In a Cat’s Eye

“Well, it’s something about Mr. Winkley. There’s some other things too, and I was just wondering if you’d had dinner yet.”

“Nope.”

“You come over for dinner?”

“Sure. Now?”

“I’d better go back to my room first, on account of I have to freshen up. You wait a few minutes, then you come over, knock on the door, and I’ll let you in. That way we can try out the door.”

“Okay.”

“Well, I guess this is goodbye. Goodbye.”

“Bye, Nancy. See you in a few minutes.”

4

I waited about five minutes and then I went and knocked on her door.

“Who is it?” she said, as if she didn’t know it was me. I think she just wanted to be proper and formal about it, to keep everything on the up and up.

“It’s me; Willy.”

She unlocked the keyhole lock and the deadbolt, opened the door against the chain, and looked out to make sure it was me. Then she pulled the chain from the slide and let me in.

“Willy! I’m so glad that you could come.”

“Yeah; me too.”

“Is Stanley out there in the hall?” she whispered.

“Stanley? No. Why?”

“He was out there a while ago. Lately it seems like everywhere I go, there’s Stanley. Then when I look at him he turns quick and walks away.”

I opened the door and looked up and down the hall.

“Has he been bothering you?” I said.

“No, but I think he’s been following me. Poor Stanley. I think he just wants somebody to talk to.”

“I’ve got a feeling he wants more than to just talk. He never talks to anybody. I don’t like him following you around like that.”

“I was in Gladys’s room yesterday,” she said. “I’d left my door open, and when I came back, Stanley was standing in my doorway. He wanted to tell me something but he couldn’t get himself to say it. I said, ‘What is it, Stanley? Tell me,’ but his face turned all red and he just shook his head and left.”

“He had no business snooping around in your room,” I said. “Don’t worry; when I’m done with that guy, he won’t be bothering you.”

“Don’t do anything, Willy. He’s just a lonely man who’s deaf and dumb and shy. He’s overly gentle and sensitive.”

“That’s what he wants everyone to think. It’s all an act. He’s got some kind of an angle.” I stepped back into the room and closed the door.

“The door works so good, I mean, it works so well, now,” she said. She must have been taking grammar lessons from Gladys. “You’re a wonder, Willy. You’re so handy.”

She gave me a bottle of beer. She didn’t open one for herself, because Nancy would never drink beer or anything that had alcohol in it. She said for me to make myself comfortable while she got dinner ready. Mr Winkley was looking down at his cat food, trying to decide if he wanted to eat it or not. I walked around the room and looked at everything. She didn’t have a lot of stuff. A blue Bakelite alarm clock radio on her nightstand and the Virgin Mary statue on her bureau were the only colorful things.

“Statue” maybe isn’t the right word. It was more like what they call a figurine. Nancy’s mother gave it to her just before she died, when Nancy was nine, and I believe that Nancy used to kneel and pray to it every day when she was alone. The figurine was the one thing she cared about the most, and that is why I think of it as a statue, though it was only about the size of a ten-inch pipe wrench.

I don’t know that I saw the statue that night, because you wouldn’t always notice something like that. But like I told the cops, if it hadn’t been there, I’m pretty sure I would have not seen it.

There wasn’t much to see out the window, mostly just the side of another brick building across the alley, but if you got close and looked sideways you could see some trees and grass. Nancy was working at the stove and then she went over to Mr. Winkley who was drinking water from his bowl on the floor. She stooped down and looked at his face, and I couldn’t think why she did that. Then she went back to working at the stove.

We had hamburger mixed in with macaroni, onions, catsup, and potato chips. She said it was her mother’s recipe. Mr Winkley was standing on the table with his head right in my plate, so that it was hard for me to get any. I had to keep pushing him away. We were sitting there eating and she started to pick up her glass of milk, and flinched.

“Did you hurt your arm?” I said.

“My wrist,” she said. “It comes and goes. I don’t even remember when it started, so it can’t be anything. It’s from holding my trimmer knife. I told Mr. Horne and he said he was going to move me out of the cutting department, but he never did.

