A Cat Tells Two Tales (14 page)

2

It was ten o’clock in the morning. I was standing in front of the public school on Eighty-first Street and Madison Avenue, staring across the street at the Frank E. Campbell Funeral Home, where poor Arkavy Reynolds’ body could be viewed in the coffin before burial. The public had been invited to pay their last respects. Well, that was what I intended to do. He perpetually had been a fresh breath of lunatic air in the New York theatrical world. Time had passed him by . . . the New York theater was now showbiz or high finance—all aspects of it—and I owed it to him to stare at his corpse.

The
Times
printed a small article about him in the theater section, not the obituary section. The reporter had called it just another senseless New York tragedy. Arkavy, it seems, had fought with a panhandler at Sheridan Square on the morning of his death. The police speculated that the panhandler got a weapon, went looking for Arkavy, found him on Jane Street, and shot him five times in the chest. The reporter said Arkavy Reynolds’ last-known residence was a seamen’s shelter down near South Street Seaport. And then the article went on to recount some of the more colorful “Arkavy” stories—such as his predilection for taking cabs and then paying the meter with off-off-Broadway theater tickets from shows that had closed years ago.

Why didn’t I just cross the street and walk inside the funeral parlor? Why was I hesitating? I don’t know, but I dawdled there for the longest time. The morning was sunny and warm but without humidity, and there was a gentle early-August breeze blowing up Madison Avenue.

I waited until I saw a group of people who might be theater folk enter the funeral parlor and then I crossed quickly against the light and went in on their heels. I had my long gray-gold hair pulled up in a bun and I was wearing leather sandals and a long loose white dress with marigolds on it.

Inside was all marble and gentility. A well-dressed man with a carnation inquired as to the name of the deceased and, once given, pointed me to the stairs. I walked up swiftly and found the room.

Arkavy Reynolds was laid out in a brass coffin. There were only eight or nine people in the room, moving awkwardly from wall to wall. Great bunches of flowers were present, still wrapped in their cellophane delivery shrouds.

I walked to the coffin, close up, and stared down. Arkavy was lying there in some sort of garment. He looked so thin in death. He had little hair on his head, which surprised me, but then again, I had never seen him in life without his hat. The moment I looked at him, I realized how stupid and sentimental I had been in coming. Arkavy would have found it too funny for words.

“A nice man,” I heard someone say very close to me.

I turned. An old woman with a pink straw hat was standing with the help of a cane and looking past the coffin at the wall.

“A very nice man,” she repeated, and then added, “and he was so good to his mother before she died. Did you know his mother?”

I shook my head.

“Did you know his family is from Albany?” she asked.

“No.”

“Yes, Albany,” she affirmed, smiled, and then hobbled away. I looked at the coffin again. It was all too sad. Who knows what dreams Arkavy had when he arrived in New York all those years ago from Albany . . . thirsting for the theatrical life, which was then the bohemian life . . . for beauty and truth through artifice . . . for
épater la bourgeoisie
. Did he really think New York would be like the Paris of Baudelaire? The fool. I turned away and walked quickly out of the viewing room to the stairs.

I hadn’t gone three steps down when a young man walking up loomed in front of me and barred my path.

He had thick black curly hair and equally thick eyebrows laying over very radiant blue eyes. He was wearing the ugliest Hawaiian sport shirt I had ever seen, hanging loose over his belt. My first thought was: How did they let him in?

He grinned at me and didn’t move aside. He said: “Beneath this rock there doth lie all the beauty that could ever die.”

I stared dumbly at him. Something about him was very familiar.

“Ben Jonson,” he said, identifying the quote.

