J tamped one of his filterless cigarettes over and over again on the counter, then put it to his lips and lit up.
"You said it. Not a reason in the world to crush a cat's paw. It's a real well-behaved cat, never done anything wrong. Nothing anyone would have to gain by crushing its paw. It's just senseless and cruel. But y'know, the world's full of that kind of groundless ill will. I'll never understand it, you'll never understand it. But it exists all the same. You might even say it's got us hemmed in.
The Rat nodded once more, his eyes fixed on his beer glass. "I just can't understand why."
"That's all right. If you can let it go at not understanding, that's the best anyone could expect."
So saying, J blew cigarette smoke out into the dark emptiness beyond the bar. He followed the white smoke with his eyes until it completely vanished in the air.
A long silence passed between the two of them. The Rat gazing at his glass, lost in thought, J running his finger back and forth along the counter top as usual. The jukebox began to play the last record. A soul ballad in falsetto.
"Say J," said the Rat, eyes still on the glass, "I've lived here for twenty-five years, and it seems to me I haven't really learned a thing."
J said nothing, but just stared at his fingers. Then he gave a little shrug. "Me, I've seen forty-five years, and I've only figured out one thing. That's this: if a person would just make the effort, there's something to be learned from everything. From even the most ordinary, commonplace things, there's always something you can learn. I read somewhere that they say there's even different philosophies in razors. Fact is, if it weren't for that, nobody'd survive."
The Rat nodded, then finished off the last inch of beer in his glass. The record ended, the jukebox clicked off, and the premises fell quiet again.
"I think I see what you're getting at, but" the Rat began, then swallowed the thought. But – the word was on his lips, there wasn't anything more he could say. So he smiled and stood up, thanked J and said, "Can I give you a lift home?"
"Nah, it's okay. My place is close by, and besides I like to walk."
"Well, now, you get some shut-eye. Regards to your cat."
"Thanks."
Climbing the stairs, he stepped out into the crisp autumn air. The Rat made his way to the parking lot, tapping the trees along the roadside lightly with his fist as he walked. He came to a halt in front of the parking meter, stared at it for no reason at all, then got in the car. After a few wrong turns, he found himself cruising toward the ocean. He stopped the car along the shore road in view of her apartment building. Half the apartments were still lit. In a few, shadows moved behind the curtains.
The woman's apartment was dark. Even her bedside lamp was out. Probably asleep. It was a terribly lonely feeling.
The sound of the waves seemed to be growing louder. Almost as if any minute now they would break over the seawall and wash the Rat – car and all – somewhere faraway. He switched on the car radio and let back the reclining seat, eyes closed, hands behind his head, half-listening to some deejay's drivel. He was dead tired, thanks to which, whatever emotions he might have had, simply came and went without gaining a foothold. The Rat began to relax and lay down his empty head on the mingled sounds of the waves and the deejay until sleep crept over him.
11
Thursday morning, the twins woke me up. Little did I notice that it was fifteen minutes earlier than usual as I shaved, drank my coffee, and read through the morning paper, still sticky with fresh ink.
"There's a favor we have to ask," said one of the twins.
"Do you think you could borrow a car this Sunday?" said the other.
"Perhaps," I said, "but where do you want to go?"
"The reservoir."
"The reservoir?"
They both nodded.
"What do you want to do at the reservoir?"
"Last rites."
"Whose?"
"The switch-panel's."
"I see," said I, and returned to the paper.
Unfortunately, on Sunday it began drizzling from the morning. To be sure, I had no way of knowing what kind of weather was most appropriate for a switch-panel's funeral. The twins didn't broach the subject of the rain, so I kept quiet.
Saturday night I borrowed my business partner's light blue Volkswagen. He insinuated that maybe I'd found myself a woman, to which I merely said
Umm.
The back seat of the bug was stained across one side, probably milk chocolate rubbed in by his kid, though it looked like bloodstains from a machine gun battle. My partner didn't have any decent cassettes for the car stereo, so we traveled the full hour and a half to the reservoir without any music, driving on and on without a word. As we drove, the rain came down harder and then weaker, then harder again, then weaker, alternating at regular intervals. It was enough to make you yawn, that rain.
The only sound was that of the high-speed whoosh of passing cars on the highway.
One of the twins sat in the front seat, the other sat in the back holding a shopping bag with a thermos bottle and the defunct switch-panel. The girls were properly somber in keeping with the funeral day. And I followed suit. We were even somber as we ate roast corn-on-the-cob at a roadside rest stop.
Only the sound of the kernels popping off the roasting cobs broke the restrained mood. We left behind three corncobs nibbled clean to the last kernel, then we were back in the car and off again.
There were an awful lot of dogs around, wandering aimlessly in the rain like schools of yellowtail in an aquarium. So we had to keep honking the horn nonstop. For all you could tell from their faces, they weren't the least bit concerned about the rain or the cars. Generally, their expressions would turn downright disdainful at the sound of the horn, but they dodged out of the way just the same. Of course, there was no way for them to dodge the rain. The dogs were sopping wet, right down to their buttocks; some looked like waifs from a Balzac novel, others like pensive Buddhist priests.
The twin in the seat next to me put a cigarette to my lips, and lit it for me. Then she put her little hand on the crotch of my cotton pants, and stroked. Her action was more like some kind of reassurance than stimulation.
The rain seemed destined to fall forever. October rains are like that. Falling steadily, ceaselessly, until everything is soaked through and through. The ground was soggy. The trees, the expressway, the fields, the cars, the houses, the dogs – everything without exception had soaked up rain, filling the world with a hopeless chill.
The road led up into the hills, and eventually we emerged from the depths of the forest onto the bank of the reservoir. Thanks to the rain there was not a soul in sight. As far as the eye could see, rain poured down across the surface of the reservoir.
The sight of that rain-swept reservoir was far more heart-wrenching than I could have imagined. We parked beside the bank, and sat in the car drinking coffee from the thermos and eating the cookies the twins had brought along. There were three kinds of cookies: coffee cream, butter cream, and maple syrup, which we divided up to make sure that we each got our fair share.