Степан Чепмэн: Revenge of the Calico Cat

After Turtle got out of school, he and his pal Snake took a walk through the garment district. They got endless enjoyment just from watching the people go by. They marveled at all the different kinds of stuffies who lived here in Plush City. Snake made mental notes of everyone they passed.

A sock monkey in steel-toed boots. A fairy ballerina with cellophane wings and a bright pink tutu. A spider in a lacy white bonnet with a fly in velvet knee pants. A king in ermine cape and gold foil crown, pushing a toothless tiger in a wheelchair. A little green man with a propeller-headed whatsitz on a leash. An Indian brave in a war bonnet with an eye-patched pirate on a peg leg. Plush City was like a Fourth of July parade every day of the year.

The sun sequin was still riding high in a cloudless sky. What a great place! Snake was so fucking glad she'd come here when she died.

Turtle and Snake wove their way through the sidewalk racks of the cut-rate doll clothing merchants. It was a sunny Friday afternoon in July of 1931. The pushcarts of the food vendors filled the air with the smells of roasted franks and hot pretzels. The kids passed the storefronts of the arm and leg sellers on Scrap Street between Rockabye and Velveteen, and all the little appliance repair shops and delicatessens and eye stores on the side streets.

They turned the corner at Nursery Avenue and Satin and walked east toward the three-story apartment block where Turtle lived with his mother. There was nothing much out front of the building — just some bare dirt and a sign that said NO loading. Turtle and Snake ducked down the alley where it was shady in the afternoon. Snake slapped an empty bottle around with the end of her green plush tail. Turtle tossed up bits of gravel and tried to hit them with a plank.

Up on the third floor, someone was playing a swing band record on a phonograph. A female trio sang the lyric in close harmony: "The gingham dog said Bow Wow Wow! and the calico cat replied Meow! The air was littered in an hour or so with bits of gingham and calico."

"Is Plush City part of the United States?" asked Snake.

"Beats me," said Turtle.

"I been asking people where they come from. Everybody comes from America, it seems like."

"What about the Chinks?"

"I ain't talked to any Chinks," said Snake. Then she heard Mr. Brownbear shouting on the second floor. "Hey, that crazy bear is talking to himself again. You wanna go spy on him?"

Turtle and Snake scurried up the fire escape and crouched in gleeful silence outside a kitchen window. If they peeked over the windowsill, they could see through a doorway into Teddy's den. Teddy was pacing up and down, flinging his arms around and ranting at the walls. The kids could only glimpse him, but they heard him loud and clear. "I bet you he breaks some furniture tonight," whispered Turtle.

"I bet you he breaks his old lady's head," said Snake. Everyone in the neighborhood knew about Teddy and Edna and their so-called fights.

Teddy Brownbear lived in a crummy sweltering apartment on the second floor. He was sitting in his armchair in his undershirt, boxer shorts, and socks and listening to a football game on his radio. He was also eating a bowl of popcorn and working on some cold bottles of brew. The wall clock said four.

Inside his fuzzy brown head, deep in his crushed velvet brain, Teddy was working up a grievance against his wife Edna Pinkbunny. Edna worked as a surgical nurse at the big uptown hospital. It wasn't right. She ought to be home taking care of her husband. Damned depression had everything turned around. On top of everything else, she'd be late getting home tonight. Teddy could sense it coming. A lot she cared, the bitch.

Teddy'd been out of work for more than a year, which gave him a lot of time to think about his ball and chain. He turned off his radio and paced around the den, kicking at the throw rugs and muttering to himself. He felt like kicking apart the furniture, but he couldn't afford that kind of indulgence. A man had to control himself. Like when you slapped your old lady around, you didn't leave marks on her face. Unless of course you intended to.

He thought about Edna’s face. That smug celluloid face of hers with the pert black nose and the wide acetate eyes with the little blue pupils inside that rattled when he shook her. Once he'd thrown hot coffee in that face, and she'd deserved it. Maybe tonight he'd mash her paw under that cut-glass ashtray. And if that whore upstairs called the police dogs again, he'd rearrange her face too.

Meanwhile, under the bathroom sink, Teddy's beloved hamster Fang was squeezing his fat mangy body through a gap in the wires of his cage. Fang was a vindictive wretch with bad breath and crooked teeth. He crept on the tips of his claws into the kitchen, staying under cover of furniture so as to sneak up on Cuddles. Cuddles was Edna's parrot, and a sickly specimen she was, living on her perch beside the Kelvinator. Her chief amusements were gnawing at her yellow plush claws with her yellow plush beak, pulling loose threads from her wings, and dry-humping her perch.

Cuddles caught sight of Fang and scolded, shuffling her claws from one end of the perch to the other and back again. Fang shinnied up the stand of the perch and snapped at her tail. Then he fell to the linoleum and landed on his head. Cuddles squawked feebly and groomed her tail.

Teddy threw a shoe into the kitchen. It hit the perch. Cuddles took flight and battered her head against the water-stained ceiling as she struggled to fly through it and escape. Fang raced madly to and fro along the baseboards, squeaking up at her. Teddy chuckled in his armchair. "Give her hell, Fang. It's good to have an interest in life." Fang scrambled up the grimy wallpaper and slid back down. He'd never learn.

Teddy turned to the kitchen. He thought he'd heard kids' voices. He threw down his bowl of popcorn, stormed into the kitchen, and thrust his head out the window. A couple of reptiles were hightailing it down the fire escape. "Get outa here!" Teddy shouted after them. "Ain't you got no better place to be?"

"All ya fadda's mustache!" Turtle yelled back.

"Go suck a lemon!" yelled Snake.

Teddy pitched a potted geranium after them. The pot exploded in the alley. Turtle and Snake ran west along Satin Street.

Teddy leaned on the windowsill. Above his head, music drifted from the open window of the dance instructor on the third floor. A phonograph was playing a record featuring the Lord Jellyfish Big Band and vocals by the Gopher Sisters. "The Chinese plate looked very blue and wailed, 'Oh dear, what shall we do?' But the gingham dog and the calico cat wallowed this way and tumbled that, employing every tooth and claw in the awfullest way you ever saw."

Teddy returned to his den and gave the ceiling a dirty look. Lazy slut, playing records all day and half the night. No consideration. He turned up his radio to drown out the music.

He eyed a kitchen chair with implacable hostility. He yearned to kick it to bits, just to relieve his aching heart. But Teddy was the kind of bear who kept control of himself. He would drink his beer and wait for Edna to get home.

A lavender plush octopus slithered past an out-of-business shoe store. He slid east on nervous tentacles, mumbling under his breath.

When T.B. was making a delivery or a pickup, he always walked. He never took buses, and he never even thought about a cab. Too easy to get jumped in a cab, and T.B. was a little guy, never much good with the rough stuff. He always walked, and he never took the same streets twice. Safer that way. He liked to play things safe.