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  Doctor Nah

  Copyright © 2014 by James Mannion

  This is a work of fiction. Any similarity to any person, living or dead, is coincidental and unintentional. (If you think you are someone in this book, or aspects of certain characters remind you of yourself, you are advised to seek out a mental health professional ASAP.)

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Doctor Nah

  DOCTOR NAH

  About ten years ago I came upon a little tortoiseshell cat sitting calm as can be on the corner of Summit Avenue and Van Reipen Street in Jersey City, New Jersey. Now, Summit is not some quiet side street. It’s a main drag trafficked by trucks, buses, and many pedestrians. And this little kitty cat sat oblivious to the hustle and bustle, quite unusual for a stray cat. I had never had a pet, not even a goldfish or a turtle, but when her serene green eyes looked up at me, I felt a connection I cannot adequately describe. It’s a little mystical to say that the cat was waiting for me, but it certainly seemed that way. And it was the first time that the corny old pick-up like, “Baby, where have you been all my life?” was utterly apropos.

  I called my girlfriend and asked her if she wanted a cat. She said no, but since it seemed obvious that I did, and this surprised her immeasurably, she consented. She drove over to collect us. While I was waiting, several people – an Indian woman in a white lab coat, an older lady in a drab business suit, an Irish-looking guy with a bad dye job, and an Italian fellow with a thick accent – all told me that they saw this cat every day and for various reasons could not take her, and exhorted me to do so. She was living in an abandoned house down the block with a feral pack. She had no collar, but she was clean and not battle-scarred as so many strays are. And Buddha-like in her serenity. Loretta arrived and I scooped the little one up in my arms and we took her home.

  Loretta named her Deva (pronounced Day-va) which is the ancient Sanskrit word for celestial light being. We got tired of explaining that to people and began to pronounce it “Diva.”

  Deva the Cat was not the most demonstrative of cats. She didn’t like to be held, she never wanted to cuddle, but she always wanted to be close. It was often like having a statue of a cat on the corner of the bed. Yet her presence was pleasing, and I learned what it was like to be a “cat person,” something heretofore alien to me and the subject of haughty jibes. No more. Never again.

  When Loretta left me, we didn’t fight over who would get the cat. She loved Deva, but knew I was bereft, and losing the cat as well as her could be the tipping point, so with sadness and sacrifice she left Deva with me, making me promise to take good care of her. I urged her to come and visit and that I would go in another room or even leave for a couple of hours if she didn’t want to be around me. She said she would, but never did.

  Deva’s personality changed slightly after Loretta left. One day, I was sitting on the futon in the lotus position and she hopped on the mattress, strode over to me with feline fluidity, placed a front paw on my big toe and stared in the opposite direction. A veteran cat person told me that female domestic cats are not as affectionate as the male of the species (I have found that this is not limited to felis silvestris catus), and this action was akin to a big, goofy, lovable dog yelping and leaping on you and licking your face. Deva intuited my sadness and was trying to comfort me. I picked her up and hugged her and smothered her head with kisses. She scratched and hissed and ran out of the room. But two minutes later she came back and put her paw on my toe again.

  In the next few years, Deva’s simple presence on the scene literally saved my life. I was suicidal at the time, but when I’d see Deva curled up in a ball on the corner of the mattress, or tapping me on the nose, or blowing in my ear during the pre-dawn hours demanding to be fed, or flipping out on catnip, or galloping around the apartment in spontaneous, frenetic bursts of energy, I realized that there was a life that depended on me. A living thing that I loved more than I loved myself. So I stuck around.

  When I learned about Loretta’s death and entered the looney bin for a spell, I contacted a distant cousin who is a bona fide crazy cat lady, and she took Deva. When I got settled in Hattie Hawkins’ upstairs digs, I got her and brought her home.

  Hattie, not a cat person, said in her characteristically gruff manner, "I don't like that cat. She ugly."

  "She's beautiful. Besides, Hattie, I'd have thought you would have learned a lesson or two from Dr. King."