And then I uttered a long, exasperated groan. Of course I knew him. What bloody bad luck! I had just started teaching a course in the second summer session at the New School. The class had met only once so far. And this young man had already become a pain in the posterior. A severe pain. It was just the introductory session of the course, so I had thrown out to the class a childish bone—what came into their minds when the word “theater” was mentioned. This young man, the one now blocking my exit, had leapt up and launched into a long violent diatribe about the American theater, quoting and approving and expanding upon Brecht’s comment that Broadway was simply one segment of the international drug trade. He had immediately alienated all the other students to such a degree that they started yelling at him . . . and my fine, gentle introductory session had turned into a shambles.

“What are you doing here?” I asked him.

“Paying my respects to a madman, Professor, just like you.”

“May I pass?” I asked, my voice growing angry.

He stepped aside and bowed low in an Elizabethan flourish, his grotesque shirt billowing, showing the lean muscular stomach underneath.

“May I introduce myself?” he asked, grinning.

“No need,” I replied, and walked swiftly down the stairs and out of the building.

Once outside, on Madison Avenue, I breathed deeply. What a fiasco! I wanted very much to be back in my apartment with Bushy and Pancho. I wanted very much to be far away from that sad dead man and that obnoxious young man. So I took a cab home.

3

One cannot control one’s students. At least I never could. Worse, I inspire them, always, the wrong way.

“Is it true that most actors are lousy lovers?”

I stared at the heavyset girl in the second row who had asked me that question. Was she serious? Was it a serious question?

I tried not to make a face, but I was disgusted with the question. This was a summer-school course at the prestigious New School for Social Research—an elite institution. It was supposed to be a serious course; about the theater and the actress in New York City . . . how they interact . . . how each enlightens, cripples, and modifies the other.

But all I had gotten during the first three sessions was a series of stupid questions. In fact, there were only six sessions left. When would I gain control of the course? When would I be able to move the students to a higher level? I had taught a few classes in the past . . . in acting schools . . . and some at City College. Some of them had turned out to be memorable. A professor at City College once told me that my lecture on
Waiting for Godot
was the best and most exciting piece of Beckett analysis he had ever heard. I had brought a homeless woman to the class to show my students that Beckett’s portrayal of tramps had nothing to do with any reality whatsoever . . . that the tramps in Beckett’s great play were in disguise. And then, with the class’s participation, I began to peel off the disguise . . . to discover who those tramps really were. Where had they worked? What were their medical problems? What country were they from? The class was in an uproar. It was the most remarkable explosion of good chemistry I had ever experienced. But that was then. And the times were different. And the milieu was different. And perhaps I was different. None of that good chemistry had emerged so far in the New School class.

Maybe it was futile, I thought, as I also thought of a way to answer the lousy-lover question. I had obtained this teaching job, in fact, only because of a stupid article about me buried in the theater section of the Sunday
New York Times
. So maybe they expected me to field stupid questions. Anyway, the opening paragraph of that article had read:

At forty-one, Alice Nestleton is still an unknown to the general public, but in the inner circle of the New York theater world her recent interpretation of the Nurse in a Portobello production of
Romeo and Juliet
in Montreal is considered a brilliant dramaturgical exploration. In addition, Miss Nestleton has a very interesting hidden life—crime. She has recently received a commendation from the Nassau County Police Department for her help in solving several grisly murders on the North Shore of Long Island, which took her into the rarefied atmosphere of the thoroughbred-horse world.

The article then went on to briefly document the roles I had played in the past and to discuss my interpretation of the role of the Nurse.

Let’s be honest. It was that damn article that got me the job and, believe me, what the New School pays buys a lot of cat food.

“I haven’t had too many lovers who were actors,” I said to the class, “so I really can’t judge them. The ones I did have were medium-rare.”

Laughter in the class. The air-conditioning was breaking down again. One of the students had opened the window in the rear; a sticky, hot, and humid August air seemed to envelop us. It was a night class. The students worked during the day. They were paying their hard-earned money for insights into the life of the actress in New York, but they hadn’t given me a chance yet to explore it with them. They were fixated on bizarre things: Who did I sleep with? . . . Where did I buy my clothes? . . . How did I support myself between parts? None of them really relevant to
the
problem, which was the structure of the theater itself and how it destroys the actress like a sausage-making machine.

