Chapter 5 (a)

The professor had given me three tasks to complete in exchange for the car, and it seemed like a good deal for me, I mean, I was happy with this arrangement. I was handy at fixing things, and I had agreed to no repair too difficult or time consuming, they appeared to be little errands that Wavery did not have the time or interest to perform himself. He fancied himself a Busy Man, an Important Man, and I was happy to keep this opinion afloat if it meant I could possess the Citroen soon. It is true I often had to bite my tongue to prevent arguing with the man myself, but he often, more often than not, spoke a language of efficient naked truth that I appreciated. I'll tell you more about that later.

Now, I was setting off on my first assignment : I was to go to an elderly mother-of-a-friend of Waverly, and fix her television set.

The professor did not want to come with me, but gave me an address and instructions to be gentle with this woman, she lived alone and had 'several cats'. He repeated himself on this point, and asked if I had allergies to the animals, which I did not. I was asked to sign a waiver of release on this matter, which I agreed to do. I was told the woman was the mother of a very important engineer who had gone to school with professor Waverly, then later transferred to MIT and became famous for inventing a new type of latex used in waterproofing umbrellas and overcoats. She lived alone (if you do not count the cats) and was slow to answer the door, I was warned. I was told I may have to bang several times and must wait several minutes before giving up that she would respond. She did not own a telephone.

I did not know what the complaint was regarding the television, but I had an impressive set of screwdrivers and sockets, and I knew how to use them. I had experience in this area. I could do this, if it meant buying her a new/used TV and replacing the broken one, I would do it.

I got in my car with my tool bag, started the engine, and followed the directions to the house I was given.

the woman, Mrs. Blackwell, lived about 20 miles away from me, as far away as can be and still live in the same city. I navigated the streets and freeways skillfully however, and traffic was light, and I arrived in about a half hour.

Upon arrival, I found her home to be an odd one. Every other house on the block stood up proud, high on the rise of green lawn from the street, but in the case of her address, only the roof was visible from the sidewalk where I parked. The house was actually in a hollow several yards sunken from street level, and about a hundred feet back. It was in a dark, cold pocket, and I had to walk across a catwalk of boards and scaffoldings to arrive at her door, and it was very dark under branches of surrounding trees when I began to knock.

I knocked, and there was a noise in response from within. I could hear babbling of some sort, a radio program or television emcee introducing, explaining, but I could not make out any actual words through the door. I knocked. I knocked again. There was a shout of some sort from inside the house. I was standing on a deck about twenty feet above the earth outside this front door, and very aware that the deck looked unmaintained, mossy, rotten. This deck was probably always in the shadows of the trees and hill and house, always slick and green. There was another shout from inside, I waited, I knocked again and shouted myself : " HELLO?"

I heard something fall over inside the house. The noises were becoming closer to the front door where I stood. There was a thump. There was a yell. I eventually heard scratching noises, and finally, the door was opened a crack. An old woman's face was in the crack of door and door jamb.

"Who are you?" The mouth moved.

"I'm Zak. Daniel Waverly sent me over to look at your TV? Is your television broken or something? I am here to fix it."

"Who?" She asked again. I had the impression her eyes were not focused on me, but at a distant spot behind me. I turned around to see if something were there. There was nothing there, tree branches hanging low, the blue sky in tiny fractured pieces beyond.

"DANIEL WAVERLY. He sent me to look at your TV. It's broken?" I said again.

Her eyes in the small crack of doorway narrowed with suspicion. "Danny? YOU'RE NOT DANNY WAVERLY." She told me.

"NO!" I responded "I am not! But HE sent me to look at your TV. It's broken?"

"My TV doesn't work!" She hissed through the crack of the door opening. "What do you want with my TV?!?"

"I am here to FIX IT. Daniel... Danny, sent me to fix it."

