The Big Meow - Diana Dueyn

Just fine, he said: just fine. He didn’t stop writing for a moment. How about you?

Well enough for the moment, Rhiow said, flicking an ear at the sound of the front door opening again for someone to leave or some new guest to arrive. I can hardly believe they’re still turning up here. How long do these things usually go on?

Pretty late sometimes, the Silent Man said. You’d be surprised, sometimes they —

He stopped. She could feel a shock of surprise go through him. On the pad, the Silent Man’s hand froze in place; his eyes went to the doorway to the front hall, to the sound of a woman’s voice speaking, footsteps —

Rhiow go up, turned toward the doorway. There was a woman standing there: dark blonde hair, a high broad forehead, dark down-slanting eyes – handsome enough for a queen-ehhif, Rhiow thought, but by no means up to the standard of the beauties who otherwise were everywhere at this gathering. The woman wasn’t dressed for a party, but in a relatively dark and conservative waist-level jacket and below-the-knee skirt and a dark hat with a veil, like someone who’s just gotten off a train in an old movie. The Silent Man was looking at her like someone who sees coming toward him something he’s dreaded for a long time.

Next to him, Walter Winchell looked from the Silent Man to the blonde woman, and back to the Silent Man again. “Damon – “ he said.

The Silent Man shook his head as the woman began walking toward to them. Then he stood up to greet her, as Winchell did. Helen, for the moment, stood her ground, and it obscurely reassured Rhiow to see her new agent do the same. But the other studio people standing around each edged backward a little, as if both anxious to dissociate themselves from something that was about to happen, and unwilling to miss seeing it.

“Well,” the woman said, and looked at them all: and looked Helen up and down.

Helen merely nodded to the woman courteously, but said nothing.

“Patrice,” said Winchell.

The woman looked at him. “Walter,” she said, and turned her eyes away to Runyon again.

“I called the house to try to reach you, Damon,” Patrice said. “And stopped by afterwards. You were out. But I managed to catch up with you eventually.” She glanced around. “Surprising to see you out and about – especially since all I’ve heard from you and the doctors lately is how sick you’ve been.”

The Silent Man made no move to reach for his pad. He simply stood there and looked her in the eye.

She came closer to him, looked up at him. Patrice was about a head shorter than he; when she looked up to meet his eyes, her face twitched a little, almost as if her neck hurt her from having done this a thousand times before. “I just had to see for myself,” Patrice said, “how you were.”

Runyon opened his mouth. “Been better,” he said, in a nearly inaudible whisper. To Rhiow’s ears, the pain in the two words was incredible, and it had nothing to do with the merely mechanical agony the Silent Man was suffering from the ruin now present where his vocal cords had been.

Patrice looked from him to Helen Walks Softly: a still look, chilly and assessing, and one which Helen did not try to avoid. “Yes,” Patrice said, “I’d say you have.”

Out in the rest of the room, a circle of relative quiet was gradually spreading away from them as if the two words that Runyon had managed to utter were working some kind of dire sympathetic wizardry of their own on the place. Heads were turning toward the frozen little tableau: Patrice, the Silent Man, Helen, and the agent and the studio people standing like embarrassed statues behind them. For a couple of breaths there was no movement, no words were spoken.

Then Patrice said, “I just wanted you to know that I’ve been down here from Reno the last few days to fetch the last of my things that were in storage. I’ve also sent for my boxes from the New York apartment and the Florida house. Everything’s on its way to Reno now. So don’t worry about getting in touch with me again when you get back to New York. There’ll be no need.”

The Silent Man’s mouth moved. Patrice, his lips said: but this time there wasn’t even a breath of sound. Somewhere across the room, ice tinkled in a glass: out in the front hallway, heels clacked across the tile, went quiet.

“Damon,” Patrice said, “I’ve been putting it off, but it’s time. I can’t just keep putting off living my own life any more. It looks like you’re finally letting go of me, which is good. I won’t ever forget you. How could I? But it’s all over. I just thought I had to say it to you at last before I left.”

He simply looked down at her, his face frozen, the brittle bright light of the room’s crystal chandeliers glinting off his glasses.

“The car’s waiting,” she said. “I should go. Goodbye.”

She turned away. Quietly and without stopping to speak to anyone else, Patrice made her way out through the bright room, past the people who stood and watched, out through the front hall, out the front door. Behind her lay a wake of glances that looked first in her direction, then in the Silent Man’s. Out in the front hall, just quickly there and gone again, though nowhere near Patrice, Rhiow caught a flash of a sky-blue dress, heard a faint tap of heels.

