20 Days of Tuck

Chapter 3: Miss Kitty

Chapter 3: Miss Kitty

August 4, 2014

The Fuzzy Bear Martini: 6 Parts Gin, 2 Parts Dry Vermouth, 1 Part Creme de Cassis.

Tudors were small but you could cram a lot inside them, which is what Miss Catherine Kitty did. Tuck had moved in with his baby grand piano, renting the spare room on the second floor. A miniature bathroom separated his bedroom from Miss Kitty’s. The piano was crammed in the downstairs living room between the flat-screen and the two-person loveseat. We had to shimmy around it to get to the kitchen and food. A tight fit was the understatement of the year, and there was a lot of bitching because of the piano’s size, a cherry baby grand of all things, but life could have been worse. Not that it really affected me, though, since I had meals outside of the house.

The arrangement was simple according to Miss Kitty: the piano could stay for two days, which was plenty of time for Tuck to find it a new home. I knew he was sad about that, storing his baby elsewhere, but come on…the house was a Tudor, not a Northern estate. There was a piano bar that was interested in renting the baby from him, which he was thinking about doing. Bar 88—it was called that because there were eighty-eight keys on a piano—was on Sand Street in downtown Erie, next to the lake. Tuck worked there three nights out of the week, killing the keys and making tips. The other two nights of his work week were spent at various solo gigs and the Mastery Orchestra of Western Pennsylvania.

* * * *

Miss Kitty. She was wild and crazy at thirty-seven. Plus, she liked her drink and men. I had been living with her for a few years and she confided in me, “I only let gay guys live under my roof for fear that I would lose money.” I was confused and she elaborated with, “I won’t sleep with gay men. What’s the point? Straight men would get their rent for free because I wouldn’t be able to stay out of their bedrooms.”

No, Miss Kitty wasn’t a w***e, but some people in the neighborhood—Ms. Northop and Mrs. Wormwood—would have disagreed with me, claiming her an adult movie star with easy ways. I admit, Miss Kitty had an assortment of men that she enjoyed to spend some quality s*x time with: two cowboys, a mechanic, a businessman from Rochester, New York, and a lawyer by the name of Grant Echo. Their ages ranged from nineteen to forty-nine. Never was the woman alone, fearing the battle of life all by herself. Plus, she admitted to me that she thought s*x in a woman’s life kept her young and healthy, which I wasn’t about to disagree with.

Miss Kitty used all of her God-given features to her advantage. She was five-eleven, platinum blonde, pale-skinned, and brown-eyed. Her lips were narrow and her cheeks were of a pink hue. Beautiful was an understatement since she had an hourglass shape and a strong looking upper frame. Some women were jealous of her good looks. And other women hissed at her, thinking her fake. Frankly, there wasn’t anything fake about her. She was about as real as the lake’s tide rising and falling on a daily basis, and just as smooth or rough when she needed to be.

* * * *

I wasn’t a prisoner in the doorless attic room on Mill Street, although maybe Tuck thought I was. He couldn’t believe that I was perfectly fine using a ladder as access to the room, thought it impractical, Middle-Aged, and quite dangerous. He told Miss Kitty on that second day that he believed I got a lot of writing done in the room, being able to concentrate on my novel and book reviews, without being bothered by the outside world.

That evening he climbed the aluminum ladder and presented a plate of food for me. His muscular bulk barely fit through the window, but he managed. Once inside, sweat on his brow and cheeks, he said, “Miss Kitty wanted you to have this.”

It was fried chicken, mashed potatoes with chicken gravy, and green beans, which she knew I loved. On one side of the plate was a piece of cornbread. I took the plate from him and said, “There isn’t anything better than her Georgia cooking. What a peach she is.”

For the next few minutes we talked about Miss Kitty’s history. She was a model in Georgia at twenty, caught the eye of Michael Basque, an elite restaurateur from Chicago. She had married young, lost three children because unfortunate miscarriages, and spent four years with Basque. Unfortunately, the wealthy businessman couldn’t keep his c**k in his slacks, cheated on her numerous times, and Miss Kitty left the marriage with six million dollars, which was stashed away in a money-producing account with the Gregory Financial Group in New York City; money that she was saving for when she turned fifty, claiming that she wanted to travel around the world, from country to country, until the day she died.

I didn’t eat in front of Tucker. Instead, there was a dorm room-sized refrigerator in the room. I placed the meal aside, having every intention of eating it later that evening.

“Not hungry?”

“Yes, I am. But I’d rather not be rude and eat in front of you. I love that meal and refuse to share it with you. Miss Kitty spoils me sometimes, and winner-winner, chicken dinner.”

He laughed.

I laughed.

And then we talked about his history for the next two hours.