A Basket of Birds

by Jane Madson McCabe

for Irene

“Like a basket of birds,

Their houses are full of treachery.”

-Jeremiah 5:27a

CHAPTER ONE

My life in New York might have been different if I hadn’t moved into the studio apartment on East 88th Street. I might have a different story to tell now, a different cast of characters. I use the tentative “might” rather than the definite “would” because, as I ask myself, wouldn’t I still have gone to the same places and met the same people? I still would have gone to Henrietta’s poetry readings, where I met Saul and Mark, and through Mark, Cat and David.

            Just how inexorable is our fate? It may be a mixture of coincidence and the invisible threads of our desires pulling us toward unavoidable collisions with one another.

            I’m in a quandary now—the mysterious events have taken place have spun my head and shaken me to the core. If I tell you my story with truth as my guide, perhaps I can fit a few more of the pieces of the puzzle together.

            They, the omniscient they who like to spout psychological truisms, say you can’t run away. Since where you go you take yourself along (and whatever character weaknesses you have, all that is ill-resolved within you), if you du run away, sooner or later you will have recreated situations that smack of those you left behind. They imply you might as well save yourself the airfare, stay put, and work things out.

            Though there is truth in this, there is also an arrogance that discounts the effect of the stage upon the actor and the changes it produces in him. Surely, there is no more violent and leviathan a stage than New York City, where everything imaginable proliferates and comes in exaggerated proportions, where the struggle for survival is at is zenith, requiring craft and guile, and the competition to “make it” elicits the best, but also the worst, in one. Therefore, one’s flaws will be more accentuated than they might be in a less challenging environment.

            Applying Darwinism to urban blight, after three years here I compared New Yorkers to the hearty cockroaches that overrun the city, who, undaunted by filth and grime, go about their business, indefatigable and confident, having already survived for eons in their own indestructibility. I could say New York had stiffened my spine and forced me to drop my pampered California sensibility, but I wasn’t sure I liked all the mutations it had produced in my character.

****

            In this story I call myself Anna. The name appeals to me for its absolute symmetry, like ABBA, or like Blake’s tiger “burning bright/in the forest of the night.” I chose the name before I remembered it was the name of my father’s mother, and following, that remembered it was also the first of my mother’s two middle names. Only after I picked it did I realize the name has a lineage in my family. No nicknames had I from my previous life from which to choose; unlike Cat, I had only one name.

When our story opens, Anna, a dark-haired woman in her late thirties, has left the West where she had lived her entire life and has emigrated to New York City. She has forsaken the wide-open spaces of her native Montana and the leisurely pace of laid-back California for the bright lights of the greatest city on earth. The year is 1981, the month, October. Anna is an artist, first a painter, now a writer. Like so many before her, she has bought into our American mythology that proclaims the artist must fulfill her destiny by completing her hajji to Mecca . . .

            Based on this implicit faith that the artist must have in himself (otherwise, he would not be able to turn himself into an anchorite, endure poverty, isolation and obscurity for Art’s sake) and on the conviction, that here, in the hubbub of Western civilization, my talent would be recognized (and in no time at all would I be feted and seated next to Norman Mailer at celebrity events), I had packed my bags and come. Months later, when I was complaining about the rigors of real life here, Saul spat out these words: “You think you’re so special. Well, I’ve got news for you, babe! Ten thousand just like you come in on the boat every day. New York likes to eat the likes of you for lunch and spit out the bones.” By then, I was sufficiently disillusioned to appreciate the accuracy of his dictate.

****

            In the fall of 1981, I arrived during the mild, golden days of mid-October New York laped along, wearing the burnished tones of sienna. I had left a cabin in the California Redwoods, where, in a fit of exasperation I had burned the last half of my Montana novel, feeding it page by page into the fire. I hated the darkness of the woods, hated the damp and musty smells of the cabin (which friends had graciously lent me), hated the knowledge that nothing happened unless I instigated it, and feared, should I stay throughout the winter, I might be mad by spring. Ready or not, I might as well get on with it and move to the place where I wanted to be. It was fear that had held me back thus far, but now feared a winter spent in that dark cabin more than one spent in New York City. And, since I also fared moving once the weather turned cold, I hastened to pack my bags, said my goodbyes to friends and relatives, who had grown accustomed to the dramatic leaps demanded by my wild ambition, and came—like a moth which is drawn to a beckoning light, though it might mean its extinction.

            Having steadily diminished the coffers of my small inheritance, I came while I could still afford to do so, knowing but two people here, Mary, a therapist who practiced Zazen, and Tom, a painter I had once slept with. Mary reserved a room for me in a hotel overlooking the Museum of Natural History. As I waited in the lobby of that hotel for the desk clerk to check my reservation, I noted my tidy appearance in a full-length mirror and smiled, modestly but triumphantly. Wearing my dark wool coat, hat and gloves, had I an umbrella, I would have looked like Mary Poppins, ready to levitate at a moment’s notice. The Fact that the clerk, a kindly Swiss gentleman, eyes me, my baggage, and kitty carrier—containing my beloved cat Alice—with such a bemused expression, confirmed that he too saw me as the European nanny type. When he informed me that since it was available the management had given me a suite for the same price as a room, I took this to be a sign of my special welcome.

            However, I laughed when I saw my suite’s bare furniture, cheap fixtures, and cockroaches scuttling across the tiles of the bathroom. “Ick! Cockroaches!” I shouted to Alice, who was examining her surroundings with proper skepticism. I swooped her into my arms and literally jumped for joy.

            “We did it, Alice. We did it. We got ourselves here. We’re in New York!”

            If I had been given a bench in Central Park that night, I still would have been happy.

            Nor did I mind that our windows faced a well to an apartment house rather than onto the museum an Central Park beyond it. Tomorrow I would see all that. What mattered was that we were here. As I held my less-than-thrilled cat, my attention became fixed on a well-lighted apartment directly across from us. A birthday cake with candles had been placed on the table next to the window. A woman crisscrossed the room to welcome guests. I could hear their happy banter and wished desperately they would invite me over so I could the that I had arrived. They would no doubt find me scintillating and welcome me into their circle. What friends would I make? Surely I would attend parties like this and grander yet. An entirely unknown future awaited me. Sure that I would success, I found this question deliciously intoxicating.

            By my measure, I found the cost of my suite exorbitant. Thus, my first task the next day was to secure an apartment. In the New York Times, I scanned the for-rent ads and called an agent on 34th Street. Since I didn’t know the city, but Mary lived on the Upper East Side, I told him that’s where I wanted an apartment. The first place that met my two requirements I took, light and a modicum of charm. I paid my fees and was aghast that it had cost me over $2,000 to move into an empty one-room studio.

            From my windows I looked across the street, where a gray stone church of American Goth architecture stood on the corner. A survival tactic wherever I went was to join a Lutheran church to put me in contact with a familiar community—a common practice among immigrants. When I walked over to read its sign, I saw the church was Lutheran and considered it a lucky portent: I had done the right thing in coming to New York. God was endorsing the project. Under His Wing I would be sheltered.

            For people in unfamiliar surroundings, it is human tendency to interpret coincidence as fate. I indulged this and other fantasies when I arrived. When I attended the worship service on Sunday morning, so comforted was I by the interior of the church, I took it as further indication that I had chosen the right path. In a dark sanctuary of late-German, romantic architecture, I found red carpets, mahogany pews and paneling, stained glass windows (though replacement of the originals, still tastefully in keeping with the style of the church). Behind the reredos, stood an elevated carved statue of Christ in flowing robe, skirted on the one side but a horn-studded Moses, and on the other by John the Evangelist with eagle and scroll. The hands of Jesus were extended in welcome—was he welcoming Anna Rassmussen to New York?

            This house of worship, with its dark, elaborately carved, wooden statues, called to mind the inchoate passion of the German personality, as expressed in its art. I recognized the same passion within myself, which I had inherited from my mother’s family. They, Germans, who had immigrated to the states before the turn of the century and eventually settled in North Dakota, where they farmed the land, were a volatile, lusty clan, so give to fierce bickering and crises, as well as tender emotionalism, they might as well have been Italians. From my father’s people, Norwegians, who had also settled as farmers in North Dakota, I had inherited a more rational and logical sensibility, angry moralism, laconism and the stoical tendency to ensure suffering without complaint. The two ethnicities were not wholly reconciled within me. Thought I dearly loved the hearty zest of my mother’s family, savored their colorful antics and them to be more accessible than my father’s people, wisely, in my youth I promulgated my Norwegian origins before my German. Years later, when I became aware in bits and pieces of the atrocities perpetrated on the Jews by the Nazis, in the very days when I had worn ribbons in my hair and peered into the faces of pansies in my mother’s garden, I had cause to ponder the conflict between Reason and Romanticism that surges through their Faustian breasts. Unwittingly, I plunked myself down in Yorktown, the German sector of New York City, and now this lovely church would be mine.

            Considering what was to be my lot for the next three years, I have cause to think I was sorely deceiving myself with my tendency to interpret these things as nearly pre-ordained. For once I had begun my search for work in New York, I felt bereft of any special assistance from the Almighty. My expectation was, given my extensive education and skills, that by exerting a reasonable effort, in a relatively short period of time, I would be offered an excellent position (part-time, of course, so I would still have time to write) for which I would be handsomely compensated. I couldn’t afford to live off my inheritance much longer, especially in this expensive city. That was when I learned what was meant when they said New York is hard—hard as the granite that undergirds Manhattan, hard as all the steel used to construct its skyscrapers. That was when I learned the true nature of capitalism with its tendency to exploit workers to fill the coffers of the wealthy.

            My struggle to attain a foothold made me feel as though I were attempting to scale a perpendicular surface without scaffolding. Understanding how things work and don’t work in this baffling colossus took some doing. Even worse were the accommodations it demanded from me: to become persistently aggressive, to no longer see all the offensive offal in the streets and subways, to develop a thick enough carapace to be undaunted by daily insults, humiliations, and rip-offs.

            I was my own worst enemy, given as I was to vocal crusades against injustice, my tendency to withdraw and sulk when met with rejection, and my enormous Pride.

            I will not here bore the reader with an endless recanting of all the merry-goose chases I went on in what became an increasingly frantic search for work and the desperate hysteria produced in me, when six months later, I was still without a job. I will recall one sequence of events to show the alteration it produced in my faith.

            First, let me explain that through I write a good deal, I am not a good typist. Whether from a kind of absent mindedness or a form of dyslexia, when I type I make all kinds of unconscious errors, word omissions and substitutions. It’s a condition, like stuttering, over which I seem to have little control, and it was one that had become enormously frustrating to me. For, though I could scarcely believe it, I had been reduced to seeking employment as a typist and was regularly flunking the typing tests at New York’s many, insidiously sterile employment agencies, where one counselor after another wished me well and sent me on my way. I was horrified that with all the native intelligence I prided myself in having, I could not break through the first barrier—that of typing fifty words a minute with less than five errors.

            By springtime, I still didn’t have a job. I was in love with the city, but the beauty of my first spring of New York, stretching and fluttering its wings like a chick in a birdbath, was all the more cruel because I wanted to stay but eared that I couldn’t should my condition persist much longer. I had been driven into a state of being whereby I envied busboys and street vendors for possessing some coping ability I apparently lacked.

            While I was falling even deeper into depression, a kindly counselor became sympathetic, discounted some of my errors, and sent me to a law firm on Wall Street. But having gotten through one door only meant that I was stopped at the next. Soon I was seated before yet another typewriter, flanked with a timer. A legal manuscript was placed before me while an officious head secretary requested that I take this little test, a formality, of course. I was exhausted from all the effort I had expended to get this far. My fingers stuck to the keys at words which had grown unintelligible. Ten minutes later, I was shown the door. So great was my dejection on that fragrant afternoon that I seriously contemplated making The Daily News by walking to the Brooklyn Bridge and jumping from it.

The next day I was sure my salvation was at hand. At last the Lord had taken pity on me and would help me get situated. At yet another employment agency, another compassionate counselor had come to my aid. This greasy middle-aged man, who wore an ill-fitting black toupee, said he had a friend, a woman who was in charge of fund raising for the Saint Thomas Boy’s School. She was looking for an assistant. The job required word processing, but he was sure I could pick it up. Sit right there. He would give her a call. As I sat calculating, since obviously wasn’t cut out for the harsh pace with which New Yorkers goad themselves, surely if I worked for a church school, the attitude would be more relaxed. As I gazed at my benefactor with a look of pure gratitude. As it was Friday, my interview was set up for the following Monday. I thanked him and left in a state of elation. With a light step restored, I walked up Fifth Avenue and over to Columbus Circle where I sat down on a bench to take in the air of the mild evening and watch New Yorkers stroll about in their rites-of-spring costumes.

At coffee hour following the service that Sunday, though I couldn’t tell the few kind souls who inquired weekly whether I had found a job that I actually had one, I could at least say that tomorrow I was being interviewed for a job I thought I would get.

Imagine my disillusionment when the next day while sitting in the reception room of the office of the fund raiser, in through the door came one of those supercilious little women with, as her tidy appearance indicated, a mind like a file cabinet. So instantaneous was my dislike for her that I felt a certain relief when she told me, in rat-a-tat fashion, what a busy shop she ran and how hard they all worked to achieve their quotes. She gazed at my resumé and said, “I see you’re a writer.”

Yes,” I replied, hope rekindled.

That did it. Her last assistant had been a musician, and she was leaving to have more time to devote to music. My interrogator wasn’t interested in hiring any more artists, whose minds would be on other things. So sure was I that the Lord had taken pity on me that I was dumbfounded. After humiliating myself to the point of assuring this implacable bitch I could learn their computer operations in no time, I stopped short, coolly thanked her for her time, and hurried out the door.

My faith had been rendered a mighty blow, but rather than give up the rock to which I was clinging, I accommodated my theology accordingly. Apparently, God wasn’t going to help me find a job. Maybe it was out of his domain to do so. What about all the others who were out of work and down on their luck? Was He supposed to make concessions for me but not for them? The realization that I could come to New York and go down the drain without anyone caring and without the Lord doing anything to stop it was a bitter pill to swallow. He had let six million Jews be exterminated without lifting a finger. Wasn’t it foolish of me to think He would order his universe to make an exception for me?

Seeing how I had set myself up for this disappointment with my fanciful thinking made it no easier to bear. With some sarcasm, I told the Lord that His church was as badly infected with money mania as the rest of the culture. Shortly after that, I took the bull by the horns, enrolled in a word processing class, and in so doing, got a start of sorts.

****

On those first Sunday afternoons in New York and for many succeeding ones, I pored over the New York Times, paying special heed to the help-wanted ads, often baffled over their many overlapping categories, much less being able to read all the repetitive small print, half of which I had learned was misleading. Anguishing over jobs I was sure I would do splendidly but for which I lacked some one or another qualification, I fought the impulse to chuck the section into the wastepaper basket. Indeed, it took several months before I had learned in ten minutes to check the sections of jobs for which I stood some chance of being hired.

In spite of my distaste for its dizzy format, I had also taken to buying The Village Voice, mostly because it contained a page called “Cheap Thrills” that advertised inexpensive events I could attend. For several weeks, I had circled a Sunday evening poetry reading on Barrow Street that advertised an open reading and names of the night’s featured readers. Though I wrote mainly prose, I had read some poems at poetry readings in California, and from doing so had met some people to whom I could relate. Surely the same would be true in New York . . . if I would just go! By nightfall, however, I was usually so comfortably embedded in my niche that I lacked the impetus to venture out into the ominous night when I still had little idea of the kind of neighborhood I might be entering. On the Sunday before thanksgiving I became annoyed with myself. Though it was raining, I determined that tonight I would go. Studying my street and subway maps, I figured out how to get there.

As it turned out, Barrow Street was a charming street in the West Village, a street made all the more endearing because it had a crook in it. Sixty-Six Barrow was located just after the turn in the road. Once inside, the ambiance changed. The walls were cracked, the stairways caked with grime, and stale, rancid odors stifled my breath. Five-H was four flights up. I climbed and knocked.

The door was opened by a fairy-godmother-like older woman with red hair and an absent-minded style of charm. She made me feel at home and told me to sign in if I wanted to read. I soon learned that she was Henrietta. Her manner was deceiving. She was in face a shrewd old lady and one of the Village’s most respected poets.

I felt as though I was in Alice in Wonderland and had fallen through the rabbit’s hole. Henrietta’s two rooms were painted an astonishingly bold turquoise. Several crude paintings were hung skew on the walls. The shelves and mantle were strewn with an odd assortment of children’s futurist toys—a miniature Darth Vader and other creatures from science fiction movies—and broken knickknacks. The tiny rooms were lined with chairs and couches over which madras bedspreads had been draped, and on every seat in the apartment sat a poet.

They were as unsightly a group of people as one could hope to find. Some were dirty, some misshapen, some disheveled, some had the oily look that marks an alcoholic’s complexion, and same, the glassy stare of those on drugs. Few looked as though they had attained a modicum of success in life. Later, I learned that Henrietta’s was a haven for the poor poets—residents of halfway houses, SROs, and housing shelters, people on welfare—all sharing a common love of poetry.

Room was made for me on one of the poet-ridden couches, and I squeezed in. for the next two hours, I listened to some of the worst verse I had ever heard, stuff that was embarrassingly crude or simple, and to server poems that were very good. When my turn to read came, I read two pieces about my family, “Aunt Violet” and “Another Episode in the Continuing Family Feud.” I was gratified that they were well received. When the reading ended, Henrietta offered me a feature reading for the following month, and her time keeper (for readers could read only for an allotted amount of time), a pale, bearded man, obviously Jewish, invited me to join him and some others for coffee at a nearby restaurant.

That night I was happy. My word had been accepted. I had been given a feature, and now everyone at the table, motley crew though they were, seemed eager to talk to me. The man who had invited me had maneuvered himself so that he was sitting directly opposite me. As the conversation momentarily wanted, he flipped open his coat and proudly showed me his badge. He weas gainfully employed by the city as a probation officer. This was Saul. Aren’t you cute, I thought.

By January, Saul and I had become lovers. Of his own volition he had begun attending church with me, and I had become a regular at Henrietta’s. I was overjoyed. In a relatively short time I had found a lover in New York and enjoyed an abundance of new friends among the poor poets. My biggest worry was my lack of employment. Since I was having trouble with this, I could cut down on my expenses by finding a cheaper place in which to live. Through a friend I was introduced to a young man whose lover was returning to the Mid-West and who wanted to share his flat in Brooklyn. In March of my first year in New York, I moved to Brooklyn.

Before I came to New York, everything I read about it possessed a certain magic, but my favorite was William Styron’s Sophie’s Choice. How I had savored Stingo account of leaving his forty-dollar-a-week job as a manuscript reader for McGraw Hill (where he had the notable distinction of rejecting Kon Tiki!) and moving to Brooklyn, where he encountered Sophie and Nathan, her mad lover, and became, for a time, inextricably bound up in their lives. I had not dared hope that I, too, following in Stingo’s steps, would move to a house in the same section of Brooklyn. Given my tendency to interpret coincidence as fate, (though I enjoyed the parallel), it is surprising that I didn’t try to make more if it than I did. Little did I know then that I would meet my own versions of Sophie and Nathan, and, like Stingo before me, would become bound up in their lives.

CHAPTER TWO

“In those days, cheap apartments were almost impossible to find in Manhattan, and so I had to move to Brooklyn.” To be sure, I compared myself to Stingo, when, nearly forty years later, I did as he did and for the same reason. While Stingo moved into a room in Yetta Zimmerman’s ubiquitous pink rooming house somewhere in the Church Avenue area near Prospect Park, I moved into the uppermost flat of a shabby brownstone about a mile away in a neighborhood called Prospect Heights.

            In my days, rents in Manhattan had so sky-rocketed that, unless one had lived for years in a rent-controlled building or made an excellent salary, he could little afford to live to live in Manhattan. There was no shortage of apartments, as the astronomical rents would have one believe; rather, thousands of apartments stood empty, marked for gentrification and the onslaught of co-opting. In my day, landlords and real estate speculators were forcing the poor out, and along with them, artists of slender means, into the outer boroughs. Manhattan was losing its creative center. For one such as me, who wished to live in places during times when artists lived in community and spurred one another to greater artistic heights—Paris in the 1880s after Zola had published L’Assommoir and Nana, when the Impressionists hailed Manet as their leader; or Paris again in the Twenties when Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas held court, when Satie crossed town with his possessions loaded in a wheelbarrow, and Picasso spit nails if Braque did a good painting; or New York during the Fifteens when the poets congregated around the vituperative Delmore Schwartz, and the painters—Pollack, Rauschenberg, Frankenthaler and Motherwell—feted and gossiped. For me, who had come to New York as much for a way of life I hoped to live as well as to make my mark, it would seem I had come to late. In the early Eighties, the artistic capital of the Western world had peaked and was crumbling into banality and commercialism, and its creative force was being pushed out like the pistil of a flower being forced into its petals. The only communities of artists I was to find were the struggling poets who frequented Henrietta’s and later a Brooklyn writers’ group—tawdry remnants of grander eras

            What a greenhorn I was when I arrived. When I moved into the one-room studio on East 88th Street, the manager of the building, a sharp-nosed little woman, was very accommodating. When she was trying to get my money and I protested that the rent was more than I could afford, she said, “I’ll speak to Mr. Cohen—maybe we can lower it for you.” No kidding—she really said that. So, like a good mid-Westerner who rests on the promised of others, each month when my rent envelope was slid under my door with the sum due neatly written in the corner, I waited for my landlord, out of the goodness of his heart, to have lowered my rent. The aggressive belligerence of seasoned New Yorkers was distasteful to me, as I felt it lacked propriety. I was of too genteel a nature to confront her concerning her promise, but, after three months had passed and it was evident they had not intention of lowering my rent—at least, not if I didn’t speak to them about it—one day I put on my coat and hat and strode down to Mr. Cohen’s office. I sat and waited for Mrs. Stein, his manager, to see me. Mr. Cohen himself was far too busy to listen to any of his tenants with complaints. After ten minutes, Mrs. Stein invited me into her office.

            I had gotten no further than, “When I moved in, you mentioned you would speak to Mr. Cohen about lowering my rent, and, you see, since I haven’t found a job yet. . .” when she cut me off, saying, “My dear! I don’t know what you could be thinking. I never said anything of the kind.”

            There I sat; my face flushed. Not only was my plea being denied, I was in effect being called a liar. In the mid-West, we do not take this kind of thing sitting down, so I stood up.

            “In that case,” I said, fumbling back for my coat, “I’ll be moving at the end of the month.”

            “I have to have official notice,” she countered.”

            “This is my official notice.”

            “I have to have it in writing.”

            “Fine. You’ll have it under your door by 3 p.m. today.”

            I walked home, my monumental Pride intact, but horrified by the thought of now, where on God’s gray earth was, I going to move? Today was the first of February.

            For the next few weeks, I was agitated. Saul was characteristically less than helpful.

            “I don’t know what you’re going to do, babe. Places har hard to find, especially in Manhattan. You shouldn’t have given notice until you had something else.”

            “After she called me a liar, what else could I do?”

            Sadly, he shook his head. In hindsight, it’s easier to see that part of our conflict was due to our having been raised in different environments. To Saul, a born and bred New Yorker, who didn’t feel comfortable anywhere else and who calculated his moves, my brand of mid-Western slam-dash, “I-wont-take-this!” only alarmed him.

            My plan was that if the first of March and I lacked another alternative, I would move into the Chelsea Hotel, where I could rub elbows with the spirits of Dylan Thomas, Thomas Wolfe, and a host of other literary greats.

            As luck would have it, by mid-February my painter friend Tom (whom I had looked up shortly after my arrival and who had befriended me) called to say that he had spoken to a man at his Sufi zicker who was leaving New York. Tom had the sense to ask him if he was giving up an apartment. As a matter of fact, his lover was looking for a roommate. The rent was an unbelievable $200 a month.

            Growing frightened watching my bank balance steadily diminish with no replenishment coming in, I grabbed the opportunity. Two hundred dollars a month rent would be a lifesaver. Immediately, I called the number Tom gave me. A man answered. Tom hadn’t told me that his friend was gay, but I had no objection. Men make easier roommates than women, I thought. Politely I inquired whether John was looking for a roommate. Yes, he said in measured tones. Half of his flat would be available as of March 1st. Yes, I could come over and see it. The more we talked, the more he seemed to warm to the possibility of sharing with me. By the time I hung up, he invited me to come for lunch on Friday.

            John promised to meet me at the Grand Army Plaza stop on the IRT subway. From Manhattanites, I had picked up the snobbery that there was little of consequence in the outer boroughs, so, on that Friday, when I emerged from the subway and feasted my eyes on the magnificent Soldiers’ and Sailors’ arch with its verdigris quadriga, I thought this was a corner of Brooklyn that could compete with the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. Later I learned there were closer subway stops to John’s house, but he chose to impress me with the grandeur of Brooklyn before I saw its seedier aspects.

            As John approached me and we shook hands, I saw my roommate-to-be was a tall, aesthetic-looking young man whose shyness caused his smile to tilt askew on his narrow face. I was reminded of Rita Thishingham and her gay roommate in A Taste of Honey. As I chatted eagerly, he briskly steered me along the picturesque route to the brownstone which was to become my home.

            “But where,” I asked, looking around, “is Flatbush Avenue?”

            Before I had come I had studied a Brooklyn map and saw that John’s street cut across Flatbush Avenue, and his house was less than half a block from it. How the name had appealed to me when I read Styron’s description of it. Like Grain Belt beer, a beer they used to sell in the Plains states, and Two-Dot, Montana, it was a marvel of no-frills simplicity. I imagined Flatbush had been named for the low-lying scrub-brush that once covered the southern face of Brooklyn as it sloped gently to Jamaica Bay, the Rockaways, and beyond that, to the Atlantic Ocean. I saw that Flatbush Avenue ran neither north-south nor east-west (as any respectable street should) but rather cut a diagonal swath running north-west from the bay to Manhattan. I could picture farmers in their horse-drawn wagons carrying the vegetables up to Flatbush to market . . .

            “It’s over there,” John replied, pointing towards the corner where cars surged across the street. “You’ll see it on our way back.”

            The brownstone we stood before had seen better days. John said the row of them was being restored and the apartments would then be co-opted. The tenants in his building had taken action against the landlord, had won several court battles, and thus a reprieve, but it was only a matter of time before they would be squeezed out.

            “I hope it won’t be too soon,” I said.

            “No,” he answered. “It will take several years before he gets around to this building.”

            As we entered the building and climbed the rickety stairway, I held my breath to keep from smelling the fetid odor of cat urine which was strong enough to make me gag. I soon learned that the house was comprised of a rainbow coalition of people—all cat lovers—and, as such, was a cat haven for both the homed and the homeless. We encountered our first resident feline on the second-floor landing, a dirty yellow cat whose long hair was matted beyond redemption. The sight of him filled me with antipathy towards whoever his owner was, towards anyone who could let a creature exist in such a wretched condition.

            The stairs had several broken boards and was precarious. From the accumulation of hair and dust-balls, It would seem that no one had bothered to sweep them for years. I hoped one of my especially fastidious relatives would deign to pay me a visit while I lived here. Already I was sure that I would live here. I just hoped John’s flat would be an improvement over this dismal stairway.

            The layout of the flat, that of a barbell, made it an excellent apartment for sharing—an ample-sized living room and small bedroom on each end, separated by a narrow kitchen, while the bathroom, as thought an afterthought, was stuck out in the hallway. The single entrance to the apartment opened into the front living room. Since John wanted to rent out the front rooms, this might pose a small problem, but I was in no position to quibble.

            The large room where we now stood was empty, save for a large oak desk in one corner and a table against one wall, set for lunch, replete with mauve candles and a bouquet of white chrysanthemums. A huge plant hung from the front window sash. I liked the room’s high ceiling and ample space but had little time to study it as John whisked me through the kitchen, which was littered with the pots and pans he had dirtied with luncheon preparations, and into his living room. It was overcrowded with makeshift furniture. Outrageously healthy plants shouted his tender solicitude. Paintings of unicorns, peacocks, and phoenixes hung on the walls. Several cats lounged demurely on the couch. John introduced the sweet-faced yellow tomcat as “Sunshine, which, as I got to know him, I changed to “Old Yeller” because of his range riding habits. Bisset, a sleek black female, dived for cover as soon as she saw me, and I didn’t see her again until several days after I had moved in. then there was the small Siamese who was so bloated from pregnancy that it hurt to look at her.

            “Don’t worry,” John told me. “That’s Beatrice. She’s Harold’s. I’m insisting that he take her when he leaves.”

            To this menagerie I would be adding my dour Alice. I was glad to hear Beatrice would be leaving, but would she leave all in one piece?

            As John served tea and were discussing our potential arrangement, in bounced a woman with frizzy black hair. She reminded me of an aging Gibson girl. John introduced her as Marcie, his neighbor from across the street. She had come to apprise her confidant of her recent trials with men. Thought initially annoyed by her intrusion, soon I too was laughing at her waggish descriptions she, the model of upright femininity, was subjected to at the hands of nefarious and befuddled men. The mood changed to one of camaraderie, and John invited her to stay for lunch.

            Lunch was served in “my” living room. John proudly carried his platters of baked fish and primavera vegetables to the table with the elegance of a polished waiter. As we ate, I let them, good friends that they were, do most of the talking while I studied the room. All it needed was a coat of paint. My instinct told me that John and I would be able to cohabit with an absence of the histrionics Elizabeth Harwick had with her homosexual roommate in Sleepless Nights.

            When lunch was over, Marcie hurried home to see whether so-and-so had called. John, mature beyond his years, turned to me and asked, “Well, what do you think?”

            Without hesitation I said, “I think it’s fine. I want to take it. I think it will work out well for both of us, but before I move in, I would like to give these rooms a coat of paint.”

            John seemed pleased. Gallantly he offered to help me. To solidify our deal, we shook hands. Then he escorted me back to the subway stop along a different route than we had come. As we stood on the corner waiting to cross Flatbush Avenue, I saw it had neither grace nor beauty. It was too narrow for its present volume of traffic, and angry motorists fought their way down it as along the teeth of a giant zipper. In the future, whenever I waited for the light to change to cross, I would stand back a couple of feet from the curb lest an impudent car jump its borders and cream me. Thought Flatbush Avenue was being restored—new stores along it were opening—it nevertheless retained the sleazy appearance of an urban thoroughfare.

            During the last week of February, John and I painted my side of the apartment. Of Stingo and Yetta Zimmerman’s rooming house I was not thinking when I chose the color, a pale salmon. I just thought it would give the rooms a warm glow. John labored to give the tin ceiling a coat of glistening white enamel, and together we sanded the parquet floors and gave them several coats of verathane. These things accomplished, on the first of March, with the help of Saul and some of his friends, I moved to Brooklyn.

            In the corner of the living room the oak desk remained. It belonged to Marcie, but since she didn’t have room for it in her apartment, she said I could use it. In my window, John left his splendid hanging begonia. Despite the ups and downs that beset me in the three years I lived here, it continuously bloomed delicate pink flowers.

            In Castaneda’s first book about Don Juan, the Yaqui shaman asks him to find his place on the porch of his house in the Sonora desert. Castaneda rolls around until he finally locates the exact place that is right for him in this environment. I liked the idea of it. For the next three years, during which time the strange events which I am about to relate took place, my place was sitting on my swivel chair in front of the massive oak desk, beneath the ever-flowering peach begonia in the light-filled, lox-colored room, in a brownstone off Flatbush in Brooklyn.

****

So that’s how our gal Sunday came to walk in the kingdom of the Jews in Brooklyn. “Was there ever such an unlikely place as Brooklyn?”—lowly stepsister to towering Manhattan, sloughing-off place for wave after wave of poor immigrants. Brooklyn—a fist, a plebeian, meat-and-potato, like-it-or-lump-it kind of place. She had resisted the homogenization that had swept the nation, had defied the hot-tub milieu of laid-back California, the shopping-mall way of life of suburbia, and had steadfastly refused to enter the modern age of plasticine and muzak. To be sure, some modernization had seeped in. yet into many a neighborhood that I might walk, be it Italian, Jewish, Russian, or Caribbean, I found myself only a step away from the old countries which had spawned themselves there. This was soothing to a ragged cowgirl who had come through the mind-boggling Sixties and confused Seventies partially shellshocked. Rather than embrace any more advances of civilization, which seemed to be rushing pell-mell to the brink of disaster, I wanted to retreat into the past, where, as I imagine them, times were sweeter. The cacophony of the tongues spoken in Brooklyn from the unintelligible Brooklynese of a native cabbie to the singsong Yiddish of the Ashkenazi Jews to the melodic Patois of the recently arrived Haitians, was music to my ears. Riding the subway, I enjoyed watching a pale-faced Hasid, wearing a black coat and black felt hat, allowing his eyes to cautiously wander from the page of well-worn Hebrew text; soft-eyes Black women with their children who stared without abatement; hearty Russians, dressed in clothes twenty years behind the times; and teenage lovers in amorous positions jauntily displaying whatever fashion was current in the world of punk. I could walk into cramped grocery stores and delis and buy knishes, falafel or Jamaican meat pies, or stroll along Brighton Beach boardwalk, watching the retired Jewish folks, sitting on benches and clucking away like a flock of pigeons. Brooklyn was a place after my own heart, and it was her multi-ethnic character that drew me to her.

            Nostalgia hadn’t been slain in Brooklyn. Even then, you could ask any native past a certain age what the saddest day of his life was, and he’d tell you it was the day they tore down Ebbets Field and the Dodgers left Brooklyn.

            As far as scenery goes, other than Prospect Park, Brighton Beach, and Sheepshead Bay, there is little to commend it. Brooklyn is a fat, misshapen pancake of ocean marshlands to the southeast of Manhattan. The clouds float over it in a low cover. Considering how flat it seemed to me, who was raised near the Rocky Mountains and who had lived in San Francisco, I thought the city fathers audacious for having named parts of it Cobble Hill and Park Slope. A standard joke between Saul and me was when we were walking up what he would call a hill, but I would call a slight incline, was, “You call this a hill?”

            I came to the conclusion that nothing was straight in Brooklyn. There was hardly a street that didn’t have bumps and crooks in it or a cul-de-sac when you least expected it. Whereas one can grasp the general layout of pencil-shaped Manhattan in a glance, one can spend years living in Brooklyn and not know all its sections, nor how to get from one part of it to another. I would never come to terms with its zigzagging street pattern where few streets run on a true north-south grid, as though the city fathers had opted for a children’s pencil maze for its design.

            I have been told that after the Indians were driven out of Brooklyn, it was homesteaded by Dutch and British farmers, who simply plopped themselves down wherever they pleased, and that when it came time to pave the streets, rather than to think of the comfort and efficiency of future generations, they simply went around whatever stood in the way.

            To make matters worse for one raised in the West where having a sense of direction is as endemic as learning one’s ABCs, Brooklyn’s layout was so disorienting that most of the time I didn’t know what direction I faced. To this day when I’m facing north and south saying, “north, north, north,” I am still convinced that I am facing south. Oh well, if I had wanted to live somewhere where the streets are perfectly orderly, I could have moved to Salt Lake City.

            Brooklyn, like few other places I have known, possesses a certain magic, which is reflected in the bounty of artists it has generated, a virtual caldron of talent boiling up from its black soil: Walt Whitman, Henry Miller, Betty Smith, Barbara Streisand, Neil Simon, Woody Allen, and Pete Hamill, to name a few—all had their start in Brooklyn. And, since no artist emerges fully-grown, like Venus on the shell of Neptune, one might ask what is there about Brooklyn that has caused this flowering? The soil must be rich in Brooklyn.

            I found myself living in Brooklyn in the early Eighties when this story took place. As predicted, my home-life with John and the cats was harmonious. Later, after my dear Alice died and I buried her in our backyard, Marcie gave me her old, female mutt, Duchess, the gentlest dog I have ever known. It was a good thing we all got along because during the next three years, almost to the day, while I lived on Prospect Place, I saw a network of friends form, thrive, then fall apart due to the various forces at work in us.

            I was going with Saul for the first half of this period of time. Since he liked to stay overnight with me, I had to tell him that for the sake of peace of my home, thus my security, he could stay over two, at the very most, three, nights a week. I knew enough then to know the peace I needed most was preserve was my peace with John.

            John wasn’t someone who formed attachments easily. After Harold left, he had infrequent lovers to console him in his loneliness. As it was, he had to endure the sounds of Saul and me making love in the morning as he padded his way through my living room and out into the hall to go to the bathroom. It probably didn’t help to hear us panting away, obviously having a wonderful time. Often before John was through with his ablutions, Saul insisted he had to urinate, so I kept a mayonnaise jar in my bedroom closet, which I would retrieve so he could relieve himself. Later, I emptied it and rinsed it out for the next occasion when it would be needed.

            Saul disliked John because he was gay. Once when he was trying to be conciliatory, he slapped John on the shoulder and said, “You’re a credit to your race,” a remark for which I could have killed him. John in turn evinced little use for Saul, thought he was obnoxious, but for my sake and the sake of my $200 a month, he endured him.

            Then I was happy, pleased with my pleasant yet inexpensive home, delighted with Saul as my lover, and content with my bevy of new friends.

            The stability of my home life I attributed to the fact that John and I were of similar temperaments. Both of us were loners who required solitude to pursue artistic endeavors. Neither could have survived the constant clamoring of wall-to-wall people.

            John’s hobbies were numerous. He had a flare for decoration. He was a virtual magician with plants. Though unschooled, the paintings he did of unicorns and phoenixes were good. He made a mess of the kitchen when he cooked, but he was a fair chef. However, his first love was music. Again, he was self-taught. He owned an electric piano when I moved in, which, bit by bit, became expanded into a laboratory for the production of electronic music. After spending his days answering the phone in the complaint department of New York magazine, at night he would shut his door and for the next three or four hours he practiced.

            Foremost, he wanted to be a singer. He was yet to discover the importance of rhythm, but that was noting compared to the sonorous droning of his singing—passionately off-key. He was, in two words, tone deaf. The intent and feeling were there, but it was as though an owl had determined to sound like a canary.

            How could be fate be so cruel as to make the thing a person wanted to do the most, the thing he could do the least? Fate had tempered her cruelty by his apparent oblivion as to how he actually sounded. As for me, I complimented him on his singing to the extend I could. Merely seeking to preserve my home wasn’t my aim. I encouraged him as I wanted to be. What if my fate were like his—the thing which I most wanted to do, which was to write, was the thing I could do least? Then supreme faith was needed: faith that a voice through long and diligent practice will become beautiful.

