Pieces of Hate (21 page)

Because, for some reason, most people thought that sort of thing was horrible. Most people loved them, those vicious, hateful animals with eyes that always looked like they were scheming, plotting, planning something insidiously horrible.

He went into a little coffee shop on the corner of Laurel Canyon and Ventura, slid into a booth and ordered a bowl of Cream of Wheat and a cup of herb tea. He couldn’t eat much anyway because of his stomach, but especially not after that scene back there in Janna’s apartment; good Lord, what an ulcer-wrencher.

She, of course, never raised her voice. She didn’t need to. All she had to do was use that . . . voice, that quiet, cold voice as brittle as a sliver of ice.

“Really, I don’t see any point in this relationship continuing,” she’d said.

“Why? I mean, sure, there are problems, everybody has problems, but . . . we can work them out, right?”

“Not this problem. This is something fundamental, something too deep to be . . . worked out, or altered.”

“Well, tell me what it is and maybe I can prove you wrong.”

“You’re too full of hatred, Clyde. It’s ingrained in you. I’ve seen it, and I know it’s not going to change.”

“What do you mean, you’ve seen it? Have I ever raised a hand to you? Have I ever — ”

“When you were over here yesterday and thought I was in the shower, I happened to get a glimpse of what you did to Cotton.”

“To Cotton?” he asked, genuinely confused for a moment. Then he remembered: it was one of her three cats. In fact, it lay curled up on the floor just a few feet away, all white and fluffy, staring at him with its eyes half-closed. “Oh, that.”

“You kicked her. Hard. Knocked her halfway across the room.”

“Well, in case you hadn’t noticed, the damned thing had mistaken me for a scratching post and was trying to remove a major artery from my leg!”

“See what I mean? There you go. Defending yourself like that. Clyde, she meant no harm. She was just doing what comes naturally. In fact, she was most likely showing you affection. And besides, that wasn’t the first time that happened. And I’m sure it won’t be the last if you stay around here.”

“She was showing affection? Janna, these animals are predators! Do you know what comes naturally to them? Killing things and eating them, along with shitting in sand, and that’s it!”

“See, now you’re shouting, Clyde. You’re frightening them.”

They didn’t looked frightened to him. The white one, the Calico, the Siamese, all lined up there on the floor looking up at him, still and silent, almost as if they were guarding their mistress . . . waiting for him to make the wrong move, say the wrong thing.

He calmed himself, lowered his voice. “Janna, I told you how I feel about c-cats, how I’ve always felt about them. It has nothing to do with you, or with us. I can only promise to do my best in — ”

“I suppose you’re a dog lover,” she said with distaste.

“I never said I was a dog lover either, but cats . . . well, I explained all that to you, Janna. I thought you understood.”

“What I understand is this; you need therapy. And if you agree to get some . . . I’ll work with you. Otherwise, Clyde, I just don’t see any future between us.”

“You don’t see any future between us?” He’d stood from the sofa then and faced her. “Well, you know what I see between us? I’ll tell you what I see between us! Three four-legged fur-licking, furniture-ruining, litter-box-stinking, Goddamned cats, that’s what I see between us!” he’d screamed. Then he’d spun around, stormed out of the apartment and slammed the door so hard, he heard something fall and shatter on the floor a second later. He hoped that, whatever it was, it had landed on one of those fucking cats.

Cream of Wheat; like an eighty-year-old man, he was eating, not like a successful thirty-three-year-old, the vice-president of a very profitable sign company that had billboards all over Southern California advertising everything from cigarettes to movies to trips to Las Vegas. But he was a successful thirty-three-year old with an ulcer, and it had gotten a little worse for every cat owned by every woman with whom he’d ever been involved.

The waitress, a dumpy middle-aged woman with her hair dyed a glaringly artificial black, brought his order and he took a mouthful of the Cream of Wheat, swallowing it a bit at a time, hoping that even something that mild would not send his ulcer into a rage.