“He used to be so nice. Then one day I was late coming in to work and by mistake I hung my coat on the wrong rack where the office girls hang theirs and they told him and he gave me a warning. It’s a permanent warning too, so I’ll always be on probation, forever. I’m just a trimmer, that’s all I am.”

“Somebody ought to put that guy’s lights out,” I said.

She put her glass down on the table, and Mr. Winkley stuck his head in it and was lapping his tongue trying to get at the milk. She tilted the glass so he could have some milk.

“Even the girls I work with on the trimmer line were like, ‘Who does she think she is?’ I guess I thought I was some hot … stuff.” Nancy never used swear words. “So now I just try to stay out of everybody’s way.”

She held Mr. Winkley’s face in her hands, and squinted at it. There was something about his face that she kept looking at.

“You should make them get out of your way,” I said. “That’s what I do.”

“My mother always told me,” she said, “that if you were good to people and played your cards right, you could get anything you wanted, but I don’t know anymore.”

“Watch this,” I said. I stood up and grabbed two legs of the table, one in each hand, and lifted the table up over my head. Then I set it back down.

“You’re so strong, Willy.”

She picked up the dishes and took them to the sink. I stayed sitting at the table with Mr. Winkley, and watched her back as she did the dishes. She was a small girl, but she was wearing shorts that were even shorter than she was. She dropped a spoon and bent over to pick it up, and I was trying to think if she looked better from the back or the front, but I couldn’t decide.

She was washing the dishes with her back to me and she said, “I’m not going anywhere.”

Her saying that out of the blue struck me, because nobody had said anything about anybody going anywhere. Now when I think about it, she might have meant that her life wasn’t going anywhere; but I don’t know.

“You’re not going away, are you?” I said.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I haven’t told anybody, but I can tell you because you’re my friend: I’ve been thinking I might get a bus ticket and ride until I see a nice quiet place, like a farm with a red barn and a big field and trees, and a pond with ducks in it; where nobody knows me and I won’t be in anybody’s way. I’ll get off the bus and go up and knock on the door and get a job as a cook.”

I figured she was just dreaming, and she wasn’t really going away.

“You’re a good cook,” I said; “but what about Mr. Winkley? They might not let him on the bus.”

She stopped working on the dishes and spoke with her back to me.

“I was wondering,” she said, “if maybe you would take care of him; I mean, just until I got settled in.”

I saw the corner of a suitcase sticking out from under her bed.

“Don’t go,” I said. “He’d miss you too much. Besides, you’d have to quit your job. You’d lose all your seniority. You’re the best trimmer they have. You’d have to give Mr. Horne two weeks’ notice. It’s a law. If you don’t, then the police will get you and bring you back.” I knew that wasn’t true, but I didn’t want her to go away.

“They’ll never find me,” she said.

“What’s the story with you and Roy?” I said. I had to find out for Elsie, but I wanted to know for myself too, and I thought maybe she was going because she wanted to get away from Roy.

She went back to the dishes.

“No story,” she said. “He’s just a friend.”

Some friend, I thought; she’d just got done saying that I was her friend. I didn’t want to push it, so I just said, “If he’s been bothering you …”

“Stay away from him, Willy.” She turned around and dried her hands with a towel. “He’s a lot bigger than you are. I don’t want anything bad to happen to you.”

I didn’t like her saying I was small.

“Roy isn’t as big as everybody thinks,” I said. “I could take that guy, easy, but I don’t like to pick on guys that have only one arm.”

“You’re just the right size,” she said. “Anyway, there’s a lot of things going on in my life and I don’t know. Never mind me. Roy isn’t bothering me.”

She came over and sat across the table from me. Mr. Winkley was on the table turning around in circles and rubbing against her hand. Nobody said anything and Nancy looked sad about something. When she finally talked, it was like she was talking to herself.

“It’s green now,” she said.

“What’s green?”

“His eye.”

“Him?” I said. “Mr. Winkley?”

“It’s green now. That’s because you’re here.”

I didn’t know what she was talking about. If it had been anyone else, I would have thought they were on drugs, but I didn’t think that Nancy would ever take drugs.

“Cats’ eyes are green,” I said. “Sometimes they’re blue. Some cats have blue eyes.”

