by Ed McBain
Since she is the only white cat on a stage full of varicolored cats often indistinguishable one from the other, it is easy to follow her every movement. She seems to have captured Stanley’s attention as well; he lightly taps David’s arm in the “Jellicle Ball” scene near the end of the first act, alerting David to her form as she is lifted over the head of a male dancer, her long legs gracefully dangling. When the grizzled cat—of course named Grizabella—sings “Memory,” the show’s one and only memorable song, the white cat is lying on her side stage left, utterly still, as rapt as the audience, completely absorbed in lyrics that truly evoke the emotions of Eliot’s real poetry. For the first time since the show began, David takes his eyes off the white cat, and finds himself moved beyond comprehension when the aging glamour cat sings of her lost, irretrievable youth.
While Stanley goes outside to enjoy an intermission smoke, David leafs through the program, trying to zero in on the name of the dancer playing the white cat. There is no White Cat, as such, listed anywhere. He tries to imagine whether Eliot would have named this cat Jellylorum or Rumpleteazer or Demeter or … wait a minute. Here are four cats, two male, two female, listed simply as “The Cats Chorus,” but he has no idea whether the white cat is one of them. He looks up their bios in the Who’s Who In The Cast section of his Playbill, but finds no clues there, either. He seems to remember, but perhaps he’s wrong, that one of the cats singing right up front and center in the Ball-Invitation number at the top of the show was the white cat … wasn’t she? He checks back to the listing of scenes, and finds three cats credited by name for that particular song, two of them male cats respectively called Munkustrap and Mistoffelees—boy oh boy—and the third a female cat named Victoria. Victoria? How’d such a sensible name sneak in here? He looks across the page to see who is playing this oddly named creature. The line reads:
Victoria ................... Kathryn Duggan
He looks at the name again.
Kathryn Duggan.
Hey! My name is Kate!
Kate.
Duggan. Rhymes with huggin’.
But no. It can’t be.
But yes, right there, Kathryn Duggan.
Well, wait a minute. He flips forward again to the biographical listings of the cast. A loudspeakered voice announces that the curtain will be going up in three minutes. The cast is listed alphabetically. He hastily reads:
KATHRYN DUGGAN (Victoria) returns to Cats after the national tour of Miss Saigon. Prior to that, she was seen in Les Miz London, and was assistant dance captain and performed in Cats Hamburg. She wishes to thank her sister Bess and especially Ron for their support and encouragement.
“Anything interesting happen while I was gone?” Stanley asks, and slips into the seat beside him just as the lights come up again.
And now David cannot possibly take his eyes from her. Whenever she disappears from the stage, as frequently she does, he wonders where she has gone, and renews his scrutiny when suddenly she reappears. He keeps hoping she will come down into the audience as some of the other dancers do every now and then, crawling up and down the aisles on all fours, but either she is hidden behind a Siamese cat mask in the “Growltiger’s Last Stand” number—at least he thinks it’s Kathryn and therefore perhaps Kate because he spots the grayish-white leg warmers under the Oriental garb—or else she’s paying homage to the cat named Deuteronomy, sitting on his lap and stroking his aged face, or else she’s pretending to be part of a locomotive’s piston assembly in yet another number, stroking the huge piston back and forth as if it is the head of a penis, nice association, Dr. Chapman. But none of this brings her close enough for him to get a good look at the face disguised by that dead-white makeup, until—as if some cat-God high up in cat-Heaven is granting a secret wish—she comes down off the stage in the “Macavity” number, comes off from the side ramp on the right of the theater, surprising him when she crawls through the wide space in front of row K, and then in her catlike way, sits up, seemingly detecting a human presence, seemingly startled, jerking her head around and looking directly into his face, her green eyes wide.
She shows not the slightest sign of recognition.
She is a cat, thoroughly immersed in her own cat existence, and she is off again in an instant, scampering away, gray-white tail twitching.
