KATACLYSM: A Space-Time Comedy (6 page)

Jude entered Greg’s cat massage parlor by gingerly squeezing through a crack in the large metal door that served as an entrance.  Greg was hunched on the ground behind a desk at the other end of the small office apparently trying to repair an antique lamp whose parts were strewn all over the floor.  He was a small man with round glasses and greasy black painted-on hair.  He wore a purple T-shirt and a pair of stained shorts.  Jude cleared his throat causing Greg to look up.  Standing up and dusting himself off, Greg hazarded a greeting.

“Oh…hello.  You must be uh…uh…uh…”

“Jude,” said Jude.

“Yes, of course. I’m sorry. I forgot you were coming.  I don’t get many consultations…now…I mean…these days.”

Greg walked over and extended his hand.  It was soaking.  His hair seemed to have gotten greasier during his trip across the room.  Greg looked nervous, much more nervous than a person in the pet hospitality industry should have looked in Jude’s estimation.

“Why don’t we sit down?” said Greg who motioned into the office and then quickly realized that there were no chairs to sit on.

“Well perhaps we’ll stand if it’s alright.  Do you think this will take long?” asked Greg.

“Well, I don’t know how long you normally take for this sort of thing…”  Jude said, suddenly realizing that he had not actually brought a cat for Greg to massage.  He tried to think quickly.

“About my cat…”

“A cat!  Where?” said Greg, his eyes darting about the floor and sweat beads forming on his forehead.

“Well actually, I didn’t bring the cat this time because…”

“Oh good, good…I mean…not good…not good per se.  It’s just that, well, I like to get a sense for my clients’ owners before I decide to take them on.  I’m very busy as you can see,” Greg again motioned to his filthy office with no chairs.  “And, of course, I wouldn’t want your cat to make the trip for nothing.”

“Yes, that’s very thoughtful of you.”

It occurred to Jude that this man was some kind of artist.  He had a gift for making other people feel uncomfortable with him.  Jude did not own a cat and furthermore, he hated cats.  Yet he had the overwhelming sense that he would never let a cat of his, if he had one, anywhere near Greg.  Obviously, if Jude’s aim was to be the least appealing cat massage therapist in the Greater Boston area, he would have to work much harder.  Suddenly, he had a tremendous desire to leave, but he needed a way to end the charade.

“I just remembered that I have to run to another engagement,” said Jude looking at his watch. “Perhaps you could show me where you massage the cats and then I’ll go.”

Greg seemed relieved at the prospect of a speedy end to their meeting.  He gestured to his office one more time.

“I’m sorry.  This is really bad timing.  My massage table is actually at the shop.”

“At the shop?”

“Yes, it uh… it had a bad leg.”

Jude had had enough.

“Alright Greg, well, we’ll be in touch,” said Jude as he squeezed his way out of the office.

Ten minutes later and two blocks away in an equally decrepit building on the edge of the waterfront, all fifty other cat massage therapists listed in the Boston area phonebook were gathered around a small, make-shift wooden stage in an awed hush.  Greg of Greg’s cat massage parlor walked in and stood quietly in the corner looking nervous.  He had been summoned moments after Jude had left his office.  Every person in the room had adorned himself in the same purple cloak and Greg was relieved when an older member of the gathering handed one such cloak to him.  The fifty-one cat massage therapists who now stood in silence awaiting their leader knew something that would have been of great interest to Jude.  For the agenda of today’s meeting included no discussion of cats or of cat massage technique.  In fact, the truth was that not one of the cloaked individuals standing in the room had any experience whatsoever dealing with pets.  Not fish, not hamsters, not gerbils and most certainly not cats.

Jude had vastly underestimated the intelligence of Boston’s cat owning public.  Not a single one of them would have ever dreamed of spending money to have a professional therapist massage his or her cat.  As a matter of fact, between them, the gathered fifty-one ostensible cat massage therapists had over two hundred years of experience in ostensible cat massage.  Yet, collectively, only one man had ever attempted to elicit their services.  That man was, of course, Jude.

No, Boston’s cat massage community, the largest by far in any city in the world, was actually an extraordinarily elaborate hoax.  Far from being feline kneaders, each of them was a handpicked member of a secret religion.  They were a cult in the best sense of the word and, at present, they awaited their leader.