****

            From among the friends that I made by attending Henrietta’s poetry readings, the one I valued the most and who exerted the strongest influence on me was a Jewish man named Mark. The tone of the poetry reading was apolitical. This was because Henrietta was, if anything, politically conservative, and Saul, her right-hand man, found politics useless and irrelevant to the concerns of poetry. With this kind of bias, those with strong political convictions—those Marxists, feminists, and other leftists—who attended the readings didn’t read their radical work. Henrietta and Saul’s art-for-arts-sake stance meant that those who violated the tone they set by reading thinly cloaked manifestos were frowned upon.

            Mark was a lithe man in his forties with a refined face and intense, pale blue eyes. He was employed as a social worker for the city. There was nothing noteworthy in the unassuming clothes he wore other than their extreme neatness. He carried a well-organized briefcase that contained the day’s edition of the New York Times, several copies of leftist newspapers, Xeroxed copies of articles he thought were relevant with pertinent paragraphs underlines, books of poetry, and a notebook of his own poems. He was always ready to hand out articles concerning recent atrocities being perpetrated around the globe to sympathetic listeners. His sense of urgency compelled him to share these things with others as a means of exhorting them to shed their apathy and become involved.

            Mark was undaunted by the silent mandate at Henrietta’s to avoid mixing poetry and politics. Whenever his turn to read came, he stood to give his words more authority, and, in a loud voice read the works of Langston Hughes, Octavio Paz, Pablo Neruda, or his own carefully wrought ditties. So impassioned he would become that Saul had to tell him his time was up several times before he would stop reading and sit down, undisturbed by the tepid response his reading evoked.

            An avid reader and devoted listener to WBAI (New York’s leftist, listener sponsored radio station), Mark was often outraged by the conduct of the United States in Central America, by Israeli chauvinism in the Middle East, by famine in Ethiopia, apartheid in South Africa , and by the exploitation of workers around the world. His heart was with the common man and his struggle for justice and equality.

            Now, it was Mark’s habit to select and befriend certain intelligent women and to undertake their indoctrination into radical politics by suggesting books they should read, magazines they should subscribe to, and happenings they should attend. I considered myself fortunate to be one of the women whom Mark took under his tutelage. It was like having my own social director to inform me of all that was of political interest going on in Manhattan. Weekly he called and listed all the movies, concerts, rallies and lectures I should attend. When he wasn’t halfway through his list, I would feel exhausted from all the imagined effort it would require of me to take in these things. Though I participated in only a small fraction of the bounty, Mark wasn’t insulted and kept calling.

            I had led a rather ostrich-like existence hitherto, and my political awareness was scanty. I had never been politically informed and was ignorant of the effect of the system of government that dominated the globe and their ramifications in our lives. For me, the time was ripe. Because of my mounting frustration in looking for work and my anxiety that I was closed out from being able to make a living, the dreadful fear and sense of helplessness that afflicts the unemployed, Mark’s indoctrination hit pay-dirt. I wasn’t able to understand how it was that someone of my education and skills, having exerted what by now was a monumental effort, still hadn’t managed to get a job. The society in which lived seemed very badly arranged. What kind of a system was it that ignored the capabilities of its people and forced them to scramble for jobs that were beneath their abilities, jobs for which they would be sadly underpaid? What kind of setup was it that offered the breaks to those who didn’t need them, while the rest were disenfranchised? Why was thee no better way to evaluate people’s aptitudes, no more help to place them in positions rather than sending them to sleazy employment agencies where they would be rated on their appearance and whether they could type 50 words per minute? It all seemed so haphazard to me, as though by virtue of my having slid into the ranks of the unemployed, I was made to feel as though I was a worthless intruder.

            Until I met Mark, I was unaware of the root causes. I was, as Emma Goldman said of one of her contemporaries, “a reformer of surface evils, without any idea of the sources from which they spring.” My friendship with him ushered in a whole phase in my education in which I read Noam Chomsky, John Reed, Howard Zinn, Dos Passos, Emma Goldman, Theodore Dreiser, and even the master himself, Karl Marx. The picture began to fall into place, and I saw the history of the world as ongoing attempts of one greedy elite or another, exploiting its resources for their own gain, keeping their fellow men as beasts of burden while they enjoyed the fat of the lamb.

When I went with Mark to several lectures at the Marxist School, I wondered what the folks back home would think if they knew where I was. Unfortunately, just as I had come to New York too late to find a flourishing artistic community, I had come too late to find a vital left. Once news of the Stalin purges became general knowledge, many intellectuals had become disillusioned. This was a time when liberalism was on the decline, the left was splintered, disaffected and unempowered. Their numbers had dwindled to a remnant, and it lacked the contagious fire it had in previous eras.

            Mark was a generous soul, for not only did he befriend certain bright women, he introduced us all to one another. In gaining his friendship, I also gained the friendship of a number of women. At the Marxist School there was Jane, a rather plain woman whose sense of humor and allegiance to the common dignity of man made her beautiful. There was Mary Ann, a woman who had worked as a teacher in a mission school in Ecuador. And Simcha, a dark-haired beauty, an artist whose studio was in the same building as the school, who produced silk screen prints bearing slogans exhorting viewers to value the lives of the children living around the world.

            Mark also introduced me to his life-long friend Rachel, whose revolutionary zeal was equal to his. She reminded me of Emma Goldman. She was a plain woman who eschewed fine clothes and makeup. She peered out from granny glasses with such fierceness that I was a little afraid of her.

            For a time, she and Mark were lovers who shared the same view of a utopian society which would same day emerge triumphant. Both favored in theory a communal lifestyle in which such bourgeois characteristics such as sexual jealousy and possessiveness would be relics of the past. When the stopped sleeping together, it diminished neither the strength nor the intensity of their attachment. This was agreeable to Mark, given as he was to be withdrawn for long periods of time into a nearly monastic celibacy.

            By the time I met him, however, I recognized in his eyes that certain lean and hungry look of a man who longs for sexual involvement. Perhaps it’s arrogant to say this, but I felt I could choose between Paul and Mark for my paramour. Although my sympathies clearly lay with Mark and with his concern for the common man, emotionally and sexually I was more drawn to Saul, though he had little sympathy for the sufferings of others, especially others who lived half way around the world and whom he didn’t know. He had, nevertheless, that rare knack which few men have—charm, the knowledge of how to relate to women and delight them, in short, the very thing for which most women are dying.

            I remember leaving Henrietta’s one cold and rainy night with Saul on one side of me, Mark on the other. I knew all I had to do was way the word, and I could go with either one. The choice wasn’t hard to make. I placed my hand on Saul’s arm and asked Mark if we could walk him to the subway. No, that wasn’t necessary, he replied. He’d see us both soon. I stood there, feeling sorry if I had hurt him and watched as he disappeared into the dark night.

            Shortly afterwards Mark began appearing at Henrietta’s with a young, dark-haired woman named Debbie. She was a violinist, a recent graduate of Juilliard, which made him proud. He had met her at Henrietta’s as her poetry readings provided a good meeting place for the unattached. Now the hungry look in his eyes was appeased by the flourishing romance. How was Rachel taking all of this, I wondered

            Upon occasion, after the reading the four of us—Mark, Debbie, Saul, and I—would go out for coffee. I then found myself sitting across the table from Debbie. Earnestly, she talked to me about her troubles with her family. She was not without a fresh, untainted kind of beauty and revealed a strongly passionate, if somewhat fearful, nature. My truer sympathies laid with Rachel, as we were the same page, though I couldn’t help but like Debbie, who flattered me, the older woman from whom she sought out advice and succor.

            Soon we were friends, and I was the recipient of SOS calls from Debbie. Typically she would report from a phone booth somewhere that she had waited 45 minutes for Mark to show up, or that she hadn’t heard from him for three days and thought she would die unless he called her soon. When she called, she generally was in tears.

Debbie had fallen in love for the first time in her life with all the obsessive passion in her breast. Mark for his part was initially pleased and relished the return to romance in his life. He was surprised and hurt, however, by Rachel’s reaction to the news. Angrily she cut off her friendship with him, claiming he was sacrificing the very ideals they both held dear. This disturbed Mark for he wanted them all to be friends. He confided these things to me the day I helped him move from his monastic cell of an apartment in outer Brooklyn to a sun-lit apartment in my neighborhood.

“I think about her all the time,” he said, referring to Rachel. “About all the things we did together. Now she doesn’t want to talk to me. Why can’t we all be friends?”

While I appreciated his sincerity, I thought he was being naïve. As hurt as he was, I suspected he was feeling to revitalized by Debbie to relinquish her because of Rachel’s reaction.

When his celibate nature again beckoned and he began to withdraw from Debbie, she was beside herself and clung to him all the mightier. He seemed to treat these dark stirrings, whether they be Rachel’s anger or Debbie’s desperation, if not entirely insignificant, still of a lesser importance than the suffering o the world and regretted the violation of the ideal that men and women should interact as comrades without jealousy or possessiveness. This was a paradigm I could not wholly share, and I thought it incredulous of him to expect anything less than what happened.

As for me, though I sympathized with Rachel, I enjoyed my role of surrogate mother to Debbie. When Mark wouldn’t let her stay overnight with him, lest she interfere with his inviolable reading schedule or his time to listen to WBAI rather than have to travel late at night by subway back to her apartment in the Bronx, I would have her stay overnight with me, feed her cookies and hot chocolate and dry her voluminous tears. Having such a role only added to me sense of having a full life and made me happy that I had come to New York and found these friends.

Since Saul was antagonistic towards Mark and put him down, as he did all people caught up on revolutionary politics, as time went on, I tended to confine my association with Mark and Debbie to telephone calls, slumber parties with Debbie, and dinner with Mark where we discussed politics. Upon occasion I joined them for an event Mark thought we should all attend.

For over a year I had been in New York when early in January Debbie called one night to offer me a complimentary ticket to a concert which she would be playing in at Carnegie Hall. Looking forward to the concert, I was pleased that she had chosen me for the honor. As it turned out, the evening contained more pleasures than I anticipated, for it was the night when I met Cat.

CHAPTER THREE

On a cold Thursday night late in January, my second January in New York, I boarded the subway to Manhattan to go to Debbie’s concert at Carnegie Hall, filled with a delightful sense of anticipation that tonight I would have a taste of good life for which people love New York. Tonight, would be the kind of evening about which I could write to the folks back home. I loved Carnegie Hall—its classical architecture, the warmth of its gilt and ivory, its plush red carpets and seats made it quintessentially New York.

Mark was waiting in the lobby, looking as proud as a father outside a delivery room. He said that someone or other hadn’t arrived yet, but Julia was waiting in our seats.

“We’re in the first-tier box,” he announced with a gleam in his eye. Even Marxists like a little luxury now and then, I mused.

As we climbed the stairs, I tried to recall who Julia was from among his friends but couldn’t remember. The news that by some lucky chance we had been given the best seats in the house cheered me. As Mark steered me down the rounded corridor with doors at intervals, I imagined I was stepping into a nineteenth century novel. Tonight beautifully dressed ladies would flirt with handsome gentlemen from behind lace fans and fluttering eyelashes. He opened the door onto our box, and we stepped down to an area where four upholstered chairs had been placed. Our seats looked directly onto the orchestra.

The woman already seated turned and smiled as we entered. Mark introduced us. “Julia Liebowitz, Anna Rassmussen.” When I took my first good luck at Julia, I was struck by the Byzantine beauty of her exotic face, as though the classical features of Eastern Medieval Europe had found their modern-day embodiment. Her creamy, unblemished skin and un-furrowed brow gave her the impassive serenity of a mannikin, yet as I gazed into her eyes, rimmed with kohl like those painted on an Egyptian mummy, I had cause for alarm—for they seemed to lack direct focus and were splintered shards of glass, flashing in many directions simultaneously. Hers was one of the most beautiful faces I had ever seen; I wondered who could possess it.

Julia’s reddish-brown hair was pulled loosely into a knot at the back of her head, softened by wispy curls at her forehead, ears and neck. Small round onyx earrings studded her ears, complimented by a thin, black satin ribbon at her throat. Her smile was luminous but gave the impression she could turn it on and off at will. She greeted me effusively, and ist seemed as though I could hear in her voice the tinkling of bells.

She was a tad plump. If in fact she shared having a memorable face with Elizabeth Taylor, she also shared having a body that was unimpressive, but this imperfection made her accessible. In a childishly small hand she held a dainty Oriental fan whose orange tassel fell gracefully onto her lap. My attention to this detail allowed me to recover my composure and begin talking to her.

“It’s a rather cold night for a fun,” I mentioned.

“I suppose so,” she answered, amused. “Even though it’s cold, these places can be so stuffy. I bring it along whenever I go to a concert, and my binoculars.”

She held up the tiniest pair of binoculars I had ever seen. A faint film of perspiration had formed on her forehead, as if to confirm the truth of her words. I admired her for knowing how to play a role, props and all. Beside me was a woman who possessed an instinctive flare for dress and a theatrical knowledge of style. She wasn’t the usual kind of person I met through Mark and Debbie.

Mark excused himself to look for the missing member of our party, leaving Julia and me to converse in private. She told me that she was working as a picture framer for a well-known art store, an occupation I would have thought beneath her. Then she confided that she was subletting an apartment in mid-town, but the owner would be back any day and that she had absolutely no idea where she was going to move to then. On her salary she could scarcely afford anything as nice or as convenient as her present location. Furthermore, she owned neither furnishings nor utensils.

I thought it curious that one so alluring would respond to a perfect stranger in such a candid fashion and was amazed by how rapidly she had drawn me into the extremities of her condition. A damsel in distress, she seemed to be imploring me for assistance. I could only surmise that she was new in New York and was floundering. Yet, it was her appearance of helplessness that made her approachable, arousing my anger that life in New York was so difficult and frustration that my own struggles mean that there was little I could do to help her other than offer my sympathy. Thought she hardly seemed the type for it, I suggested that she try the YWCA. When she crinkled up her nose, I said, “That’s why I live in Brooklyn. Who can afford Manhattan? Especially a single woman on her own.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t live in Brooklyn,” she said disdainfully. “I don’t ride the subway. If I can’t get there by bus or cab, I don’t go.”

“Brooklyn’s not so bad,” I told her defensively. “There’s less hassle there than in Manhattan.”

“But I love Manhattan,” she exclaimed. “I love its energy and excitement!”

“So do I, but I can’t afford it. Besides, I need peace and quiet for my work.”

“Oh,” asked Julia, “what do you do?”

Soon I was bragging to her that I used to be a painter, but now I was a writer. Her obvious admiration caused me to go on about it more than I usually would, but who doesn’t like an appreciative audience, especially in one so attractive? Mark returned shortly and announced that the errant party would not be coming. The house lights were dimming, so we ceased talking and settled ourselves to enjoy the concert.

As I focused my eyes on the stage, I realized that I hadn’t spent my usual time watching the musicians ready themselves, a sight which would have been marvelous tonight, given our vantage point. Tonight was an evening when rather than having too little, I would have too much. Tonight I was living the charmed life.

The conductor strode onto the stage amid polite applause and raised his baton. I spotted Debbie seated in the second row of violinists, her shiny brown hair tipped over her elbow as she raised her bow. The conductor dropped his baton with a flourish, and the concert began.

The program was entirely of Italian music. Although not my favorite, its rapturous cordances allowed my mind to take flight. Mingling with the strains that filled the auditorium, my thoughts were of past and present loves, recollections made all the sweeter because of the company I was keeping.

We seemed to be characters in a nineteenth century novel, like Anna Karenina or Madame Bovary, only I wasn’t familiar with the story that would unfold. More had begun, I felt, with the dropping of the conductor’s baton than this concert disclosed. Julie reached over to hand me her binoculars, which I took and focused on Debbie, straining to keep up with a rapid fugue. If I could do this every week, would I ever grow tired of it?

During the intermission, Mark resumed his search for the absent member of our party while Julia and I repaired to the lobby for a cigarette. We talked not as strangers but as women who have known each other for some time. In response to my question of how she liked the concert, she shrugged and replied, “Well, it’s hardly Beethoven, but it’s okay.”

I assumed she knew more about classical music than I did but also suspected that she was trying to impress me. Were it not for her strange eyes I would have felt comfortable with her. As it was, I felt queasy. I was fascinated by her, but her desperation scared me. I was both attracted and repulsed, but my repulsion made the attraction all the stronger. When the flickering lights signaled the end of intermission, we found Mark and reclaimed our seats.

After the concert we stood in the lobby, waiting for Debbie. When she came, lugging her violin case, she was breathless and beaming with pride.

“Well, what did you think of it?” she demanded.

We patted her and told her that it had been a good concert. “I heard you playing, and thought you were in fine fiddle,” I kidded.

Debbie smiled with elation.

It was an exhilarating night for all of us. At Julia’s suggestion, we decided to go to a nearby Austrian restaurant, which had the ambiance of a cozy European inn—wooden booths, tables covered with red and white checked tablecloths, and thick candles, dripping multi-colored was. Our waiter spoke with a thick Slavic accent. When he wheeled to our table a cart laden with a tempting array of desserts—cakes, tarts, pastries and strudel—Debbie’s eyes sparkled like a child’s before a Christmas tree. Julia sat across from me, and we continued our earlier conversation.

She said she had come to New York from Michigan, where she was living with her sister and her sister’s husband, but now that they were divorcing, her sister was thinking of coming to New York. Her sister had a disease that attacked her nervous system, and Julia thought it was her responsibility to care for her.

Still endowed with a dose of the California do-your-own-thing mentality, I responded that I hoped she wouldn’t undertake this unless it was what she really wanted to do.

I admitted that I had a lover with whom I often fought, but that our sexual relationship was consistently good.

Julia said she dated numerous Israeli men. I had heard of their love-‘em-and-leave-‘em style. When I mentioned this, Julie confirmed my allegation, saying, “I know. I’ve been to bed with so many different men in the past two weeks, I feel as though I always have the taste of semen in my mouth.”

I was appalled that this exquisite woman would have so little regard for herself that she apparently slept indiscriminately with whoever wanted to bed her and was furthermore amazed that she would so blithely make such an announcement in public. So shocked was I that I didn’t censor my honest response.

“That’s terrible!” I exclaimed. “I mean, I don’t see how it can help you, and in a place like New York, it’s dangerous. I don’t mean to be moralistic. After my divorce I went through a period of promiscuity, but the more men I slept with, the less I knew who I was.”

I was embarrassed by my primness, but my words were met with a look from Julia bordering on adoration.

“I don’t know who I am,” she admitted helplessly. “I don’t have the foggiest notion.”

When the evening ended, Julia and I exchanged telephone numbers, and she invited me to the eightieth birthday of Claudio Arrau at Avery Fisher Hall in a few weeks.

****

Whenever I thought of Julia over the next few days, a peculiar image arose: a woman, sprung from her origins, tumbling through outer space with semen in her mouth. I was at once intrigued by her and concerned for her.

When I called to confirm our date, she seemed delighted to hear from me. Disembodied, coming through the phone, her voice again reminded me of the tinkling of bells. She spoke so candidly about herself that I found I could talk to her about my troubles with ease. Whenever I said anything the least bit funny, she laughed as though it were the funniest thing she had ever heard. She’s trying to win your friendship, I thought. I was flattered and happy to give it to her.

We began to call one another almost on a daily basis. One day Julia sad she wanted to read me a letter she had received from her sister Roberta. “Dear Cat,” the letter began and continued with maudlin endearments. When she finished reading, I asked, “Does Roberta always call you ‘Cat’?”

“oh, that’s only one of my names,” Julia laughed. “I have many names, a different name for every period of my life. Darlene was my given name, but I don’t care for it, never did, so I’ve been Darlene, Dorry, Katherine, Katrina, and Tess. Now I’m Julia, but Roberta always calls me ‘Cat’ or ‘Kitten’.”

“For Katrina?”

“No, silly, for cat, feline. You can call me whatever you like.”

I had never met anyone who had so many names, and I found it peculiar. I couldn’t help but think it might contribute to Julia’s disorientation and lack of having a firm identity. I took some time before I settled on two names for her. Since I didn’t want to add any new names to someone who already has so many, most of the time I called her ‘Cat’ because she reminded me of one, but when I was annoyed with her, I called her ‘Darlene’ because I knew she didn’t like it.

****

The sun the day of the Arrau concert was so bright that it hurt my eyes. It was early February, so it contained little warmth, and the cold seemed to cut  like the blade of a knife. Cat was already at the hall when I arrived, dressed in a tasteful beige and black dress and wearing the same black onyx earrings. She told me that the concert was sold out. Before I knew it, she stationed me outside to watch for people trying to sell their tickets at the last minute, while she watched inside. Soon she waved me inside, holding two tickets in her hand.

Our tickets were not for adjoining seats, so we were obliged to separate. By the time I settled myself, I was feeling jerked about and was unable to fully enjoy the concert.

Afterwards we walked several blocks to a cafeteria, waited in line, and ordered chicken potpies and tea. Not until we had seated ourselves could I relax and assess how I felt being with Cat again.

I was as fascinated by her face and flashing eyes as I had been the first time I met her, and I noted the same sense of giddiness as I had then. Tiredness fingered her eyes. Her predicament was unchanged. It was no certain that she would have to move soon, but she still had no idea where. She was working six days a week and had not time to look for an apartment. If she did fine one, she didn’t have any money for furnishings. Disheartened, she played with her food.

“It’s awful,” she said, referring to the pie. “I really can’t eat it.” She pushed her dish aside and drew a cigarette from a handsome leather case, lit it, took a drag, and blew a stream of bluish smoke into the air.

Not about to waste the money I had spent, I doggedly ate, thought the dish was tasteless. Cat seemed to be waiting for me to finish and to say something to encourage her, to do something to rescue her.

“The worse of it,” she said, her eyes misting, “is that I’m really terrified of being alone. It makes me feel crazy. I don’t get anything done. I just sit and cry.”

“Do you know anyone you could share a place with?” I asked, feeling as thought she wanted me to say she could say with me.

“No,” she answered, drawing from her cigarette, then exhaling. “There’s no one I can think of.”

Though I felt ashamed, I was glad my own living arrangement precluded an offer, if that’s what she wanted for me.

She began to speak of various men who she thought might help her. There was one who was in love with her and who had helped her before. “But Richards so fat, I can’t stand him. If I accept his help, he’ll want to sleep with me. It makes me sick to think of being in bed with him.”

She might be able to procure a loan from another man. Cat talked as though he should be glad to help her out.

Coming from people whose mothers didn’t teach their daughters the art of manipulating men for their own ends, I was enthralled by Cat’s inventory.

“You know, I don’t like your hair,” she said suddenly. “I mean, it’s too severe for your face.”

I patted my long brown hair which was pulled back into a chignon. “What do you think I should do with it?” I asked defensively.

Cat studied me, then said, “You need something softer. Maybe you should cut it and get a permanent.”

“Maybe I should,” I admitted.

Before catching the subway back to Brooklyn, I walked Cat to her bus stop. On the way, she turned to me and said, “Let me know if there’s any art supplies that you need. I can get them for you.”

“You can?”

“Sure,” she said smiling. “I can steal them.”

I said nothing. Our time together hadn’t been very satisfying. There was something peculiar about her, and I couldn’t put my finger on it. Her comments about my hair I resented and wondered if the black pen she had used to write down her phone number at work was in fact stolen. Her handwriting was rounded and upright. I wouldn’t take her up on her offer to get me art supplies. If she was stealing from the store where she worked, I didn’t want her fired on my account.

****

A few days later after attending a revival movie with Mark I had the opportunity to compare notes with him concerning Cat.

“How well do you know her?” I asked.

“Not very well,” he replied. “I met her through Miriam. You haven’t met Miriam yet, have you? She’s a nice woman. She knew Julia in California. She’s been trying to help her. maybe you should talk to her.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I feel worried about her. she seems to be bouncing off the walls. What do you think?”

Mark seemed reluctant to concern himself with Cat and her problems, but he made some attempt. “Do you think she needs counseling?” he asked.

“Yes,” I answered. “Yes, I do. I’m going to tell her so, too.”

Soon I had my opportunity. By this time, Cat and I were talking to each other every day on the phone. Beset with uncertainties, she called me from work and from her apartment whenever she was anxious. Because I was a sympathetic listener who made sensible suggestions that calmed her, she was turning to me more and more, yet I could plainly see she needed more counseling than I was prepared to offer.

Nevertheless, it’s seldom welcome news, no matter how much one might need it, to hear a friend thinks you need therapy. My fear that Cat wouldn’t like my advice made me all the harsher when I said it, interrupting her mid-point in a sentence and saying, “Look, Cat, I think you need to see a professional. I think you should find yourself a good therapist. Even if you have to pay for it, at least you’ll know someone’s there when you need him.”

Thought I regretted the abruptness of my delivery, I was heartened by how well she took it. Almost immediately she reported that she was seeing a woman called Betsy. When Cat described her methods, I recognized her to be a Jungian. Soon Cat was saying, “Betsy says. . .” as though she were another friend.

Though the therapy helped Cat deal with her anxieties, since the realities of the tight spot she was in weren’t illusionary, therapy couldn’t entirely relieve her of them. She needed to find somewhere to live and fast.

****

            Interestingly, just when Cat most needed a savior—a knight in shining armor to ride in, swoop her into his arms and rescue her from the jaws of homelessness—she found one, in the form of David. I could call him a savior. Cat didn’t perceive him as one.

            About this time Mark suggested that the four of us—Cat, Debbie, he and I—take in an afternoon concert at an art gallery in Soho and afterwards go out for dinner. Cat and I arranged that I would meet her at the art store where she worked, and we would take a cab to Soho. I resented the added expense of a cab, when the price of the concert and dinner would already be a strain on my budget.

She was tending to a customer when I arrived looking lovely in a swirl of green and brown paisley, an auburn shawl tossed jauntily over one shoulder and gold earrings dangling and catching the light when she tossed her head. Today she was a gypsy. She flirted unconscientiously with the young man she was helping, making me sorry I had never learned the art of casual seduction. When she had a moment to speak to me in private, she grabbed my hand and said, “I’ve got news for you. I’ll tell you later.”

As it turned out, Cat’s “news” was a poor Cinderella story. The previous evening a photographer in the store invited her to a cocktail party at an uptown gallery. She had dressed, gone down to the street, and seeing a chauffeur leaning against his limousine, had persuaded him to drive her to the gallery. When she arrived, she found that her friend was so preoccupied that he didn’t give her more than a greeting, and she was left to wander among the crowd alone. Only those with invitations were allowed into the dining room for dinner. Failing to persuade a waiter to let her in, Cinderella took a cab home.

“It was awful,” Cat complained. “I went home and cried my eyes out.”

I didn’t know what to say since I would never presume on people’s good graces in such a fashion myself, however, she made no demands on my sympathy, instead brightening and saying, “Oh, have a date tonight.”

“You do?” I suppose my face showed annoyance that she would arrange a date on a night when we had plans.

“Not until later,” she appeased me. “I’m not supposed to meet him until 10:30. Why don’t you come along?”

“Sure, I’ll be your chaperone. . .”

“No, he said that he might bring a friend.”

“Who’s this you’re meeting tonight?” I asked.

“Oh, remember, I told you I met someone at the Red Parrot the other night. We have to go there sometime. It’s a good place.”

“You said you met several men that night.”

“I did. He’s the one who asked me to dance, and when I did, eh said he was in love with me and wanted to marry me.”

“Oh, another Israeli trying to get his green card.”

“No, he already has it.”

“Uh-huh,” I murmured skeptically.

She knew that I took a dim view of the Israeli men she dated, but I couldn’t’ help but be secretly impressed that there were still some men left in the world who could fall in love at first sight and ask the lady to marry them. It struck a romantic chord in me for it was just the kind of thing I wished would happen to me.

“What’s his name?” I asked.

“David,” Cat answered. “David Gabriel Hamza.” Quite a handle, isn’t it? He was born in Morocco.”

My interest was piqued. I wouldn’t mind going somewhere new and meeting some men. It might be fun.

“Alright. I’ll come along to keep an eye on you and to check this guy out. If he passes my inspection, you can go out with him, but what do you bet, his friend will be short and weight 120 pounds?”

Cat laughed. Then, as thought she had read my thought, she said, “Oh, let’s take the subway—we can save some money that way.”

We took the subway to Soho and walked, arm in arm, to the gallery where Mark and Debbie stood waiting for us. Mark was annoyed because we were fifteen minutes late.

“It was my fault,” Cat placated him. “I couldn’t get away from work any sooner.”

Knowing how often he kept her waiting; I raised my eyebrow to Debbie. Being late didn’t mean we were late to the concert. Mark was an old hand in the procedures necessary to gain admission to such affairs and usually insisted on meeting a good hour before an event was to begin, to so have plenty of time to buy tickets. We had to stand in the line outside the gallery for another twenty minutes before we were admitted.

The concert was splendid, especially a Schubert concerto, but our meal at the Chinese restaurant was mediocre. Again, Cat picked at her food. Our conversation seemed like random missiles flying with little connection between topics. Cat invited Mark and Debbie to come with us to the club where she was to meet David. Since the evening was mild, we decided to walk.

At a side street in the West Village, we descended a few steps into a crowded club, throbbing to the beat of middle eastern music. The noise was so loud that Mark and Debbie changed their mind about staying, excused themselves, and left. Cat and I stood near the entrance, letting our eyes grow accustomed to the darkness while she looked for David.

We didn’t wait long. Soon a well-built, dark haired young man, nattily dressed in a black suit, white shirt and black tie came forward to greet us. When Cat introduced me, he took my hand, as though he owned the place, welcomed us. I liked him as soon as I lied eyes on him, thought he was handsome, and was impressed with his ceremonial manner and regal bearing.

David led us past a dance floor where a belly dancer was swirling—red scarves waving, breasts jiggling, and finger cymbals chiming—to our table. The noise was so deafening that I could only smile at the man sitting there, but I felt like laughing. Just as I had predicted, eh was short and thin. Standing to greet us, he took my hand in a limp handshake and smiled benignly, giving me the creeps. David introduced him as Ezra.

David fulfilled his role of host admirably, but it was plain that he only had eyes for Cat, and now they reflected his happiness in seeing her again. I was left in moments of relative quiet to attempt conversation with Ezra, but I had trouble understanding his English. The effort involved and fact that I wasn’t the slightest bit interested in him made me glad when the music preclude conversation.

Though we protested that we had just come from dinner, David insisted on ordering a generous repast of middle eastern dishes and several bottles of wine. Cat, who had eaten like a bird at dinner, now ate with gusto.

Suddenly David leaned over the table to talk to me. “I’ve been all over the world,” he said. “I have seen many things. I fought in the Israeli army. I have killed people and have been wounded. It makes no sense. Why should people fight and kill each other? We are all brothers and sisters. I am your brother. You are my sister. It makes no difference that I am a Jew and you are a Gentile, if I am a Jew and you are an Arab. I love everyone—Jew, Gentile, Arab, black, white. I am a Moroccan Jew, a black Jew.”

There was pride in his eyes as he spoke, and his manner was earnest. I was impressed. He was expressing a point of view that I shared, and I felt that I was in the presence of a man among men. It was generous of him to make conversation with me when it was obvious that he was in love with Cat.

When Cat and I tripped off to the bathroom, she asked, “Well, what do you think of him? Does he pass your inspection?”

“I like him,” I replied. “I like his style. He’s handsome, too.”

“Do you really think so??

“Yes, don’t you?”

“Not particularly,” she answered casually, leaning toward the mirror to wipe a smear of mascara from under her eye, leaving me to wonder by what standard she found me attractive. Maybe if I were as beautiful as she, I would grow accustomed to handsome men falling in love with me.

“And how do you like Ezra?” she teased, turning her face towards me.

“What did I tell you?”

We giggled and I watched admiringly as she touched up her face and teased her hair back in place. She was lovely. I could see why David had fallen in love with her, yet she seemed to be indifferent to him.

“You could do worse, you know.”

“Oh,” she answered nonchalantly, dropping her lipstick in her handbag, “but, then again, I could do better, too.”

“What’s the matter with him?”

“He hasn’t much money for starters.”

Her impudence only accentuated her sparkle.

David rose when we returned to our table and held Cat’s chair for her while I squeezed around the table next to Ezra, whose wan smile filled me with repugnance.

I said that I had to go home. David asked if Ezra could drive me. No, thank you, I replied. I was used to riding the subway. It wasn’t late, and I would be fine. I told Ezra that I was happy to meet him, Cat, that I would speak to her tomorrow, and made my way out of the club.

The next afternoon Cat called. “Hi,” she said. “Guess where I am?”

“How many guesses do I get?” I asked sardonically.

“I’m in Brooklyn.”

“Wonder of wonders. And you’re at David’s.”

“How did you know?”

“It took me two college degrees to figure it out. How are you?”

“Oh,” she answered languidly. “I’m fine. We’re spending the day in bed.”

“Lucky you.”

“He’s very passionate,” she whispered. “I’m exhausted. I’ve never met anyone with so much energy.”

Just as I was wondering where David was, Cat said in a conspiratorial voice, “He went and bought some pastries. Now he’s making coffee.”

In the background I could hear the blare of middle eastern music.

“He wants me to come and live with him. He says his home is mine, if I want it.”

“that’s generous of hi. That would solve your problem.”

“I know, but I don’t want to live in Brooklyn. Look, I’ve got to hang up. Here he comes.”

At that point, a commotion ensued. I surmised David had put down the coffee cups and was tickling Cat because she yelled, “Stop that. I said, stop it! Leave me alone. Anna. I’m talking to Anna.”

Then David’s voice said, “Hello, Anna. How are you today?”

“I’m fine,” I said.

“That’s good. One day you will come to my home. I will cook dinner for you.”

“Why, thank you. That would be nice.”

Then Cat took the phone. “Anna? I’m going to. . . eiii. Cut that out. Go away now. Anna, I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

“Okay. Have fun. Bye,” I said and hung up the phone, envious of the fun they were having when I was spending the day alone. It seemed to me, as I thought about it, that David’s offer was the best, indeed the only, real option Cat had.

CHAPTER FOUR

A delay in the return of the friend from whom Cat was subletting gave her a reprieve—time to try to find an alternative to moving in with David. Although she searched mightily, whatever she found had he substance of confetti. She was emotionally unsuited to live alone, and practically speaking, it was out of the question. To move into an inexpensive hotel for women was not to her taste. She was in a vulnerable state, like an animal caught in a maze. There was no doubt it was a bona fide existential crisis.

Meanwhile, David was using his considerable persuasive powers to coax her into moving in with him. Still she resisted. Moving to Brooklyn didn’t tally with the kind of life she wanted. Whatever she wanted was vague. She seemed to want to wear beautiful clothes, to be chauffeured in limousines, to live in luxury, and not to have to exert herself unduly—in short, to live in Xanadu, eating grapes and enjoying sensual pleasures, to live the glittering life for which New York is famous.

These things I would have enjoyed too but was of a more purposeful temperament than Cat. Even as I contemplate her now, what seemed to be lacking in her was that she hadn’t any goal other than to surround herself, as best she could, with luxuries. She was as multifaceted as a diamond, yet, with all the reflections she cast, there was something unknowable about her, for all her apparent frankness, some unspoken truths. In any case, moving to Brooklyn to live with a poor émigré simply wasn’t included in her glamorous fantasies.

None of her friends, including me, advised in favor of the move, thought my reason differed from theirs. Theirs was that the cultural values of immigrants are different from ours. As far as I was concerned, they were displaying the usual xenophobic reaction to foreigners, without, as David was quick to note, ever having met him. Later, when I got to know him better and experienced some of his values first-hand, I thought them to be an improvement over ours. Thought my impression of him was positive, I feared he might possess the middle eastern chauvinism that permits violence toward women and was afraid that if Cat did something that displeased him, he might beat her.

None of the people advising against the move, including me, offered anything in the way practical assistance. I wasn’t going to suggest that she move in with me. In view of the fact that David’s was the only substantial offer she had, finally I suggested that she try it.

So, the inevitable happened. On a Sunday afternoon early that cold spring David borrowed a car, drove to Manhattan, helped Cat pack her clothes and other belongings and brought her to live with him in the King’s Highway area of Brooklyn.

Although the immediate catastrophe was averted, just because Cat had a place to live didn’t mean her predicament as solved. Now higher on her list of problems was that of contending with him. She might as well have been suddenly carried off on the back of a horse, kidnapped by an Arabian sheik, and flung into his tent miles across the sands—to fulfill the role of his captive beloved, to be petted and fed pomegranates and pastries, and to be made love to—in short, not to be given a moment’s peace.

For now that he had her, David couldn’t leave her along. His ardor and exuberance demanded that he sing, dance, and should, usually accompanied by loud, middle eastern music or a blaring television. His gregariousness, especially now that he had a beautiful woman living with hi, meant a steady stream of Moroccan and Israeli immigrants paraded through the apartment.

Unless one is prepared, being suddenly thrown into a strange environment can alarm the soundest of psyches, and poor Cat’s could hardly be called the soundest. She had little opportunity to feel relieved that he had rescued her because she was immediately beset with his demands, distressed by constant noise and confusion, and deprived of privacy. Her salvation was hardly better than what she had left. She had not been with David long when she telephoned me for help.

While she was talking, he constantly interrupted, demanding her attention and calling her one or another of his pet names. When she tried to shoo him away, he took it as bait and teased her more, so that it was only her helpless tears that subdued him.

“What am I going to do?” she exasperated. “He won’t leave me alone.

With privacy such a must in my own life, I could readily sympathize with her utter lack of it.

“Can’t you lock the bedroom door?”

“No, nor the bathroom, nor the kitchen.”

Sniffles.

“That’s rough. I guess you’re going to have to muster your strength and teach him to respect your privacy.”

Tears.

“Go ahead, let it out. Don’t hold back. You must really be frustrated.”

Amid a torrent of tears, like clothes swirling in a dryer, she told me of having accompanied David to a party where hardly anyone spoke English. She became so disoriented that she ran out the door.

“The worst of it,” she wailed, “is I don’t know who I am. What am I doing here, in Brooklyn?”

I tried to reassure her that Brooklyn wasn’t so bad once one got used to it. She would become accustomed to riding the subway to work and all the other privations.

“I know it’s difficult,” I said, “but, try to relax and ride with things. Enjoy what you can of it. He’ll settle down when he gets a little more used to having you around. Look at it this way—what else are you doing with your life right now, anyway? It’s anything but boring.”

“I wouldn’t mind a little more boredom now,” she answered, and I knew the waterworks had subsided for the moment.

