Cat by Any Other Name (9781101597729) (6 page)

Chapter 9

Start to finish, it was one of the oddest days I have ever lived.

The morning seemed to go by in a blur. Make coffee. Feed cats. Newspaper. Suddenly it was afternoon. I felt inexplicably lightheaded. I found myself in front of the mirror, putting my hair up in a style that came out of nowhere—but I decided to leave it. I thought I saw Pancho do a kind of double take as I bent down to fill his bowl with dry food.

I'd discharged my cat-sitting duties by one thirty, so I had all the time in the world to walk uptown to the bar where I was to meet Tim Roman. I stopped once to look at some brown suede shoes that had caught my ey, and once to buy a new lip rouge.

I kept reminding myself how important it was to keep focused. I wasn't out to hurt Tim, but I did need to extract information from him.

He had given me excellent directions. I had no trouble finding the place. Tim was the only person in the eating area. He pushed out his chair as soon as I entered the room. But as I walked toward him, I had the sensation that the man standing there smiling at me was a totally different man from the Tim Roman who'd been married to my friend Barbara. Different from the stunned and anguished man who'd brought me the jogging clothes and wanted me to talk to his orphaned cat.

He was dressed stunningly enough to be a full-page ad in the
Times
magazine. He was wearing an impeccably tailored gray suit with lighter gray pinstripes, an off-white shirt the color of which suggested the inside of a cucumber, and a rust-colored silk tie I recognized as a Hermes. He greeted me warmly, with a kiss on the cheek.

If my heart skipped a few beats before I returned his greeting, it was because . . . because, frankly, it had just hit me that Tim Roman was a beautiful man.

I felt a little underdressed. I could only hope that my long black skirt and white cashmere V-neck sweater made me appear dramatic, rather than simply plain.

Something else was peculiar about this meeting. I'd never been in this bar before, but there was a familiarity about it. Not so much a real memory of it, as a theatrical one. As if I'd once walked onto a stage and made an entrance onto a set like this. As if I'd long ago sat with a man who looked like this, at a table that looked like this one. Maybe I'd lightly touched my pearl-and-jet necklace, as I was doing now, while we spoke. But the memory was a false one—I'd never been in such a play.

It was much more likely that Tim had sat here with Barbara on a hundred such occasions, that it was they who had been the “actors.” She would come in, simply dressed but lovely, to meet her handsome husband. And the two of them would behave rather formally with each other, almost as if they were on a date. But how had all of this worked its way into my vault of memories?

“What would you like to drink?” Tim asked. He was having some kind of whiskey, without ice, in a small glass. A tumbler of water rested next to his drink, untouched.

“A Bloody Mary.”

He ordered the drink for me and another one for himself. (It was bourbon: Jim Beam.)

When my drink was placed before me, I took a fairly robust sip. “This tastes wonderful,” I said. “I walked all the way up from Twenty-Sixth Street, along First Avenue. I was thirsty.”

“Long walk,” he said, and I could see that he was admiring me, but not for the long walk. I caught that glance of his and held it for a while with my own.

And then the lady detective in me interceded.

“I passed the most charming little church on the way up here,” I said. “Around Sixty-Fifth Street. Do you know it?”

“No.”

“A Catholic church, but the signs announcing Mass and what have you are in Czechoslovakian—or Slovakian—or whatever they speak.”

He went on looking at me, very still in his seat.

“This may sound like a strange thing to say,” I went on, “but I just had the feeling that Barbara would have been quite taken with a little church like that . . . do you think?”

He shrugged. “Barbara never showed any interest in churches. We traveled all over Italy a few years ago. I don't think she visited a single one.”

“Aren't they pretty hard to avoid in Italy?”

“No ‘working' churches, I mean.” He looked at me then with one of those shy, adolescent kind of smiles. Certain middle-aged men seem to have a patent on them. “But Barbara and I did go into a church from the Middle Ages to see a few Bernini's.”

“Was she an atheist?” I asked. “We never really discussed things like that.”

“I wouldn't say that. It wasn't that she had anything against organized religion. She didn't care one way or the other.” Tim signaled the waiter for another round of drinks.

