I’m back, babies! I shouted as I walked in the door.
Annabelle ran to greet me. Thatch, lying on top of the chest of drawers, sat up, and I could see Stella stretched out on my bed. I could also see, from the trail of paper leading to the bathroom, that Stella had destroyed another roll of toilet paper in my absence. I walked into the living area, hanged my bag on a bedpost, took off my coat and hanged it over the back of my computer chair, put my cap on top of the CD case, and sat down.
Are you okay? Annabelle asked. She jumped onto my lap.
Yes, I am, I told her. There will be a few tests.
Tests?
Nothing serious.
Are you in pain? Thatch asked.
No pain, but I am very tired. I didn’t sleep at all last night, I told him. I think I’ll lie down for a bit. No, I can’t. I have to clean up Stella’s mess first.
I rose wearily and hobbled to the bathroom. Yep, a shredded roll of paper lay dying on the bathroom rug close to the litter box. I went into the kitchen and took the dustbuster from the wall and removed its charger cord. After scooping the large pile of paper from the floor, I kneeled on the floor and vacuumed up the small scraps lying about while Stella watched with avid curiosity. In fact, she studies everything I do with avid curiosity.
Oh, Stella, I moaned, what am I going to do with you?
Stella’s response, after attacking the dustbuster and failing to shred it was to jump on the back of my left heel and bite my Achilles tendon. Then she jumped off me, ran to Thatch, grabbed him by the neck and wrestled him to the floor. I cannot wait for her yearly checkup with Dr. Mohr to get her claws trimmed.
Get off me, Thatch yelled. He leaped up and ran through the apartment with Stella in hot pursuit. I got off the floor and hanged the dustbuster back on the wall.
Okay, I told Annabelle, let’s lie down for a bit. I’m exhausted.
I stretched out on the bed and Annabelle climbed onto my chest, wandered around a bit, and then settled in the middle of my ribcage. She looked anxiously at my face, studying my eyes, and sniffing my mouth.
Where were you this morning? She asked me.
I told you before I left. I had a colonoscopy. I’m glad it’s over. I just need to sleep.
Did you see Dr. Mohr?
No, baby, she’s your doctor. I saw Dr. Finkelstein on the East Side. I like him. I think we’ve had four or five close encounters now.
We lay there for about thirty minutes. Annabelle laid her head on my chest and drifted off. I tried to doze but it was impossible. Every time, I started to drift, Stella, pursued by Thatch (or vice versa), leaped across the bed as they raced through the apartment. At one point he lost her and stood on the bedframe trying to find her. As soon as she wandered by, he jumped on her, the screaming and hissing began. I sat up, and Annabelle jumped off me.
What the hell? I yelled.
No one’s hurt, Annabelle said. It’s part of the game. She jumped off the bed and joined the fray. I got up and sat at the computer.
I finally got to sleep sometime after 8:00 that night, following a long day where nothing went well, and it was an intense night of dreams. I do not remember the first two dreams now. Perhaps they were lost in the bathroom trip around 3:00 in the morning. The last dream was so devastating that I was relieved when the alarm rang at 6:15, and I had to get up, dress, and feed the babies.
I stumbled through the cans of Fancy Feast and chattering cats, then sat down numbly at the computer, read my email, and sobbed. You’re being ridiculous, I thought, and I wept more. I had my first cup of coffee and browsed through my Amazon orders to see what would arrive today.
What’s wrong? Annabelle asked. She stood up in my lap and looked into my face. Have you been crying?
No, I said. I think it’s allergies, but I am depressed this morning. I had a bad dream last night.
Allergies, my paw. You’ve been crying. Over what? Spilt milk?
No, Annabelle. A dream. I had a dream that upset me. I don’t know why.
What was it about?
I told her all that I remembered about the dream.
Oh, this is really interesting, she said. Way does it mean?
I’m not sure. That I miss those boys?
Well, Annabelle said. This is good for my Det. Kibble research. Thatch! Where are you?
Thatch came running. He had been finishing off the food that Stella and Annabelle had not eaten.
What? he asked her.
Would you get my address book? We have things to do this morning.
An adventure?
No, just some research.