“But, I’ not in love with him. Do you think I’m using him?” she asked.

“Look, he wants you to be with him. He didn’t say, ‘if you love me, live with me.’ All he said was ‘live with me.’ You’re getting ahead of yourself. You don’t even know him yet. Give it a chance. You’re living with him because he wants you to. Re-lax. Take things as they come. Get some rest. You sound exhausted.

Our conversation was interrupted by more calls from David.

“There he is again,” she complained. “I don’t know if he’ll ever let me rest. Anyway, thanks for listening. What would I do without you? I’ll to you tomorrow.”

I hung up, feeling as though I had done my good deed for the day. Our roles were becoming defined. Mine was that of the good friend who offered sensible advice that helped her calm down. The role fed my positive image of myself, made me feel needed, and so informed me about their life together, it wouldn’t be inaccurate to say that when Cat moved in with David, I might as well have moved in myself.

What began was a two or three year period during which Cat either lived with David or moved from place to place on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, a period when so many cries for help came my way that my mind becomes flooded when I try to sort them out—the times she left him and where she went on each of her sojourns. Daily I received reports concerning the development of their affairs. Furthermore, I soon became a frequent guest at David’s Shabbos dinners, so I had the opportunity to get to know him and gained his friendship in addition to Cat’s.

Theirs was a portrait in contrasts. Visually, they complemented each other. He was dark, she was fair. He was robust, she was delicate. The mating instinct was operating at its most instinctive level, whereby men and women mate with their physical opposite. His masculinity accentuated her femininity. But the contrast between them extended beyond the physical. He was active, full of energy. She was passive and retiring. She wanted peace and tranquility—thus, his presence was a harassment to her. and yet something deeper would prevent their bonding as their physical appearance might indicate.

Cat’s life was then made up of extremes. Either she had all the activities generated by David, overwhelming her, or, when he was gone and she was alone, she felt a knowing emptiness inside.

“He has so much life in him,” she said admiringly. “Yet he drives me crazy. I can’t wait for him to leave. But, when he does, it’s as though he takes all the life out the door with him. When he’s gone, I’m empty.”

One of the invisible contrasts between them was that David knew exactly what he wanted, which was to marry Cat and have her bear him children, whereas Cat had not idea what she wanted. David was incredulous.

“How can you not know what you want?” he demanded. How could anyone not know what she wanted when what he wanted was so clear? How could Cat, a grown woman, not know what she wanted? Didn’t she want what every woman wants—a husband and children? No matter how persistently he hammered at her, she reiterated, no, no, she didn’t know, and the more she denied him, the more persistent he became.

I suspect that Cat was more aware of what she wanted than she was willing to divulge. Her stronger emotional bonds were with women. She seemed to view men as an alien bred to whom she was mildly attracted, whereas, she could share herself more fully with women and enjoyed their company. She wanted to share her home with a woman, but it was okay with her if a man were an accessory to this kind of arrangement. These feelings were never stated directly by her—they arose from my observation of her tendencies.

****

Debbie and Cat were on friendly terms. Sometimes, when Cat was still living in midtown, Debbie would spend the night with her. From comments they made, I learned they engaged in feminine pleasures, such as combing and styling each other’s hair, dressing in one another’s clothes, and lounging in bed together. I wondered how far their intimacies extended and considered myself a prude.

Sometime after Cat moved in with David, Debbie decides to give a dinner party and invited Mark, Cat and David, and Saul and me. It was the only evening this sextet spent together—as it proved to be disastrous.

Debbie put a great deal of work int preparations, for it wasn’t often that she could get all of us to come to the Bronx. She cleaned for several days beforehand and cooked her mother’s recipes for quiche, pasta and salad. We agreed that we would bring the bread, wine and dessert.

When Saul and I arrived at the appointed hour, Debbie was aflutter in the kitchen, and Mark was waiting to playa the records he had brought. An hour passed while I helped Debbie, and Mark entertained Saul. Then Cat called to apologize for their delay and urged us to begin eating. We were ready for dessert when she and David arrived. Cat’s smile seemed forced, and David, usually so genial and outgoing, was withdrawn. He placed a bottle of Arafat on the table, sat down, folded he arms across his chest, and hardly spoke. He refused Debbie’s food, asserting that he wasn’t hungry. Mark and Saul were correspondingly cool, and David retreated further into a sullen silence.

In spite of Debbie’s best efforts to make the evening enjoyable, it was a flop. Our conversation was constrained. No one seemed to know how to redeem things. No one demurred when Cat and David took their leave. Since Saul and I had had enough by then, we accompanied them.

We walked to the subway station and took the trained downtown in as repressed a mood as we had at Debbie’s. Cat sat smiling fixedly while David, Saul and I were silent.

I knew that Saul didn’t like Cat. Since I respected his judgement, his uncanny ability to pick out what was amiss in others, I wanted his opinion. After Cat and David deboarded, I turned to him and said, “You don’t like her, do you?”

“No, I don’t.”

“What don’t you like about her?” I pressed him.

“She’s about as phone as a three-dollar bill for starters,” he said. Then, looking directly at me with his sharp gaze, he continued, “And did you notice her eyes? They’re all over the place.”

Yes, I had observed Cat’s eyes, and I knew exactly what he meant. I said nothing—he was confirming my fears about her.

Afterwards, Cat reported that they were late because David didn’t want to go, and she had to force him into it. Once there, he was offended by Mark and Saul’s lack of hospitality and pronounced Debbie’s dinner to be meager fare. The only one of her friends whom he liked was me. He though the rest were garbage.

When I went to David’s for dinner, I saw whey he was critical of the hospitality at Debbie’s, for he was a Sephardic Jew, who had a more lavish sense of hospitality than is typically American.

Before that, however, I visited Cat once when David was at work. She was complaining about being stuck off “in the middle of nowhere,” so I thought I would cheer her up with a visit.

“Oh, good,” she said when I called to say I was coming. “I don’t feel like cooking. We can go to a restaurant where David has ten me. It’s not exactly plush, but the food’s good.”

It was a day when spring teased with alternately warm, then cool breezes. With a light heart, I boarded the subway and rode to King’s Highway for the first time. Just as I liked the name Flatbush Avenue for its no-frills simplicity, I liked the name King’s Highway for the image it evoked: a royal procession, banners waving, and a crowd cheering.

Once the subway emerged from the underground, I watched modest houses on tree-lined streets fly by. I got off at an overhead platform at the station and descended to a commercial street, populated by Jews, who, like me, had been enticed outside by the mild weather.

The street was cleaner than those in my neighborhood and was lined where produce, clothing and furniture were sold. The fruits and vegetables were of a better quality than those sold in my neighborhood. The merchandise was rather garish, more likely to appeal to the nouveau riche—thick gray carpets, enameled tables, heavily cushioned davenports, and huge mottled vases.

A line of movie-goers formed in front of a theater, built in an era when mock Moorish architecture was favored. Here were bearded men and women in scarves herding their children with an old-world protectiveness. This wasn’t an area of Brooklyn where I would fear being mugged.

The imposing brick apartment building at the corner of 5th Street and King’s Highway, where Cat and David lived, retained an air of respectability. Cat buzzed me in, and I climbed to the second floor. As I walked down the corridor, I saw her, holding the door open, her face wet with tears.

“Thank God you’re here,” she said. “I’ve done nothing but sit and cry and smoke cigarettes ever since I talked to you. I don’t know what’s the matter with me. I can’t seem to stop crying. What am I doing here?”

“You’re living here until you can get on your feet,” I said matter-of-factly. “Come on, old girl, cheer up. It’s a beautiful day. Do you want to waste it?”

“But how did I get here?”

“David drove to Manhattan, picked you up, and brought you here. Surely you remember that much.”

“But how did I end up here?”

“You haven’t ended up anywhere. It’s too soon for that. You’re here now, and it’s not so bad. I like your neighborhood. It’s a lot cleaner and safer than mine.”

“You do? You really like it?”

“Yes, I do. It may not be Manhattan, but it has character and charm.”

While I gave Cat a good dose of positive thinking, I studied the apartment. One of her complains was that she wasn’t comfortable because David had undertaken to paint the apartment. Yet the work was being done in a systematic fashion with an absence of clutter. The apartment was light and airy. White lace curtains hung from the windows, fanning in the breeze and sending kaleidoscopic patterns on the floors and walls.

Cat took me into the kitchen to make us some Turkish coffee and showed me the blue parakeets David had bought her, who were hopping about their cage, chirping a paean to spring.

“he named them Fatchie and Beenie, but I can’t tell them apart,” Cat said “The Moroccans think it’s bad luck to keep birds in the house, but he bought them anyway. Today I have to buy a mirror for them.”

Everywhere I looked spelled order and an appreciation for beauty, from the meticulous way the dished were stacked on the rack to dry to bowels of fresh fruit and flowers on the table. Cat sniffled as she stirred the thick coffee, set out two dainty cups and saucers, patterned with pink and blue roses, and poured the brew.

“Do you know what you’d have to pay for a place like this in Manhattan?” I asked. “This is lovely, and it will be even nicer when David finished painting. Look at all he’s doing to please you. He loves you. He wants you here.”

“I know,” she said, her eyes clouding over again. “That’s part of the problem. Because I don’t love him.”

“Love!” I spat out. “What love? Half the time when we think we love someone, we’re only fooling ourselves. Come on, Cat. You’re lucky to have all this. Enjoy it.”

“You’re the only one who thinks I did the right thing by moving here. You’re the only one who likes David.”

“What else could you do? You had to move somewhere. As for David, most of your friends haven’t even met him, so how can they judge him? Friends are great when it comes to giving advice—they’ll give all the advice you ever wanted and then some, but they suddenly become paralyzed when it comes to offering real assistance. Even I wouldn’t help you move.”

“That’s right,” Cat agreed. “You wouldn’t.”

Before long she cheered up. We drank our coffee, chatted, put on our coats, and walked to a small pet store where Cat bought a mirror for the parakeets. Then we treated ourselves to falafel in a small restaurant. By the time Cat saw me to the subway station, she was smiling and ready to concede that the King’s Highway area of Brooklyn wasn’t the worst place in the world.

Shortly after this, David invited me to one of his Friday night Shabbos dinners, so again I boarded the subway and rode to King’s highway. I almost despaired of finding a liquor store in the upright Jewish neighborhood, but after walking several blocks, found one and bought a couple of bottles of good French wine. Then I retraced my steps to their apartment house, peering into shops and delicatessens along the way. Spring was irrepressible now.

The apartment was already filled with people when I arrived. Cat looked like a Moroccan princess in a pale blue caftan that David had given her. Glittering earrings matched her sparking eyes. She greeted me with a kiss and said, “I’m glad you’re here. Now I’ll have someone to talk to.”

David was in the kitchen preparing dinner. He stopped his work to receive me.

“Welcome!” he sai, gesturing that his wet hands prevented him from shaking my hand. “I’m glad you’ve come. I want you to enjoy yourself tonight. Take Anna into the living room,” he instructed, “and introduce her to my friends.”

“How can I when I can’t talk to them?” Cat protested. “I don’t speak Hebrew.” Nevertheless, she took my hand and led me into the living room, filled with Moroccan and Israeli families—husbands, wives, children and grandmothers. The men addressed each other in guttural shouts while the women murmured softly amongst themselves.

Cat squeezed my and whispered, “The rabbi and his wife are coming. Remember, I told you about him?”

Cat had told me that David had taken her to meet a Moroccan rabbi, who was reputed to have psychic powers. He had given her an amulet to keep under her pillow to ward off evil spirits.

The coffee table and lamp stands were heaped with bowls of fruit and nuts. A dining table was set with fine China, crystal goblets, and silverware. A number of salads had been placed in the center. Appetizing aromas wafted from the kitchen, giving me a feeling of wellbeing. The other guests eyed me and Cat curiously, but inhibited by the language barrier, neither they nor we attempted conversation.

Feeling awkward, I said to Cat, “Let me say hello to Fatchie and Beenie.” In the kitchen, the birds were in a state of excitement, as though they, too, were glad there was a party.

David refused my offer to help him.

“No, no. You are my guest tonight. You must eat, have a good time,” he said. I watched him deftly spoon a tomato sauce over fillets of fish for baking.

When dinner was ready, everyone crowded around the table. Candles were lit, and David offered a blessing. Whenever a dish was passed, he scooped an extra-large portion onto my plate. When I protested I couldn’t eat that much, he ordered me to eat. “This is good for you. You are too thin. You must eat.”

So, eat I did, savoring each mouthful. I ate like someone who had been deprived of good food. David let his dinner grow cold as he presided over me like a mother bird feeing her young. As soon as my plate was slightly diminished, he replenished it until I begged him to stop.

“Really,” I pleaded. “It’s delicious. I don’t know when I’ve tasted food this good. But I can’t eat another bite.”

Cat and several of the women had risen to clear the table for coffee and dessert when the rabbi and his wife arrived. Places were made for them, and the dished were returned to the table. David served with them with new pronouncements of “Eat. Eat. Enjoy!”

The rabbi was a short man with a swarthy face and a grey beard. A scar ran from his forehead over his right eye, which was covered with a patch, and down his cheek.

Plates of cookies and pastries were placed on the table for dessert, as well as cups of Turkish coffee, thickly sweetened and garnished with lemon peel were served. The bowls of fruit were passed.

Then the evening’s entertainment began. David had hired musicians to perform. Space was cleared for them. An unusual assortment of instruments materialized—a balalaika, a guitar, and bongo drums. As the musicians played, several men sang haunting modal harmonies. David beat the bongo drum and sat in repose until, until to contain his enthusiasm, he thrust the drum aside, stood, and broke into dance. He’s just like Zorba the Greek, I thought.

“Do you know how the rabbi lost his eye?” Cat whispered.

“How,” I asked, wondering if he had been in a sword fight.

“He was blessing a bull, but it wasn’t dead. It reared up and gouged his eye out.”

“Jesus!” I exclaimed. “What a surprise.”

Several people, following David’s lead, began to dance. Cat and I moved onto the floor. She held my hand, her eyes closed, sawing to the music, a gentle smile of contentment on her face. David swooped her into his arms from behind, held her close, and gently, turning her to face him, nuzzled her neck. They are such a pretty couple, I thought, with a touch of envy.

When the party ended, David asked if I had enjoyed myself.

“It was wonderful!” I exclaimed. “I don’t know when I’ve had such a good time. You’re a wonderful cook. You should open a restaurant.”

“Ahhh,” he said. “That is my dream.

“Well, here’s to your dream coming true,” I said, lifting my glass of wine to him.

“Thank you. And, to your dreams coming true also,” he replied, solemnly lifting his glass.

Before I left, David went into the bedroom and returned, carrying a half dozen Moroccan blouses.

“Please,” he said, “I want you to have one of these. Take the one you like.”

“Oh, David, I can’t take your lovely clothes.”

“You must. I like you. I want you to have something from me.”

Certain that he would overrule my objections and that it would be impolite to refuse, I selected a yellow blouse with red embroidery.

Still he wasn’t satisfied. He went back into the bedroom and returned with a red leather wallet, which he pressed into my hands. “Here,” he said. “I want you to have this. You are my friend.”

Rather than get into an argument that would diminish our encounter, I accepted the wallet as well. But when he tried to give me a caftan, I resisted. “Please, stop,” I protested. “It’s too much. I won’t accept it.”

By the time the car Cat had called to take me home arrived, I was sated with good food and drink, was content to give the driver my address, and nearly fell asleep before we reached my brownstone.

The next day I thought of what a gracious host David had been and called Cat. After thanking her, I told her, “I can see why he was offended at Debbie’s.”

CHAPTER FIVE

Early that summer, Cat left David for the first time. She had lived with him for about three turbulent months, in which she had rallied herself to demand a few rights and had, upon occasion, backed him into a corner—long enough, in other words, for their relationship to have undergone some changes. Not long after Cat settled in with David, her sister Roberta visited them. For several days, Cat reported what a wonderful time they were having—lounging around and feasting on David’s good cooking.

“We’re sharing so much love together,” Cat cooed.

As marvelous as it sounded to me, cooped up alone in my garret, I sourly predicted the honeymoon wouldn’t last long. I took a dislike to Roberta before I ever met her. When Cat put her on the phone and I listened to her, saying how she had heard so many wonderful things about me that she felt she already knew me and that we, too, were friends, I was clearly put off. Coming from people who take offense at those who are prematurely solicitous, though I assured her I was looking forward to meeting her, inwardly, I breathed contempt.

My opportunity to meet Roberta came when I was invited to dinner on Friday. A cousin of theirs named Cindy was in town for the weekend, so she, too, was present. I was met at the door by three Parcae, each dressed in one of David’s caftans—Cindy, a curly haired blonde in rose, Cat in gold, and Roberta in pale blue.

Roberta was attractive enough, with luxurious dark hair and dreamy eyes, but she lacked Cat’s exotic beauty and subtlety. She snuggled herself up to me, pressed her bosom to mine, and in a sugary voice, declared how happy she was to meet “the famous Anna.” I couldn’t help but feel that her gushes were inappropriate, overdone and false. The manner with which she had thrown herself on me reminded me of an orphaned bitch, sidling up to a perfect stranger. With reserve, I said I was glad to meet her.

For the rest of the evening I kept my distance from her but watched her out of the corner of my eye, marveling that anyone could conduct herself in such a wanton fashion, oblivious to how unconvincing all her gooey prattle sounded. I could see the same quality in Cat, but it was tempered with grace and discretion.

With three lovely women with whom to share his apartment, David was outdoing himself. Soon the apartment was again filled with as many people as it had been on the night when I met the one-eyed rabbi.

Roberta was already on familiar terms with David, had developed an interest in middle eastern cooking, and was monitoring his every move in the kitchen. I got the impression that she wanted to go to bed with him but that he wouldn’t accommodate her.

By the time Roberta’s visit had extended into its third week, dissension brewed. David angrily reported that she was a “taker.” So far, she had contributed nothing to the maintenance of the household. His account hardly raised my estimation of her. Yes, Cat concurred, Roberta was cheap. She was reluctant to spend the money she had made from the sale of her house in Michigan. By the time David was fed up, she left for Cindy’s cabin on Long Island with young man to whom David had introduced her.

****

About this time, I had a dream that I interpreted as a depiction of a form of evil. Before me was a pulsating silver substance, like a puddle of mercury, constantly changing shape. Seductively, it invited me to draw near. I was fascinated by its pastel iridescence but kept my distance. I felt as though it would swallow me up, as quicksand would if I embraced it. I wasn’t threatened by it because eluding it was so simple. Just as it had no fixed shape, neither had it any impetus of its own. All I had to do was walk away, if need be, and it couldn’t follow me.

In the manner that I try to make sense of my dreams, I tried to make sense of this one, searching for corresponding impressions from my waking life. In so doing, I tied the dream to Cat because it seemed as though both she and the pulsating substance were similar, in that she seemed to have little will of her own but tried to attach whatever she wanted to her. I wished I had neither dreamt it nor associated it with her because I liked her. she had become an important part of my life, yet I trusted the authenticity of my dream. If it were a warning, I would do well to heed it.

I told no one about my dream and felt guilty that Cat so openly shared her dreams with me. I stashed it away for future reference, to be recalled from time to time in light of what else happened. By our behavior, you would have thought that Cat and I were two love birds, sharing the same piece of toast, but I had begun to keep of what I thought to myself. If I recognized something of a sedentary octopus in Roberta, whose tentacles reached out to grasp things, I recognized the same in Cat.

****

Not long after Roberta left, Cat lost her job at the art store. She was vague about the reason for her dismissal, leaving me to wonder if they had become aware that she was pilfering merchandise. I never asked her about it because she was broke and worried. In spite of David’s generosity, he was doing mostly handyman, temporary work and wasn’t making enough to support her. Cat paid her share of their expenses. As it turned out, Cat’s new job provided her with a means of escape from him.

Apart from her skill as a picture-framer, Cat showed a dearth of marketable skills. She could neither type nor file. She lacked the education which would qualify her for a profession like teaching or accounting. Most of her other aptitudes lay in the home arts—cooking, cleaning, decorating, and nurturing others.

After applying for jobs as a home companion and a nursery school aide, she was offered one as a live-in companion to a woman therapist, who was undergoing a divorce and had a  five-year-old son. Cat’s duties included caring for the child and keeping the apartment in order. She accepted the position at a low salary on the condition that she would be given her own room.

When she complained that now she was a “babysitter,” I went to her defense.

“You see,” I lectured, “because your skills are in the area of home care, you are of little value to the marketplace. If you nurse those too ill to care for themselves, or if children are entrusted to your care—if your labor doesn’t generate capital—you are treated as a second-class citizen. If your work were valued, you would be paid a decent wage for it. This system treats people as though they are commodities. It respects neither them nor their labor. It anyone asks what you do, tell them you are a governess or an au pair. Those titles have more dignity.”

She had gotten more than she had bargained for with my lecture. My own search to get myself situated was fresh in my mind, and I was outraged by the system that had put me through such an obstacle course. Cat thought my discourse was brilliant.

“You always make me feel so much better,” she purred.

Early that summer, Cat left David. Again, I offered no more than minimal verbal support. I had come to like David and wished she would see his value and remain with him, but since she consistently maintained that she wanted to leave, I thought it best not to interfere. I only cautioned her that if that’s what she was going to do, she do it when he wasn’t home.

Cat’s foremost complaint about living with David was her lack of privacy. Rachel’s, however, offered little by way of improvement. In fact, it would seem that she had gone from the kettle into the fire. Thought she had a room, she could scarcely call it her own because Rachel had just moved to the apartment and wasn’t unpacked. Since work was being done on it, the living room and dining room weren’t settled, and the only habitable rooms were the kitchen, bathroom and Cat’s room. Stevie’s room, of needs be, was resolved, but it was filled with his bed and all his toys. As a consequence, most of their living took place in the kitchen or Cat’s room.

Cat then was like a billiard ball, buffeted from pocket to pocket, dependent upon the exigencies of those lives to which she was of service.

I was curious to see how she would get on with Stevie, a sweet but fearful child, who was traumatized by his parents’ divorce. Cat’s unhurried pace calmed him, and her gentleness soothed his turbulence.

Thought she laughed at herself, saying it was because of the chaos she felt within, she was obsessed with keeping wherever she lived clean and order. Walls and floors were generally scrubbed, and tasteless or useless items were discarded. Rachel’s busy professional life and the stress of her divorce left with her little energy for Stevie and household chores. Therefore, Cat’s presence was a blessing. Rachel treated her like a peer. She was full of negative advice regarding David.

****

One Saturday Cat called to say that Rachel and Stevie had left for the weekend. Why didn’t I come over and spend the night with her? We could go out and to a movie. I had never stayed overnight with Cat. In fact, I had avoided doing so, making the excuse that I had to walk my dog both in the morning and in the evening.

The hot summer weather had arrived, and that day was as golden as buttered toast, promising a luscious night. I couldn’t resist. I asked John if he would walk Duchess. When he said yes, I told Cat that I would come.

I felt foolish as I packed my satchel. Though never articulated in an overt manner, I feared, underlying Cat’s invitation, was a desire to be physically intimate with. I had long ago concluded that there was no point trying to wash away the bulk of my conditioning nor would I want to. I didn’t want to try all the permutations of human sexuality. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t know who I was. I had formed my identity as a heterosexual woman and was content to have it remain that way.

I took the subway to the Upper West Side and walked to Cat’s building. The wedge of sky I could see between buildings was two brilliant ribbons, one orange, the other magenta. Plump Hispanic women sat in chairs on the streets, conversing, while children bounced balls and men congregated around bodegas or broken-down cars. In the West, even on extremely hot days, it cools off at night. In New York, the night temperature equals that of the day. Had I been in the country, I would have heard the chirping of crickets.

Cat now lived in a building with a doorman. When I first came to New York, I was amused by the superstitious-ness of New Yorkers. Most often they omitted the number 13 from floor numbering schemes. This building was no exception. I stepped into the elevator and pushed the button for the fourteenth floor.

Cat smiled when she opened the door, reaching out and pulling me inside, but I could tell that something was troubling her. She had grown plumper over the past few months, but I supposed that it was due to David’s cooking.

“I’m so glad you’re finally here,” she said. “I’ve spent the afternoon worrying. I’m glad they’re gone, so we can have the place to ourselves. Come, see how I’ve fixed up my room.”

She led me into a room where the result of her efforts were worthy of a highly paid decorator, who knows the value of sparseness. The room was orderly and restful. On the windowsill next to the bed, she had placed a spray of bachelor buttons and gypsea in a small sea-green vase.

The kitchen was as tasteful as Cat’s room, but the rest of the apartment was littered with cartons, covered furniture, and workman’s equipment.

At first, we took Rachel’s no-smoking-in-the-apartment rule seriously and went to the back stairway when we wanted to smoke. On our first forage, Cat pulled a fat joint from her pocket, which she said was excellent grass. She lighted it, and we each had several tokes. After a few moments, I began to see things in the surrealistic fashion I do when I am stoned.

“Oh, hell,” said Cat. “Let’s smoke in the apartment. I can air it out before Rachel comes back. Come on. I have to change clothes before we go out for dinner.”

Before she changed clothes, she added a final touch to my outfit, a black jacket that she had found at a second-hand store. I was wearing a black blouse and silk pants, so her touch elevated my appearance from attractive to smashing.

Usually from her small bounty and a few borrowed items, Cat put together outfits that you would have thought she purchased on Madison Avenue, but tonight she couldn’t seem to find anything to war. Th pounds she had put on gave her the curves of a Babushka doll and prevented her from wearing her favorite clothes. Finally, she settled on a madras dress, which did little to compliment her.

“Oh,” she screamed in frustration, “I think I’m pregnant!”

I looked at her and felt sure she was.

By the time she was dressed it was too late to eat and take the bus downtown to see the movie I wanted to see. “Oh, let’s see The Red Shoes,” Cat begged.

I agreed, so, arm in arm, we descended in the elevator to the street. I weas uneasy that passersby might take us for a couple of lesbians but was content in my anonymity to let them think so.

At the restaurant, Cat lamented over her possible pregnancy. She had heedlessly complied when David had discouraged her from using her diaphragm.

I studied her round figure and lustrous face, to which worry had given increased vulnerability, and said, “I’m afraid you are.”

Then she cried openly, saying, if so, she would have an abortion. Knowing how much David wanted her to have his child, she wouldn’t tell him until it was over.

“Look,” I told her. “Just because you think you’re pregnant doesn’t mean that you are. Go and get a test first thing on Monday. And, if you are, don’t listen to me. If I were pregnant, I would want to keep the child, so it will be hard for me to advise you not to.”

Cat continued weeping. “I can’t have his child,” she said. “I’m not even in love with him.”

Life seemed so ironic. Those who want children are denied them, whereas they are given to those who don’t. David would be overjoyed if he thought Cat was pregnant. What a crazy world, everyone wanting what they can’t have and viewing what they do have as the worst of possibilities.

“Don’t cry,” I told her. “It’s not irreversible, if you are. Come on, we’d better leave, or we’ll be late for the movie.”

She dabbed her eyes, went to the restroom, and came back with her composure regained, but she looked as she would cry at the drop of a hat.

I put my arm around her as we walked down the street. She took my hand and gave it a squeeze. “Thanks,” she said. “I really don’t know what I would do without you.”

By the time we reached the theater, the effect of the grass had worn off, and my reserve had returned. I thought Cat would like it if I held her hand, but I sat there like a stone with my hands in my lap.

The Red Shoes was a sentimentalized version of the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale, in which a ballerina must choose between her career and her lover. She frees herself from her obsession for dancing by throwing herself from a balcony, landing, amazingly enough, on a passing train. Miraculously, she survives, but her feet are crushed, whereupon she’s carried off in the arms of her lover. A perversion of the original story, it had been diluted into the modern woman’s choice, alá the Fifties, between career and marriage.

I wondered if the original story could tell me something about Cat. I knew then that someday I would write about her and was looking for a format into which I might couch my story.

When I looked up the story, I was as distressed by its harsh moralism as I had been as a child. “The shoes would not let her do what she liked—when she wanted to go the left, they danced off to the right.” I failed to see that Karen’s sins were so monumental that she deserved having her feet cut off! Finding no workable connection between the story and my knowledge of Cat, I dropped attempts to write about her then.

When we returned to Rachel’s, an emotional distance separated us. I was tired and wanted to go to bed. Nothing was said. Like a maid, Cat readied the bed. I put on my pajamas and climbed in. I felt completely asexual. There would be no invitation coming from me tonight or any night.

“See you tomorrow,” I said awkwardly.

Cat turned out the light and tended to her own bedtime preparations. I could hear her creeping around the apartment for a few minutes before settling herself down on the couch across from me. Thought she said nothing, I felt as though I had disappointed her. I didn’t spend too much time pondering things as I was soon asleep.

When we awoke in the morning, I saw that I had overslept and was late for church, so I rushed to dress and leave. There was no time for breakfast. Cat was pleasant but remote. I hugged her and hurried off to catch the crosstown bus.

****

Late that afternoon, when I was preparing to return to Manhattan for Henrietta’s poetry reading, the phone rang.

“Hello?” I answered.

I was startled by an unrecognizable voice that snarled, “I’m going to kill you!” Then the line went dead.

To be sure, I was shaken couldn’t imagine why anyone would call and say such a thing to me. The voice seemed more masculine than feminine and not entirely human. I thought of Cat and wondered whether she was outraged by my refusal to allow physical intimacy between us. Was she capable of making such a call?

I was so disturbed that by the time I reached Henrietta’s, I caught my thumb in the door jamb and received a pinch. My sore thumb represented the hurt, prank or otherwise, I felt that someone would say such a thing to me.

After the reading, I asked Saul if we could go somewhere by ourselves. “There’s something I want to talk to you about,” I told him.

When we were seated in a nearby coffee shop, I told him about the call. Swearing him to secrecy, I asked, “Do you think Cat could have placed it?”

He fixed a cold stare on and uttered one syllable. “Yes.”

For the next month, thought I talked to Cat on the phone as usual, I avoided seeing her. Meanwhile, the call bothered me. I wasn’t worried that someone would actually try to kill me, only by its intent. By then I had met Miriam, the friend who had known Cat in California, and found her to be a perceptive and trustworthy person, who I didn’t think would betray confidences. In order to lay my mind to rest, I called her, and, requesting her discretion, told her about the call. She had known Cat for many years. Did she think she was capable of something like this? When Miriam said she knew nothing in Cat’s makeup to indicate she might behave like this, I assigned the incident to prankster, let it go at that, and Cat and I became chummier still.

CHAPTER SIX

As that summer turned into autumn and autumn turned into winter, though I continued to be informed concerning the affairs of Cat and David, I was more preoccupied with my own affairs than I was with theirs. We were approaching the portentous year, 1984. For a long time, I had held the conviction that civilization was marching towards the precipice and some kind of calamity would encompass the entire globe—my apocalyptic conviction if you will. Though I knew it was an irrational thing to hope for, I confess, I was anticipating that 1984 would be the year when the long-predicted Fall of Western Civilization would escalate. The edifices of civilization, as we knew it, would tumble down like a crystal palace in an earthquake. I had fastened my hopes on 1984 because of George Orwell’s book by that name. My desire stemmed because of how vastly insufficient I deemed most of our present-day institutions to be—how blunt, obtuse, and cruel. I had carried this conviction with me to New York, and the unrelenting harshness of my environment here had served to further it. After my arduous search for work, fed by all the reading I was doing at Mark’s behest, I saw the history of the world as the rape of the planet’s wealth by one group of greedy elites after another. At the end of 1983, I judged the United States to be every bit as repressive and unjust as the Soviet Union, though in an opposing fashion and saw little difference between the rhetoric of the superpowers and Orwell’s Oceania and Eurasia.

I was convinced that whenever the next major transition was made, we would look back on these times as barbaric. For all our advances, I felt that we were still living, psychologically speaking, in the Dark Ages, and many of our advances, rather than improving the quality of our lives, had only increased our alienation. We had gone to the moon, but we were still in kindergarten as far as having been able to overcome our prejudices, hatred and violence.

I named capitalism as the monster that had produced this sad state of affairs in the western hemisphere. New York had not changed its historical precedent in that it was still a city of sweatshops and low salaries for the common worker, while great wealth resided alongside ever-growing poverty, homelessness, and squalor.

In retrospect, about the only noteworthy thing that happened in 1984 was that the United States invaded Grenada. However ironically, it was my most Orwellian yar, a case, I suppose, of self-fulfilled prophecy. It was the year that I rocked the boat and my cozy world capsized, flinging me into bitterly cold waters where I held onto whatever bits of flotsam I could find.

What happened of a personally catastrophic nature was my break-up with Saul, moreover, the particularly nasty nature of it, which left me to greet 1984 utterly devastated. It was one of the worst blows I was yet to suffer through. For, even though I characterized our romance as being similar to that of the gingham dog and calico cat, in that we invariably we spat, I had become exceedingly attached to him, and despite the disparity between us, I loved him.

Even so, it was I who initiated the breakup, or, more accurately put, it was I who tested the strength of our bond. As comfortable as we had become with each other, I saw that our relationship wasn’t going anywhere and blamed Saul for his failure to take us a step further. I was growing restless.

For two years Saul had spent several nights a week with me in my narrow bed in my salmon-colored bedroom. During those nights, I slept hanging on to him, and in the morning when we woke, I hugged him and inquired into his sleep-filled face, “Are you my huggy-bear?”

This never failed to delight him. Like a wet puppy, he quivered and shook and said, “Yes!” Then we rolled around in the flushed morning light making love while John silently padded his way to the bathroom. And when Saul couldn’t wait for John to finish, I retrieved the mayonnaise jar from the closet so that he could pee into it. When John vacated the bathroom, Saul rose, washed, dressed, and went off to work with no ore to eat or drink than a cup of black coffee. When John also left, I would get up, dress, get myself another cup of coffee, a cigarette, and soon enough was writing at the massive oak desk under the ever-blooming begonia. At about ten, Cat would call, and we would compare notes. In the afternoon, I left for my teaching job in New Jersey. This was the life I had created as my buffer against the harsh elements of New York, the situation as it existed until I rocked the boat, casting myself into dark, mercurial waters. . .

Saul would usually stay overnight with me on Saturday night. Often, we went out to dinner and then to a movie. On Sunday mornings, we hurried to dress and catch the subway to my church in Manhattan; for when I moved to Brooklyn, I retained my membership at the Lutheran church on the Upper East Side across from the original apartment I had rented when I first came to New York. Shortly after Saul and I started going together, he began coming to church with m.

Saul was a Jew who had more than a passing interest in Christianity. Among the books of poetry that lined the shelves of his dusty lair were books he had read on the life of Christ. He was a non-practicing Jew, who scoffed at orthodoxy as he scoffed at political fervor and other forms of idealism. Though he reveled in the beauty of poetic imagery, he neatly separated romanticism from reality, knew the difference between them, and towards real life was cynical. I suppose his cynicism was armor, for he possessed a fearful and conservative nature. It provided me with an antidote to my romantic naivete, as I often sensed in Saul’s cold-hearted analyses of others more accuracy than my own sweetened ones possessed. Yet the difference in our natures, our polarity, helpful though it sometimes was, nevertheless, was also the basis of our contention with one another.

Saul loved the quaintness of my church with its dark sanctuary, the elaborateness of the liturgy, the richness of the music, and the compassion of the sermons, delivered by our alcoholic minister. The poet in him couldn’t have found an environment that appealed more to his aestheticism.

The congregation, mostly German Americans, was pleased to have among its members a Jew who looked as much like a Hasid as Saul did. His conviviality made him popular with some, while others, I suppose, were offended by his unctuous manner. Saul made his rounds during coffee hour after the service, flattering the women he liked, ignoring those he didn’t. in so doing, he became as much a part of the congregation as was I. Often, during the service when a particularly evocative hymn was sung, or the scripture was especially rich in poetry, or Pastor Schnaidt’s sermon was poignant, Saul would respond with a “Wow!” of appreciation. When I pointed out to him that there was a reality behind these things, he denied that it was so, or that it should have any bearing on his life.

One morning as I listened to Saul’s pleasant tenor voice as he joined in on a hymn, it occurred to me to suggest, “Why don’t you join the choir?” Saul liked the idea, and he did just that. Soon Thursday nights found him traveling back to the Upper East Side for choir practice. He became friendly with some of the choir members, and thus, as much as I became part of the crowed that congregated at Henrietta’s, Saul became part of my church.

****

That time has long passed. I have often wishes that I could call back those halcyon days when Saul and I made love in the morning and carried don, but is it not in the nature of the beast not to fully embrace one’s happiness when one has it, then to regret it when it’s gone?

In the fall of 1983, I was growing discontented and was asking myself if I wanted to marry Saul and spend the rest of my life with him. Not that he was asking. He seemed perfectly content to let the status quo go on ad infinitum. We didn’t even discuss living together. Perhaps each of us had his and her reasons. Nice as my life was then, I wasn’t sure that I wanted to be restricted to it. Saul was ambivalent about making a commitment. So, I did something I deeply regretted and consider one of the major mistakes of my life: I dated Saul’s best friend for a brief time.

It isn’t my intention here to write all about that for it would shift the reader’s attention to a story other than the one I’m telling. Actually, that is not altogether true—I prefer not to include the entirety of this mess because it’s too painful. Suffice it to say that my actions struck the fatal blow to our relationship, and to my consternation, Saul responded by leaving altogether.

“There are sixty was to leave your lover,” as the song goes, and, in this case, since he was one of those rare men who have a knack with women, Saul’s method was to plunge himself into a relationship with another woman whom he met at Henrietta’s. I was beside myself. Though I considered myself to be a veteran of heartbreak, none of the blows I had previously survived hurt more than this one.

As it turned out, I earned my notoriety among the Village poets more for my marksmanship than for my way with words. When Saul refused to sit down with me so that we could set that had escalated between us at peace, despite repeated entreaties on my part, I determined that we would have a show down. Now that the only times I saw him were fleetingly at church and at Henrietta’s, I decided it would have to occur in one place or the other. I had by then weathered through the worst Christmas of my life, one when the temperature dropped below zero and stayed there throughout most of January.

Our showdown took place on January 15th—it’s a date I’ll never forget, for, on the birthday of America’s prince of peace, Martin Luther King, Jr., I committed my violent deed.

I was in a wretched state, deeply disturbed by Saul’s ignominious departure and subsequent inaccessibility to me. Since I couldn’t bear to let anyone I care about depart in such an ill-resolved fashion, I had fought to become reconciled with him and to lay our argument oto rest, but this was precisely what he denied me.