I stole a glance at the right rear of the classroom. That was where my nemesis always sat—the young man in the Hawaiian sport shirt who had accosted me in the funeral parlor. His classroom behavior had continued to be unbelievable. I seemed to irritate him severely. I seemed to lack the dedication he required. I seemed to be his ogre of a decaying theatrical class. He challenged. He emoted. He screamed. He wept. He was wearisome. But sometimes he looked at me with such a strange, fierce look, I had the feeling that he and he alone in the class knew I was a very good teacher when the time and place were right. And always, from the first moment he walked into class, I felt that he was watching me, studying me, waiting to pounce on me, and wanting very much to anticipate the things I would say and the movements I would make.

His seat was empty! Thank God! Maybe he had withdrawn from the course. It was a cheering thought.

I looked at my watch. Eight thirty-two. The class was supposed to run until nine.

How does one abort a class? Would the students be happy? Or would they feel cheated?

A middle-aged woman with startlingly gray hair raised her hand. I acknowledged her.

“I want you to address Portobello’s concept of Shakespeare.”

God bless you, lady, I thought. I was about to do it, but suddenly I became weary . . . very weary. I wanted to go home . . . I wanted to feed my cats.

I smiled at her. “Why don’t we quit early tonight, and I’ll start the next class with Portobello.” I was suggesting, asking, begging.

They leapt at the chance. Without another word, they gathered their packages, half-eaten sandwiches, carryalls, and paperbacks. They were as happy to leave as I.

One girl remained as the others flew out. She was an actress. I just knew it. I couldn’t handle her worshipful gaze, as if I had truly “made it.” I hadn’t. My income was still primarily from cat-sitting, from playing games with oftentimes borderline psychotic felines like the beloved Geronimo.

“At least,” she said, “that idiot didn’t show up.”

She was wearing a tank top. She had short brown hair and incredibly intense green eyes.

“That’s for sure,” I replied, smiling, thinking of the blessed absence of that young man who had tormented me maliciously during the first few sessions. Then the girl became shy and said nothing. An awkward minute passed. Then two minutes. Finally, she left.

I waited sixty seconds and was starting to exit when two men entered the classroom. They didn’t come all the way inside, hovering near the door and smiling at me. They introduced themselves. Cops. Detectives Felix and Proctor. They were attached to some task force with an incredibly bizarre bureaucratic name. Young men, clean-cut, vacant eyes.

“You are Alice Nestleton?” the one named Proctor asked.

“Yes.” I had no idea what they wanted.

They laid out on my desk in a scattered pattern about twenty photographs. I looked at them. In most of them the backdrop was the inside of the Frank E. Campbell Funeral Home, where Arkavy Reynolds had lain in state.

“You took pictures at the funeral home? Why?” I was astonished.

“Arkavy Reynolds was a good snitch. An informer. He helped us. We helped him. We don’t like it when one of our own gets blown apart by a semiautomatic twenty-five-caliber Beretta in broad daylight.”

Arkavy a police informant? My God! It was too bizarre. What did he inform about? Dressing-room sex at the Public Theater?

The one called Felix, who was wearing an old-fashioned button-down shirt, asked me to go over the photos. I identified myself. I identified the obnoxious student. I identified a few other people—theater people—whom I hadn’t seen in the funeral parlor because they arrived earlier or later than my visit. The detectives made notes on the backs of the photographs I had identified.

“What time was he murdered?” I asked.

“Late morning,” Proctor answered.

“Were there any witnesses? Do you have any suspects?”

“We’re working on it, lady,” Felix answered testily.

“Did you check out his room? I think he lived in a seamen’s shelter downtown.”

“We know where he lived.”

“Did you check out his coffee shops? He used to go to one on Fifth, just east of Second and the Polish coffee shop on Tompkins Square Park.”

