At the end of a night, around midnight, (jazz title) I'd head back up Westland Ave to my apartment. I no longer had to struggle quite so much to afford it. The scene when I opened the door was ever shifting. My two roommates provided their own level of entertainment. The shifts in the landscape were swift in the sophomore year, best told, as I have remembered them, as a series of vignettes.
One night, I opened the door to find that Yoshi had brought home a date. He had big plans, but by the time I got in at midnight, he'd hit the skids. I walked down the hall to my room, taking off my autumn (first semester) coat and brushed by Yoshi as he stumbled to the bathroom. Yaaak! The perfect greeting, a puking roommate. A peek in the kitchen revealed the cause. A half empty gallon of rotgut. It was that red colored Burgundy shit that I hated more than anything. Back past the bathroom, I tried to put in a good word. I aped Van Dyke, who I had just gotten to know:
"Condolences."
Yosh put up a wan hand, but then, yaaaak. Continuing to my room, I put down my coat and was about to settle down on the bed when it suddenly dawned on me that if Yoshi Akiwa had gotten drunk (on a whole half gallon of faux Burgundy), he had to have help. There had to be someone else in the apartment. I headed for his bedroom. I found her sitting primly on the edge of his bed. She was a darling woman, with straight blond hair and a hunched over posture that meant only one thing: a double reed player. She was traveling without her axe, so I could only hazard this as a guess.
"Top of the morning to you, I'm Cal."
She put out a limp, fair hand.
"Harmony."
"You're a music student I gather?"
"BCM, Bassoon."
"Your date is indisposed."
"So I hear. He went over the top. I'm still stuck at the bottom. Can I trouble you to walk me back to the dorms?"
"Of course. I'd be delighted."
No sign of Stewart. He stayed out late, cruising for a bruising. We suited up in my bedroom, and Harmony looked around at my spartan life.
"You have a ton of books."
"I like to read."
"Me too. What are you reading now?"
"I'm mired in textbooks for school. Piston, Hindemith, Creston, Dallapiccola."
"These are all books by composers. Are you one of those?"
"Yep. Busted."
"No, no. I think it's very cool. I would have nothing to play without the likes of you."
"Perhaps I should write you a bassoon piece."
"That'd be great..."
"...as long as I don't have to learn to play it."
"It's a specialty. It takes a lot of hot air."
Down the hall and out the door into the cool night air. Her breath in the chill was mingling with mine as we walked and talked. We were the only signs of life.
"Thanks again for being such a perfect gentleman."
"Thanks again for the opportunity to accompany a fair young maiden home."
"You are...a very funny man, Mr. Hunter."
"I get even funnier when I'm warmed up."
"What does it take to warm you up?"
"Just a little hot air."
"A specialty of mine...say, all too quick, here we are."
"Yes here we are."
"It's too cold to stand out here."
For a second, I thought she was going to invite me in. After all, she'd been expecting some wild flute player action, and had been left at the altar, so to speak. Instead, she kissed me on the neck.
"I've enjoyed our little chat, Cal. I really hope to see you again. Soon."
"I'll look for you in the halls of higher learning."
As I walked back to the scene of my roommate's Waterloo (last seen praying to the loo), I thought to myself, this is the start of a beautiful friendship.
It was true. By the time we got to Halloween, she'd been by any number of times and had hatched the notion of giving blood at the blood bank to celebrate this spooky holiday. We did do this, and together as a weird date. With the badges of our gift of bodily fluid, our gauzed and adhesive taped arms, we flopped onto the bed to make out. She'd been timing the workings of her feminine affairs and decided that on this night, we should go all the way. Soon after this, she chucked the dorm and unofficially moved in. Having a woman in the house deeply offended Stewart.
"You could have asked me, Calbraith!"
"I figured it was my call."
"Well, now we've got to deal with tampons in the bathroom. More dishes in the sink."
Oddly enough, given the way Harmony got in, Yoshi took my side in the skirmishes with Littlefield. Nobody liked his effeminate screech. We much preferred a true red-blooded tampon using female.
Since I was now carless, I was stuck in Boston, more or less, over Winter break. I also had a job and a schedule. Harmony invited me up to New Hampshire to meet her folks. We took the train. Her mother was a charming host, a woman on top of things, a homemaker and a wit. Her father was a wheelchair bound grouch who called his daughter in for consultation. He used the expression "intellectual work," which I snapped right up as a delicious phrase. He'd send us from homestead to town to pick up 'medicine.' I observed that his medication of choice was a large quantity of hard liquor. This was another thing I knew little about, but I detected the hypocrisy quickly. On the second day of our visit, as we coagulated in the old farmhouse for breakfast, I found Harmony's father to be in a very grumpy mood. I had offered to make the cream of wheat (shades of my failure at eggs on the Cape!) and as I stirred the thickening goop, I was treated to a lecture on pragmatic morality.
"I know what you did last night."
