new girl in the big city

My first night in New York, I lay in a strange bed in a stranger’s apartment next to my boyfriend (who, by the way, I had spent a grand total of 28 days with ever, and guess what? I was moving in with him! Into a 400-square-foot apartment! In a strange city! In a foreign country!), listening to some maniac using a power saw at 2 am. What kind of person used a power saw at 2 am? Clearly, only the kind that is a maniac intent on overcoming that Manhattan twelve-locks-on-the-door problem in one fell swoop: the kind that is hellbent on murder, mayhem, and other such big-city American shenanigans. What had I done? Why had I left Canada? Didn’t I know that New York City was full of evil nuts wielding weapons not restricted south of the 49th parallel? I had read about Kitty Genovese! I knew no one would call the cops! The maniac sawed with demented impunity as I lay shaking, weeping under a stranger’s duvet (white, flowered, immaculate), waiting for the crazy fuck to come storming through the door wearing one of those hockey masks, yelling and revving on that ripcord like nobody’s business. Splatter everywhere! The pristine country-white built-ins ruined, ruined! Nice Jewish Girl Murdered By American Maniac On First Night In New York! Her Butchered Torso Found In Bed Next To Butchered Torso Of Non-Jewish Yankee Boyfriend Who Did Not Go To College!

Oh, the horror!

My sweetie snored gently, undisturbed.


Down the hall, the cat threw herself against the door of the room we’d locked her into, over and over again. Thud (thud). Thud (thud). Thud (thud). She liked to aim for the spot where the door hit the ceiling, and she could do it from standing on all four paws, straight up. We knew because the doors were glass (this room would have been the dining room, if it wasn’t already full of two-year-old moving boxes and discarded baby furniture. The dining table was in the living room), and we had seen her do it about forty-seven times that night. We also knew because my one true love stands about six-foot-one, and the cat had shot straight up from the floor to claw at his face, unprovoked, more than once. It went like this: my sweetie entered the room. The cat looked up, all innocent-like. My sweetie paused. The cat wandered over and rubbed herself against his ankles. Was she—really—was that—perhaps—a purr? Just as my honey opened his mouth to say, “see? She likes me! She really likes me!”, the cat, making like the electrified kitties on one of those old Saturday morning cartoons, shot straight up into the air, all four paws extended out and down, like she’d been goosed with a cattle prod. She landed, every time, with her claws in my sweetie’s head, he screaming, she screaming, me screaming, he and I pulling at the cat, trying to get her OFFFFF! OFFFFF!

So then we locked her in the undined-in dining room.

It’s not like he was mean to her. My sweetie likes cats. Really. He’s a total softie when it comes to cats. Even though he’s allergic—like really allergic, not the deathly kind where your throat closes but close enough, the eyes swelling up and the full-body hives and the whole nine yards. And he was willing to risk all this, to be with her! To love her! And she was having none of it. Which is, in fact, weird, since in general, people with allergies are total cat-magnets, and not in the trying-to-claw-your-face-off kind of way. Once, I had this cat, and also this sort-of boyfriend or whatever. The sort-of boyfriend (or whatever), he was allergic to cats. And the cat, she was part Himalayan, a stray with long, fabulous, Marilyn-Monroe glamorous white fur and a purr you could hear coming at you from the other side of the street. The boy was no good, and the cat knew it. So she would do this thing, where we would be in my room (in my hovel of a basement student apartment, occupied also by my roommate who was also my friend until her unemployed alcoholic boyfriend moved in—he had this rule, that you couldn’t drink till eleven because that’s when the pubs opened in England, so he watched cartoons on the couch with a beer open, waiting, beside him, till the clock struck the hour? I never totally got it because what about the time change? But anyway) so anyway we would be in my room, doing stuff, and then the unboyfriend would get up to go pee or whatever, and the cat? She would come tearing down the hall from the other end of the hovel and take a flying leap from the doorway onto the bed (which was a futon so the leap was small, but anyway) and then she would roll over and over and over on the bed, till it was covered with hair and dander. Then he would come back in, and he would swear at her and try to kick her (nice, huh?), but she would just do the Marilyn thing, play dumb, but you don’t love me? But I love you!, kiss-kissing at him, purring, making up to him. Which only made him flee that much faster.

Such a smart kitty, she was!

So much smarter than me!