Be that as it may, I didn’t go to Henrietta’s with a violent intent, rather to force a confrontation between Saul and me. I spent the previous Saturday composing some pointed sonnets that I planned to read when it was my turn. They have been subsequently trashed, and it was just as well that the incident occurred before I could read them.

I informed Saul at church on Sunday morning that I would be at Henrietta’s that evening, and he informed me that this new girlfriend Patty would be there. Before this, I had but a glimpse of her and was relieved to see that she was a dowdy sort of woman. Nonetheless, I was jealous. I had contrived that when I finished reading, I would hand her my business card along with the invitation to give me a call if she wanted the lowdown on him!

Patty wasn’t there when I arrived, but Saul was. I helped myself to a cup of coffee in the kitchen and took a seat on a straight-backed chair without acknowledging him. Patty arrived after the reading had started, and space was made for her next to Saul on one of the couches. Saul gave her one of his winning smiles and said “Hi, babe,” while I sat stonily, not hearing a word of the poetry being read and not caring a whit for all those words, signifying nothing. I hated every nice feature she had—her dainty hands and pretty face—and rejoiced that she was generally lumpy, her hair was stringy, and she had the demeanor of an aging hippie.

As the reading progressed, every once in a while, Saul turned to Patty and gave her another broad smile, a thing, had he any sense at all, he would have refrained from doing while I sat there. Had I been a cat, my tail would have been twitching.

If you do that one more time, motherfucker, I silently warned him, I’m going to cream you. I look around for a weapon, something I could heave at him, and noted the round stoneware cup I was holding in my lap.

Well, he did, and I did. At his next smile, I threw the cup with all my might, and, thanks to all the softball I had played in my youth, had I gone up and marked his skull beforehand, I couldn’t have scored a more prefect bull’s eye.

The cup shattered. Saul’s eyes popped open. His mouth made a perfect “O” as he jumped from the couch. A second passed while the shock of what had happened registered on all present. I was only slightly less surprised than Saul, who reached his hand to his skull, and discovering blood, screamed “You hit me! I’m bleeding.”

He became hysterical, and since this wasn’t part of my scenario, I didn’t know what to do next. The place was befuddled and astir. Henrietta kept repeating absentmindedly, “I know just how you feel.” Then, remembering my plan, I stepped forward to hand Patty my business card.

Terror registered on her hapless face as she cried, “Get away from me!” in my heightened state of awareness, she reminded me of a cornered rodent, and I welcomed this small glimpse into her character.

Shunned, it occurred to me that the only thing left to do was to leave. So, I gathered my unread sonnets, stuffed them into my satchel, assured Henrietta that I would pay her for the cup, and made my way through the throng of confused poets who were crowding around me, through the kitchen, and across the hallway to the room where I had left my coat. Saul followed, calling my name when he meant to call Patty’s, and apprising me of my crime.

“You hit me!” he accused. “You hit me with a cup!”

I looked with amazement at the trickle of blood that was making its way across his forehead, onto his cheek, and into his beard.

“Yes,” I readily agreed, loud enough for those inside to hear, “and if I had something larger, I would have thrown it!”

We stood staring dumbly at one another while I methodically assembled my attire. Then, I gently pushed him aside with a polite, “Excuse me,” and made my way past him down the stairs and into the street.

Thought it was a cold night, I wasn’t the slightest bit cold. I felt refreshed. In a state of exhilaration, I walked to the subway station, boarded the train, and rode home.

Saul, as I soon learned, immediately dispatched himself to the emergency ward of the nearest hospital. Shortly I after returned home, the telephone rang. When I answered it, I found the caller was Reverend Schnaidt, the pastor of our church. He said that Saul had called him from the hospital and told him of my misdeed. “Yes,” I freely admitted. “I thew a cup at him. Furthermore, I’m not one bit sorry.”

If he was dismayed, he had the grace not to show it. “I can understand how you might feel that way,” he granted me.

If I wasn’t sorry that night, in the morning I was considerably subdued. As I was wondering what the consequences of my actions would be, Saul called. “You know, you could have put my eye out,” he piously informed me.

“Sorry I didn’t,” I quipped.

“Well, I’m pressing charges,” he stated. “You’ll receive your summons tomorrow. Furthermore, you can no longer come to Henrietta’s. you have broken our rule of no violence.”

I was surprised, yet knowing Saul as I did, I shouldn’t have been. He was as litigious as are some Jews, who believe neither in grace nor forgiveness but rather in holding to the letter of the law. He believed the law was the only rational mode for governing the behavior of others. Hence, anyone who transgressed must be subject to its due processes.

As promised, the next day Saul, accompanied by two burly policemen, climbed my stairs to deliver my summons. I wasn’t gracious. Taking it from one of them, I slammed the door and screamed, “Do you think you have enough protection?”

In two weeks, I was to appear in Arbitration Court.

The elations I had experienced after throwing the cup had vanished like the morning dew, and I was even more desolate than before. When I called Henrietta to find out whether it was true that I would henceforth be banished from her readings, she said yes, and then recalled some incident from her own life when she had become angry, but not violent. I considered my right to attend her readings no small matter, for as tawdry and downtrodden as the crowd that assembled itself there was, it had provided me with a sense of community and was an important bastion of my support network. Yet, there was little I could do but accept the punishment beset me by my own actions.

As far as I was concerned, Arbitration Court was a bad joke, but a good example of how much our modern institutions leave to be desired. Rather than answer my need for reconciliation, it expedited matters in an assembly-line fashion. I suppose, considering my violent deed (had my aim been less accurate, I may well have put Saul’s eye out), I should have been grateful that he chose Arbitration Court rather than to press criminal charges. However, at the time I was desperately seeking for some person or group who would arbitrate our dispute in a kind and just fashion. My experience in court only served to further my conviction that our age is harsh and mechanical in its administration of justice.

The event is worth describing. When I arrived a few minutes ahead of the appointed hour, Saul was already there. When he ambled over to instruct me to sign in at the front desk, I glowered at him and snapped, “Do I know you?”

The room where we sat was a government chamber, strong and sturdy, with high ceilings. It was a somber room, yet I liked its austerity. Wooden benches at one time may have faced a judge’s bench, but now they faced a large desk, behind which on each side were two doorways. I had not idea what to expect and had come, dressed in my business suit, prepared to tell my side of the story.

Saul and I sat on opposite sides of the room. While were waiting to be called, his support contingency arrived, consisting of Henrietta, her grandson, and another poet who held to the letter of the law. Seeing that Henrietta had lent Saul her support didn’t surprise me, but it hurt my feelings. Hadn’t I been friends with her, too?

We were called separately, ladies first, to tell a rather homely social worker our sides of the story. I supposed I went on in quite a plaintive fashion while she diplomatically honored neutrality. I would have welcomed a “Right on, sister!” but I knew that this wasn’t a realistic expectation.

I was dismissed, and Saul was called in. Ten minutes later, we were both summoned into the room. While the woman recounted elements from both of our stories, I was stoical and Saul admitted, gosh, gee whiz, maybe he hadn’t done everything he should have, in much the same way a schoolboy might admit to having stolen bubble gum. Then she produced a standard contract that stated that from this day forward, each of us would promise to have nothing further to do with the other. We would neither call for any reason nor would we go anywhere where the other would be present.

I have gingerly spoken with several people concerning the insufficiency of arbitrating personal disputes that have escalated to violence in such a fashion and have received the tacit agreement that perhaps this is the best way to address them. At the time, however, when all I wanted was to sit down and talk to Saul so that we could restore the good feelings we once had, the contract only served to plunge me further into despair. I thought of it as farcical. The court of the land had decreed that everything be frozen in place and that the wounded parties go forth to resolve things as best they could on their own. In that moment, I knew why the nations of the world fail to resolve their differences.

Neither Saul nor I resisted. Each of us dutifully signed the contract. I still have mine somewhere among my papers.

I scowled at Henrietta on my way out of the chamber and walked into the cavernous archways of the building looking for a phone to call Cat.

“How are you,” Cat asked gently.

“Oh Cat,” I replied, “I feel like dying.”

“Ohhh,” she cooed. “I’m so sorry. I wish you were here so I could make you some tea.”

As we talked, I noticed that Saul, too, was heading for the phone, no doubt so that he could call Patty. He stood with his back to me, reporting the disposition of the affair. It was all so hideously wrong and lacking in compassion. If only he would put his phone down, come over, and invite me for a cup of coffee so that we could laugh over all this foolishness. But, that was not to be. Saul dropped the receiver back in place like he was throwing down a wet washcloth and walked out of my life.

“What are you going to do now?” Cat asked. “Anna, are you still there?”

“Yes, I’m here. I guess I’ll go home. What else can I do?”

It wasn’t that she said anything that helped to encourage me, but I was grateful that she was there and cared. It gave me enough strength to be able to walk outside into a world devoid of Saul’s face or the face of anyone I knew. That brings me to the end of January of my most Orwellian year.

****

The worst, believe it or not, was yet to come. Would that the hurt and anger I felt had dissipated with the splitting of the cup into a thousand shards. Then I could have felt that the score was even. As it was, I felt mortally wounded and in a precarious state, not completely in control of my emotions for some time to come. Though I was supposedly the offending party, I felt maimed by the turn of events. I missed Saul dreadfully. The pain of our disaffection was so great that one night while I was waiting for the train in New Jersey that would take me back to New York, I wondered as it approached whether I should jump in its path.

I’m not the suicidal type, but my anger had to go somewhere, inward or outward. I chose outward, which mean for the better part of a year, I still wanted to hurt Saul. It was a terrible time when I felt as though I was wrestling with demons. They left me alone during the day when I was working, but at night, especially on those nights when I made the long trek from New Jersey back to Brooklyn, a feeling of desolation descended upon me, and the desire to still do him harm would rear its ugly head.

I knew that no matter how exhausted I was, I wouldn’t be able to sleep. I wished that I could hire some thugs to grab Saul in a dark alley and beat the holy shit out of him, leaving him as mangled as I felt. I wished I were a Sicilian and had a couple of Mafia brothers who would break his legs. Sometimes at night, I considered buying a gun. In my fantasy, I calmly walked into this office and riveted bullets into this body. Geysers of blood gushed from each wound as he slumped to the floor like a dying elephant. Then, as ai stared at the heap of flesh that was once Saul, I realized what I really wanted was to hold him. The degree to which I wanted to hurt him was the degree to which I missed him. It added to my range of experience to learn how one feels when one is cruelly deprived of one’s lover.

This understanding would help me to subdue the demons, as usually by then I was so exhausted I knew that if I took some aspirin and drank some warm milk, I would finally be able to sleep. But whether I attacked my mattress and flailed my arms against it until I had no strength left or I relived my preferred fantasy, it was no insurance that I wouldn’t be accosted by these same demons several nights later.

It was awful. Nineteen eighty-four was the year when, because of my personal battle, I felt like a criminal. Had I not realized that I wasn’t in my right mind when these seizures overtook me, I might have gone ahead. Never again could I separate myself from those who committed crimes of passion.

Gradually, taking far more time than I would have expected, these desires left me, and I was no longer plagued by them. But, it was such a bad year that whenever I bought clothes, I invariably bought black, leading my sister to say when she saw my wardrobe the following Christmas, “Black is not your color!”

As it turned out, I did take a second revenge on Saul, but this one was of an entirely non-violent nature, a meaner thing than throwing the cup had been but one that was well within the keeping of the law. In fact, I used the law as my instrument. Citing the agreement we had signed and threatening to bring him back into the Arbitration Court if he refused to comply, I drove him from my church. For even after my brilliant pitch and the “trial,” Saul continued to attend choir practice on Thursday nights and the worship service on Sundays, thought he slipped out the door after the choir had sung its anthem. I let him know that he was in violation of our agreement, and if he would not honor it by leaving my church, I would ask that the case be renegotiated. Let hi have a taste of his own medicine, I thought. Let the law be on my side for a change. He would understand that.

When several friends protested that this wasn’t exactly Christian behavior, I replied, “If he were a gentleman, it wouldn’t even be a question.” And when they reminded me of how much Saul enjoyed singing in the choir, I rejoined with, “There’s plenty of other choirs he can sing with, if he likes.”

When I succeeded in driving him from my church, I imitated his behavior and never contacted him to tell him thank you. My victory wasn’t as hollow as it might seem. It was my statement to New York that I couldn’t be pushed beyond a certain point without standing up for myself. I had no one else who would stand up for me. And if my actions were un-Christian, then it was time, for my own sake, that they be so. Furthermore, I reasoned, if the church’s doctrine of reconciliation had any meaning, then its membership should be reconciled, one unto another. I was in essence telling Saul that this wasn’t just pretty poetry he could Wow! over and not take to heart, not as far as I was concerned.

It was in this state that I endured 1984, and this paltry scene set the stage for what was to come.

CHAPTER SEVEN

After the breakup, I was too demoralized to give any thought to finding a new lover. Rather, I took the route of least resistance and relied on my friends to provide my soclife. In so doing, I became even more involved with Cat and David than I might have, had I a man of my own. Cat’s arrangement at Rachel’s ended earlier that year, and she returned to David. Her fear that she was pregnant had proved to be a fact, and she had an abortion without telling him.

“The wife is back,” David said philosophically upon her return, and he resumed preparing his Friday night dinners, where I was a regular guest. They were both pleased by my visits, Cat because she was fond of me, and David because I often lent him support when he came under attack from Cat’s family and friends. Cat was amused that I consistently offered a different opinion than they did and seemed glad that a friendship had developed between me and him. They reflected a more positive image of me than that of the deranged woman who hurled cups at poetry readings. Once a week, I could relax, eat David’s good cooking, listen to music, and ejoy their companionship.

Though the was illiterate in English, David had mastered the language sufficiently to be able to express himself with insight. He had a gift for gab. I often agreed with the opinions he voiced, especially those on the human condition.

“It’s very interesting,” he lorded over Cat, “how all those people you talk to can tell you so much about me when they’ve never met. Why don’t they come, sit down, and talk with the real David Gabriel Hamza before they say who he is!”

Or, “Trash!” he would erupt. “Do you know what they are? They’re garbage. All those friends of yours—they’ll fuck anyone they meet. They’re trash—they fuck themselves.”

Knowing I was sympathetic worked as a catalyst on him. Over plates of steaming bluefish he proselytized, embellishing the gracious way of life as lived in Morocco and scoffing at the niggardly ways of American.

“I open my house to them. I say, come and eat with me. I shop. I buy the best, only the best, the best fruits and vegetables, the best meat. I come home and cook. I make only the best. They come. They say, ‘Davy, this is good.’ Then they go. And when the wife, she is gone and I am alone, the phone, she doesn’t ring. They don’t say, ‘Davy, come and eat with us tonight.’ No, I sit alone. But, when the wife, she comes back, I go out and I say, ‘Come and eat at my house tonight,’ then they come again, but they come empty—how do you say it?”

“Empty-handed,” I offered.

“Yes, empty-handed. They come empty-handed. These are the friends I have.”

“I know what you mean,” I said. “Most people are takers. I wouldn’t give you two cents for the lot of them.”

“Lot? What is that?” David might ask. He had a keen ear, and though he complained that I used too many big words, when he heard the sound of one he liked, he would ask for its meaning.

“Lot? You know, group. The entire group of them.”

“Ahhh,” he nodded, signifying comprehension. “The group, yes, the lot—the garbage.”

“Most people are looking for a free ride,” I persisted. “And when they find one, they think it’s their due.”

“Due?”

“You know, their payment or reward, what they think they deserve.”

“I tink you’re both being too sharsh,” Cat might protest, but mostly she offered few opinions because she didn’t tend to concern herself with such things.

I believe it was David’s food that got me through that black year. “The best food I eat, I eat here at your house,” I told repeatedly, imitating his manner of speech. “All the rest tastes like garbage. I think your food keeps me from getting sick. If I’m coming down with a cold and eat your fish, in the morning I feel fine. You really should open a restaurant.

To open a Moroccan restaurant in the Village or in a nice area of Brooklyn was David’s dream. As far as I could tell, he had all the ingredients to make it a success—the cooking expertise, managerial skill, congeniality, and showmanship. He had everything he needed except for money.

There was no escape from the ubiquity of our need for money to do the things we wanted to do. Those who had it had power, but those without it could merely dream. If too much time went by without our being able to realize our dreams, we began to deem them foolish. David didn’t though—he wanted a restaurant so badly that whenever he could, he entertained lavishly.

****

My circle of friends diminished after the breakup from Saul, but remaining were Mark, Debbie, and Moe, a woman from my church (about whom you will hear shortly). Thought John and I got along well enough, I didn’t count him a close friend. He was ten years my junior, yet he carried himself with maturity and restraint. I couldn’t hide my misconduct from him, nor could I imagine him riled enough to throw a cup at someone. Thus, a rather lopsided arrangement existed in which he assumed the position of the sensible one whereas I was the wayward adolescent. The inequality annoyed me. However, I didn’t want to do anything that might upset the harmony of my home. So, even if it meant acquiescing to his “superior” development, I ate humble pie and did whatever I could to keep things running smoothly.

I wasn’t as close to Mark and Debbie as I was to Cat and David, but I appreciated their friendship. However, I was growing steadily more irritated with Debbie for what I called her “little girl routine.” I didn’t mind her SOS calls when she was upset, but I thought that she should share more of her aggravation with Mark and less with me. When he was present, she pretended none of it existed. Her biggest fear was losing hi, and she wasn’t going to do anything that might jeopardize her tie with him. Consequently, Mark was oblivious to many of Debbie’s concerns. Occasionally, I tested out this discrepancy. After spending an hour on the phone one night placating Debbie, the next I might have dinner with Mark. During our political discussions, Mark would become excited and gesticulate wildly, but when I asked, “How are things with Debbie?” he would look puzzled and answer, “Oh, they’re fine,” as thought it was strange that I asked.

As far as being able to share my bereavement over Saul with him, forget it. He had heard about my having thrown the cup and didn’t know what to make of it. This jealous outburst of mine lay outside his sphere of understanding, so he sidestepped making the attempt. Therefore, our discussions remained mostly in the political arena. I didn’t mind because I was learning from him. I was still a novice, too new to politics to have formed definite opinions. Mark’s opinions were long since formed and inviolable. He was impatient with my need to think things through on my own.

I was trying to compare the advantages of living in a capitalist with those in a socialist one. With this in mind, I mentioned that it seemed to me that many countries were finding that capitalism was a better system for stimulating the economy—take the recent decision of the French to return some of their nationalized industries to the private sector.

For this, I received a scowl. “In France,” Mark hotly informed me, “they don’t discuss capitalism. They discuss which brand of socialism.” His rejection was so vehement that I was glad I hadn’t made this faux pas before a group of European intellectuals.

In a city as big as New York, it’s possible to have friends from differing contexts with little overlap between them. If all one’s friends are from different contexts, one soon feels that his existence is somewhat schizophrenic. Because we all knew each other, I considered Cat, David, Mark, and Debbie my group of closely-knit friends. For the continuity of my life in New York, I had formed us into a tighter circle than we proved to be.

As the summer of 1984 beckoned, I deemed that the best medicine for my wounded spirit would be to participate in as may pleasant outings as possible and vigorously pursued this course. In so doing, I inadvertently left a trail of events to which I could return when I was searching for the clues to the mystery that had engulfed me.

One Sunday, I noticed in the church bulletin an announcement that the youth minister was planning to take a group of people on a river rafting trip along a tributary of the Delaware River. I decided it might be fun to join them. When I spoke to Moe about it, I found she wanted to go, too.

My acquaintance with Moe began when I joined the congregation of Immanuel Lutheran Church where she worshipped, too. I didn’t know her well because I rarely saw her apart from church. However, we had fallen into the habit of talking regularly on the phone. Our positions in New York were similar in that we both came from the country’s interior and had come to the city to pursue artistic vocations.

Moe was a large, billowy woman who possessed, on the one hand, the forthrightness of mid-Westerners, and, on the other hand, the cultivated mannerisms suitable for one profession: an opera star.

To sing with the Metropolitan Opera was her dream. She, like David, possessed an abundance of qualities that were necessary to achieve her lofty purpose: she had a beautiful and strong soprano voice, the intelligence needed to interpret music with power and depth, and the largesse of soul which separates the true artist from the amateur or pretender. Yet these weren’t enough to ensure her success because she was so strapped into making a living that she didn’t have the time required for training and money necessary for lessons.

I had come to New York, believe our American myth that if one’s talent is sufficient, he or she will rise to the top like cream, but now I had begun to see that this was not necessarily the case. I saw too many people like Moe whose struggles for survival were so intense that they couldn’t free themselves to pursue their rightful vocations. Because of that and the cut-throat competition, they often became demoralized. Meanwhile, time slipped by. The diva who never flowered onstage grew old and gave singing lessons. The once promising painter designed book jackets, and years passed without his lifting his brush to canvas. When I knew her, Moe had one remaining outlet for her truly magnificent voice: singing in our church choir.

Moe had a caustic wit which was often self-deprecating. She liked to tell others that she made her living “selling meat.” The truth was she worked as a sales representative for a Japanese company that imported meat products. She was fairly well paid. However, due to her inner demand to live as she deemed fitting one of her station, she constantly overspent and was falling deeper into debt.

She covered her need for praise and reassurance by hamming up the foibles of others. I got to know this side of her on Sunday evenings when she called to compare notes concerning what had happened in church that morning. In a highly irreverent manner, she would lampoon members of the congregation.

“Did you see Dick the Diver drooling over my bosom at coffee hour? I thought he was going to defrost my cupcake.” Or, “Poor Georgiana—she missed every beat and ended our anthem a whole note below the rest of the sopranos.”

I suppose it wasn’t very nice of us, but it offered us some relief from the strangeness of the congregation. Sometimes I found her humor so funny that I lay on the floor to stop from laughing. I was in awe of her perspicacity and frightened by the weight of her suffering, framed, as it often was, in satire.

When I found out that Moe was going on the river rafting trip, I was delighted and asked a favor of her—could I stay overnight at her apartment on Friday so that I wouldn’t have to schlep in from Brooklyn on Saturday?

I knew that Moe often let her tiny apartment become so messy that she wouldn’t let anyone in the door, but I hoped that she would make this an exception. As luck would have it, she had the key to a friend’s apartment in the same building, so she agreed to let me stay there. We planned to meet when she got home from work and spend the evening together.

At the appointed hour, I stood in the foyer of Moe’s building on Central Park West, ringing her bell. About the time I concluded she wasn’t home yet, she came in the door in the company of a young man whom she had picked up while listening to an outdoor concert in Central Park. She was tipsy. I could find little redeeming in the man—his motorcycle outfit and shifty eyes made me distrust him. What the hell is Moe doing with this boy? I wondered. Soon I was being dragged along with the to the man’s apartment several blocks away. He shared a large, well-furnished flat with several people. A number of people were sitting in the living room drinking beer and talking. Since they seemed to be a far cry from the kind of people I usually associate with, I remained silent while Moe conversed with them. She had adopted the manner of a haughty, knowledgeable diva, probably as a means of defense.

A woman produced a vial of cocaine. She tapped a small amount onto a round mirror and with a razor blade formed it into two lines. Rolling a five-dollar bill into a straw, she offered someone a hit and then repeated the process for each person present. I sniffed my lines and felt brighter than before, but it wasn’t enough to coax me from my shell into conversation with these people, whom I neither knew nor liked. I sat and waited for Moe to signal to me that she was read to leave.

“I haven’t had any dinner,” she complained when we were again standing on the street. “Let’s go get some pizza. What time is it, anyway?”

“It’s 1:20 a.m.” I answered, worrying that with too little sleep I wouldn’t be at my best for the day ahead.

We walked to a pizzeria on Amsterdam Avenue and ordered several slices. Then I realized just how drunk Moe was. As we sat at the table, eating our pizza, her eyes darkened, and she became increasingly happy. She seemed unconcerned that she was getting streaks of tomato sauce down her lovely turquoise dress. She reminded me of a mixture of Phyllis Diller and Lady Macbeth. Loudly, she denounced the choir director at our church for not giving her more opportunities to sing solos and congregation for their apathy. When she stopped clowning, she reflected only despair.

“He gives Charles and Sarah solos but lets months go by without letting me sing. Do you know why? It’s because I’m friends with his ex-wife. She left him. Now she lives in Europe and sings with the Hamburg Opera. He takes his resentment out on me. When he does give me a solo, he loves to criticize. ‘Oh, Moe, don’t you think you should sing that section softer?’ He likes to find fault with my interpretation, but the only places he’s ever sung are in churches.

“Why, when I sang Violetta in La Traviata, Alvin Consel told me he wept, and he has an international reputation as a great director. He kissed my hand and told me he had never heard it sung more powerfully. What does Tom know about music?”

Rivulets trickled from her eyes and down her cheeks, detouring around smudges of tomato sauce.

“I know you’re a great singer, Moe” I said quietly.

“You!” she sneered. “What do you know about music?”

Piqued, I replied, “I know what I like, and I know when I hear someone good. You’re better than good. You have a great voice.”

Her anger melted into defeat. “Then why am I singing in a church choir? Why am I seeling meat instead of singing at The Met? Tell me that.”

“I don’t know,” I told her wearily. “It’s not because you’re not good enough. It’s the damn system. You just never got the breaks you needed. You don’t have the backing.”

“And now I’m nearly too old. Do you know what it means to be in training? It means singing six hours a day. You have to watch everything you eat and drink. It’s like training for the decathlon. I don’t even practice anymore. I don’t have the time, and I don’t have money for lessons. What’s happening to me?”

She seemed close to throwing all convention.

“Do you know who I am?” she demanded of me.

“Who?”

“I’m Mary Magdalene, that’s who. I know her soul. She knew the ugliness of life. She was a whore, but she loved Christ. She knew what it was to be in the gutter. That’s where I am—in the gutter.”

“You’re not in the gutter, Moe. You have a good job. . . “

“I’m in the gutter, I told you, just like Mary Magdalene.”

Gently I suggested we walk home, me and this defeated Mary Magdalene in her tomato-and-tear-streaked dress. Once we arrived, I would put her to bed.

“You’re not putting me to bed,” she erupted. “I’ll put myself to bed.”

“Okay, whatever you like, but come on, let’s go. It’s getting late.”

I stood, hoping in this way to convince her that we were leaving.

She stood, too. Then she swashed over the table, and bracing herself with one hand, with the other, she removed first one shoe, then the other. She plopped them into her oversized purse. “These damn shoes hurt my feet,” she complained.

“But what if you step on some glass?” I protested.

“What’s a few more cuts?” she answered, grinning defiantly.

“Well, come on then.”

Outside, I put my arm around her waist to give her support. It was 2:30 a.m., and I wanted to sleep. Moe’s mood seemed to have shifted to complacency as she trudged along, the bottoms of her feet steadily becoming blacker. For all her bulk, she had the delicate hands and feet of someone half her size. Moe enlivened the relative quiet hour with an aria, “I’ve Been Working on the Railroad.”

When we entered her building, I again offered to see her to bed, and again my suggestion was met with belligerence.

“You’ll not put me to bed. I’ll see you to your door.”

“Okay, you’ll see me to my door,” I acquiesced.

We rode up the elevator to her friend’s apartment. Outside the door, Moe fished in her purse for the key. When she found it, she opened the door, stumbled inside and onto the floor. Our walk, it would seem, had been but a respite from the storm, for she lay on the floor and resumed her denunciation of the choir director at church.

“I’m not going to Immanuel anymore,” Moe asserted. “I’ve been there humiliated there long enough. I’ve had enough of them and their hypocrisy. I’ll find a church where I’m appreciated. To hell with them.”

I didn’t know what to do, as it was plain that I could get no rest with Moe lying on the floor ranting.

“Come on, Moe, we both have to get some sleep. I’ll be dead tomorrow if I don’t rest. You’ll be dead, too. We have to get up at 5, you know.”

Glancing at my watch, I saw that it was almost 3 a.m. “It’s already 3 a.m., Moe.”

“I don’t care what time it is,” she muttered, smearing snot across her face like an owlish child. Her eyes were shut, and sure that she was falling asleep, I stoop up and tiptoed to the couch, which was to be my bed for the night.

“You don’t listen to me,” Moe said, opening one eye. “I said, I’m not going to Immanuel anymore, and that means I’m not going rafting tomorrow.”

“Sure you are, Moe,” I mistakenly argued with her. “You’ll feel different when you’ve had some sleep.”

“No, I’m not going. . .”

“But Moe, others are depending on you. You’re supposed to drive your car. We’re supposed to pick up Harriet. . . “

“I don’t care, I’m not going. You’ll have to drive my car. I’ll find you my keys.”

“But I don’t have a New York license. My California license’s expired, and I haven’t gotten a new one.”

“Drive anyway,” she instructed.

She sat up, reached into her purse, and began throwing items onto the floor—shoes, checkbook, comb, wallet—in her attempt to find her car keys.

“I’ll find them,” I said, grabbing the purse and looking inside. “Oh, here they are.”

Moe resumed her supine position. Her eyes were shut again, and she was breathing noisily. I picked up the scattered contents of her purse and stuffed them back inside, slung it over my shoulder, and in a no-nonsense manner, began to hoist her from the floor.

“Come on, Moe,” I said firmly. “You’re going to bed now.”

“Leave me alone,” she yelled, thrusting me aside and sitting up. “I’ll put myself to bed.”

Unsteadily, she rose to her feet, reached for the purse I held out to her, weaved her way to the door, opened it, and without so much as a goodnight, fell into the hallway, slamming the door shut behind her. I heard her making her way to the elevator.

For a minute, I lay on the floor thoroughly exhausted from all my pleading and wrestling with Moe, wondering how on earth I was going to find the strength for the day ahead. The night was very warm, the air was till, and the apartment was so stuffy that I could hardly breathe.

Take a shower, I told myself. Then you’ll feel better. Then get some sleep. An hour is better than none. Don’t think now. Think tomorrow. Get up now.

So, directing myself, I rose from the floor and went to the windows to see whether I could let any more air in. They were open as far as they would go. How does she stand it? I wondered of the apartment’s tenant. I went into the bathroom, ran a lukewarm shower, and shedding my clothes unto the floor, stepped into it. Water splashed down me. Wash, I reminded myself. I took the bar of soap from a dish and rubbed it over my body. Wash your hair. I look around for some shampoo, and, failing to find any, shampooed my hair with the soap. Great. Your hair’s going to look great tomorrow. Now get out. Dry yourself off and get into bed. Don’t forget to set the alarm. Set it for five. By now it was almost 4 a.m., and I felt like crying. Don’t cry. Lie down and go to sleep. That’s it. Close your eyes. Now, stop thinking. In such a fashion, I was soon fast asleep.

When the alarm went off an hour later, I was surprised that I felt somewhat refreshed. But I had no sooner oriented myself when the escapades of the previous evening flooded back in. Now that Moe, too, had presumably slept, she might have changed her mind about going on a trip. I dialed her number and heard a busy signal. After how she had rebuffed me the night before, I wasn’t of a mind to go and knock on her door. Besides, I had only enough time to dress and do a she had instructed, but my stomach churned as I imagined Moe lying on the floor of her apartment, dead or unconscious, the receiver in her hand. Be rational, I told myself. She was very drunk and needs to sleep it off. I left the apartment and went to get her car.

When Harriet and I reached the church, I was told that Moe had called, and wanted me to go back to her apartment and pick her up. I was relieved that she had rallied herself enough to join us, but when I saw her waiting on the corner for me, I was amazed. She looked as fresh as a deodorant ad. How does she do it? I wondered. Where does she find the strength?

Several hours later, as we were shooting through rapids, I watched Moe paddling vigorously and shouting gaily as though she had twelve hours’ sleep the night before. Again, I marveled over how she had pulled herself together. After rafting, we drove to the minister’s summer home, where we had dinner and stayed overnight. We would return to New York on Sunday.

It rained the next day. Moe and I decided to take a walk. She said she hoped I wouldn’t think any less of her for what had happened. Of course not, I assured her, though I had been concerned. I delivered a brief lecture: even if we don’t always get the care we want from members of the church, isn’t it better to have a community of like-minded people than to be without?

Moe was short with me. “As usual, you’re so piously right.”

My feelings were hurt, and I was angry. Had she no idea what her performance had cost me? We were saved from further discussion in the group who had driven up behind us and was honking the horn and telling us to come in out of the rain.

The trip back to New York was grueling. Rain came down in torrents. Traffic into the city was backed up. Anticipating the long subway ride once I got to Manhattan, my patience had worn thin. The strain of Friday night, the activities of Saturday, and my current depression had conspired to produce an excruciating case of bursitis in my right should.er Moe, when she could, rode like a bat out of hell, chattered, sang, and was generally cheerful. How does she do it? I wondered glumly. When at last she dropped me off at my subway stop, she looked quizzically at me and inquired, “What’s the matter with you?”

“I’ve got bursitis in my shoulder,” I replied, winding as I hosted my knapsack.

Moe grinned. “Out of shape, I’d say. Well, take care. Toodle-loo. I’ll call you soon.”

I stood watching her zoom away, rain dripping down what must have been my forlorn face.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Several weeks later, Cat, Mark, Debbie, and I celebrated Debbie’s birthday by taking her out to dinner at an Indian restaurant on East 6th Street, where the food was good yet inexpensive, and where we could sit outside in the “garden.” The garden was a cemented backyard, surrounded by brick walls, but it was gaily decorated and quite pleasant. I had a bakery in Park Slope make a double-chocolate cake with a violin iced on top for her. During the previous month, Mark had reverted to celibacy, causing Debbie to become even more agitated than usual, so Cat sought to help Debbie by buying her a white, silk teddy to revive his flagging interest in sex. It must have cost her a small fortune, but she was often quite generous when she gave gift.

The day was humid, promising my favorite kind of sultry summer night. Mark, Debbie, and I congregated beside the revolving sculpture across from Cooper Union and waited for Cat. Soon enough, she sauntered toward us, bearing a tiny bouquet of flowers and her special gift, wrapped in lavender paisley paper. At dinner, I noted the same awkwardness that often accompanied our g-together and was disappointed because I wanted to have a good time.

After dinner, Mark suggested that we have our dessert at his apartment where we could listen to his records, so we boarded a subway back to Brooklyn. When we detrained, I excused myself, saying if I walked my dog now I wouldn’t have to worry about how late I stayed. Actually, I also wanted to buy some beer, because I was sure that Mark wouldn’t have any alcohol on hand. I walked Duchess, bought some beer, and as I strolled to Mark’s, I yearned for someone with whom I could make fiery love (damn you, Saul, anyway) and rejoiced that if Cat’s teddy worked its magic, maybe Debbie would.

When I arrived, Mark was standing in front of the bookshelves that lined a wall in his living room, ceiling to floor, where his volumes on Marxism, socialism, philosophy, history, and his record collection were systematically arranged, taking our requests. His accumulation reflected the tastes of an intellectual—the best classical albums money could buy, folk music from the Sixties, rock classics, blues, reggae, and some jazz.

“Oh,” I exclaimed, “put on some reggae—I want to dance! And do you have any Janis Joplin?”

Mark became enlivened. “First, how about some Joplin?”

“Great. It’s been a long time since I’ve heard her.”

As Mark put a Janis Joplin record on the turntable, I walked to the windows and looked out at silhouetted apartment buildings, the haloed glow of streetlights, couples mingling, their arms entwined, and the sail-like shaped of trees in Prospect Park. The windows had been thrust open, yet hardly a breeze filtered into the room. As I listened to belts from the great torch lady, I thought my heart would break from the mixture of pleasure and pain it felt.

“Half the world is crying,

And the other half is crying—

For the same damn thing.”

Ain’t it the truth, I thought, and turning to my friends, I saw that Mark and Debbie were dancing, so I joined them. When Mark put on some reggae, we danced without restraint.

****

Had I been more astute, I might have seen that our foursome was not quite the close-knit group I imagined us to be. It would seem my need to have this illusion was greater than my ability to see the truth: that seeds of dissension had sprouted and this association, like that of Saul and the Village poets, would soon disintegrate. As it was, I ignored the signs. For example, sometimes Mark or Debbie would drop a deprecating remark about Cat in my presence—disapproving things like, “She wears too much makeup.” It was as though they were testing me, inviting me to conspire against her, but since I’ve never liked talking behind friends’ backs, I sidestepped their remarks as though I hadn’t heard them. I surmised that they had their reasons and speculated that Debbie might be miffed because Cat tended to be less patient with her than was I. The reason for Mark’s dismissal was easy: since she had no political consciousness to speak of, she wasn’t worth his time.

Cat was not oblivious to their withdrawal and was probably hurt by it. She continued seeing Debbie from time to time, and occasionally she called Mark and suggested getting together. Usually, he made an excuse and several months would pass before she tried again. I was therefore pleased when, several weeks after Debbie’s party, she said she was planning to have dinner with Mark that night.

“Good,” I told her. “You haven’t spent any time alone with him for awhile.”

When I queried Cat the next day about their meeting, she said that they had eaten out and returned to the apartment where she was living. Now Cat was house-sitting for a cousin, a musician who was on a European tour.

With disgust in her voice, she began to tell me that Mark had put his hands on her and gave me to understand he had made a pass.

“I couldn’t stand his scrawny hands on me,” she confided.

Since early in our friendship Mark had confessed to me that he was attracted to Cat, I didn’t think that this lay beyond the range of possibilities. Indeed! It didn’t occur to me to question her story.

After we hung up, I thought about what Cat had divulged and became angry with Mark. Didn’t he know when to leave well enough alone? If he wanted sexual involvement with someone besides Debbie, why didn’t he go outside of our group to find it? Didn’t he realize the disruptive effect this kind of behavior could have? I chewed on this for awhile and called Cat back.

“Maybe Debbie should know,” I said flatly.

(If this seems like a stupid thing to propose, I can only cite the impression it made on me when my former husband was fooling around with a friend of mine behind my back, and none of my friends had the gumption to tell me). Furthermore, I was growing intolerant with the homeostasis that existed between Mark and Debbie, her complaints to me, and his ignorance of them. Alá my California conditioning, I still proselytized honesty as the measure of the quality of a relationship. Had this been a trap, I could not have walked in more blithely.

Cat disagreed. She was sure that if she told Debbie, she would lose her friendship. I found this difficult to believe—shouldn’t one be grateful to friends who tell one the truth?

“If anyone tells Debbie, it will have to be me,” Cat concluded.

“Okay,” I conceded. “I won’t say anything. Maybe you’re right—it’s better that she doesn’t know.”