“That’s not what I mean. Lately, sometimes his eye gets black, and real big, like a saucer. It scares me.”

“You must have had a bad dream or something,” I said. I didn’t like her talking crazy like that.

“It seems silly now,” she said. “It’s when I’m alone; I’m not afraid when you’re here.”

You could just barely hear piano music coming through the wall from Gladys’s room. It sounded like classical music and I thought Gladys was improving herself. Mr. Winkley went to sleep on the table. It was getting dark and we listened to the music. When the music ended Mr. Winkley woke up and stood up on his hind legs and grabbed onto my wrist, and started arm wrestling with me.

“It’s getting dark earlier now than it used to,” I said.

“I know,” she said. “Why does it do that, Willy?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “It does that every year. In the winter it will be dark most of the time.”

“I know,” she said. “I’m glad it’s not the other way around. I mean, it’s better to have the sun in the summertime, when it’s nice outside, don’t you think?”

“Sure,” I said.

She went back to the sink to finish washing the dishes. Mr. Winkley was still grabbing my wrist trying to pull it down. He bit down on the back of my hand and stared at me like he was saying he was going to beat me one way or another. That’s when I saw that his eye, which had been green just a few minutes before, was big and black, and I realized that was what Nancy had been talking about. I could see why it scared her. It did look like a saucer, like he was a machine that could kill you and didn’t care. It was like he was two different cats.

“Help me, Willy.”

Her saying that when it was so quiet in the room scared me. I didn’t know what she meant.

“I can’t reach the cabinet over the sink,” she said. “I need a big tall man to help me put these dishes away.”

I was taller than Nancy and I could reach the cabinet to put the dishes away for her.

“Mr. Winkley won’t hurt you,” I said. “I’ll show you.” I picked him up and handed him to her and we looked at his big black eye. He must have been wondering why we were looking at him like that.

“Keep looking at his eye,” I said. I went and turned on the light.

“It turned green,” she said.

I turned the light off and on a few times so she’d get the idea, and then I explained the whole thing to her, how cats can see in the dark, and how humans’ eyes do the same thing only not as much. I knew all about it.

I was about ready to leave and she started telling me about this movie that was supposed to be very good. I wanted a cigarette and Nancy wouldn’t have minded, but I didn’t smoke in her room because Nancy wasn’t the kind of girl who would ever smoke.

I was getting ready to leave again and she said, “I have to show you my bird book.” She went and got the book. She sat down at the table, and I pulled up my chair beside her so she could show me the bird pictures. She’d circled in pencil the ones she’d seen. I didn’t even know she was interested in birds.

She pointed to a picture of a bluebird and said, “My mother used to say that when you see a bluebird, it brings you happiness. I always used to look for them.”

There was no circle around the bluebird. She turned the page.

“This one, the purple finch, is our official state bird,” she said.

“It’s pretty,” I said. I wasn’t looking at the picture, though; I was looking at her. That’s when I realized, like a light bulb going on over my head, that she had been telling me about the movie because she wanted me to ask if I could take her to see it. She must have gotten the idea from Elsie.

She told me she’d bought the book some weeks or months before, along with a bird feeder and some seeds. She got the feeder out of the closet to show me.

“I was going to put it outside my window,” she said, “and I was pretty hepped up about it at first, but then it seemed kind of stupid. It’s too dark in the alley. The birds won’t go there. Anyway, I don’t know how to put it together.”

“The birds will come,” I said. “It’s not always so dark in the alley. I can drill holes in the brick for the screws and make a hanger for it, and we’ll put it outside your window. You put some seeds in it, and pretty soon a bird will come to it, and then the other birds will come too.”

“Do you think I might get a bluebird? Oh Willy, I’ve never seen a bluebird!”

“Sure,” I said. “There’ll be lots of bluebirds; all kinds of birds; blue, red, yellow, all different colors. When do you want me to put it up?”

“Tomorrow’s Saturday. How about tomorrow morning?”

“Okay,” I said.

When I was standing at the door to leave I asked her if I could take her to see the movie. It was playing for only one more night.

“I’d love to,” she said.