  "Mmm...hmmm?"

  "A cat should be judged not by the color of its coat, but by the content of its character."

  "Sheeit!"

  "Mmmm, hmmm. Sometimes I think I'm the last man on earth who really believes that, about cats and about people. I am legend."

  About six months ago, I noticed blood on the corner of the mattress where she slept. I picked her up and also saw some around her mouth. I tried looking in her mouth but she fought me. When she tried to eat dry food in her dish she cried and ran away, I found a veterinary service that made house calls. Let’s give them a plug, shall we? VetDispatch, servicing most of New Jersey. The doctor and her assistant, two very compassionate and empathetic women, examined Deva and told me she either had severe gingivitis or an oral mass. Either way, an antibiotic shot was administered. Deva rallied and was her old self again. After three weeks the antibiotics wore off and the symptoms returned in full force.

  A second house call resulted in a second shot and the prognosis was inoperable, terminal oral cancer. For the next six weeks, I did my best at caring for her in a form of hospice mode. Like any cancer patient, she had good days and bad days. She was her old self sometimes and other times she would stay under the futon and could not be coaxed out. At night, however, she would jump on the bed and want to sleep in the crook of my arm, her face close to mine. The tumor gave her halitosis, but I never turned her away.

  I’d put a harness on and she would sit out in the sun or walk around taking in the scents and sounds. I fed her liquefied tuna mixed with a holistic painkiller with an eye dropper, and I cried a lot.

  One day she refused to open her mouth to eat, and her eyes told me she had had enough. I called the vet and she was euthanized the next morning. I held her and talked to her through the process and the last thing she saw was the human who loved her more than he thought it was possible to love a fur-bearing quadruped.

  I miss that darn cat. Deva the Cat is never far from my thoughts and forever in my heart.

  And always will be.

  * * *

  If you read my book, The Little Sistah, you’ll note that I cut/pasted the above from that text, but it serves as an appropriate prologue to this little holiday yarn. No, it’s not going to be the next A Christmas Carol or It’s a Wonderful Life, but it took place between Thanksgiving and Christmas, about seven months after the events in the aforementioned literary confection, which I highly recommend. In The Little Sistah, one Mr. Scanlan Grimes, a fat, fifty-year-old white man living in the inner-city of Jersey City, goes from zero to hero (after a fashion), dud to stud (a polarizing, divisive claim), and “nottie” to “hottie” (now that strains credulity to the max). This much is true: I did get my groove back. More or less.

  I frequented a bodega on the corner, a short block from my house, when I was feeling lazy, which was most of the time. There was a decent supermarket about a ten minute walk away. Other than that, I had to take a bus to the downtown/waterfront part of Jersey City, which in the time I’d been there had developed into an upscale appendage of Manhattan. Just as only the very rich or very poor could live on Manhattan Island, and this was spreading like a virus to the outer boroughs as well, so too was Jersey City in the process of gentrification. Even my reluctantly adopted home, the Greenville section near the Bayonne city l
imits, was showing the early stages of this insidious societal ill. Insidious in that it makes no accommodation for the poor folks (of which I am one). They’ll just be given the bum’s rush to another hellhole. From my bedroom, which is on the corner of the house, I can look out one window and see the Statue of Liberty, and from the other see the top of the Empire State building. I note the irony as I look at Lady Liberty’s shining torch and gunshots punctuate the still of the night.

  Enough of this screed. A word to would-be writers: you can make your social commentary more palatable to the average reader with a healthy dollop of sex and violence and humor, and not mere polemical pontification.

  Back to the bodega: there was a little tortoiseshell cat in the store, sweet and serene and unlike the usual wizened and weathered mouse-catchers these establishments keep on the premises. She looked liked she could be the late, lamented Deva’s offspring. She always came over to me and rubbed my ankles, and I would kneel and pet her before she took a nip at my hand and bolted away. The woman behind the counter always offered her apologies and I said “De nada,” with no attempt to pronounce it correctly.

