“A first kiss is never as dignified as in your fantasies.” Rocky holds the receiver of Cat’s office phone lightly to her ear, laughing at whatever Larry has said in response.
Cat sits at the computer, pretending not to listen.
“You’re a wet kisser, darling. All tongue.” That laugh, wild and high.
Cat stiffens. Her typing speeds up; she can do over sixty words-per-minute now.
“Six o’clock.” Rocky hangs up and says to Cat, “Larry’s picking me up here. Can you believe, in all these months, he’s never seen my home?”
“Before you go,” Cat says, as Rocky moves dreamily toward to the office door, “could we take a minute to discuss something?”
“Larry’s madly in love with me. Connie was a genius to introduce us.”
“I’d like to take a week of vacation soon, if it’s okay with you. It has been almost six months, when we agreed I could —”
“I’ll never be a white bride again. Maybe this time I’ll wear... red!”
“I’d just like to take a little time —”
“Sleep a little late tomorrow, darling.” Rocky, at the door, turns around. “If Annie doesn’t have enough money to pick up my cleaning, give her something from petty cash. And someone should tip the delivery person from Lamar.” She is expecting the delivery of a two-thousand dollar dress she plans to wear tonight.
Cat swallows what has become a familiar lump of frustration. “Petty cash is almost empty.”
“Someone will have to go to the bank.”
“I’ll go during my lunch hour,” Cat says, capitalizing on the opportunity to underscore the sacrifice of her time. She flaps the calendar open to the first week in April. “Could we please discuss the dates for my vacation?”
“I need a vacation.”
“I’ve looked at your schedule and it’s pretty light in April. So this seems like a good week for me to be away.”
Rocky sighs. “Where are you planning to go?”
“Teddy and I can’t make any definite plans until we know the dates.”
Rocky’s mouth pinches at the corners. She returns to the desk to look at the open calendar. “Okay, that looks fine. Mark it in my personal calendar, too.”
“Thank you!” Cat feels a trill of elation at her small victory. She has her mind set on a week of inn-hopping in New England, and Teddy already said he’d take the time off whenever she could arrange her own schedule. “Also, Rocky, while I’m looking at the calendar, you never told me what to do about that celebrity auction. It’s coming up and they keep calling me.”
“I’ll think of something to donate.”
“Okay, I’ll stave them off. Oh, and Rocky, John called. He needs to set up another interview.”
“Find some time next week. Call him back for me, will you?”
The rest of the day passes quickly. When the doorbell rings just after six o’clock, Cat is in the dining room saying goodnight to Annie, lingering in the hope of catching a glimpse of Larry Drumm, celebrated playwright, in person.
Rocky comes running down the hall, calling, “I’ll get it!” She’s wearing the new red minidress with sheer black stockings and spiky black pumps.
Annie whispers what is obvious to Cat. “She’s too heavy for a dress like that.”
Rocky stands by the wall mirror next to the front door and gazes at herself. “How do I look?”
“Beautiful!” Annie says.
“I look sexy in red, don’t I?”
The bell rings again.
Rocky opens the door to a small, squat man with the tight-skinned gleam of someone who has been overhauled by plastic surgeons. A thin web of brown hair fails to hide the pinkish circles of hair plugs. His body looks lumpy in some places and lean in others, as if from botched liposuction. Cat can hardly believe her eyes. She has seen photos of Larry Drumm in magazines, and he looked nothing like the plasticy gnome standing in the doorway.
Towering over him in her heels, Rocky coos, “You look so handsome,” and touches a red-enameled fingernail to a gold button on his navy blazer.
“That dress,” he says in a nasal monotone that hardly reveals his meaning, but it’s definitely not a compliment.
“It’s new.” She stands back so he can get a better look.
He turns his attention instead to the living room, with its hot colors and skyline view. “Looks like a ritzy whorehouse.”
She laughs.
