In a normal situation, you can’t advise someone to leave their spouse because when they don’t, you become that asshole who talked shit about the spouse. But nothing about our situation is normal and I am #TeamPhil. “You don’t need a cat,” I say. “You need a studio.”
“Tell that to the wife. Man, we’re so close to freedom. My kid’s on her way to college in a few months and the wife wants to tie me down with a new cat.”
“Does she not… I don’t wanna overstep… but does she not get who you are?”
He flicks his cigarette into a pile of leaves. “Nope,” he says. “Not lately.”
The next day I march into the library and walk into your office. “Okay,” I say. “Let’s get cats. I’m in.”
You fix your eyes on your computer screen. He fights you every step of the way and I am on #TeamYou. “Well,” you say. “That was fast. Do you have a name picked out?”
I sit in my chair and you scratch your collarbone and I latch my hands behind my head and smile. “Riffic,” I say. “Little Riffic Goldberg.”
“Ah,” you say. “I do love me some suffixes.”
Suffix sounds like sex and you are the smartest, sexiest woman on the planet and you are the fan to my tastic, showing me a picture of your favorite kitten, the one with a natural tuxedo. “Look at this little guy. He’s all dressed up and he will find somewhere to go.”
I tell you his name should be Licious and you groan—anything but Licious—and I dream of a long slow Saturday, you and me naming our kittens. “Well,” I say. “There’s three of them, right?”
You nod. “Yes.”
“Okay, so after work, let’s go pick up Riffic, Tastic, and Licious.”
But you throw your empty coffee cup in the trash and tell me that now Nomi’s on the fence. You’re doing it again, you’re protecting your rat. You tell me that Nomi wants a kitten, not a cat, and kittens grow up fast. You shrug. “There’s no way around it. It’s the fate of all kittens.”
You’re a fatalist and you need to believe in fate. Me. I pick up one of your tchotchkes and I make a proposal. “How about I get all three kittens, Tastic, Riffic, and Licious and then, when you’re ready, you can take one.”
“You’re so sweet, Joe…” Yes, I am. “But three cats… what about your furniture?”
“I have plenty of room. And I can get the toys, scratching posts…”
I am a homebody and Phil is a home-wrecker and you fiddle with your pen. “I always had this idea that when I had my bookshop… well, every bookshop needs a cat.”
“Just like every bodega. How about this? I keep one. You keep one. And Licious will live in your Bordello.”
You practically purr at me. “Well, on one condition. The little guy in the tux cannot be named Licious. You can’t do that to me, Joe. You have to give up on that name.”
I purr right fucking back. “Giving up’s not really my style, Mary Kay.”
* * *
Three days later, my arms are all scratched up and I am a man with three cats. I am also the owner of a Gibson and I sneeze—my body will adjust to the dander—and Phil waves his hands. Frantic. “C’mon, man. I don’t wanna catch what you got.”
He was grumpy in the meeting and he’s grumpy after the meeting. I tell him I’m sorry and he shrugs it off. “It’s not you,” he says. “The wife’s holding a grudge about the kitten thing. Showing me videos of the kittens.”
I send you my videos and you love that I don’t post them online, that they’re only for you, for me, for us. And now I find out that you show the videos to him—ha—and he takes a drag of his cigarette. “All right,” he says. “I gotta split.”
He goes home to you—the injustice—and I go home to Riffic and Licious and Tastic and they’re not just exceptionally cute. They also give us a reason to communicate around the clock. You send me links to cat toys and you’re “too busy with Christmas” to come over and meet our future cats and I’m a busy man, pushing Phil to man up and put his music first. Christmas is getting closer—every day Phil is a little bit closer to the edge—and every day I send you photos, mostly of Licious. You tell me that you’re going to die of cuteness and somehow I go to sleep and the next day, I go to a meeting and Phil spends the whole time writing a song in his phone about how his wife is riding him about cats and bookstores.
I go home after the meeting and play with my kittens and I check Phil’s tweets.
Can’t fucking wait to tour. Philistans# Peace#
Did someone say SacriPHIL surprisealbum# ChristmasIsCanceled# Peace#
Fixin’ to put another shark inside your shark, Philistans… Peace#
What do you do when your wife drives you crazy? Asking for a friend Peace#
Licious and Tastic and Riffic are so cute—they’re scratching the Sacriphil albums I bought on eBay—but I can’t just sit here. Not tonight. I want to see you. I want to see what your marriage looks like when it’s imploding. I put on a hoodie and I pick up my binoculars and I’m out the door.
It’s cold in the woods and it’s dark in the woods and your windows are bright and I see you, Mary Kay. You’re turning the pages of a book and your rat walks into the room and you don’t look up. You flip him the bird and he slams the door and you are mine. You don’t love him anymore. You love me.
The blow comes out of nowhere.
Something hard hits the center of my back. Binoculars: Down. Me: Down. The blow comes again: A boot in my back and heavy breathing—my poor ribs—and then another kick. POW. I am on my side and I taste blood and another kick knocks me into a rock. Roots punish my back and the boot punishes my front and I know that boot. I’ve seen that boot. A heavy, militant-but-also-fuck-me Sorel.
In a wheeze, I get her name out of my mouth. “Melanda?”
12
“I knew it!” Melanda grips a pink can of pepper spray, pink as your mother’s Cadillac. “I knew you were a pervert the day we met,” she says. “Two words: Woody. Allen.”
Fuck. Fuck. “Melanda, no, this isn’t what you think.”
She grunts. “For the last fucking time, you don’t tell me what I think. I know what you’re doing, pervert.”
“You’re wrong. Let me… please listen to me.”
She grinds her big angry boot into my chest and there will be a bruise. “Aw, do you want me to listen to you, Joe? Are you gonna tell me you were out here bird-watching? Are you gonna tell me that you didn’t even know that Nomi lives in this house?”
Nomi. No. Not her. NO. I can’t breathe and I am the bird, dying in the dirt. “Melanda, this isn’t what you think.”
“He loves books! He adores film. And he does love birds. Birds as in teenage girls.”
My vocal cords freeze up on me. The boot. The lie. “No, Melanda. No, no, I was not looking at Nomi.”
“Don’t even try, pervert.” She presses a number on her phone and she thinks I’m a pervert and you don’t come back from a pedo accusation and I am not a fucking pedophile and Melanda may be skilled in the art of self-defense, but she has a lot to learn about offense. I grab her by the Sorel and I yank. Hard. She goes down and her phone goes down and I clamp my hand over her big vicious mouth. I pick up the closest rock.