  A cute little black child came in the store, crouched down and called out, “Dulcinea,” and the cat trotted out from one of the aisles and raced into her arms. Their rapport was apparent, and a manful tear gently descended from my eye.

  “Can I have her, Mami? Please?!?”

  “No, child, she our cat.”

  “I’ll give you $100 for her,” I said impulsively.

  “Que?”

  “One hundred. Yankee dollars, not pesos.”

  “Sorry, Papi, not for sale.”

  The little girl looked up at me. “Hey, mister. You wanna take my little friend?”

  “And give her to you,” I said. She started to cry and stood and hugged me.

  “If I could, I would, little girl.”

  “My name Aldonza.”

  “And I’m Don Quixote, the Lord of LaMancha.”

  “You look like a wizard.”

  A 5’10”, portly Caucasoid with gray hair and a white beard that he’d let run wild due to depression and disinterest, wearing all black, including a cheap felt fedora from C.H. Martin, and brandishing a formidable-looking twisted hickory walking staff almost as tall as he was could appear like a crackpot alchemist to a small black child in an inner-city ghetto. People of my pallor were scarce, if entirely absent, ‘round these parts.

  “At least you didn’t say Santa Claus.”

  “Well…”

  “Quit while you’re ahead. Wizard is better, kid.”

  She smiled. Dulcinea, while this exchange was occurring, had spied a few pigeons and starlings pecking at whatever was on the sidewalk outside the store. She was in stalking mode. The door was open. I kept a close eye and the cat inevitably bolted after them. I ran as fast as a 50-year-old man with coronary artery disease could and snatched the cat in my arms just as it left the sidewalk and headed for the street and into traffic that had no respect for human pedestrians, let alone furry fluffballs.

  Little Aldonza followed me with tearful screams, and I returned the cat to the store.

  “You should watch her better!” she yelled at the owner and stamped her feet.

  “At least keep the door closed,” I added. “The weather’s changed and it’s getting chillier every day.”

  “Yeah, Papi, yeah,” she said with no intention of heeding our advice.

  The child and I purchased our few items and left the store. It turned out we were walking in the same direction.

  “I hate that,” she said in child-like fury. “They don’t deserve to have a beautiful kitty like her.”

  “No, they don’t. I’ll keep trying to buy her for you.”

  “You shouldn’t be able to buy another living thing. We learned that in school. It’s called slavery.”

  “Well, it’s a little different with a cat.”

  “I hoped you wouldn’t say that. You seem nicer than most white people.”

  “Where’d you pick that one up?”

  “In Social Studies class.”

  “Not at home.”

  “No. My moms tells me that there’s good and bad in every one and we shouldn’t hate any group of people.”

  Listen to your mother. Just out of curiosity, what do you know about World War Two?”

  “That America attacked Japan with nuclear bombs.”

  “Did you ever hear of Pearl Harbor?”

  “No.”

  “Here’s my Social Studies lesson for today. Cats are nicer than people of any race, color, or religion. Without exception.”

  She giggled. “I agree, Mr. Wizard. And don’t get me wrong. There are bad black people, too.”

  “Magnanimous of you.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  “There’s a bad man who lives on Union Street. He’s a drug dealer and he kills cats just to be mean. Sometimes he catches strays and feeds them to his pit bulls. A few months ago he ran over a shoe box full of kittens in front of a group of really little kids and laughed as they cried and cried.”

  “Anybody do anything about this,” I quickly edited my choice of words, “villain?”

  “People are scared of him.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Doctor Nah.”

  “Sounds like Ian Fleming translated into Ebonics.”

  “Huh?”

  “Nothing. What’s his real name?”

  “That’s it. Kilpatrick Nah. He’s half black and half North Korean.”

  “The cops don’t do anything?”

  “He’s been taken in a few times, but gets out pretty quick.”

  “Maybe I’ll have a talk with him.”

  “I wouldn’t. He’s a scary dude.”

  “I can be scary when it’s called for.”

  “You’re fluffy. A big ole wooly sheep dog.”