When we hung up, I surmised that was all there would be to that. It wasn’t really a big deal. Cat herself had said nothing really happened, merely that she had found the situation to be “provocative.”

The next day was dank and muggy—a dog day in early August. I went to Manhattan on errands, and as I returned, I remember having a child’s sense of anticipation. The air was beginning to stir, indicating a storm was brewing. I heard the phone ring as I climbed my stairs and sprang up the last few steps to answer it. It was Cat in a state of excitement.

“Guess what? I told Debbie!” she exclaimed.

“You did what?”

“I decided you were right. She should know, so I called and told her.”

“You didn’t.”

“I did.”

“How did she take it?”

“she became hysterical. She wanted me to call Mark and tell him.”

“For God’s sake, why?”

“I don’t know, but I called him.”

“You didn’t. Well, I guess you did. How did he take it?”

“He yelled at me, ‘You what? Just what did happen?’”

“So what did you say?”

“I told him nothing, only that I found it provocative and thought Debbie should know.”

“What did he say to that?”

“He said that I was crazy, and he didn’t want anything more to do with me.”

“Oh, no . . . you poor thing.”

I was shocked by this information and felt responsible. After all, it was I who thought that Debbie should know, not Cat.

“I’d better call Debbie,” I told her. “I’ll call you right back.”

When I reached Debbie, her hysteria had been mollified by Mark’s denial that anything had happened.

“He’s coming over tonight,” she announced with pride. “I want nothing more to do with Cat.”

“Look,” I said levelly, “I think Cat was trying to do you a favor.”

“What favor?” Debbie asked like a truculent child.

“She told you the truth. Isn’t that worth something?”

“I have spoken with Mark,” she replied, “and I believe him.”

I could see Debbie was already profiting from this. When before was Mark willing to drop his plans and visit her. My frustration mounted, and I found myself shouting, “Sometimes you don’t know who your real friends are!”

The New York telephone lines must have sizzled and popped that day like the rain outside as calls flew back and forth. I must confess that I found it exhilarating—our suppressed sentiments were being released. All had entered the fray of it.

“Oh boy,” I exclaimed in my next conversation with Cat. “This isn’t just any ordinary day in which nothing happens. Today something really happened. It’s like the Fourth of July. After this, things aren’t going to be the same.”

Even as I spoke, I realized I couldn’t say just what had happened because I didn’t know myself. Nothing had really happened the night in question—Cat had said so herself. She had merely found the situation provocative, so why were we all screaming at one another? As far as things not being the same hereafter, I was correct, though not in the manner I thought. I was thinking that now Mark and Debbie would be forced into more honest communication, not that my relationship to this group would be altered.

“Let’s have more of it,” Cat enjoined. “Let’s confront each other every day.”

“Like two merry witches we crepitated. Then she dropped a quiet bombshell: “You know, I did this for you.”

I was shocked. Cat was telling me she had started this business on my account. On her own, she would have never done it. Her usual manner of handling interpersonal difficulties was to resign herself to them. Even as we were laughing at the preposterousness of the affair, I was thinking that things had gotten out of hand and felt a responsibility to put them back in order. Naively, I believed that once all the dust had settled, we would resume rationality and remain friends.

My first attempt to restore order was to call Debbie again and plead with her that Cat had told her because she thought she should know, to which she implacably repeated, “I believe Mark.”

Since I believed then that, even though nothing had come of it, Mark had made a pass at Cat, I grew irritated and tried another tactic.

“You have a short memory. Who was it who spent a lot of money to buy you that teddy on your birthday? Does that sound like someone who wants to do you wrong?”

Debbie remained unmoved. “Mark thinks Cat is crazy, and so do I.”

Frustrated, again I shouted at her. “You’re the one profiting from all this. You haven’t gotten this much attention from Mark since you met him. You should really thank Cat.”

My mission as peacemaker failed, and all I could mutter before hanging up was my epitaph: “Sometimes you don’t know who your real friends are.”

Then I tried to console Cat. “It’s all so unfair. When I’ve told people the truth in the past, my real friends always came back, but sometimes it took awhile.”

My consolation was weak, and she knew it. “No,” she replied. “They won’t be coming back, but that’s okay. They’re not that important to me. I’ll miss Debbie, though.”

During these pyrotechnics and the initial period following them, I didn’t talk with Mark. As I later told him in my defense, it didn’t occur to me to question Cat’s story, so I didn’t think to question him on it. As far as I was concerned, he was guilty of having made a pass, and his denial was a cover-up. Thought I thought him better than most, that was men for you. Therefore, I assumed that Cat was being condemned unfairly. My guilt stemmed from the feeling that I had instigated her action. I would have to confess my part in it.

The next event that summer was my birthday. This being the summer I had resolved to fill it with as many pleasant outings as possible, I celebrated it by inviting my remaining friends to join me on a champagne cruise on the Staten Island ferry, a poor girl’s celebration, but one everyone could afford. Cat and Moe came—this is worth mentioning because it was the first of two social occasions when both of them were present. Mark and Debbie spurned my invitation because Cat would be there. Instead, they invited me to have dinner with them several nights later.

I had seen neither of them since the explosion and was nervous about our get-together. I thought they had gone to lengths to avoid the truth and bore my self-appointed duty to defend Cat’s action and assume whatever blame was due me. Nevertheless, I fully expected that we would sit through dinner and never have the trouble mentioned unless I brought it up. I told Cat as much. She was anxious that I call her as soon as I returned home.

Debbie was already at the revolving sculpture when I arrived we made small talk as we waited for Mark, but the strain between us was evident. I concluded she wouldn’t relax until Mark arrived. When we spotted him, I could see from the way he was walking, stiffer than usual, that he was experiencing difficulty as well. As he drew near, I saw he was pale and seemed visibly shaken.

We were halfway through dinner at another Indian restaurant when Mark startled me by launching into a thorough character denunciation of Cat.

“I want you to know that I’m not the slightest bit interested in her,” he declared. “In fact, I think she’s, she’s slothful. She wears too much makeup and is phony. She could only have a vile motive for doing this to Debbie.”

So overcome was I by this attack and the confusion his accusations produced in me, I was thrown off balance. Let responsibility lie where its due, I reminded myself, searching for some entry remark. Calmly, I said, “I was in on it. When Cat told me what had happened, I was angry with you and thought that Debbie should know.”

Mark’s face took on a costive expression. “Just what did happen?” he demanded.

I was immediately stymied. What had happened the night in question was even more vague than when Cat had told me about it.

“I don’t know,” I confessed. “According to Cat, you made a pass at her, and she found it provocative.”

“Provocative? We had dinner, went over to her apartment, and talked for awhile. I didn’t want to stay. I certainly didn’t want to make love to her. I would rather make love to my grandmother.”

“You didn’t put your hands on her?”

“No, I didn’t.”

Mark’s face became further contorted as he recalled why he was angry with me.

“Why,” he challenged me, “didn’t you call me after Cat told you that? Didn’t you want to hear my side of the story?”

The $64,000 question. Indeed, why hadn’t I? as a matter of fact, it hadn’t occurred to me to ask his side of the story because I accepted Cat’s unquestioningly. I knew Mark had a valid oint, but it was one that I would have to grapple with when I had time to think. There was little time for that now, in the heat of the battle, as it were. Grasping at straws, I stammered, “I didn’t feel our friendship accommodated that degree of openness. The last time we discussed anything personal was over a year ago when I helped you move, and you were upset about Rachel. All we ever seem to discuss is politics.”

“You call that not personal?” Mark yelped. “I share my deepest convictions with you, and you don’t call that personal?”

He was putting and may not have heard my weak, “No, not in the same way.”

I had little time to reconnoiter before he was on to his next offensive.

“So, you wanted to destroy my relationship with Debbie, too.”

“No!” I shouted.

During this time, Debbie had been listening to us like a little girl listening to her parents argue. The only time she entered into the conversation was to remind her daddy of something he had forgotten. I looked at her and decided if I was going to be able to make Mark understand my motivation, I would have to tell him of my irritation with Debbie.

“Look,” I informed him. “For the past two years, Debbie has come running to Cat or me whenever she’s upset with you. I’ve told her that I think you would have a more honest relationship if she would take her grievances to you.”

Mark scrutinized Debbie with a frown, and she evidenced such discomfort that I sought to soften my charge with, “Well, she doesn’t do it as much as she used to.”

Now that the spotlight had swung to her, Debbie squirmed and, giving Mark a downcast plea, said, “I didn’t want to bother you when you were busy.”

Mark seemed satisfied with this, leaving me to sense I hadn’t adequately expressed how my irritation had prompted her to know. Mark’s expression towards her softened as he said dotingly, “Debbie wouldn’t hurt a flea.”

At the sound of his praise, Debbie’s countenance grew distinctly angelic.

Returning his attention to me, Mark stormed, “So, you don’ think we have an honest relationship.” Why, we’re always completely honest with each other.”

I refrained from saying, yeah, maybe you are.

Our debate had been going on long enough that a gentle Indian waiter had neared us, waving our check and gesturing for us to please give up our table. Other patrons were eating their dinner and listening to us. My mind was reeling with things I would have to think about when I had time. I felt battle-fatigued and as though I was losing ground. Mark, owever, once started was not about to be put off. I doubt that he noticed the waiter with his pleading eyes and the looks our table was drawing.

He resumed his castigation of Cat.

“I don’t know why you’re such good friends with her,” he charged. “You told me yourself you think she’s off the wall. And that Moroccan she lives with—some day he’ll get mad and beat the holy shit out of her.”

“I said that awhile ago. She’s had a rough time, and she’s trying. She’s more grounded now, but that’s probably because of David. Besides, she’s been a good friend to me.”

“You think she’s such a good friend!” he thundered, waving his finger in my face. “Just you wait. In another year, she’ll have figured out some way to stick the knife in your back!”

I stared with my mouth agape, stunned by the blow. Seeing me disabled, Mark continued, “Remember the night, on Debbie’s birthday, when you went home? Well, when we got over to my place, Cat shook her head and said, ‘Poor Anna, she just doesn’t like to hum.’ To hum,” he repated, nodding his head and humming.

I wondered what Cat meant by ‘humming’ and could only deduce that she was referring to my unwillingness to engage in anything other than straight sex.

Several waiters now stood before us, their faces anxious. One of them resolutely held out our check. At last we rose and made our way out of the restaurant. I could see that they had been more than generous—the foyer was crammed with people waiting for tables. Our argument spilled onto the street.

“So, you and Cat wanted to break us up,” Mark alleged. “Well, it didn’t work, did it? We’re closer than we’ve ever been.”

“I wasn’t trying to break you up,” I protested. “Believe me, I want a relationship myself. I don’t want to break up yours.”

Nothing I said that evening seemed to have the slightest placating effect, rather, every word seemed only to sink me further. My next comment was no exception.

“I admit in the beginning, I thought your relationship was doomed.”

“Doomed?” Mark bellowed. “What do you mean, ‘doomed?’”

“Well, you’re such a confirmed bachelor, and Debbie wants to get married and have a family, so I didn’t see much hope for it.”

“So, you wanted to save her from the clutches of a pervert, is that it?”

“No, no, no,” I cried wearily. Why was everything I said interpreted wrongly? As I regard them, Mark with his self-righteous anger, so sure a plot had been watched to wrest Debbie from his clutches, and Debbie, clinging to him as though he were the hero of the universe, I thought, were the truth known, I bore him greater affection that I bore her.

Nothing redeeming was said before we parted. Confused, weakened, and shaken, I walked to the subway, glad only to have finally escaped this misguided discussion. I had failed miserably to defend Cat, moreover, Mark’s warning had struck me to the core.

There was a message from Cat on my answering machine when I got home. “Call me,” she invited breezily. “How was dinner? Call me as soon as you get home, I’m all ears.”

There was no way I could speak to Cat that night. I didn’t want to tell her how vehemently Mark had attacked her, nor could I admit how weakly I had defended her. I needed time to think, to decide just what I would tell her. feeling as though I was swimming in dark, swirling water, I left the answering machine on and went to bed. Though it was a warm evening, I heaped the covers over my head. Several more calls from Cat were recorded, each less gay than the previous one. Finally, she resigned herself, saying, “I didn’t think you would be out so late. Well, I’m going to bed now. Call me first thing in the morning.”

When I did speak with her the next day, I lied and said I had gotten home late because of a subway delay. I diluted my report of the evening, saying only that, “Mark certainly was on your case, but when I admitted my part in the affair, he was angry with me, too.”

When she pressed me for explicit information, I said, “Oh, you know. He thinks you wear too much makeup. He doesn’t have much use for anyone who’s not interested in politics.

“What about Debbie?” she inquired.

“Debbie sat through dinner like a child listening to her parents argue. Don’t worry,” I advised. “In time this will below over as though nothing happened.”

“No, it won’t,” Cat replied. “I shouldn’t have told her.”

“You were honest,” I demurred. “People just don’t want to hear the truth.”

Cat sighed, showing no confidence. “What are you going to do now?”

“I don’t know. Everything’s blown out of proportion. I’ve got to get to work. I’ll talk to you later.”

When we hung up, I was agitated, as though there were some kind of mischief afoot, confusing matters. I regretted my inadequate defense of Cat. I sat down at my typewriter and wrote Mark a messy, disordered letter in her defense. I reiterated that I thought Cat was trying to improve her life. Maybe he should be more sympathetic towards those whose personal concerns superseded an interest in the world’s troubles.

I wanted him to understand my motivation for wanting her to tell Debbie, that I was tired of her complaints. I knew it was a poorly written letter, but I sent it anyway.

Two days later, when I received Mark’s tidy response, he referred to my letter as “venomous.” He said he had spoken with Debbie and that she had assured him that the last time she had complained to me was approximately eighteen months ago. He concluded that since I had chosen to remain friends with Cat, he wanted nothing further to do with me.

I could hardly believe my eyes. Again and again, I re-read his statement that eighteen months had passed since Debbie last complained, when the truth was that the very night before the commotion started, Debbie had called and asked me whether I thought Mark was interested in sleeping with other women. Havin the information I had gotten from Cat that day, I thought, if you only knew, but since I promised Cat would say nothing, I told her no, I thought he was too preoccupied with worldly affairs to have time to chase women.

“Why don’t you ask him yourself?” I urged her.

“Oh, I couldn’t do that,” Debbie objected. “He would think I was being possessive.”

“Suit yourself,” I replied curtly.

Though admittedly there had been some tapering of the frequency of her calls, it was an all-and-all-out lie to say eighteen months had passed since she had last done it. Yet, hadn’t I given her leave to it by saying, “She doesn’t do it as much as she used to.”

Misunderstanding was rife. I had little confidence that I could make Mark understand. As things stood, he had questioned Debbie and was satisfied with her response. Little Debbie , who wouldn’t “hurt a flea,” had misled him. Little Debbie, whom I had fed cookies and milk and let stay with me so she wouldn’t have to travel  on the subway late at night, had done this to me. I could call Mark and refute her, but what good what it do?

She must have been terribly threatened to tell such a falsehood. I could call and tell her what a coward and prefabricator I thought she was, but I refrained from doing so. Too much had already been said. One bad word only seemed to lead to another. If Debbie needed Mark so badly that she would misguide him, then she might as well have him. I would say nothing further.

I didn’t care if I lost Debbie’s friendship, but there was sorrow in my heart over the loss of Mark’s. I would miss our conversations and being invited to happenings I would never know on my own.

Cat seemed relatively untouched by these developments. When I informed her that I, too, had lost their friendship, she purred, “They’re not that important to me. I can live without them. I’ll miss Debbie, though.”

With a heavy heart, I replied, “I’ll miss Mark.”

****

I still have the photographs we took the night of Debbie’s party in an album. There’s one of Cat and me, sitting on the subway, arms linked and looking cocky. There’s one of Debbie giving Mark a bashful smile—he appears embarrassed. Debbie is holding two boxes on her lap, the white baker’s box, containing her double chocolate birthday cake, and beneath it, the paisley-wrapped present of the silk teddy. Debbie is wearing a yellow blouse and Mark, a light blue shirt.

The next photograph shows Debbie and Cat sitting on Mark’s couch, their arms around each other. They are both barefoot. It’s not the best photograph of Debbie, as her face has assumed a ghoulish expression, and one foot is turned, so that with the mean tricks a camera can play, it looks like a club foot. Cat looks gorgeous, but then, I never saw a bad photograph of her. in this one, however, her eyelids are closed, and she seems weary. The cake has ben set on a TV tray in front of them, and its candles are blazing. Part of it became smashed in transit.

The last photograph on the page is of Mark dancing, framed by his bookshelves, where each book and record is systematically arranged. His head is thrown back, and his arms are raised at awkward angles. His expression is ecstatic.

I remember how we danced that night—Debbie as thought she were a bountiful milk maiden, Mark as though he were a cast-off creature who inhabited the underworld of Bertolt Brecht, and I with forced abandon. All of us were acting out, I suppose, some measure of our personalities.

CHAPTER NINE

That fall, I joined a cooperative art gallery in Brooklyn Heights. I had brought numerous watercolors with me to New York with the hope that they would be enough to launch my reputation as a painter. I laugh now when I think of what my expectation was then, but it’s a rueful laugh. When I first arrived, I took my work to some galleries on Madison Avenue and 57th Street, and failing to get beyond, “They’re nice, but we’re booked for the next three years,” or, “Why don’t you paint larger?” I packed them away for a better day. When I had painted them, I reasoned that size should not be a determinant of the value of a work of art and expected a critic with a discerning eye might say, “Hey Sam, will you look at these?” hence, I was ignorant that in a place as huge as New York City, what one does one must do on a large scale, or it will be ignored.

Joining the gallery was a way of killing two birds with one stone, a way to show my paintings and a social outlet to make up for recent losses. The people who comprised the membership of the gallery were a gentle lot, who painted because they were moved to do so. I found their companionship enjoyable and their work creditable, but soon I found my involvement was strictly a labor of love. I doubt anyone sold enough to offset his dues, to say nothing of the time he spent on the gallery’s maintenance.

Soon, I was invited to contribute work to a “New Members’ Show” in December. It was just the inventive I needed to do some new painting, and now I wanted to paint some cityscapes.

Early fall is an exhilarating time of year in New York. Once all the New Yorkers who have escaped the summer heat come pouring back into the city, one can feel the energy level rising as schools, stores, playhouses, and concert halls prepare for the new season. Anticipation tantalizes residents and visitors alike. The colors of buildings deepen to rosier tones, and the trees acquire their warm hues while the city takes on its fieriest palette.

I wanted to paint some autumn views of Manhattan from lofty perches. The trouble was I couldn’t simply walk into a building and paint a scene from one of the windows without being thought of as odd, arousing the suspicions of tenants and doormen, and being kicked out. Therefore, I was left reduced to asking people I knew who lived in apartment with good views if I could paint from their windows.

Now Cat working as a nursemaid for a wealthy Jewish family, who made its fortune in plumbing supplies trade. The views from their apartment on a high floor overlooking Central Park was splendid.

“Oh, I must paint it,” I exclaimed when I first saw it, watching cotton balls bouncing over apartment houses and the park. In another month when fall would be at its zenith, it would be stunning. I prevailed upon Cat to ask her employers if I could paint a picture here. “If they feel nervous about my being here, I could meet them and show them my work.”

Her smile said she liked the idea. “I’ll see what I can do,” she assured me.

“As them tonight,” I urged.

About this time John announced that, what with his burgeoning electronic studio, he was feeling cramped in his rooms. Since he was planning to buy more equipment, he needed my space. Perhaps I should begin looking for another apartment.

This didn’t come as a complete surprise to me. As well as our arrangement had worked for both of us, I had already begun to feel the time was coming for me to move in. but I loved my rosy abode in that dilapidated brownstone, John, his three cats, my dog, and his outrageously healthy plants. They had provided me with a home and surrogate family in New York. For nearly three years, this had been my sanctuary, my refuge. His suggestion therefore caused fear to grip my stomach. Now, where on God’s gray earth would I go?

John, who was just as nervous about this conversation as I was, sought to soften the blow. “I’m in no hurry for you to move. I just thought you should start looking.”

“What kind of time frame are we looking at?” I queried him.

“Take as long as you need,” he replied kindly, “two, three, four months.”

For a while, I withheld the news from Cat. I knew what she would want—let’s look for a place together—and I knew that I didn’t want to do that. I feared that if I lived with her, I would be confronted with opportunities, however subtle, to become physically intimate, and I was holding out, as I often shared with her, for a man with whom I could share my life.

My feelings were complicated by my affection for David. I wished Cat would see his value and acquiesce to his desires. Failing this, I thought she wasn’t being fair to him. If she had not intention of ever giving in to him, she shouldn’t let go of him so that he could find a woman who would?

The exigencies of our lives often didn’t allow us the most honorable course of action. Strict morality was more a luxury than an imperative, superseded by our need for survival. Still, I was beginning to think it was unethical of her to use him as a backup when all else failed.

“Why don’t we look for a place together in Manhattan?” Cat proposed when I finally told her.

“First I’m going to look in Brooklyn. I know you don’t want to live there, but it’s good enough for me.”

My reply was enough to indicate my ambivalence. She would back off and give me time to come around. I was under no pressure from John. Nevertheless, the idea that I had to find a new home was enough to make me queasy, all too aware of the vaporous lives we were living. Cut one caper too many and you could go down into the streets to join the swelling ranks of the homeless. I wasn’t making enough money to handle the expense of an apartment on my own. Thus, I felt forced to think of possible roommates.

That summer I had started dating a therapist named George who lived in the neighborhood. He was a pleasant fellow, but I would characterize our relationship as lackluster. I was still so devastated by the unpleasant demise of my affair with Saul that it would have taken a saint to get along with me, and this George was not. His apartment was in a good neighborhood, but it was a basement apartment, and, as such, was cold and musty. George complained about it and gave desultory indications he would like to move.

About this time, I spotted an ad in The Village Voice for a “spacious, six-room apartment” on Eastern Parkway. “Needs work” cautioned the ad, but since the price, if shared, was right, I called the broker and made an appointment to see it.

Eastern Parkway had once been one of Brooklyn’s grandest boulevards, lining Prospect Park with magnificent apartment houses. They had been built at the turn of the century by a growing aristocracy that demanded spacious quarters. By current standards, these apartments were humungous. Their foyers were as grand as hotel lobbies with marble inlays and chandeliers. But through the twists of fate in urban developments, now they were either boarded up to lie fallow or were rented to a Black population and were in a state of disrepair. It was only a matter of time before the tenants would be squeezed out to make way for gentrification.

When I say the apartment, I observed that “needs work” was an understatement. The place looked as thought it had been through a war. Plaster hung from the ceiling, debris was strewn about, and paint the color of dishwater was peeling from the walls. Still, if the clutter were removed and it were restored, it could be elegant again and would have ample room for three people. If George came in on it, if there were a man living there, too, then sharing with Cat was conceivable. I wasn’t thinking straight during those days. I packed my satchel and went to work on the painting I was doing from her employer’s windows.

While we were having coffee, I told her about the apartment, elaborating more on its former glory when horse drawn carriages had conducted high society up and down the boulevard, than its present decrepitude.

“The points is the neighborhood is coming back—they’re co-opting every building they can. I’ll see if George wants to come in on it. If we split the rent three ways, we could afford it.”

I was going against my inner, cautioning voice and thus felt off kilter. Meanwhile, Cat was delighted. She offered to pay her third on the spot, sight unseen. When I started working, she discreetly withdrew to leave me alone. I was so giddy I could hardly concentrate. An hour or two later when I was packing to leave, she handed me a warm package wrapped in foil.

“I made you some banana bread,” she said, smiling as though she were an Indian princess.

I had no doubt that the bread was a love offering, her way of saying how glad she was that I had I had finally come around.

“Thanks,” I told her, hoping my discomfort didn’t show. I didn’t have the heart to tell her I didn’t like banana bread.

“Let me know what George thinks of it,” she told me.

I was saved from further foolishness on this account by George’s abject refusal to look at the place. “The neighborhood may be coming back,” he glowered, “but it’s not back yet. It isn’t safe. My patients wouldn’t come to that neighborhood.”

He may have been puzzled by how well I took his refusal. It allowed me to call Cat and way, “The deal’s off—George isn’t interested.”

When she suggested that we take it ourselves, I said, “I’m afraid that’s out of the question. It needs too much work for us to handle.”

She was disappointed. “I was having fantasies of being driven up Eastern Parkway in a horse-drawn carriage,” she rued.

“John’s not pressuring me to get out,” I reminded myself as well as her. “I’ll just keep looking.”

I felt like someone who had crashed a party and now was tiptoeing for the nearest exit. Several weeks later, I found a rambling flat on Atlantic Avenue that also needed work, though not to the extent of the other apartment. The rent, if shared, was reasonable. Not having learned my lesson the first time, I told Cat about it.

“For $800 a month, this place is a steal. There’s room for three. David could come in on it.”

In the meantime, George and I had parted company, so I was trying to protect myself by including David. Again, Cat was delighted and encouraged me to put down the deposit immediately. “David would love living with both of us,” she asserted. “He’s told me so himself.”

Obediently, I paid the deposit and one month’s rent, promising to pay the last month’s rent in a few days, when I could get it from Cat. This time it looked like a sure thing. I fantasized about David’s scrumptious dinners being served in our new home and felt protected by his imagined presence. But the next day, the agent called and apologized: he hadn’t been authorized to rent the apartment, and someone in his office had decided to take it. Would I come down and retrieve the check I had given him. Again, I was relived. Try as I may, I couldn’t dislodge my reservation about living with Cat, even if David were there.

“Look,” I said when she expressed disappointment that this deal had fallen through, too, “I’m going to take a breather from looking. I need to concentrate on getting ready for the show. I don’t want to look again until after Christmas.”

It was mid-November and after the show, I planned to go to California for Christmas. I hadn’t been thinking clearly lately. It was best to shelve finding a new apartment until the new year.

“It’ll be winter then,” Cat protested. “Who wants to move in the winter?”

****

Here the soup begins to thicken in a mysterious way, as though I were under water and could only see vague shapes of things turning. Things seemed to be moving in slow motion towards a climax.

To be sure, Cat had been patient with me. She was disappointed with the second collapse of a sharing environment, and she wasn’t fooled. She had sensed my resistance all along and heard the relief in my voice, yet she never openly voiced what must have been a growing aggravation with me.

Rather, she was supportive, so proud of the painting I had done from her employer’s window that she insisted on framing it herself. We argued over whether the inner mat should be dark or light, and she was pleased when I let her make the decision cat was assuming a maternal role, scolding and advising me as a mother would her advice.

“Yes, Mother,” I teased.

“Do as I say,” she retorted.

To be sure, she was in love with me.

****

One day, I told Cat, “When I lived in San Francisco and one of the painters I knew had an opening, all his friends would come. Afterwards, we would go to a bar or restaurant and celebrate. Wouldn’t it be fun if we did that?”

“Let’s,” she encouraged, so I asked some people if they would join us at a Moroccan restaurant near the gallery after the reception. I was pleased when Moe, who rarely came to Brooklyn, promised she would come and bring Charles with her.

Charles was a handsome gay man who also belonged to our church. He and Moe were good friends. He wasn’t the usual kind of man one might find in a Lutheran congregation. I had nearly fallen out of my pew the first time I say him. With his thick, blond curls, deeply tanned complexion, well formed body, and tailored suit, he looked as though he were a model for Armani ads. Charles was the kind of homosexual to whom women are drawn. Close up, his face showed signs of dissipation, and I placed his age beyond what his youthful Adonis image suggested from afar.

Were it not that he and Moe were such good friends, thick as thieves really, I might have tried to ingratiate myself into his circle, but since I knew Moe would be jealous, I refrained.

As it was, I heard a great deal about Charles form her. They were like brother and sister, childhood playmates, and at some level, despite his homosexuality, tormented lovers. Their bond was strengthened by their fantasy, since they had both been adopted, that they had the same father. This was pure nonsense because Moe knew who her real father was. Charles had been adopted into a wealthy family and lived an idle life. He and his lover owned a chain of health clubs, but according to Moe, Ted was the brains behind the business. They also owned a townhouse on the Upper East Side and a vacation home in East Hampton.

Moe often spent her free time at one or other of their homes. These were times when she could relax and let her hair down. She and Charles spent hours playing together playing like children. They sang duets while Charles accompanied them on is baby grand piano. He had a good tenor voice and showed considerable showmanship. When they performed, you would have thought they were married or lovers.

Moe relished these times when she could step forth in all her glory, eat, drink, and be merry. . . until, when she was nearly beside herself with happiness, Charles would spoil it all by making a nasty comment. Like, “You know, you’re a pig.”

His comments were enough to send her on a self-destructive binge that lasted for several days. I think he touched on her fear that she was unlovable. She might get so drunk that she blacked out. Then, through the kind of super-human effort I had seen in her, she would pull herself together.

Moe was intelligent and saw the danger signs—an overdrawn bankbook, a growing list of creditors, not being able to remember what had happened for blocks of time. She consulted a therapist, and as my art show approached, she voiced the intention of weaning herself from her attachment to Charles, yet whenever he called and suggested a movie or dinner, she dropped all else and ran to meet him.

She was convinced that Charles enjoyed eliciting her jealousy. At choir practice, he might ignore her and pay attention to Dearie, a pretty divorcée of modest circumstances. Charles had assumed an avuncular position to Dearie’s children. Dearie adored Charles while Moe fumed, sure he was doing this to taunt her.

“Did you catch the little scenario at the communion altar this morning?” Moe asked me one Sunday. “Dearie almost threw herself at his feet. I thought I would throw up.”

As a matter of fact, I had seen it and knew Moe wasn’t exaggerating. While the parishioners were kneeling at the rail for the Eucharist, Dearie followed Charles and flung herself at his side with the passion a heroine in a Gothic romance novel might muster.

“He’s buying Dearie’s boys a Christmas tree,” Moe continued. “Meanwhile, I’m lending him money and charging my cat food at the grocers.”

The things we do for love, I thought. During this time, neither she nor Charles had any money. She was changing jobs while Charles and Ted were trying to sell some of their assets. I had already floated Moe one loan, and she had asked me for another.

The week before the show, I was in such a hurry that I sprained my ankle on some subway stairs. I was beside myself.

“One Saturday, I have to pick up the paintings I had framed,” I complained to Moe. “With a bad foot, how am I going to carry them home?”

Her response was truly Christian. “It’s simple,” she answered benevolently. “Charles and I will come over and help you.”

My sense of gratitude was somewhat tarnished by my knowledge that it would also provide her with a convenient time to pick up the money I was going to lend her. If you have to buy help, I bemoaned, so be it.

Good to her word, Charles and Moe arrived early the next Saturday afternoon. I feared that Charles, when he trekked up our filthy stairway, would think I lived in abject poverty, but he merely complained he wouldn’t have come had Moe not insisted. He was pleasantly accommodating, and she seemed satisfied with their good Samaritan mission.

Since part of the money I was giving Moe was going to go to Charles, she had alerted me beforehand to please slip it to her out of his sight. Naturally, I complied, trained as I am to preserve the male ego.

Soon the two of them were walking gaily down Seventh Avenue in Park Slope while I hobbled alongside them. The day was mild, overcast and misty. I thought it a grand adventure and dismissed the frown that had formed on Moe’s brow.

When we arrived at the art store, I was crestfallen to find the owner, who had assured me he was skilled in framing, had left such large inner borders around the pictures that they looked as though they should be hung on a school bulletin board. I paid him, but as soon as we were in the street, I fussed.

“I can’t hang these! There’s a gallery down the street. Let’s stop there, and I’ll see whether they can redo the mats. After that I’ll buy you a drink.”

Since they were watercolors and had been glasses, they were heavy. Charles insisted on carrying both packages. “Now I know why you wanted me along,” he teased.

A woman at the gallery said that she could cut new mats and would have them ready in a few days. While I was working out the specifications with her, Moe and Charles went to a bar across the street. Once my errand was complete, I joined them. Now I could enjoy the rest of the day.

The saloon was brimming with a boisterous pre-holiday crowd. Moe and Charles were sitting at the end of the bar by the window. Charles gave me his chair and moved to the other side of Moe. I gulped down my first drink before I noticed that Moe had grown sullen and withdrawn. Apparently, she had taken exception to something Charles had said at my house, and it was enough to trigger her regressive behavior. Charles sat there glum as any straight man might be next to his angry love.

“I can’t say anything anymore that you don’t take exception to,” he chided her.

He seemed to be the more mature of the two of them. His responses seemed to indicate, when all was said and done, she was first with him.

We shared a Chinese dinner before they returned to Manhattan, but Moe’s slump took the gaiety from it. When she and I went to the bathroom, she wanted my impression.

“I don’t know,” I said squirming. “Sometimes I don’t think you appreciate how hard he tries.”

“You don’t know him like I do,” she retorted. “You only see him when he’s being nice.”

“That’s true,” I admitted. “Well, it was nice of Charles and you to come to Brooklyn. “Thanks for your help.”

If my mentioning the above scenario seems inconsequential and not of sufficient interest to include in this narrative, I can only say it was another incident which I recalled when I had to make a judgement concerning Moe.

****

            My troubles getting ready for the show weren’t over after I received help from Charles and Moe. On the day I was to transport my painting to the gallery, I called a car service and carried my boxes down to the stop. Once the work was at the gallery, the worst would be over.

            The driver arrived, took one look at my boxes, realized my predicament, and announced, “I kent ‘ave dem boxes in my car.”

            “For God’s sake, why not?” I asked in disbelief. “They won’t take up that much room.”

            “Nope. Kent do’t.”

            “What do you think I’m transporting? A live elephant?”

            “His face reflected his pleasure in refuging me. “Kent” was really “won’t” and won’t was out of spite, the satisfaction it gave him to see me stranded, as it were, with my elephant. I was furious.

            “You’re a stupid and cruel man,” I spit out. “I’ll call your company and tell them they’ve lost my business because of you.”

            “Suit yourself, lady,” he replied, unconcerned, stopped back into his car, and drove away.

            This wasn’t the only time when something like this happened, and I understood it as another instance when some petty person, lacking in authority, used whatever little bit he had like a club. But my excellent analysis of the man’s motive wasn’t going to transport my paints to the gallery. Tears of outrage formed in my eyes, and I felt like lying down and dying next to my elephant, but not before putting up a sign that read, “I give up!”

            I couldn’t go back upstairs and call another car service without first hauling the boxes back inside the building, so I asked a kid passing by if he would guard them while went down to Flatbush Avenue and hailed a cab. I promised him five dollars. When he complied, eyeing the boxes s though they must contain some kind of strange contraband, I hobbled down the street. In a few minutes, I succeeded in getting a taxi. Fortunately, this driver was of a more benevolent nature than the first and swung around to my street. He hoisted my boxes into the trunk. I was so grateful, I tipped him five dollars. When my boxes were safely inside the gallery, I counted my money. The show was costing me a bloody fortune, and I probably wouldn’t sell a single painting.

CHAPTER TEN

On the Sunday of the reception, once all the details were attended to, I was free to relax myself. I allowed myself to drink as much as I wanted, so what I report now was seen through my drunken haze. It was a polite, social event with people milling around, studying the paintings, and chatting. Most of my friends came lat. When Cat and David arrived, she confided that he had resisted coming, but when she snapped at him, “You owe Anna that much!” he rose, dressed, and gave her no further trouble. Now that he was here, he circled the room, his hands clasped behind his back, solemnly scrutinizing the paintings. When he completed his survey, he came to me, and, cupping my elbow in the palm of his hand, leaned over, and whispered, “Yours are the best, by far, the best.”

            I knew, David, though unschooled, possessed a good eye, so I valued his opinion. Having gone to such trouble and expense getting ready for the show, like the cook who can’t taste her own food, I couldn’t judge my own work. I glanced at Cat from across the room and that this would be one of the times when I would feel little connection with her.

            Moe and Charles straggled in accompanied by a young man, whom I took to be their friend. Moe seemed preoccupied with him. Charles looked around, then said he would like to buy the painting of the cat behind a cactus for his mother. Fat change, I thought, though his intention pleased me.

            When I caught Moe in passing, she said that she and Charles had picked up the young man on the subway over here. She had started talking to him, and Charles suggested that she invite him to come with them. If Charles was interested in him for himself, Moe was upstaging him. Both at the reception and dinner, she seemed to be so absorbed in him that Charles might well as not have been there. He responded by courting me.

            Six of us went to the Moroccan Star that night—Cat, David, Moe, the stranger, Charles, and me. David assumed the role of host, ordered for us, and went to a nearby grocery store to buy beer because the restaurant didn’t serve alcoholic beverages.

            Cat’s smiled indicated that she wasn’t comfortable. Her coolness toward me was appreciable. Is she ad at me? I wondered, but communicating with her was beyond my ken, given my worsening condition. It struck me that we were an odd assortment of people who probably wouldn’t have anything to do with each other, were it not that my celebration was forcing us into it.

            I felt the pressure of Charles’ knee against my thigh. Embarrassed, I moved it. “Don’t,” he whispered. “I need it—for reassurance.”

            Moe was getting the best of him. The man who was receiving her attention seemed like an empty-headed jock. His taught muscles made me afraid of him. I hoped she didn’t plan to continue her flirtation past this evening. It was some consolation that Charles was paying attention to me, but I assumed his performance was more for her sake than mine.

            “Take me home with you,” Charles said lough enough for Moe to hear. “I want to sleep with you tonight.”

            Engrossed with her paramour as she seemed to be, his comment didn’t escape her. I could see her eyes were surveying the situation at large.

            No one seemed to have noticed that I had slipped into a state of catatonia from which I observed the action rather than participate in it. As I sat there, regarding things from behind the protective wall of my inebriety, it occurred to me that little of our outward behavior represented the truths that lay beneath the surface. If one took it at face value, one might think Moe was truly enamored with this young man, that Cat and David were an old married couple who no longer hand anything to say to each other, and that Charles was seducing me. Cat seemed trapped in her role of the plump, Mediterranean housewife. Whenever she did say something, it smacked of all the phoniness of which Mark had accused her.

            What was really going on, I felt sure, was that Moe was settling a few scored with Charles, Cat was angry with me over our failure to find an apartment, making her feel all the more stuck with her immigrant non-husband, and Charles was pretending that he had an interest in me.

            It took me a few seconds to realize that David was talking to me. When I got the gist of what he was saying, it was that he knew of an apartment for rent. If I liked, he would arrange to have it shown to me. When he told me where it was, I protested, “David, you know that’s further into Brooklyn than I want to be.”

“Ten minutes more on the subway,” he claimed.

“How’s the neighborhood?”