Toward the end of the show, when Grizabella sings the searing words “Touch me,” David’s eyes fill with tears.
At eleven o’clock on Sunday morning, shortly after he’s called Helen on the Vineyard, the intercom buzzer sounds, and Luis the doorman tells David there’s a delivery for him.
“Some young lady leaves a package,” he says.
“A package?”
“Sí. But a leetle one.”
“Can someone bring it up?” David asks.
“This is Sunday. I’m here only myself.”
David is still in his pajamas. The Sunday Times is spread all over the dining alcove table. He tells Luis he’ll be down for the package later and then realizes this has to be his handkerchief, and that the young lady who delivered it was surely Kate Duggan, who last night had prowled all over the stage of the Winter Garden Theater in rather good imitation of a predatory feline. He has already decided he’ll go out for brunch in an hour or so, and he figures he can pick up the handkerchief then. Surely there’s no urgency. But nonetheless he throws on undershorts, jeans, a T-shirt and a pair of loafers, and, unshaven and unshowered, takes the elevator down to the lobby.
The package is a small clasp envelope with his name hand-printed on it in thick red Magic Marker letters. . Luis gives him a big macho Hispanic grin and all but winks at him as he hands over the envelope. The grin suggests that not everyone in the building has “leetle” packages delivered by beautiful redheaded girls at eleven o’clock in the morning. David ignores complicity with what the rows of glistening white teeth imply. He thanks Luis for the package, answers politely when Luis asks how Mrs. Chapman is enjoying the seashore (slight raising of a Puerto Rican eyebrow, faint suggestion again of the male-bonding grin under the black mustache) and then walks across the lobby to the elevator bank. He feels certain Luis’s dark eyes are on his back, and feels suddenly guilty of whatever crime Luis is imagining. In the elevator, he resists the temptation to open the envelope. It seems to take forever for the elevator to crawl up the shaft to the tenth floor. It seems to take forever for him to unlock the door. The keys feel suddenly thick in his hands.
He carries the envelope to the table in the dining alcove off the kitchen, and sets it down on the front page of the Arts & Leisure section. The red letters spelling out his name are ablaze in bright morning sunshine. He sits at the table. Picks up the envelope again. Turns it over. Lifts the wings of the clasp. Opens the envelope.
The handkerchief has been laundered and ironed, folded once upon itself, and then once again to form a perfect white square. He is disappointed when he realizes there is no note attached to the handkerchief. He peers into the envelope, spots a small white business card in it, and shakes it free onto the table. The card is imprinted with her name, her address on East Ninety-first, and two telephone numbers, one below the other. He turns the card over. Handwritten in blue ink scrawled across its back are the words:
He smiles.
He does not go immediately to the telephone, but he knows he will call her sometime later this morning, before he goes down for brunch—what time is it now, anyway, eleven-fifteen, eleven-thirty? He looks at his watch. It is twenty past eleven. He’ll call her later, as a courtesy, thank her for her kindness, her thoughtfulness, mention how much he enjoyed her performance last night.
He goes back to reading the Times.
His eyes keep flicking to the card lying on the table beside the freshly laundered handkerchief.
He looks at his watch again.
Eleven twenty-five.
He rises abruptly, decisively, walks into the bathroom, undresses, glances at himself briefly in the mirror, and then steps into the shower. He
studies his face carefully as he shaves. His eyes meet his own eyes often. He realizes he is rehearsing what he will say to her when he calls. Naked, he pads into the bedroom and puts on a black silk robe with blue piping at the cuffs, a gift from Helen last Christmas. Wearing only the robe belted at his waist, the silk slippery against his skin, he sits propped against the pillows on the unmade bed, and dials the first of the numbers on her card. A recorded voice tells him he has reached the Phillip Knowles Agency, and that business hours are Monday to Friday from nine A.M. to six P.M. He puts the phone back on its cradle.
Oddly, he thinks of Arthur K’s sister in her blue robe, propped against the pillows in her midnight bed.
