At the usual time, around three thirty in the afternoon, Felipe came knocking on Billy’s door.
He did not have Grace in tow.
Billy looked at Felipe and Felipe looked at Billy. It was something a little like having a mirror to look into, Billy thought. An emotional mirror, at least.
“She’s definitely with her mom,” Felipe said.
“You saw her?”
“Yeah. I went to pick her up. But her mom was there to pick her up, too. So what was I supposed to do? Can’t you just see this Hispanic guy taking off with somebody else’s kid while her real mother’s standing right there? That would have been a disaster, huh?”
“Did you even get to talk to her? How did she seem?”
“She tried to come over and talk to me, but her mom wouldn’t let her. So I guess she seemed sort of…not free. Like she wants to do something or be somewhere, but there’s no getting around her mom. But she did call out something to me.”
“Yeah? What did she say?”
“She said, ‘Tell Billy I’m sorry about the cat.’ So then that’s why I came by here. I know you don’t like it too much when people knock on your door, but I just wanted to let you know I’ll take the cat. You know. If you need me to.”
“Oh,” Billy said. “That’s nice. How nice. But, you know what? We seem to be getting used to each other. We’ve actually been getting along OK. We’re kind of…settling in.”
“Oh. OK. Good. Fine, then.”
“You realize,” Billy said, “that if her mom stays clean we may never see her again.”
To his surprise, his lip quivered slightly with the words, as if they might make him cry. Which, in front of Felipe, would be quite humiliating.
“I thought of that, yeah,” Felipe replied, not tearful, but equally down.
“Would you like to come in?” Billy asked.
It was unusual behavior on Billy’s part, and he questioned himself regarding the move, both at the time he said it, and later, after the fact. The simplest possible answer seemed to ring true: he was now used to having company at three thirty in the afternoon.
Felipe came in and sat on Billy’s couch.
“Coffee?” Billy asked.
“Great, yeah,” Felipe said. “I’ll be awake when I get to work. That’ll be good.”
Before Billy could even get into the kitchen to start a pot, the cat came walking in from the bedroom, headed straight for Felipe, and sniffed at the cuffs of his jeans.
“Well, well, well,” Billy said. “Here’s Mr. Lafferty the Cat now.”
Felipe looked up quickly, as if to gauge whether Billy was joking or not.
“Are you kiddin’ me? She named the cat Mr. Lafferty?”
“I would not kid about a thing like that.”
“Geez. There’s just no getting away from the guy.”
“At least this Mr. Lafferty likes you,” Billy noted, just as the cat jumped into Felipe’s lap.
“Yeah. Thank God, huh? Thank God there’s no such thing as an animal bigot.”
Billy went off to make the coffee.
As he was measuring the grounds into the filter, he looked up to see Felipe leaning in the kitchen doorway, watching. Mr. Lafferty the Cat circled back and forth, around and through legs — first Felipe’s and then Billy’s — rubbing and purring and arching his back.
“I guess you two have settled in,” Felipe said.
He indicated with a flip of his head the china cup of water and the saucer of dry cat food, neatly arranged on a cloth placemat on Billy’s kitchen floor.
“Fine china, yet,” Felipe added.
“We all have to eat, and there’s no need being a barbarian.”
“So, I used to have this neighbor,” Felipe said, “years ago, before I lived here. She had this big dog, like a Doberman, I think, and she used to swear to me that this dog was prejudiced. It was such a crock. She told me this story once where she says she’s walking down the street with the dog, and, heading right towards them on the sidewalk, she says, there comes this big black buck—”
“Buck?”
“Right. Exac’ly. I know. This is my point. So she says the dog right away starts growling at the guy. Long story short, turns out this woman is so stupid she doesn’t get how the dog won’t trust black people because it can tell she doesn’t.”
“Wow. What do you even say to a story like that?”
“Well, I started making fun of her. Like laughing at her, in a way. I said, ‘You saw a deer on the street? Right here in L.A.?’ And she’s like, ‘No, it wasn’t a deer, it was a man. A big man.’ And then, I’m like, ‘Well, you said it was a buck. And a buck’s not a man. It’s an animal.’ But she never did get it. She just thought I was confused. But this other neighbor of mine, she’s overhearing all this, and she’s laughing her ass off, kind of behind her hand, you know?”