“Not bad. You’ll see. I’ll take you there.”

“How big is it?”

            “Big. Fix, six rooms. Big rooms.” He held out his hands to indicate their size. “It’s big enough for three people.”

As we agreed that sometime during the next week he would show me the apartment, I smiled fondly at him. Of the people present, it was David’s friendship of which I felt the most assured. Cat was looking at me. She knew how fond of him I had grown.

The waiters served the desserts David had ordered—an array of fruits, pastries, and demitasses of espresso. As my dinner plate was removed, I realized I had tasted hardly a bite of it.

Charles reached for a handful of groups. Removing one from its cluster, he popped it into his mouth, and, holding it between his teeth, he leaved over and invited me to take the other end in my mouth. I couldn’t resist without drawing even more attention to his action, so I complied, and, as a result, received a sloppy kiss on my mouth. Not only was a I embarrassed, I was afraid. What would Moe think if she saw it, as she surely must have—her tormentor hissing her confidante?

The dinner seemed like a Fellini movie, but that was not the most amazing thing that happened. Cat, on her return from the ladies’ room, went to Moe and smothered her head with kisses! Then, as though she had not done this, she returned to her chair, gathered her purse and coat, and told David that she was ready to leave.

Had I seen rightly. She and Moe hardly knew each other. They had exchanged no more than a word or two. My calculations told me her performance was for my benefit.

The young man, like the white rabbit in Alice in Wonderland, consulted his watch, realized he was late for an appointment. He excused himself and departed, leaving Moe, Charles, and me to walk to the subway station. Our remnant was silent. Since the object of Moe’s affection had departed, Charles no longer felt compelled to further his attentions on me. He gave Moe the deep freeze, while she walked along as though unconcerned. Charles remained polite, but when I stepped onto the Brooklyn-bound train, I could see them standing twenty feet apart, both having assumed the stance of someone traveling alone.

I rode home feeling lonely and cheated. My friends had been too concerned with their own scenarios to make the evening what I had wanted it to be: a celebration to congratulate my achievement.

Drunk and exhausted though I was, I couldn’t sleep. As I reviewed the vignettes that had occurred, they took on ghoulish proportions. I chastised myself for having accepted Charles’ kiss. Moe must be furious with me. Would she think I had betrayed her? Furthermore, I was sure that Cat sensed my lessening sympathy for her and my growing sympathy for David. Why had she smothered Moe’s head with kisses? What were we all doing? Was my loneliness propelling me into the middle of my friends’ affairs? Even in my sleep, I continued to be tortured with misgivings until towards Dawn I dreamt a happy dream: David showed me an apartment in a neighborhood as funky as Cannery Row.

In the morning, I was submerged in gloomy reflections. I had grown so fond of David that I feared I was falling in love with him. I was wrested from my turbulence by the ringing of the phone. It was Cat, wanting to compare notes of the previous evening.

“How are you?” she asked.

“Terrible,” I replied. “I’m exhausted, depressed, and hung over. Was it obvious that I was drunk last night?”

“You were already pretty far gone when we arrived,” she told me, a hint of disapproval in her voice. Then she turned the conversation to Moe. “Does she make it a habit to pick up young men?” she queried me. “That could be dangerous.”

I could see why she had seized on it. The only other time she had been in Moe’s company, on our Staten Island ferry ride, Moe had done the same thing. Then there was the man she had picked up on the night before our rafting trip. I realized Cat had a point, but I tried to defend Moe.

“Yes,” I admitted, “but nothing usually comes of them.”

“Well, it isn’t safe. She could get herself into trouble that way.”

I had to agree, reminding myself that all this was coming from someone who, when I met her, was going to bed with men by the dozens. I had suppressed my memory of Cat smothering Moe’s head with kisses, so failed to see the discrepancy between her condemnation of Moe and her display of affection.

I had not sooner hung up with Cat than Moe called in need of moral support. Full of self-righteous pity, she reported that Charles had moved from subway car to subway car, leaving her to trail behind. When they alighted, he walked off without so much as a good night, and she had to hail a cab to take her home. She recounted these tings as though there had been whatsoever no provocation on her part.

“It seemed to me that you were using that young man to get back at Charles,” I told her. “And if you were, you certainly succeeded.”

“You know, you’re right!” she replied, as though I had suddenly illuminated her behavior to her. “Let him have a taste of his own medicine,” she declared. “Let him know how it feels.”

“Look, Moe, I’m sorry about that kiss. I didn’t see any way to avoid it.”

“Kiss?” she replied.” I didn’t even see it.

****

I was depressed for the next few days during which time I soberly assessed my situation. Nothing would come of the show, I felt sure, other than my having to retrieve my paintings when I returned from California. Even the knowledge that I would soon escape my difficult life in New York for a week failed to cheer me.

I was going through an identity crisis and was glad that I would soon see my three best women friends. They would vouch for me—I might be zany at times, but, at heart, I was a good person. If they were presented with the same decision as I was, they would respond as I had—they would say no to having a lesbian affair.

The next Friday night, I joined Cat and David for dinner. After we had eaten, Cat said that she had given my features some thought and proposed that she give me a punk haircut. I considered her offer. Since I wouldn’t be going to California the success I had hoped, I could go at least in fashion. Punk wasn’t the mode I would have chosen, however. Rather, it was a symbol of my defeat. I agreed, and Cat got out her shears and a can of styling mousse. I sat at her knees while she began cutting.

She could have clipped me bald for all I cared. As it was, she snipped my hair close to my head. In matters of taste, I trusted her judgement. I sat there, placid as a sheep to its sheering. Cat laughed and said to David, “Look how Anna trusts me.”

I looked up and saw her grin, the glint of the scissor blades in her hands. I closed my eyes. “Do as you please,” I told her.

I succeeded in deceiving her, for in my heart, I didn’t trust her, though I felt guilty. Look at how she makes you over, I thought. Look at how good she is to you. Still, the kernel of distrust remained, though I was careful to conceal it.

When Cat finished, I went into the bathroom to look at myself in the mirror. She was correct in that the hairdo suited me, however, now there was nothing to shield the strain reflected in my face.

****

My depressed failed to lift. I realized that my position was growing untenable. Cat expected that I would continue to give her the support I customarily gave her, yet my feeling that she wasn’t being fair to David was growing. During the past year, her position had steadily improved, whereas his had worsened. Now she had a steady income, while he bounded from one handyman job to another, with periods of unemployment in between. She was saving money, and he was asking her for it. She viewed their association as a business arrangement. Though she berated him for his lack of solvency, she contributed an increasing share of their expenses. David claimed if he knew she loved him it would enable him to make money. I was growing impatient. I had concluded that Cat would never give David what he wanted.

Several nights later when I was talking to her on the phone, she expressed the fear, “One day he’ll tell me he no longer wants me here. Then what will I do?”

She waited for my reassurance. Despite my decision to keep my feelings to myself, I replied, “I guess you’ll find out when it happens.”

Cat remained cordial. Though I tried to dismiss the matter as of little consequence, I worried. I had crossed an invisible line. My stronger loyalty had shifted to David, and she knew it.

****

Several days later, I took the subway to King’s Highway to see the apartment David had told me about. When he met me at the door, I saw that he, too, was worried. Their apartment was one where the landlord supplies too much hat than too little. Though it was December, he was wearing shorts and a t-shirt. I couldn’t help but admire his well-proportioned body.

“I want to get out of New York,” he confessed. “It’s too hard. All most people are interested in here is money.”

“I know,” I concurred, hesitated, then said, “David, I don’t think you’re ever going to get what you want from Cat. Why don’t you just pack your bags and go?”

No I was acting based upon the invisible line I had crossed. On David’s behalf, I was interfering.

“I can’t,” he replied. “I don’t have any money.”

It wasn’t as if he were expressing anything he hadn’t shared with Cat, but she only laughed and old him, unless he saved $1000, he’d better not try. When I tried to mollify his fears by saying that luck travels with the traveler and he would manage on his own, his frown expressed his lack of confidence.

David dressed, and we walked over to the office of the landlord of the apartment he wanted to show me. A decrepit old man, who looked like a gray turkey, opened the door. As he shuffled around looking for his keys, I thought that he and his offices were a composition in grays. He was as gray as the furniture, files and boxes that cluttered his hovel.

“Bastard,” David had called him on our way over. “He’s rich. He owns several buildings, but he won’t spend any money to fix them up.”

The deal David was finagling with this wizened bird was that if he helped him rent the apartment, he would pay David to clean it and paint it.

The man’s car reminded me of a moth pod. The old geezer, his bone-dry fingers clutching the steering wheel while his nose peered over it, drove us to a neighborhood I had never seen before. In recent years, its population had changed from Jewish to Puerto Rican. Because he refused to replace the light bulbs in the stairway, he had to use a flashlight to illuminate our way. Once we were inside the apartment, David took the flashlight and showed me the rooms while Scrooge stood by the door, caring not a whit whether I liked it or not.

I liked what I could see of it—a cozy kitchen that looked into the building’s well, ample-sized bedrooms, and a street-side living room with an alcove that could be turned into a studio. If the rubble removed and it were painted, it would be livable. David pointed out the apartment’s good features, but once we were in the street again (the miser wouldn’t give us a ride back to his neighborhood but shuffled back to his cocoon and disappeared into it), I asked him what he though. He said, “Don’t take it. It isn’t safe. Do you realize how easy it would be to break into that place? Anyone who wanted could crawl through the windows.”

No, I hadn’t. I wasn’t streetwise as he was. I cherished his protectiveness. If he thought it wasn’t safe, that was all there was to it. I would consider it no further.

We walked back to David’s neighborhood where I persuaded him to come and have a cup of coffee with me before I went home. Again, he talked of leaving New York, and again, he said he couldn’t because he couldn’t afford to.

In a sock at home, I had stashed several Krugerrands, which was my emergency money. Was I such a miser, like the miserable creature, I had just met, that I wouldn’t help the man whom I had come to consider as my brother?

“I have some money saved,” I told him. “I’ll help you.”

On my way home, I realized that by offering to give David money, I was crossing Cat. Not only was I encouraging him to leave her, I had volunteered to help him.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

When I returned home, there was a message from Cat on my answering machine. “I came home expecting to find both of you here. Instead, I found no one. Call me as soon as you get home. I’m anxious to hear how you liked the apartment. Love. Bye.”

My guilt over offering to help David rather than making me timid made me bold. It would be easy enough to tell Cat that I had seen the apartment and liked it, but since David didn’t think it was safe, I wouldn’t consider it. However, it would be difficult to address the question of our sharing directly. Yet I felt it must be done. Resolutely, I dialed her number.

“Hi, it’s me.”

“Good I’ve been waiting for you to call. Why didn’t you come over and wait for me to come home?”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t feel like waiting around.”

“Well, what did you think of the place?”

“I liked it, but David said not to take it because it isn’t safe. Anyone could break in. I’m afraid it’s another no-go.”

Cat apparently also felt that we needed to resolve the question of whether we could live together, and she had more courage than I. She said, “Anna, tell me, how do you feel about living with me?”

I was silent for a few seconds, then asked, “May I be honest?”

“Please be.” A trace of annoyance crept into her voice.

“I’m ambivalent about it.”

“But, why?”

“You know I want to share my life with a man. If we shared, I’m afraid it wouldn’t happen because I would be too comfortable . . .”

“But, Anna, that’s nonsense. Your position would be better because you wouldn’t be so isolated. And who knows better than me that you need your privacy when you’re working?”

“That’s not all.”

“What else then.”

“I’m afraid of it.”

“Afraid to live with a woman?”

“Not necessarily.”

“What then?”

“I’m afraid of a lesbian affair.”

At last I said it, that dreadful word. I felt like the princess who named Rumpelstiltskin. Cat showed irritation but not the anger I thought she must feel. After how she had patiently wooed me, after my recent indications that I was willing to try it, now I was rejecting the idea.

When we hung up, I felt sick inside. The relief I usually feel after having been honest was usurped by a sense of uneasiness. I wished there were someone to whom I could confide the peculiar position I was it and how it frightened me. Surely they would ask what indications Cat had given that she was a lesbian, and I would have to say, none, really. Could anyone understand why I would encourage a friend’s man to leave her? was I trying to steak David from Cat? No, I wasn’t. I just wanted him to be free to make a new life for himself.

I paced the floor, glad that John wasn’t home yet to see that I was upset. I took Duchess and walked to the liquor store, where I bought a bottle of whiskey to help put me to sleep. John had come home when I returned, so I sat in my bedroom and drank, drumming my fingers on the dresser and wondering whom I could call. I thought of Moe. Of the people I knew, she was the most likely to understand, but she had been so absorbed in her own troubles lately that whenever I talked to her, I got a couple of minutes, and she got the rest. I felt too vulnerable to risk her lack of understanding. By 11:30, I was sufficiently dopey to go to bed and fell asleep.

At 12:30 a.m., I awoke with a start. I was so startled by my dream that I rose straight up and stood at the foot of my bed. I had dreamt that I was searching for an exit from a room that had trompe’l’oeil murals painted on the walls. As soon as I approached a door reached for a doorknob, I realized it was only an illusion of a door. Something invisible was pursuing me. As I few more frantic when each exit provide to be a fake, I felt the dull thus of knife blade in my back. Cat, I thought, still dreaming, she got me. Standing there, now fully awake, a chill came over me. But, how had she gotten me? I didn’t know, and I wouldn’t know tonight. With that odd bit of reasoning, I feel back into bed and back to sleep.

When I woke in the morning, my first thoughts were of the strange occurrence during the night. I had no doubt that my dream was a psychic impression, but I had never received a message so strong that it made me stand straight up from sleep. There was little doubt in my mind that I had been hit or was going to be hit, but I would have to wait until it was revealed. I forced myself to put these unintelligible thoughts from my mind and went about my business that day, taking care when I crossed streets and looking over my shoulder when I came up the steps of my building. I was being ridiculous. Cat, even at her worse, wouldn’t be violent. I was letting my mind run away with me.

I didn’t call Cat that day and hoped she wouldn’t call me. The voice of reason consoled that she would accept my reasons and adjust herself to them. But, what about my offer to help David? Should I tell him that I had changed my mind? It wasn’t as though I had jumped to conclusions, yet I could hardly be Cat’s friend and encourage David to leave her.

Around 4:30 that afternoon, when I could no longer keep my worries to myself, I called Moe. Discounting her cool reception, I plunged ahead and told her about my conversation with Cat the previous night. “I told her I was afraid of a lesbian relationship,” I confided. There was little to prepare for Moe’s response.

In a cold voice she said, “But you already have a relationship with her.”

“I what?” I gasped?

“You called me last night and told me all about it.”

“What? I never called you last night. I got drunk and went to bed.”

“You did, too. You called me. It was late you don’t usually call me that late. You were whispering. You said you had spent the afternoon in bed with her. You went into detail about what you did to each other. You asked me what I liked.”

“Moe,” I said assertively, “I don’t know to whom you were speaking, but it wasn’t me.”

“It was too you,” Moe claimed. “It sounded just like you. You said you were horny and wanted to get your rocks off so you could sleep. You asked me what my fantasies were.

“Moe, it wasn’t me,” I said quietly but with little hope she would believe me.

“How can you say that? It was your voice I heard.”

“Moe, in all the time you’ve known me, have I ever given you any indication I would do a think like that?”

“No,” she admitted, “but you never really know someone else. And you and Cat seem so close.”

“Moe, please believe me, I didn’t call you last night. I would never do a thing like that.”

Moe’s voice indicated that she didn’t believe me, she was convinced I had called her, and now I was overcome with remorse and was trying to deny it.

“Cat must have called you,” I concluded. “She must have been so angry with me that she called you to get even.”

“How could she have? I’ve never given her my phone number. Did you give her my phone number?”

“No,” I said in exasperation. “I didn’t give her your phone number. I would never do that without asking your permission.”

“Then how could she have called me?” Then, as though seeking to comfort me, she added, “I know how lonely you’ve been since you and Saul broke up. I won’t hold it against you.”

“But I didn’t call you!” I yelled in frustration. “I wouldn’t do a thing like that.”

“But you said yourself you were drunk. Maybe you called, and now you don’t remember it.”

“Moe, enough. I don’t know who called you, but I know it wasn’t me. I’ll get to the bottom of this, I swear, if it’s the last thing I do. I’ll talk to you later.”

I was in a state of shock when I hung up. I had been hit all right. I was afraid, yet I was outwardly calm. I was sure that Cat had done this to me. Now what was I going to do? The first thing would be to leave the house so I wouldn’t be home if she called. Throwing on my coat and grabbing my purse, I walked to a nearby bar for a a drink and to decide what I would do next.

The thing that frightened me the most was that Cat could so successfully imitate my voice and manner of speaking that Moe hadn’t distinguished mine from Cat’s. If she would do this to me, what was she capable of doing to David? David. I had to talk to him. I had to tell him what happened, but how could I reach him? Cat must be home by now. He was probably preparing their dinner. I couldn’t bear the thought of talking to her—I would sooner have spoken to the devil incarnate. This is what I would do. I would go home and call my ex-husband, Jim Johnson in Montana, with whom I had remained friends. I would ask Jim to call David and tell him to call me.

A plan, any plan, was better than sitting there. I left my unfished drink, went home, and called him. What would I do if he were not home? I would have to think of someone else, then. Luckily, Jim answered the phone.

“Look,” I said, cutting through the preliminaries, “I know this is strange, but I need to ask a favor of you. I can’t explain. It’s too complicated. I’ll explain another time.”

“What is it? You know I’ll do what I can—within reason.”

“I want you to call a phone number I’m going to give to you. If a woman answers, hang up. As for David. If he answers, explain who you are and ask him to call me, but tell him not to call from his house. If he does, I won’t talk to him.”

“Sounds like you’ve got yourself mixed up in a triangle.” Jim commented dryly.

“No. Yes. I don’t know. It’s not how you think. Will you do it?”

“Sure, give me the number.”

“Thanks. I’d do the same for you.”

“I owe you a few.”

Once this task was completed, there was nothing to do but wait for David’s call. In a few minutes, the phone rang.

“What’s the matter?” David implored. “Your ex-husband called me from Montana. Why would you have your husband call me? Can’t you call yourself?”

“Are you home?”

“Yes.”

“Then I can’t talk to you. I told Jim to tell you to go to a pay phone and call me.

Tears of distress formed in my eyes.

“Why can’t you talk to me here?”

“I just can’t. Go to a pay phone and call me back.”

With that, I hung up. I had botched it. Now Cat knew that my ex-husband had called David. She would know something was up. Now what?

David called again in another ten minutes.

“Alright,” he said. “I’m calling from the corner. It’s cold out. What’s up?”

“It’s Cat!” I blurted out. “Last night she called Moe and pretended she was me.”

“She did what?”

“She called Moe and pretended she was me. She told me we were having an affair.”

“An affair?”

“She told Moe that she and I are sleeping together, that we’re lovers.”

“But why would she do that? I don’t understand,” David declared. “Cat loves you. I love you.”

“Because I told her that I don’t want to live with her because I’m afraid of lesbianism.”

“Cat’s not a lesbian. If she was, I would know.”

“I’m not saying she is for sure, but I think she might be. She called Moe last night and told her we have a sexual relationship. She pretended she was me.”

Maybe a genius would have trouble following this, but David grasped the essence of what I was saying.

“I’m going home to talk to her,” he assured me. “If she did this to you, I’ll leave her.”

When we hung up, I saw that my reaction was precipitating further commotion. Now David was on his way home to confront Cat. The soap opera was worthy of As the World Turns, but it was really happening. I flipped on my answering machine and waited for Cat to call.

“Ann, please talk to me,” she pleaded when she called. “Anna, I know you’re home. I don’t understand what’s happening. First your ex-husband calls David. Then he says he has to go to a pay phone to call you. Then he comes home and accuses me of being a lesbian. Oh, Anna, what’s wrong? Please talk to me.”

She was crying when she hung up. What was startling was that she sounded completely innocent! Could it be that I had falsely accused her?

CHAPTER TWELVE

On my way to visit David the next day, I was still convinced that Cat had been the caller. Indeed, no other possibility had entered my mind. Because I thought only someone who was mad would do such a thing, I was prepared to urge him in stronger terms to get out. Thus, I was ill-prepared for the suggestion he would make that would propel m into months of personal psychological sleuthing.

Once I was inside their apartment, even before I had removed my coat, David began to chide me.

“When your husband—what’s his name—called me, I thought something terrible had happened to you. I was scared. Why did you call him? Couldn’t you have called me yourself?

“No, I couldn’t. Not then. I was in a state of shock. Still am.”

“So, you called your husband?”

“My ex-husband.”

“What his name?”

“Jim. Jim Johnson.”

“That’s a good name. He sounds like a nice man.”

“He is, most of the time.”

I was glad that David knew I had an ex-husband who still cared enough for me that he would help me if I asked.

Eventually David stopped marveling that my former husband had called him and then asked me to repeat what I told him last night. I explained that when I had called Moe, she said that she had received a call from me, telling her I was having an affair with Cat. Only the caller wasn’t me, so I had assumed it was Cat pretending to be me.

“But why would she do that?”

“I think she was angry because I told her that I don’t want to live with her.”

His haggard face told me the situation was trying his comprehension of the universe. As we talked, he carried bowls of salad to the table, leftovers from last night’s dinner, but today, I had no appetite.

“But when she heard your husband, your ex-husband, had called from Montana, she said, ‘Hurry. Go call Anna. She must be in trouble.’ When I came back, I called her a lesbian to her face. She cried and said it wasn’t true. She’s not a lesbian. She didn’t sleep at all last night.”

I was sorry to learn Cat had been up all night, was I was torn between horror at her evildoing and sympathy for her.

“David,” I pleaded, “I think something’s the matter with Cat.”

“Yes, something’s wrong,” he concurred, “but she’s a good person. She has a good heart.”

Go easy, I counseled myself. Of course he will defend her.

“Yes, she has a good heart,” I said, though I didn’t know how someone could have a good heart and perpetrate such falsehoods.

“She doesn’t have Moe’s phone number, so how could she have called her?” David challenged. “Besides, I was here all night. I would have heard her if she had called Moe.”

I realized Cat’s not having Moe’s telephone number would be part of her defense. I knew that Moe’s number was unlisted, so she couldn’t have gotten it from the directory or information. I didn’t know how she could have gotten it. When I evaluated whether David would have heard her if she made the call, I decided he wouldn’t necessarily have. They had stopped sleeping together long ago. When Cat was there, she took the bedroom, and he slept on the couch. I knew David to be a sound sleeper. If the door were shut, as most likely it would have been and the caller whispered, as Moe said she had, David wouldn’t have heard it. I said none of this to him. Rather, I asked, “So who called then?”

He smiled thinly and answered, “Maybe you called her. you said that you were drunk. Maybe you called her, and now you don’t remember it.”

“David, you can you say such a thing? It wouldn’t matter how drunk I was. I’d never do something like that. Please don’t think I called Moe because it’s just not true.

He accepted my protest with no further argument, though his question increased my alarm—could I have made the call?

“Maybe Moe is lying,” David said. “Maybe she made it all up. Did you think of that?”

“Moe?” I exclaimed. “She wouldn’t make up something like that!”

“How do you know? You told me that she has problems.”

“Yes, but who doesn’t? No, I don’t think she’d do something like that.”

I was nevertheless jolted by this feasibility, which furthered my sense of horror.

“It isn’t nice of someone to become between friends like that,” David said. “Someone is lying. Now no one knows who they can trust. We can found out who the liar is if we bring everyone together. We’ll get drunk. Alcohol loosens the tongue and makes people speak the truth. You call Moe. Tell her to come here. We’ll all talk.”

As sensible as his suggestion was, I didn’t feel that Moe would come to such a meeting. “She wouldn’t come,” I told him.

“Give me her number. I’ll call her.”

“I can’t do that, David. Her number isn’t listed, and she doesn’t want anyone to have it unless she gives it to them.”

“Eat, then!” David said in exasperation, waiving his hand at the food.

“I can’t eat. I’m not hungry.”

He ate nothing himself. We had reached a deadlock. David believe Cat was innocent. I was unconvinced. I went away from him with a heavy heart but a mind that was busily considering whether Moe could have concocted the whole thing. One likelihood made way for another. By the time I reached home, I realized another possibility was that the two of them, Cat and Moe, could have acted together.

I threw off my coat, rushed to my desk, and grabbed a notebook and pen. I felt like Sherlock Holmes in cape and hat, smoking his pipe. I would solve this mystery. Somehow, I would solve it. I wouldn’t rest until I did.

Meticulously, I listed all the possibilities:

1. Cat placed the call.

2. Moe made up her story.

3. An unknown person placed the call.

4. Cat and Moe acted together . . .”              

Examining my list, I searched for others. It couldn’t have been a random prank because no one else had access to this information. I crossed out number three. Moe claimed the caller knew some of the clothes from her wardrobe. Then I frowned and wrote down a fifth possibility:

5. I placed the call in a drunken stupor, and now I can’t remember it.

As horrible as each possibility was, this was the worst because this would mean that I couldn’t trust myself. Yet, if was to be as objective as I intended, I would rule out nothing until I could prove it false.

My own exoneration floated into my mind. Certainly people get drunk and do things they don’t remember, but since I had no desire to go to bed with Cat, or any other woman, for that matter, it wouldn’t matter how drunk I was, I wouldn’t call someone and claim I was having an affair with one. Furthermore, flawed as I was, I wasn’t the kind of person who would deliberately tell falsehoods about myself or others. I summed up my justification in a single sentence: how can a person do something that isn’t in them to do?

Relieved, I drew a line through the fifth possibility and moved up to number four, that Cat and Moe had acted jointly. This was only slightly less alarming than the fifth because it would mean my two friends really were out to get me. I could see why each had cause to be annoyed with me; Cat, because I had confounded her plans, and Moe, because I had kissed Charles, but were these adequate provocation for them to plot against me? Each claimed she didn’t have the other’s phone number. What about that?

I decided the third possibility, though feasible, was unlikely. It would demand orchestration on their parts I could see neither of them rendering. Moe was too involved with her own problems, and Cat was too lazy. Thus, I ruled out number three, bringing me back to either Cat placed the call, or Moe made up her story. Was Moe more unbalanced than I thought she was? How well did I know her?

Having an alternate explanation made it possible for me to speak with Cat that day, but it was a case of my hiding behind the truth. I told her I realized that Moe might have made her story up. I pretended I favored this assumption as a ruse, to pick additional clues. Sooner or later, I believed that the liar would reveal herself.

Our conversation was strained, and my throat was dry. Cat’s voice bristled with hurt as she voiced her recriminations. “How can you accuse me of such a thing? I don’t know her number. I don’t even know her last name.”

“It wouldn’t help if you did. Her number’s unlisted.”

“Didn’t David tell you how worried I was when your ex-husband called him? Why did you insist he go to a pay phone? He came back and called me a lesbian. Then, you wouldn’t even talk to me. I didn’t sleep a wink last night. How can things ever by the same now that you’ve accused me of doing this?”

During this outpouring of emotions, I was afflicted with a dual set of emotions. On the one hand, I felt like someone who, in discovering a theft, accused the wrong party. If so, I was dismayed by my mistake and contrite. On the other hand, if Cat was lying to confuse me, her performance was very convincing. I almost wanted Moe to be the guilty party so I wouldn’t be compelled to witness this protestation as a cover-up.

In order to defend myself, I said, “I honestly don’t know whether you called Moe or if she made it up. I’m sorry if I’ve falsely accused you, but at this point, I can’t say Moe is lying.”

“Maybe you called her yourself,” Cat countered. “You said you were drunk. Maybe you called, and now you don’t remember it.”

“I considered that,” I retorted coolly, “and I’ve ruled it out. Even if I were drunk, I wouldn’t do that. How can a person do something that isn’t in them to do?”

Cat didn’t press the point but rather changed her tactic. “Have you spoken with Moe today?”

“Not since yesterday. I haven’t been able to decide what to say.”

“Well, maybe you should before you make any more accusations.”

She had resumed the role of the wounded party. In my schizophrenic state, I flipped between believing her and being awed that she could act so convincingly. This was to be my mental condition for the next several weeks.

“Look,” I said, “I’m exhausted. You must be, too. Let’s leave things be for now. We’ll talk again tomorrow.”

“Okay. I can only hope you’ll see things clearer then.” Her tone indicated that I hadn’t been forgiven.

Sadly, I hung up the phone and wished I could go to sleep and forget this bizarre predicament, but my mind was  too alert. I wanted desperately to solve this mystery and was determined to use whatever intelligence I possessed to do so. I would look for whatever clues I could deduce from a piece of tissue or a little cough. But for now, I was afraid to call Moe and felt in too weakened a state to talk to her. Now that she, too, was a suspect, what would I say? Having accused one person, I hardly wanted to accuse another. Whoever struck this blow knew that in psychological warfare, you gain an advantage if you can cast doubt in your opponent’s mind.

I didn’t have many facts about the call other than that the caller whispered and spoke in a sexually provocative manner. I wondered why Moe had tolerated it. She had said that she and the caller had spoken for almost an hour. The only way I could obtain more information was in speaking to her again. The detective in me overcame my fear, and I dialed her number.

“Moe, it’s me, Anna.”

“How are you?” Moe asked in her diva voice. She had erected a barrier between us. I reminded myself that she still thought the caller had been me, thus I proceeded in a straightforward manner.

“Moe, I need to ask you some questions—about the call.”

“I’d rather not talk about it. Why don’t we just forget it. You forget it. I’ll forget it, too.”

“Moe, please believe me. I didn’t call you. I swear on a stack of Bibles it wasn’t me you talked to. I can’t forget it, either. If this happened to you, could you just forget it?”

“You’re making too much over it, Anna,” she commented dryly.

“Moe, please, tell me everything you can remember about the call.”

“Anna, I told you last night. You asked me what I had on, what I liked . . .”

“Not me. I wasn’t me. Anyway, go on.”

“There’s not much else to say.”

“But you said you talked for an hour. Why did you put up with it? Why didn’t you hang up?”

I hadn’t intended to ask her that. It slipped out in spite of myself.

“I thought it was you. I thought I’d humor you.”

“What about the voice—what did it sound like?”

“it sounded just like you, except you where whispering . . .”

“Whispering . . .”

“Anna, please, I really don’t want to talk about it. In fact, I don’t want anything to do with it. I have to go now.”

“Okay, Moe, thanks. I’m sorry I bothered you.”

“Don’t feel bad, Anna. Just try to forget it.”

Her benevolence failed to console me. My conversation with her was like trying to pry open a clam. I had, however, gleaned one small bit of information. If Moe was innocent, her responses were sound. She was probably spooked by the call herself. Though she still thought the caller had been me, the steadfastness of my denial was having some impact.

The fact that the caller had whispered would account for her not being able to recognize whatever distortions there were in the voice, and if Cat had been the one who called her, she would have whispered in order to not wake David.

Would that these pieces of the puzzle fitting could solve the mystery, but they could not. Yet they were all the information I was going to get tonight. Like a schoolgirl, who has completed her homework, I prepared for bed. I hoped my dreams would tell me something. My psyche, however, protected me from further duress that night. My dreams, if I had had any, were clothed in white oblivions, and I remembered nothing of them in the morning.

For the next few weeks, indeed for month to come, I was obsessed with the call. Like a blind man groping along, I reviewed the few facts at my disposal, alternately accusing Cat, then Moe, as though I were trying hat on their heads to ascertain the best fit. When I came full circle, I began the cycle again.

I constructed scenarios for both alternatives, imagining Cat sitting in David’s bedroom, her fury needing some expression until she was prompted to lift the phone. But, how did she know Moe’s phone number and clothes from her wardrobe? At this dead end, I would switch the scenario to Moe, imagining her agitation over the kiss until, when I called her, she saw an opportunity to get back at me. This scenario had fewer unanswerables. In most situations, I had found the easiest explanation to be the most viable, but this was a time when I wasn’t content to adopt it.

****

Several days later, I called Cat from a shopping center in Connecticut. I had taken the train that morning to an out-of-the way place to be interviewed by an agency that claimed to help people find work overseas.

I was patronizing them because I had concluded that I wasn’t doing well in New York. I recalled as folly the brash confidence I had when I arrived, the believe that I would be the one in a million who would make it. Now I felt I should concede defeat and activate an alternate dream, that of living and working overseas. Since I held a child’s naivete that this agency would help me, I ignored the telltale signs posted on the wall of the room where I now sat along with a dozen or so other applicants, reminding us that the keys to success in life lay in having the right attitude. In other words, don’t blame us if you pay us money and still don’t get the job you seek – sure signs of yet another rip-off joint. Their insistence that we travel all the way to this hideaway to be “interviewed” was but a ploy to lend them an air of respectability and to capitalize on peoples’ believe that that which costs the a lot in terms of effort and money is valuable. In addition to my train fare, I had paid $15 for a cab from the train station to this establishment.

Even when a cheap trick was played, I refused to heed the message. After we had filled out our applications and watched a Mickey Mouse film, extolling the glories of overseas travel, a “counselor” reported that one of us didn’t meet their qualifications. While each person sat fearing that he would be designated the unacceptable one, she selected a poor Pakistani man as the pariah.

My customary ire was subdued as I submitted to their contrivances, and, grateful I had been spared being singled out as the unsuitable one, I wrote out a check to engage their services and called for a cab to take me back to the train station. Once there, I had a two-hour wait before the train arrived, so I walked to a nearby shopping center for lunch.

A sense of loss, sorrow, and defeat had accompanied me that day from the time I had risen in the morning. First there was the loss of Saul, then Mark and Debbie, and now I faced the loss of both Cat and Moe. The events of the day and being back in suburban America accentuated my feelings of abandonment and melancholy. My life in New York seemed to be disintegrating. Would I be left with no one to call a friend?

Fondly, I remembered some of the good times Cat and I had shared, how we had laughed together, told each other things we would tell no one else. I could hear the tinkling-bell sound of her voice. Now she, too, was lost to me. Fervently, I wished all of this hadn’t happened. I left my half-eaten cheeseburger, went to a pay phone, and called her.

“Anna!” Cat answered with surprise. “I thought you were going to Connecticut.”

“I did. I’m calling you from there.”

A sense of urgency came over me. “Oh, Cat, I’m sorry for all of this. I just want to forget it and go on as if it never happened.”

In so saying, I had in effect handed her the power.

“I wish I could forget it,” Cat replied, “but I can’t. I can’t forgive it, either. Not yet.”

“I know,” I answered humbly. “I don’t expect you to. I just feel terrible, like everything I care about is slipping away.”

“I know,” Cat concurred. “I feel the same way. The worst ting about it is how isolated I feel.”

Doublethink had not left me. She can afford to be generous now, I thought.

“Look, I have to go. My train will be here soon. I’ll talk to you later, okay?”

“Okay. I’m glad you called. Call me again when you get home.”

This bit of reconciliation failed to dispel my gloom and me from my deliberations. Rather, it made me feel all the more a fool. They should have hung a sign over me that day that read, “Fool. Sucker.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

At David’s insistence, on the Friday night before I went to California, I joined him and Cat for dinner. I was touched that he was doing whatever he could to bring Cat and me back together, but I accepted his invitation more for the opportunity to pick up clues than because I wanted to see her. so preoccupied was I by the call that the approach of Christmas failed to put me in a festive mood. I went shopping earlier that day and purchased a white shirt as a gift for David, but I didn’t buy anything for Cat. Before this happened, I had promised to buy her a Bible, but it was a promise half in jest when she had said she’d never read a word of it. To do so now struck me as hypocritical. In an aimless fashion, I had looked at the Bibles on the shelves at A&S’s department store in downtown Brooklyn but took none of them to the cashier. If the matter came up, I intended to make the excuse that I had looked but hadn’t found the version I wanted.

The weather was warm for December, and tonight there was a drizzling rain, which softened the shapes of houses and trees as they moved past the train’s window. I leaned my head against the seat and closed my eyes. There had been no new information, no new insights during the past week, and I was no closer to solving the mystery. I had expected the liar to have declared herself by now. Certainly, had I done another such a turn, I wouldn’t be able to rest until I set things right. But I knew it was useless to expect others to behave as I would.

Recently I had read in a book that good people are rarely suspicious. They cannot imagine others doing the things they wouldn’t do themselves. I agreed, adding that nor are those who connive likely to admit what they’ve been up to. The article went on to state that normal people are inclined to visualize those who do evil as being monstrous in their appearance, whereas, often the monsters in real life look and behave in even a more normal fashion than others. I checked the quote I had scribbled into the little notebook I carried in my purse:

They present a more convincing picture of virtue than virtue presents of itself—just as the wax rosebud or the plastic peach seems more perfect to the eye, more what the mind thinks a rosebud or peach should be, than the imperfect original from which it has been modeled.

I sighed and closed my eyes again. I had accepted that the liar wasn’t going to confess. There was too much to lose for that. I would have to ferret out whatever clues I could find.

Still, the mystery intrigued me. So much of what people read nowadays was so highly fictionalized and sensationalized with sex and violence, it would seem many readers believed the most interesting stories were the made-up ones they read in thriller novels. Consequently, they often overlooked the mysterious aspects of their own lives. They were so gorged on overwrought sex and violence that they were numb and thought they needed even more to jar their deadened senses. I wondered if it was still possible to write a story that had little sex and violence in it yet would be intensely interesting.

What would Cat’s face tell me now? How would her eyes look? How would she behave? What changes would I be able to discern in her?

I was not approaching this confrontation unprepared. I had decided to pretend I was almost convinced that Moe had made the story up, but I wouldn’t say that I was fully convinced because then a full reconciliation would be expected, and that I couldn’t above. If the evening would require Cat to act, it would likewise require some improvisation on my part. Though I didn’t wholly approve of my own subterfuge, I felt it was a time when this was warranted.

As usual, I enjoyed the walk down King’s Highway, looking into the store windows along the way. On how many Friday nights had I been happy I could make this journey? The enchantment of the pre-holidays made my premonition this would be the last time the three of us would share dinner all the more poignant. As was my custom, I stopped at the liquor store and bought a bottle of Blue Nun. Hardly in season, my choice was my symbolic than appropriate. Engaged as I felt I was in a battle between good and evil forces, I wanted all the help I could get.

Once inside their overheated apartment with its radiators busily hissing despite the mild evening, I was relieved that we all acted as we usually did, even though there was tension among us.

            Cat looked tired. Since her eyes always danced wildly. I couldn’t say that I saw an appreciable difference in them. Once our greeting kisses and exclamations were concluded, a silence fell. David made the excuse that he had more things to buy for dinner, put on his coat and beret, and left, leaving Cat and me to speak in private.

