In a Cat’s Eye

“Willy, get in here. I want to talk to you.”

Sometimes Elsie had me eat lunch with her. I went into her parlor. She was watching TV with the sound off. I thought they might be showing the spacemen, but they weren’t. I fixed the rabbit ears on the TV to give her a better picture; it didn’t hurt to be nice to her. Her pillow had slid out from behind her neck.

“Let me fix your pillow for you, Elsie,” I said.

She grabbed the pillow away from me when I tried to fix it for her. I guess she just didn’t want to be comfortable. I sat in the chair I always sat in and we looked at the TV.

“They don’t show the spacemen anymore,” I said.

“You mean the astronauts. They came back from the moon over a month ago. What makes you think it would be on TV now? Whatever put that idea into your head?”

“I don’t know.”

It was just doctors and nurses on TV, and Elsie always watched that.

“Something has gotten into Nancy,” she said.

“It’s that Roy,” I said.

“Willy, has Roy been bothering Nancy?”

“He’s been following her around. She doesn’t want anything to do with him because he’s a drug dealer. Francine said the police caught him and cut his arm off.”

“You know better than to believe anything Francine says. The police don’t cut people’s arms off.”

“I know,” I said. “I’m just telling you what Francine said.”

“Roy lost his arm in an accident.”

“He sells dope to little kids.”

“Stop talking about people. You don’t know anything about Roy. He always pays his rent on time.”

“I’d like to know where all his money comes from,” I said.

“He gets disability. You’re not disabled. You could work.”

I never liked Roy, and I didn’t think Elsie liked Nancy going around with him any more than I did, but she wasn’t going to say anything bad about him. I figured that Nancy probably felt sorry for Roy on account of he had only one arm, like she’d felt sorry for Mr. Winkley because he had only one eye. When Mr. Winkley was living out on the street and he had pneumonia, Nancy took him in. He went in and out her window. Elsie didn’t know about Mr. Winkley, and I wasn’t going to tell her. I was sorry that Mr. Winkley only had one eye, but I wasn’t sorry for Roy, because he caused enough trouble with one arm that he didn’t need another one.

“I’ll tell that Roy he better stay away from her if he knows what’s good for him,” I said. I never did like that Roy.

“You’ll tell him no such thing, Willy. You just stay away from him. Did you hear what I just said?”

“Yeah.”

We watched TV with the sound off, and I thought, Roy has been bothering Nancy.

“She’s lost weight,” Elsie said.

“I know,” I said. “She’s not happy like she used to be.”

“She said her door was sticking. You told me you fixed it.”

“I did. I put on a new deadbolt just last week.”

“And she said the hinges were loose. When she gets back from work, would you take a look at it?”

“Yup.”

“Talk to her, Willy. See if you can find out what’s troubling her.”

“Okay,” I said. “I’ll find out and let you know right away, Elsie.” I liked to find out things for her.

We were looking at the TV. I was thinking that maybe Elsie had forgotten the soup, but I didn’t want her to think I was hinting for her to give me some, so I didn’t say anything.

“She has a steady day job,” Elsie said. “She pays her rent on time every week.”

I wanted to get her off the subject of rent.

“She’s got a bank account,” I said. “She told Gladys, and Gladys told me, that she had a thousand dollars in it.”

“Well I shouldn’t be at all surprised; and she’s only twenty-one. Nancy’s a nice young woman.”

“Yup.”

“You’re a young man. What are you, nineteen or twenty?”

“I guess. You don’t want to burn your soup,” I said. “Are you going to have lunch?”

“You can still make something of your life.”

“Yeah, sure.”

“Why won’t you apply for a job at the restaurant?”

Elsie was always nagging me about getting a job. Her brother ran a diner a few blocks from The Morpheum. Stanley worked there part time for Elsie’s brother, washing dishes. I figured that if I went to work for Elsie’s brother, any money he paid me I’d have to pay right back to Elsie for rent and then for all I knew she’d give it right back to her brother, and that didn’t seem fair to me.

“It’s honest work,” she said. “I think that a nice young woman, like Nancy, would be wanting for some young man, I mean a nice young man who worked and had some money in his pocket, to take her to see a movie. If I was a young woman, that’s what I’d want.”

She was trying to fix me up with Nancy. I didn’t think I could ever ask Nancy out; not that I hadn’t thought about it. I liked Nancy a lot, but she was way up there and I was way down here. She never made you feel that way, though. It’s just that I saw her as like an angel or something, and I was—well …

“I’m not the guy for her,” I said.

“You paid your debt to society, Willy.”

“Yeah.” I’d paid and then some. Up society’s, I thought.

“She won’t wait forever, what with all the nice young working men there are today. A young woman expects a young man to express his feelings and not keep them inside; and as pretty and sensible, as nice a young woman as Nancy is—time waits for no man.”