“I’ll be over in the morning to set up the bird feeder.”

“I’m glad you came over, Willy.”

“Me too.”

“I’m not afraid now,” she said.

“I’m never afraid of anything,” I said. “There’s nothing to be afraid of.”

“Goodnight, Willy.”

I don’t know how it happened, if it was that she started to hold her right hand out for a handshake or what, but we were standing close and her right hand came up and I took it in my left hand and then she took my right hand in her left hand, so that we were holding hands, and then our hands sort of floated up to our shoulders. She was looking up at my eyes and I was looking down at hers, and my eyes must have been saying please, because hers were saying yes. Then we let go of each other’s hands, and hers moved up my arms and around the back of my neck, and mine went down and around her waist. Then we were kissing, but it was only a few seconds and she pushed against my shoulders and sort of slipped away from me.

She put my hands by my sides, patted the front of my tee shirt, and let out a deep breath.

“Well,” she said. We were still looking at each other’s eyes.

“So,” she said.

I tried to hold her again but she wasn’t so sure. My hands were all over her and she was sort of pushing me away.

“Willy, I’m not who you think I am,” she said. “I don’t want to hurt you. I’ve made so many stupid mistakes and I don’t even know if I can stop making them. I still haven’t got everything straightened out.”

“It’s the same with me,” I said. “None of that matters now. It’s only now and tomorrow that matters.”

I didn’t want to leave, and I never wanted to hurt her.

“Nancy, could I … would you mind if I asked you if I could …?”

Just then Mr. Winkley knocked a pot off the table and ran under the bed.

“Oh, that cat,” she said. She put the pot back on the table looked under the bed and told him he was a bad cat. Then she came back.

“Now where were we?” she said.

I want to stay with you tonight, I almost said. If I had just said it out loud, everything would have turned out different, but I didn’t say it.

“We were saying goodnight,” I said.

“Goodnight, Willy.”

“Goodnight, Nancy.”

I left.

I couldn’t sleep so I went out for a walk. I walked around for about an hour and all I could think about was Nancy. I remembered the suitcase under her bed, and her saying that she wasn’t going anywhere. Sometimes at The Morpheum you’d be friends with somebody and then they’d leave in the middle of the night and not even say goodbye, and you’d never know what happened to them. I was afraid that when I went to Nancy’s room the next morning, she’d be gone.

I hadn’t really spent all of the money that Elsie had given me for the hinges. I’d only told Howie that because I didn’t want him borrowing it. I still had a little over two dollars, and that was enough for two movie tickets, a drink, and some popcorn.

5

When I woke up the next morning Mr. Winkley was meowing outside my door. He made for me to follow him to Nancy’s room. She had never let him run loose like that before. He started meowing again and I picked him up and put my hand over his mouth so that Elsie wouldn’t hear. I knocked and called Nancy’s name but there was no answer. I tried her door and it was locked. I didn’t want to think that she had left in the middle of the night without taking Mr. Winkley. I knocked on Gladys’s door and called to her.

“Gladys!”

“Pipe down out there!” she said. “People are trying to sleep!”

“I’m looking for Nancy. She’s not in her room.”

“Yeah well I haven’t seen her.”

The Colonel stuck his head out from his room, which was right next to mine. With his flat-top haircut and thin face, his head sticking out sideways looked like a triangle.

“Willy,” he whispered, like he had some secret to tell me. He looked up and down the hallway to make sure nobody else was out there, and waved for me to come over. I thought maybe he knew where Nancy was.

“Come here,” he whispered. “I have something to show you.”

We went in and Mr. Winkley hopped up on the Colonel’s bed and went to sleep. It turned out the Colonel just wanted to play chess. He’d invented a foolproof strategy that he wanted to try out on me.

“I can’t play chess now, Colonel,” I said. “Nancy’s gone. I was supposed to put up her bird feeder, but she doesn’t answer her door, and it’s locked. Mr. Winkley was in the hall meowing. Something’s wrong.”

“Oh, I’m sure there’s a perfectly rational explanation,” he said. “You’ve taken quite a fright. Why don’t you just sit down here, and while we’re awaiting Nancy’s return, we can have a little game.”

