Roosevelt wondered.
“No, sir. I never asked.” Calling attention to such an eccentricity
had seemed as impolite as mentioning a physical deformity, so I had
always pretended to accept this aspect of Roosevelt as though it were
not in the least remarkable.
“Well,” he said, “about nine years ago I had this really great dog
named Sloopy, black and tan, about half the size of your Orson. He was
just a mutt, but he was special.”
Orson had shifted his attention from the cat to Roosevelt.
“Sloopy had a terrific disposition. He was always a playful,
good-tempered dog, not one bad day in him. Then his mood changed.
Suddenly he became withdrawn, nervous, even depressed.
He was ten years old, not nearly a pup anymore, so I took him to a vet,
afraid I was going to hear the worst kind of diagnosis. But the vet
couldn’t find anything much wrong with him. Sloopy had a little
arthritis, something an aging ex-linebacker with football knees can
identify with, but he didn’t have it bad enough to inhibit him much,
and that was the only thing wrong. Yet week after week, he wallowed in
his funk.”
Mungojerrie was on the move. The cat had climbed from the arm to the
back of the sofa and was stealthily approaching us.
“So one day,” Roosevelt continued, “I read this human interest story in
the paper about this woman in Los Angeles who called herself a pet
communicator. Name was Gloria Chan. She’d been on a lot of TV talk
shows, counseled a lot of movie people on their pets’ problems, and
she’d written a book. The reporter’s tone was smart-ass, made Gloria
sound like your typical Hollywood flake. For all I knew, he probably
had her pegged. You remember, after the football career was over, I
did a few movies. Met a lot of celebrities, actors and rock stars and
comedians. Producers and directors, too. Some of them were nice folks
and some were even smart, but frankly a lot of them and a lot of the
people who hung out with them were so bugshit crazy You wouldn’t want
to be around them unless You were carrying a major concealed weapon.”
After creeping the length of the sofa, the cat descended to the nearer
arm. It shrank into a crouch, muscles taut, head lowered and thrust
forward, ears flattened against its skull, as if it was going to spring
at us across the six feet between the sofa and the table.
Orson was alert, focused again on Mungojerrie, both Roosevelt and the
biscuits forgotten.
“I had some business in L.A.,” Roosevelt said, “so I took Sloopy with
me. We went down by boat, cruised the coast. I didn’t have the
Nos-tromo then. I was driving this really sweet sixty-foot Chris-Craft
Roamer. I docked her at Marina Del Rey, rented a car, took care of
business for two days. I got Gloria’s number through some friends in
the film business, and she agreed to see me. She lived in the
Palisades, and I drove out there with Sloopy late one morning.”
On the sofa arm, the cat was still crouched to spring. Its muscles
were coiled even tighter than before. Little gray panther.
Orson was rigid, as still as the cat. He made a high-pitched thin,
anxious sound and then was silent again.
Roosevelt said, “Gloria was fourth-generation Chinese American. A
petite, doll-like person. Beautiful, really beautiful. Delicate
features, huge eyes. Like something a Chinese Michelangelo might have
carved out of luminous amber jade. You expected her to have a
little-girl voice, but she sounded like Lauren Bacall, this deep smoky
voice coming from this tiny woman. Sloopy instantly liked her. Before
I knew it, she’s sitting with him in her lap, face-to-face with him and
talking to him, petting him, and telling me what he’s so Moody
about.”
Mungojerrie leaped off the sofa arm, not to the dinette but to the
deck, and then instantly sprang from the deck to the seat of the chair
that I had abandoned when I had moved one place around the table to
keep an eye on him.
Simultaneously, as the spry cat landed on the chair, Orson and I