Cat Chaser Page 5

  It didn’t seem possible to miss someone you saw only once or twice a week over a period of a few years; but she had continued to picture him and think about him and what she felt now was real. You know when you miss someone.

  Before today she hadn’t seen Moran since his divorce. Since his father-in-law drummed him out of the club, ripped the crest from his blazer. Mary saw it that way in fantasy, in flashes: Moran standing at attention in his beard and sneakers, expelled for refusing to wear white patent-leather loafers with tassels, and matching white belt. Out. Refusing to talk about real estate, grain futures, tax shelters, more real estate. Out.

  She should have jumped up and yelled and run across the lobby. Nine hundred miles from home . . .

  Call his room.

  An outfielder with the Cincinnati Reds’ Triple-A farm team came over to where Mary sat at the first table inside the lounge and asked if she’d have a drink with him. Good-looking, well built, at least ten years younger than she was. Mary smiled and said, “I’d love to. Sit down.”

  Giving her something to do, so she wouldn’t have to make an instant decision. For all she knew Moran was meeting someone, a girl . . .

  They talked about the World Series in New York and Guerrero, the L.A. Dominican, hitting the home run Sunday, the outfielder telling how everybody in the lounge watching it on TV had practically freaked out, their boy coming through. She flirted with the outfielder a little, because she could see he was taken with her and it made her feel good. The mysterious American woman in expensive casual silk, alone in Santo Domingo. The muscular, curly-haired outfielder sat with his big shoulders hunched over the table eating peanuts one at a time, holding back.

  Mary de Boya, at thirty-four, was quite likely the best-looking woman the outfielder had ever seen in real life. Her blond honey-streaked hair fell in soft waves to her shoulders framing delicate features, a fine mist of freckles, startling brown eyes.

  She asked the outfielder what it was like to stand at the plate and see a hardball coming at you at ninety miles an hour. The outfielder said it didn’t matter how fast it came, you had to stand in there, you couldn’t give the pitcher nothing. He said it was the curveballs that were more apt to do you in. Curves low and away. The outfielder asked Mary if she had ever been down here before. She told him a few times, for polo matches at Casa de Campo. He said oh, was that what she was down for this time? Mary paused. She said no, she was meeting her lover. The outfielder said oh . . .

  “Now I’ve got to run,” Mary said, and left the outfielder half in, half out of his chair. At the front desk she asked for Mr. Moran’s room number.

  The clerk said, “Mr. Moran,” and looked it up. “Five three seven.”

  “How long is he staying?”

  The clerk had to look it up again. “The twenty-ninth. Four days.”

  Mary turned partway, paused and turned back to the desk again. “I think I’d like a room.”

  “Yes,” the clerk said, “we have a very nice room. Or we have a suite if you like a sitting room, too.”

  “That’s fine,” Mary said, though she didn’t seem quite sure about something. “I don’t have my luggage with me.” She looked at the clerk now for help. “It’s at Casa de Campo. If I give them a call, can you send someone to pick it up?”

  “Yes, but it’s seventy miles there,” the clerk said. “I don’t know how rapidly they can do it.”

  “Do the best you can,” Mary said. She filled out the registration card using her maiden name, Mary Delaney, and an address in Miami Beach off the top of her head, committing herself now, beginning to make her move, thinking: If you’re meeting someone, Moran, I’ll kill her.

  The view from Moran’s room was south, past the swimming pool area directly below and down an abrupt grade to a postcard shot of white colonial buildings and palm trees on the edge of the Caribbean. In this time when dusk was becoming night, color gone from the sky, he could hear voices, words in clear Spanish and bikes whining like lawnmowers: the same distinct, faraway sounds they listened to sixteen years ago in tents on the polo fields. The sounds of people doing what they did despite the other sounds that would come suddenly, the mortar and rocket explosions, five klicks removed from the everyday sounds, off somewhere in the city of Santo Domingo. He didn’t like those first days, not trusting the people, not having a feel for the terrain. He studied his Texaco map by flashlight and memorized names of the main streets, drew red circles for checkpoints, Charlie and Delta, the embassy, the Dominican Presidential Palace, the National Police Barracks. Take Bolivar to Independence Park, where burned-out cars blocked intersections, and duck. Beyond this point you could get killed. He liked it once he had a perimeter and was able to tell his fire team what they were doing. None of them had been to war.