She watched Thatch run off to the linen closet. Then she turned back to me. I’ll handle this, she said. Piece-a cake.
Oy! I thought. Instead, I asked, You’re not contacting Det. Kibble, I hope?
No. But I know just the person to call.
Thatch came tearing out of the linen closet with her address book.
Thank you, Thatch. I should have put all of these address on my phone. I’ll be back.
Annabelle sauntered off to the kitchen. Stella, who was sleeping in the kitchen sink – don’t ask why – jumped down and began sniffing around the phone.
Stella, Annabelle ordered, back off. I’m making an important call.
Who are you calling? I asked.
Your psychic friend in Indiana. Do you mind?
Oy! I thought. Instead, I said. Yes, I do mind.
Tough. I’m cracking this case.
All right. I give up. Put the phone on speaker.
My friend Jack has great psychic insight, and I was curious to hear his thoughts.
Hello? I heard Jack answer the phone.
Mr. Earles? This is Annabelle, Larry Moore’s daughter, and we need your help.
Is everything okay? he asked.
He had this dream, and we’re concerned about it. I believe you will offer wonderful insights.
Well, I’ll try. Jack sounded flattered.
Annabelle told him my dream in as much full detail that she could remember. There were a few gaps, but she had the gist of it.
Let me ponder this and call you back, he said. You do know, he said, that we in Indianapolis are an hour earlier than you.
Well, you were up.
I had to answer the phone. He sounded irritated.
I’m happy you were home.
I was sleeping.
No, you told me you were awake. You had to answer the phone. Hello? Are you still there? Hello? Mr. Earles? I guess he hung up. she told me.
Oy! I thought. Instead I said, Well, you called him awfully early.
But he was up. He had to answer the phone!
I dragged myself out of my stupor and began the kitty cleanup. My procedure is to set the empty dishes in the sink to soak, clean the litter, and then wash their dishes. The litter took forever. I could not get my thoughts straight, and it took forever.
Stella! Stop that. Stella!
I was washing dishes at the sink. Here it was, late January, and I wore shorts and a T-shirt. In the past, it was so cold that I wandered about the apartment wearing layers of clothing.
Dammit, Stella, move!
What’s she doing? Annabelle jumped up on the sink.
She keeps licking my legs. It drives me crazy. I worry about stepping on her, and she won’t get out of my way. Stella, move! Please, baby, just move.
Come on, Stella, Annabelle said. Let’s leave Mr. Crabby to his work.
I finished that in peace, made the bed, and then sat at the computer, brooding over that dream. The phone rang. It was Jack.
Jack! Thanks for calling back. I was afraid Annabelle was working your last nerve.
She was. Is she rude to everyone?
No, but she focuses on things and stays there. I’m glad you called back. I was going to call you later and apologize.
I calmed down once I started thinking about your dream. It was a doozy!
It’s been troubling me all morning. Annabelle wanted to help.
This what I think, he said. Coming on the heels of the knockout drops for your colonoscopy – they can be like astral travel, you know – I think you’re anxious to get all unresolved issues out of your system, even if they distress you to remember things.
Okay, I’ll buy that, I think. I’m really not handling this dream at all well this morning. I’ve got things to do, and I’ll think about your advice. Thank you, dear Psycho.
That’s Psychic, with a chic!
And I’m the psycho, with an Oh, Jesus! We both laughed.
We talked a few minutes about mutual friends, and just before we said goodbye, he added, Do not be surprised if you hear from one or more of those people or find a communication from them that you have forgotten or misplaced.
Since one of them is now dead, I said, I would be surprised. Thanks for your thoughts. I’m very grateful to rely on you. I’m sorry about the early call.
Just remember we folk in the provinces are an hour behind. Gotta run.
I hung up the phone and returned to the computer. Annabelle and Thatch, who had been eavesdropping, jumped onto the computer table. Annabelle jumped into my arms, and Thatch looked over the computer screen.
Are you okay, Daddy? he asked.
He had a bad dream, Thatch. My dreams are good, Annabelle said. Last night I dreamed I was singing at the Met.
La Traviata? Thatch asked.
Yep! I was a good Violetta.