He smiles a tight non-smile, an unsmile that is worse than a frown. “We have a reservation for six-thirty,” Rocky reminds him, “so —”
He turns and walks out, not waiting for Rocky to finish her sentence, or acknowledging Cat or Annie, who hover in plain sight. Rocky grabs her coat and follows.
All the way home, Cat thinks about Larry Drumm. His plays are supposed to be funny, witty, quick, and maybe they are. Maybe in the theater his sensibility is effective. But just looking at him in person tells a different story. The man has faked himself nearly out of existence with all that plastic surgery. So much effort and he isn’t even beautiful. These people are beautiful, Cat thinks, looking at the unaltered graying sagging real people riding home at the end of the day. Bodies have slowed down, as all head up and down and across town toward whatever well-earned comforts await them. She thinks of Teddy and her day’s exhaustion begins to wane.
She ascends the subway at Astor Place and passes the big tilted cube, someone’s outsized abstract sculpture which moves slowly with any subtle breeze. Walking along St. Marks Place in the purplish twilight, among the bums and addicts and homeless and artists, she feels a surge of love for her corner of this city. Not Rocky’s glamorous Upper East Side corner, or the Upper West Side corner of her childhood, but her corner, downtown.
At Second Avenue, she stops to buy a bouquet of flowers, pink-speckled tiger lilies that the Korean salesman wraps in a cone of paper printed in green army camouflage. She cradles them in her arms and goes home, eager to tell Teddy the good news that they can now plan their long-awaited vacation.
The moment she walks through the front door, directly into the kitchen, she is enveloped in the rich aromas of Teddy’s cooking. A large soup pot on the stove is sending up steam. She walks over to it and looks in: Teddy’s homemade marinara sauce full of basil and mushrooms and onions and garlic. She gives it a stir with the long wooden spoon he has left on the counter.
“Teddy?”
“In here.”
The rest of the apartment is dark except for the light in Teddy’s small study, the third room in their railroad. He is seated at his desk, reading a library book. Cat walks in, flicking on lights as she goes, and stops in front of him. She hands him the bouquet. “Flowers for my Teddy bear.”
“Well well.” He flutters his eyelids in mock female delight, his beautiful pale eyelids fatigued from hours of reading. She knows he studies intensely during the day when she’s gone, and can see him relaxing upon her return, opening, becoming not Ted the scholar but Teddy her lover, her best friend.
“I’ve got a week off, the first week in April!”
“Hey, great! So we’ll do Vermont?”
“Vermont, New Hampshire, whatever. I can’t wait.”
“That’s good news.”
He fills a vase with water and arranges the flowers. His hair is thick and curly, the color of clover honey which is rich and dark and bright. Cat thinks his face has a kind of Renaissance look: high forehead, long straight pointy nose with finely chiseled nostrils, a wide mouth with a thin top lip and pouty bottom lip, and cool bluegray eyes. She stands behind him and wraps her arms around his middle. Considerably shorter than he is, she stretches up to kiss him.
“Ah, this is nice,” he says.
“I love you, Teddy.”
“And I love you.” They kiss.
“Aren’t you hungry?” he asks.
“Not yet.”
They move to the bedroom and undress each other. The familiarity of their naked skin is luscious as they roll together, body into body. At the moment of dare, Teddy withdraws and sits back, concentrating on conserving his excitement. Cat jumps up and runs to the bathroom, where she inserts her diaphragm. It’s a dangerous habit, starting unprotected then stopping at the edge.
Dinner is penne with the red sauce that has cooked to perfection over a long afternoon, and salad with Teddy’s homemade mustard-dill vinaigrette. Everything is delicious, as always.
“I’ll buy a book of bed and breakfasts tomorrow.” Cat reaches for a piece of Italian bread.
“I can look for something in the library,” he says. “It’ll be free.”
“But out of date. I’ll buy the book. We’ll split the trip.”
“Sounds good. There’s more pasta, want some?”
“No thanks, I’m full.”
He crosses the kitchen and refills his plate.
“So.” He sits back down with his second mountain of penne. “Vacation.”
“Vacation’s going to be great,” Cat says. “We really need it.”