  He would walk those streets tomorrow . . . and hear the voices again on the field radio . . . “Cat Chaser Four, you read? Where the fuck are you?” . . . And the girl’s voice coming in. “I know where you are. I see you, Cat Chaser . . . Hey, Cat Chaser, come find me . . . You no good with tigres. All you know how to hunt, you Marines, is pussy. Come find me, Cat Chaser Four, whatever your name is . . . This is Luci signing off.”

  Luci Palma, the sixteen-year-old girl who gave them fits with an M-1 carbine from World War Two. The girl who ran over rooftops . . .

  The room-service waiter came with a bucket of ice that held three bottles of El Presidente beer. Moran signed, gave the waiter a peso and said, “Were you here during the revolution?”

  The waiter didn’t seem to understand.

  “Hace dieciséis años,” Moran said.

  “Oh, yes, I was here.”

  “What side were you on?”

  Again the waiter hesitated.

  “Que lado? Los generales o los rebeldes?”

  “No, I don’t fight,” the waiter said. “I like peace.”

  “No one I’ve talked to was in the war, the guerra,” Moran said. “I wonder who was doing all the shooting.”

  The phone rang.

  “I was in Samaná,” the waiter said.

  “Everybody was in Samaná,” Moran said. “Thanks.” He walked behind the waiter going to the door and stopped by the nightstand next to the bed. As the phone rang for the fourth time he picked it up.

  “Hello.”

  The voice instantly familiar said, “Moran? What’re you doing in Santo Domingo?”

  He said, “I don’t believe it. Come on . . .” grinning, sitting down on the bed. “What’re you doing here?”

  “I asked you first.”

  “Where are you?”

  “About twenty feet above you. Seven thirty-five.”

  “I don’t believe it.” He sat up straight and wanted to make his voice sound natural, casual, as he said, “Mary? . . . Is Andres with you?”

  “He can’t come back here, George. He’s afraid somebody’ll shoot him.”

  “Gee, that’s too bad. I mean that you couldn’t bring him.” He heard her giggle. “Well, who’re you with?”

  “Nobody. I’m all alone.”

  “Come on . . . I don’t believe it.”

  “Why’re you so amazed?”

  “You kidding? I don’t believe this. I’m not sure I could even imagine something like this happening.”

  She said, “Are you alone?”

  “Yeah, all by myself.”

  “I mean are you meeting anyone?”

  “No, I’m alone. Jesus Christ, am I alone. I don’t believe it,” Moran said, getting up, having to move around now, excited. “You know I recognized your voice right away? What’re you doing here?”

  “I saw you in the lobby. A little while ago.”

  “Yeah? . . .”

  “If you’re not busy, you think we could have a drink?”

  “If I’m not busy? Even if I was . . . Listen, I’ve got three cold bottles of El Presidente sitting right in front of me, unopened.”

  She said, “Why don’t you come up and see me, George? Bring your beer with
you.”

  “Right now?”

  “I’ll have the door open.”

  She did, too.

  Waited just inside the sitting room for him so that when he appeared in the doorway and entered the short hallway past the bathroom and closet he would have to come to her and she would open her arms. . . . Except that he was carrying the ice bucket in front of him with both hands and when she raised her arms he didn’t know what to do and they stood there staring at each other, anxious, aching, until she said, “Make up your mind, Moran. Are you going to hold the beer or me?”