Did he really believe what he'd just said? Obviously, Barbara had been very careful. But how, really, was it possible for a woman to hide from her husband the fact that she was taking formal instructions in a religious faith? How could one party in an intimate relationship hide from the other a new—and perhaps profound—religious belief? More to the point,
why?
Why had Barbara been so secretive? Who would have objected—or cared? I was sure that among her enlightened friends the attitude must have been “live and let live.” There were a lot worse passions than Catholicism.

Tim began to discuss the bar itself—not just how much he and Barbara had liked it, but its neighborhood aspects. How long the place had been on this spot, how it had once been located across the street, who'd had a wedding reception here, and so on. I listened to his easy, free-flowing narrative, still struck by how
different
he seemed: pulled-together, modulated, droll—and very beautiful.

We had fallen into a silence. But not an edgy one. We were calm. At ease. He watched me as I sipped my Bloody Mary through the straw. It was mildly spicy, as I had requested.

After a bit he said: “It is very nice sitting here with you. Barbara would be pleased if she knew.”

How on earth could I respond to that? I didn't. “You know,” I said instead, “I don't think I even know exactly what kind of designer you are.”

“I design what you're sitting on.”

Puzzled, I guessed, “Underwear?”

He laughed out loud—a large, nice laugh, familiar and hearty. “No. Chairs. You're drinking with the guy who won first prize for a three-legged rattan number. In Milan. 1984.”

“I'm impressed. I never knew a chair designer before.”

“And I never knew an actress with a passion for crime.”

“Only when the client pays me,” I lied. “Actually, my only remaining passions are for Maine coon cats and . . .” What was it I had almost said, “friends”?

“What about the herb garden?” he asked.

“That was Barbara's passion, not mine. She was the one who made everything work.”

Tim picked up the theme. “She made everything work.” Now I could see, in the corners of his countenance, traces of the fragile widower I'd come to know. So he
was
still precarious, probably prone to wild mood swings, sudden bouts of tearfulness, plunges into morbidness.

I looked in the direction of the three men at the bar, all of them watching a bike race on the cable TV sports channel. The digital clock near the set said it was 5:14. One by one, the bar stools were being claimed by after-work drinkers.

“I should get going,” I said.

“No.” Tim leaned forward and caught my hand. The anxiety in his voice betrayed the casual gesture. “No, don't go yet, Alice. Come with me and . . . say hello to Swampy.”

Because he was my friend's husband . . . that must explain why I'd never noticed how wonderful-looking he was.

I found myself looking down at his perfectly formed knuckles. “I will,” I said, “if you'll tell me the story of how you and Barbara first met.”

“Why do you want to know that?”

“No reason. Because.”

“And she never told you?”

“No, never.”

“Then it's a deal. You can comfort Swampy, and I'll tell you how we met—for what it's worth. And I'll make you coffee, too. I make excellent coffee.”

Five minutes later we were inside the roomy apartment. Tim went into the kitchen, which soon was filled with the racket made by an old coffee grinder.

I started crooning to old Swampy, who lay stretched out on the rug, his massive alley cat head cocked to one side as if the weight of it were too much for him. He acknowledged my presence with the merest glance.

The coffee seemed to be taking forever. As my conversation with Swampy was going nowhere, I got up and started to look around the apartment. I'd been here a few times before but not very often. The place needed a paint job. And though much of the furniture was hand-me-down, those pieces mixed in seamlessly with the various antique end tables and armchairs scattered around the huge living room. What was obviously not a particularly special or charming space had become so simply through the presence of the people who'd lived in it.

Here and there I saw an object that Barbara obviously had either hunted down or come upon and just had to have: a hand-carved tortoise from South America, a watercolor of a sea bird, an Egon Schiele print. In fact, I knew that if I looked carefully, I would find her spiritual fingerprints all over the house. And even though she had died somewhere else—for a possible indiscretion that might have occurred somewhere else—I felt that the search should begin here in her home. Wasn't that really why I had agreed to come upstairs with Tim? At just that moment of awkward self-discovery, Swampy, draped over the back of the sofa, looked at me directly for the first time since I'd come in, and I could have sworn there was a hint of mocking laughter in his eyes.

