Free When the Cat's Away by Kinky Friedman

all this to help a convalescent country-singer-turned-amateur-detective. And what thanks had he gotten?
    But that didn’t make things any better for me. I was still weak and subject to periodic dizzy spells. I was trying to locate a killer and a cat before somebody drowned me in a bag. And now I had to cope with a petulant and somewhat torpedolike houseguest.
    Being an urban hermit is not the easiest thing in the world to be when you grow up. You feel either crowded or lonely as hell. But at least you feel something. I was feeling like a shot of Jameson.
    I walked over to the counter and poured a medicinal portion into the old bull’s horn. Ratso was already back on the couch. I noticed he was sleeping on his stomach.
    I downed the shot and thought about Jane Meara, whom I ought to check on. I thought of Fred Katz, whom I ought to find before he found me again. I thought of Sergeant Cooperman, whom I ought to talk to but didn’t want to. I thought of Leila, whom I wanted to see. I wasn’t better but I was ready. I thought of lots of things, lots of people, lots of reasons why I was me. Maybe someday I’d fall victim to marriage, suburbia, puttering with my lawn, but I couldn’t really see it. I’d long ago come to the conclusion that you’re born alone, you die alone, and you might as well get used to it. Nothing that Thoreau or Kerouac hadn’t already found out, but it was comforting to realize that nothing had changed.
    I took another shot and looked over at my boots standing by the desk. They were long and narrow, like my mind. I visualized a person standing in them. Another Kinky, but not like the other Kinkys I’d seen when I first came to in the hospital. It was the Kinky that I could be with a little bit of luck and a hell of a lot of guts. He was a little weatherbeaten but he looked all right. You could tell that he didn’t have time to be lonely.
    There’s not that much time left, I thought. There never had been that much time. Never enough to spend the rest of your life looking at the bland face of a child in a yellow station wagon.
    The road could’ve ended anywhere, but it didn’t. So you keep driving life’s lonely DeSoto, looking ahead into the rain and darkness with the windshield wipers coming down like reaper’s blades just missing your dreams. And you don’t stop till you’re damn well ready. Till you come to the right place. Till you come to the right face. The place may be New York or Texas or it may be somewhere painted with the colors Negroes use in their neon lights.
    The face will be smiling. So you take the key out of the ignition and you see if it opens her heart.

25
    The phone call from Eugene came at about 6:15 A.M. It was a trifle early and it was also a trifle unpleasant. “Our little friend,” according to Eugene, had not been idle during the night. Whoever he was, he was continuing his campaign of terror against Jane Meara. Eugene was at Jane’s place now because she was frightened to be alone. They wanted to meet me. They had something for me.
    I didn’t want anything. Maybe another twelve hours of sleep.
    I agreed to meet them in an hour at a little Greek coffee shop on Twenty-eighth Street around the corner from Jane’s office. I hung up, got dressed, found and fed the cat, and found and lit a cigar. I put on my old hunting vest, my hat, and my coat and I tiptoed across the living room like a guy sneaking out of the house for a poker game. It was my house—I could sneak out of it if I wanted. I locked the door to the loft behind me.
    One rule I always follow in life is “Let sleeping rats lie.”
    * * *
    Vandam Street was windy, cold, and empty in the early morning. There was just a little old lady trying to hold on to a little pink hat and me trying to hold on to my cowboy hat. Deserted as it was, the place had an aura of urban prairie to it. Of course, these days I usually rode two-legged animals.
    I drifted up Hudson and hailed a hack. Through a frosty window that