“We do. It’ll be nice to just hang out together. One week, huh? When’s your next vacation?”
“I don’t know. Summer, I guess.”
“I’ve been thinking.” Teddy leans forward, resting his chin in the palm of one hand. “Why don’t you use some vacation time to do some of your own work? Get back to cartooning. That was the plan when you took this job, wasn’t it?”
“I know,” she says, sensing the looming shadow of disappointment she feels with herself every time she thinks of how little she’s accomplished since starting her real job which is starting to feel more and more unreal. “I want to. I need to.”
“You could always do some drawing on the weekends, you know. Or at night.”
“That’s easier said than done. There’s stuff to do on the weekends. And I’m so tired after work. And when would I spend time with you?”
“Don’t use me as an excuse.”
“That was a little harsh.”
“I didn’t mean it to be. What I’m saying is that it’s time to get back to work. We love each other... that’s not going to change. But we both have to reach for the whole balance now.”
“Teddy, are you feeling like you’re not getting enough accomplished because of me?”
“No, I’m doing what I need to do. But you’re not.” He pauses, then adds, “I’m worried that someday you’ll resent me if you look back and realize you stopped cartooning when we met.”
“I didn’t stop when we met. I stopped when I went to work full-time.” Her tone is more defensive than she’d intended. And she’s splitting hairs. With or without Teddy, sooner or later she would have ended up facing this very dilemma. “I guess I could try to carve out some time.”
“I think you should. Your work’s really interesting.”
The compliment nearly levitates her off her chair. “Thanks, but I’ve got a long way to go before I show it to —”
“Cat, your work is good. Don’t be such a perfectionist.” He spits out the word like a hard seed and stands up. “I know what you need — incentive. Come on, we’re going out.” He tosses his napkin onto the table and pushes back his chair.
“Now?”
“Right now.”
“Where?”
“You’ll see.”
They walk along Second Avenue, bundled up against the early-March chill. As they cross the street, Teddy stops and claps his hands together. “I’m going to introduce you to Isabel.”
“Who?”
“Isabel Rodriguez, she edits Freak.”
“That weird magazine?”
“She prints cartoons.”
“I haven’t drawn a cartoon for five months. Forget it, Teddy.”
“Exactly. You’re drying up, sweetie. If she doesn’t light a fire under you, no one will.”
“This isn’t the right time to show my work.”
“It’s the perfect time. Come on, let’s go see if she’s home.”
“You mean right now?”
“Why not?”
He takes her hand and pulls her along St. Mark’s Place until they reach a crumbling stoop next to Zen Sushi. One of the bells is labeled with an icy lettered freak. Teddy rings.
A window thumps open and a woman with spiky, bleached-white hair looks out. She is wearing red lipstick, and calls down, “Who the fuck is there?”
“It’s me!” Teddy calls up.
One corner of Isabel’s mouth curls. Her gaze lands on Cat. Then she nods once, goes back inside and closes the window. A few moments later the door buzzes open.
They climb to the second floor. The stairs are filthy and peels of paint seem to drip off the ceiling. The same lettering as on the bell downstairs labels her door, only bigger: FREAK. Teddy knocks and the door swings open.
Cat is surprised at how small and delicate Isabel appears. Hanging out of the window, she seemed tough, even a little scary. Well, she is a little scary, standing there with her spiky bleached hair and fire-engine red lips and black kimono and leopard slippers. But up close there is too much surface defense, as if she is trying to protect something breakable. Cat smiles and waits to be introduced.
Teddy and Isabel lean toward each other and touch cheeks.
“This,” Teddy says, “is Catharine Gold.”
“Come on in.” Isabel walks across the room and flips off the TV. Then she turns around and looks at Teddy. “Long time.”
Teddy sits on one of her wooden chairs and Cat stands next to him. Isabel sits on the couch, which is haphazardly covered with a zebra print cloth. She reaches for her pack of Camels on the battered wooden coffee table, slides one out and lights it.
“How long has it been?” she asks Teddy.
