Cat People (8 page)

The sight of the artists at their easels brought back Irena's enthusiasm. She took out her book, found a spot on a stone bench, and began to sketch.

Twenty minutes later Irena snapped the lead of her third pencil in frustration. She could simply not get the cathedral down the way she wanted it. The light was wrong, or she had chosen a poor angle to work from, or she plain wasn't in the mood.

She closed the sketchbook with a snap and walked over to look at the canvases other artists had lined up outside the iron fence with hopefully high price tags attached. There were too many of the familiar weeping clowns and wistful children. The last artist along the fence seemed to be the most talented, although his still lifes were strongly reminiscent of Van Gogh.

"If you like anything, make me an offer," the young artist said from close behind her. "Those prices are just for my ego."

"They're very nice," Irena began, "but I—"

She stopped short, transfixed by one painting that did not seem to belong with the others. It was a white cat, curled up and lying on a dark-blue cushion. There was a spikiness about the fur and a look of madness in the animal's eyes that made Irena shudder.

"It's not very good, is it?" the young artist said.

"It's ... different."

"The fact is, I don't do animals very well, but some people like them, and I aim to please."

Irena felt suffocated. She had to get away from the terrible painting of the cat.

"Excuse me," she said abruptly to the young artist, and left him standing in front of his paintings as she hurried away. Irena could feel him staring after her.

She walked swiftly up St. Ann Street. The buildings seemed to close in from both sides. The ring of her heels was unnaturally loud in her ears. She stopped, confused, when she found herself at the corner of Bourbon Street.

As always, the sounds of jazz spilled from open doorways as the tourists wandered along both sides of the street. The brassy music and the crowd and the profusion of garish signs made Irena feel dizzy. She looked around for someplace to sit down, and saw she was standing in front of a narrow bar called Le Whiskey. As far as she could tell, it was cool and reasonably empty inside, so she walked in.

The only other customers were a man and a woman in their forties, enthusiastically groping each other in a back booth. Irena found a barstool, and the gray-haired bartender hurried over with a welcoming smile.

"Afternoon, Miss. What can I do for you?"

"I'll have a Coke, please."

"Bourbon and Coke?"

"No, just a Coke."

"Whatever you say." The bartender scooped crushed ice into a glass and filled it with cola from a hose that came up behind the bar.

"Like a twist of lemon in that?"

"No, thank you."

The bartender sighed. He squared up a cocktail napkin on the bar and placed the glass on it. "I don't feel like I'm doing my job, just pumping Coke into a glass."

Irena smiled at him to show that his efforts were appreciated.

"Quiet today," he said, encouraged by her smile.

"Is it?" Irena had no interest in the state of his business, but it was relaxing to have someone to talk to.

"Yeah, real quiet. It'll pick up about dinnertime, though, then we'll go all night long."

"Sounds exciting."

"Gets to be routine when you've been on the street as many years as I have. Once in a while, though, something really weird happens. Last night, for instance, we had a big ruckus right up in the next block."

"Really?" Irena took a long swallow of the Coke. She was only half-listening to what the man was saying, but the sound of his voice soothed her.

"Oh, yeah, it was something. Had the police, ambulance, fire department. Regular circus."

The man was so plainly eager to talk about it that Irena could not refrain from asking, "What happened?"

"I never did get the whole story, but it seems an escaped lion or something got into a building up the street and got hold of some woman. Chewed her leg right off, is what I hear."

"A lion?" Irena felt a quickening of her interest. The fine hairs quivered at the base of her neck.

"It was some kind of a big cat. Tiger, maybe, I don't know. Whatever it was really kicked up a fuss. Had a big crowd in here after it was over, but no two people seemed to have the same story about what happened."

Irena finished her Coke and set the glass down on the bar with a thump.

"Another one?"

"No, thank you. I have to go." She gathered up her sketchbook and her tote bag and headed out the door.

"Have a nice day," the bartender said, but she was already gone.

