Carl and Lenny by Kate Duva
Fat Lenny vegetates on top of the kitchen table, his sexy eyes slitted in the sun, tail curling and uncurling rhythmically, oblivious to his father's crisis.
"No smokes?" Carl crackles. "Aww, Winston Lights! Smoking a Winston Light is like sucking your sister."
Carl is a wisp of a man who subsists on pudding and microwave mac 'n cheese. He wears his white hair in a stubby ponytail and always has a fantasy paperback in his butt pocket. Lenny is a massive red tabby who frightens pit bulls and suffers from obscene rashes. Carl has a cancer growing slowly and mightily in his gut, but no one knows it yet. He wears two talismans around his neck: a crucifix and a shark's tooth.
"Y'all live in the home," my brother-in-law cracks. He's a summer-homer, worth a fair-sized chunk of IBM, so he emphasizes "home" as if to couple it with the word "charity," or the word "wayward." We're the patchwork family, lonely desperados who should be grateful to have a home. Carl the ex-junkie; the alley cat he stole from the shelter because they deemed him an unfit father; me, a chronically unemployed daughter; and my new husband, who can't speak English but can jump-start cars.
Carl's in the basement. We're upstairs. My mother, the rightful owner of this Home, lives in between, among dusty, sexy antiques. Abandoned crossword doodles. Wine stains. And Lenny fur. From her bedroom she can hear Carl breathe.
"Lenny, ya hungry? I gotcha Squid Bonanza!" He pops open a can of Sea Captain's Choice. He whistles jazz hits of yesteryear. He tells me the story of getting his young military ass kicked by a chimp in Alabama, and gossips about old pals who have jumped in front of trains, or jacked up their bad hearts on coke and croaked while shooting hoops.
Carl's oldest friend in the world was a man nicknamed "Fishball." Fishball and my mother shacked up for years, and when she learned his childhood friend was languishing in a lonely room at the YMCA, she rescued him. Eventually Fishball was dumped, but Carl stayed.
A disciple of Lenny called this morning at three. Me and my sweetheart were awake, so we walked out in our bathrobes and met the disciple in front of Boomer's, a Greek nightclub. The disciple was a boyish recreational drug user with a stud in one ear, and he cradled Lenny in his arms.
I call Lenny's fans disciples because their attention borders on feverish. They call the number on his bone-shaped tag at all hours, gibbering in Spanish or English. Some threaten to call the animal cops to report neglect. Others simply seem eager to perform good deeds and content to be blessed with Lenny's company.
I would like to be Lenny. I could lounge on a plasticated couch under a portrait of Elvis Presley. I could curl at the feet of a family breakfasting on their sunny patio, fawning over me in Tagalog. I could party with bikini ladies eating buckets of fried chicken in a blow-up pool. Leonard has experienced all that and more. He has seen the private animality humans unleash in the safety of their city dens. He is that rare American who actually knows his neighbors.
Lenny sits swishing his tail at Carl's breakfast bowl. His yellow eyes are fierce but empty. Ennui. Life ain't worth livin' unless it's on the prowl. Carl chomps his cereal with a vengeance
."No, Leonard. You're just gonna chew up the peppers, and plop in the dirt. You can plop at home, without getting ear mites. You remember what happened the last time you attacked Wales?" he asks the cat. "You came back with several bumps on your cranium!"
When Carl goes to the hospital, they'll pump him with all the blood he needs, and he'll turn pink as a tongue. For weeks I will hear him through the bathroom vents, coughing up hell.
Leonard will be the victim of a hit-and-run. Fur will fly, and land in orange patches on Lincoln Avenue, and end up in birds' nests. Carl will massage Lenny all night, feeling for broken bones, and Lenny will just purr.
"I ain't gonna die til the Cubs win the World Series," Carl says.
"Oh, Carl. You wanna live forever?"
I hand Carl a word-processed document. He's wearing purple jeans, and conducting an opera with his eyes closed.
"Carl! I wrote a story about you."
"Is it dirty?" he asks. "I wanna hear it!"
Kate Duva has been published in Hair Trigger magazine and The2ndHand. Her writing and visual art can be seen in the Duva Diaries at www.kateduva.blogspot.com. She lives in Chicago where she teaches tiny children and is a bit of a hermit.