He rolls back his eyes in thought, looks at Cat, smiles.
They were lovers. Suddenly, Cat knows it. She swallows an impulse to bolt, along with spike of resentment that Teddy had the audacity to bring her here. What was he thinking?
Isabel nods. Her eyes wander away. She says, “So.”
“Listen, Izzy,” Teddy says, plunging right in. “Cat has some cartoons to show you. She’s good.”
Isabel forces a flatline smile. Then she shrugs. “All right. Let’s see ’em.”
“They’re at home,” Cat says, feeling helpless, somehow betrayed in a way she can’t quite put her finger on.
“I just wanted to stop by to introduce you. She’ll bring the cartoons over tomorrow evening.”
Isabel shakes her head. “Tomorrow’s no good. Gotta meet with the printer at six. Thursday morning, late, like around noon.”
“No good,” Teddy says, knowing Cat’s workaday schedule limits her to nights and weekends. “How about Saturday?”
Isabel shrugs; evidently, that means okay. The deal is done, and they leave with as little fanfare and as much awkwardness as when they arrived.
Cat and Teddy are silent all the way home, she hot with anger, he bright with some inexplicable pride. But as the hours slip by, Cat decides Teddy is only trying to help. He loves her. He wants her to be happy. And he must know as well as she does that, once the bloom of their romance fades, her happiness will rely as much on her work as on him. She spends the next few nights trying not to worry about what Teddy’s and Isabel’s relationship had once been, or how terrifyingly vulnerable she will feel showing her cartoons to a stranger, an editor-stranger, and focuses instead on which cartoons to bring to the meeting.
Teddy says, “Just bring your best work,” and Cat says, “But what is my best work?” and Teddy says, “You know what your best work is, Cat, don’t get stupid on me now.”
Stupid! But he’s right. She has entered a kind of frenzied confusion at the thought of facing Isabel with her work. It is only Freak, she tells herself, an insignificant offbeat journal that probably no one even reads. And it is only some paranoid punk chick who is probably more afraid of Cat than Cat is of her. But still, her nervousness builds as Saturday arrives.
Having assumed that Teddy planned to go over with her, she is surprised when he doesn’t make any move to get ready to come along. He sits hunched over his desk in the still posture that has become familiar, and tells her he is studying.
“Can’t you take a break?”
He leans back in his chair and looks at her. “Sweetie, go.”
“Teddy —”
“You don’t need me to hold your hand.”
“I don’t know why you started this.”
“Go!”
She grabs her folder and marches out.
But she isn’t really angry at Teddy anymore. She has solved her irritation with the gradual understanding that he really is trying to help, not humiliate, her. He made a connection for her — everyone says you need connections to get anywhere — and he only expects her to take advantage of it. She knows what he is doing: daring her to strike a balance between practicality and aspiration, to walk the walk, and handing her a moment for action. So he and Isabel used to be lovers. So what? She publishes cartoons.
She marches up the crumbling stoop and rings the bell. This time, Isabel doesn’t pop out of the window to look, she simply buzzes Cat up.
The front door is cracked open, and when Cat knocks, Isabel calls, “Come in.”
She is sitting at a desk, which is really just a plank of wood resting on two rickety sawhorses. The desk is piled with papers and books. Two Rolodexes and a telephone totter on top of piles. Isabel wears tight faded bluejeans, a black turtleneck, and a pair of black thick-rimmed glasses. She has on the same leopard slippers as the other night and her lips are just as sizzling red, redder even in the bright winter daylight.
As Cat walks in, the phone rings, and Isabel speaks quickly and bossily with the caller. She hangs up without a goodbye.
“So let’s see,” she says.
Cat hands over the folder, which Isabel lays on a heap of papers and briskly opens. She lights a cigarette and smokes deeply as she turns over the cartoons one by one. There is no expression on her face. Cat doesn’t like it. Not one bit. She feels violated, invaded, judged.
Isabel flips back to the beginning, separates out two individual cartoons and squashes out her cigarette in an overflowing ashtray.