She focused on my for a few seconds, then looked beyond again into whatever dimension she was paying attention to. " Well. I always liked Danny. Are you married?" she asked the space behind me. She backed up a bit, I could tell and then warned me: "I am going to open the door now. Don't let the cats out." The door closed, and I could hear the chain being removed from the safety latch. The door opened again, much wider this time, and immediately a flood of orange stripey kittens hemmoraged forth out of the doorway over my new shoes and onto the deck behind me. I was reminded of a video I had once seen about Lemmings. The memory chilled me, and I hoped it would not prove to be prophetic.

"OHHHH NOOOOO!!!!" The old woman yelled "My cats! Don't let them out!!!!" She tried to block the doorway with her feet and legs, but she was too slow and doing it all wrong.

The cats were already out. I don;t know how, but there were about fifty of them, all tiny, all about the same size, about two month old kittens. They were everywhere, mewing. Meowing. They did not go over the edge of the deck and fall like the Lemmings did, they just spilled out and covered the dark moldy area and began to meow in their tiny voices. Misses Blackwell began to panic and cry "OH NOOOOOOO!!!" over and over again from the doorway. I picked up one kitten at a time and tried to put it tenderly back inside the house, but as soon as I would put it down, it would scurry back outside. More cats were flooding outside from the breached door. I could not keep up.

I began to pick up several of the cats at a time and throw them roughly inside through the open door. Once the woman noticed this, she tried to protest "You're THROWING THEM!!", but it was the only way. If I threw three or four at once, only one or two would emerge from the door and skitter across the slimy deck to the edge and begin to meow into the waiting abyss. It took about fifteen minutes, but I managed to get all the cats thrown into the house, with only one or two lost over the edge of the deck.

As soon as there were no cats outside, I stepped inside the house and pulled the door shut quickly behind me, preventing any more escaping felines. It took a couple of seconds, but then I was overwhelmed with the filthy scene laid before me.

All windows were covered with blinds, which were fashioned from towels and blankets, so it was very dark in the house. The only light provided was from a couple of lamps with no lampshades. There was a terrible smell all around me, and it was hot inside. The place smelled of cat shit and there was also a sweet smell, a sickeningly sweet smell of .. over ripe fruit? Rotten bananas? Underneath it all was a strong odor of tobacco smoke and booze. It took some effort on my part not to retch. I actually had to lift the collar of my shirt up over my nose in an attempt to filter out the filth I imagined drifting into my airways and body. I didn't care if it appeared rude to the woman, my lungs are valuable to me! What I at first thought was a dirty mangy carpet turned out to be a linoleum floor covered in dried, packed down cat shit and dirt and dust, smashed and kneaded and left to harden for years and years. I looked with sorrow down at my new shoes I had just purchased the day before and wanted to keep clean. 'I'm sorry!' I thought to my shoes. 'I'll make it up to you somehow!' There were piles of papers and bottles and trash and furniture stacked everywhere, in some places almost up to the ceiling. There was NOTHING clean in this house, and everything was pulsing and moving with all the cats sleeping and playing and meowing and hiding and stretching everywhere. the scene was horrific, and if I had not seen it for myself firsthand, I would not have believed such a place existed. I resisted the urge to turn around and bolt back out the door, I really wanted that Citroen, I tell you!

The woman had stumbled about halfway back across the room, balancing herself on the piles of dishes and laundry and trash that were stacked around her. She reminded me of one of the frogs Wavery had been telling me about, the ones that wait on a lily pad until another available pad is within reach before hopping. She would clutch at a tower of garbage and collect her balance and energy before pushing off for the next one, like a sailboat stopping along a chain of islands. When she reached the middle of the room, she turned to address me:

"Are you one of Danny's boys? Are you married?"

"No. I'm Zak. I've been helping Profess... I mean, DANIEL, out with some stuff. I'm a mechanic. I mean, I fix things. I'm not married. Not yet."

She tried to stand still, but was wavering, swaying, is if she were standing in the back of a moving truck. Her long, white, straight hair swayed and brushed against her nightgown. I noticed then for the first time that she was drunk.

"Not yet? You have someone picked out though? Engaged? Treat her right! Don't be a bastard like Danny is. Don't listen to him. He's a bastard!"