Someone at the front of the room pushed the play button on a portable boom-box and a trumpet sounded producing a flourish.  Any quiet chatter between the members abruptly came to an end as a tall man in a dapper business suit emerged from the side door and strode deliberately to the centre of the stage.  Slowly, he turned to the audience who were at once entranced by his sparkling hazel eyes.  His words were barely audible but they held a quiet power that gripped everyone in the room.

“Brothers, I know.  I know that we have suffered.  We have suffered greatly.  You all know well that for years now I have been searching for a sign from our master.  There have been whispers, yes, and we have accomplished much.  But we have waited patiently for the message, the message that would give us our final purpose…our final quest.  This morning, I received just that message.”

Like any new religion, this one had experienced many growing pains.  It had all begun five years earlier when the leader received a signal from a celestial being while he was walking down the street.  When he answered the signal, a voice called out to him saying “Hey, you! Let’s talk.”  That voice, it turned out, belonged to a being called Adam Outerspace and the leader read his meaning with perfect clarity.  The voice said to make preparations because soon the leader would be called upon to perform a great service.  Until this morning, the leader had not heard the voice again.  But in the meantime he had made tremendous progress forming a group of followers and, more importantly, he had inferred the true identity of Adam Outerspace.  It was clear to him that Adam Outerspace was “The Adam” from Adam and Eve and that he was actually an angelic astronaut, a Messiah who had returned to Earth to help his progeny achieve salvation.  It was so obvious, thought the leader, that it would have taken a moron not to understand the message.  And now, he and his tiny cluster of followers were to be Adam Outerspace’s medium.  The leader only needed to wait for a signal instructing him on how to proceed.  After five long years, he had finally gotten the message and now their fate was set.

“What did the message say?” yelled someone who was standing near Greg.

This breach of protocol truly annoyed the leader.  He always insisted that their secret meetings be conducted using Robert’s Rules of Order.  It was the only civilized way to go about a religion.  There was a momentary twinge in his cheek but quickly he composed himself.

“You were not recognized,” he replied in the same hushed tone with a hint of contempt.

“Oh c’mon Terry, tell us.  Please?” called someone from the other side of the room.

Terry the leader’s nostrils flared and he turned violently toward the voice.

“I told you never to call me that!  And especially today of all days.”

Immediately the cloaked man recoiled.

“I’m sorry Great One, please do go on.”

Terry took a breath and relaxed.

“I forgive you brothers for forgetting yourselves in the moment.  It is a truly exciting time.  In a burst of light and glory, the words came to me in the early hours before dawn.  The meaning was simple.  The End of Days approaches in less than sixty hours and we must send the world a signal.  We must make haste brothers, but have no fear.  In the aftermath of the apocalyptic times, we will each hold a place at the highest table in the new utopia.”

Before going on with the details, Terry paused for effect to allow his words to sink in.

“Who sent the message?” shouted someone near the stage.  Terry rolled his eyes.

“Is there not one among you with a shred of self-control,” he admonished.  “It should be obvious to all of you that the message came from…You Know Who.”

There was silence.  Someone coughed at the back of the room.  Terry was unable to hide his frustration and disappointment.

“You know, the one, He Who We Must Not Name.”

“Who?...Voldemort?” blurted out Greg.

“No not Voldemort you twit!”  shrieked Terry, his face turning crimson and sweat running down his forehead.  “Our supreme lord.  The heavenly astronaut.  Adam Outerspace!”

Suddenly, there was much murmuring in the hall.  Terry sighed.

“Order!  I demand order,” he called, waiting until everyone had settled down.  “Now, as we have very little time until our Messiah returns, we must decide on a course of action.”  Terry licked his lips as he prepared to present his brilliant scheme.

“Let’s nail him to something!” interrupted another voice from the back.

“Absolutely not,” said Terry feeling that he was losing control.

“C’mon, what could we nail him to?....  What about an octagon?  That would look really neat.  Hey Ralph!  Do you think we could get us a piece of wood shaped like an octagon?  We could nail him to that.”

