Her name was Elizabeth Ainsworth (“My friends call me Bunny”); she was a widow; had no living relatives; her late husband’s grandfather had owned coal mines; she lived in a small county seat town in a house “much too big”; passed the time “in the usual small town activities.”
Wow, thought Tony. I’ve finally hit the jackpot.
It certainly looked like he had.
An old hand in such situations, Tony struck the right note, modestly describing himself as a cautious international entrepreneur (“I’m not a plunger”) presently interested in putting together a Singapore real estate deal. Further modest revelations finally caused Bunny to interrupt him by saying that he had to be “a wonderfully compassionate human being to cancel an important meeting with your Wall Street bankers” to hurry to Pittsburgh to visit his hundred-and-five-year-old great-aunt before she died.
“Money’s important, but family — what there is left — comes first,” Tony said solemnly. “She’s the only relative I have left.”
Bunny was returning from her annual theater-museum-shopping trip to New York. She and Harold had gone for years, and following his tragic death she had gone alone, to the despair of Clara Hogan, the housekeeper. A healthy, robust, not bad-looking widow in her late fifties (her dear Joe was killed in a mine accident early in the marriage), Clara had it pretty nice.
She had her own spacious third floor apartment, the fine salary, Wednesday and Sunday afternoons off (Bunny dined at the country club on those days). She visited her mother-in-law in the nursing home on Wednesdays, had to endure the inevitable question, “You’re still keeping Joe’s memory alive, aren’t you, Clara?”
Clara did the cooking, supervised the two maids, did some dusting, straightened a lampshade — things like that — nothing too taxing. But she worried. For even though Bunny had assured her that she would be well-cared for in her old age, Clara — well aware that Bunny was a kindhearted, innocent person who regarded most people as true blue, the salt of the earth — feared the worst every time Bunny went to New York. (What if she falls for a fortune hunter, what would happen to me?)
“There goes the poor lamb on her way to slaughter,” Clara moaned to the housecat every time the Hillsdale taxi picked up Bunny for the trip to the Pittsburgh airport. “A babe in the woods, all alone in that wicked city where there’s a dozen wolves in sheep’s clothing ready to pounce on rich widows with their hearts on their sleeves. Mark my words, Midnight, one of these times she’s coming back all aflutter, gigglin’ she’s met Prince Charming.”
At which Midnight — technically a dumb animal but in reality one smart cookie — the trusted confidante of the housekeeper, would meow to say he shared her concern.
Midnight plays a vital part in this tale, which can almost be called a tragedy with a happy ending, if there is such a thing. He is the third Ainsworth housecat. Percy, the second one, was eighteen when it became obvious that the mice were gaining the upper hand. In accordance with Bunny’s tearful instructions, Clara found a home for him with a lonely old couple to whom Percy’s eighty-five-dollar a month pension was a godsend. A replacement had to be found.
Clara went to the County Humane Society, a ramshackle facility slowly sinking into the huge void left when the coal beneath was mined out years ago. There were six cats — clean, shiny, spayed or neutered, with all of their shots — awaiting (a) adoption or (b) the gas chamber.
“No, no, the poor creatures don’t suffer,” insisted the kind people there. “It’s over in seconds. But it’s a crying shame so few are adopted, how many are abandoned.”
Clara picked a long, lean, black male with fiery green eyes and one and a half ears. She and Bunny agreed that Midnight was the perfect name.
Midnight blundered with his first catch. Though thoroughly schooled by Clara — including several trial runs with a toy ball that squeaked — Midnight was so proud of his first catch that he forgot Clara’s repeated warning never to let Bunny see a mouse, dead or alive. He went running to Bunny with a poor little mouse still alive, squeaking pathetically, dangling from his mouth. Bunny had hysterics. Midnight learned his lesson.
He averaged about three mice a month (“Beats me how they get in,” Clara said time after time), took them through the cat door in the bottom of the kitchen door, deposited them behind the garage, where the gardener put them in with the grass and foliage cuttings.
Musophobic Bunny had not gone into hysterics since Midnight’s first catch five years back. Unfortunately, the record would soon be broken.
Clara’s dire prediction came true, Bunny sailed home on cloud nine from her June 1994 trip, all aflutter. She had met Prince Charming.
“The most handsome, charming, compassionate man you can ever imagine, Clara,” she gushed. “Imagine an international entrepreneur cancelling an important meeting with Wall Street bankers to rush to a Pittsburgh nursing home to visit his hundred-and-five-year-old great-aunt. Wait until you see him, Clara. And you will. He’s coming to visit us on Saturday. You’ll love Tony, Clara; I’m sure you will.”
“What did I tell you,” wailed Clara to Midnight that evening when they were alone in her apartment. “I knew it was gonna happen, just knew it. She’s been a sitting duck ever since the poor mister’s been gone. And did you hear her — he’s ‘Tony’ already. Ha; ten to one Prince Charming Tony is nothing but a two-bit gigolo that any grown woman with half an ounce of common sense could see right through. I’ll never understand why someone like her — a college graduate, reads two books a week — can be so simple-minded. Can you, Midnight?”
That statement would have given Sigmund Freud pause, and Midnight was no Freud. He was simply a cat, a smart cat but still a cat. Clara (the poor woman needed someone to talk to) frequently forgot that.
Prince Charming arrived around four Saturday afternoon in a rented car. Clara, all gussied up (scorn for two-bit gigolos had lost out to feminine vanity), looked great. So did Midnight; bathed, brushed, scented. But Bunny outshone both of them. She had spent two hours at her favorite beauty parlor, gotten “the works,” wore a gorgeous blue pants suit she had bought on Fifth Avenue. She looked no more than forty, in the bloom of radiant womanhood.
Tony rang the doorbell. Clara (having vowed to be totally immune to “the most handsome, charming, etc. etc.”) opened the door while holding on to the doorknob. Which was a good thing; otherwise she might have fallen backward. For Prince Charming was everything Bunny claimed. And he was not only incredibly handsome, he oozed masculinity, mischief, mystery. Poor Clara; bells rang, harps played, drums banged. Tony had that effect on women.
“You must be Clara,” he said, favoring her with a gorgeous smile. “Bunny has told me how valuable you are to her.” (Bunny had covered a lot of territory on the short flight to Pittsburgh.) Tony took one of Clara’s hands, squeezed it.
Then he saw Bunny. He gave dazed Clara’s hand one last strong squeeze, strode quickly to where Bunny was standing, took both of her hands in his, held them tightly while exclaiming in a voice that throbbed with manly mellifluence, “Wow, Bunny, you look like two million dollars.”
Poor Bunny, she blushed, she giggled, she glowed, she managed to say, “Oh, Tony, you ought to be ashamed of yourself for saying such things.”
“No, I mean it. You look fabulous.” Poor Bunny, she almost simpered.
Then it was Midnight’s turn. He had been lurking behind a chair, watching with ill-concealed disgust the way the two women were fawning over an obvious four-flusher. He didn’t fool Midnight. Cats can tell.