Rebecca didn’t think she left the living room window open intentionally, but when she got back to the apartment from her weekly humiliation at the unemployment office, Balboa, the rescue kitten from Hell, was gone. It wasn’t her idea to rescue him in the first place. She liked animals only enough to know that she didn’t like them, and shouldn’t be allowed to have them.
At the beginning of August she was terminated at the newly incorporated Save the Micronesian Striped Iguana Fund. To be more accurate, the fund was terminated when its sole major donor discovered that the lovable little poison-spewing beast looking longingly at the camera in the touching ‘You know you need me’ posters, was either already extinct, or never existed in the first place. Who knew? Dorie, her boss, probably.
It wasn’t exactly the perfect job, anyway. Rebecca shared her 4x5’ office with a corn snake and a gecko (both caged, thank god) and had to bring her own laptop. Britta, the office manager, had an inexplicable fondness for Yanni, and played his ‘Greatest Hits’ on her desktop at least once a day. If anyone asked Rebecca what she was doing there to begin with, she explained that Dorie had convinced her that if the little bastards died out they would have taken the entire ecosystem of Nauru with them.
Rebecca’s building on W. 93rd was what the ads on craigslist call a ‘luxury building,’ meaning there was a working, graffiti-free elevator. Her apartment had the original radiators, and a tiny kitchen with a gas stove she had to light. The living room looked out on a small courtyard that nobody ever visited, because the couple in the garden apartment let their rooster use it as an exercise yard, and a man on the fifth floor of the building facing hers occasionally peed out his window.
“If you need a roommate, put an ad up at Columbia,” her totally clueless, older sister, Marlin, advised her from her pale pink mini mansion in Berkeley Heights. Marlin had achieved her one life goal: to have enough money that she didn’t need to have a goal. Rebecca’s goal was to save the planet. Despite an M.A. from Columbia in what her sister referred to as ‘green stuff,’ she hadn’t saved anything, not even Nauru and its imaginary lizards.
The posting drew inquiries from a Pakistani grad student who ended the interview by proposing to her, a junior who hoped Rebecca wouldn’t mind if she ‘smoked a little weed’ in the apartment now and then, and a twenty-something who didn’t actually go to Columbia. “The other girls I live with do. They think I’d be happier somewhere else.” Hmmm…
So Rebecca made one of those ads with the tear-off fringes on the bottom, and posted it in a little coffeehouse around the corner. That’s how she found Olivia, her roommate of last resort.
Unlike the now and then weed smoker, Olivia was gainfully employed, a big plus. She worked in customer service at Omnipatek, one of those hi tech companies whose homepage proudly proclaims “WE PROVIDE SOLUTIONS” without mentioning what they’re solving.
“I’m not going to pay $1300 a month to share a bedroom. You can keep your clothes in there, if you want.” Those were Olivia’s terms. The rent was due in six days. Rebecca bought herself an air mattress, and moved into the living room.
Olivia and her ‘would have qualified as a sugar daddy if he’d been five years older’ boyfriend were in the midst of a trial separation.
“I told him if he wanted me to move out, he had to pay my rent somewhere else. He’s got a lot of money. It’s no big deal for him.”
Four days after Olivia moved in, Rebecca came back to the apartment to find IT digging his tiny claws into her air mattress. There was a note on the table.
He was wandering around Bear Mountain, so I brought him home. His name is Bear. Gone out to get a litter box and cat food.
Bear had the distinction of being that rarest of all creatures; an unlovable kitten (not that Rebecca would have loved him under any conditions). He had the face and the personality of a Tasmanian Devil.
Four days after ‘Bear’ moved in, Olivia, for no reason whatsoever, changed his name to Elmo, and ten days later, to Balboa, because she loved the movie ‘Rocky’ and ‘He’s such a little champ.’
During his first three weeks in Rebecca’s apartment the ‘little champ’ shat in the bathtub and a pair of Rebecca’s running shoes, bit one of her dates on the ass, and spent an entire night batting a #2 pencil around the living room.
Olivia referred to Bear-Elmo-Balboa as “My sweet little baby.” Rebecca called him “Rosemary’s Baby,’ not to Olivia’s face, of course.
The Sunday before the Great Escape Olivia announced that she and some guy named Bradley were going to Atlantic City for three days.
“I left instructions. You need to change the litter box every night.” She breezed out the door with her matching four-piece luggage set, and Rebecca went into her former bedroom and curled up in fetal position on her former bed. In a touching show of solidarity, Balboa used the couch and matching loveseat as scratching posts.
And so, it was with truly mixed emotions that Rebecca faced the reality that Balboa had made a run for it, the mixed part being that she couldn’t afford to lose Olivia’s share of the rent.
Balboa didn’t come back when she called him. He didn’t come back when she yelled ‘Elmo’ or ‘Bear,’ either. She contemplated using his nickname, but she felt uncomfortable yelling ‘Fucking Monster’ out the window.
“Hey!” It was peeing man. “I saw your cat.” He pointed at the fire escape. “I saw him a couple of minutes ago, two flights up. He climbed in the window.”