That’s what cats usually do, when people are allergic: they immediately demonstrate undying love and affection. (Or people who are afraid. My mom is more or less afraid of all non-human life forms which possess the power to move independently. When we were kids, she would stand inside the plexiglass storm door, screaming, “Go home!” at the local dogs, when they wandered across the lawn. Shockingly, they generally did not go home. At least not immediately. We waited. It was not uncommon for us to be late for things. My cat always went directly to my mother as soon as she settled herself anywhere in the apartment, climbed unstoppably into her lap, kneaded and turned and sat down to purr and demand petting. “Go home!” my mom would whisper. “Go home!”) Cats always head straight for the vulnerable person. It’s this sense they have, this built-in radar that lets them get back at the world for all the ways we’ve fucked them over, burying them in pyramids with dead pharaohs and spaying them and feeding them cat food and all. And they do it while professing unending devotion and sweetness. Worse than thirteen-year-old girls, they are. They never let on that they’re attacking, even as they’re shaking that dander all over the allergic person. This cat, however, was straight-up hating on my baby. And she didn’t care who knew it.

Just like the serial killer with the power saw. Same thing. Only without the hockey mask. Like something out of Poe, this cat was.

My first day in New York City had felt like a movie, or perhaps several movies. It was one of those movies where the pretty young couple cross arms and whirl around, laughing, by the fountain at Columbus Circle. And it was Pretty Woman, after the part where she finally gets to shop. And it was also a Woody Allen flick, and maybe Bergman. And that cat was definitely all David Lynch, all the time.

And now we had entered onto the Texas Chainsaw Massacre portion of our evening.

I trembled. I shuddered. I pulled the duvet (white, flowered, spotless) over my head. That would stop him. Definitely. For sure he’d never know I was under here.

And then the noise stopped.

I heard—was that? Maybe?—the sound of a door groaning open. Against its will. Had we locked the door? Triple-locked it? Were our keys in the outside lock? Had we just invited the murderer in?

I called my sweetie’s name, once, twice, softly, softly, so as not to let the murderer know that I was awake, because that would be much worse.

“Mmmmppphllkkkk,” said my sweetie. He snored once, elbowed me in the nose, and rolled over, wrapping the duvet around himself. Leaving me exposed, naked, vulnerable, just waiting for the kiss of those metal teeth on my bare breast!

I listened hard. Not footsteps. But…something…

Ah. Perhaps this was an undead murdering chainsaw-wielding lunatic, slithering across the floor?

(You know there’s a reason I loves me my Ambien).

The bedroom door, open a crack, cracked open.

I gasped. Tensed. Peeking from under my eyelashes, feigning sleep, I waited for his grey-green, undead, wild-eyed face to emerge over the edge of the bed.

A second. Then another. And another.

And then---

Something flew past me, over my head, as I lay cowering there! “ARRRRRRRGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!” screamed my sweetie. “Get it off! Get it off!” The duvet shredded; feathers flew everywhere; my boyfriend danced across the bed, clawing at his head, at the thing attached to his head, screaming. The dining room door had been opened! The cat, apparently, had developed opposable-thumb technology!

And then we heard the voice.

I can only imagine the scene from the vantage point of the doorway. First, the cat, locked in the dining room, probably mewing piteously like some sort of sad condemned prisoner. Then the bedroom door; the floor strewn with lingerie, the wine glasses, half-empty, next to the bed (white duvet, with flowers); the cat attacks; a crazed naked man stumbling around on the bed roaring with a cat attached to his head; the downstairs neighbor banging on the ceiling; me hiding under the covers, only my eyes and my hair showing, shrieking about chainsaws; outside, the chainsaw.

To this day, my one true love swears that it was not he who got the dates wrong. “I reconfirmed it on the phone! I said, see you Thursday! Not Tuesday in the middle of the night! Thursday! You heard me on the phone!”

There was, of course, hurried flight. We left our things. They packed a bag for us, left it with the doorman next day, with a note. Don’t call. They kept (a) the vegetable peeler from my sweetie’s knife kit; (b) his $6 sunglasses from a street fair; (c) my new bra. Pink and purple. With lace. We did not ask for these things back. Not even the bra.

These days, when I hear a chainsaw in the middle of the night, I do what any self-respecting New Yorker would do. Winter or summer, I turn on the air conditioner to drown out the noise, roll over, and go back to sleep.

In our new building, there are no pets allowed.

back to the rabbit hole...