That’s the latest. After Annabelle learned that Kelli O’Hara was singing at the Met, she decided she should as well. So, she’s been learning the soprano lead in Verdi’s La Traviata. The Italian’s too much for her, so she makes up her own “Italian” text. She’s been singing “Ah, Force Me, Louie” to death.
What about you, Thatch? I asked. Do you dream?
Good ones and bad ones. I dream a lot about food, and sometimes I have scary dreams about living on that Bronx garage roof when I was a baby. It gets ugly and I wake up scared. Then I crawl in bed with you and snuggle close to you. Then I feel safe.
What was your dream? Annabelle asked me.
I started telling them the basics of the dream, but I kept breaking down. Bits and pieces remained, but a lot of the logic, if there were any, was lost.
The dream was primarily about a young actor I once loved intensely. We were both at some large white clapboard home outside Manhattan for a Thanksgiving weekend. There were a lot of guests, and the hosts – Pam and Paul? Peggy and Peter? – were a married couple with children who were working on some project/lecture about genetic traits and facial features among siblings and parents and children. And then there were these two men . . .
Who are they? Annabelle asked.
One was a young man I met around 1972 and the other was an actor I had met while I worked at the Drama Book Shop, around late 1979 or early 1980.
Where are they now? Thatch asked.
Well, I said, one is dead; he died far too young.
Oh, no! Annabelle exclaimed. Which one?
Alan. The boy I met in 1972. Maybe it was 1973.
And the other?
He lives in Los Angeles with his wife and works regularly as an actor. He’s been in a lot of movies and TV. He’s very talented.
You loved them? Thatch asked.
Yes. Enormously.
Okay, Annabelle ordered, tell us all.
Well, let’s sit on the bed. I don’t want to sit at the computer and cry.
So, we climbed onto my bed, and I propped up the pillows.
You know, Thatch, Annabelle observed, this will be good for my Detective Kibble research.
Should we write things down? Thatch asked.
No, you should not, I said. Now, who do you want to know about first?
Alan. You knew him for a long time.
Yes, around forty years. Come to think of it, I’ve known each of them for about forty years.
Stella, who had been napping on my bed when I sat down, snuggled closer to me and continued to sleep.
It’s chilly in here, I observed.
It’s because, Annabelle told Thatch and me, you leave the window open. I have another cold, and you’ve been coughing a lot.
I guess I need to take you to see Dr. Mohr.
Thatch needs his yearly checkup and shots.
I can wait, Daddy. Take Annabelle.
Thatch, don’t make me mad. I want to hear this story. Are you going to tell us?
Okay, babies, this could be painful. I still miss him so much.
And I told them about my friend Alan, who was a university student about seven or eight years younger than I. I had pulled into a gas station in my hometown, and one of the handsomest, nicely assembled young men I’ve ever seen tended to my car. When he walked to the driver’s side of the car to wash my windshield, I could se was carrying a copy of Voltaire’s Candide in his back pocket.
Candide? I asked. That’s one of my favorites. Why are you reading it?
A lit class, he told me. You really like it?
Well, I admitted, I like Leonard Bernstein’s musical version a lot. The book’s fun, too. Yeah, I like it.
About a week later, I stopped by the station to lend him my LP of the original Broadway cast recording of Bernstein’s comic operetta Candide. When he returned it, he lent me a recording by Jackson Brown. Before long, we were friends, talking books and records, and I was hugely infatuated with him. We were both crazy about the novel Ragtime and the movie Nashville. We smoked joints, drank a lot of beer, mingled friends, and I longed to tell him how much I cared for him, but I was too shy, too insecure, and I knew he was still mourning an ended love affair with a girl.
You never told him? Annabelle asked. Why? Why?
I think he knew, I answered, but sometimes you open a door only to find it slammed in your face.
I never understand a thing you say, she said in disgust. Do you understand this, Thatch?
I think so.
Are you lying to me?
I liked what we had, Annabelle, and I didn’t want to screw it up. I think he knew my feelings, but I will never know for sure.
All right, continue.