“Well, where are you with it now?” Cat asked.

Were we in the kitchen. I was sitting near the table David used for preparing food. Cat stood against the windowsill. The cool cast of the overhead neon light made her skin look as smooth as alabaster. She had composed herself so that she reminded me of the woman in Manet’s painting The Bar at the Folies-Bergére.

Conscious that I was afraid of her, I reached for an onion on the table and stroked its papery surface.

“I haven’t solved it, if that’s what you mean,” I answered bluntly. My mouth felt dry as I tried to recall my rehearsed response. “The easiest explanation is that Moe made it all up.” I tore a piece of the onion skin and crumpled it in my hand, pleased by its arid flakiness.

“Why do you think she’d do such a thing?” Cat inquired.

“I don’t know. She’s been irritated with me lately. Who knows? It didn’t help things that I kissed Charles.”

“But he’s gay.”

“It doesn’t matter. She’s very tied to him. Maybe she’s more disturbed than I thought she was.”

“She’ll get herself into trouble if she keeps picking up strange men,” Cat reminded me.

“I know. It can be dangerous, especially in New York.”

I held the onion in my hand as though it were the globe, hoping Cat wouldn’t detect my ploy and that I could be forgiven for using Moe as my pawn.

“But you’re not sure she did it, are you?”

“No, I’m not sure,” I answered forcibly, placing the onion on the table.

“I haven’t slept much lately,” Cat confessed. “I’ve been too upset, too depressed. When I think of what good friends we’ve been, and then you accuse me of this. I didn’t call Moe. How could I? I don’t have her phone number. You’ve never given it to me. I don’t even know her last name.”

“It wouldn’t help if you did,” I said. “Her number’s unlisted.”

Cat used this to her advantage. “You see, there’s no way I could have gotten it, could I?”

“I don’t suppose,” I answered.

“There you go again. The thing I can’t forgive is that you continue to think I did it. I’m not going to feel alright until you’re convinced I didn’t do it.”

“But how can I be convinced when I don’t know,” I shot back, dismayed by our frankness.

“You never will know, either” Cat retorted, adding more softly, “that is, if Moe doesn’t confess.”

I was stunned by the possible truth of the first part of her statement and felt defeated. If the liar never confessed, I might never be able to solve the mystery. Again and again in the future I would return to this, until it became a focal point in my thinking. Although I didn’t realize it then, she had inadvertently given me the means by which I would eventually lay the matter to rest.

Dazed, I realized that Cast was now speaking in a gentle manner. “You know, I wasn’t anxious to see you tonight. I almost told David that I couldn’t go through with it. But I’ve also missed you and our talks. Oh, Anna, don’t look so sad. I hate to see you sad. You’ve been making too much over this.”

My gape must have reflected my confusion. Maybe Moe made her story up, and Cat was my good and faithful friend.

As though reading my mind, Cat reassured me. “I know how this has upset you. I’ll do whatever I can to help you solve it.”

David’s keys were rattling in the keyhole, causing us both to look towards the door.

“he so wants us to be friends again. He’s been nearly as upset as I’ve been. Let’s show him we’ve resolved it,” Cat pleaded.

I nodded my head foolishly.

As David stepped into the kitchen, holding his bag of groceries in his arms, his face wore a questioning expression. Cat gave him a serene smile and said, “Anna and I’ve talked, and if things aren’t prefect, they’re better than they were, aren’t they, Anna?”

Not waiting to disappoint David and afraid to reveal my innermost feelings, I smiled weakly and nodded. As if to prove the truth of her words, Cat came over and embraced me. She cradled my head to her bosom as am other would cradle her child’s head. Her breasts were soft, plump, and warm. They could have belonged to my mother. Her scent was as clean and light as the Lily of the Valley cologne I loved as a child. Though I hugged her back (for what else could I do?), inwardly, I wanted to cry out. But I uttered not a sound though I smiled amicably. We’re too close, I though. We’re breathing the same air. I’m suffocating. We’re too close for comfort.

David smiled benevolently. “Good!” he proclaimed. “We’ll have a nice dinner-bluefish, cooked the way you like it, Anna. We’ll have a good time, like we always do.”

Cat released me, saying, “I’m glad that’s over. Now you two talk. I’m going to change before we eat.” She disappeared into the bedroom.

David poured me a glass of wine and set to work. He removed the fish from the bag, unwrapped it, and laid it on the cutting board. “A beauty, no?” he stated, stroking its silver skin. “Four pounds.”

“It’s beautiful,” I agreed, sipping wine while I watched him work. I loved the deftness of his movements, his reverence for the food he prepared. Was love the spice that made the difference between a good and great cook?

“So, you’re leaving us for Christmas,” he said as he laid the fish into a baking dish and began chopping onions and peppers to sprinkle over it. “So, we’ll have our Christmas tonight.”

“I didn’t know that you celebrate Christmas,” I teased, knowing full well David took Christian holidays almost as seriously as Jewish ones.

“Christ was a Jew, no? You’re a Christian. So, I celebrate Christmas. Here, smell this.”

David held a sprig of round-leaf herb under my nose. “Parsley?” he inquired.

“I call it cilantro. That’s what the Mexicans call it. Americans call it coriander, and the Chinese call it Chinese parsley. What do Moroccans call it?”

“I call it Chinese parsley. If I can’t find it in this neighborhood, I go to Chinatown to buy it.” He tore off some leaves and sprinkled them on top of the fish.

“Put a tape on, will you, Anna? My hands are wet. Put on the tap that’s on the coffee table. I just bought it.”

I found the tape and put it into the tape deck. Plaintive strains of middle eastern music filled the room. Knowing that David liked his music loud, I turned the volume as loud as I could stand it.

“It’s not loud enough,” David complained when I returned to the kitchen. “I can’t hear it.”

“Alright. Go deaf,” I retorted, going back to increase the volume.

The melancholy of the music, the clatter of dishes, the smells permeating the apartment, the lace curtains swaying before the open windows—all conspired to give me a feeling of well-being and make whatever conflicted Cat and I had seem inconsequential. In this apartment, I had found my happiest moments during the past year. I wished that this, too, would not pass.

When I came back to the kitchen, David was slipping the fish into the oven. “It’ll take thirty minutes to bake, and then we’ll eat.”

The bedroom door opened, and Cat floated out. She was wearing David’s caftan and was a vision of loveliness. She had done her makeup with extra care so that her cheeks had a peach-colored glow. Her hair was done as I liked it, pulled back with wispy curls fringing her face and neck. My God, I thought, she looks like an angel, the personification of righteousness.

“I’m so glad this time I’m innocent,” she bubbled artlessly. I could have laughed aloud at her choice of attire and theatrical entrance. I had little doubt but that it was mean to proclaim her innocence, but what did she mean by “this time?”—that she had been guilty of fabricating the story about Mark putting his hands on her? Frankly, I thought she was overplaying her hand, and this was the most blatant act I had witnessed her performed.

Nevertheless, David and I provided an appreciative audience. He took such pride in her beauty, and happiness shone in his eyes, though he pretended otherwise. “You’re wearing my best caftan,” he scolded.

“I know,” she answered demurely. “Don’t think I don’t know quality when I see it.”

This evening of pretenses bumped along, and my memory of some of it is blurred. Before we ate, Cat said she wanted to give me my present. Withdrawing a tiny white box from her sash, she chastised me.

“I didn’t know whether to buy you anything or not—after all you’ve put me through lately. I stood in the store and said, ‘should I or shouldn’t I?’ But when I saw these, I felt you must have them. Even if you don’t deserve them, I didn’t want you to go to California without them.”

She laid the box in my lap and kissed me on the cheek. I was clearly embarrassed. I hand’t counted on Cat buying me a present. “But I didn’t get you anything,” I said lamely.

“You promised you would buy her a Bible,” David charged, let down by my negligence.

“I know,” I admitted, “and I looked, but I didn’t find the version I wanted. I’ll look again when I’m in California.

As I said it, I knew I would never buy Cat a Bible. To do so seemed like a mockery.

“Never mind,” Cat said. “I wouldn’t read it if you did. Open your present.”

I opened the box. It contained a pair of slinky earrings, made of imitation copper, silver, and gold bands. I held one up and watched it shimmer in the light. It was incumbent that I show appreciation.

“You shouldn’t have bought me anything,” I demurred, “but they’re beautiful. Thank you.”

“Put them on,” Cat commanded. “I want to see how they look with your new hairdo.”

I removed my gold studs and fastened the earrings in place, tossing my head to feel their sway. Cat gave me a critical look of approval. “Yes, they look lovely. I just wish your eyes didn’t look so said. Well, shall we eat now?”

****

Before I left for California, I spoke again with Cat on the phone and met privately with David.

As though reading my mind, she asked, “Are you planning to talk to anyone in California about this?”

As a matter of fact, though I wasn’t planning on sharing it with my sister and her husband(as I thought it would only upset them), I was planning on confiding it to my good friends—Evie, Clare and Eleanor, whom I had known for more than twenty years. We came from the same town and from the same kind of God-faring, middle-class families. We all went through the conflagrations of divorce and career changes in the turbulent Sixties and Seventies, and we share the same values. Though we enjoyed one another for the beauty each possessed, we felt intimicies between women shouldn’t go beyond sisterly hugs and kisses. My situation in New York had plunged me into an identity crisis. As much as I would value whatever insights they might offer, I needed their validation that in a similar position they would react as I had.

I protected myself. “I don’t know,” I said. “I’m not sure anyone would understand.”

“Don’t talk to anyone about it,” Cat advised. “You’re right. No one would understand.”

I was at a loss to perceive what difference it made to her. Was she afraid I would stumble across some insight I had neglected, or was she merely seeking to keep what happened in the family, so to speak?

“You’re probably right,” I sighed.

Our conversation ended with Cat telling me how much she dreaded spending Christmas with David and my promising to call on Christmas Even.

The next day, I met David at a coffee shop a few blocks from their apartment to give him the Krugerrands I had kept in a sock under my bed. Both of us were nervous about the transaction I handed him the gold coins, and he turned them over in his hands as though dazzled by their sheen.

“You should be able to get about $700 or $800 for them,” I told him. “That should be enough to get you to Florida and a couple of weeks’ lodgings.”

“It isn’t enough,” he moaned.

“It’s all I can spare,” I snaped, annoyed by his lack of fortitude. “It’s enough to get you out of here. You’ll manage okay.”

Carefully, he wrapped the coins in a handkerchief and stuck them into the uppermost pocket of his coat, but fear remained in his eyes.

“Don’t you understand she isn’t good for you?” I asked. “You’ll never get what you want from her.”

“I know,” David admitted. “She’s a taker. Her family and friends—they’re all takers.”

“The next time you fall in love,” I couldn’t help but say, “look for more than a beautiful face.”

David sat in his black leather jacket and beret, looking entirely woebegone, his handsome fate set with a wounded expression. We were but two wayfarers fate had thrown together, who had become as brother and sister. You would do the same for your own brother, I assured myself.

“I’ve got to go,” I told him. “I’m not finished packing. I guess you want to sit here for awhile.”

I put on my coat and hat and best to kiss him on the cheek, saying, “I’ll miss you, but I hope you’ll be gone when I return. Good luck. Don’t be afraid. God will be with you.”

My less-than-valiant brother nodded his head and seemed close to tears.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

“I hope you’re not going to be your usual moody self,” Bertha said as she handed me a mug of hot coffee across the kitchen counter and set out a container of non-dairy creamer. Through the windows, I watched black coots, floating like corks on the lagoon, and seagulls soaring in a gray sky.

“The last time you were here, you spent more time in your room than visiting with us,” she chided.

Over the years, we had established the kind of truce sisters whose natures are different establish, so I know there was the expectation that I would spend more time in my room than she deemed acceptable, and my automatic, “You know I need more time alone than you do,” was unnecessary.

I glanced around the kitchen, noting the remodeling changes that had been made in my absence. Bertha’s home would have looked like any other open-air, California-style house in Foster City were it not for the fact that she insisted on hanging the surrealistic paintings I had done in graduate school and before. As often as Frank pleaded with her to please take some of them down—they baffled neighbors and gave the children nightmares—Bertha staunchly refused.

“You really should take some of the paintings down,” I said.

“I like them,” she maintained. “Id miss them if they were gone.”

“Don’t you know,” said Frank, who had breezed into the kitchen for a cup of coffee before going to play golf, “this is your art gallery? Bertha’s the curator. I took some down once, but as soon as she saw it, she put them right back up. I did drink my coffee in the morning with “The Vultures of Gossip” pointing their fingers at me . . .”

“I did that one in high school,” I laughed.

“And at night, that thug who looks like Winston Churchill reads over my shoulder. I tell our friends you have an imagination.”

“How did your show go?” Bertha inquired.

“I didn’t sell anything.”

“You were so sure your work would be recognized in New York,” Frank reminded me.

“I know, but it hasn’t been—not yet.”

It seemed as though I were forever telling my family, just you wait. Meanwhile, the years were flipping by.

Bertha told me of the Christmas events she had planned for us—the girls’ Christmas concert, The Nutcracker, the Dickens’ fair, and viewing the decorations at Macy’s and Baldalucci’s.

“I already bought your tickets,” she informed me, “as part of your present.”

What she meant was, I bought them so you can’t squirm out of going. Her mind drifted to the next bone of contention. “I suppose you’ll have to run around and see all your friends . . .”

“Of course I want to see them. You know that.”

“You know, I’ve been thinking,” she continued. “Why should you break your neck going to see them. Ask them to come here instead. They’re welcome here.”

“That’s a good idea,” I said, not eager to take public transportation all over the Bay Area to see friends who had become more spread out as the years passed. “We’ll compromise. I’ll try to get those I can to come here.”

“Try?” Berth said, implying that trying wasn’t good enough. Then she scrutinized me closer.

“You know, you don’t look well. Is New York getting you down? Is something wrong? You look tired, and you’re too thin.”

Momentarily, I was tempted to pour out my story, but I restrained myself. Bertha would only say, if that’s the kind of friends you have, you’d be better off without them. She wouldn’t understand how few I would have left.

“New York’s hard,” I admitted. “It gets me down.”

“But you had to go there. Montana and California weren’t good enough for you. We told you it would be hard, but when do you listen to us?” Bertha reprimanded, adding, “And who cut your hair? It’s too short, too sever. What kind of an image are you trying to project?”

“Can’t you tell? Don’t I look ‘punk’ to you? It’s the rage in New York.”

“In New York, huh?” she scoffed. “Well, it’s the rage in Foster City, too. It’s all the girls want. Didn’t you see Sarah this morning?”

“I haven’t seen the kids yet. They went to school before I got up.”

“Well, you look about as punk as me,” Bertha joked, her rotund body dressed in an oversized t-shirt that said, “Bay Area Marathon,” jeans, and top siders. “Are you still mourning Saul? Do you ever see him”

“Yes, I miss him, and no, I never see him.”

“Ae you dating anyone new?”

“No, not really.”

Her inquisition had me almost in tears. I wished there were some aspect of my life which I could hold up as successful.

“Look,” she relented. “I presumed that you hadn’t finished your shopping, so I thought we go to Hillsdale this afternoon. I’ll buy you a cabbage at Salads Galore.”

“I haven’t gotten the kids’ presents. I thought I’d buy them some books.”

“Don’t buy them any more books,” Bertha advised. “They never read the ones you’ve already given them. Give Jaime a check—he’s got his own shopping list. He won’t wear what I buy him unless it’s the right brand. Buy the girls some punk stuff. That’s what they’re into.”

****

As it turned out, I saw Eleanor before Christmas, Clare on Christmas Day, and Evie the day before I returned to New York. Eleanor and I talked as we walked up the hill in El Cerrito to Dagny’s house, where we had been invited to dinner to commemorate the time when the three of us had shared her spacious, glass enclosed house on the hill overlooking the Bay. Eleanor recalled the time as a nightmare—she had abandoned her little house in the Berkeley flats after a man broke in and raped her.

“I was freaked out from the rape,” she now complained. “No one understood what I was feeling, there was no privacy, and you and Dagny were fighting all the time.”

“You had to go somewhere,” I protested, piqued that she didn’t appreciate that I had done what I could. “It was better than being alone, wasn’t it? Dagny and I took your mind off your troubles, didn’t we?”

“That’s true, Eleanor conceded sardonically. “I didn’t know which was worse, being alone or listening to the two of you squabbling over money.”

“What could I do? If I had let her have her way, she would have spent all mine for me.”

Eleanor’s no-frills honesty could be brutal. As much as I wished she would be more diplomatic, more appreciative, I wouldn’t want her to compromise her candor for I knew I could trust her implicitly. She was my soul sister, the only other one of the four of us who had chosen the path of the artist. Eleanor had become a composer and, as such, had suffered ongoing poverty and deprivation.

I would never forget the first time I saw her after the rape. Her eyes were riveted in their sockets like billiard balls shot into pockets, and she wore a cloak of humiliation so vivid I could hardly look at her. no wonder she spoke of her life in two phases: before the rap, and after the rape.

We had taken this walk many times before when we had lived with Dagney—up Arlington Boulevard, as it dipped and rose past luxurious homes, lush vegetation, and a golf course rimmed with towering eucalyptus trees. Night had fallen, and all we could see were the dark shapes of trees and houses against a Prussian blue sky, the glow of streetlights, and windows. I couldn’t see her face or her pale green eyes, only the sound of our voices and the swish of trees as they swayed in the breeze.

I told her my story about the call, trying to give as fair a portrait of Cat and Moe as I could, so as not to affect her judgement. I took comfort that she didn’t ask whether I had made that call—she knew I wouldn’t do something like that—and from her attentiveness as she listened.

“What would you think if this happened to you?”

With little hesitation, Eleanor answered, “You know, it’s one thing for Cat to have been disappointed that you didn’t want to live with her, quite another for her to get even in that way. She sounds like a dangerous person to me. I think you should drop her as a friend.”

****

On Christmas Eve, I went to Bertha and Frank’s bedroom to call Cat. The thousands of miles separating us accentuated our estrangement. Had I not promised that I would do so, I wouldn’t have called.

“On, Anna. I’ve been waiting for your call. I’m so depressed. David’s drunk. He’s been banging around here and screaming. Do you want to talk to him?”

I didn’t, but I didn’t see how I could refuse.

“Anna?” David slurred my name. “What’s happen’, man? Cat’s color’n her hair. I’m drinking Jack Daniels. How’er you?”

“I’m fine,” I answered, disappointed that he hadn’t left New York. I was sure he bought the Jack Daniels with the money I had given him. Soon, I gave up trying to talk to him. “Put Cat back on, will you?” I said.

“I told you he’s drunk,” Cat said when she took the phone. “Drunk and disgusting. Anything new in California?”

I wanted to get off the phone. Christmas seemed about as merry as an anchor dropping to the bottom of the sea. “I’ve got to go. My sister’s rounding us up for church. I’ll call you when I get back.”

“Okay,” she said with resignation. “Have a good time, a better time than I’m having.”

****

That Clare, Nat, and Joey arrived a good two hours late for Christmas dinner was a source of aggravation to Bertha and, therefore, to me.

“On any other day I would mind,” Bertha fretted. “But you’d think they’d have the courtesy to come on time for Christmas dinner.” She inspected the overdone turkey and shut the oven door with more force than was necessary.

“I’m sure it’s not Clare’s fault,” I told her. “She probably can’t drag Nat away from his toys.”

“I thought their little boy’s name is Joey.”

“It is,” I replied. “Clare says that Nat’s more a child than Joey.”

Bertha’s smile was unrelenting. “This is the last time I’m inviting them for Christmas.”

I looked at the clock. It was 4:30 p.m. Our company had been invited for 3. “They’ll be here soon,” I assured her.

Christmas day was dragging along. We were all testy and bored. The kids were acting as though the presents they had opened that morning were ready for the Salvation Army and were whining, “When are we going to eat?” Even Frank’s usual good humor was exhausted as he asked, “Where are your friends?”

At last, Jaime plunged into the family room with the announcement that “They’re here. Auntie Ann’s friends are here.”

We all went to the door to greet them. Clare was apologetic as she helped Joey up the stairs. “I’m sorry. I couldn’t drag Nate away from his new VCR. We had to watch Indiana Jones twice. I had to throw a fit to get him to move.”

We hugged. Motherhood looked good on Clare. Though a pound or two heavier, she looked as healthy as I had ever seen her. Our ensemble proceeded into the family room, and Frank busied himself making drinks while Bertha bustled about, checking last minute preparations. The children’s toys became new again as they tried to interest Joey in them. Soon enough, dinner commenced. No one mentioned how dry the turkey was.

I had warned Bertha that after dinner, Clare and I were going to my room to talk. As I helped her load the dishwasher, I reminded her of it.

“Why can’t you talk her,” she protested.

“I’m sorry, dear. It’s a private matter.”

Her face said, after all I do for you, like entertaining your friends on Christmas. She felt cheated. She hated to be left out.

“I can’t imagine what you have to talk about that’s so important. You never change, do you?”

“We never change,” I countered, and she said nothing further.

In Naomi’s bedroom, Clare shared the developments in her life in my absence. In her twenties, she had given a baby, a daughter, up for adoption because she didn’t want to marry the father, and she came from a strict Mormon family that made raising a child out of wedlock unacceptable. Years later, she married Nathan and had Joey. Now, her daughter was eighteen, and Clare was going through the proper channels to insure, should she want to know her real mother, a file containing letters and photographs could be made available to her. The adoptive father had asked that Clare not interfere with his daughter’s life.

“I can never talk about with her without crying,” Clare said. “I just want her to understand why I made that decision.”

She fished in her purse for a Kleenex and dabbed her wide gray eyes.

“You’ll see her one day,” I said. “I’m sure of it. And in the meantime, look what a good life you have with Nathan and Joey.”

“I know,” Clare said, her mood shifting. She began to tell me how hard it is to be a mother in your forties. Then she asked, “What about you? How are things going?”

As dispassionately as possible, I told her the story of my friendship with Cat and the lesbian undertones I felt existed.

“Has she ever,” Clare asked, searing for the right word, “made a pass at you?”

“No, not really,” I admitted. “She’s too subtle for that.”

I went on to tll her about Moe and the call. “The truth is,” I concluded, “I don’t really know whether Cat placed the call or Moe made her story up.”

“Gut reaction,” Clare demanded. “Who do you think did it?”

“I don’t know,” I cried. Whatever gut reaction I initially had had been obliterated by constant ruminations.

****

Evie’s brown hair flowed as she walked toward me, wearing a denim work short, Levi’s, and cowboy boots. Sunglasses shielded her eyes, and she wore little makeup, but with her statuesque figure and classic face, she was still beautiful. I called her “Helen” for Helen of Troy, the face that launched a thousand ships. Close up, I could see fine cracks on her face like those on a fine porcelain vase, a few strands of gray hair, but rather than detract, they seemed to enhance her.

While we walked around the Opera Mall, I enjoyed listening to her apologies for not having written or called. They were as they always were—I’ve been too busy. I couldn’t find the time. I’ve been too wrapped up in my own affairs. Though I loved her, I had punished her by making her the last friend I saw before I headed back to New York.

The added fullness of her figure of a woman spoke of a woman who is being sexually satisfied. In my absence, she had divorced Wendell and had taken a younger man for her lover. I didn’t fault her because I knew what breaking free had cost her. Now that she had done it, she was relaxed.

“I should go on a diet,” Evie admitted, “but Tom likes me this way.”

“You look great,” I told her. “Love agrees with you.”

We found her silver sports care, which, like her, showed signs of age but was still elegant. Papers and items of clothing littered the space behind the seats.

“I’ve turned into such a slob since Wendell left,” Evie said. “I’m behind with everything, but, thank God, I’m no longer quite so compulsive.”

As we drove over the Bay Bridge, heading north on the freeway to Vallejo, a heavy smog covered the green hills. As in the days when we had chased over the planes of Eastern Montana in Evie’s black Chevy, we drank in the beauty of the landscape. “Got, it’s beautiful.”

“I know,” said Evie. “I hate to give it up. It’s a long commute to work, but it feels sog good when I drive home. I don’t know whether to keep the house. I owe Wendell half the value, but I’m going to try.”

One of things I admired about Evie was how she always managed to get what she wanted.

She turned into a housing development of California-style, modern houses perched on the hillside, drove around a loop, and pulled into the driveway of her house. She gave me a tour, showing me the landscaping she had done in my absence. As usual, I admired her refined sense of taste.

Soon, we were propped on her slate-colored couch in the living room, drinking tea. Evie fetched one of the afghans her mother crocheted and threw it over our legs. She gave my foot a friendly tweak and said, “You’ve hardly said anything about yourself. How are you doing? It’s hard living in New York, isn’t it? I don’t think I could stand it.”

“Yes, it’s hard,” I admitted. “Hard in ways I never would have dreamed possible. But I haven’t said much because I’ve been saving my time to tell you a bizarre story. I want you to listen and tell me what you think. I mean, give it your best shot.”

For the third time, I told my story about Cat, Moe and the call. As she listened, Evie’s brow puckered in concentration, and her dark blue eyes darted back and forth as though searching out possible motivations. She asked the same question that Clare had asked, “Did she ever give you any indication that she’s gay?” and again, I answered, “No, she’s too subtle for that.”

When I finished, Evie lost no time in rendering her verdict. “I bet Moe did it,” she declared, hissing like a goose. “She was angry with you for kissing Charles.”

I was taken aback and reminded myself that, in the course of soliciting opinions, one must listen but ultimately make up one’s own mind.

“You like him, don’t you?” Evie said.

“Who?”

“David.”

“Yes, I like him. He’s like Zorba the Greek.”

“Do you think you’ve fallen in love with him?”

“God, I hope not.”

****

I was agitated as I packed my suitcase to return to New York. I noted that the sum of my consultations with the muses had resulted in a draw: Eleanor thought Cat had one it; Evie, Moe; and Clare had honored neutrality. Therefore, I was no further ahead. I would still have to make up my own mind. Cat’s words taunted me: you never will know, either.

I reached for my knobby, black and white sweater, annoyed that Naomi was watching me. My feelings were hurt when she said, “I’ll be glad when you’re gone so I can have my room back.”

I forced myself to remain the adult and replied, “It’s hard to give up your room, isn’t it? And you keep it so neat, too.”

Naomi warmed to this praise. “Mommy says I’m neater than Sarah.”

“It’s in your genes, kid,” I quipped.

“What does that mean?”

“It means that your mother and father are neat, so you’re neat, too.”

“Then why isn’t Sarah neat?”

The question stumped me momentarily. “She must have gotten a few of the sloppy jeans,” I answered.

The conversation engrossed Naomi, but I wanted privacy. “Look, I can finish packing a lot more quickly if you’re not watching me. And the quicker I’m done, the quicker you get your room back. So, why don’t you go help your mother with dinner? I’ll be down in ten minutes.”

Reluctantly, Naomi acquiesced to my questionable logic, picked up her Cabbage Patch doll , and left, calling downstairs, “Mommy, Auntie Anna says I have neat genes.”

At the top of the stairs, she turned and said, “Tell me when you’re done, okay?”

“You’ll be the first to know.”

I locked the door to prevent further intrusions and placed another sweater into the suitcase, asking myself, what if you never learn the truth of what happened? What then?

For the first time, I accepted the likelihood that I would never know. I thought of my analogy of a car accident that I used when arguing with people who think all truth is relative. Two cars collide. There are several witnesses. Each says it happened differently. Even though the truth is that the vehicles impacted in a precise fashion, which physicists might be able to ascertain from the damage, a jury might never know the truth because they are dependent on the reliability of witnesses, who saw it from different points of view.

This was a law of life rather than its exception. Most of the time, we don’t know exactly what has happened. So, if I never knew, never was able to prove what happened, what was I to do? It came to me that in order to lay this matter to  rest, I would have to examine the evidence I had as carefully as I could, and then, right or wrong, make up my mind.

Of course, I continued, that’s what we have to do all the time. It’s part of being human not to know the entire story, to live locked inside the limitations of partial knowledge, our own perceptions and prejudices.

The realization was like a weight being lifted from me. For the first time since the call, I felt lighthearted. I knew what I would do when I returned to New York. I would sit down with Moe and ask, “Look, did you really get that call?”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

My plane back to New York landed at the Newark Airport several days before the new year. Patches of yellow snow nestling in the marshes along the approach to Manhattan indicated there had been cold weather in my absence, but today was mild. The city seemed grubbier and more crowded than when I had left it, but I knew this was only because m y senses needed time to become dulled to its everyday filth and gestion. I lugged my suitcase from the subway stop to my house and carried it upstairs. When I entered the apartment, I was perspiring from the effort, so I went to the window and threw it open. Since John was at work, my welcoming committee consisted of his dog and my cats. Duchess’s dull coat and eyes indicated that she had suffered in my absence, but now that I was home, she wagged her tail joyously. The cats acknowledged my return by congregating around my suitcase. The apartment was in need of good dusting. Hair balls glided when I walked across the floor. Home. This was my home. Despite its tawdriness, I loved it. I was glad to be in my own space again.

            I rifled through the mail on my desk, opening the Christmas cards and reading their messages. Then I went into the kitchen to make myself a cup of coffee. I set the kettle to boil, and, taking a mug from the stack of dishes lying on a towel next to the sink, I rewashed it. John was clean, but he washed dishes in such a hurry that he often didn’t get all the food particles off. He had left the dishrag in the sink, wadded and smelly. Disdainfully, I picked it up and carried it into the bathroom where I dropped it into this clothes hamper. By the time I returned, the water was boiling, so I dropped some instant coffee crystals into a mug, poured the water in, and opened the refrigerator to see whether there was any moil. “Damn,” I said, finding none but the freezer door hanging akimbo, a sure sign that it needed defrosting. My “to do” list was growing: unpack, take the laundry down, walk Duchess, pick up a quart of milk, defrost the freezer . . .I carried my coffee back to the desk, sat down, and stared at my suitcase.

Normally, I would call Cat to say, “I’m back,” but I didn’t feel like talking to her yet. Nor did I feel inclined to call Moe. I wished that I could call Saul and tell him I was back, then realized that almost a year had passed since I last spoke with him. Gazing at my lox-colored room, I remembered how John and I had painted it before I moved in. Some day in the not too distant future, I would no longer call this place home. Like the final hours of 1984 were being swallowed up by time’s advance, my present life was being consumed. Ahead of me lay a new home, a new group of friends—I could only hope they would be an improvement over my present lot. If all of life is change, I contemplated, I should have become used to it by no. Only an abnormal life would change as much as yours, my inner critic offered.

I decided that I would corner Moe after church the next day and offer to buy her lunch. When we talked, I would bring up the call and ask her my question. That way, I could watch her face when she answered, and maybe I would be able to ascertain whether she was telling the truth.

Later that afternoon, when I had grown tired and lonely, I called Cat at work.

“Hi. It’s me. I’m back.”

“Oh, Anna, I’m glad you’re home. I’ve missed you,” she replied. “I’ve been in a slump for the past week. How was your vacation?”

“It was okay though not my best time in California. How’s David?”

I asked tis abruptly in my eagerness to find out whether he had gone to Florida. If I had put money on it, I would bet, ten to one, he hadn’t gone.

“I guess he’s okay,” Cat said. “He hasn’t been working. He drives me crazy with all his stomping around. He says he’s going to Florida. When I ask if he has the money, he just glowers. I wish he would leave. Then I’d have the apartment to myself.”

I winced over how little she cared for him. Lately, I recognized that I had a more idealized version of David than she did. I was moved by his rhetoric whereas she only laughed at it.

“Did you talk to anyone in California? I mean, about what happened?” Cat asked.

I hesitated and thought, she’s tracking you closely. “I talked with Clare and Evie,” I answered, omitting that I had also talked with Eleanor.

“What did they think?” she asked.

“Clare offered no opinion, and Evie thought Moe must have made up the story,” I replied.

“So, where are you with it now?”

“I still don’t know, but I’m going to talk to Moe.”

“When?”

“I’ll catch her after church tomorrow.”

“Do you want me to come with you?” Cat asked.

Her question confused me. I couldn’t figure out if this was something one would offer to do if she was innocent or guilty.

“No, it won’t be necessary,” I replied. “Moe would never agree to talk to both of us. It’s better that I talk to her alone.”

“When you find out that she has made this up, what will you do? Cat asked.

“Nothing,” I replied. “I have no desire to get even if that’s what you mean. The loss of my friendship will be enough.”

“What are your plans for New Year’s Eve?” she inquired.

“I haven’t planned much,” I replied. “Maybe I’ll go to the Village with Bob. It might cheer me up to hear his predictions of doom and gloom. What are you going to do?”

“David and I’ll stay home. I’d invite you over, but I don’t want to see you until this is resolved,” Cat said.

“I feel the same way,” I replied. “So let’s welcome in the new year apart.”

“Okay, call me after you talk to Moe.”

****

I was disappointed that Moe didn’t come to church the next day. That meant I’d have to go to her apartment in order to see her or wait another week. In the afternoon, I felt such a sense of urgency that I called her.

“How was your trip?” she asked in a friendly fashion. After some chitchat, I said, “Moe, there’s one more thing I want to ask you—about the call.”

“Anna,” Moe replied sternly, “I thought I told you to forget it.”

“But,” I persisted, “I have to ask you one more question.”

“Anna, please . . .”

“Moe, just let me ask you this,” I begged.

“Alright,” she conceded. “What is it?”

“Did you really get this call?”

“I most certainly did!” Moe’s voice rang out.

The force of her assertion demanded that no further questions be asked, but that was all I wanted to know. I hung up thinking, I believe her. She is telling me the truth. I didn’t think that someone whose voice was as clear as hers, as clear as a bell, could be lying. My decision was made. Cat must have placed the call.

****

I dreamt vividly that night and in the morning recalled the following dream: I was in an arts and crafts store. Among the merchandise was an assortment of masks. A sales lady held up a mask for me to try on. When I did and looked in the mirror, my face was that of a young woman with an innocent, beguiling expression. I took it off, and she held up another, larger mask for me to try on. This face was that of a jester, with a raucous expression, and a large, protruding nose. When I held the mast to my face, I saw that the nose pointed inward.

Though I couldn’t readily interpret the dream, I knew the masks symbolized all the pretenses we were maintaining, pretenses I had grown tired of. Though I had determined that Cat was the liar, I had no particular plan of action.

It was the last day of 1984—for me, a doom-laden year. All day, I sat around and tried to look busy whenever John came through my side of the apartment. Really, I was thinking, thinking about Cat, trying to call to mind all I knew and feared to b true about her.

Who was she? How well did I know her?

Usually, I had a pretty good idea of who people were. I was able to piece a cohesive whole from the things they said, the worries they expressed, and the activities in which they engaged. Though Cat, too, had characteristic expressions, worries, and activities, from the start I had had an uncanny perception of “otherness” about her—as though part of her was missing and had been replaced by something unknowable. Like a chameleon, she was adept at blending into her environment, taking on its colors, and thus camouflaging herself.

For some time now I had considered a possible diagnosis of her condition, but since it was such a frightening one, I hadn’t embraced it. I wouldn’t have now, were it not that by employing it I could find answers to the questions that surrounded the call. What I had feared might be true of Cat was that she had a rare and dangerous psychosis.

My view of the phenomenon was more Biblical than scientific. I thought the condition differed significantly from other forms of mental illness. The paranoid, as I understood it, was excessively suspicious, the schizophrenic’s personality was split into contradictory aspects, the manic depressive was subject to excessive highs and lows, and the catatonic had withdrawn from life. I believed that the victims of most forms of mental illness had an exaggerated condition for there are elements of paranoia, schizophrenia, manic depression and catatonia in all of us, from time to time. Yet the personalities of the victims of most forms of mental illness remained unified, however distorted they might be.

The opinion of medical science is that people who have multiple personalities conjure up the different personalities they have from themselves. I believed, on the one hand, that they are hosts to disembodied spirits that roam the Netherlands. I based my conclusion on the fact that the personalities inhabiting a multiple personality individual are too different in character and abilities to have been conjured up by a single individual.

I had read enough case studies of the phenomenon to know that it seldom occurs, but when it does, if afflicts people who have been severely traumatized in their childhood, when they are in the process of forming their ego. It seem to be caused by their inability to assimilate some aspect of their existence—usually, they have been sexually molested by a member of their family or subjected to some other form of brutish violence. The reason child abuse in the form of incest is so reprehensible is because the psyche of a child is insufficiently developed to be able to understand the implications of sex, much less ex with a member of one’s own family. Unable to assimilate their experience, their ego takes flight, leaving their psychic houses, so to speak, and room for boarders. In short, I viewed the phenomenon of multiple personalities as nothing less than demon possession. Thus, the possibility that Cat might have multiple personalities was enough to scare the holy bejabbers out of me.

Yet I had scant evidence that she had this syndrome, not enough to hold up in a court of law. But since, in this case, I was the detective, prosecuting attorney, judge, and jury, I could and would consider it.

I thought about her eyes, how they darted in many directions simultaneously, yet I didn’t think this condition could be deduced from one’s eyes alone. What about all the names she assumed?—Darlene, Kitty, Dorry, Tess, and Julia. It isn’t unusual for a person to change his or her name, but it is unusual to change it six or seven times, to say nothing of being disorienting. Yet one can hardly make a case for someone having multiple personalities based on the number of names she or he has taken.

I recalled the time to me she may have been hinting to me what her condition was. I had known her less than a year when she announced that she was going with her aunt to a convention on parapsychology in Washington, D.C. This wasn’t unusual for during the time I knew her, she often consulted with therapists and psychics of one kind and another. I wondered if any of them had a clue as to the nature of her trouble? When she returned and called me, her excitement was voluble.

“I went to a seminar on multiple personalities,” she relayed. “I was so scared, but I went in and sat down right in the front row. When the doctor described the condition, oh, Anna, I cried like a baby.”

I wondered then if she was trying to tell me she had multiple personalities, but I was afraid to ask. When I first met her, she often said, “I don’t know who I am. I don’t have the foggiest idea.” Once, she added, “There are so many voices—I don’t know which ones to listen to . . .”

Still, I had not a shred of proof, could only point to the strange things that had occurred during our friendship—the voice, more masculine than feminine, saying he was going to kill me, the confusion surrounding the Mark and Debbie fiasco, and now, the call. Whenever something strange happened surrounding Cat, all the evidence seemed to evaporate like the morning dew.

