Look at the way they follow her. It must be pheromones.
A full belly gives a man a sense of focus.
This highly focused thought carried Crow much of the way from the Black Forest Inn to his apartment. Something about the potential energy in a stomach full of good German food made the world seem no more than a manageable extension of his life. His car would be repaired. Dickie would make good on his marker. The cards would fall his way. Soon he would have time to think about things like falling in love and discovering meaning in his life.
Walking down Nicollet Avenue past a cluster of Vietnamese and Hmong businesses, gut full of spaetzle, paprika schnitzel, and cabbage, Crow smiled in the fading evening light. It was another hot one. He walked slowly so as not to break a sweat, and he let his mind drift.
Debrowski was in Chicago, baby-sitting two of her bands, and would not be back until tomorrow. He wished she were here now. He wanted to tell her about his idea, his answer to the Galactic Guardians. He wanted her to know that he wasn’t wimping out, that he could take care of himself. So far, his scheme had all the substantiality of a cokehead fantasy. Still, on this warm night, even the insubstantial felt as solid as a gut full of paprika schnitzel. If he told it right, she would be impressed. If he could pull it off.
Crow was wearing his red-and-pink short-sleeved polyester bowling shirt with the name HAL embroidered in blue thread over the pocket and PARK TAVERN printed on the back. It was his favorite shirt. He had found it folded into one of his dresser drawers during the early years of his ill-fated marriage to Melinda Connors. Who was Hal? Jealous and suspicious, he had worn the shirt that day, parading her guilt before her. Melinda’s only reaction had been to ask, in an offhand, disinterested way, “Who’s Hal?”
“You don’t know?” he had asked, putting some edge into his voice.
She had smiled vacantly. “Do I know? Is it your dad’s name or something?” Melinda had always been weak on names. Crow had stared at her face, then a smooth twenty-three, still healthy and in love, and had seen only mild curiosity and befuddlement. She had no idea who Hal was. Hal was, and would always be, a mystery to them both. Inwardly embarrassed, Crow had concluded that the shirt had gotten mixed in somehow at the laundromat. To teach himself trust, tolerance, and patience, Crow had worn the shirt at least once a month for all of his seven-year marriage. The heavyweight polyester was indestructible. He had come to like it, to feel comfortable swathed in thick synthetic fiber, and he still wore it as often as possible. He loved it when people called him Hal. The Vietnamese woman at the drop-off laundry where he now took his clothes called him Hal Crow: “Tank you, Mr. Hal Crow.” She would smile, handing him his tied-up bundle of clean clothes. He liked the way they ironed everything, even the jeans, then folded it up into a package the size of a cereal box.
He was thinking about his ex-wife, bowling shirts, and Vietnamese laundries, going up the walk to his front door, digging for keys in the front pocket of his ironed blue jeans, when a voice said, “Where’d y’all get that shirt? I sure do like it.”
Crow stopped. Catfish Wicky was sitting on his front steps, smoking a cigarette.
“I do too,” Crow said, after a moment. He remained still, feeling awkward. She was wearing loose black cotton shorts and a white short-sleeved shirt, the top several buttons unfastened. Her legs were tightly crossed and her elbows pulled into her lap, making her appear small and compact. He had the impression that she was cold, though the air temperature was easily eighty-five degrees. She was barefoot; her red sandals sat obediently beside her on the concrete step. He looked around, and at the cars parked on the street, looking for a Cadillac, a Mercedes, a Porsche. He saw nothing but the usual beaters that lined his street.
“Where’s your car?”
“I left it at home.”
“You walked here?”
“I took a cab. You want to offer a girl a cup of coffee or something? I’ve been sittin' here near an hour, waiting.” She put her lips to her cigarette and inhaled deeply, then let the smoke trail over her red upper lip and into her nostrils.
He walked around her and unlocked the bottom door. “I don’t have any milk.”
“That’s okay, Joe Crow.” She hooked her fingers through the thongs of her sandals and stood up. He heard her following him up the narrow staircase, her bare feet soft on the hard wooden steps. “Just make it hot and strong, okay?”
