The landlady had told him the woman’s name, but he had forgotten it. It was something foreign, something Slavic. He turned the corner onto Bloor and walked in the direction of a cafeteria he remembered from his rooming-house days of a dozen years before.
CHAPTER TWO
After she watched the new roomer close the front doors behind him, Grace Hill returned to her kitchen and sat down at the table. Peanuts lay on the inside sill of the back window absent-mindedly washing one of her shoulders but keeping a green eye focused on the movements of some sparrows that were chasing each other through the budding leaves of a pair of lilac bushes against the fence.
Grace watched her for a moment before she said, “Peanuts, you red devil, what are you doing?”
The cat gave her an insolent glance over her shoulder and went back to her toilet, first stifling a bored yawn.
Grace planted her slippered feet more firmly on the patterned linoleum of the kitchen floor, cupped her chin in her hands, and gave herself up to thoughts of the coming summer. This year, she decided, she would go to the Sun Lovers’ Club every weekend. Not like the year before when she had missed too many trips because of her fear of leaving the roomers alone from Saturday morning to Sunday night.
She was going to enjoy the coming season, with its long days in the sun and the beautiful nude young men strolling above her on the grass of the sunny hillsides. It would be wonderful! Which reminded her that she hadn’t yet mailed in her application and membership fee. Here it was the second of May, with the club opening up on the first of June.
She crossed the narrow kitchen to an old-fashioned kitchen cabinet and rummaged in a top drawer until she found a pen, a half-used package of envelopes, and the skinny remains of a writing pad. With these in her hand she once more took her chair at the table and began to write, in German, to the secretary of the club. When the application was written she pushed herself to her feet with a sigh and shuffled over to the large pantry that she had converted into her bedroom. She returned to the table and made out a cheque to the club, signing it with her maiden name, Gretchen Stauffer.
Peanuts was now standing on the windowsill, her back slightly arched and her tail twitching, intent on something below her in the yard. Grace walked over to the window, as the cat gave her a quick nervous glance, and looked down at the lawn. A big tom tabby stared up at her with unblinking eyes. Even from that distance she could almost count his gaunt ribs which ran back from a pair of heavily muscled shoulders. She stared in fascination at his flat head with its scars from a hundred fights. The tom took his eyes from the window and moved his head slowly from side to side, taking in the lawn on both sides of him and the bushes that lined the fences.
Grace picked up Peanuts and whispered in her ear, “Is that your lover, you red devil? Eh, is that your lover? Eh?”
She trembled as she carried the cat to the kitchen door, opened it, and placed Peanuts on the floor of the back porch. The big red female tried to squeeze herself back into the house but Grace blocked her with her legs. The tomcat didn’t move but stared intently at the frantic female as she tried to regain the safety of the kitchen. Grace, with a series of gasping giggles, said, “Here she is, cat. Here’s your sweetheart for the night.” With a quick jump she got back inside the door, closing it behind her.
She ran to the window and looked out. She could not see Peanuts, who was hidden from view as she pressed herself against the door, but she stared in breath-holding fascination at the tomcat who had pulled himself up to full height, his eyes on the porch and his tail slowly flicking from side to side. As he stared at Peanuts he shoved out his tongue and licked his dry lips, before glancing over his shoulder to reconnoitre the garden behind him. Then, his eyes on the female again, he took a stiff-legged forward step, then another, bringing himself closer to the steps that led up to the porch. Grace heard Peanuts backing her haunches against the door, and she laughed quietly, her eyes still on the tom. Though he had not returned her glance since his first insolent stare, Grace knew that he was aware of her presence at the window.
She heard Peanuts give a warning mew, and the tom stopped momentarily and glanced about him carelessly before moving slowly ahead as before. The door rattled slightly as Peanuts backed herself against it, and Grace gripped the sill with both hands as she urged the tom on under her breath. He placed one scarred paw on the bottom step and his head rose like a cobra’s as he tried to stare into the eyes of the ginger female. Slowly he began his upward climb, each step a calculated movement, each movement a flowing forward of lithe rippling muscle and taut shivering ganglions, the head seeming separated from the crouching flowing body beneath.
Peanuts gave a strange cry and hissed at him, but as if knowing that it was only female coquetry and invitation the big tom let his body flow on to the floor of the porch, where he stood in momentary indecision, showing his independence by glancing over the garden once again. Peanuts began a series of guttural cries, far different than any noises she had ever made in the house.
Grace stared at the gaunt tomcat with a fascination that was almost mesmeric in its intensity, her fingers digging into the wood of the windowsill and her mouth hanging open. Now that she could see the tom from a distance of a few feet she was aware of the strength and maleness of him, of the sexual concentration that was apparent in his unblinking eyes and quivering haunches. As she watched he mewed piteously, making the sound of a woman in pain. He was answered by a cry from Peanuts that started deep down in her throat and rose to a hysterical pitch of quavering trills.
“Hurry up, hurry up!” Grace pleaded with him. He advanced across the porch towards the female, moving himself a section at a time. His head disappeared from view behind a corner of the window, and she stared at his shivering hindquarters and his fiercely lashing tail. Both cats were now crying to each other, their voices sometimes raised in thin feline screams and at other times muted as they talked in tones of unbearable sadness. Suddenly, almost too quick to see, the tom disappeared completely in the direction of the doorway, and the door rattled on its lock as they met against it.
Grace heard her cat give one long-drawn-out cry and then they tumbled into view, the tom gripping Peanuts around her belly with his forepaws while he searched for a tooth-hold on the back of her neck. The yellow cat was trying to drag herself toward the steps, but the full weight of the tom pressed her hindquarters to the floor. She strained with her front legs as her back legs dragged behind her elongated body, and the back legs of the tom tried to find a grip on the smooth board floor. Neither cat was crying now, their full efforts being concentrated on their straining purpose. Grace pushed herself against the windowsill until it bit into her middle through her girdle, and she clenched her teeth on her tongue.
Suddenly from upstairs came the sound of running water, then with a swoosh and clatter the ancient toilet flushed and gurgled as it emptied noisily down the pipe that lay hidden in the wall behind the kitchen sink. The tomcat loosed his precarious grip upon the ginger female and swung his eyes toward the house, crouched now for a hasty spring away from the startling noise. Peanuts in a few quick bounds reached the fence at the north side of the garden and clawed her way to the top of it, where she stood poised for a moment surveying the yard beyond.
With a lithe bound the tomcat reached the grass and threw himself upon the fence a split second after Peanuts had left it. In a moment both cats had disappeared into the maze of gardens, backyards, and laneways that stretched a full block between the rear of the houses on Adford and the next street, Bemiral Road.
Grace Hill let her hands relax from the windowsill, wiped her mouth with the back of one hand, and glanced up at the ceiling.
“You crazy Russian!” she shouted, knowing that it was Sophia Karpluk who had flushed the toilet. “You dirty Russian schlampe!”
Then she collapsed on a chair, staring with unseeing eyes at the pattern of the linoleum at her feet.
Later on she hurried into her bedroom and pulled an old shoebox from