Irena walked down Bourbon Street aimlessly for a block. She was troubled by fragments of memory and unformed thoughts that she was afraid to examine too closely. On an impulse she stopped at a pay telephone and looked up the address of the Tabernacle Mission in the book.

The mission turned out to be a barny wooden frame building on North Rampart Street. It was badly in need of painting. Irena climbed the worn wooden steps and pushed open the door. About a dozen men and two or three women were scattered throughout the rows of benches. The odor of their unwashed bodies mingled with the smell of varnish. They were shabby and defeated-looking. Up in front, standing behind a peeling altar, an earnest man with plump cheeks and a rosy complexion was telling the people how to find riches within themselves by declaring for Jesus. The listeners seemed unconvinced.

A young woman with a clean-scrubbed face came up beside Irena.

"Hello, I'm Marianne. Is there something I can help you with?"

"I wonder if Paul Gallier is here. I'm Irena Gallier, his sister."

"No, Paul hasn't been in today. We don't usually see him more than twice a week." Hastily she added, "Not that we aren't grateful for the time he does give us."

"I see." Irena cleared her throat. "Might someone have called him down here last night?"

"Called him down?"

"I mean, might there have been an emergency or something?"

The young woman smiled. "We really don't have that kind of emergency here." She glanced around at the people slouching on the varnished benches. "Mostly all we get is people who are spiritually tired. They're willing to listen to the Word in exchange for a bit of food afterward. As you can see, we don't get much of a crowd. They could do much better by applying for welfare or food stamps, but our people are the kind who don't like the government's getting involved in their lives."

"Then you haven't seen my brother, today or last night?" Irena said.

"Sorry."

Irena thanked the girl and left the mission, slipping a bill into the offering box on her way out. Suddenly she felt very tired. Rather than walk all the way to Carondelet Street to catch the St. Charles trolley home, she hailed a taxi out in front of the mission.

When she got back to the Gallier house, Paul still had not returned. Femolly had prepared a dinner of baked chicken with a flaky crust flavored with herbs. Irena ate without enthusiasm.

"Did my brother call, or anything?" she asked.

"Nope," Femolly said. "Like I told you, sometimes he's gone two, three days. You mustn't worry, he'll come back when he can."

The dark woman disappeared into the kitchen then, and did not return until Irena had finished eating. She started to clear away the dishes, but Irena stopped her with a hand on her arm.

"Femolly, did you know my mother and father?"

"I knew them, child. Worked for them right here in this house, same as I do for your brother and you. They weren't here a whole lot, but I always kept the place ready for when they came."

"What kind of people were they?" Irena asked. "I've tried and tried, but I can't really remember anything about them."

Femolly's eyes looked into the distance. "They were fine people. Special people. Your father was the handsomest man you'd ever see. He did his best to live the right kind of life. And your mother, your beautiful mother, she looked a lot like you. Oh, they were a fine couple to look at. Truly a handsome couple."

"Did they ... do you think they loved each other?"

"Oh my, yes. Those were two people as much in love as I ever saw."

"Then why did he ... I mean, how could he ... do what he did?"

Femolly looked at her accusingly. "I thought you didn't remember any of that stuff."

"I don't, really, but people have told me about how they died. I went to a library and read the stories that were in the newspaper about it at the time."

"Best you just forget all about it," Femolly said. "Stuff like that is best left buried."

Irena wanted to ask more questions, but Femolly made it clear by the way she clanked the dishes together that the discussion was over.

"You must be tired from walkin' all over town," she said, relenting a little. "Why don't you go on up to bed?"

"I am tired," Irena admitted, "but I don't think I can sleep."

"Why don't you go into the den and look at the television in there? The stuff they got on nowadays always puts me to sleep."

"I think I'll do that," Irena said.

She found the cozy room—all leather and books, with a massive old desk—just off the entrance hall. The air held a faint scent of pipe tobacco. Irena wondered if her father had relaxed in this room. It was not a room that would suit Paul.