He had a great wanderlust, and he was continually vanishing for months on end, camping in the desert or seeing other parts of the country. When I realized I hadn’t seen him in some time, I would call his mother, and she would tell me where he had gone and when he would return. He would drop out of school, travel, return, find an apartment, and our social life would continue. He kept swearing that, once he finished school, he was off to Europe.
Only I left first; I moved to Manhattan.
During my second year at The Drama Book Shop, I received a letter from my wandering boy. The letter contained a photo of Alan sitting in a park with a large shepherd dog. He was smoking a cigarette and on the back of the photo he had written in French, Want a cigarette? The letter told me that he had met in Paris a French-Italian girl and he was getting married. I probably cried myself to sleep for a week. Three years later, the newlyweds moved into an apartment on Main Street in my hometown, and when I went home to see my family, I called, and he invited me to dinner to meet his wife. After dinner, we watched Dustin Hoffman in Death of a Salesman, and I told them about my two weeks working at the Minskoff rehearsal studios while Dustin rehearsed the Broadway production of the play. That was 1985.
You know Dustin Hoffman? Annabelle interrupted. I love him!
He and I had several encounters, and at one point I did some research for his production company. He’s a wonderful man.
Tell us more!
Later, Annabelle.
Get back to Alan, Thatch said.
For the next twenty-seven years I had one or more dinners and visits whenever I returned to Ohio. I watched him and Liliane move through several apartments to a nice house not far from the university campus, saw his daughters grow into beautiful young ladies, and told them all my stories of the glamorous world of show biz, accompanied by copies of my latest recordings. He had become a popular middle school teacher, and in 2013, at the age of sixty, he retired. That year, my health fell apart, and I did not visit Ohio to see family and friends. In October, at the height of my crippling affliction, which had me eating pain killers and muscle relaxers like candy, he sent me an email. He had been through an operation for a brain tumor. I read this – I know I read it – but it did not register; I was too caught up in my own self-pity. To be fair, he did relate in his email that a post-surgery MRI showed improvement and remission. That’s really good news. And back to my own self-pity.
Well, life is cruel, the world is unjust, and he died in early April 2014 at the age of 60. My friends Ginny and Richard had come to New York for a vacation, and they told me the news when I met them for lunch. I refused to let that spoil our lunch, I told them. I’ll fret about this later. That night, I looked up his obituary online, sat in front of the computer, and wailed, screamed, and raged at the ugliness of existence.
While two cats climbed on me with hugs and sympathy, I sat in bed and sobbed. When I calmed down, Annabelle asked me, What was he doing in your dream?
He appeared very late in it. Came out of nowhere. We were in a conversation about sibling resemblances, and suddenly he was there with a brother. Alan was about as young as he was when I first met him, and this brother looked like a funny house mirror version of him.
I never understand half of what you say, Annabelle said after a moment of contemplation.
I’m sorry, Daddy, Thatch said as he crawled onto my lap.
You can tell me the rest of your dream later. Annabelle jumped off the bed. I need to work on La Traviata. Come on, Thatch! “Ah, force me, Louie!”
That’s “Ah fors’ e lui!” I yelled after her.
And singing “Ah, Force Me, Louie” at the top of her lungs, she vanished into the linen closet with Thatch is pursuit. Stella sat up, looked around, jumped on my foot, and bit my toes.
I guess I’ll tell you the rest later? I called after them.
I woke the next morning with a sore throat, clogged nostrils, and a cough that rattled my lungs.
Oh, crap, I thought. I was coughing up crap from my lungs and my nose would not stop running.
You’ve got a cold, Annabelle said to me. Then she sneezed.
So do you, Missy. I wonder if Dr. Mohr is in today. She should check you out.
I’ll go, only if you finish telling us your dream.
After breakfast.
Since she can’t smell with a stopped up nose, she wouldn’t eat, and each time I approached her to clean her blocked nostrils, she ran from me. I could only find her by following the sounds of her sneezes and make attempts to unclog her nose.
Annabelle, dammit! Let me clean that gunk out of your nose!
No!
Annabelle, it’s for your own good.
Tell me the rest of your dream, and I might allow you to touch my nose.
This is going to be painful.