Tim came in with the coffee then—in two tall, steaming mugs that seemed to have been carved out of onyx. He had removed his jacket but not his tie; his sleeves were rolled up to expose strong-boned wrists. We each sat on a straightbacked chair, separated by a small round table.

The coffee was really good, and I told him so. We sat drinking in silence for a few minutes more. I found myself wondering whether, if my best friend had been, say, Ava Fabrikant, I would be here in this strangely dreamy and morally ambiguous kind of situation with her husband Les. Hard to imagine it. What about Pauly, Sylvia's husband? Almost laughable. My reverie was broken by a query from Tim.

“What was it you asked? How I met Barbara?” I nodded.

He started to speak, but then stopped and looked over at Swampy.

“If you want to tell me,” I added.

“Why wouldn't I want to?” he chuckled.

“There was nothing very mysterious about it.” But again, he quickly stopped himself before he could begin the story. Tim put his cup down and started to remove his tie. When it was off, he folded it carefully and placed it on the table. His movements were catlike—effortless, but with a hint of violence. I never took my eyes off him.

“Know the criterion for a good chair design?” he asked, out of the blue.

“Does this have anything to do with how you met Barbara?”

“Probably. Most things have something to do with Barbara.”

“Well then, no. I don't know the criterion.”

“I mean, beyond beauty and function and durability of material. I mean the base, the real criterion.”

“No,” I repeated. “I do not know.”

“It's simple. It's this: The person who uses a chair is supposed to feel better—mentally and physically—when he or she rises from that chair than when he or she sat down in it.”

“That sounds . . .”

I saw Tim rising from his seat. He took the few steps over to my chair and then he was very close to me. “That sounds very logical,” I said. His waist was at eye level, and I could see his rib cage moving beneath his shirt.

“Alice, I need your help,” he said quietly, urgently, as he knelt in front of me.

“I will help you as much as I can, Tim.”

He kissed me on the lips then, just for a second, but long enough.

“Do you know what it is to be frightened, Alice?”

“Of course I do.”

He looked deep into my eyes. “
I'm
frightened, Alice.”

“Of what?” I was speaking in a whisper now.

He placed his hand gently on the side of my head. “Of the next moment, and the next one after that, and the one after that. I'm frightened of a world that no longer makes sense to me.”

And then his face was against my neck. He was speaking and kissing me with equal desperation. “I want to make love to you . . . in the bedroom. In the same bed where I used to make love to Barbara.”

I took his face in both my hands, suddenly feeling desperate, too. And horrible. I was seductress and seduced, and victim and onlooker, and villain and hero all at the same time—Barbara's avenger, Barbara's betrayer, Barbara's replacement.

“Come, Alice,” he said, his voice strangely grave. “Don't you want to come into our room, my love?”

It made me feel beautiful, too, the way he looked at me, as if it were absolutely right, absolutely natural, to be here with him. I knew what Barbara must have felt every time he'd touched her in this way.

“Yes,” I answered his question. And stood up, and accepted his long kiss, and took his hand, and walked with him into the room.

Chapter 10

It had been a long time since a man spent all night in my bed. Bushy was confused and unhappy, having lost his pillow. He was stalking back and forth on the floor beside the bed, his tail raised. Pancho ignored the guest altogether, dashing from one end of the apartment to the other, just like always.

The sex had been overwhelming. I felt a solid joy in the fact that Barbara had selected this man for a husband, for he was a remarkable lover.
Now
, that is—I didn't know about the past. But who cared about the callow Tim Roman? Now he was the ideal middle-aged man. Slim and tall and strong and graceful and tender and intuitive and wise. He could be father, son, and lover all wrapped into one functional package.

Tim stretched languorously and smiled at Bushy. Then he pulled me close to him.

“How long ago was it when we first made love?” he asked.

“Three days.”

“Seems much longer ago than that. Did you know what was going to happen when you came to the apartment?”

“Um-um,” I said, fudging. I was lying and not lying. How could I know now what I had expected to happen three days ago?