“I can’t pay you,” she says.
“You like them?”
“Yeah, not bad. Where else do you publish?”
“Nowhere.”
That tight smile reappears on Isabel’s face. “You work full-time?”
“Well, just lately. I used to mostly just do this.”
“Trust fund run out or something?”
“No,” Cat says, swallowing a sense of shame she doesn’t deserve. If Isabel thinks she’s a dilettante, why take the cartoons? “I worked part-time, and Teddy helped me for a while.”
“So I guess it must be love.”
“Guess so,” Cat says. And she knows that not only have Teddy and Isabel slept together, but she was in love with him.
The prospect of having two of her cartoons published — if only in Freak, and by a woman who is jealous of her and possibly holds a grudge — is more satisfying than Cat had imagined. It is at once an exciting and vulnerable feeling to know that her cartoons, her art, will soon be seen by others. This small accomplishment propels her through a blizzard of similar days. She feels a new wave of inspiration, which at times sweeps over her at the office when she is supposed to be concentrating on All Things Rocky.
When the inspiration is strong enough she gives in to it, pushes aside her piles of work, sets a blank sheet of paper on her desk and begins to draw. But she finds that her subjects have changed. Now, instead of siphoning stories of other people’s lives from newspapers, she finds plenty of material in her own life. A drawing juxtaposing a busty big-haired celebrity boss and mousy secretary comes out especially well, and without planning to, she features the two pseudo-women in a comic strip she calls Max & Min: 2 Sides to Every Woman.
On one such morning, minutes into a detailed frame featuring a close-up of the inside of the celebrity’s wide-open mouth, Cat realizes that John Paglia has been standing next to her desk, observing her. A jolt of surprise passes through her like an electric shock. She covers the drawing with a blank page.
“You draw?” he says.
“I had a few spare minutes. I’m really not supposed to be doing this here. Sorry.”
“Don’t worry, I won’t tell her. You’re an artist?”
“Cartoonist.”
“Same thing, right?”
“Are you here to see Rocky? Because she’s out for the morning.”
“I’m just dropping off a disk.” He tears at the Velcro of a large outer pocket of his blue down jacket, reaches in and pulls out a disk. He places it on the desk. “What’s your cartoon about?”
“Don’t know yet,” she lies. She knows exactly what it’s about — the unbeautiful inside of a greedy celebrity and her prime feed: the people around her. “I just felt like doing it. I guess I’m free drawing.” Her smile is exaggerated, to remind him of the silliness of his own term.
“Touché. I know I was laying it on thick, but it really is a good idea.”
“I guess so.”
“Which?” he asks. “Laying it on thick or free writing?”
“Both. But you have to do that with Rocky, she needs tons of affirmation.”
“Well, I’m used to the star mentality from my days on Rising Tides. Everyone’s a prima donna on the soaps, you get used to it.”
“So you don’t really believe all that stuff about free writing?”
“Actually, I do believe it. I started out as a fiction writer, you know, in college. I thought I was going to be the next Hemingway.”
“Who doesn’t?”
“And you were going to be the next Gary Trudeau, right?”
“I still am,” Cat says, surprising herself.
He lets loose an enormous smile. “Of course. So anyway.” They laugh together. “I used to practice free writing to get my juices flowing before I sat down to write the Great American Novel which I never wrote in the end, then eventually I just did free writing as therapy. It’s amazing how well it works. I used to sit in my office at the network, in fact, just like you are now, stealing a few minutes.”
“So you really won’t turn me in?”
“Not a chance. I’m a freelancer, I know my place.”
“Well, you sure know how to work Rocky, I have to hand it to you. And to be honest, this book of hers has been keeping her busy, which means she doesn’t hang around in here so much, which means I’m less harassed. So thanks.”
“We should talk some time, I mean about Rocky. I should interview you. What do you say?”
“Me?”
“Well, I’ve been interviewing other people in her life, and you’re a people in her life, right?”
“I guess I am. You should talk to Annie, too.”