  “Woof.”

  She hugged me and ran away. “I have to get home. See y’around, Gandalf!”

  * * *

  A couple of days later I went back to the bodega. Before getting anything, I always looked for little Dulcinea. Her usual spot was on a shelf in the window where they kept the warm three-liter bottles of C&C soda. They were exposed to the direct light and heat of the sun and the labels on many of the bottles had faded to white, the print no longer legible. I wouldn’t buy those were I you. I’m no chemist, but seems to me that the liquid in a plastic bottle that had been baking in the sun all summer was probably a little on the toxic side.

  “Where’s my little friend?” I asked the woman behind the counter.

  “She gone, Papi.”

  “What?”

  “Sunday morning, I no see her for a while. I look all over the place. She no here. Must have run outside. Never come back.”

  I became dizzy and began to experience shortness of breath. “You had the door open again?”

  “Si.”

  My chest began to tighten and I felt the familiar stabbing pain of angina as the light-headedness and gasping worsened.

  “I knew this would happen! Stupid fuckin’…stupid fuckin…”

  The last thing I remember was falling into the ice cream freezer in front of the counter.

  * * *

  I emerged from the fog in a hospital bed. I recognized it as the Emergency Room of Jersey City Medical Center. I was behind a curtain and hooked up to a machine monitoring my vitals. I was not alone. An old black gentleman sat by my bedside.

  “Quincy, I didn’t know you cared!”

  He said nothing. Quincy was a friend of my landlady Hattie Hawkins, a wheelchair-bound sassy senior who took me in at my lowest ebb a few years back. She was a neighborhood heroine and legend. In the 1970s she was a female private detective, a real-life embodiment of Coffy, Foxy Brown, and Cleopatra Jones. A colorful woman of color straight out of a blaxpolitation movie. A few months back I was pressed into service as her “legs.” People in the community still came to her for he
lp, and I functioned as Archie Goodwin to her Nero Wolfe, if you understand that pulp fiction allusion. If not, that’s why we have Google. Our first adventure together is chronicled in the highly-recommended novella, The Little Sistah, and I’d had a few minor escapades since.

  Quincy was a man of mystery, a mystery I didn’t want to solve. Cryptic allusions by he and Hattie hint that he was some kind of Black Panther (unfortunately, not the superhero) -esque “by any means necessary” dude back in the day. I’d hate to call him a former domestic terrorist because, although he’s kind of a racist, he did save my life, and he also provided me with my walking staff, which had a few surprises that have come in handy more than once. Not to be too heavy-handed with the pop culture references, but he is my personal “Q.”

  “How ya feelin’?”

  “Delightfully medicated.”

  “EMS guys checked your wallet and called Hattie. She asked me to drop by.”

  “Thanks. Last thing I remember is collapsing in the bodega.”

  “Yeah. The doctor says you had an anxiety attack and when you fainted you hit your head. Since your blood pressure was through the roof and you’ve been here before for stress tests and a cardiac catheterization, they’re gonna admit you and run some more tests. You’ll be here a day or two.”

  “What does Hattie know?”

  “That little girl came by and asked about you when the shopkeeper told her what happened. I told Hattie you had a mild heart attack, not a full-blown panic attack. She would think you quite the pathetic loser if she knew you fainted over the fate of a darn cat.”

  “And you don’t agree with that assessment?”

  He paused, as if what he was going to say was a difficult subject or an embarrassing admission. Finally, “When I was a kid down south, I had me a hound dog. We grew up together. We’d go huntin’. He was my best friend. Loved that damn hound. When we was both about sixteen, I saw he was slowin’ down. Back legs achin’and unsteady, not eatin’ much, just layin’ around. Didn’t need no vet to tell me the score. So, one morning we went out on one last hunt. Maybe I’m anthropomorphizing, but –”

  “Maybe you were what?”

  “Anthropomorphizing. Assigning human characteristics to –”

  “I know what it means. I’m just surprised you do.”

  “See, this is what I mean about the white man…”