Well, that was easy. Rebecca grabbed her keys, and took the graffiti-free elevator up to 6D. A very nice, middle-aged man lived in 6D. He introduced himself to her the week she moved in, and always said hello when they shared the elevator.
She had a lengthy debate with herself regarding knock style. Soft and apologetic or strong and assertive? As always, she went with the former. There was no answer, no ‘wait a minute,’ no sound of footsteps on a wood floor, and no ‘Get me the hell out of here’ meow.
Rebecca was going to slide a note under the door when the realization hit her. The window in 6D was still open. Balboa could already be downstairs de-feathering the rooster. Equally possible, he was still in there, shitting in shoes and destroying furniture. The only option was to throw herself on the mercy of Tomas, super extraordinaire. At least that’s how she always referred to him, although he was fairly ordinaire. It made him happy, and much more likely to come to the apartment to fix things in less than the customary forty-eight hour waiting period the other tenants had to put up with. She went to the basement to plead her case.
“I’m not supposed to do that, Ms. Chase.” The sentence had a silent ‘maybe’ in it.
“They do it on Law and Order all the time, Tomas. I’m sure it’s legal.”
The keys were in his hands, but he wasn’t moving.
“My roommate will be heartbroken. You have no idea what that kitten means to both of us.” In Rebecca’s case: rent money.
“Ok, but I gotta go in with you.”
As the slowest elevator in the Upper West Side ascended to the 6th floor Tomas delivered a moving soliloquy with alternating lines of “I hope I don’t get into trouble” and “I hope he doesn’t find out.”
He opened the door slowly. “Mr. DuPont?”
“Here Kitty,” Rebecca called hopefully. “Maybe he’s in the bedroom…Oh my god!” Over the couch hung a giant portrait of Mr. DuPont dressed in nothing but a half dozen piercings. On the piano were two large photos, more or less in the ‘Super Real’ style, featuring body parts that probably belonged to close friends of his.
‘Tomas I think I’ll skip…” She realized she was talking to herself. He was out of the apartment, waiting down the hall, his head in his hands.
“You can lock it. I’ll put a note on it.”
Someone thought they saw my little gray cat climb into your apartment. His name is
Rip. That was pointless. The cat had no idea what his name was.
Someone thought they saw my little gray cat climb into your apartment.
If you find him would you call me?
Thanks, Rebecca 4D
“All done. Tomas?” His head snapped up and he dashed to the door.
“Calm down. This is New York. I’ll bet there are at least three more apartments that look like that in this building.” Rebecca chirped.
“No they’re aren’t. I’ve fixed almost every toilet here, so I know. I’m going now.“
The sun was setting on W. 93d. Little What’s-His-Name was still missing, and Mr. DuPont was likely out on the town, in brown Dockers, a white polo shirt and leather underwear. Rebecca wracked her brain for a good story to tell Olivia.
“He was despondent. Somehow he managed to open the living room window. He left you a farewell letter…”
Rebecca’s phone barked. Three days after Attila the kitten moved in she changed the ringtone. It was comforting.
“Rebecca? It’s Blake DuPont, 6D. Found your kitten hiding under my bed.”
“You did? I was hoping he was there. I thought I heard him crying.” Sure she did.
“He’s still under the bed. Poor thing must be terrified. I’ll be here for at least another hour. Why don’t you come up and get him?”
“I’ll be right there.” Oh, swell, another visit to the DuPont Museum Of Homoerotic Art.
The door to 6D was open a crack.
“Rebecca, come on in. I’m in the bedroom.”
She could hardly wait to see what he had hanging over his bed.
Pretend not to notice. Pretend not to notice. Pretend not to notice. Pretend not to…OH
The TMI portrait over the couch had been replaced by a framed poster of Monet’s Water Lilies. There was only one photo on the piano, two hot young guys holding champagne glasses.
“I think I’m scaring him. You should go in there alone.” Mr. DuPont exited the bedroom making that tongue-clucking sound that is always spelled out ‘tsk, tsk,’ even though it doesn’t sound like that at all. “Oh, that’s a picture of Randy and Dennis at my 50th birthday party. They’re here all the time. You’ve probably seen them in the lobby.”
If Rebecca could have done it with a straight face, she would have said, “I may have seen them somewhere, but they weren’t dressed like that.”
She knelt by the bed groping around for anything small and furry
Several puncture wounds and stigmata-like gashes later she managed to drag out a writhing, hissing Balboa.
“You were right. He’s a little upset. I better get him home. Thanks for everything.”
Mr. DuPont stepped between Rebecca and the door. “The lock sticks. You know, you and your boyfriend should come up for drinks sometime. How about next Saturday? Nothing fancy. Randy and Dennis and a couple of girls we know from the gym, are coming. I think you’ll like each other.
“That’s sounds great. Sure. Can I bring anything?” A whip, perhaps? “I’d better get Balboa home.” That sounds great? Well, she could just show up for one quick drink, and…and…
And that is when Rebecca summoned the courage to do what she should have done from the beginning.
“Olivia, it’s Rebecca. I can’t stand Balboa. You’re going to have to find some other place for him to live.”
“Ok.”