“I will. I’ll take you to lunch or something, but we shouldn’t talk here.” He winks.
“Deal.”
“So, how serious are you about your cartoons?”
“Serious, I guess. I’m getting two published soon in this little journal I’m sure you never heard of.”
“Called?”
“Freak.”
“I think I’ve seen it. Isn’t it one of those ultra hip magazines they have down at the St. Marks Bookstore? I used to lurk around down there when I felt like a piece of human garbage, like I was selling out everything I ever thought was true about myself. I used to stand there and leaf through all those underground journals because they’re the polar opposite of soap operas. But the truth is I never bought one. I never even read one. In the end, I’d just go home and watch TV.”
“I don’t think anyone reads them, but it’s my first credit, so I’m happy.”
“You should be, those things are stepping stones. You live down there?”
“Sixth Street. I live with my boyfriend. You?”
“Upper West Side with Maria, my dog, and the leftovers my ex-wife called ‘solid furniture’ when she moved out with all the good stuff.” He smirks. “I should get going, I’ve got an appointment to have a corn removed from my toe.”
Cat laughs.
“I do! What’s so funny?”
“Sorry, it was just the way you said it. You have a wicked sense of humor, don’t you, buried under that salesman thing you do?”
“Salesman thing?” That smile, big and toothy and unembarrassed. “No, you’re right. But you have to have a sense of humor in this biz.”
“I’ve been wondering, is this your first celebrity bio?”
“It’s the first one I’ve actually put down on paper, but when I was at the network I wrote those diva bios in my head twenty-four hours a day. They ran through my mind like movies.”
“TV movies?”
“TV movies-of-the-week, multipart, the whole shebang.”
A few weeks later, Teddy comes home with an armful of Freaks and a big bouquet of lilies.
“Here it is!” He drops the magazines onto the kitchen table. “You’re on pages seven and ten.”
Cat flips right to her cartoons. “I don’t believe it! Do you think anyone will see them?”
Teddy shrugs. “Sure.”
“You must have spent a fortune on these. Isabel said she could only give me two free copies.”
His face is pink from the chilly early spring. He yanks off his jacket and tosses it over the back of a chair. “It cost me nothing. Except the flowers — I paid for them. But Izzy gave me all these free.”
“Izzy?”
He unzips his jacket. “I guess I’ve got charisma and you’ve got talent.”
“When did you see her?”
“Just now, on the street. I bumped into her and went up for a beer. I asked for some extra copies and she gave me these.”
“She just gave them to you? She doesn’t seem like the most generous person in the world, she’s —”
“Are you’re getting your period or something?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Just let it go. She gave me these and that’s the end of the story.”
“You’re wrong, by the way,” Cat says. “I’m not upset because I’m getting my period, though I am expecting it any minute, but that’s not the point — and while we’re on the topic, I hate it when you default to that. It’s Isabel, there’s something about her that disturbs me, and I just don’t see —”
“Let’s just drop it, okay?”
Cat doesn’t like the feeling that’s pulsing between her ribs. Suspicion, or jealousy, she isn’t sure, but it’s something new. She decides she better get to know Isabel, befriend her, wedge herself between them before they get too close again.
So on Saturday morning, her period now three days late, Cat shoves five cartoons into her folder and goes over to Isabel’s, who, she has come to learn, rarely goes out before two o’clock.
This time, Cat stands right behind her as she goes over the cartoons.
“Okay, this one.” Isabel pulls one out. “The others you can still work on.” She closes the file and hands it to Cat.
Cat smiles. “Busy for lunch?”
“Today?”
“The sushi place downstairs has a lunch special.”
“I don’t usually go out for lunch.”
“My treat.”
“Well, I guess I could. It’ll be tax deductible, you know, ’cause it’s a working lunch.”
They go downstairs and share a tiny square table shoved against the wall of Zen Sushi.
“Thanks for giving Teddy all those copies of Freak, that was nice of you.” Cat bites half a California roll.
