Free A Cat Tells Two Tales by Lydia Adamson Page B

ring. Or put the damn machine on, which I hated.
    But what if it was Charlie with a change of plans?
    I picked up the phone. It was Carla Fried.
    “Alice, I’m at La Guardia. I have to catch a plane at Newark in three hours. If I go through Manhattan, we can meet for coffee.”
    “Where does the bus bring you?” I asked automatically, flustered by her call.
    “I take it to Forty-second and Park. We can meet in the bar of the Grand Hyatt, across the street. An hour okay?”
    “Fine,” I said. And she hung up. God, that woman had become efficient. It was like dealing with a corporate jet.
    Remembering that the bar of the Grand Hyatt was pseudo-posh, I threw on something pseudo-respectable.
    Carla was waiting for me at the entrance to the bar inside the hotel lobby. She had taken a cab. The moment we sat down, she started to talk a mile a minute. She was sorry she hadn’t called back after she left Atlanta. Everything about the production was going well. She wasn’t going to pressure me about a decision on the part—there was still plenty of time. Then she sat back and grinned.
    “I’m babbling, Alice, I’m sorry. Planes make me crazy.”
    We ordered drinks.
    “What is going on with you?” she asked.
    Her question seemed so absurd I started to laugh and then to cry. How could I tell her what had happened? How could I tell her about the murders? She wouldn’t comprehend or care. How could I tell her about the fear when that little red truck came toward Jo and me?
    “What’s the matter, Alice? Are you sick?”
    Her face clouded over with such concern that I felt terrible at spoiling our meeting.
    “No, no, a man,” I said quickly, recovering.
    “A man? I had forgotten all about them,” she quipped. “You mean those people with the funny musculature.”
    “I think I’m going to have an affair, Carla. And I’m a little nervous. It’s been a long, long time.”
    “Who is he?”
    “A man I met at the racetrack. A trainer.”
    “It has been so long since I had an affair, Alice, that when I go out for drinks with Waring—”
    “Waring?” I interrupted, not remembering the name.
    “The millionaire I told you about . . . the one who funded our season.”
    “I’m sorry. Of course I remember. Are you sleeping with him?”
    “No. That’s my point. He’s smart and handsome and crazy and rich. The kind of man I always dreamed of. But now I just sit and talk theater with him, and not a single erotic thought pops out. You’ll see. He’s in New York. I called him from the airport after I talked to you. He’ll be here to have a drink with us. But I want to hear about your man.”
    “Well, Charlie Coombs is not rich or handsome, but he may well be crazy.”
    “You can’t have everything,” she said.
    Another round of drinks came and we lapsed into one of those wonderful, surreal, lewd, revealing conversations that are basically sexual autobiographies. It was delicious. We laughed. We cried. We remembered.
    Suddenly I felt a touch on my shoulder. And then I heard a voice.
    “So you’re Juliet’s Nurse,” the voice said. I turned and stared at a man.
    “I’m Waring,” he said, and pulled a chair to our table, sitting easily.
    Is he the Pope? I thought sarcastically. Only one name—Waring. Maybe all very rich men use only their last names—even in bed. He was tall and skinny. His thinning light hair was brushed back and longish. He was wearing an old brown corduroy suit with a beautiful light blue knit tie on a dark blue shirt. He looked like an academic. His face was lined, with blue eyes. Fifty? Sixty? I couldn’t tell.
    “Don’t worry, I’m not going to harass you about the part,” he said, “because Carla has been giving me all kinds of etiquette lessons about dealing with actresses.”
    His voice had that funny Canadian accent, a flattish inflection which is so difficult to describe and even harder to mimic.
    He sat back and beamed at Carla. My curiosity immediately turned to hate. He