over to that Russian place to get their food.”

  “You don’t . . . by any chance . . .” I asked haltingly, “mean . . . the Russian . . . Tea Room? On Fifty-seventh?”

  “Yes,” she sniffed. “What do you think I mean? Grand food he gives them. And us, too. Lenny feeds us all. Now you just tell him those babies are hungry.”

  When I asked her to take us to the babies, Fay was reluctant. “What for? You wanna hear ’em crying?”

  A couple of our tens got her on her feet. Tony had handed me the money wordlessly, all the time shaking his head in wonderment.

  We were led across the hillock, through one of the small stone tunnels that dot the park, and emerged in front of a large rock outcropping surrounded by an iron rail fence. Here we came to a halt.

  “See any babies?” Tony asked me. “I don’t.”

  Fay began to rummage around in her cart. At length she pulled out a huge stainless-steel spoon, something that I guessed they were still looking for at one soup kitchen or another.

  She stepped up close to the fence and pulled the spoon noisily along the rails. It made quite a racket. She stepped away from the fence and smiled at us.

  There was a blurry movement on the rocks on the other side of the fence, and then a big, battered tomcat came into view. He approached the fence slowly, as if each step were a hardship.

  Then another cat appeared, this one a dingy calico. Then another. And another. They began to arrive in pairs after that. They kept coming and coming, in an unhappy procession. They all looked cranky and underfed. All expectant.

  “See?” Fay said without satisfaction. “There’s all the hungry babies. See ’em?”

  “Swede,” Tony whispered to me, “I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore. This is the last straw.”

  I only half-listened to him. I was paying more attention to Fay, who went on, “And tell him the other ones are hungry, too. The ones up at a Hundred and Third. Tell Lenny we need some money right away.”

  The desolate cats set up a wailing chorus.

  “Oh, I can’t stand it when they cry!” Fay whined, stuffing the spoon back into the cart and starting to move off. She called back to us, “You tell Lenny, if he can’t come out here to leave some money in his apartment! I’ll go and pick it up!”

  I rushed over to her, keeping up with her surprisingly energetic pace. “Just a minute!” I said. “Lenny has an apartment?”

  Fay snorted. “Now look here, sister! Lenny is a gentleman! You ever know a gentleman who didn’t have a place? Why, he’s got a mansion! A big, blue mansion. I know . . . I been there.”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the cats slowly moving off. The signal for food had sounded. They’d been called to supper. But they were going away hungry.

  Chapter 15

  While Fay was giving me directions to the “blue mansion,” Tony just stood nearby, whistling to himself. When I told him where we were off to he said this whole thing was getting insane, but I insisted we go looking for the apartment, which was reportedly on upper Broadway, on the border of Harlem.

  We stopped at one of the many new watering holes “gentrification” had brought to the vicinity—this one at One Hundred and Twelfth Street. Tony wolfed down a hamburger while I had soup. The barstools were plush and comfortable, and the place was soothingly lighted. A
jukebox in the back was playing a woman vocalist’s unusual—in fact, downright acidic—version of the old classic “Stay as Sweet as You Are.”

  Tony’s skeptical head-shaking had only increased by then. It was as if he had a mosquito trapped in his ear.

  “I know, Basillio, I know,” I told him. “We’re in Never-Never Land. But you said you were going to stay with me on this.”

  “I’m staying!” he protested, chuckling. “I’m staying.”

  We sat drinking for a while.

  “You know what’s bothersome?” he asked a few minutes later. “I mean, what else is bothersome, putting to one side our close encounters of the third kind today.”

  “What?”

  “Isn’t it weird how all that stuff his so-called friends said about him is turning out to be worthless?”

  “Explain what you mean,” I said, sipping my Bloody Mary, which was too sharp for my taste.

  “Well, for openers, they all just knew that he had been a homeless derelict for the past three years. It turns out he had an apartment—excuse me, a ‘blue mansion.’ ”

  “We don’t know that for sure, not yet, anyway. We’ll find out in a few minutes whether Fay was telling the truth about that.”

  “Humph. And what about the money? The money everybody said he didn’t have. The friends told you he’d squandered it all—didn’t have a dime—that he hit them up for money. But he had enough for a mansion. He had enough to buy cat takeout from the Russian Tea Room!”

  “You’ve got a point there, Tony.”

  “And the way they all said he was an egotistical maniac, a user who lived only for his own perverse gratifications, whatever the hell they were. Turns out he went out of his way for some of these . . . poor unfortunates. Lavishing chicken Kiev on a gang of stray cats, for god’s sake! Sounds to me like he was on his way to sainthood.”

  I nodded, not sure whether he was right on that last point. After all, as every actor knows, people are endlessly complex and contradictory. One trait does not a whole character make. A man can, theoretically, be a self-involved bastard yet still care about stray animals.