Slowly the Silent Man sat back down in his chair, then reached out to the coffeepot on the table, picked it up, tried to pour himself another cup. But the pot was empty. The hand that held the pot was shaking, and Rhiow thought this did not entirely have to do with caffeine. A dark ehhif came hurriedly across the room, picked up the pot and took it away.

Winchell was still looking after her. The Silent Man picked up his pencil again, pulled the pad over to him, and stared at the shorthand-covered page on top as if having trouble remembering how it had gotten that way. After a moment he tore that page off, laid it aside, and wrote on the pad, pushed it over to Winchell as the coffeepot was brought back full.

“Wonder how she knew I was here…” Winchell read under his breath.

He looked off to one side, where a sharp-faced, sharp-eyed woman in a dark evening dress and an extravagant hat had been watching the whole passage most keenly. Now that woman looked away, picked up the cocktail she had briefly put down and started an animated conversation with a short bald man in a tuxedo. “My money says somebody called our little Hedda over there,” Winchell said, “and Hedda called Patrice.” His face creased into a fierce frown. “You know as well as I do that she and Louella Parsons have been digging into your story for months, dropping little hints in their columns. And Hopper wasn’t here earlier, Damon: she turned up after the excitement with the cops. Could’ve been that after she got the call from whoever told her you were here, she called Patrice herself, then came to see the excitement. Dollars to doughnuts it’ll be on the radio when she does her show in a couple of days…”

Rhiow glanced around at Hwaith and Urruah. I’d start getting unsidled if I were you, she said. Somehow I doubt we’re going to be here much longer. She jumped up on the empty chair on the near side of the Silent Man, looking at him closely.

The Silent Man was writing on his pad again, shaking his head. After a moment he shoved the pad at Winchell.

THE STORY’S BEEN OTHER PEOPLE ALL MY LIFE. NEVER GET USED TO BEING ONE MYSELF. TIME TO GO.

Winchell glanced at the words, frowned, poured Runyon another cup of coffee. “One for the road?” he said.

The Silent Man nodded. Helen came to stand by the table on the far side. “I’ll be heading out shortly as well,” she said, apparently to him, but also to Rhiow, and then to Urruah as he slipped out from under one of the buffet tables and Hwaith as he came in through the French doors. “Mr. Fields and I have some matters to discuss, and some appointments to set up for tomorrow. Mr. Runyon – thanks again for your kindness.” And I’ll be in touch with you all first thing in the morning, she added silently to him and the others, so we can discuss what we can do with what’s started happening to me. Rhiow, anything from Arhu?

Not as yet, she said. Go ahead, Helen. Call if there’s need. We’ll see you in the morning.

Dai stihó, my cousins, Helen said, and moved off, heading for the pool terrace in company with Mr. Fields.

Winchell was looking out across the room, staring down the many eyes still stealing glimpses at the other man at the table, who was now looking at the torn-off pages from his pad. “Damon,” he said, “you want me to drive home behind you?”

The two men’s eyes met, and though the look was very still and composed, Rhiow was surprised at the warmth hidden in it. This is his only real friend, she thought, and he’s going to need his friends, this next while… But the Silent Man shook his head, reached for the pad. MAY HAVE SOMETHING FOR YOU IN A FEW DAYS, he wrote. FOR THE COLUMN, AND YOUR OWN SHOW. BIGGER STORY THAN MINE WILL EVER BE.

Winchell looked at him for several moments, then nodded. “All right,” he said. “Drop me a note about it tomorrow, if you can. And keep me posted.”

The Silent Man nodded, put his pad away, got up. Behind him, on a chair nearer the wall, Sheba had been sleeping for some time, fed and petted into doziness quite early in the proceedings. Now Runyon picked her up: she purred as he settled her into her accustomed place on his shoulder and almost immediately dropped off into a doze again. The Silent Man looked around the room, sketched an ironic salute to the gorgeous crowd who were still watching him and trying not to look as if they were. Then he headed for the door. Rhiow leapt down from the chair and went after him, Urruah and Hwaith following after.

In the front hallway, Elwin Dagenham was standing by the front door, talking in a low voice to a fair-haired young man – working for whom? Rhiow wondered. Possibly some PR person, a flack for one of the local columnists or fan magazines — ? Whose secrets, whose pain are being sold off at the moment?… But the Silent Man paused by the front door, looked at Dagenham, nodded to him, mouthed the words: Thank you for a lovely evening.

Dagenham looked at him with an odd stricken expression, and nodded. “Thank you for coming,” he said.

The door was opened for Runyon, and he walked out and headed down the stairs toward where the cars were parked. Out past the house, away down the hill, the lights of Los Angeles glittered. As Rhiow and the others followed him down the stairs, she found herself suddenly feeling as if she was being stared at by many cold, distant, heartless little eyes. But whether the ones before her or behind her were more heartless, she couldn’t tell.