Milo couldn’t get enough of her. It was as though she—half cat, half fish—was the most fascinating thing he had ever encountered. He covered her lap, kneading her thigh, both of them purring. Crow set a mug of reheated coffee, blistering hot, strong, and bitter, on the glass-topped table before her. She picked it up and let Milo sniff it, then took a sip.
“It’s hot,” Crow warned, a little late.
“It’s perfect. Good coffee.”
Crow sat down across from her with his coffee, waiting for her to get to it, whatever it was.
“I sure do like this kitty cat,” she said. Her accent seemed to come and go. Sometimes she sounded like any other Minnesotan except for the persistent y’alls, then she would leap a thousand miles south between sentences, and he could almost smell the swamp in her voice. There were even a few words, like caw-fee, that sounded as if they’d been learned in Brooklyn, or maybe Newark.
“He likes you.”
“Cats do. Did y’all ever meet my kitty cat?”
“I saw him.”
“He’s a good cat. You know how he got himself all crippled up? I’ll tell you. Dickie threw him right off the balcony. Dickie says Katoo just fell, but that man’s got more shit in'm than a Cajun privy. Katoo never fell off nothing. He’s a good cat.” She scratched under Milo’s chin. “You’re a good 'un too, Mr. Milo.”
“He threw the cat off the balcony?” Crow was shocked. He liked cats.
“Twenty-five stories. I was down at the pool. Poor Katoo landed right next to me. I saw him coming down, feet first. Broke his poor kitty spine. They told me I should have him put down, but I found a vet who fixed him up with his wheels. You should see that cat go.” She smiled with her mouth, put a cigarette between her swollen lips, and lit it with a disposable lighter. Milo jumped down from her lap. “Kitties don’t like smoke,” she said, sending a thick brown plume toward the ceiling.
Crow held up his mug and looked at her through the curls of steam coming off his coffee. Milo jumped back up onto the sofa and sat at the far end, watching Catfish smoke. She reached over and scratched the top of his head.
“You know that big ugly fellow was chasing Tommy?”
Crow nodded and set his cup down.
“Well, he’s sitting in this big old blue car in the ramp at my building, watching my poor little Porsche. I go down to get in my car and there he is, the biggest ugliest sight a girl could ever hope for. He didn’t see me, though. I got right back in that elevator and got my sweet butt out of there. That’s why I had to cab it on over here.”
“Freddy Wisnesky.”
“That’s him.” She let a languid stream of smoke drift into her nostrils. The skin between her lip and nose was stained soft yellow; Crow wanted to take a tissue and wipe it away. Beads of oily perspiration showed on her forehead. “He’s still looking for Tommy. I'm scared of him.” She didn’t look scared.
“You should be. Why don’t you tell the security guys about him?”
She shook her head. “Right now I know where he is.”
“You’re going to not go home again?”
“Not till he leaves.”
She put out her cigarette, stood up, pushed her hands deep into the pockets of her shorts. Milo walked across the sofa to the cushion on which she had been sitting, sniffed it, turned two circles, and sank into a black ball. Catfish walked around the room, touching things: books, a vase, his framed baseball cards, a blank wall.
“Why are you here?” Crow asked.
“I wanted to see you. I liked the way y’all were looking at me that night. Like I was real. When Dickie looks at me, I feel like a martini.”
“Which way do you mean—like you are one or you want one?”
“Like I'm a martini and he’s looking at me, staring at the olives. I need a real man in my life.” She walked past him, behind his chair, leaving a vaporous trail of smoke and sweat. “A guy like Joe Crow.”
Crow watched her moving away from him, toward the doors leading out onto the porch. She stood with her back to him, letting him have a good look at her.
“All the time while you were following me, I kept thinking about you, thinking about you and me.” She turned and walked directly toward him. He had the sense that her moves were choreographed, but that didn’t prevent his heart from speeding or his mouth from going dry. It was as though he were watching a bad movie—but he was in it. Her hands, hot and moist, pressed in on either side of his face; she bent down and kissed his lips. Her saliva was acid; he could feel his lips burning. Then she was gone, back on the sofa with Milo on her lap, both cats watching him and smiling.
