Bono

Chapter Twenty-two

TELLING TALES

To be granted permission to stroke a cat is a high compliment.

I’d heard nothing from the Huffington Post and was beginning to wonder whether they had even received my first blog. Concerned by the lack of response, I called Vida. She responded with her trademark breeziness saying she’d spoken to an editor there and it was going to take a few days for the blog to be posted. Next to Michaela, Vida was the biggest non-worrier I’d ever met.

Meantime, Vida added, the publishing house would like me to bring Bono along to the book launch they were hosting in ten days. It would be in a pet shop so Bono wouldn’t be lonely.

I tried to explain that Bono hosting a book launch would be like Howard Hughes starring in his own song and dance spectacular. It would traumatize him, and undo the progress we’d made. If he was put on show in front of strangers, he’d curl up in a ball and have even less chance of finding a home.

In the end we agreed to make a decision closer to the time.

Even if for some reason Huffington Post decided not to use my stuff, I went ahead with a second blog post.

“I’m only trying to help you,” I said to my roommate, who remained gregarious as an Easter Island monument.

No one said it was going to be easy . . . I typed, like a schoolgirl telling tales. Bono refused to budge from under the bed.

As I hammered away, a set of whiskers appeared from the shadows. A nose and a set of traffic light eyes nudged forward. Watching me from the safety of his cave entrance, the cat seemed curious. I called his name, but he didn’t respond.

“You are a high-maintenance, unrewarding animal,” I said, turning my attention back to the keyboard. “And you can stay there as long as you like.”

With half a blog under my belt, I flopped on the couch and flicked through the TV channels. In a strange variation of Stockholm syndrome, America’s bitter struggle for freedom from Britain seemed to have left the nation obsessed with Downton Abbey and Call the Midwife. Though I was intrigued by their version of Antiques Roadshow, it soon anaesthetized me into a stupor. I was about to switch the thing off, when a tiny figure trotted across the room toward me.

I froze, and pretended to be fascinated by the commercials. Bono moved closer and nudged the edge of my shoe with his forehead. Resisting the urge to cry out and embrace him, I ignored him and kept staring at the TV. Bono emitted a bell-like mew. I pretended not to hear.

When he leapt on the sofa and sat beside me, my heart melted like the ice cream in our fridge that didn’t work. I leaned toward him. He hesitated, as if he might change his mind and scurry for cover. But he stood still and he let me slide my hand over his bony spine.

The human hand is ideally shaped to stroke a cat’s spine. The curves are designed to fit into one another. With a few more swishes, I could hear the hum of feline throat muscles vibrating. According to Olivia, a ten-year study at the University of Minnesota found that cat owners were 40 percent less likely to have heart attacks than people who didn’t have live-in purr machines. As Bono’s humming grew louder with every swish, I could feel my muscles relax, my lungs take in slower, deeper breaths.

As he raised his face, his eyes seared through to my soul. In him I saw the wildness of the magpie’s gaze, the untouchable beauty of a creature who doesn’t question his purpose, or fret over the fact his life is limited to a few short years.

Bono and I recognized something in each other. We were both adrift, a little knocked around and uncertain how the rest of our lives were going to pan out. We were lost and looking for something. Neither of us were sure where we belonged. Bono snared my heart in that moment. No matter how confusing everything around us was, we had each other.

“Don’t you worry, my friend,” I said. “I’ll find you a home.”

The touch of his fur made me realize I was homesick. And yet, as Bono rested his dainty paw on my lap and dipped his face in my hand, I knew the cat had claimed me. And so, in its way, had New York. Both of us were starting to feel we belonged. The city that never sleeps is in actual fact the city that never shuts up. Every morning before dawn I’d wake to the grind and clatter of construction against the ambient thrum of tires on asphalt. As the working day began, the hum of air-conditioning units would be punctuated by taxi horns, sirens, brakes squealing, and trucks backing up. Out on the sidewalks, the background hum of a hundred different languages would be interrupted by the unlikely sound of a police horse clearing its throat. Sometimes, the noise and energy of the city morphed into a monster that left me drained. The relief of retreating to our building and the comfort of sliding the key into the heart-shaped lock was immeasurable.