She snapped on the small television set and waited for it to warm up. It did not much matter to her what was on, just so it would occupy a part of her mind. When the picture came into focus she settled into a deep, comfortable chair. The story on the screen had something to do with policemen in San Francisco. Irena did not even try to figure out what was going on. The clipped dialog, the multiple gunshots, and the squealing tires during the car chase had a familiar rhythm that relaxed her.

The movie ended and the late news came on. Irena dozed comfortably through the current international crises and the sports report, then snapped suddenly alert as the anchorman switched to local news.

An angry black face filled the screen. Then the camera pulled back to show the leopard sitting against the rear wall of a small cage, glaring out at the camera. The voice of a woman reporter was saying, "... the leopard was taken to the New Orleans Zoo, where it is being kept in this quarantine cage while tests are made to determine if it is diseased. So far, attempts to locate the owner have been unsuccessful."

The camera pulled back still farther to include in the picture a slim, windblown young woman standing next to the cage and talking into a ball-on-a-stick microphone.

"If no owner turns up," the reporter said, "the zoo will have to decide what to do with its new kitty cat. This is Christine Goode at the New Orleans Zoo."

Irena sat in the chair staring at the screen during the remainder of the news and a rerun of
Starsky and Hutch
without seeing any of it. Sometime after midnight she went to bed and slept fitfully, her dreams filled with cats.

In the morning Irena awoke with a light sheen of perspiration covering her body. The bedroom curtains hung limp before the open window. Outside the sky was low and gray over the city, holding the heat and moisture in like a lid on a pot.

Irena got out of bed and walked down the hall to Paul's room. Again there was no answer to her knock. Inside everything was exactly as it had been the day before. The bed was neatly made, the window open, everything precisely in its place.

She dressed and went down to breakfast, but asked no questions this morning about her brother's whereabouts. Nor did Femolly offer any information. The breakfast of buttermilk pancakes was served and eaten in silence.

"Is there a newspaper?" Irena asked as the dark woman cleared away the dishes.

Femolly shook her head. "Your brother don't hold with newspapers. Can't say as I blame him. Nothing but killings and wars and other bad news."

Irena went into the den and turned on the television set. She clicked from channel to channel, looking for a newscast, but found nothing but game shows and reruns of ancient situation-comedies. Frustrated, she snapped off the set and went back up to her room.

For an hour she poked around, arranging and rearranging the things in her drawers and the wardrobe chest. She critically studied the sketch she had begun yesterday of the St. Louis Cathedral. It still did not look right. She tore the page from the spiral-bound book, crumpled it into a ball, and dropped it into the wastebasket.

Growing more restless by the minute, she stepped through the window onto the balcony that stretched across the front of the house. She leaned on the iron railing for a while and watched the cars that moved up and down the street under the heavy old elm trees.

Finally it became impossible to stay in the house. Irena gathered up her sketchbook and tote bag and went downstairs. She found Femolly in the kitchen, sitting at the red-checkered table, doing a crossword puzzle.

"I'm going out for a while," Irena said.

Femolly's answer was a noncommittal grunt.

"Do you think I'll need a raincoat? The clouds look kind of threatening."

"Won't rain today," Femolly said, looking up briefly.

Irena hesitated for a moment. "Well, I'll see you later." She left the house with Femolly's eyes following her.

The St. Charles streetcar took her downtown, where she found a taxi and told the driver where she wanted to go.

After a few minutes the taxi rolled to a stop before a tall gate in a red brick wall. A dilapidated ticket booth stood outside the gate. Beyond the bars a few gloomy buildings of Southern Gothic architecture were visible. People strolled the grounds unhurriedly.

"Is this it?" Irena asked the driver.

"This is what you asked for, lady. The old New Orleans Zoo."

Irena fished in her bag for money to pay the fare.

"Sure you wouldn't rather see the French Quarter?" the driver said.

"I've seen the French Quarter."

"If it's a zoo you want, why not let me take you to Audubon Park? It's bigger, newer, cleaner, and there's a lot more to do there."