Tell me, or I will march down to the police precinct and sit on Detective Kibble’s desk until you come for me.
All right. Let me get some coffee and make myself comfortable.
Ten minutes later, the cats and I sat on my bed. Stella snuggled close to me and promptly fell asleep. She and Thatch had eaten Annabelle’s breakfast as well as their own. Thatch sat up eagerly, and Annabelle crawled onto my lap.
The main focus of the dream was this young actor I met in The Drama Book Shop, Bene.
Bene? Annabelle looked surprised. What kind of name is Bene?
It’s actually Ben. When he was a boy, he sent a letter to some magazine, and they published it, only the typesetter screwed his name, and it stuck.
She thought about this for a minute. Continue, please, she said. Tell us about Bene.
I was doing an inventory, and he was researching the French playwright Beaumarchais for a production of “The Marriage of Figaro,” in which he was playing the title role. I went to see the off-off-Broadway showcase, and he was wonderful. He’s quite a good actor. I stayed after the show to say hello, and for the next seven years or so, until he moved to Los Angeles, we had a rather intense relationship. I loved him dearly, and he knew it, but I was always the bridesmaid. When things got fraught with his love life, he would call, and I would meet him after his Broadway show closed for the night. Some nights from 11:00 or so to long past midnight I listened to his anguish over his affairs with men and women. He was living with an actress at the time, and he was seeing occasionally an actor in his show. There was a lot of guilt and anguish over the state of things. I listened, offered advice, if I had any, and silently begged, Look at me, just notice me, I love you more than anyone, we could be happy.
Later, to my chagrin, because I was unhappily involved with a cocaine-addicted Jewish American Prince going through drug treatment in 1985, I started pressuring my friend Bene for sex. Things got very messy, and it almost destroyed our friendship. Around 1987 or so, he had the lead in an Off-Broadway show that brought him rave reviews. Every agent who had declined to represent him suddenly called to inquire, do you need an agent? He signed with one, and shortly after that he moved to Los Angeles.
Did you ever see him again? Annabelle asked.
What’s a Jewish American Prince? Thatch asked. Does that make you a princess?
What became of him? Annabelle asked.
The Prince? He was a mess, I told them, and he’s not a part of this dream. He ran off to Israel to escape his parents. Now, do you want me to finish this nightmare?
Yes! Annabelle stated. He moved to Los Angeles. Did you ever see him again?
I did. For a long time we spoke occasionally on the phone. I believe I saw him once or twice when he passed through New York on a regional theatre job. I also had breakfast with him in Los Angeles when I was recording something. He had a guest appearance on some TV western in which he played a good guy who is killed by the villains. I watched it to the point where he got shot and turned it off. I couldn’t bear to watch him die. He met an actress about twenty years ago and married her, and I hope he’s happy. I wish him only the best.
Do you still love him? Annabelle asked.
Yes, but not in the way I did forty years ago. I’m too old now for such obsession and madness. There’s been too much time and distance, and I am no longer that person, thank God.
Do you miss being that person?
Oh, no, no, no. He was too crazy and callow. I miss that person’s enthusiasm and confidence that he could do anything. What I miss about Bene is the intensity of the friendship. We communicate by phone or email now, but it’s mostly small talk: how are you? I’m doing this, I did that, what’s coming up? And besides, I gave my heart to three kitties who needed me far more than I ever needed him.
So, why did this dream affect you so strongly? Thatch asked.
Thatcher. I don’t know. I don’t think I’m mourning what might have been. Perhaps I’m merely missing the unresolved holes they left in my life.
Detective Kibble is just a precinct away, Annabelle said. You know, I have him on speed dial. I could call him.
Please don’t.
You sure?
Very.
All right. She sneezed. She sneezed again.
Snot! Thatch yelled. It’s all over me! Yuck, Annabelle.
I told you my dream and I am calling Dr. Mohr.
I sat up on the edge of the bed and reached for my cell phone. Stella jumped onto my back, climbed to my shoulder, and made an elegant swan dive over me to the top of the air purifier. I dropped the phone, and Annabelle and Thatch applauded.
Stella posed and took a bow.
©2020, Larry Moore
Annabelle & Thatch 