"Pardon?"
"I had my son as a spy. He's just a little kid, he doesn't know how to evade interrogation. But I want to hear it from you. Did you or did you not sleep in my daughter's room last night?"
"I did. I'm an adult, you're daughter's an adult, we consent."
"The age of consent in this particular state is 21. You can't be 21. My daughter is certainly not of age. Besides, it's my house, and in my house, you go by my rules."
I'd been hearing this one all my life. What was it with parents? Did they all go to the same parenting school?
"I didn't get the rule book coming in last night."
"What did you just say?"
He thundered this out. I'd been sotto voce.
"Nothing. I said I'm sorry. It won't happen again."
Harmony poked me hard.
"OK. Just so we understand each other."
The cream of wheat was like a ball of rubber in the pot just now. I figured with a little milk and sugar it would be just dandy. I kind of liked it lumpy. We sat down, and then the 'great man' said grace. The height of hypocrisy, this, because I knew he was a drunk. I didn't understand alcoholism. It goes in the future file, fodder for a sequel. I had no modulated sense of mercy. I resolved, therefore to frost him out. So therefore, when he rocked back in the wheelchair, putting a few feet between him and his lump of cream of wheat in its bowl that matched the plate, and roared:
"I can't eat this! It's just like carpet tack!"
I had no response at hand other than to say:
"It tastes great to me. I like it lumpy."
I failed to notice the smoke coming out of Harmony's ears. Her mother, blessed soul, tried to ameliorate her husband:
"Well, would you like more eggs? A bit more bacon?"
"No, I've lost my appetite. You can throw this garbage out."
Harmony got up from the table and bolted to the upstairs bathroom. I glanced at her Mom, and we locked gaze for just a moment. It was as if she tried to telegraph the impossibility of her situation.
"You have to forgive him. He's very distracted by his intellectual work."
"Mom!"
"Excuse me. Being a mother never ends."
Harmony had also lost her appetite. Me and the little tyke who ratted his sister and myself out sat alone chowing down.
Another vignette:
One evening after work, I'd been over to Xenia's. Xenia was Rodless; they'd had a tiff, so I had her in tow. Harmony was elsewhere. We didn't interfere with old friends, at least not at that point. I opened the apartment door to the unmistakable smell of cat shit. I didn't think we had a cat.
"Yosh, what's up?"
"I'm watching this cat for my sister's friend. I think it's sick."
Again, things feline were outside my knowledge at that time. When cats get sick, of course, it's time to either call a vet or contact a crematorium. The cat was indeed 'sick.' It was a jet black adolescent shorthair (again, applying future knowledge to memory), and it's fur was matted with shit, piss, and drool. It was lolling it's head and drooling. It had lost control of its bladder and bowels, and Yoshi was fooling around with paper towels trying to clean up after it. It had moved on to the next phase of its express train ride to oblivion. Xenia instantly became hysterical. She loved (loves) cats. I watched for a moment as the cat staggered around, it's pupils dilating in different unmatched diameters. I headed for the kitchen and started flipping through the Yellow Pages for a vet. We didn't have a phone in house, so this meant hitting the pay phone out on Westland Ave. It was late. There was going to be no vet open for business. If an emergency vet could be found, we had no car. Xenia remained in the room with the sick cat. I could hear her yelling now:
"Oh my God! This is bad!"
I raced down the short hall and looked over her shoulder into the bedroom. I got there just in time to see the cat jump up in the air and fall all legs splayed out. It did this again. This time, when it hit the floor, it rolled over on its back and convulsed. It never righted itself. It howled, making an horrible sound. Then, blood rushed out of its mouth and the poor thing expired. Now, we had a corpse. Xenia was, as the expression goes, beside herself. Yoshi was wringing his hands, moaning.
"What am I going to tell my sister."
"You're going to have to tell her that her friend's cat is dead."
"I didn't do a thing to this cat. I don't know what happened."
I didn't either. At the time I suspected Yoshi of advanced cat torture. I thought he might have slammed the cat's head in a door in his clumsiness. Now, looking back, I think the cat must've gotten into the roach bait. Maybe it just brushed up against one of those cakes of yellow poison we put out (particularly Littlefield, who was waging all out war on the roaches), and then licked it off its paws. That might have been enough toxicity to cause massive organ failure and, well, sudden death.
Xenia proposed that we go over to Hemenway Street and consult one of her favorite hip Theater Professors who lived there. I had no better plan. It was about 2 in the morning, and she couldn't think of anybody else who could be reasonably enlisted for advice. He was, she said, always telling her to call on him any time, any time at all that she had a problem. (When, after all, did the true art of potential seduction ever sleep?) We took the little walk, with Yoshi coming along as well, since he didn't want to be alone in the apartment with a corpse. I was dubious. Two AM? Who would be crazy enough to be arousable at this hour? Even the prostitutes were all nestled snug with their Johns. How would we get in the building? We had no outside door key. We arrived at the entrance, and tugged the locked door. I looked at Xenia and shrugged as if to say, 'now what?' Just as we were about to turn tail, a woman opened the door on on her way out. We averted our eyes and shot in past her. Then we identified the man's buzzer and commenced to wail on it. After an untheatrical pause, a groggy voice came over the intercom.