Arthur K’s arm around her.
He takes a deep breath and dials the second number.
“Hello?”
Her voice.
“Kate?”
“Yes?”
Somewhat breathless.
“This is Dr. Chapman. David.”
“Oh, hi. I just came in the door. Did you get the …?”
“Yes, that’s why I’m …”
“I washed and ironed it myself, you know. I didn’t take it to a laundry or anything.”
“Well, thank you. That was very thoughtful. Truly.”
“Considering what a lousy ironer I am …”
“On the contrary …”
“… I think I did a pretty good job.”
“Very professional, in fact.”
There is a silence on the line.
“I saw you last night,” he says.
“Saw me?”
“Your performance. In Cats.”
“You did?”
“Yes. You were very good.”
“Well, thank you. But …”
A slight pause.
“How’d you even know I was in it? Did I mention …?”
“Actually, I …”
“Because I don’t remember tell—”
“It was just an accident. My being there.”
“Gee.”
“I enjoyed … seeing you. Your performance. I thoroughly enjoyed it.”
“Gee,” she says again.
He visualizes her shaking her head in wonder. The golden-red hair. The hair so effectively hidden by the white fur cap last night.
“Everybody else saw me in it ages ago,” she says. “Everybody I know, anyway.” She pauses again. “How was I?” she asks. “I don’t even know anymore.”
“Terrific.”
“Did I look like a cat?”
“More so than anyone else on stage.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“Tell me more,” she says, and he can imagine a wide girlish grin on her freckled face. “Tell me I should be the star of the show …”
“You were really very …”
“Tell me how beautifully I dance …”
“You do.”
“And sing …”
“Yes.”
“Take me to lunch and flatter me.”
He hesitates only an instant.
“I’d be happy to,” he says.
He is surprised to learn that she’s actually twenty-seven.
“Which is old for a dancer, right?” she says.
“Well, no, I don’t …”
“Oh, sure,” she says. “Especially a dancer who’s been in Cats forever,” she says and rolls her eyes. Green flecked with yellow. Sitting in slanting sunlight at a table just inside the window of the restaurant she’s chosen on the West Side. Eyes glowing with sunlight. “Now and forever, right?” she says. “That’s the show’s slogan, the headline, whatever you call it. Cats, Now and Forever. That’s me. I’ll probably be in that damn show when I’m sixty-five. Every time I go for an audition, they ask me what I’ve done, I say Cats. That’s what I’ve done. Well, that’s not all I’ve done. I was in Les Miz in London, the Brits call it The Glums, did you know that? And last year I toured Miss Saigon. But Cats is the big one, Cats is Broadway. I’ve been in that damn show practically since it opened, seventeen years old, little Dorothy in her pretty red shoes, I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore, Toto. That’s right, we’re in a goddamn show called Cats!”
He realizes he is nervously checking out the restaurant as she talks, trying to remember how many people he and Helen know here on the West Side, preparing a cover story in advance to explain why he is here with a young and beautiful girl while his wife is up there in the wilds of Massachusetts. He remembers all at once what Kate said that first day in the park, referring to the handkerchief she’d bloodied and offered to launder—Your wife would kill me—and wonders if she’d been fishing that day, trying to learn if he was available. Well, he’s flattering himself, for Christ’s sake. Why would anyone as beautiful as she is, as young as she is—well, twenty-seven, he’s just learned—why would anyone like Kate wonder whether a forty-six-year-old man, a man about to be forty-six, was married or single or divorced or whatever the hell? Besides, he’d been wearing the wedding band, just as he’s wearing it now, plain to see on the ring finger of his left hand—see, folks, I’m married, nothing fishy going on here, nobody trying to hide anything, I’m married, okay? So of course, she’d already known. She’d seen the ring, and she’d known he was married. Still, he wonders why that particular remark if it wasn’t a fishing expedition. Or maybe a warning. I know you’re married, mister, so no funny moves, okay?