Every floor of our building had a slightly different aroma. Down at street level it was redolent of the vehicle fumes and cabbage. Up the first flight on the so-called second floor, the odor gave way to hints of overcooked pasta mingled with cheese.

I worried that our floor had a meaty overlay that betrayed the presence of our animal stowaway. My offhand exchanges with Ted had left me uncertain whether our apartment was officially pet friendly. If we were breaking some kind of communal code by having Bono, I worried the residents might appear bearing pitchforks at our door. After tracing a dank, sour smell that seemed to be emanating from the communal garbage chute, I was relieved to find an empty bag of kitty litter among the garbage. Until I realized it was ours.

Below us, the third floor reeked of cigarettes and socks. The inhabitants of the third floor seemed to communicate with each other solely through signage. Each brown door was embellished with a No Smoking notice, apart from the one directly below us. Whoever lived in there had retaliated with the DO NOT SLAM DOORS! banner. I’d studied that angry scribble at leisure because it was where I usually stopped to catch my breath on the way up.

After a successful day out buying clothes that both fitted and weren’t black, I paused for the regulation breather on the third floor. To my astonishment, the DO NOT SLAM DOORS! sign moved. A pair of spectacles with lenses thick as latte glasses appeared from a crack in the door.

“Been shopping at a place for women of a certain age, have we?” said the owner of the spectacles in a heavy Irish accent.

His face was narrow and lined, the hair unnaturally dark against his pallid skin.

“How do you know?” I asked, taken aback.

“A friend of mine used to go out with her years ago,” he said, nodding at a woman’s name emblazoned across my shopping bag. “Her brand’s very successful.”

My indignant reaction gave way to amusement.

“Are you saying I should buy clothes from a different shop?” I asked, subconsciously scanning his outfit. With a gray cardigan sagging over an open-necked houndstooth shirt, he was hardly the personification of Karl Lagerfeld.

“Not at all,” he said. “I’m saying it’s a shop for older women.”

Clothes are an ongoing source of anxiety for me. I’m always on the lookout for a self-appointed stylist.

“Do you mean her outfits are designed for someone older than me?”

“That depends,” he said. “How old are you?”

The conversation was getting ridiculous. And now I was starting to worry he wasn’t gay after all. Besides, when I was growing up, few things were more scandalous than mutton dressing as lamb. Surely it was appropriate for this side of hog to buy frocks from a shop for old sheep.

He introduced himself as Patrick. After he found out what I did for a living, he assured me he knew every great writer who’d ever lived in New York. Arthur Miller was a moody sod, but Frank McCourt, who wrote Angela’s Ashes, was his best friend. But Frank was dead now, of course. Every great writer seemed to be underground clutching his Remington typewriter.

Patrick asked if I had cockroaches. I said I hadn’t seen any so far. He wanted to know how much a month I was paying. I told him I couldn’t remember, which was true. Whatever it was it was bound to be too much, he said.

“And tell me, what is it you’ve written about?” he asked, pulling a cigarette from his pocket and fixing me with a frog-like gaze.

“Um, a cat,” I replied, humbled by the pedigree of his literary friends.

He sucked his cheeks in what I thought was an attempt to disguise disappointment.

“I see now. Would that be a children’s book?”

When I explained it wasn’t, and that the cat was a metaphor in some ways, he said he wouldn’t mind reading it. I told him I’d drop a copy by sometime.

“Good,” he said, lighting the cigarette and inhaling as if his life depended on it. “So, you’ll be coming down for a cup of tea then.”

Confused and vaguely annoyed, I toiled up the final flight of stairs clasping my new old-women’s clothes. I made a point of slamming the door. Still, it was reassuring to know somebody in New York drank tea.