Эд Макбейн - Privileged Conversation

He realizes he is nervously checking out the restaurant as she talks, trying to remember how many people he and Helen know here on the West Side, preparing a cover story in advance to explain why he is here with a young and beautiful girl while his wife is up there in the wilds of Massachusetts. He remembers all at once what Kate said that first day in the park, referring to the handkerchief she’d bloodied and offered to launder — Your wife would kill me — and wonders if she’d been fishing that day, trying to learn if he was available. Well, he’s flattering himself, for Christ’s sake. Why would anyone as beautiful as she is, as young as she is — well, twenty-seven, he’s just learned — why would anyone like Kate wonder whether a forty-six-year-old man, a man about to be forty-six, was married or single or divorced or whatever the hell? Besides, he’d been wearing the wedding band, just as he’s wearing it now, plain to see on the ring finger of his left hand — see, folks, I’m married, nothing fishy going on here, nobody trying to hide anything, I’m married, okay? So of course, she’d already known. She’d seen the ring, and she’d known he was married. Still, he wonders why that particular remark if it wasn’t a fishing expedition. Or maybe a warning. I know you’re married, mister, so no funny moves, okay?

“Where in Kansas?” he asks.

“What?”

“You said...”

“Oh, that was just an expression. Don’t you know the line from Wizard of ...?”

“Yes, of course. But I thought...”

“No, I’m not. From Kansas.”

“Then where are you from? You said...”

“Westport, Connecticut. But I’ve been living in New York since I was seventeen. Ten years last month, in fact. That’s when I got the job in Cats . Before then, I was studying dance in Connecticut. No wonder I’m still in that damn show. Where are you from?”

“Boston.”

“I thought you sounded a little like a Kennedy.”

“Do I?”

“A little.”

“Is that good or bad?”

“It’s good, actually. It’s a nice sound, that Massachusetts accent. Or dialect. Whatever you call it. Regional dialect, I guess. Anyway, I like it.”

“Thank you.”

“You promised to flatter me. Tell me about last night.”

He tells her how he’d been invited to see the show with a man he despised, someone whose wife is in his wife’s aerobics class, venturing to mention his wife, watching her eyes to see if anything shows there, but nothing does, and anyway, why should it? This is simply a Sunday brunch in broad daylight, a married man wearing his wedding band for all to see, two people who’d happened to share an unusual experience together, now sitting and chatting in the innocent light of the sun, nothing going on here, folks, see the ring, wanting to waggle the fingers of his left hand so the ring would catch the light of the sun and flash like a beacon to anyone entertaining suspicious thoughts.

He tells her all about how she’d captured his attention because she was so very good...

“Tell me, tell me,” she says, and grins again.

...perfectly capturing a cat’s, well, essence , he supposes one might call it, in a show that was otherwise, well, he hates to say this...

“Say it,” she says. “It sucks.”

“Well, there were things about it...”

“Name one,” she says. “Besides ‘Memory.’”

“‘Memory’ was very moving.”

“I played Sillabub in Hamburg. I got to do the other version of the song. The younger, more innocent version than the one Grizabella sings. In a sort of high, piping voice, you know? For contrast.”

“Yes.”

“But aside from ‘Memory,’ what else is there? It isn’t even a dancer’s show, you know, like Chorus Line or any of the Fosse shows when he was alive, which is odd because you’d think the very notion of cats dancing would inspire all sorts of inventive choreography. None of the dances seem to me like anything a cat would dance, do they to you? Do you have a cat?”

“Not now.”

“I have a cat, well, you’ll meet her, and believe me, if they allowed her to get up on that stage and dance, it wouldn’t be like anything we’re doing up there. It’s a shame when you think of it, the opportunities squandered...”

He is thinking about what she said not ten seconds ago, I have a cat, well, you’ll meet her , and misses much of her dissertation, or what sounds like one, sounds like something she’s said many times before to many other people, about the way cats naturally seem to be dancing whenever they move, the glides, the leaps, the turns, “Even in repose,” she says, “a cat looks like a dancer resting,” but he is thinking I have a cat, well, you’ll meet her , her green eyes unwavering as she leans across the table toward him, fervently intent on making her point, the reddish-gold hair falling loose about her face, he wonders why they didn’t make her a tawny cat, didn’t use her own hair and a rust-colored costume instead of dressing her in white like a virgin, and why the name Victoria, he doesn’t recall any Victoria in the Eliot...

“Was there a cat named Victoria in the poems?” he asks suddenly. “Excuse me, I didn’t mean...”

“That’s okay, I was just rattling on, anyway. When he talks about the names families give their cats, he gives Victor as an example, but not Victoria. And also, he mentions that Mungojerrie and Rumpleteazer live in Victoria Grove, which is an actual section in London, have you ever been to London?”

“Yes, many times.”

With my wife, he thinks, but does not say.

“But what’s interesting is that Victoria is the only straight name in the show,” she says. “All the other cats are given what Eliot calls their par tic ular names. Which he rhymes with perp endicular, by the way. Have you read the poems?”

“Yes.”

“Mediocre, right? Like the show. God knows why it’s a hit. Dress people up like cats, and you’ve got a hit, go figure, no matter how boring it is. Would you like to go to the crafts fair? When we’re finished here. Or do you have other plans?”

“No,” he says. “I have no other plans. Who’s Ron?”

“Ron? I don’t know. Who’s Ron?”

“In the program, you thanked...”

“Oh. That Ron.”

“You thanked your sister...”

“Bess, yes. Well, Elizabeth, actually.”

“...and especially Ron...”

“My God, did you memorize that dumb thing?”

“...for their support and encouragement.”

“Ron was someone I used to know.” Her eyes meet his. “Why?” she asks.

“I just wondered. I’ve never understood why performers thank people in the program notes...”

“It’s stupid, I know.”

“...sometimes even dedicate their performances to this or that person...”

“Absolutely idiotic. How can you dedicate a performance? Mom, Dad, I dedicate this next pas de deux to you. Unless my partner objects. In which case, I dedicate the entrechat .”

“And yet...”

“I know, I know, you surrender to the stupidity. Everyone else is thanking everyone in sight, you figure the people you know and love will be hurt or offended if you don’t thank them . They put that in the program when I rejoined the show in January. After the Miss Saigon tour ended in Detroit. If you liked me in a white fur hat, you should’ve seen me in a black wig and slanty eyes.”

“Was Ron in Miss Saigon? ”

“Well, yes, actually. He played the Engineer.” Her eyes meet his again. The Green Lantern’s eyes. Flashing across the table at him like a laser beam. “Why?” she asks again.