“We’re not nailing anyone to anything,” barked Terry.  “I tell you that at every meeting.  That’s not what we’re all about.”

“But it’s worked before.”

“Silence!  I have waited too long for my plans to be ruined by feeble minded imbeciles.”

Terry’s eyes sparkled wildly.  His previously polished demeanor had degenerated into a panting huff.

“I am the leader of this organization.  Don’t forget that I am the one who has assured each of you a privileged spot in the world to come.  If there is anyone who questions my leadership, then speak now or forever hold your tongue.”

This time there was absolute silence.  Another cough caused Terry to raise an eyebrow.

“Very well, now here’s what we’re going to do…”

It was one thirty and, across town, Jude was making his way back home.  He had nearly reached Boston Common, coming upon the familiar cobblestone streets that marked the first leg of the Freedom Trail.  Something bothered him though.  The line marking the trail on the sidewalk was an exquisite aqua.  Somehow, he was certain that it should have been red.  Jude was tired of feeling unsettled.  He needed a drink.

Ducking into the nearest pub, Jude sat down at the bar and ordered a gin and tonic.  Turning to grab a cocktail napkin, he was surprised to find the woman he had been chasing that morning seated right next to him.

“Hello again,” he said nonchalantly, taking a sip of his drink.

Flower looked up.  She seemed dejected albeit in a radiantly beautiful way.

“It’s you again.  Have you been following me?”

“Actually I haven’t,” replied Jude. “But it would be a lie to say that it hadn’t crossed my mind.  So listen, why don’t I buy you lunch?”

“It’s very kind of you to offer.  But I’m afraid that I’ve had a rather awful morning and I’m not convinced that I’d be very good company.”

“Nonsense, I insist.  I’d love to hear all about it.”

Jude walked over to a table for two and pulled out a chair motioning for Flower to sit down in it.  Hesitantly she joined him.

“You said that your name was Flower…how unusual.  It’s quite beautiful,” said Jude as he sat down.

“Thanks.  My parents were a bit eccentric.  My father liked the name Lilly for a girl but my mother was dead set against it.  She wanted to call me Rose.  Flower was a compromise.”

“Eccentric parents, eh?” said Jude.  “As it happens, I know a couple myself.”

The waiter rushed out of the kitchen and set down two sizzling orders of fish and chips nestled in the customary checkered wax paper lined baskets.  He left them alone.

“So, what do you do for a living?” asked Flower as she tried to coax some thick bottled tartar sauce into her basket.

“Do you own any cats?” said Jude with an expression that suggested this was a perfectly normal answer to her question.

“Why do you ask?” replied Flower unfazed.

“Just curious.”

“I don’t have any pets,” she said leaning forward.

“I’m a cat massage therapist.”

She looked at him and blinked several times as though someone had just shone a bright light in her eyes.

“I can’t say I hear that a lot.”

“Yes, well I enjoy the element of surprise.  But enough about me, tell me about you.  Why is it that someone as delightful and pretty as you is sitting in a pub looking sullen on such a beautiful day?”

Flower eyed him carefully as she popped a French fry into her mouth trying to figure out what she felt like telling him.

“I’ve had a rather strange morning,” she said reaching for the vinegar.

“Huh,” Jude snorted in agreement, “tell me about it.”

“So, the thing is Jude, I’ve done something silly.  I don’t know why I’m telling you this but I’ve been visiting a psychic.”  She held her hand up.  “It’s not the kind of thing I would normally do but, you know, a girl gets bored.  Anyway, she’s given me some news that’s quite bizarre.  Normally, I wouldn’t give it a second thought…but it’s just that she’s always so bang on about everything.”  Flower smiled at Jude.  He was so disarming that she was actually surprised to find herself feeling a bit better.

Jude waited for her to continue.  When nothing was forthcoming he reached out and touched her hand.

“Come on, I could use a good laugh.  What did the psychic tell you?”

Flower eyed him again, this time for twice as long as the last.  She bit her lip.

“Oh hell, it’s not like you’re the Political Editor for the Boston Globe, is it?” she said with a little giggle.

Jude smiled a puzzled smile but decided to let her continue.