  He hurried past her into the sitting room, placed his bucket on the coffee table next to hers that held a bottle of champagne. Now they could do it. Now as he turned she came into his arms like it was the most natural thing in the world, wanting to hold and feel each other close after only looking at one another for all those years and keeping a distance between them, sometimes inches, but always a distance. There. It felt good, better than imagined, and from that moment something more than two old friends meeting. Their mouths came together, unplanned, but this too seemed natural, their mouths seeking, brushing, fitting softly as their bodies relaxed and began to blend. . . .

  Abruptly, without a flicker, the lights in the room and in the hall went out.

  They pulled slightly apart, still holding each other. Moran said very quietly, “We must’ve blown a fuse. Generated too much electricity.”

  “I’d believe it,” Mary said, “if I hadn’t been here before. They run low on power and have to black out parts of the city.”

  “For how long?”

  “I think fifteen or twenty minutes. Didn’t you notice a candle in your room?”

  “No . . . Where you going?”

  “To find the candle. I saw it somewhere . . .”

  “I can’t see you.”

  “I think it’s in the bedroom.”

  He followed the sound of her voice, moving carefully now in total darkness, hands ready in front of him. His shin hit the coffee table and he heard the ice bucket rattle against glass.

  “Where are you?”

  “I’m in the bedroom,” Mary said. “I think.”

  He moved in that direction, around the coffee table, and came to a doorway that seemed darker than the dark sitting room. Entering cautiously, a room he’d never seen, with nothing to picture from memory, Moran extended his arms like a man sleepwalking. He caught the scent of her perfume, moved a cautious step and felt her hair brush his face. She was between his arms and he closed them around her now, feeling her hands slide up over his ribs.

  He said in almost a whisper, “You find the candle?”

  “No. It must be in the bathroom.”

  He said, “Do we need it?”

  He felt her hands, her breath—this slim girl, not as tall as he’d remembered her, the image of her across a room. He felt the silky material covering her bare skin, the skin smoothly taut, her body delicate but firm pressing into him, their mouths brushing, finding the right place again, and this time drifting into a dreamlike kind of consciousness, Moran aware but not seeing himself, Mary moving against him, moving him, guiding gently, and Moran knew where they were going, feeling the foot of the bed against his leg and it was all the bearings he needed. They bailed out in the dark and fell into the double bed in the excitement of each other. She said, “You don’t know how long . . .” He said, “I know.” Barely moving their mouths apart to speak. She said, “God, I want you.” He said, “How do you get this off?” He said, “Shit, I tore it.” She said, “I don’t care, tear it,” pulling his belt apart. He said, “Can you wait, just a second?” She said, “No.” He said, “I can’t either. Jesus.” She said, “Don’t talk.” He said, “One second . . .” and got on his knees and pulled off her sandals and slacks and somehow got out of his pants, pausing then, catching his breath to pull his shirt over his head and when he sank down again into the bed they were naked, with nothing to make them hold back all that longing they could now release. The lights came on as they were making love, a soft bedroom glow that was just enough and could have been cued as Moran said, “Oh, man,” and had to smile as he saw Mary smiling. Now they could see each other and it wasn’t simply an act of their bodies, they were identified to each other, finally where they wanted to be more than anywhere. Moran’s urge raised him stiff-armed, raised his face to the headboard, to the wall above them and he groaned, letting go that was like, “Gaiii-yaaa!” and brought Mary’s eyes open, but she closed them again, murmuring, moving, and remained in iridescent sparkling dark as he came back to her again, winding down, settling.

  She felt moisture on his back, his shoulders. She said, “Oh, God,” as though it might be her last breath. Then opened her eyes to study his face in repose, his eyelashes, his eyelids lightly closed.

  She said quietly, “Well . . . how have you been?”

  “Not too bad.”

  “Do you always do that?” Her words a soft murmur.

  “What?”

  “I thought you were in pain.”

  “I was, sort of.”

  “You really throw yourself into it.”

  “That was the first time I ever heard myself do that. It just came, so to speak.” He opened his eyes. “You do an analysis after?”

  “No, but I’ve always wondered about you,” Mary said. “Do you know how many words we’ve spoken to each other, counting today?”

