Motherless Brooklyn

The big Nazi cat went on raking up thread-loops from my trousers, seemingly intent on single-handedly reinventing Velcro. Meanwhile Kimmery had placed the two glasses of water on the floor near my feet. Though the room was dim-we were lit as much by the reflected skyline in the big room behind us as by the faint bulb there in the foyer-she’d removed her eyeglasses for the first time, and her eyes looked tender and small and searching. She slid down to seat herself against the wall, so we were arranged like clock hands on the face of the floor, our shoes at the center. According to the clock of us it was four o’clock. I tried not to root for midnight.

“Have you been living here long?” I asked.

“I know, it looks like I’m camping out,” she said. “It’s been about a month. I just broke up with this guy. It’s pretty obvious, isn’t it?”

“The Oreo Man?” I pictured a weather-beaten cowboy in front of a sunset, holding a cookie to his lips like a cigarette. Then, in frantic compensation, I conjured a tormented nerd in goggle-glasses, peering at cookie crumbs through a microscope, trying to discern their serial numbers.

“Uh-huh,” said Kimmery. “A friend was moving out and she gave me this place. I don’t even like it. I’m hardly ever here.”

“Where instead-the Zendo?”

She nodded. “Or the movies.”

I wasn’t ticcing much, for a couple of reasons. The first was Kimmery herself, still an unprecedented balm to me this late in the day. The second was the day itself, the serial tumult of unsorted clues, the catastrophe of my visit to the Zendo; that extra track in my brain had plenty of work to do threading beads together, smoothing the sequence into order: Kimmery, doormen, Matricardi and Rockaforte, Tony and Seminole, Important Monks, Gerard Minna and the killer. Minna’s killer.

“Did you lock your door?” I said.

“You’re really afraid,” said Kimmery, widening her eyes. “Of the, uh, giant.”

“You didn’t see him?” I said. “The big guy who took me outside?” I didn’t mention what happened next. It was shameful enough that Kimmery had had to mop it up.

“He’s a giant?”

“Well, what do you call it?”

“Isn’t gigantism a genetic condition?”

“I’d say it is. He didn’t earn that height.” I touched the delicate spot on my head with one hand, kept the other calm at my side, ignoring every impulse to return the cat’s pulsing and pawing at my legs. Instead I fingered the homely, hand-stitched coverlet on Kimmery’s mattress, traced its inelegant, lumpy seams.

“I guess I didn’t notice,” she said. “I was, you know-sitting.”

“You’ve never seen him before?”

She shook her head. “But I never met you before today either. I guess I should have told you not to bring anyone like that to the Zendo. And not to make noise. Now I missed practically the whole lecture.”

“You’re not saying the lecture went on?”

“Sure, why not? After you and your friend the giant were gone.”

“Why didn’t you stay?”

“Because my concentration isn’t that good,” she said, bitterly philosophical now. “If you’re really Zen you sit right through distractions, like Roshi did. And Wallace.” She rolled her eyes.

I was tempted to remind her that she’d moved to avoid being trampled, but it was just one objection among thousands.

“You don’t understand,” I said. “I didn’t bring him to the Zendo. Nobody knew I was coming there.”

“Well, I guess he followed you.” She shrugged, not wanting to argue. To her it was self-evident that the giant and I were dual phenomena. I’d caused his presence at the Zendo, was likely responsible for his very existence.

“Listen,” id. 01C;I know Roshi’s American name. He’s not who you think he is.”

“I don’t think he’s anyone.”

“What do you mean?”

“I didn’t say, like, Roshi’s really Johnny Carson or something. I just said I didn’t know.”

“Okay, but he’s not a Zen teacher. He’s involved in a murder.”

“That’s silly.” She made it sound like a virtue, as though I’d meant to entertain her. “Besides, anyone who teaches Zen is a Zen teacher, I think. Probably even if they were a murderer. Just like anyone who sits is a student. Even you.”

“What’s wrong with me?”

“Nothing’s wrong with you, at least according to a Zen outlook. That’s my whole point.”

“Taken.”

“Don’t be so sour, Lionel. I’m only joking. You sure you’re happy with that cat?”

“Doesn’t it have a name?” Feline Hitler had settled ponderously between my thighs, was purring in broken measures, and had begun to feature tiny bubbles of drool at the corners of its mouth.

“Shelf, but I never call him that.”

“Shelf?”

“I know, it’s completely stupid. I didn’t name him. I’m just catsitting.”

“So this isn’t your apartment and this isn’t your cat.”

“It’s sort of a period of crisis for me.” She reached for her glass of water, and I immediately reached for mine, grateful: The mirroring scratched a tiny mental itch. Anyway, I was thirsty. Shelf didn’t budge. “That’s why I got involved with Zen,” Kimmery went on. “For more detachment.”