Bono

Chapter Fourteen

LOVE IN HIDING

A cat rewards affection only when he is ready.

Loving someone is easy. Getting them to love you back can be complicated. People have fought, died, and created the greatest art for it. From what I know, the more desperately you ache for another’s affection, the faster they will run.

I still cannot fathom how Philip and I fell for each other. It was one of those rare, explosive events, like an asteroid crashing into Earth. Being eight years older with two kids in tow, I was hardly a catch. And he was fresh out of the army with a body straight out of a Greek sculpture gallery. With us being opposites in so many ways, there were countless times it would have been logical for us to take off in separate directions. I’d be lying if I said there haven’t been a few occasions when it looked as if that might happen.

How we’d managed to stick together for more than two decades was even more mysterious than the falling in love part. Except now I’d claimed time-out, and we were on opposite sides of the world. He was up to god knows what in Melbourne while I whiled away my freedom pining for the affections of a sick cat.

Being a woman, I’ve listened to countless true stories of rejected passion. Love has become another consumer item. People think if they want it badly enough, and are willing to pay a high enough price, they’ll get it. They try too hard, expose too much of themselves too soon. Quite often, all they’re left with is a shredded ego and a pile of psychologists’ bills.

The trick, I think, is to observe the skills of seducers and animal whisperers. If you sincerely want someone to fall for you, first signal your admiration, then create a benign space around yourself and step back a little. This allows the other person—or creature—to observe you and decide if they are interested. It gives them room to move forward. That way they will think they have chosen you. If they are repelled by your initial show of appreciation, well then you have not humiliated yourself entirely.

After Jon’s pep talk, I decided to stop beating myself up over Bono. We’d had a bad start, but we could move on from that. When the cat cringed at the sound of my booming voice, I wouldn’t take it personally anymore or try to imitate Lydia’s soft sing-song tone. He’d have to get used to the fact that, for all my faults, this was me.

I wasn’t asking much of him in return, apart from acceptance—and a willingness to swallow the occasional pill. We both had wounds, insecurities, and question marks over the future. From now on, I would chill out so the cat and I could find a way to get along together, with Lydia as our ambassador, at least for a few more days.

Besides, we couldn’t send him back to the shelter until Michaela had set eyes on him.

“Do you think the place still stinks?” I asked, straightening our gallery postcards on the mantelpiece.

“I can’t tell,” Lydia said, snapping her bed back into the shape of a sofa. “Should we get some air freshener?”

“Flowers would be better.”

I hurried across the street and brought back arms full of heavily scented lilacs. We placed them in strategic positions—outside the bunker, next to the bed, and (to discourage a repeat performance from Bono) in front of the fireplace.

“What happens now?” Lydia asked.

“We wait, I suppose.”

“I mean how does Michaela get up the stairs without a key? Isn’t there some kind of doorbell?”

We’d never had a visitor before.

“I haven’t seen one. I’ll go downstairs and wait for her on the street.”

An explosive buzz shook the room.

“The doorbell!” Lydia said. “There has to be a way of opening the downstairs door from here.”

I watched her stab buttons on a disused looking keypad beside our doorway and wondered what made her think that would work. She must have seen too many episodes of Friends. I stumbled down the stairs to greet our guest.

“Not the greatest apartment in the world,” I said, escorting Michaela into our studio. “But big enough to swing a cat.”

Michaela seemed momentarily taken back by the modesty of our surroundings.

“Oh,” she said, regaining composure. “It’s . . . lovely.”

The coffee we made was passable. The organic fig biscuits were crisp. But there was an amber-eyed elephant in the room.

“Where’s Bono?” Michaela asked, batting her eyelashes in anticipation.

I tried to summon a socially acceptable answer, or maybe even a white lie.

“Under the bed.”

“Oh.”

“He’s shy, but he comes out when we’re away,” I said, trying to sound casual. “At least, we think he does.”

“He’s magical,” Lydia chimed in. “Come see.”

My daughter dropped to her knees beside the bed, lay on her stomach, and beckoned Michaela over. Watching the elegantly suited editor lie down and adopt the same position beside her, I wished I’d thought to mop the floor.

“Oh, he is adorable!” Michaela said.

As she stood up and dusted herself off, Michaela didn’t seem at all disappointed. She agreed with Lydia that he was indeed a beautiful cat.

“I’ve got some wonderful news,” Michaela said. “Vida has been working very hard and she’s scored you a portal on the Huffington Post. It’s really quite a coup.”

Of course I’d heard of the Huffington Post, the online newspaper set up by Ariana Huffington in 2005. Millions of eyeballs scrolled its pages every day. But a portal sounded like something out of Star Trek. I had enough trouble posting on Facebook, let alone diving into a portal.

“We think it would be great if you wrote a blog for them about Bono,” Michaela said, beaming megawatts of optimism.

“If we can stir up some interest, maybe we can find him a permanent home.”

At that moment, the usual tightness in my shoulders upgraded to an ache.

“You mean, someone who’ll adopt him?” I asked.

Not only were we to foster this terminally ill cat, I was supposed to write a Huffington Post blog that would find him an actual home? What did Michaela and Vida imagine I could say about a cat who refused to come out from under the bed?

“I’m not much of a blogger,” I said. “In fact, I have no idea how to go about it.”

“Vida’s a tech wizard,” Michaela said. “Her team of marketing mavens will help you log on. Or you can just email the pieces to her and she’ll put them up for you.”

I grabbed another fig biscuit off the plate, chomped it in two bites and waited for the calming effects of a sugar high to kick in. There were approximately three people in the world who’d read anything I wrote for the Huffington Post. Two of them would have cats already. To hope anyone might fall in love with our antisocial housemate enough to offer him a home was beyond whimsical.

“Don’t worry,” Michaela said. “I’ve got a good feeling about this.”

I wondered if General Custer said the same thing when he heard Chief Sitting Bull was waiting for him.