Also he doesn’t know I’m in an art class in that very residence, and still will be after his move-in date. Also he doesn’t know I’m in an art class atall.With Lauro. Who he probably thinks is just some guy Raffi picked up at the bar.
I’m itchy with nerves. I’m looking at a negative of my normal life, where everything has changed to the opposite of the color it used to be. Everything, and I mean everything, feels like a lie.
I suddenly hate this neighborhood. And I hate that bar. With all the brass and the sexy lighting. I bet people get laid courtesy of that bar all the time. What a reprehensible neighborhood bar. Where all the soon-to-be-divorced newly arrived tenants can go and mingle. They should have neighborhood confessional booths instead of bars. This city is going to shit.
“Oh, shit, we’ll miss the bus.” We both start running, and we do, indeed, miss it.
“Long way from Sal’s,” he says eventually, after a long while, after our breathing has evened out again and we’re waiting for the next bus. Sal’s is the bar that is exactly an eight-minute walk between our house and Raff’s. What he means is, why the hell did me and Raff meet for a drink on the Lower East Side?
I shrug.
He opens his mouth, obviously about to say something. But then he just…doesn’t.
So we don’t say anything at all while we wait for the bus. Or while we board the bus or while we sit and watch the city pass by.
So look, I know that we obviously—painfully—are not on the same wavelength anymore. I know that we are at the furthest possible point from in sync with one another. But I know Vin. And I can feel him turning over and over whatever it is he didn’t say.
He waits until I’ve got keys in our apartment door, about to let us inside. He’s behind me, hands in his pockets. I bet he recognizes his very last chance. Once we’re inside, I’ll be behind my bedroom door faster than he can blink.
“Roz,” he says, in the same tone that he used in the bathroom at the bar.
“Yeah?” I’m pausing.Ask me about this Lauro guy. Ask me why I was on the Lower East Side. Ask me what I did tonight.
“…I’m sorry,” he says. About the shirt? About leaving me?
“I know.”
And then I push through the door.
Tonight I’m going from paper.
(Overachiever!)
You told me to write them down before I read them aloud! Can’t win with you dorks.
(Finally he’s starting to get a little sassy!)
Okay, here I go, it’s called The Cat Doesn’t Come Back.
(Cat story!) (We got a cat story, people!) (Ring the cat bell!)
What’s the cat bell? Oh, my God. You actually have a bell you ring when someone tells a cat story?
(You got a lot to learn, kid.) (We get a lot of cat stories around here.)
All right. Well. The Cat Doesn’t Come Back.
I rescued a cat when I was about ten years old. And I really mean rescued. It was stuck on a third-floor windowsill of an apartment building in my neighborhood in Marine Park. I climbed up on a fire escape, knocked on the kitchen window of the unit, had the grandma who lived there let me in and walk through (she made me take my shoes off), open the window, and get the cat.I’d never had a cat and didn’t know a lot about them. But I knew when they didn’t like you they’d claw and bite, so I expected to get the hell scratched out of me while I brought it back down to the street. But the cat was actually really sweet to me. She just kind of curled up in my arms and started purring with her eyes closed.
I actually recognized her too. She was cute, but sort of weird-looking for a cat. Really big, ragged ears, splotchy brown fur, and one of her pupils was super dilated. I knew where she lived. In this dodgy bodega my mother and brother and I avoided because of the crowd of guys that stayed in there all day. I was pretty sure they kept her there as a mouser.
Anyhow, she was sweet to me and I could tell she was in bad shape. Up close, her ears were ragged because she’d been fighting, or attacked or something, and one of them looked infected. So I walked straight to a vet that I knew of, where we’d taken my brother’s pet parakeet when it had a virus.
Turns out, the dilated-pupil thing was something she just needed medicine for, it happens to a lot of street cats, I guess. And they put her on antibiotics for the ear, and cleaned her up, and by the time I left, with her in my arms, still purring, I had a new pet cat. And there was a bill that was about to be mailed to my mother’s house that was so high I knew that when she got it I was going to get smacked with a wooden spoon. But it was worth it. Because the cat was purring.
Anyways. My mother actually really liked the cat and honestly, it’s not a bad idea to have a mouser in Brooklyn.
(What was her name?)