  “We didn’t have to use words. That was the spooky part about it. I always had the feeling we knew each other when we were little. Little kids who played together, then didn’t see each other for about thirty years.”

  “I’m not that old.”

  “You’re old enough. You know what I mean,” Moran said. “I don’t have to explain anything to you.”

  “No.”

  “Boy, you are really something.”

  She said, “There’s more to it than that, isn’t there?”

  “There’s way more,” Moran said. “I don’t mean just in bed. Will you tell me what you’re doing here?”

  “I came down with some girls from the club. Polo buffs. Or that’s their excuse to get away and party, maybe play a little tennis. Actually they came down yesterday, but I couldn’t make it till today.”

  Moran said, “Yeah, I ran into them at the airport. They looked sort of familiar—one of ’em’s name is Philly?”

  “Right, Philly, Marilyn and Liz, my old tennis court buddies.”

  Moran said, “You’re staying here, this place? I don’t think it’s very in.”

  “No, what happened,” Mary said, “my friends drove in from Casa de Campo to meet me and go to a cocktail party at the Santo Domingo Country Club. Mostly embassy people.”

  “Yeah? . . .”

  “Then I was supposed to drive back to Casa de Campo with them later. The polo matches start tomorrow.” Mary paused. “But I left the party.”

  “Why’d you come here?”

  “Well, you told Philly you were staying here . . .”

  “Yeah? . . .”

  “I thought I’d stop by and say hi.”

  Moran said, “Really?” And began to smile. “You came to the hotel just to see me?”

  “You want the truth?” Mary said. “I came to Santo Domingo just to see you.”

  “But you said—”

  “I lied,” Mary said. “I didn’t plan to make the trip. But then Philly called last night to coax me, tell me about the embassy party and happened to mention she saw you at the airport.” She said, “There, I’ve bared my soul to you, Moran.”

  “It’s a nice one,” Moran said. “I’m getting excited all over again. But what about the polo matches?”

  “I think polo’s boring,” Mary said. She smiled and he smiled. “I sent for my bags. For the time being I don’t have any clothes.”

  Moran said, “You don’t, huh?” Still smiling.

  5

  * * *

  SHE SAID, “You’re getting tired of me already.”


  “What, because I said we ought to go out? Room service is okay, but it’s still room service.”

  “I have to admit, George, you’re a lot more romantic than I thought you’d be.”

  “I hear myself sometimes,” Moran said, “I sound like I’m about seventeen.”

  She said, “You don’t look much older, except for the beard. I love your beard. I love your body.”

  Even after he had told her why he was here and she was fascinated and wanted to walk the streets of his war with him, they remained in the hotel for the next two days. They needed the intimacy of being alone together, to look at each other with no one watching now and realize, no question about it, they were right. Boy, were they right. Meant for each other. They could say it and it sounded fine. They could say, I love you, earnestly, though so far only in the midst of love, perspiration glistening on their bodies, and I love you sounded pretty good, too. They lay in the sun at the hotel pool, a breeze coming off the Caribbean. She touched him and told him he could be one of the winter ballplayers. He told her she was way better looking than any of the young baseball wives, looked around, realized it wasn’t even a contest and widened the scope to include all the girl movie stars he could think of. He believed it. They talked, never having to think of things to say, and were at ease with each other in silence.

  “I remember times at the club I’d see you staring off in space,” Mary said, “like you were planning to go over the wall.”

  They lay side by side at the deep end of the pool, facing the afternoon sun, their lounge chairs touching.

  “I got pardoned,” Moran said. “If I hadn’t, yeah, I would’ve done it. I could feel it coming.”

  She said, “Can we get a few things out in the open?”

  “It’s all right with me.”

  “Okay. Why’d you marry Noel?”

  “I think it was her heinie,” Moran said. “That high, insolent ass, like it’s got a personality all its own.”

  “Are we going to only say nice things?”

  “Well, you know her as well as I do. Sometimes the things that attract us are the things that sooner or later turn us off. I should’ve looked at her stuck-up ass and known.”