The fur rose all over her. Behind her, she could feel the house watching, silent, waiting, almost like a live thing itself: and in it, something else that watched as well. But what?

Dear Whisperer, let us soon find out…

The car parked again, the doors shut, the cat food dishes outside the rear French doors replenished, Rhiow had thought the Silent Man might now want to get caught up on some of the sleep he was surely still short on after the previous day’s work. But instead he changed out of his party clothes into silk pajamas and bathrobe and slippers, brewed himself a fresh pot of coffee, sat down at the typrwriter, and began to transcribe his notes.

Over on the sofa, Sheba was dozing again. Urruah and Hwaith had tucked themselves up on the bookshelves, meatloafed and compact, with eyes half closed; Rhiow was sitting looking out the garden doors into the darkness, digesting the evening’s events and debating the team’s next move with herself while waiting for news from Arhu and Siffha’h. Behind her, the typing went rattling along, paused, rattled on again.

I hate to ask, she thought, studying at her dark reflection in the dark glass. He’s in enough pain. There’s always the Whisperer.

And indeed the Whisperer could tell her much of what she needed to know. But She could not tell Rhiow the truly important thing, which was what the Silent Man thought and felt about it all. Am I sure we really need to know about this? Is asking him about it merely needlessly increasing the local entropy of emotion, and doing sa’Rraah’s work?

Yet he’s in this quest with us, willingly. We have to know his issues to make sure they don’t interfere with his ability to do this work.

Rhiow sat there quite straight, her tail wrapped around her feet, while the typing went on, stopped, went on again. A page was pulled out of the typewriter, laid aside, coffee was drunk, another page was rolled in, the typing started again. Two or three more times this process was repeated, and Rhiow sat and thought and listened to the night. Outside, to her surprise, she caught the distant sound of something she had only heard in Central Park before now: a nightingale. This one was hidden away up in the gray-needled scrub pines over the wall behind the house, pouring out its little liquid bursts of song and apparently quite untroubled by the staccato song of the typewriter. Amazingly noisy thing, Rhiow thought. Computers have spoiled us, truly —

The noise stopped a few seconds later. Rhiow looked over her shoulder and saw the Silent Man pouring himself another cup of coffee. As he drank and leaned back in his wooden typing chair, staring at the page still in the typewriter, Rhiow stood up, stretched, wandered over to the desk. “Truly,” she said, “as the Queen’s my witness, I’ve never seen an ehhif drink coffee the way you do. It’s a wonder your brain’s not just one big bean.”

The Queen? he said, and yawned.

“God,” said Hwaith.

Oh.

Urruah opened an eye and looked down at Rhiow. “He’d love our – “ She shot him a look. “Where we come from,” Urruah said, closing the eye halfway again. “There’s this chain of stores, they have this coffee that – “

“Urruah,” Rhiow said. The last thing they needed right now was a discursion on grande frappucinos.

“He’d really like them,” Urruah said, “that’s all I’m saying…”

Rhiow waved her tail. “Cousin,” she said to Runyon, “are you finished with that?”

The Silent Man gave Rhiow a tolerant look. Come on up.

She leapt, sat down over to the typewriter’s left, wrapped her tail around her feet again. “Cousin,” Rhiow said, “forgive me this. I dislike having to ask about something that caused you the discomfort we saw. But I must, so that we’re quite clear about what happened tonight. Who is Patrice?”

He sighed, leaned further back in his chair, folded his arms across his chest. Patrice Amalfi del Grande Runyon, he said. My second wife.

“You said earlier that she was away on business,” Urruah said.

Monkey business, said Runyon, as usual.

He was silent for a few breaths. We were married in ’32, the Silent Man said. Knew each other for a long time before my first wife died. Another silence fell. His face didn’t change, staying still and cool. But the pause felt so spiny with suppressed guilt and anger that Rhiow wouldn’t have dared break it. For a long time we were happy together. Then, though – I got sick –

Another long silence. Rhiow looked away: Urruah, though, gazed steadily at the Silent Man, in quiet support of something Rhiow could tell was very much a tom-ish kind of pain. She took up with a younger guy, Runyon said. They’ve been living in Reno, where they met when Patrice was posted there for national service during the war. It’s been an open secret in town for a while now. Mostly the publicity people have kept quiet about it. The cool look broke: Runyon smiled bitterly. If you’ve still got enough clout in town to get them in trouble, enough friends at the studios who’d be angry on your behalf, the gossip columns and the two big name ladies with their radio shows know better than to foul their own nests by opening their yaps in public.