“Except, really,” Billy said, “much as I like a good joke at a small-minded person’s expense, it’s not all that funny.”
“No. I guess not,” Felipe said, picking up the cat and holding him, scratching gently behind Mr. Lafferty the Cat’s ears. “But sometimes you gotta laugh. I mean, what else you gonna do?”
Billy turned on the coffee maker, and, careful to keep looking at it and not Felipe, said, “You know, he came down here. And gave me a hard time, too. Right before the first time I took care of Grace.”
“Lafferty?”
“Lafferty.”
“About what?”
“He wanted to know if I was gay,” Billy said, still pretending the coffee pot required all of his visual attention. “He said he had a right to ask because, as he put it, ‘Homosexuals are more likely to be child-molesters.’”
He sneaked a quick look at Felipe, who didn’t notice, because he was busy rolling his eyes skyward.
“Oh…my…God! I swear that guy had child-molesting on the brain! It’s like he never thought about nothing else. What the hell’s wrong with a guy like that?”
“We’ll never know,” Billy said. “Now we’ll never know.”
“Just as well,” Felipe said. “I don’t think I even want to know. Less I know about the inside of that guy, the better.”
“Like I could possibly be anything-sexual,” Billy said, purposely regressing the conversation without knowing why. “I mean, look at me. How could I be anything but asexual? There’s nobody here. Just me and this drab little apartment, and a direct-deposit every month from my mother that’s just barely enough to starve on.”
“Well, at least she squeezes you out something.”
Billy laughed.
“My parents are rolling in it,” he said. “Filthy. Rich in the filthiest possible sense of the word.”
“Oh.”
The longest pause in the history of pauses, Billy thought. He did not fill it.
“So…”
“Don’t tell me,” Billy said. “I’ll guess the question. If I come from money, what am I doing in a place like this?”
“None of my business, but yeah. That’s what I was wondering.”
“I think they figure if they give me just barely enough to stave off my literal death, it’ll motivate me.”
“They don’t want to enable you,” Felipe said.
A brief silence, and then they both burst out laughing.
“You can see how well it’s working out so far,” Billy said, taking a grand and flashy bow in his old red pajamas.
? ? ?
“Oops,” Felipe said. “I got news for you.”
He was sitting on Billy’s big stuffed chair, with Mr. Lafferty the Cat upside down on his lap, stretched out on his back and purring. Felipe was drinking his coffee with one hand and rubbing the cat’s tummy with the other.
“Bad news?”
“Just news news. We’re going to have to change Mr. Lafferty the Cat’s name to Ms. Lafferty the Cat.”
“Girl cat?”
“Girl cat.”
“Grace will be…”
Then, to his embarrassment, he had to stop talking. So he wouldn’t cry.
A long silence.
Then Felipe said, “I know. I miss her, too.”
“I feel like I’m supposed to be hoping her mom gets clean. You know, for Grace’s sake. But what about us? What about our sakes? What about if she never lets us see her again?”
“I don’t know,” Felipe said. “It’s messed up.” A pause. “Time’ll tell.” He glanced at his watch. “I better get ready for work.” He slugged down the rest of his coffee in one extended gulp. “Thanks for the coffee.”
Felipe slid the cat down on to the floor and headed for the door.
“Let me know if you see her again,” Billy said.
“I will. I mean, both. I’ll see her again, and I’ll let you know, both. I’m going to her school tomorrow, too. And every damn day after that. So if her mom ever screws up and doesn’t come for her? There I’ll be. So I’ll see her. Even if I don’t get to talk to her. And I’ll let you know.”
Felipe let himself out without saying more.
Billy began the process of locking the door after him, but, before he had even finished, he was startled by a sudden knock.
“Yes?”
Felipe’s voice echoed through the door.
“Don’t even bother to unlock it, Billy, it’s just me again. I just wanted to say one more thing. I just wanted to say I wouldn’t care if you were. I’m not like Lafferty. I’m not a prejudiced guy. My father taught me not to look down on nobody, not to think bad about nobody. Except assholes. He said it’s OK to be prejudiced against assholes, because nobody has to be an asshole. It’s voluntary.”
Silence. Billy seemed to have lost the ability to communicate.
“But you’re definitely not an asshole.”
“Thanks,” Billy said.
“Later, mi amigo.”
“Thanks,” Billy said.
If there were any other words in the universe, they were unavailable to him in that moment.