Isabel pinches in one side of her mouth and Cat sees that she has a deep dimple. “Yeah, well, I’m not going to make a habit of it. He’s a little hard to say no to, you know? I was sort of in a rush when he came over.”
Is this what Cat was looking for, a rift in their stories? Teddy told her they had bumped into each other on the street.
“Well, thanks,” Cat says. “I’m sending them to my family. They love Teddy. They all think it’s really great he introduced me to you, and Freak, I mean.”
“Great,” Isabel says.
“Teddy’s behind me.”
“The thing is,” Isabel peers cautiously at Cat. “About Teddy, I mean. The thing is he’s a man.”
“I know that.”
“I like men,” Isabel says, “but I wouldn’t trust one, and I wouldn’t depend on one.”
“Why not?”
“How old are you?”
“Twenty-five.”
“I’m thirty-one. I used to be dumb, too. Everyone was, I guess.”
“Dumb?”
“Listen, you gotta live your own way. All I’m saying is we all make the same mistake early. We lose ourselves just to love someone. It’s a luxury, love. You gotta pay for it. And the price can be too high. The thing about feminism people forget is that it’s not just about day care and sharing the vacuuming. Jeez, look around. How many men do I know who moonlight as rapists?”
“Rapists?”
Isabel shakes her head quickly. “Not literally. I’m talking about violence, you know, all kinds of violence. I mean, it can be something invisible like knocking down self-esteem.” Isabel stares at Cat, and Cat stares back, confused, helpless, excited. “I mean,” Isabel says, “I fuck men, I even like them, and damned if I don’t fall in love again. But I’ll tell you no man ever stood behind me who didn’t stab me in the back.”
“What about women? Don’t women betray you sometimes?”
Isabel’s nostrils flare. “Yeah, sure, sometimes.”
“I think maybe you’re seeing things too black-and-white.”
“Listen, all I’m saying to you is that’s the way it is. Don’t get fooled, is what I’m saying. Don’t lose your self.”
Cat feels ashamed and she doesn’t know why. She doesn’t understand what Isabel is talking about, not really, though she wants to.
“I’m not telling you to turn away from Teddy. I’m only saying we all have to watch our backs, on the streets, and at home too. Even at home.”
But at home, Cat wants to say but can’t think of how to explain it so Isabel will believe her, at home is where I’m loved. What she says is, “I think I can trust Teddy.”
“’Course you can. At least, you have to. All I’m saying is there are pros and cons to everything, even love, and don’t think you’re gonna get off without the cons.”
The waiter whizzes by and drops their bill on the table. Cat hoists her purse up from where she has slung it across the back of her chair and takes out fifteen dollars. She puts the money on top of the bill and weighs it down with the salt shaker.
Isabel pushes her empty plate away and leans forward. “I’ve been through all this with Teddy, and he even agrees.”
“What do you mean? Been through what?”
“I’ve told him how it is for us, you know, for women. It’s no great revelation. He’s a smart man, he knows, but....”
Isabel hesitates, and Cat says, “What?”
“Nothing, never mind, I’m just blabbing.” Isabel smiles, a broad friendly smile that strikes Cat as strange for someone who is so guarded and solemn. “If I couldn’t be honest, like, if I didn’t make a commitment to saying what I think whether I’m right or wrong, then I never would have started Freak. You know?”
“Yeah, I think I understand that.”
They leave the restaurant and stand out on the street in the cold overcast early afternoon. Isabel’s threadbare black coat hangs open.
“Thanks for lunch,” Isabel says.
Cat shrugs. “No problem.”
“Sorry if I upset you. But listen, maybe it isn’t so bad to get upset about things every now and then, right?”
“Right.”
“Good cartoon. Come around when you have some more.” Isabel walks slowly up the stoop and lets herself into the building with her key.
