Эд Макбейн - Privileged Conversation

Who out there might misinterpret any innocent move she makes?

Any innocent look that crosses her face.

She is happy for the white makeup.

It hides her from him.

She feels naked in the tight white costume.

Who out there will try to touch her?

Who out there is the one who thinks he owns her?

You know that you are mine, I hope ...

Who out there is waiting for her to crouch at his feet?

Kneel beside me and let me touch your fur .

There is a moment in the show when she comes down off the stage — during the “Macavity” number — comes swiftly down the side ramp on the right of the theater, crawls through the wide space in front of row K, and then crouches alongside the aisle seat, sits up, seemingly detecting a human presence, seemingly startled, jerks her head around and looks directly into the face of whoever is sitting in that seat, her green eyes wide. The moment is literally that. An actor’s moment, but an actual moment as well. She is off again at once, scampering onto the stage again, gray-white tail twitching.

But today she glimpses from the corner of her eye the face of the man sitting in that aisle seat. It is a thin pale face, the deep-set eyes a dark glowering black.

After the show, she asks the dance captain if it would be okay for her to stay out of the audience for a while.

“What do you mean?” he asks.

“Not go down in the audience.”

“Why?”

“Somebody’s bothering me out there,” she says.

“What do you mean, bothering you?”

“Some creep.”

“Bothering you? How? ”

“I’ve been getting letters,” she says. “Can’t we just work around it? Nobody’ll miss me out there, believe me.”

“Change the choreography? How can I...?”

“Please,” she says. “I’m asking you. Please.”

The dance captain looks deep into her eyes.

“Sure,” he says.

That night, from where she is standing stage left, waiting for a music cue, she locates the aisle seat.

A fat woman in a bright purple dress is sitting in it.

The letter is delivered on Tuesday morning.

The letter is delivered to her home address.

She desperately wishes she could talk to David.

But it is nine days since he last called, and he won’t be back in New York till next week — if he’ll be back in New York — and a lunatic now has her home address.

She wishes next that she could talk to Jacqueline Hicks, but of course this is the month of August and every fucking psychiatrist in the city of New York is away at the beach or in the mountains.

This is Lost Weekend .

This is Ray Milland in the reruns she’s seen on television, frantically trying to find an open pawnshop on Yom Kippur.

She goes to an open bike shop instead.

Rickie Diaz is changing a tire when she gets there, wearing much the same outfit he had on when she bought the bike. Red nylon shorts with a white nylon tank top this time, the same numeral 69 on the front of it. In blue this time. Same bulging pectorals, biceps and triceps, same tattooed head of an Indian chief in full feathered headdress on the biceps of his left arm. Plus ça change , Kate thinks, perhaps because she, too, is wearing the same outfit she’d worn that day David came here with her to help pick out the bike. Green shorts and orange shirt, white socks and Nikes, plus c’est la même chose . Rickie’s shiny black hair is pulled to the back of his head in a ponytail and held there with the same little beaded band he was wearing the last time she saw him, and took his number, and told him she might give him a call someday. Because a girl seeing a married man never knows how long it might last, right, David? Where the hell are you, David?

“Well, well, well,” Rickie says, “look who’s here,” and rises from his squatting position to shake hands with her.

Well, well, well .

I see little Kathryn is trying to avoid me .

“Can I take you to lunch?” she asks.

“Let me lock up,” he says at once.

He reads the letters silently and thoughtfully.

“Your lord and master, huh?” he says.

“Yeah,” she says.

“Where’d he get that idea?”

“A weirdo,” she says, and shrugs.

“Must be,” Rickie says, and continues reading. “Who’s Victoria, anyway?”

“That’s my name in the show. The character I play.”

“Darling Victoria Puss,” Rickie says, and nods.

“No, just Victoria.”

“I mean, that’s what he calls you here.”

“Yeah.”

“And Sweet Victoria Puss.”

“Yeah.”

“Whose coat is so warm.”

“Yes.”

“Miss Open Pussy.”

Kate nods.

“I guess he likes that word, huh?” Rickie says.

“Well, it’s... Cats , you know. The show.”

“Oh, sure, I realize.”

He keeps reading through the letters.

“This guy ought to have his mouth washed out with soap.”

“Tell me about it.”

“Cock-tease, wow.”

“Well, he’s nuts, you know.”

“Sure sounds that way.”

“Well, obviously.”

“This kind of thing ever happen to you before?”

“Never.”

“Boy.”

“What scares me...”

“Sure, he knows where you live.”

“Exactly.”

“Must’ve followed you home or something.”

“That’s what I figure.”

“Have you gone to the police?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Well, for one, I don’t know who he is.”

“But that’s their job, isn’t it? Finding out who he is?”

“I guess so.”

“But you don’t think so.”

“I just don’t know if they’d even bother with something like this. It isn’t as if he’s threatening me or anything.”

“It isn’t as if he’s exactly stable, either.”

“He does sound a little nuts, doesn’t he?”

“A little?”

“I guess I will call them. If he doesn’t quit.”

“What makes you think he’ll quit?”

“Well... I have this idea.”

“Yeah?”

Rickie Diaz has been cleared with the night-shift doorman and when he asks for Kate Duggan after the Wednesday night show, he is immediately allowed entrance to the theater and told where her dressing room is. He stands looking somewhat embarrassed and awed as she introduces him to the other kids, all in various stages of feline undress, using his full proud Puerto Rican name, Ricardo Alvaredo Diaz, as she learned it yesterday while outlining her brilliant plan to him. Rickie has now seen the show from a house seat provided and paid for by Kate, from which sixth-row-center vantage point he alternately watched the prowling cats on stage and checked the house for any male who seemed too interested in the particular cat in the white costume. As they come out of the Seventh Avenue stage door at ten-fifty that Wednesday night, hand in hand and trying to look very lovey-dovey, Kate scans the men waiting on the sidewalk for the performers to come out. Most of them are holding autograph books. One of them is carrying a flash camera.

Rickie is wearing jeans and a long-sleeved white shirt detailed with an embroidered parrot in red, yellow, orange, and green, a gift from his uncle in Mayagüez, he tells her later. Kate has asked him to look casual tonight because she herself is wearing what she customarily wears to and from the theater in the summertime, just jeans and a T-shirt, sometimes with a sweater if it’s cool, which this summer shows no sign of becoming. So she’s pleased that Rickie looks not like a theatergoer but like someone who might just possibly be her big, tattooed, longhaired, bulging-muscled boyfriend, which is just what he’s supposed to look like. To reinforce this notion, she reaches up to touch his cheek the moment they step out onto the sidewalk, kisses him quickly, says, “I’m starved, honey,” and loops her arm through his as they begin walking uptown.