Maynard and Jennica. Rudolph Delson

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ the turtle’s feet. Crinkling my nose at the mice. They had this whole pen of mice just beside the aquarium aisle, living in an inch of sawdust and tunneling into a stale loaf of oat bread. You feel bad for pet-store mice, since they obviously are sold as food for snakes, but I guess not bad enough that you aren’t going to buy a kitten to kill the house mouse that’s in your kitchen. Because, if it wanted to, my house mouse could go live in the loom next door, or whatever it is that guy is building, but pet-store mice have no escape.

      I was working my way toward the kittens when the owner lady finally came over. She was like:

      “The last time you were here, you were expressing some reluctance. You said you had issues with spontaneity and indulgence, and that you were concerned with how cat ownership by single women was perceived by single men in New York. We were discussing whether or not you should premise your day-to-day decisions on the likes and dislikes of the hypothetical male love interest.”

      I like this owner. Very student-radical-feminist-turned-small-businesswoman-divorcée. Mid-fifties, obviously hanging around the Village since college for who knows what reason. You know, still smokes two cigarettes a day, wears these earthy clothes she bought in the early eighties. So I said:

      “Well, he’s not hypothetical. His name is George and we’re being set up on a date by his sister.” I mean, I didn’t want the owner to think I was utterly hopeless. “Plus, I heard a mouse.” And she said:

      “Okay, so you’ve reached a stage where delay is no longer emotionally viable. That’s healthy. Is there one of these kitties you have your eye on?”

      And there wasn’t, really, which was one reason I kept going back. Because, I don’t want just some random cat. I want a hulking cat. One that will kind of spill over the edge of whatever he sits on. And a very intelligent cat. Because some people have these airhead cats, who obviously are unsettled by everything that is happening around them, and antsy. I don’t want one of those. I don’t want a cutesy cat, or a spastic cat. I want a cat that’s jaded. Affectionate, but coy. And I want a cat that is world-weary and a little wry. I want a well-read cat, a fat and autodidactic cat. I was trying to explain this to the lady, who … I like her, but she was giving me this look, like, Am I going to make a sale? Finally she asks me:

      “Have you been to Practical Cats?” Which is their sister store, on Lex and 78th, and which only sells cats. A kitten from Practical Cats can cost from five to eight hundred dollars, but, for example, they have cats where they guarantee the cat will learn its own name. They’ve bred them for that. So she gives me their card and sells me a litter box and a bag of litter and one of those catches-the-mouse-alive traps that don’t work. And as I am going, the macaw, like, hollers in my ear.

      What THE MACAW hollered (Summer 2000):

      Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh!

      JENNICA GREEN finally explains what she was doing on an uptown No. 6 train (early August 2000):

      Anyway, that was Monday night. When I got home from the pet store, I set up the mousetrap, turned my air conditioner on low, and ate my leftover falafel salad out on my fire escape. Where there are no parquet floors radiating heat, and where there is a breeze to keep me cool while my air conditioner gets started, and where the only wild rodents are pigeons. And squirrels. I decided that I liked the idea of going on a date with George Hanamoto. We could get white wine at a rooftop bar somewhere; I’d been fantasizing about rooftop bars since the start of the heat wave. Maybe there was one with a pool, like on the fourth fl oor of the Fairmont. Anyway.

      And I decided that I liked the idea of a store called Practical Cats. I could take a few hundred dollars out of my money market account, which supposedly is the account I use to save up for my down payment, but whatever. And I work in midtown, where Hoffman’s administrative offices are, but Tuesday morning I had a meeting at the downtown office, where our traders work, so after that meeting I could take an early lunch and go shopping for my five-to-eight-hundred-dollar cat. Which is why I was on an uptown 6 train at 10:25 A.M. on a Tuesday.

      MAYNARD GOGARTY comes within a whit of finishing the story of what happened on the uptown No. 6 train (early August 2000):

      So! Half a minute south of Grand Central on an uptown No. 6 train. The skinny black kid has denounced me to the authorities, and the woman with the beauty spots has in turn denounced the skinny black kid to the authorities, saying, “Those kids are lying, and their cases are full of graffi ti pens.”

      The conductor decides to take charge. She says, “Miss, I know that Mr. Peanut here”—meaning, alas, me—“didn’t pull the brake. It was someone at the front of the train.” Apparently she heard this from the motorman when she was in her booth. “I am just telling Mr. Peanut to keep his hands to himself with the brake box.” Meanwhile she is considering the boys’ trumpet cases, and so now she says, “Show me what you’ve got.”

      Well—then I have my brainstorm. Oh, it cut right through the old hot and humid brain haze, this brainstorm of mine did. Follow me: if I could confuse the situation for just a moment, the conductor would have to go back into her closet to announce the next stop. Then the boys could escape when the train doors opened at Grand Central, and then I would have a lovely segue into conversation with the beauty-spotted woman on the way to 51st Street. And I knew that the woman with the beauty spots would stay on the train at least as far as 51st Street, because if she were getting off at Grand Central, why would she not have stayed on the express train back at Union Square? Ah-ha! Is my brain not infallible?

      I say to the conductor—audaciously, “You are not going to search the boys’ trumpets.”

      The conductor says, “Mister, I have had enough from you, and I have heard enough of your so-called opinions. Either everyone wants me to call the police in here or these two boys will show me what they’ve got.”

      So! Pointing my attaché at the woman with the beauty spots, I say to the conductor, “Madam. The lady here misinterpreted what she saw. There were no graffiti pens. Very likely she saw two rambunctious black kids—.”

      And just as I’d predicted, the conductor goes back into her booth to announce Grand Central. All right—mea culpa! Mea own regrettable culpa. I shouldn’t have implied that bigotry was at work in what the beautiful woman said. I shouldn’t have implied that she was only denouncing the black kids because they were—black. But I meant only to diffuse the situation. I would apologize to her on the way to 51st Street.

      What I’d forgotten was that the black boys had dates in the next car up, so naturally they weren’t going to get off the train, not without their girlfriends. And I also didn’t account for another possibility.

      YVETTE BENITEZ-BIRCH announces that the train is going express (early August 2000):

      You cannot make it too clear for these people. I said, “Fortysecond Street, Grand Central Station. Transfer to the 4, 5, and 7 trains and the shuttle to Times Square. Ladies and gentlemen, listen up. Listen up, people. This train is making express stops only to 125th Street. Express stops only. This train will not be stopping at 51st Street, 68th Street, 77th Street, 96th Street, 103rd Street, 110th Street, or 116th Street. If you want to stop at 51st Street, 68th Street, 77th Street, 96th Street, 103rd Street, 110th Street, or 116th Street, get off this train and get on the local immediately behind.”

      You cannot make it too clear for these people.

      When we had left 42nd, I went back into the car to straighten СКАЧАТЬ