Crow cleared his throat and crossed one ankle over his knee to conceal the sudden swelling in his groin. His body was betraying him. “What is it you want, Catfish?” His voice was thick, the back of his throat numb, as if he were on his fourth, fifth, sixth fat line of coke.
“I need a place to stay tonight.”
He pointed at the sofa. “You want to sleep with Milo, it’s fine by me.
Catfish smiled, a big smile showing all of her little white teeth, and hugged Milo to her breasts.
Crow lay naked on his bed, unable to sleep. He had opened the window, but the air outside was congealed and there was no movement. Perspiration pooled in his navel. His jaw bulged; he stared through slitted eyes at the water stain on the white plaster ceiling. It was shaped like a butterfly, a flower, a seashell, a woman’s sex.
It had been over a year since the last time he had had any, or wanted it. When his marriage to Melinda Connors ended, he’d left his desire behind, or locked it away, or destroyed it.
No, not destroyed. The woman Catfish had found it. He closed his eyes and let the images flicker across the movie screen. Catfish in her black party dress, her breast pressing against his biceps. Catfish in her red Porsche, punching through traffic. Catfish reclined on the undressed bed at the Twin Town, kicking her sandals across the motel room. Catfish standing in the motel room door, laughing. Catfish small on his front steps, smoking. Catfish with too much red lipstick, nicotine staining the underside of her wide nostrils; Catfish with small sharp teeth, hot sweaty hands, breasts tart as grapefruit swinging against her white shirt.
He opened his eyes and looked toward the bedroom door, at the slit of light at its bottom. Why Catfish Wicky? She had the predatory, utterly self-centered perspective of a female cat. She smoked cigarettes, drank, jumped in the sack with every swinging dick. She was not particularly good-looking—swollen lips, protruding eyes, burnt-looking flesh, stained upper lip. She was married. He tried to twist her image into a gargoyle, a Medusa, a hag. The effort left him with a knot in his chest and an erection. He licked his lips—an hour after her kiss, they still burned. He rolled onto his side, away from the damp center of the mattress, and forced his thoughts to Dickie Wicky. That should help him chill.
At Crow’s insistence, she had called Dickie to tell him she wouldn’t be home. Dickie wasn’t there, but she left him a message:
“Can’t make it home tonight, honey. Remember that big fella I was telling you about? That Freddy Wisnesky fella? Well, he’s sorta lookin' for me, and I got to make myself scarce for a day or two. I’ll be in touch.”
After she hung up, he had said, “Why didn’t you just tell him where you were?”
“He’d freak, darlin'.” Then she had laughed. “But maybe then he’d pay you ten thousand dollars to leave me alone. y’all want me to call him back?”
“Forget about it.”
“Anyways, he’ll be drunk as a mash-fed opossum when he gets home.”
Crow had let it go. He tried to imagine Dickie, drunk, alone in his condo, listening to the recorded voice of his nymphomaniac wife. It wouldn’t be so bad, though, because Dickie would quickly render himself unconscious and oblivious. Crow envied the man his drugs, his liquor, his peace.
A soft thud came from the living room, then the sound of bare feet padding down the hall, the sound of the toilet seat going down and, a few seconds later, the tinkle of urine falling into the bowl. The image of Catfish sitting on his toilet. The sound of the toilet flushing.
She had said he looked tense. She had wanted to rub his neck. She had sat on the sofa, curled her toes over the edge of the glass-topped coffee table, put the palms of her hands together, squeezed them between her thighs.
“Don’t you want me?” she had asked.
He had brought out a blanket and a pillow and said good night.
He heard her now, padding back toward the living room. He could feel the muscles in his abdomen relax. He swallowed, and half- thoughts tumbled unidentified through his mind like clothes in a dryer. As though in a memory, he again heard the sound of bare feet on a wooden floor. The door to his bedroom opened, closed, and he felt a hot hand press his shoulder back against the mattress. He opened his eyes, drew a ragged breath, stared at her dark shape. She moved her hand down his chest, paused at his belly—”You’re all soaking wet, honey”—and continued down to stroke the length of his swollen penis. He heard her husky whisper, “I thought you might be waiting on me, Crow,” and then her tongue was in his mouth, deep and soft and wet, and he hoped he would drown.