Something has gone very wrong.

He dropped the spoon and it clattered against the bowl, his eyes gaping as he looked around, trying to see if someone in either of the adjoining booths had said that. They were both empty.

Clyde reached up and rubbed his temples, closing his eyes tightly.

The voice had been in his head. Actually, it hadn’t been a voice so much as an inarticulate feeling that had passed through his head like a ghost, dragging those words — or, rather, the essence of those words — along with it.

He took a deep breath, rubbed his eyes and sighed, long and slow, deciding he was just upset, just angry and hurt and . . . and maybe Janna was right and he needed some therapy after all.

Dipping the spoon back into the mush, he tried once again, scooping it into his mouth.

How could it have happened?

The mush spewed from his mouth, spattering over the brown table and, for a moment, his eyes crossed, making the entire coffee shop ooze together as if it were melting.

The waitress rushed to his side. “You all right, sir?”

“Juh-just, um, I was — ” He coughed and wiped his mouth with a napkin.

“Choking?” she asked, bits of her red lipstick clinging to her large front teeth.

“Yes, yes, that’s all. I’m fine. And, uh, I’m very sorry, really.”

“No problem ’tall, I’ll just get a rag.” She was back in a moment, wiped up the mess, smiled readily and left him alone with his thoughts.

Clyde wasn’t sure he wanted to be alone with his thoughts.

He put a hand to the side of his head. He’d felt no pain, but there had been . . . something. In fact. it was very similar to the brief but shocking feeling he’d had when he’d fallen on that cat outside Janna’s apartment earlier.

But, of course . . . it couldn’t possibly have anything to do with that. No, it . . . couldn’t.

He just sat there for a while, listening.

Voices talked quietly. Two men at the coffee counter laughed with one another. Syrupy music played quietly over the P.A. The cash register beeped and chirped. From the kitchen, the sounds of a sizzling grill, pots and pans —

He took if from one of the others . . . killed him dead.

Do you think he knows what he has?

How could he? Impossible, impossible!

Clyde made a “Hhmph!” sound in his throat, clenched his teeth, leaned his head forward and held it tightly between both palms, thinking to himself, That didn’t happen, I just need sleep or a vacation or maybe just a drink or —

He looked up and saw that one of the men at the coffee counter was smoking. Clyde had given it up a couple years ago because of the ulcer, but a cigarette sure sounded good now. On shaky knees, he went to the man and asked, more timidly than he was used to hearing himself speak, “Do you think I could bum a cigarette, sir?”

The older man smiled, a few teeth missing, and said, “Sure. Hell, take a couple.” He also handed over a book of matches.

Clyde thanked him and returned to his booth, immediately lighting up with trembling hands. As he was taking his first drag in a long time, he looked down at the book of matches on the table and saw what was on the front: an advertisement for a revival of the play Cats. He reached down and turned it over.

The cigarette was wonderful, glorious, an alcoholic’s first drink after a decade of tenuous and miserable sobriety, even though it wasn’t his usual brand. He smoked it slowly, wanting it to last, and decided he would go out and buy a pack of Benson and Hedges menthols as soon as he left the coffee shop. Sure, he’d pay for it with a fire in his gut, but he deserved the treat. Hell, after all this, he deserved a lot.

Clyde lifted the cup of tea to his lips and began to sip.

He doesn’t know what it is yet but it scares him. He’s frightened.

He dropped the cup and it shattered. Tea splashed everywhere. Clyde’s head jerked to his left toward the window at the booth, because this time it was much more powerful, as if it were closer, as if someone were shooting it into his ear, that horrible feeling of wordless words and incoherent feelings and there in the window, sitting on the sill, its long tail moving slowly and gracefully back and forth, its body still as stone, was a midnight-black cat staring at him with frigid orange eyes.