Albert Avery, the chief of internal medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital, stomped and breathed his way into the small home in Beacon Hill.  Like all doctors who work in teaching hospitals, Avery was used to grilling his students on the widest spectrum of signs and symptoms of disease.  One such symptom was Cheyne-Stokes breathing.  Most commonly, this refers to a sleeping person who spends some of his or her time not breathing at all and the rest of the time trying desperately to catch up with a series of fast, labored breaths.  Dr. Avery was a bit atypical.  He had Cheyne-Stokes breathing while he was awake and, on the occasion that his body said ‘what the heck, let’s go for a few breaths’, the sound was not wholly unlike that of an old jalopy backfiring into a megaphone.  He was a sickly looking man with a stomach that protruded to the extent that it looked as though he had stuffed a small basketball under his dress shirt.  One day, while he was invigilating a clinical examination, a young resident had actually made the mistake of beginning to examine Avery when she entered the room rather than the patient on the examination table.

Avery was a strange man to be sure, but perhaps nothing about him was as unusual as his take on the autopsy.  Now, most doctors agree that autopsies are an invaluable tool for understanding disease and for determining why medical errors occur.   Autopsies help assure that hospitals continue to maintain and improve upon the standard of care.  So rarely does a day go by when a physician at Massachusetts General doesn’t pull his team aside to discuss some crucial insight reached through an examination of the dead.  Dr. Avery, by way of contrast, liked to stress the importance of autopsies with his actual, live patients.  You see, when patients are admitted to hospital, it is common practice to discuss their wishes with regards to emergency resuscitation.  Avery often found this a perfect opportunity to give his new charges a lecture on the importance of the autopsy.  To top it off, having done research with the Office of the Chief Coroner of Boston for many years, he insisted on wearing his coroner pin on his lab coat at all times.  As you might imagine, these things did not instill his patients with great confidence.  In fact, at best, his bedside manner could be described as ‘a bit off’.

Among Avery’s other passions was a deep love of complementary and alternative medicine.  It was his quest to educate his students about different and unusual methods of diagnosis and healing that brought him and his companions to the Hindu mystic.

Neither of the two men accompanying Avery was very happy to be joining him on this afternoon.  Both were still recovering from a very difficult night.  Eric Silver stood next to Avery looking paler than normal.  Despite the bizarre events of last night, however, Eric felt quite alert after having a surprisingly good cup of tea and a rest at home.  The same could not be said for the third man, Dr. Avery’s brother Louis who was a math professor at Harvard.  After seeing what appeared to be a green alien flying by his office window in a flying saucer late last night, he had become convinced that he was going mad.  He could not fathom how Albert had convinced him to come along.  Eric was astonished on meeting Louis to find that he was morbidly obese and actually looked worse than his brother.  Grotesqueness seemed to run in the family and neither nature nor nurture appeared to have been very kind to either man.

“I want to go home,” said Louis who jabbed his brother in the side as they entered the dimly lit audience chamber and stood by the wall.  “I already know what my problem is.  I just eat too much,” he groaned. 

Louis was right.  Like any thin man trapped in a fat man’s body, he ate three times as much as any thin man.

“Knock it off Louis.  Don’t be such a crybaby.  You don’t see ‘epistaxis’ over here whining,” he said motioning towards Eric.  “Besides, you’re the one who wanted to get someone to check on your heart anyway,” said Dr. Avery under his breath.

“Yes,” Louis protested.  “But you’re the chief of medicine in one of the most reputable hospitals in the country.  This wasn’t exactly what I had in mind.”

“Shhh!”  Dr. Avery put a finger to his lips.  The Hindu mystic had walked in. He was a handsome man who wore a tan Nehru jacket over his thin frame.  Without speaking, he moved to examine the only other person in the chamber, a woman clad only in shorts and a T-shirt standing on a small round carpet in the centre of the room.  The woman was thin but tall and she towered over the slight mystic as he walked in a circle around her.

“Watch what he does carefully Silver.  He’ll have the diagnosis in forty seconds,” whispered Dr. Avery.

“So I guess these guys don’t worry too much about confidentiality then,” Eric replied with just a hint of disdain, gesturing to the three of them.