“This isn’t a game,” I said. “She was afraid that somebody might break into her room, and then last night she said she might be leaving.”

“Well then, that explains it. You see, she’s not going anywhere. She only wants you to think that. You still have a lot to learn about the female mind, my boy. Sit down and I’ll explain.”

I sat at his table. The chess board was all set up on it.

“Her fears,” he said, “which prompted her to engage your services in repairing her door, are all in here.” He pointed to his own head. “Don’t you see? It’s not the outside intruder she fears, but her innermost desires which she cannot acknowledge.”

“What are you talking about, Colonel?”

“A young woman’s desires. It is highly dubious that she ever had any intention of leaving. She probably placed Mr. Winkley outside your door, pinched him until he meowed, and then ran off when you opened it. She wants to make you aware of how much you care for her.”

Mr. Winkley jumped off the bed and went to scratching the Colonel’s door.

“You see,” he said, pointing at Mr. Winkley. “There is an entity whom we see as the devil, who scratches at the door of our unconscious. We lock our door against him, thinking to keep him out. But where is he, really? He is inside.” The Colonel pointed at Mr. Winkley, then at his own head. “He’s not trying to get in. He wants only to be let out, to be free, where he cannot harm us.”

I didn’t know what he was talking about. “I’m going to ask Elsie if she’s seen Nancy,” I said.

“Oh posh, Elsie is probably in cahoots with Nancy. The two are doubtlessly engaged in a conspiracy.”

“I’m going to find Nancy.”

“Very well, then. I’ll go with you.”

“Okay. Don’t let Mr. Winkley out.”

I ran down the stairs and asked Elsie if she’d seen Nancy.

“She hasn’t gone out,” Elsie said. “She must be in her room.”

“I don’t think so. She doesn’t answer her door, and it’s locked.”

“Did you say anything to upset her, Willy? Nancy might not want to see you.”

By then the Colonel had come down the stairs, and we went outside and looked up and down the street.

“Her window!” I said, and ran around the back of the hotel and up the fire escape.

When I got up to Nancy’s window I tried to open it but it was latched. I squatted down and looked in. I couldn’t see much at first, because the sun was bright and the light was off in her room.

Then I saw her lying on the bed, and I knew. When somebody looks right at you, and your eyes lock onto theirs; when neither one of you moves and time stops and the bottom falls out of your stomach, you just know right away. She didn’t move, and nobody could sleep with their arm twisted behind them like that and their eyes wide open. A needle and syringe hung from the crook of her other arm fallen off the side of the bed, and a rubber cord was tied above. You always know when somebody’s dead.

I was squatted there at the window, and I looked down at the ground through the grate, because I didn’t want to see Nancy like that. It felt like the fire escape was pulling away from the building, and I grabbed onto the window ledge to keep from falling. I tried to stand and I lost my balance and fell against the railing. By then the Colonel had come around to the back of the building and I saw him standing on the ground in the alley looking up at me and his mouth was moving and I could see that he was shouting something, but it was like they turned the sound off and I couldn’t hear anything.

He must have known from the way I looked, because he ran back around the corner.

I caught up with him inside the hotel as he and Elsie were going up the stairs.

Elsie wouldn’t call the police until she was sure, and she wouldn’t give me or the Colonel her key ring. We finally made it to Nancy’s room and waited while Elsie caught her breath and sorted through the keys, but she couldn’t open the door because the deadbolt was locked, and it was the kind that works only from the inside.

The police had to break in the door to get into the room. The hinges didn’t come off, and the keyed lock didn’t break because Elsie had unlocked it. The deadbolt and chain lock were ripped off the door frame, but still screwed to the door.

It was only a few seconds between the time the door swung open and the time the police moved us away, and I thought I didn’t see the statue. I didn’t exactly not see it, though, so I wasn’t sure.

“I think it was probably there last night because I didn’t see it missing then,” I told the cop. He had a small book he was writing my answers in. “It should be on her bureau.”

“Wait here,” he said. He went in the room and talked to the other cop, and came back.

“Okay, Willy,” he said. I wanted to ask about the statue but he went off to talk to Elsie.