“We know where he hung out,” Proctor replied.

I was about to ask another question when Felix exploded: “What the hell is going on here? Are you a cop? Who is interrogating who?”

“No one is interrogating anyone,” I replied softly, then let the dust settle before I asked another perfectly plausible question.

“Why would the murderer show up at the wake?” I asked.

“You never know,” Detective Felix said, then gathered up the photographs, thanked me, and left. I had the sense that the two men were oddly foreign . . . like they were from Belgium or someplace like that.

One of them stuck his head back through the door. “By the way, we found you because one of the ushers at the funeral home saw you once in an off-Broadway show. He said you were very good, but he didn’t remember the name of the play.”

It was almost ten when I finally began climbing the five flights of stairs to my apartment. I was carrying a large bag of groceries, which included various tidbits for my Maine coon cat, Bushy, and my nearly tailless ASPCA contribution, Pancho.

The hallway was stifling. But there was only one more landing to go. The stairs were so familiar that I had lost my sense of climbing and thought only of the cats waiting for me . . . waiting in the darkness . . . each doing his own thing. Bushy was probably stretched out on the sofa, one eye open, his stomach purring softly at the thought of the coming food. Pancho was probably just finishing one of his lunatic dashes from cabinet to cabinet in the kitchen, running from shadowy enemies.

In fact, I was so wrapped up in the cats, I never saw the figure sitting at the top of the landing until he said: “Happy Birthday, Professor.”

I froze in fear—staring through the dim light.

“Happy Birthday, Professor,” the voice repeated in a mocking tone.

The outline of a man, a young man, sitting calmly.

Next to him on the stairs was a large carton wrapped in paper, with ribbons hanging from it.

A thief? A rapist? A psychotic derelict? I didn’t know. I wanted to run, but my feet remained rooted.

My grocery bag, I thought. I can fling my bag at him and run down the steps. But I didn’t.

“Who are you? How did you get in? What do you want?”

“Theater!” he shouted dramatically.

Oh, God! My fear abated for the first time. It was my nemesis: the obnoxious student from the back of the class who had not showed up for the most recent lesson, thankfully—the same one I had met in the funeral parlor.

“What are you doing here?” I yelled, anger replacing the initial fear . . . anger at his arrogance and stupidity and craziness. I was so weary of him.

“I brought you a birthday present,” he replied.

“It’s not my birthday.”

The young man stood up for the first time. Even in the bad light I could see that he was wearing one of his ghastly loud sport shirts. He was taller than I had remembered, and older. He had a small blunt nose and his large eyes seemed green in the hallway—not blue. His skin was very white.

I was tired. I was angry. I snapped at him: “Please move aside with your box and let me get into my apartment.”

I had spoken to him as if I was a kindergarten teacher and he was a recalcitrant tot.

He didn’t move. He didn’t speak.

The clock was ticking. Tick-tock. His shirt was drenched with sweat; large stains moved from his arms to the center of the fabric.

Then he moved quickly, down the steps, toward me—so quickly I couldn’t respond at all.

At the last moment he sidestepped, just brushing me with his face, whispering: “I love you.”

And then he was gone to the next landing below. His steps were like a receding train . . . quicker and lighter in the distance.

“Your box,” I yelled out after him, pointing at the item he had left behind on the top of the landing.

But it was too late. He was gone.

Oh, God, I thought. All I needed now was a crazy student who had fallen in love with me. But there was a more immediate problem. I had to open my apartment door with an extra-large package in addition to my shopping bag—without the cats getting out.

I reached the top landing and began to push the large birthday box toward the door of my apartment with my foot.

Halfway there the box began to vibrate furiously, ribbons flapping and unraveling.

I stepped back, startled.

Before I could do anything, the box turned over on its side.

Out leapt a very large and very beautiful snow-white cat with a black-spotted face and a black-spotted rump.

The cat leapt onto the banister and stood there—eyeing me malevolently.