Disclaimer: I don't own anything WAT-related, not even a red push pin!
Each of us angels
Summary: Can Danny Taylor ever admit that he needs someone? Danny-centric.
"We are each of us angels with only one wing, and we can only fly by embracing one another." - Titus Lucretius Carus
Danny Taylor set at the table, polite semi-smile fixed on his face. He has tried the fish, he complemented the hostess, he even accepted an obligatory piece of the birthday cake with a crooked candle thrust into it.
It wasn't working. The situation was awkward, and nothing any of them could do would change that. He had his misgivings about drifting into this sort of a forced intimacy with his brother's family, but he reasoned that nothing could be gained if not at least attempted, and a child should not be penalized for the sins of the elders.
It was Nicky's 10th birthday. The actual party with a few of the boy's school friends took place in the afternoon, and this was a follow-up for the family. The family being Raphael, Sylvya, Sylvya's brother with his wife, and Danny.
Nicky looked at him expectantly all throughout dinner, trying to communicate something. What it was the kid wanted Danny couldn't tell, but he smiled, and he joined in singing "Happy Birthday," and he listened attentively to Sylvya's recital of all Nicky's recent accomplishments, and he made enthusiastic noises at all the opened presents, putting a special word in for his own: remote controlled 4X4 toy truck. An expensive gift that Danny felt compelled to buy, not really knowing what the kid would like, but reasoning that a mobile wheels was a viable option for a boy of any age.
And he even talked to Raphie about cars. Cars was Raphie's business now, and, incidently, the only safe subject between the brothers. They couldn't really talk about the past: too raw, too close, and too damaged by time and events. They couldn't very well discuss Raphie's family, because that inevitably led to the memories of the said unmentionable past. They couldn't talk about Danny's job, because anything to do with the law enforcement was too painful an issue for his brother. So they talked about the business of fixing and retooling cars as if it was the most fascinating thing in the world. The conversation took all of 10 minutes, at the end of which Danny felt that he really put in enough time with his brother's family, and could, without seeming rude, claim an early rise and leave. A difference between kinship and obligation - the time spend and the time one can safely leave.
Danny walked out on a street and took a deep breath. It was wet and icy: one of those miserable February evenings when it seems as if it will never be Spring. He welcomed the chill. It was something real, in any event. Something he could allow himself to feel.
Danny made his way out of a subway station couple of stops short of his home. He needed to breathe the cold air, he told himself: a decision he regretted quickly as he passed numerous brightly-lit bars on his way. They beckoned to him in that tangible, physical way that never failed to cut him off at the knees. He had no trouble summoning the tactile memory of a warm, perfect, golden trickle of alcoholic liquid rushing down his throat. The memory assaulted him and went, just as quickly. Danny was used to this, and, by this point in his life, had coping mechanisms in place to take down the memory and push it out of reach. . . . At least for the moment. . . . At least until the next assault. This dance was familiar to him, and he knew he could invent new steps should they become necessary.
Danny entered his apartment building in Washington Heights, just below the Cloisters at the northern Manhattan's Fort Tryon Park overlooking the Hudson River. He liked his neighborhood. The park was beautiful, the view of the river appealing in any weather, and the buildings stately and dignified, unmarred even by those ugly New York fire escapes that now adorned everything. A necessity, Danny understood, but eyesores nonetheless.
The building where Danny lived was a 1930s solid gray-stone, with the elegant echoes of the Art Deco period. It was built for prosperity and comfort, and has survived the meaner times of the mid-20th century, when this neighborhood went slowly to seed. Rent control held up until the mid-1990s, but the old owners died out, and the properties moved on to the new, more enterprising people, who didn't fail to capitalise on the neighborhood's beautiful natural surroundings, its proximity to Columbia University, and the elegance and comfort of its buildings. Danny got lucky when he found this apartment at the start of the new gentrification. He could remember five years back when the buildings were defaced, and the front entrances littered, and the stained-glass doors of the hall were stained with other things of dubious aesthetic value. He saw the potential, and he rented his place then and there. As it turned out, he made the right move. Five years later, and the buildings were being restored right and left, the streets were clean, and little, dainty, expensive boutiques have opened up alongside the colorful Dominican convenience stores. And the rent went though the roof for those who were looking for it now. Danny's rent, however, was fixed at the introductory, slow-growing rate of five years ago.
He took the elevator to the 7th floor. Outside his apartment he spied a small orange tabby cat. The cat looked up at him expectantly. Danny groaned inwardly and opened the door, letting the cat in with the resigned air of a martyr.
The tabby, named, inexplicably, Oscar, did not, in fact, belong to Danny. He was by rights Mrs. Fuller's cat. An 84-year-old lady and a professor's widow, Mrs. Fuller has up to recently been active and lucid, more than able to take care of her ailing husband and a cat. However, since last Spring, when Mr. Fuller passed away, his wife started to feel the burden of age. Her will to live, as well as her strength was slipping, and she started to forget things.
On more than one occasion upon coming home Danny would find brown shopping bags that were left forgotten on her welcome mat. Danny would rap on her doors and bring her shopping in. He has taken to checking up on her several times a week, making sure she didn't forget to turn off gas, or water, or eat dinner. She'd let him do it, which was, to Danny, another sign of her rapid deterioration.
When he first met her, Mrs. Fuller was 79 and fiercely independent, with deceptively frail body and an active, probing mind. That woman would not have taken kindly to being handled. But that was before her husband and her reason for living passed away. This new Mrs. Fuller gave up, and Danny knew it. Still, he checked on her twice a week, and sat in her kitchen pretending to eat inedible cookies, and listened to the stories from her past. He wasn't even sure if she was telling the stories to him or simply recounting them to herself, but he listened, not at all put out for having to do so. She rambled a bit, but, on the whole, they were interesting stories, vivid and full of details of people gone and of life as foreign to Danny as is she was talking of South Africa or Iceland.
And he all but inherited Oscar. It started with Mrs. Fuller forgetting to feed the poor beast, who soon realized where the food might be procured. Today was no different. Danny ushered Oscar into the small kitchen, opened the fridge and took out a can of cat food. He has been buying it regularly for months now, but, for the longest time, refused to get some kind of a proper container for it. It was as if in his mind, once he did that, the cat would become irrevocably his. He ended up getting a white bowl with brown cat-paws design on it from Mrs. Fuller's.
It should be said that Danny really disliked cats. He remembered a one-time girlfriend, who owned a large, fat, gray furball. She insisted on dressing the thing in sweaters and shoving it into every guest's face, so they would pet it. "Isn't my baby precious? Isn't he just darling? Wouldn't you like to kiss it?"
No, Danny didn't like cats. To him they were symptomatic of neurosis and misplaced affection. But he felt for Oscar. After all, the poor thing was just trying to survive, suddenly finding itself bereft of its accustomed care and forced to scrounge for food, weary of strangers, discovering that the world can be cold, unsympathetic, and unforgiving. Not unlike Danny himself in those chilly childhood days.
Which is why Danny now stood in his kitchen, looking down at Oscar scarfing food from an ugly pet bowl. "Great. I should change my name to Felix, because, goodness knows, we are an odd couple."
OK, just a beginning, and I promise, there will be plot. :) At least I will try hard to introduce one.
Eloise