In the Bowery
At the opposite end of the room Whimsical Fatman sat in, there was a huge dark chest of drawers six feet tall and three feet wide. It was missing all but its bottom drawer, and inside that drawer a small, rangy Calico cat had made a nest for itself and its six recently born kittens. Whimsy, in an old gray wing chair, could hear she kittens purring softly. He had the knife that he'd taken out of Merlin O'Dwyer in his right hand, blade pointing downward, and his feet were propped up on the chair's matching ottoman, which was minus most of its stuffing. He was remembering his wife and his children, and finding himself in awe of the fact that somewhere in his quickly atrophying gray matter his son's name still lurked. But he could not, for the life of him, fish it out. He could remember his daughter's name—it was Melissa, a name his wife had chosen, over his objections that it was too "fussy," but which he had slowly come to accept. But his son's name eluded him, and it made him angry.
He ran his thumb along the blade of the knife, opening a tiny slit in the skin. He studied the finger for a moment, but no blood appeared. Ivan, he thought suddenly. My son's name is Ivan! He chuckled low in his throat; it became a quick, gurgling cough.
"Ivan!" he grumbled, when his coughing fit finally ended. "Shit! Ivan!" His voice, a low tenor, had once been comforting, almost sweet, but over the years, and after countless gallons of lousy booze had snaked down his throat, it had become harsh and ragged; and now, the Calico cat, hearing it, leaped from the chest of drawers, one of its kittens still clinging to a nipple. The cat ran for the open front door, then through it. The kitten fell off halfway to the door and lay on the scarred old wood, mewing pathetically.
"Ivan!" Whimsy growled. His gaze settled on the kitten. "It's not 'Ivan,' cat!" The kitten's head bobbed about in a blind search for the source of the voice.
Whimsy chuckled again, and again it became a quick, gurgling cough, the kind that seems the distinct province of old, unhealthy men and of bums. And when it ended, a name floated up to him, as if it had been anchored under black water and the coughing fit had set it loose: The name was "William, Jr." and it made him angrier still. A loud, brittle curse erupted from his throat, which made the kitten mew more quickly, in panic. And then he let the knife fall over the arm of the chair, to the floor, buried his face in his hands and wept.
"I am an educated man!" he said into his hands, through the weeping. "I am an educated man!" And somewhere deep inside him, in some small, cluttered back room of his brain, he thought that that fact, the fact that he was educated, was very, very funny, because it really didn't make any difference now.
The kitten continued mewing. Whimsy continued weeping. At last the mother cat reappeared, approached the kitten very cautiously, sniffed it a couple times, picked it up by the scruff of the neck, in the time-honored manner of mother cats, and carried it back to the nest.
A half hour later, Whimsy pushed himself, with effort, out of the wing chair, went over to the dresser, peered down blankly at the mother cat and its kittens and said, "I wish I could tell you it's been nice." He left the room quickly, favoring his left leg—because of a touch of arthritis in his knee—and made his way out of the building.
He wondered about making it all the way to 181st Street, through Harlem, to the George Washington Bridge.
He wondered how long it would take him to walk to North Carolina.
He wondered if anyone there would recognize him after so many years.
And he wondered, most of all, why he gave a damn.