"Who is it at this ungodly hour?"
"It's me, Xenia."
The buzzer buzzed on the inner door, I grabbed it and pulled. We raced as a little straggling group to the top of the stairs where the man was standing in the open door, in his underwear and robe. His robe was open. Seeing three of us, he closed the robe and tied its belt.
"The three musketeers," he said dryly. This was not going to be the fuck of his life. Just another fucked up event in the student life. He held the door open and gestured us in with his theatrical flourish. He was a director. He made endless fun of actors, particularly the non-method, pre-Stanislawski ones. I now learned that he kept this up in his sleep. We filed into the man's script stacked, cluttered apartment and Xenia poured out the cat tale in a rapid hysteria-laced rush. We came to rest in his kitchen and watched as he made coffee. Very civilized.
"OK. Dead animal. Here's what you've got to do. You'll want to get a big plastic trash bag. I've got one...right...here."
"I can tell where this is going."
"I'm sure. You need to put the carcass in this bag, and then toss it in the dumpster."
"Oh, what will I tell my sister," Yoshi wailed.
"Such a sordid end for a noble pet."
"You don't want a corpse in your apartment very long, trust me."
"I trust you. On that, believe me, I believe you."
"It's just so inhumane."
"The animal is dead. It's all over now."
"Baby blue." (That's me, I can't help it, it's a disease of my 'where ever I think that.')
"Look, if it's any consolation, you can have a little ceremony. I can lend you a Bible."
"I'm Asian, remember."
"I'm afraid that's all I've got by way of advice. I'm sorry you've all been through this disturbing experience. Now drink up, and get going. I have class in the morning."
So, it came to pass that I was elected to scoop the remains of the cat into the bag we'd woken up a Theater Prof to obtain, using a chunk of cardboard we'd fished out of the dumpster on Hemenway Street, the very one in the little space between two buildings that we'd selected as the final temporary resting place (out from under our noses) of Madame X, the defunct cat. This was the hard part. In the end, the corpse was in the bag, which Yoshi was left holding. I went for paper towels and mopped the thickened blood off the wooden floor. Xenia hopped up and down in horror at this, but it all had to be done. She had been very useful. Without her, I'm not sure how this would have played out. Out once more into the night air we went. Yoshi was pall-bearer. I had a head full of poetry and felt I didn't need my Bible. When we arrived at the dumpster, Yoshi handed me the bag. Xenia said,
"Do we want to say a few words, or just, you know, toss it?"
"I have a few words."
I cleared my throat and commenced:
"Put the rubber mouse away.
Pick the spools up off the floor.
What was velvet-shod and gay...
Yoshi:
("No, don't say 'gay.' That cat was not gay.")
Xenia elbowed him in the ribs.
"...will not want them any...more."
We heard footsteps and voices approaching from around the corner. In a burst of not wanting to be caught in a serious violation of some public health ordinance, I heaved the plastic over the rim of the dumpster. We all turned and began walking back in the direction of... oh, we were just aimlessly walking. Xenia tugged my sleeve in the direction of her place. Yoshi was on up ahead. He could not be stopped. He was heading back to our place. Almost to myself, I continued the doggerel (sorry kitty) in stentorian tones.
"What was warm, is strangely cold.
Whence dissolved the little breath?
How could this small body hold
So immense a thing as Death?"
I looked over at Xenia, who was weeping. Had I been a warmer, less cautious sort, I would have given her a hug. I couldn't. I was merely a reciting automaton, my emotions spent. Xenia sniffled. At length, we got to her door.
"Did you write that?"
"No. I wish. It got to you. I never managed to."
"Not true, my dear, not true."
"No that's from a book of poems I've had since Elementary school. The book is called "Reflections On a Gift of Watermelon Pickle, and Other Poems."
"That was one of the 'other poems.'"
"Yes. I'd have to look it up to learn the name of the poet. I forget."
(As gloss: Sara Henderson Hay.)
"So immense a thing..."
"...as death."
"Are you coming up?"
"No, I'm done. I'm heading home."
"Well, thanks for a most interesting evening."
She gave me that French peck on the cheek that I never mastered. Up the steps and in, she was gone. The curtain fell on another whacked-out sophomoric scene. As I think of that poem now, in light of the storms to follow, I wonder how Tennant would have taken it, had I ever thought to bring it up to him. After all, the immensity of death cannot be 'held' in a body of any size. Death, the cessation of life functions, is, like the university, more a concept than a thing. It was very Gibert Ryle, the death of that cat. It may as well have been Schroedinger's cat, for all the philosophy that swirled around it.