Cat isn’t exactly sure what Isabel was getting at, but she obviously doesn’t trust Teddy. Her vague warnings feel like insults. Her words hurt, poke wounds Cat hadn’t even noticed were there. And now, walking along, skimming the surfaces of Isabel’s words and not wanting to go deeper but wanting to, needing to, hoping never to, but understanding that she will have to, she reaches home without noticing her surroundings. She had completely miscalculated the danger Isabel poses. Cat doesn’t understand Isabel at all, yet Isabel claims to understand her. And how, Cat wonders, how has she gotten through to Isabel with her cartoons? What is her own work saying that Freak understands and she herself does not?
When Cat gets home she finds Teddy in the kitchen mixing up a batch of tuna. “Hey there, pussycat. Hungry?”
Cat shakes her head. “Went out to lunch.”
“Alone?”
“With Isabel. I brought her more cartoons.”
“Izzy went out for lunch? Did she take the cartoons?”
“One.”
He mounds tuna on a slice of bread and covers it with another slice, then cuts the sandwich diagonally. “She’s a killer, huh?”
On Monday morning, Cat rushes in to work ten minutes late and goes straight to the bathroom with her bag from the drug store. She takes out the early pregnancy test and reads the directions. As instructed, she holds the little plastic wand in her stream of urine, then prepares to wait the full four minutes for a result: a pink circle for positive, a blank window for negative. But in less than a minute the bright pink bull’s-eye appears.
Pregnant.
She goes to her office, feeling as if she suddenly inhabits a different world. She sits down, and only after a moment does she notice that on top of her desk is a pair of Rocky’s shoes, neon blue pumps. Strangely, in Cat’s daze, their presence does not seem unusual.
Maybe she could talk to Rocky? She’s a smart, mature woman, despite her faults. And she was a pioneer 20th century feminist; she has given talks on issues like single motherhood and the option of abortion. Cat gets up, walks down the hall to Rocky’s study and knocks on the door.
“Come in,” Rocky says.
“Do you have a second?”
“I have many seconds.” Rocky leans back in her chair, where she has been writing pages of her memoir. Yellow sheets covered in loopy writing are scattered across her desktop. “I have hours and years. I have a lifetime.”
“What I mean is, Rocky... I’d like to talk.”
“Sure.” She swivels in her chair to present her full attention. Cat sits opposite, on the couch, and tells her about her pregnancy.
“And I just don’t know what to do,” Cat finishes. “I feel really torn. How will I support a baby all on my own?”
“You can’t,” Rocky says. “That’s the conundrum we face. Day care sucks, it’s too expensive. Men can’t be counted on. And if we have our unwanted babies, their needs suffocate us.”
Listening to Rocky’s well-intentioned advice, Cat realizes that she is talking to a woman who is a single mother and yet doesn’t have a clue what a woman like Cat, someone with an average life, faces. As Rocky goes on, Cat wishes she hadn’t sought Rocky’s counsel because it isn’t helping. It can’t help when the conversation is carried out over such a vast divide.
“End it,” Rocky says, regaining Cat’s attention. “Abort it. Liberate yourself. That’s what we fought for back in seventy-three.”
“I’ll think about it,” Cat says. “Thanks, Rocky.”
“Any time.” Rocky smiles. “By the way, I left you my shoes. I think they gave me the fungus. You can give them to the charity auction people.”
It sounds so wrong that Cat can’t answer at first, then manages: “But if they gave you the fungus, maybe you should throw them away.”
“They’re expensive shoes, and they were mine. Someone might buy them.”
“Well, okay.”
“I want to dictate a letter to go with them.”
Cat nods. She finds a pen and a pad of paper on the desk, and sits down next to Rocky. She can feel her heart rapidly sinking. She can’t do this now, can’t send out infectious shoes to people in need. Can’t take dictation. She needs to think. It was a dumb idea to even consider trying to talk to Rocky about her own problems. Rocky Love, that inspirational icon, no longer exists — and maybe never did.
Rocky begins to dictate: “Don’t step on my blue suede shoes was always a favorite song of mine, and even though these blue shoes aren’t suede, they are donated to your important cause with true feeling. For these are my favorite shoes, and only with sorrow do I part with them.”