THE CAT WHO MET LILLIAN HELLMAN

Lillian clutched the stray cat to her bosom and said, “Henceforth, you shall be known as The Cat who
Met Lillian Hellman. Ain’t that a bitch and a half? Huh toots? The cat I found on the war-ravaged streets
of Madrid. I love it. Saved from Franco by my warm arms as I emerged from the embassy...”

“Okay,” the cat said.

“But this is Trenton. And that is a liquor store.”

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The cat and Lillian were traveling to Paris. On arrival at customs, one of Lillian’s suitcases filled with
bottles had fallen and crushed every bone in a young Frenchman’s left foot.

“Gawd, I’m so sorry...that’s my....my....”

“Materia medica,” the cat ventured.

“Yes, thank you, exactly,” Lillian said, and coughed.

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“Hammet could beat every one of those damn union-busting gorillas under the table with his dick, which
was harder, even limp, than Eiffel iron..”

The cat reclined and stared out at her, tolerantly, from a patch of sun.

“I am not a fan of genre fiction,” he said, then shut his eyes, smiling inwardly, as Miss Hellman
stomped off to abuse a Nicaraguan.

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“Couldn’t you find albacore tuna?” the cat asked Lillian one evening, miffed.

“Oh, we never eat albacore down south. Mama always said that’s a sure way to get the dysentery. In
fact, we lost three cousins to that very illness, one of whom was affianced to a Spanish naval officer who
had discovered an island past Rapa Nui in the...”

The cat turned up the sound on “Leave it to Beaver” full volume, drowning out Lillian who shut up and,
shocked, went into the kitchen to patronize the black maid.

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Lillian was running through the house, frenetic, babbling. Her “Julia” had just been exposed as an
elaborate literary fraud. Lillian clutched the cat madly.

“Whatever shall I do?” Froth glimmered on her lower lip.

The cat waited for the inevitable answer Lillian always gave to her own questions. It followed two
seconds later.

“Why I’ll sue that McCarthy bitch. I beat ANOTHER McCarthy and the whole goddamn WORLD
applauded! I’ll beat another...”

“Do the words ‘Marquess of Queensbury’ mean anything to you?” the cat yawned.
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Lillian was speculating on her literary immortality, looking out a window. The cat had just made a
terrible aspersion, which was the worse for being painfully true and obviously transparent to all. Lillian
racked her mind for a comeback that would sting.

“That hairball in the sink looked like Tallulah’s fuzzbox after 3 a.m.”

“Penis envy will get you nowhere,” the cat sallied back, in a perfect bon mot Lillian immediately
appropriated for future use against a difficult Truman.

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One lovely Christmas night:

“You spilled that bottle on purpose damn you! You know the stores are all closed! That was the last of
the Corvoisier, you scrofulous muff-manque!

The cat went into the parlor to study the Christmas ornaments made out of gum wrappers Dash had sent
from prison.

Lilly was furious when the cat sniped, “I think Pinkerton boy has found his metier at last!”

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Lillian was having yet another imaginary “phone conversation” with Hemingway to impress her guests
(two spinsters from the local Salvation Army store) when the cat playfully batted the disconnected phone
cord across the old women’s ill-shod feet.

The sisters looked down in horror, and up to Lillian with the eyes Christ must have reserved for Judas.

“Oh, I do believe that cat shall someday keep several nutria company in a coat,” she hissed in a
withering Southern accent.

___________________________________________________________________________________

Lillian was reading aloud scenes from “The Little Foxes” in her drunken, histrionic voice. She was the
larding the scenes liberally with misremembered and self-aggrandizing pieces of eulogy from
contemporaries she admired (privately, never publicly).

“Did you ever notice your plays are like Jack-in-the-Boxes the second time around?” the cat chimed in
from his berth atop the radiator.

“May Frank Rich and you die in a hellacious bitch-fight” Lillian cried and ran from the room in tears.

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The cat was waiting patiently, and not at all flustered, at the animal shelter. Lillian returned to the
building petulantly, to redeem the animal she had just given up.

“You weren’t afraid I meant it?” she asked during the taxi ride home.

“Nope. Only I know where you hid the real Chambers microfilm.” He wouldn’t even look at her.
“Amateur.”

Lillian looked out the fogged window and wept silently.

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Lillian was on a tear, her eyes like Rasputin’s.

“Stalin asked for my international policy in person! Roosevelt asked for my advice on domestic policy!”
She was fuming, pursuing the domestic from room to room.

The cat’s eyes met hers as they passed each other.

“All of this over a recipe for cornbread?” the cat couldn’t resist saying.

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Lillian lay frail upon the bed, the painful reality closing in on her--that habitual lying, a good memory
and constant drinking will rarely yield a lasting body of work based on a Sartrean “authenticity.” The
phone shrilled and the cat answered, talked briefly, hung up.

“Who was that?” Lillian stammered, afraid.

“Agent,” the cat said curtly.

“Tell him to stick it to the other bastard and he’s got a deal,” she snickered through her morning stupor.

“Not yours, silly. Mine,” the cat drawled.

Lillian trembled in dread of the tears and long nights to come.

All rights reserved. Author is W.B. Keckler

Visit my blog for more fiction, poetry, literary yak yakkity yak....
My books include Sanskrit of the Body (Penguin) and Alright, But I'm Gonna Burn
Down the Building
(forthcoming, Six Gallery Press, Pittsburgh).
My blog:
http://joebrainardspyjamas.blogspot.com/