Гвен Купер - THEM! - A Story In Five Parts

Clayton, clearly laboring under the misapprehension that Fanny had invented some fascinating new game ( We’re running in pointless circles! Wheeeeeeeee! ) hippity-hopped after her, working desperately hard to keep up and make sure he didn’t miss out on any of the “fun.” I don’t know if Fanny thought that Clayton was chasing her, or if his presence simply egged her on, but the harder he pursued, the faster she ran. The moth trap still attached to Fanny’s tail bounced gaily between them, like a child’s pull-toy.

I knew that Fanny’s inevitable next move—once the futility of running in circles had fully revealed itself to her—would be to try to get back upstairs and under the bed. Accordingly, I stationed myself in front of the staircase and hunkered down like the catcher in a baseball game. Soon enough, Fanny came winging toward me. Upon seeing me waiting for her, she tried to make a last-minute swerve beyond the reach of my arms. But this time I was quicker than she was and—at last!—I scooped her up in my arms.

Shooing Clayton away with one foot, I cradled Fanny against my chest for a moment, both hands supporting her from beneath as I pressed my cheek against the top of her head and tried to slow the anxious pounding of her heart with the calmer rhythm of my own. “I’ve got you, Fanny,” I murmured. “I’ve got you, little girl. It’s all going to be okay.”

Gesturing Laurence toward the middle of the living-room rug, I carried Fanny over and sank slowly into a cross-legged position. Holding Fanny out at both arms’ length for a moment—the moth trap now dangling limply from her tail like a flag that’s lost its wind—I turned Fanny around and pressed her against my side, so that my hands were still supporting her beneath her chest and hindquarters, her head was wedged firmly beneath my elbow, and her backside with the sagging moth trap was facing toward Laurence, who was now seated across from me.

“I’m going to kind of squish her against my side, so that she feels a little safer and doesn’t see what’s coming,” I told Laurence. “And you are going to rip that wretched moth trap right off her tail.”

Laurence, his eyes passing over Fanny as she continued to squirm, looked dubious. “I don’t want to hurt her.”

“It’ll be fine,” I assured him. “Ready?” I pressed Fanny a bit more tightly against my side.

Laurence grasped the end of Fanny’s tail and, with agonizing slowness, began to peel it from the inside of the moth trap, one strand of fur at a time. Fanny struggled in earnest now, one of her hind claws raking through my shirt and into my skin. Although we kept her claws fairly well trimmed, she dug in hard, and I knew it would leave a nasty scratch.

Gritting my teeth against both the pain and Fanny’s tussling, I said to Laurence, “You have to rip it off in one clean shot, like tearing off a Band-Aid.”

“But I don’t want to hurt her,” he repeated.

“ She’s hurting me ,” I told him. “Just get it off already.”

Laurence’s hold on Fanny’s tail tightened, as did his grip on the moth trap in his other hand. He hesitated for a second and then, with one decisive tear, tail and moth trap were finally separated. I loosened my own grip on Fanny just a little, but that was all she needed to wriggle free. Racing back upstairs, I could hear the sound of her claws skidding across the floor above us as she once again retreated under the bed. I knew we wouldn’t see her again for the rest of the night.

When I examined the moth trap, I found a fuzzy black strip that Fanny’s tail had left behind but, fortunately, no skin and no blood. I, however, hadn’t fared as well. A few dots of blood from the scratch Fanny had given me seeped through my nightshirt. Laurence noted it, too.

“I’ll go get the alcohol,” he said, standing up and helping me to my feet.

“Rubbing or drinking?” I asked, hoping for the latter. And Laurence laughed, replying, “Why not both?”

By breakfast-time the following morning, Fanny and I were friends again. A good night’s sleep and the welcome aroma of food after her unplanned fast the day before (Clayton, it would appear, had eaten Fanny’s food as well as his own when she’d failed to show up for her meals) had done most of the work of restoring the balance between us. After her post-breakfast siesta, Fanny returned to stalking moths through the house. Laurence and I were pleased to note that their numbers were in a definite decline. And the retreat continued even after we disposed of the rest of the moth traps—which, we were forced to admit, hadn’t been nearly as effective a moth deterrent as Fanny was, anyway.

People with black cats are apt to refer to them as “house panthers.” It’s an epithet I’d certainly never apply to my roly-poly Clayton, crazy as I am about him. But in Fanny’s case, the comparison between her and her “big cat” cousins seemed apt: the precise symmetry of her lean muscles beneath her glossy black fur; the flawless grace and balance when she leapt from floor to bookcase; the hypersensitivity of the ears, eyes, and whiskers that didn’t miss a single thing that moved, crept, or flew in the terrain around her.

I realized, watching Fanny prowl through the house with as much unthinking confidence in her own prowess as any panther ever had, that the constant stream of sensory input and physical awareness—which made her such a ruthlessly efficient hunter—were also the root cause of the overload that occasionally made her spook a little too easily.

You couldn’t have separated the one from the other, couldn’t have changed the balance without throwing the entire mechanism off its axis. Without question, Fanny could be a pain in the neck sometimes. But she was our pain in the neck, which was precisely why we loved her as much as we did.

And she was still—as we recognized that laundry and pesticides would take us only so far—one of the best weapons we had in our ongoing assault against the moths.

3. Scene from a Lost Harold Pinter Play

ACT ONE – SCENE ONE

INT. GWEN AND LAURENCE’S THREE-STORY BROWNSTONE IN JERSEY CITY – A SUNNY WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON

LIGHTS UP ON DOWNSTAGE LEFT: GWEN sitting at a sleek black desk in front of her laptop computer. With one hand on the keyboard, another tapping on the desk, and her eyebrows scrunched as she gazes at the laptop’s screen, she’s obviously deep in thought. CLAYTON, a three-legged black cat, is splayed out on her lap.

LIGHTS UP ON ELEVATED PLATFORM, DOWNSTAGE RIGHT: LAURENCE has just sat down at an old wooden desk in front of a large desktop computer. As he arranges himself on the chair, FANNY, another black cat, eagerly leaps onto his lap and daintily makes herself comfortable. LAURENCE shifts to accommodate her as he turns his head toward the offstage door and shouts to GWEN, who is one floor beneath him.

LAURENCE: Hey! One of the cats threw up in the kitchen!

GWEN: Okay.

LAURENCE: Okay.

GWEN: And . . . ?

LAURENCE: You should clean it before it sinks into the tile and makes a permanent stain.

GWEN: Can’t you clean it? With all the moth mishegas I’m behind on my deadline.

LAURENCE: I thought you’d want to look at it first.

GWEN: Why would I want to look at it first?

LAURENCE: I don’t know . . . I thought you might want to check viscosity and breakdown.

GWEN: What does “viscosity and breakdown” even mean?

LAURENCE: It’s from that old motor oil commercial—remember those commercials?

GWEN [muttering]: You and your old commercials.

LAURENCE: What’d you say?

GWEN: I have to turn in this story to my editor tomorrow. Are you going to clean it or not?