The Violet Hour by Richard Montanari Read Free Book Online Page A

gone.

7
     
    Macavity was his favorite name, although it was not the only name he used. God, no. Over the past twenty years he had been so many people. Still, he liked to keep his aliases in the realm of T.S. Eliot’s poetry, if he could. He liked Mr Mistoffelees, but it wasn’t very practical, as aliases go. He liked Bustopher Jones a lot. Now, that was a kick-the-door-down name, there. Bustopher. You needn’t pack a second day’s worth of charm if you had a name like Bustopher. But it was getting harder to use them, primarily due to that heretical, venus’s-flytrap set for every midwestern rube who dared set foot in midtown Manhattan on a weekend theater package. That desecration of T.S. Eliot’s Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats.
    Julia would have hated Cats with a passion.
    Of that, he was certain.
    Thank God the show had finally closed.
    On those occasions when he needed a formal first name, he used Tom. That was Eliot’s first name. Thomas Stearns Eliot. Julia had told him that Tom was what they called T.S. Eliot in his younger years.
    For the most part, though, for him, it was simply Mac. Macavity was the Mystery Cat, see. The Hidden Paw. ‘Hey, Mac,’ the street people would say to him, the only people who saw this keen edge of his life. It was easy for them to remember. ‘Morning, Mac, how are ya?’ they would say. And that suited him fine.
    He got up from the MetroPark bench, stood, stretched, prepared to run. He had changed his clothes. He now wore navy blue sweats, a dark knit watch cap.
    He imagined Julia, barefoot, standing in the lagoon by the art museum . . . Julia cooking spaghetti on her dormroom hot plate . . . Julia crying over Shel Silverstein’s The Giving Tree. He breathed deeply the unsullied air of the MetroPark, eyes closed now, filling his lungs with the scents of the suburban forest.
    He opened his eyes, saw a jogger, a young woman of nineteen or twenty. Julia’s age. She leaned over to sip water at the fountain, the outline of her ass high and firm and inviting. She stood up straight, unzipped her windbreaker, struck a pose. A chill cut across the park, and even from thirty feet away, he could see her nipples fighting the spandex for room. Her hair was a raw honey color, soft, ponytailed, perfect. She scanned the park, the nearby pavilion, looking around slowly, slowly, finally in his direction, then rather quickly away. It was a look that women gave to men when they found them attractive but, with their highly attuned female whiskers, sensed they were dangerous as hell.
    You . . . cannot . . . have . . . me, the swing of her ponytail said as she turned her derriere to him and trotted, fawnlike, up the asphalt path and into the greenery.
    But he could have her if he wanted her. He knew that. While the other runners navigated the paved asphalt trails of the park, he usually attacked the cliffs that bordered the Chagrin River: shale, limestone, granite. City-hard surfaces that made him strong.
    He took off his cap for a moment, fingered his hair. His features were sharply drawn, nearly aristocratic in their symmetry. As often as he had been described as handsome throughout his life, he had been described as plain; as often over six feet as under.
    When he had to, though, he could be small, very small. Add a three-day beard, an unkempt shock of hair, a khaki jacket, and he could blend into any crowd, float unseen through any city. A gray ghost among gray buildings.
    He walked to the river’s edge, found an area near a copse of sycamores. Perfect, he thought. Julia would like this place. He found a hole, dropped in the extra daffodil bulbs, covered them with the rich earth.
    He put his cap on, scanned the immediate area, saw no one, then turned on his heels and began to trot along the all-purpose trail, a hundred or so yards behind the pretty blond jogger.
    Not much of a head start, he thought a few moments later as he entered the canopy of trees, just about hitting