All afternoon I persisted with this grappling for one reason: when I applied this diagnosis, I could fashion answers to the questions enveloping the call. If some kind of supernatural power were involved, it was within the realm of possibilities that Cat could impersonate me so accurately that Moe would think she was talking to me. But, if this were the case, the situation was all the more terrifying. These thoughts were too much for my poor brain. I got up and went into the kitchen to see if there was anything to drink. Finding an open bottle of white wine in the refrigerator, left over from the dinner John had hosted the previous night, I poured myself a glass and returned to my desk.

I figured out a way that Cat could have gotten Moe’s telephone number. During the time when I was painting from her employer’s window, I made four or five trips to their apartment. As I recalled, sometimes I took my purse with me into the room where I was working, and sometimes I removed my cigarettes and left it on a chair in the dinette with my coat. In my purse, I carried a tiny address book where I had listed the names, addresses and phone numbers of the people I knew. Moe’s phone number was in it. I wouldn’t put it past Cat to go through my purse and copy any information she thought might be useful to her one day.

My explanation for how she could have known clothes from Moe’s wardrobe was unsatisfactory. I recalled that on the night of my birthday cruise, Moe had told us that she had her colors done, and they were turquoise, pinks, and browns. Would this have been enough for Cat to make some calculated guesses? I never told her that Moe was wearing a turquoise linen dress the night she smeared it with tomato sauce.

Had I been less scared, I might have had more sympathy for Cat. I knew she had been molested in her childhood. She told me that her father, a shadowy, ineffectual man who had never succeeded at anything in life, had raped her when she was only four or five years old. There was little in her family dynamic to mitigate this devastating experience. Her mother showed a preference for Roberta, whom she had designated the “artistic” one, leaving Cat to abdicate her own talent so as not to upstage Roberta. She considered Roberta more of a mother to her than her real mother had been.

With such a family constellation, I could understand why Cat preferred women to men. Yet, how could Roberta, so lacking in morality herself, have provided her with much of a role model? Amorality was part of their adult lives. When Cat lived with Roberta and her husband, they conducted a ménage trois. Roberta had her lovers and encouraged Cat to sleep with her husband.

It seemed to me that Cat’s entire family was sick. I could see her as the scapegoat for the malignancy that had accumulated in it. They were people I could neither like nor respect, as their values seemed to have more to do with getting by than embodying any righteous principles.

Substance would be lent to my theory if I could identify some of the alternate personalities manifesting themselves through Cat, but they had never shown themselves to me other than in fleeting glimpses. If I was right about her condition, it was so masterfully disguised I doubted that anyone else had guessed it.

I was no longer the Pollyanna I had been as a child, who thought all people were good, and this was not the first time I had encountered evil. I had met it firsthand before, and I knew of its multiple disguises and the confusion it causes, a virtual Tower of Babel. I knew that evil can be identified by the confusion it causes. Anyone who kids himself about it doesn’t know life. I had found malevolent forces in the universe larger and stronger than I. I believed whenever I encountered them, the best course of action was to flee—don’t even stop for your coat and hat.

Nearly all human action is the consequence of thought. What we think propels us to act. It doesn’t matter whether our thoughts are accurate assessments of reality or not. The man who kills his wife because he thinks she is having an affair may or may not be correct. Whether I was right or wrong in my evaluation, it prompted me to act. What was in my mind on the last day of 1984 led me to the following action:

The phone rang, jolting me from my reverie. I reached for it and found the caller was David.

“Come,” he said forcibly. “Come over and have dinner with us tonight.”

“I can’t, David. I’ve made other plans.”

“Plans? What Plans?”

“I’m going to the Village with my friend Bob.”

“The old man?” David had made it his business to know what other friends I had. “Your tennis partner?”

“Yes.”

“Bring him over here. He’s welcome. We’ll have a good dinner. I’m cooking fish the way you like it.”

“Thanks, David, but I can’t do it.”

“I just can’t. We wouldn’t be comfortable.”

“”We’ll have a good time. I’ll talk to him.”

“It’s not that.”

“What then?”

“Cat and I thought it would be better if we didn’t spend New Year’s Eve together.”

“I thought you had resolved that. You were friends again before you went to California.”

“No, not quite. I appreciate your invitation, but I can’t come. Not tonight.”

Gradually, I weaned myself from this conversation and hung up, aware that Cat would find it strange that I hadn’t asked to speak to her. Things had come to a head with me, as though I had stepped aboard a train of no return. I could no longer tolerate my own disguises. When the phone rang a few minutes later, I picked it up knowing the caller would be Cat.

“Hi,” she said in her conspiratorial voice. “We just finished cleaning up the apartment. Now I can sit down, my up my feet, and have a cigarette. Why did you hang up? Didn’t you know that I wanted to talk to you?”

I had the impression she had just popped a tasty morsel from David’s dinner into her mouth. The weight of holding up masks overtook me.

“Cat,” I began in a grave voice.

“Anna, what’s wrong?”

“Cat, I have to say that I believe that you placed the call.”

“Moe,” Cat gasped. “You’ve talked to Moe. What did she say?”

“Only that she received the call, and I believe her.

“Well, she’s lying!”

I imagined that Cat jumped to her feet then. David, seeing that something was wrong, asked her what it is.

“It’s Anna. She’s back to that again,” Cat snarled, then tried to reengage me. “Anna, how can you?”

“Cat,” I said levelly, “I want to terminate my friendship with you.”

“Just like that? We’re friends for over two years, and you want to end it just like that?”

“I’m sorry,” I said, but my tone was unyielding.

Then she asked a strange question. “Will you forget me now?”

“No,” I conceded, but offered nothing beyond that because I didn’t want to prolong our conversation.

“Well, happy new year,” she screamed. “Have a happy new year!”

Finding no desire in me to wish her a happy new year, I simply said, “Take good care of David,” and calmly placed the receiver in the phone cradle.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

I was anything but calm. Inside, I was reeling and in a state of shock. I had never in my life so guillotined a friendship, with a single swipe of the blade. If a parting of the ways was required, usually I was the one who stood begging for reconciliation. I didn’t know what would follow. Still, I must function as a normal human being.

I got up and went into the kitchen where I poured myself another glass of John’s wine. I looked at my watch. It was 4:30—seven hours before this most strange and unhappy year would be over. I was to meet Bob in the Village at nine. I knew we would wander around, watch the revelers, eat an inexpensive snack, and discuss politics. Then I would come home and go to bed. I had three hours to fill before it would be time to dress and leave. They seemed an eternity. I couldn’t just get drunk, so I put on my coat and took Duchess for a walk. The weather was as mild as May, but I felt like someone who has jumped into frigid waters and was hanging onto whatever bit of flotsam she can find.

Bob was an elderly gentleman whom I had met when I was working at night as a word processor. We had started talking, discovered we shared similar views, and became friends. An embittered old man who loathed capitalism, he had come from a middleclass family of means and was intelligent and well-educated. However, he spent his prime as the grasshopper fiddling, following the tennis circuits or wherever his whimsical nature led him, frittering away his inheritance and waking up too late for it to do any good. Now, he had been pushed to the fringe of society, part of the growing number who were but a step away from homelessness. He had been reduced to going from one unemployment agency to another, offering his single marketable skill as a statistical typist. He claimed he could type one hundred words a minute, but after having worked with him, it was a claim I doubted.

If his age and disheveled appearance didn’t cause prospective employers to look askance—there was no telling when his suits had last seen the cleaners, and his hands were perpetually smudged from all the newspapers he fingered—his mouth would. Even before he opened it, the tell-tale sign was evident: as if to advertise his opinion, he had taped a lewd, hand drawn cartoon of Reagan to the side of his tattered briefcase.

Whenever he spoke to people on the subway, waitresses in the cheap restaurants where he took his meals, and receptionists in offices, he denounced our system, calling Reagan, “the monkey actor;” landlords “vampires;” and the American public, the “boob American public.” If the recipient of his diatribe was some poor secretary, after having been labeled “lackey robot,” or an “ass kisser,” she would summon her supervisor, who showed him the door. If he bridled his tongue long enough to get himself hired, his employment was short lived, ending in yet another incident when he called the office manager a “tool of the big boys” and was summarily dismissed.

Thus, my friend condemned himself to the existence of revolving in and out of Manhattan’s sleazy employment agencies, creating ever more elaborate plots to secure employment or to reduce expenses, and continuing dismissals that only furthered his convictions and perpetuated the cycle into which he was ensnared. I had come to see him as a revolutionary without a revolution, an anchorite whose anti-social behavior increased his isolation, an avenging angel who shook his fist at society. He was a protest movement of one, and his rewards were always the same—increased poverty and ostracism.

To be sure, he had few friends. By virtue of the facts of his good breeding and that I was one of the few people who enjoyed his company, I was rewarded with the courtesy a gentleman affords a lady. Though I was routinely subjected to his harangues, I also benefited from his knowledge of history and politics.

That evening, I was glad I could look forward to a discussion of the downfall of capitalism rather than of my personal affairs, for Bob was discreet and never pried into my private life beyond what I was willing t tell him. I knew that for several hours, my mind would be taken off the situation at hand.

He was waiting for me at our usual meeting place in front of Waverly Theater on Sixth Avenue, dressed in a trench coat and misshapen gray fedora. His face worse its ironic smile, and his glasses were smudged and tilted across his pale face, making it seem as though one eye looked up and the other, down.

“There’s more homeless people this year than ever,” he reported as I kissed him, took his arm, and we walked to a nearby greasy spoon. “And more beggars. I counted 13 homeless and 28 beggars on my way here. They’re sure to have a happy new year in Reagan’s America.”

He had only one subject, which he pursued relentlessly: the disenfranchisement of the masses in corporate America. His face was devilish as he told me, “It’s said the capitalists would bid against each other for the rope used to hang them.”

After consuming coffee and stale doughnuts, we walked through Washington Square, where idlers and drug dealers milled around. “This will be another Hooverville in another couple of years,” he instructed. “Once the vampire landlords drive all the poor into the streets, we’ll have shanty towns in the middle of Manhattan, like they had during Hoover’s administration, when people built shacks in Central Park. This is the ‘trickle-down effect.’”

Sometimes I wearied of my friend’s doom and gloom, the bitterness he embodied, but tonight I was content to let him ramble on for the distraction it provided. At midnight, we stood on lower Fifth Avenue. Sounds of noisemakers, cries and sirens filled the air. “Happy New Year,” I said, kissing him on the cheek.

“I doubt that either of us will have a happy new year,” he replied, smiling sadly.

“What do you mean?” I protested. “At least it won’t be like this year. I’m glad this year is over!”

****

When I returned home, I walked Duchess and prepared for bed, hoping that the late hour and exercise I had gotten had tired me enough so that I would be able to sleep, but now that there were no more diversions, my mind returned to my sudden termination of my friendship with Cat. As I lay awake in bed, I saw a sleepless night awaited me.

It was out of character for me to suddenly end a friendship. I wondered if this was Saul’s legacy to me. In having irrevocably terminated our affair, he had equipped me to do the same to another. If so, it wasn’t a bad skill to have in an environment as precarious as New York.

My lack of pity for Cat surprised me. Whether she wanted him or not, she still had David. She was a survivor—soon enough, she would find someone to replace me. I must look to my own survival.

Yet it was all too much. My three years in New York had yielded me little. By my own measure, I had tried and tried hard, yet I hadn’t even managed to put together a decent life for myself. Maybe I should pack my bags and go. But where would I go? I didn’t feel strong enough to move to a new environment, even if the setting were more benign than New York City. I needed the affirmation of the people who already knew me. Therefore, my options were few: I could return to either California or Montana. I calculated my remaining money, what each transition would cost, and chose Montana because it would be cheaper.

As the first light of day seeped into the bedroom, I crawled from bed and went to the phone to call my ex-husband Jim.

“Anna?” he answered sleepily. “What time is it?”

“Four a.m. your time,” I replied. “I just wanted to be one of the first to wish you a happy new year.”

“What’s up, babe?” he asked.

“I can’t take anymore of New York. I want out. I need your help.”

“What happened?”

“Oh, I can’t explain it—it’s all too complicated and crazy. It has to do with the situation I called you about before.’

“Sounds to me like you’re in the middle of a triangle—you should know better than that.”

“No, well, yes. I guess you could call it that. I’ve had it. I want to come home.”

“What do you want me to do?” he asked warily.

“I want you to come out here. I’ll pay your way. I want you to help me pack, rent a truck, and drive back with me.”

I waited for his response.

“If you want you, we’ll get you out,” he said gallantly, as if knowing equivocation would reduce me to tears. “I’ll come if you want me to, but it’s not a very good time for me. I’m in the middle of a contract. Hold on, babe, don’t cry. I’ll do what I can, but why don’t you call TJ? I saw him the other day, so I know he’s not working. I bet he would come out and help you. Do you want me to call him for you?”

TJ was my nephew, but I wouldn’t have thought to has him, had Jim not suggested it.

“No, I’ll call him. I’ll call him later today,” I told Jim, loving him for handling me in such a gentle fashion.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” he asked.

“I’m sure.”

“I’ll call you back tonight. Don’t worry. If you want out, we’ll get you out.”

****

I made numerous long-distance calls that day besides the one to TJ who said, “Sure. I’ll come out and help you.”—to other relatives to announce my imminent return to Montana and to invite them to come out and ride back with TJ and me. As I increased the number of my invitations, I realized I was careening out of control. How would I handle them if they came? When the phone rang in the middle of this, I had no idea who the caller might be.

“Will you still talk to me?”

“David!” I exclaimed. I had expected than when I said goodbye to Cat, I was saying goodbye to him as well. “Of course I’ll talk to you.”

I explained to him that I had had it with New York. I was going home to Montana. This set his mind working on a proposal he would make to me later.

After we hung up, I realized the scenario I was creating was exceeding manageable proportions. Where would I sleep all my relatives? How would I feed them especially if I were packing to leave? What would they think of the seedy building where I lived? What if we ran into a blizzard in Minnesota on our return, got stranded, and froze to death? That night, I dreamt my apartment was filling up with so many relatives there weren’t enough chairs for them all to sit down.

Amused by my dream, I thought of myself as a Montana Indian, stranded in New York City, being rescued by her tribe. In my youth, I had seen beat-up, lowriding cars full of Indians. Whenever they went to visit, the entire family went, and when they stated they stayed for weeks. As much as my imagined return to Montana, ala Indian style, pleased me, its preposterousness embarrassed me, especially when I thought of the truth heralding my return: “Failed Writer Returns Home.”

When David called the next day, he said, “Don’t go back to Montana. Come to Florida with me. We’ll go as friends—you help me. I’ll help you.”

Still unbalanced by recent events, I was delighted. Why not ride off into the sunset with David? After all, I loved him. I had no sooner accepted his proposal, called the members of my family to tell them I had changed my mind about coming home, received several “Are you sure you know what you’re doing?”s, when I saw that Plan B was fraught with as many difficulties as Plan A.

            Now the situation was absurdly complicated. What a sore comeuppance reality is, crushing our most cherished illusions in its train. Its truths are difficult to bear. I knew, for instance, that David’s invitation was not born because he was in love with me, but rather from desperations—he figured that I had enough money to see us both through a period of adjustment. Furthermore, he was still living with Cat. By accepting his offer, I had placed myself in the position of “the other woman” left to creep around and calculate my calls when she wasn’t home.

But, first things first. Soon after David made his offer, I hopped on the subway and rode out to King’s Highway to see him when Cat was at work. I was pained by his resistance to my greeting kiss. When I asked my most pressing question, “Are you still in love with her?” he denied that he was. I wanted to believe him, but I knew better. When does a person stop loving another? My experience led me to believe that usually it isn’t until long after a relationship has ended. This meant, in a psychological sense, we would be bringing Cat with us.

Because I had concluded that the best thing for David was to get away from her, I didn’t feel it was morally wrong to go with him, but I didn’t want to be living in Florida with David and have to continue my involvement with Cat. Though I might wish that he were in love with me, mostly I saw him as my brother. I was doing what I would do for my brother.

My next question was, “What if you back out?”

David looked at me and snorted, “If anyone backs out,” he said, “it will be you.”

My attempt to feel happy because I was going to run away with a man whom I loved had as much buoyancy as a balloon filled with water. When I fantasized about David and me, living simply and beautifully in a little cottage on the beach, it felt as substantial as “Over the Rainbow.”

My sense of degradation was so intense that I can recall it but vaguely now. Events come to mind, and the censor in me rises to bat them back into oblivion—my needing to talk to David when Cat was home, calling, and hanging up as soon as she answered, imagining her turning to him and saying, “Anna’s trying to reach you again.” Then, if he didn’t get the message and go to a pay phone to call me, being forced to call again.

We were into the dead of winter then, with all the snow falling that had refrained from falling during Christmas. I hadn’t heard from David for four or five days and beside myself with worry. When he finally called, he said he was calling from King’s County Hospital, where he had been hospitalized with a throat infection.

“Why didn’t you call me sooner?” I asked, my voice cracking querulously.

“I was too sick,” he replied, garbling his voice in an attempt to convince me he was at death’s door. He asked me to visit him the next day, and I promised that I would.

That day was the harshest one of the winter. A blizzard assailed the land with a biting wind. True to my word, I went to see David. Getting there wasn’t easy. There was a five or six block walk from the subway station to the hospital. As I crunched through the snow, the wind smote my face like a whip, and I felt like an astronaut trekking across the surface of the moon.

I reached the hospital and found my way to the waiting room. King’s County Hospital is a poor people’s hospital, dirty and overcrowded, one that cares for those who don’t have any previous health insurance. It reminded me of a human zoo, where the animals have been sedated. Despite the inclement weather, the room was full of hoi polloi, docilely waiting to see their relatives and friends.

Since visiting hours hadn’t started, I bought myself a cup of coffee and some fries in the coffee shop. The fries were stale, and the Styrofoam cup I held failed to warm my icy fingers. I watched the people, thinking they were like cattle being led to the slaughter, as though they always knew this would be their fate.

When visiting hours were announced, I rode in a crammed elevator to the fifth for where David was waiting for me in the visitor’s wing. He was dressed in pajamas, robe, and slippers, and reminded me of Omar Kaddafi with an air of ponderous concern about him. He accepted my greeting kiss without enthusiasm. As if to divert any complaints I might have, he went to great lengths to explain the severity of his condition, opening his mouth, and pointing to the infected area. His explanation so weakened him that he was forced to lie down, so he guided me to his room. Like a dodo bird, I followed and watched as he climbed into bed and pulled the covers to his chin, as if to say, I’m a sick man, what can I do?

Rather than sympathetic, I felt curiously envious. I, too, wanted to crawl into a hospital bed and be taken care of. The cat seemed to have gotten my tongue as I searched in vain for something to say. All I could think of was, “Has Cat been to see you?”
            When David said that she had come four or five times, I felt utterly defeated. Maybe she loved him, after all. If so, what was I doing? Since it didn’t seem appropriate to ask a sick man to deal with the myriad details attenuating a move, I gazed around the ward where he lay with four other patients.

Following my gaze, David gave me an account of each. The man across from him, lying in a jaundiced misery, was a thief and a drug dealer—he had been brought here in handcuffs. When he recovered, he would be transported to the county jail to wait trial. The old man in the bed next to his, mumbling incoherently, was dying. Since he already looked like a corpse, albeit a talking one, I could only hope that he would die quickly. David complained that his croaks during the night kept him from sleeping. The flaccid creature, who lay mute in the next bed like a collapsed walrus, with tubes running from beneath his covers to an I.V. and other machines, seemed to have already surrendered his life force and was peaceful. But, the worst was the man in the corner. One of his legs had been amputated at the knee the day before. His foreshortened leg kicked the covers, as if his body were saying, where have you gone?

Fetid odors of excrement and decay wafted my nostrils, and I felt sick to my stomach. Haplessly, I cut my visit short. Somehow, David found the strength to rise and walked with me to the elevator. Still, I couldn’t think of anything to say except, “Get well.” Nor could I think of a single thing my visit had accomplished other than to let him know that I cared. As I retraced my steps home, I realized my escape plan was folly. What I should do was find my own apartment, move, and start a new life.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

On a day shortly after my hospital visit, I went into Manhattan to do some errands. While I was sitting in a coffee shop in midtown, scanning the rental ads in The Daily news, I came across an ad for a one-bedroom apartment somewhere in Brooklyn for $500 a month. I went to the phone and called the agent, expecting to hear, “Lady, it was rented yesterday.”

“No, it hasn’t been rented,” a friendly man said. “Would you like to see it?”

“Why, yes, yes, I would. When can I come?”

He said I should come today and gave me directions to his office. When I hung up, I cried—not so much for the possibility of finding an affordable apartment, but because one human being, a real estate agent at that, was being nice to me.

The apartment was pleasant with plenty of light and room. I said I would take it, but on my way home, I had misgivings because it was so far into Brooklyn and because of my promise to David. By the next morning, I had developed cold feet, so there was nothing to do but call the agent and tell him that I had changed my mind.

I had let my opportunity to rent a manageable apartment pass. For the time being, I persisted with David and my plan, but I knew he was using me. By giving him the gold pieces, I had given him the idea there was more where that came from. If he knew he couldn’t count on Cat he thought he could count on me.

My salvation, when it came, was swift and sure. It seemed to be another time when the powers that be bailed out their fair-haired maiden.

On a Saturday in early February, when David was hospitalized with another throat infection, I walked to a nearby U-Haul agency to find out what it would cost to rent a truck and drive to Florida. The cost was more than twice what I had estimated. Just as I was removing my coat, the phone rang.

The caller introduced himself as Mr. Rivera, the director of a training program for high school dropouts. “I have your resume here,” he said. “I think I would like you to work for me.”

Since the salary being offered was good, I set up an interview for the following week. Then, I sprang into action. Luckily, I hadn’t thrown away the real state agent’s phone number. I called him and asked, “Mr. Greenspan, is there any change that apartment is still available?”

“No, I’m sorry,” he said. “I rented it two days ago, but I have something even better and for less money.”

He described an attic apartment not far from the first one he had shown me. I told him I would be right there. Not bothering to comb my hair or put on lipstick, I flew out of the house as though my life depended on it. Twenty minutes later, I walked into Mr. Greenspan’s office. I’ll take it, sight unseen, I felt like saying. Here’s my deposit.

We drove to a residential neighborhood with streets lined with substantial, middle-class houses, and walked to the side door of one of them. Our knock was answered by a sturdily built man with an open face and a German accent. The sweet aroma of applesauce cooking permeated the house, making me feel as though I had been wandering in a sordid and dangerous world and had come to a home, like the house of my childhood, that was safe and wholesome.

“I’ll take it,” I told Mr. Greenspan as soon as I saw the apartment was adequate.

“Good,” he replied, perhaps just having completed the fastest transaction of his career. “I thought you would like it. As you can see, it’s clean and empty. You can move in as soon as you like.”

When I returned home, I checked my watch and couldn’t believe it. In less than two hours, I had arranged an interview for a promising job and had rented an apartment. Either task generally took months. It was as though the universe was saying, yes, I would be able to continue my life in New York. All that was left to do now was to tell David. As if on cue, he called.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’ve rented an apartment.”

“I told you so,” he groaned. “I told you, if anyone backed out, it would be you.”

****

It was purely coincidental that I moved on Valentine’s Day. For the few days before, I was busy packing. John helped me.

“You know, we’ve lived together for three years,” I told him as he handed me an empty box. “I don’t know how you feel about it, but I think we succeeded. We’ve had few problems between us.”

“That’s true,” he answered, smiling his shy smile. “That’s longer than some people are married.”

I smiled, too. I would miss him, his cats, the magnificent begonia, and my peach-colored rooms in this dilapidated brownstone.

When I was packing, I came across a pair of heart-shaped glasses that I had purchased to use as a prop for a Valentine’s Day card I wanted to paint. My inspiration came from seeing a pretty young woman on the subway one Valentine’s Day, wearing hearts on her sweater, heart-shaped earrings and glasses. I hadn’t painted the card yet, but I put the glasses in my purse, thinking I would wear them to work. My students would enjoy them. Let the lovers of the world enjoy the day, I thought. It was enough for me to be moving.

When I was standing amid stacks of unopened boxes in my new apartment, there was a knock at the door. I opened it to find a small, sprite, white-haired lady. Her blue eyes sparkled with such intelligence and wit that I felt as though I had come across a leprechaun.

“I’m Mrs. Gallagher, your downstairs neighbor,” she said. “I know how disturbing it is ti move and was wondering if I could invite you for a cup of tea?”

“That would be nice,” I told her.

A few minutes later, I was sitting in Mrs. Gallagher’s kitchen, being served tea in a Blue Willow cup and telling her that I was a writer.

“Is that right?” she replied, her eyes growing brighter yet. “Well, then you must come with me to my writing group. We meet on Sunday afternoons at Brooklyn College.”

Mrs. Gallagher was obviously a woman of culture and refinement. I was sure we would become the best of friends, and to have a writing group in my neighborhood seemed almost more than I could hope for.

The blessings of the day didn’t stop with having tea with Mrs. Gallagher. Later, when I was in a restaurant on Church Avenue across from the school where I taught—eating lunch and wearing the heart-shaped glasses—I was approached by a handsome man who reminded me of Perry Como.

“Do you know what just happened to me?” he asked.

“No, what?” I said.

“I just got hit by one of Cupid’s arrows,” he teased.

“Really?” I replied, looking down in embarrassment.

“Do you mind if I join you?” he persisted.

I laughed. “Be my guest,” I invited.

Thus, the new life that was granted me when I moved further into Brooklyn was as I wished it to be. I was able to make friends who were a cut above those I had known before and to build my life on a firmer foundation.

****

About the time I moved, Moe sublet her apartment and moved to California. Perhaps she recognized that she would never be able to realize her dream of becoming an opera star—I hope she knew it wasn’t from lack of talent. Although I knew she would ham it up wherever she worked and would sing in church choirs, I preferred my image of her, in a blue gown, singing Violetta in La Traviata, with such passion that chills went up the spines of her audience. She didn’t keep in touch with me after she moved, so perhaps she still thought the caller was me. Every once in a while, I ask myself, what if you chose wrongly? But the question lacks conviction and has become merely rhetorical.

Occasionally, I’ve seen Mark and Debbie on the subway and have noted Mark is thinner and Debbie has put on weight. If they saw me, one of us acknowledged it.

I never saw Cat again. After what happened, I bore her a curious lack of feeling which was neither love nor hate but indifference.

Only my friendship with David survived the transition. Two, even three years later, before he finally returned to Israel, he was still calling me and asking, “How’re you doing? What’s happening?”

He continued to live with Cat until the day she left him, sometime during the summer of 1985. She left when she was able to rent an apartment in Manhattan, which she shared with a woman. He reported that he came home and found her gone. She had left not so much as a bobby pin.

“Why did she have to do it like that?” David lamented. “Couldn’t she tell me she was leaving? Did she have to leave when I wasn’t home?”

I breathed a sigh of relief and said, “Yes, I think so. For your sake, I’m glad she’s gone. Now you can get on with your life. You can find a woman who wants you and wants what you want.”

David ignored my words. “We were together for three years. Why did she have to do it like that?”

I was wrong about David’s fortunes rising after Cat left. Either that, or I had sadly misjudged the amount of time it would take for him to get on his feet again. For the next few years, his life fell until it was in an abysmal state. Without a job, he stayed alone in his apartment and watched television while the bills accumulated. His rent was overdue, and his landlord threatened to thrown him out. Day in, day out, he sat in front of the blaring box with empty Coke bottles strewn about and a depleted refrigerator. I was reminded of Dick Diver in Tender is the Night and of Hurstwood in Sister Carrie.

During this time, David’s feeling for Cat underwent a change. He grew bitter towards her. Endlessly, he recounted the injustice she had rendered him. He would call me in the middle of the night to repeat it.

“Hello?” I would answer, groggy from sleep.

“Anna, it’s me, David.”

“Hi, David. What’s up?”

“I can’t sleep,” he would say. “Wy did she do it? I took her in off the streets. I gave her my house, everything I had. I let her stay here for three, four years. Then she left without telling me she was going. Why? I never hurt her. I was good to her, good.”

“I don’t know why, David. She just wanted something else. Some people are like that. You’ve got to forget her.”

“You’re the only one who knows. You were there. You saw how good I was to her.”

He would continue his litany like a blind man tapping his way with a cane. All he wanted was the sound of my voice. He didn’t care what I said.

“Now, when I call her, she says she doesn’t want to see me. She doesn’t want to talk to me. She hangs up on me. Now she has her apartment in Manhattan. Now she lives with that woman. She pretends she never knew me.”

“David,” I would plead. “I have to go back to sleep. I have to work tomorrow. I’ll call you as soon as I get home.”

What business was it of mine if he sat there until he calcified, and the landlord put him on the street? But, I couldn’t bear his unhappiness and did what I could to help him. I badgered him, told him to forget her, to get out of the apartment, to leave New York. We have the same conversation again and again.

“You’ve got to get out of there, David. You’re living with too many memories. You’re eating yourself up over this. It isn’t good for you.”

“But where can I go?” he asked. “I don’t have any money.”

“Why don’t you go back to Israel or Morocco? This country’s no good for you. I’ve heard the Israeli government will pay Jews to go and live there.”

“I can’t go back to my family in Israel. They would expect me to be religious, and I’m not religious, not anymore.”

Privately, I thought David was more religious than many of the orthodox Jews I saw, wearing their yarmulkes and phylacteries, safely enclosed in their tight knit communities, but I knew what he meant. He was no longer a practicing Jew. He no longer even observed the Sabbath.

Summer changed to winter, and still David sat in his apartment. Where had Zorba gone? He was no longer signing, dancing, full of himself. Finally, one day he called and said he was going to Montreal. Some people there promised him work. All he needed was the bus fare and a place where he could store his things. I complied on both counts. He brough a duffel bag to my house, and I gave him bus fair to Montreal.

My altruism was mitigated by my relied that he was finally on his way, out of my hair. Surely, now he would make a new life for himself and forget Cat. My hopes were dashed when he began calling to say aliens couldn’t get work permits in Canada. He wanted me to give him the money to return to New York.

I refused. I had already given him several thousand dollars, money I didn’t expect that he would ever repay. I had come to see him as a hopeless drain on my finances, and my desire to help him as nearly pathological. All his promises to present me to the King of Morocco fell on deaf ears as I steadfastly refused to help him come back to New York. At last, he called and said he was coming back. Could he stay with me for a few days until he got himself situated? Again, I felt compelled to tell my “brother” yes, but only for a day or two.

David only stayed for two days because he found work with a contractor and moved into an apartment he was helping to remodel. He found himself a new girlfriend, a stockbroker who had a drinking problem and a history of mental breakdowns. Again I hoped that he was on his way towards rebuilding his life, but soon enough, his lady friend returned to her home state of Louisiana, and David quarreled with his boss and got himself fired. Then he was buffeted from one job to another and, if he couldn’t sleep on the couch of a friend, he made his home in abandoned buildings. I knew he was brushing elbows with drug dealers and feared one day he would call me from jail.

Now he blamed Cat for everything that had gone wrong in his life. It was her fault that he was in this state, penniless and homeless.

“Kaput!” he shouted from a payphone one day, loud enough to hurt my ears. “Now she’s a lesbian. What do you make of that?”

“I can’t say that I’m surprised,” I replied. You were right about that much, I told myself. “How do you know?” I asked David.

“I went to see her. I met the woman she lives with. She’s ugly.”

“Just because Cat lives with a woman doesn’t make her a lesbian,” I said primly. “A lot of women live together.”

“No. She told me she’s her lover. She says she’s happy. I said, ‘How can you be happy when you’re sleeping with a woman?’ How can she do it?”

“David,” I replied. “Some women prefer women, just like some men prefer men.”

“She says she changed. She used to like men, but now she likes women.”

“I bet,” I said dryly.

“I don’t want her to be happy,” he asserted. “After all I did for her, now she’s happy. Sure, she’s happy. She has her job, her apartment in Manhattan, and a woman for her lover. And I have nothing, not even a home.”

The news of Cat’s lesbianism was another blow to David for he was a Sephardic Jew who had internalized the chauvinism of his race. It would have been bad enough to be deposed by a man, but to be deposed by a woman was more than he could take. His ardor for Cat had changed to resentment, and now with the news that she was a lesbian, his resentment changed into a desire for revenge.

Whenever he called, his topic was the same—his desire to destroy Cat’s happiness, indeed, his desire to destroy Cat.

“She won’t talk to me,” he announced, letting me know he had resumed hounding her. “She doesn’t want to see me. After all I did for her—I took her in off the streets. For five years I gave her a home. Everything I had was hers, and now she doesn’t want to see me.”

“David,” I reprimanded wearily, “don’t you see? You’re wasting your time. You’re making things worse for yourself. Let Cat be. Think of yourself.”

“I don’t want her to be happy,” he replied, ignoring my pleas. “I want her to pay for what she did to me. I want to hurt her. I want to cut her face. I won’t be able to rest until I lay her into the ground.”

In the news those days was the ghoulish story of a landlord who had slashed a young model’s face. News like this only permeated the consciousness of people like David, giving them ideas.

“She isn’t worth it,” I replied. “Don’t destroy yourself over this. She’ll receive her punishment in the end. You don’t have to do a thing.”

I may as well have told the sun not to rise. David’s demand for revenge was inexorable as stone, and I was but throwing water on it.

“How?” he demanded. “How will she be punished if I don’t do it?”

“’Vengeance is mine,’ saith the Lord” I quoted.

“What does that mean?”

“It means that we’re supposed to leave revenge to God. God will take care of those who have hurt us. We’re not supposed to seek revenge ourselves.”

“But she robbed me, Anna. She took everything I had. Now I have nothing, and she lives in Manhattan with her woman lover. Phew! I can’t live with it. I have to get even.”

“If you hurt her, David, you’ll have it on your conscience.”

“I’ll have nothing on my conscience. Things will be even. I’ll be able to live again.”

I hung up, thinking how technically Cat had broken no law. She hadn’t even deceived David. She never promised to marry him. She had promised him nothing at all. What he had given her, he had given freely. All she had done was use his apartment and generosity for her own convenience until she could get what she wanted.

Yet, hadn’t she broken some unnamed law, a law that governs righteous people? Wasn’t there a law somewhere that says its unfair to use those who truly love us as steppingstones? Wasn’t it exploitation of the sorriest kind because it sucks the life spirt from the one who loves, and he receives nothing in return? No I worried that David would take the law into his own hands and hurt Cat.

I didn’t worry long. A few nights later, I picked up the phone to hear David saying, “I did  it, Anna. I beat up Cat. I hurt her.”

“You didn’t?” I said. “How? Where?”

David’s story come out in a topsy-turvy manner that I pieced together as best I could. Apparently, he went into Manhattan and waited for Cat on 72nd Street. When she walked down the street after work, he grabbed her and hit her several times, knocking her to the ground. Her screams drew a crowd. Someone called the police. Before they came, David fled into the subway and took the train to King’s Highway, where he was sleeping on the coach of a friend. He called me from there.

“I didn’t have time to get my knife out, or I would have cut her face. I hope she goes to the hospital. I hope she dies,” he said.

“Do you think the police will come for you?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” David answered. “If they do, I’m ready.”

“Ready for what?”

“To go to jail.”

The next day, two police officers arrived at the door with a warrant for his arrest. He offered no resistance, nor did he deny that he had assaulted Cat.

“If she doesn’t know me,” he asked them, “how does she know where I live?”

“What am I to do?” he inquired in the police car on their way to the station. “That whore, for six years she took from me, and now she doesn’t know me.”

“Sue her,” one of the officers told him.

“Sue her?” David spat out. He had had his fill of the law-abiding ways of doing things in this country. “Sue her for what? For ruining my life?”

He was booked and put into jail overnight. In the morning, he was sent to the infirmary and given medicine for his throat. Then was interviewed by a lawyer from Legal Aid and released. He returned home and called me.

Bragging as though some great honor were being conferred him, he announced, “They will send me an invitation to go to court.”

“An invitation?” I laughed. “They’ll send you more than that.”

“I don’t know the word,” he admitted.

“A summons. They’ll send you a summons to go to court. That means you have to go.”

“I’ll go,” he assured me. “I want to go to court. I’ll be happy to go.”

“I couldn’t wait for God,” David confessed. “I would have to wait too long.”

Cat didn’t show up in court. I didn’t think she would. Perhaps she knew that David’s defense of himself would be more eloquent than anything she had to say for herself. Perhaps she didn’t want to add to his misery. As it was, David dramatically recounted the now seven years that he had taken care of her. The judge was sympathetic. Charges were dropped, and he was released with the admonition that if he ever went near Cat again, the case would be reopened, and he would be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

****

Several days before Christmas 1986, I visited David, and we shared a bottle of wine. Though he claimed that he still wanted t lay Cat in the ground, having assaulted her had lessened his intent.

            “Come with me,” he proposed again. “Come with me to Florida. We can manage. I’ll help you. You’ll help me.”

            “I can’t, David,” I answered smiling. “I’m staying right here, at least until I finish the book I’m writing. Then I want to see if I can get it published.”

            “Ah,” he said, drawing a deep breath. “The story I could tell . . .”

            “Well, it may not be as you would have told it, but I think I’m telling your story for you.”

            I relaxed. For the first time, it occurred to me that my story was more David’s than it was Cat’s or mine.

            “Your novel?”

            “What do you think I’ve been writing about for all this time? I’ve been writing about all this, about you. You’re one of the main characters.”

            “I hope you’ve only said good things about me.”

            “Mostly good things. I’ve said that you’re tall, dark, and handsome. I’ve said that you’re like Zorba the Greek.”

            “But I’m not Greek.”

            “I know, but you’re like Zorba. He was full of life. He liked to sing and dance and shout.”

            The prospect of being immortalized pleased David.

            “I hope you can publish it,” he said.

            “So do I.”

            “It’s hard, isn’t it?”

            “Yes, it’s hard.”

We clinked glasses.

“Merry Christmas,” David said.

“Happy Chanukah,” I replied. “L’chaim. Maybe next year God will be good to us.”

“Yes, it’s about time.”

“Yes, it’s about time.”

David was quiet. Then he said fervently, “I wish the Messiah would come. I wish he would come tomorrow. I wish he would destroy this rotten world so we could start over.”

“I wish that, too.”

“If you’re waiting for the Messiah, and I’m waiting for the Messiah, what’s the difference between a Christian and a Jew?” David asked.

“You’re waiting for him to come the first time, and we’re waiting for him to come the second time” I answered.

“Then there’s no difference, is there?” he concluded.

“I don’t think so,” I agreed.

I was a bit tipsy when I left him. As I drove home, I was grateful for my home, my friends, and for the life I had.