“Where in Kansas?” he asks.
“What?”
“You said …”
“Oh, that was just an expression. Don’t you know the line from Wizard of …?”
“Yes, of course. But I thought …”
“No, I’m not. From Kansas.”
“Then where are you from? You said …”
“Westport, Connecticut. But I’ve been living in New York since I was seventeen. Ten years last month, in fact. That’s when I got the job in Cats. Before then, I was studying dance in Connecticut. No wonder I’m still in that damn show. Where are you from?”
“Boston.”
“I thought you sounded a little like a Kennedy.”
“Do I?”
“A little.”
“Is that good or bad?”
“It’s good, actually. It’s a nice sound, that Massachusetts accent. Or dialect. Whatever you call it. Regional dialect, I guess. Anyway, I like it.”
“Thank you.”
“You promised to flatter me. Tell me about last night.”
He tells her how he’d been invited to see the show with a man he despised, someone whose wife is in his wife’s aerobics class, venturing to mention his wife, watching her eyes to see if anything shows there, but nothing does, and anyway, why should it? This is simply a Sunday brunch in broad daylight, a married man wearing his wedding band for all to see, two people who’d happened to share an unusual experience together, now sitting and chatting in the innocent light of the sun, nothing going on here, folks, see the ring, wanting to waggle the fingers of his left hand so the ring would catch the light of the sun and flash like a beacon to anyone entertaining suspicious thoughts.
He tells her all about how she’d captured his attention because she was so very good …
“Tell me, tell me,” she says, and grins again.
… perfectly capturing a cat’s, well, essence, he supposes one might call it, in a show that was otherwise, well, he hates to say this …
“Say it,” she says. “It sucks.”
“Well, there were things about it …”
“Name one,” she says. “Besides ‘Memory.’”
“‘Memory’ was very moving.”
“I played Sillabub in Hamburg. I got to do the other version of the song. The younger, more innocent version than the one Grizabella sings. In a sort of high, piping voice, you know? For contrast.”
“Yes.”
“But aside from ‘Memory,’ what else is there? It isn’t even a dancer’s show, you know, like Chorus Line or any of the Fosse shows when he was a
live, which is odd because you’d think the very notion of cats dancing would inspire all sorts of inventive choreography. None of the dances seem to me like anything a cat would dance, do they to you? Do you have a cat?”
“Not now.”
“I have a cat, well, you’ll meet her, and believe me, if they allowed her to get up on that stage and dance, it wouldn’t be like anything we’re doing up there. It’s a shame when you think of it, the opportunities squandered …”
He is thinking about what she said not ten seconds ago, I have a cat, well, you’ll meet her, and misses much of her dissertation, or what sounds like one, sounds like something she’s said many times before to many other people, about the way cats naturally seem to be dancing whenever they move, the glides, the leaps, the turns, “Even in repose,” she says, “a cat looks like a dancer resting,” but he is thinking I have a cat, well, you’ll meet her, her green eyes unwavering as she leans across the table toward him, fervently intent on making her point, the reddish-gold hair falling loose about her face, he wonders why they didn’t make her a tawny cat, didn’t use her own hair and a rust-colored costume instead of dressing her in white like a virgin, and why the name Victoria, he doesn’t recall any Victoria in the Eliot …
“Was there a cat named Victoria in the poems?” he asks suddenly. “Excuse me, I didn’t mean …”
“That’s okay, I was just rattling on, anyway. When he talks about the names families give their cats, he gives Victor as an example, but not Victoria. And also, he mentions that Mungojerrie and Rumpleteazer live in Victoria Grove, which is an actual section in London, have you ever been to London?”
“Yes, many times.”
With my wife, he thinks, but does not say.
“But what’s interesting is that Victoria is the only straight name in the show,” she says. “All the other cats are given what Eliot calls their particular names. Which he rhymes with perpendicular, by the way. Have you read the poems?”