I started to reply " No, I won't. And I don't have anyone picked -"

"BASTARD!" The woman interrupted, shouting. She turned away from me again and took a step, and her shoe landed right on the orange ringed tail of one of her cats. The thing made a loud cry and jumped straight up into the air, causing the woman to lose her balance for a moment and lean back and sit on a pile of junk on her coffee table. "Whoa! My cat!" she said to herself.

I scanned the room looking for the TV. I saw it against the far wall, on top of a dresser, one of the few things in the room not covered in dirty clothing or trash. It was tiny, a 13" plastic cube, with chrome antennae standing tall in the customary 'V' shape. It was all the way on the other side of the room, and I was going to have to walk across this floor to get there. The thing was not going to come to me, as much as I wish it would. I steeled my nerve and then asked Mrs. Blackwell: "Is that the TeeVee? What's wrong with it?"

"My TV's broken." She said silently, still looking down at the ground around her slippers. She blinked once or twice, like a person just waking up, and then fixed me in her vision. "I can't see my shows! That ... the.... The UH-HUH there, it just upped and quit on me last week. Danny told me he would fix it! That sniveling bastard!"

"Well, that's why I'm here, Mrs. Blackwell. Profes... I mean, DANIEL, sent me to fix your TeeVee. I'm going to fix it for you so you can watch your programs. Can you tell me what it did? I mean, how is it broken? What did it do?"

"It DOESN'T WORK!" She yelled, flailing against the pile of trash she was resting upon. She pushed herself up to a standing position, knocking another cat onto the floor. It ran out of the far doorway and into another room.

"Alright. I'll take a look at it!" I reassured her, and began to step carefully across the room, trying not to step in anything too fresh or moist.

I made my way across the room to the television and twisted the stained knob to the right to turn it on. It was an old thing, and the power knob was also the volume knob. I turned it far to the right and in a few seconds it began to emit a hissing noise out of it's tiny speaker, so I knew it had power. A red light on the front glowed as well, telling us it was in fact turned 'ON'.

"WEll, it has power. " I said out loud top the woman, who had crept up behind me and was now siting in a huge, dirty ashtray on top of a coffee table.

"I can't see anything! How am I supposed to watch THAT?!"

The screen was completely black, it was true. I switched the channel selector knob around and around several times, and nothing improved, vision-wise, but I was able to hear a program or commercial once or twice. I began to sweat in the hot room. A cat had hopped on top of the TV and curled up with it's nose under it's tail and begun to sleep. I asked the woman about a calender on her wall to distract her momentarily, and when she looked away at the calendar, I tipped the TV forward, and the sleeping cat slid off and onto the floor, waking mid-air and landing on it's feet. It looked back up at me accusingly.

I got nervous and began to mumble to myself, not knowing what was wrong with the television : ".. yeah. The vertical probably isn't off, and I can hear the capacitors charging... I can hear it, so the power supply isn't blown... Could be the tube itself or the secondary coil.." I slapped it once or twice right on the top of the set. When that didn't work, I slapped a couple more times on the back of it. The cats near me ran away for a minute or so before returning, mimicking the cloud of dust which rose from the small plastic cube before settling down again.

"What are you saying?" Mrs. Blackwell leaned forward to decipher my speech. "Why are you hitting it? I did THAT already! Don't you know what you're doing? Where is Danny? HE didn't have the nerve to show up himself, did he? Are you married? MY husband died twenty years ago, thank God. HE was a bastard, too"

I did not know if she was comparing her husband's bastard qualities to mine or Professor Waverly's, but I took some offense to the comment nonetheless. I am a very sensitive person. You should know this about me.

I waited a few seconds, and then strategized an escape plan right then and there : ' I have to take your TeeVee back to my shop and inspect it more thoroughly." I told Mrs. Blackwell. I can't tell what is wrong, but know you this : I WILL FIX IT. I will. I am not a ... BASTARD.. like you like to say. I'll be back. With your TeeVee. Fixed, working. I will. "