Punish Me with Kisses (37 page)

"James was a little neurotic, yes. I put him with you because I thought you'd help. Unfortunately it never occurred to me you'd bash in his little skull."

Penny ignored this attempt to make her feel like a murderer. "What do you mean 'thought you'd help'? You kept saying he'd help
me
."

"Did I? Yes. But it wasn't necessary for you to know certain things. You'd have been frightened, and that wouldn't have done either of you any good. The point was that James had to learn to deal with people. He had trouble with some of the others. I thought you might gentle him. I hoped you two would get along."

"What kind of trouble?" She was angry now.

"Oh, he bit a couple of them, but not with any 'killer bite.' I don't believe that—not for a second."

"He tried to sever my wrist."

"I think you made that up."

"You were just using me. Using me to treat a psycho cat!"

"This is part of your sickness, Penny—this way you twist everything around."

"It's your sickness." She stood up. "I'm finished with it. And I'm finished with you now, too." She glared at the psychiatrist.

Dr. Bowles glared back. "You're sick," she said. "You can't walk out on me. You know all about us. You could harm me now."

"That's ridiculous." Penny turned, started toward the door. Then she stopped—she heard a peculiar sound. It was a little cry, more like a chirp, the sort of high-pitched chirp a little animal might make. She turned back toward Dr. Bowles. The psychiatrist, who had been slumped in her chair, was poised now, as if she were about to spring.

"Beware," she hissed. "We have a saying. Anybody who walks out on us—that person is Fair Game."

"You're crazy. You're threatening me."

Dr. Bowles' eyes flashed with hate. "We are who we are," she whispered cryptically, "and nobody does us in."

I
t stormed all night and the next day, too, a blizzard they called it on the news. Penny spent the entire day inside, listening to the grinding gears of the bulldozers, the scraping of shovels as people worked to free their cars.

She was afraid.

She heard them assembling near the end of the afternoon, trudging up the stairs, whispering as they passed her bolted door. Dr. Bowles must have summoned them, called an emergency meeting despite the snow, a special kind of Mayday to discuss how Penny could be dangerous and whether they should designate her Fair Game. They were fanatics—she knew that; single-minded and obsessed. They were smug and sure, in thrall to the psychiatrist. They were The Cat People, she was their enemy, and now she was afraid.

She huddled on her window seat staring at TV and ate dinner while she watched the evening news. Inflation was up. The oil ministers announced another rise in the price of crude. There was fighting in Central America. Boat people were adrift at sea. A commentator said the world's problems were "intractable." Mobs ruled the streets of Teheran.

What were they saying about her? That she'd betray them, call up the health department, reveal the locations of their precious caches of cats? That she hated little creatures, was cruel and sadistic, had to be dealt with before she did them in? Would they try and talk to her first, win her back, persuade her she was wrong? Or would they pass sentence on her, seize her, lock her up with a dozen vicious cats like James, leave her alone to be clawed and chewed?

The wind roared outside. Snow still fell upon the streets. She could hear the sound of exerting ignitions, buses and taxicabs rattling their chains on the avenues. She tried to engross herself in a TV drama, and was just getting interested when the telephone rang.

"We'd like you to come up and talk things over," said Dr. Bowles, her voice sweet as always, as if the confrontation of the previous evening hadn't taken place. "We're all waiting for you. Why don't you come? We've got cookies here, and punch."

"I'm finished with you. I told you that."

"Now just a moment, my pet."

"That's my decision. It's irrevocable." She hung up, proud of her steely tone.

A few minutes later the telephone rang again. This time the doctor didn't bother to conceal her rage. "We've been discussing what to do about you."

"Discuss me all you like."

"You better come up here."

"I'm not coming. Don't threaten me and don't bother me again."

As she hung up for the second time she felt her pulse begin to race. She expected another call, resolved not to answer the phone, but then, suddenly, her doorbell rang and she jumped up from her window seat.

They'd sent someone to try and lure her out. She moved toward the door, stood as still and silent as she could. The bell rang again, a long time, harsh, insistent, and in the silence that followed she heard whispering in the hall.

What if the whole group was out there? What if they tried to break in, take her upstairs by force?

"We know you're in there, Penny. Time to come out now, come upstairs and face the group." It was John, the one whose Mayday call she'd answered, whose cats were gazing at her now, their eyes still and flat.

"Come on, Penny. You're holding everybody up." It was Wendy, her voice hard, more impatient than John's.

She didn't answer. Her heart was thundering. She backed up quietly into her bedroom, then slowly, carefully lay back upon her bed. She wrapped her arms about herself and began to pant and shake.

Click.

She knew the sound. They were opening up her locks. She remembered now: Dr. Bowles had a set of keys, had insisted on having them in case of fire. One more lock to go, and then the iron-rod floor lock—she had a few seconds, she calculated, before they got to that.

She jumped up, rushed to the door, threw open the locks herself. She burst into the hall, shoved Wendy against the opposite wall, pushed John aside, started down the stairs. But there were two of them down there blocking her way, the young men who'd dug the graves. She turned, adrenaline pumping, ran back up, shoved John again, then realized she was trapped. She was heading straight for Dr. Bowles' apartment. Several cat people flattened themselves against the walls to let her pass. She caught a glimpse of Dr. Bowles, a beatific smile on her face, as she passed her doorway and charged up the attic stairs.