“Screw confidentiality Silver.  After last night, I should hardly think that you’d be one to judge.  Now just shut up and pay attention.”

These last words came out louder than Dr. Avery had intended.  The mystic faced them and stared for a moment with a placid but slightly reproachful expression on his face before turning back to his patient.  There was silence except for Dr. Avery’s strident breathing.  The mystic put two fingers on the woman’s forehead and then quickly moved his hands to her shoulders, then her collars.  In a single jerk, he grabbed her wrists and bent his head down as though listening carefully for her pulses.  Next, he put a hand on her belly and then rapidly proceeded to rub each of her legs from top to bottom as though massaging out a cramp.  The whole procedure was over in thirty seconds.  The mystic stood to face the woman.

“Jenny O’Brian?”

“Yes,” she replied.

“You are thirty-seven years old.  Your parents’ names are Patrick and Margaret.  As a child, you had difficulty adjusting to school because of a speech impediment which was corrected when you were ten.  You are far sighted.  You have no illnesses except for heavy periods that last seven days every month.  On the first two days you soak through four pads per day and are frightened to leave the house.  You are worried that you may have cancer.”

He paused, waiting for some sort of affirmation.  Jenny nodded.

“You do not suffer from cancer.  Rather, your heavy bleeding is simply a genetic phenomenon.  Your mother had the same problem but was too embarrassed to ever tell you about it.  Go to your local pharmacy and purchase some Black Cohosh.  Take the recommended dose for two months and return to me.”

A look of relief swept across Jenny’s face.

“You see.  Cheaper and better than an MRI,” whispered Dr. Avery to Eric who rolled his eyes.  The mystic turned to the three men on the wall.

“Louis Avery next, please.”

“Thank you so much,” said Jenny as she gathered her belongings and left the room.

“Have you brought shorts and a T-shirt?” the mystic asked Louis.

“Yes,” Louis replied.

“Very well.  Please change and stand in the middle of the round carpet.  Try to move as little as possible.  I will go meditate on your problem for several moments and then I shall return.”

And without another word, the mystic left.

When Flower finished recounting Madame Sfortunata’s predictions, Jude took a sip of his beer, leaned back and puffed out his cheeks.

“So I don’t get it.  It’s so preposterous.  What makes you think that any of this stuff is really going to happen?”

Flower thought this a fair question but didn’t know exactly how to explain the way she felt.

“I guess it’s just that Madame S is never wrong about anything.  That’s what’s eating at me.”

“Ok,” said Jude putting out his hand.  “Give me an example.”

“Well, most of the time we talk about shopping.”

Flower ignored the look of confusion on Jude’s face.

“But sometimes she tells me other things.  Like last month, she said ‘one of the senators in Washington is having an affair’.  Sure enough, I turn on the television a few weeks ago and there’s a whole sordid story about some senator from Missouri.”

“Uh huh,” said Jude, unmoved.

“And then, she told me that there would be a big hullabaloo outside my building last Sunday and that I wasn’t going to get a good night’s sleep.  And sure enough, she was right.”

Jude rolled his eyes.

“Of course there was a big commotion, Flower.  What planet do you live on?  It was the Superbowl and the Patriots were playing.”

“Oh right,” said Flower flinging her hair back.  “The New France Patriots.”

“Yeah, right…New France.”  Jude still couldn’t figure it out.  He recalled learning the history in school, had studied about the French takeover of New England just before the American Revolution, but somehow he felt that something about this was very deeply wrong.

“And then…I forgot about this one Jude…she said that this past Tuesday a bird was going to go extinct in Africa.  So I picked up a copy of National Geographic and sure enough one had.”

Jude shook his head in amazement.

“Flower, get a grip.  Anyone could have told you those things.  They’re mind-bogglingly obvious.  The press is always on about some political sex scandal and National Geographic practically has a weekly column on extinct African birds.  All of these things have perfectly reasonable explanations.”

Flower wasn’t quite buying it.

“Well they may not be the most inspired predictions.  I’ll give you that.  But I’m certain of one thing.  They all came true.  So it’s still a bit disconcerting when she seems to think that I’m just going to stop existing…like I’ll never have been born.”