“I want you to know I didn't have a master plan to seduce you, Alice. I mean, I always liked you. I may have wondered what it would be like to be with you—if I weren't married—but I didn't know this would happen.”

As we lay there, together, close, Barbara had never seemed more present.

I looked into that deep greenness of his eyes, for what seemed to be the millionth time. Tim was right—it did seem like ages ago that we first made love. Never before had I felt so comfortable with a man who was essentially a stranger. And with whom I had practically nothing in common—except, of course, our love for Barbara. Was he making love to me as a surrogate Barbara? Of course. But that wasn't the problem.

The problem was me. I seemed to have lost sight of everything important. I was bouncing off all the walls—suspecting Tim, deceiving him, sleeping with him; venerating Barbara, trying to avenge her, but at the same time trying to supplant her.

The confusion and conflict must have shown on my face. I heard Tim speaking to me as if he were far away. “What are you thinking about? Alice . . . ?” he whispered.

I moved away from his touch.

“Are you starting to feel a little guilty?” he asked. “Like we're betraying her in some way?”

“Barbara's dead,” I replied softly. “You cannot betray the dead.”

His face seemed to grow paler, the morning sun highlighting the strong lines running down each side of his jaw.

But of course I didn't believe a word of what I'd just said. One
can
betray the dead—feel love and anger and hate toward them. Or guilt. One can demand justice for the dead. That was why I had pursued Tim originally. And look at what had happened: I was now “involved” with Tim, to put it mildly. The truth was that my passion for him was total. And I no longer knew what I was doing.

It was then that I saw some of the old panic coming back into Tim's face. He suddenly sat up and began a disjointed kind of monologue.

“When it happened . . . Do you remember, Alice? We heard the sound of the cars, and then we looked down and saw that terrible thing on the road, and then we looked at each other . . . and we realized that she was missing. Remember? What I felt then was so strange. It was as if Barbara were standing right beside me, but she was also down there, shattered, a heap of bones and flesh . . . dead. I was calm then. Because she took my hand. For some reason I recalled something I had read a long time ago. Some Austrian philosopher—I forget his name—said that the limits of your language are the limits of your world. That's what I was thinking as I stood there looking down. I knew I had reached the limit. Bang. The limit was like a wall. And I had hit it. And there was nothing to say. Nothing.”

He went on talking. I watched his shoulders and chest rising and falling, as he spoke about how he could no longer really speak. About how Barbara's death had taken away his capacity for meaningful language.

I was watching his face closely. And in some disembodied way, I was watching myself watch him. I tuned in and out of his speech, which barely made sense. No, I didn't know what I was doing at all. Was all this—this tumble into intense passion—really about my desire to
be
Barbara Roman? My desire to be a woman whom others loved devotedly because I was wise and gentle and compassionate and capable? Perhaps I had leaped into Tim's bed, into his life, in exactly the same way I leaped into criminal cases. Did I just want to show others the truth they couldn't see? If I could show the police they were wrong about a case because they were looking through a glass darkly, then I guess I could show Tim Roman that I was another Barbara.

I snapped back into the present when I realized he was addressing me directly now. “. . . It's been so wonderful being with you,” he was saying. “But sometimes I think you'll disappear, too. Afraid I'll touch you, and you'll break into pieces.”

“I won't,” I said. “I'm not going to break.”

He buried his face between my breasts.

I have to be careful, I thought. If I find myself needing him as much as he needs me, all my priorities will go out the window forever. Barbara's murder—if it was that—was supposed to be my first priority. I had to get to the point of looking at the affair with Tim as a gift—like finding a hundred-dollar bill in a used book.

We made love again and again. And at last we lay side by side, neither touching nor speaking for a long time.

I had dozens of things to do that day: meet a new cat-sitting client, see my agent, do laundry and the shopping, make some phone calls. But I just lay there.

“Alice . . .”

I touched him lightly on the thigh to signal that I was listening.

“I'm going to Atlanta tomorrow on business. Could you . . . go up to the apartment and look in on Swampy?”

The request seemed so jarringly out of context, so ridiculously mundane, that I began to laugh uproariously. Then I got out of bed and went about the business of the day.