She knew the
catroom
was there, of course, knew Dr. Bowles kept a multitude of cats in the attic of the house, knew the smell that filled the stairwell couldn't come from the half dozen Persians in the apartment, but nothing quite prepared her for what lay behind the steel door when she flung it open and rushed inside.

There was a small hallway stacked to the ceiling with boxes and sacks, cat litter and canned cat food she'd seen delivered so many times at night. And there was a huge freezer, for storing dead cats, she assumed, but she didn't look too closely at that for she was aware, as she ran down this little hall, of a strong odor, stronger than anything she'd ever smelled in the house before, and also of a noise. It was not loud, anything that pierced her ears; it was more like a background sound—meowing and scratching and the tread of tiny feet.

This smell, these sounds, came from behind another door. She unhooked the latch, pushed it open, and then she saw the cats—three hundred, maybe four hundred cats, a chaos of live creatures, some in pens, others in cages, most scampering about loose, wrestling, standing still, defecating and urinating in troughs of litter, some scratching at posts nailed to the walls, others nursing kittens or engaged in sex. Siamese and Persians, tigers and mongrels—they ran about, a mass of moving fur, in air so foul with the stench of urine and male spray that Penny thought she'd retch.

"She's in the
catroom
!" It was Dr. Bowles shouting from down the stairs. "Get her out of there before she harms our friends. Bring her down to me."

There was no way out, Penny saw, except the way she'd come in. For a moment she felt defeated, grabbed a broom from the corner, decided to try and fight them off with that.

But then an idea struck. She started thrashing the broom about. "
Whoosh! Whoosh! Scat! Scat!
" she cried, making sweeping motions toward the door. Some of the cats just stared at her perplexed, but others started out. "That's it!
Scat! Scat!
" she shouted again. Twenty or so cats began moving down the stairs.

"My God!
The cats!
She's letting them
out
!" It was someone from the group.

Penny beat her broom against them, forced out more and more.

"
Catch the cats!
"

"
Block the cats!
"

There was frantic screaming from below. And then it was as if the cats suddenly realized that their chance for escape had come. There was a mass stampede of animals toward the stairs, Penny behind them, urging them on with the broom, yelling "
Scat! Scat!
" following them down.

"Never mind her," shouted Dr. Bowles. "
Save the cats! Save the cats!
"

Penny rushed down among them, this cascade of slithering bodies, as they evaded the outstretched arms of the cat people, pouring down the flights and landings. The cat people were screaming with frustration as the cats slid around them, crawled beneath their legs, jumped out of their flailing arms. When Penny reached the lobby and opened the door, a hundred scurrying cats plunged out into the snow.

She ran as hard as she could, high-stepping through a drift. The plows had cleared a car's width passage through Eightieth Street. She ran over to Madison Avenue, then downtown a block to a phone booth at the corner of Seventy-ninth. She looked back. No one had followed her, but she could hear their cries. She imagined them running about, stumbling in the snow, trying to catch the cats.

She was about to dial 911, the emergency number for the police. But then she paused—there was someone else who would help her, someone else she could call.

W
hatever made me think this summer project was going to be so wonderful that all I had to do was get out of that carnival of a studio and then the sweet air would blow away my cobwebs, and the glittering sunlight would cauterize my wounds? What an asshole I've been! Now everything is getting WEIRD. Project's out of control. Tension's incredible. Anything can happen now ANYTHING—

T
he East River shimmered in the dusk, fifteen floors below, and as Penny gazed down upon it, she thought for the first time in months of her old walk-up on Eightieth Street, how far away it was, the miserable life she'd led there—how far away and long ago.

She finished her drink but continued to stand at the window, watching the shadows deepen, the river turn black like oil. She pondered the evening ahead.
Our first anniversary
, she thought. Then she smiled:
Tonight I'll tell him it was me
.

She drew a bath, the water as hot as she could stand, then submerged herself. As she soaked she thought of Jared. He'd phoned that afternoon. She'd refused to take his call.

The first time he phoned, collect from Taos, she was curious what he'd say. He told her he was working as a dishwasher in a restaurant there, was thinking of moving down to Santa Fe. Then he called her "babe." He sounded so slummy and immature that she winced at the memory of having lived with him. But she was polite, and when he asked her questions, she was crisp and firm with her replies.
No
—she didn't want him back.
Yes
—she was with someone else now.
Yes
—she was happy. She wished him luck in life.

He wrote her a few times after that, but she didn't bother to reply. There wasn't anything to say to him anymore—he was part of a past which now was dead. Still it made her a little sad to think of him in his apron standing by a pay phone in New Mexico while her secretary told him she wasn't in. She wondered whether he'd hitchhike to New York and try to see her. She hoped he wouldn't. It would be a waste of time.

She stepped out of the tub, dried herself, started getting dressed. She put on simple things, tight designer jeans, a silk blouse. No bra. She selected an antique turquoise necklace everyone admired, then brushed out her hair. It was longer now, layer cut, soft and coppery and full. She loved the way it glowed, the way it bounced and caught the light. It was as good now as Suzie's hair—even better, she thought. It was one thing to copy her sister, another to find her own way and excel.