Clyde threw himself out of the booth so fast and so clumsily that his arm slid over the table and knocked everything on it to the floor in a sharp clatter of glass and silverware, all the while staring at that black cat in the window, staring as its tail waved this way and that in dream-like slow motion and as Clyde stumbled backward clutching his mushy napkin, his back slamming against the wall right next to the men’s room, mouth open wide, lips pulled back to bare his teeth as if in a silent scream.

The waitress rushed toward him blustering, “Mister, just what is wrong with you? Am I gonna have to ask you to leave, or what, now, huh?”

He pointed at the window with the soiled napkin, at the black cat that had not moved an inch . . . that just continued to stare directly at him, straight into his eyes. His lips moved rapidly over his teeth, producing-incoherent blubbering sounds.

The waitress stamped out his smoking cigarette, which was burning its way into the garish orange and gold carpet.

“Mister, you’re just gonna have to pay your bill and go, you hear me?”

Clyde forced himself to calm down, took deep breaths. Closed his eyes so he couldn’t see the cat staring at him —

He’s noticed me . . . sensed me . . . he senses all of us.

— and tried to close his mind to whatever ridiculous, frightening things were happening to it and . . . eventually he mustered a smile for the waitress, fumbled for his wallet and tried hard not to shake as he opened it.

“I-I’m really suh-sorry about all that, I’m . . . well, I’ve . . . I’m on some new medication, see, and sometimes it’s . . . well, that’s not important, is it?” he chuckled.

But she didn’t chuckle with him. And neither did any of the people staring at him from their booths and from the counter. They didn’t even smile.

He pulled out a ten. “Here. For the bill, the mess, and for you. Sorry again.” He started to leave but spotted that cat again in the corner of his eye, still there in the window. He turned to the waitress again. “Is, uh, there another way out of here, by any chance?”

The waitress stared at him as if she’d seen his face on a Post Office wall. “Other end of the restaurant. Past the register.”

“Thanks.”

He left quickly. He didn’t feel like the walk to Sherman Oaks, so he caught the bus — not something he usually did, because he never needed to . . . he just didn’t want to be out and about at the moment — and as soon as he got inside his house, he spun around and locked his door, not knowing why.

It was a Saturday afternoon and he had nothing to do . . . now that he wasn’t going to be spending any time with Janna. He took a beer from the refrigerator — the non-alcoholic kind, thanks to his ulcer, but he’d take a colostomy bag for one really good drink right now — then plopped down on the sofa in front of the television, grabbed the remote and began to flip through the stations, hoping to find something that would take his mind off of . . . whatever.

He had a pretty good-sized house for just one person. Two bedrooms, two baths, a spacious living room decorated by some highly paid skinny guy named Lucien, a yard kept up by a well-paid gardener and a very large picture window through which Clyde could admire his yard as he sat in his living room.

His thumb hit the remote button until he finally found one of the news channels. He left it there. They were talking about Bosnia again, as they had been for so long. He didn’t listen, just looked at the ugly pictures and realized that there were others far worse off than he.

Then the newscaster appeared and said, “Now, with our Pet’s Corner, brought to you by Tender Vittles, here’s Peter Carmen.”

The picture switched to another man, smiling and blond and oh so well-kept. “For a long time, many have thought there are only two kinds of people in the world: dog lovers and cat lovers. And, for a long time, the dog lovers were in the majority. But that has been changing over the years. Cats have been growing steadily in popularity. But in the past year, that growth has taken a substantial jump. Right now, cats hold a twenty-two percent lead over dogs as the preferred pets among pet owners! That’s right, seventy-two percent of pet owners surveyed prefer cats over dogs. Sounds like an election, I know, but it’s more than that. With the growth of urban areas and the incredible population explosion, cats are easier to take care of because they are more independent and don’t need to be taken for walks through potentially dangerous streets. In fact, cats have actually come to be revered, not unlike the way they were revered by the ancient Egyptians, who actually worshipped them. They are revered now by more people than — ”

Clyde hit the remote so hard, he thought he might have broken it.