Vigil for a Stranger by Kitty Burns Florey Page A

you?” he said. His voice was kind. He wore earmuffs and a ski jacket. He looked like a bear. I just stared at him. “Can I do something for you?”
    I pulled myself together and said, “I used to eat out at your place in Westville.”
    â€œYeah, I thought you looked familiar.” He stuck his hands in his pockets and puffed out his cheeks and rocked back and forth on his heels, the way people do when they’re cold.
    â€œIt was really great pizza,” I said.
    â€œIt’s going to be even better down here,” he said. “You wait and see.”
    â€œI don’t get downtown that much, really.”
    â€œYou will.” He smiled at me. “You’ll come down for Jimmy Luigi’s.” He looked like he wanted to leave, but he added, with dogged politeness, “Was there something I could do for you?”
    I felt I owed it to him to say something else, he’d been so nice about coming outside to talk. “Well, my cat died,” I said. I meant that to be the beginning of a concise litany of my woes, culminating in my personal reaction to the loss of Jimmy Luigi’s, but after I said it I couldn’t go on, I couldn’t lay my troubles on such a nice man, and so I said, “But it doesn’t matter, I don’t want to bother you, I just wanted to say I’ll miss having your place right down the street from me. I really like your white clam pizza. I like the oregano especially.”
    But he wasn’t listening. He was frowning off into space, grimacing slightly, running his hand over his jaw and around to the back of his neck—portrait of a person thinking. He said, “Let me think, let me just think.”
    â€œReally,” I said. “I don’t mean to keep you out here.” I gestured vaguely up Chapel Street. It was winter-bleak, the whole city was, all of southern New England was grey and ugly, most of the snow melting as soon as it fell, the endless traffic churning up what was left, the air smelling of chemicals and exhaust and damp, and people on the street, chased by the wind, looking red-nosed and desperate and drugged-out on cold medications. I said, “I was just on my way up to—”
    â€œWait,” he said. “I’m thinking. How would you like a pair of them?” I looked at him. He had greenish-brown eyes that were very, very slightly crossed, and his front teeth were very, very slightly crooked. I didn’t know what he meant. Pizzas? He said, “How about a couple of nice red tabbies?”
    It turned out he ran a cat-placement service on the side. He didn’t keep the cats himself; his friend Hugh had a barnful out in Southbury, and James was always on the lookout for potential adoptions. He placed an average often cats a month, he said, but the cats kept multiplying, he couldn’t keep up. The two tabbies, though, had belonged to James and his ex-wife, Nona. She had remarried and had a baby and the baby was allergic to the cats, and so the cats had come to James and were now with Hugh. James couldn’t keep cats in his tiny, triangular place, and besides he was never home, which wasn’t fair to a pet. Their names were Rosie and Ruby, short for Roseola and Rubella. “We thought that was clever because my wife is a pediatrician,” James said. “Now I just think it’s stupid. She still thinks it’s clever. She and her new hubby got a gerbil for the baby and named it Dr. Spock, ha ha. But Rosie and Ruby are great cats—identical twins, six years old, neutered, affectionate, gorgeous, clean, fluffy, outgoing, intelligent, temperate in their habits …”
    I agreed to take the cats. James smiled and shook my hand, and we went up to Claire’s for herb tea and huge slabs of Hungarian coffee cake. We talked about our awful exes. James ordered a second piece of cake. I loved watching him eat, he ate with such unself-conscious enjoyment. I thought I