STRAND spotlight

SOCIAL DISTANCING, Chapter 6: In Which I Get A Little Behind In My Work.

By Liz McLeod

Still Your House Manager

“Id oo mama’s widoo baybee cat,” I oozed, skritching Miss Carol T. Cat’s furry cheek. “Ess ooo id!”

She glowered at me, from the comfortable living room chair where she reclined with dignity. Her ears tipped back ever so slightly.

“Id mama’s baybee kiddy wassum fooooood? Ess ooo does!”

Her eyes narrowed. “Cease that witless prattle at once,” she snapped, in a voice that sounds to the unfamiliar like the old Carlton Bridge raising on a winter afternoon. “If you mean to ask me if I wish to dine, the answer is of course in the affirmative.” She thumped off the chair and took two steps toward the kitchen before freezing in place. “That odor,” she demanded, turning to face me. “Identify its source.”

I shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot. I knew I’d forgotten something.

“Well?” she asked, fixing me in a penetrating glare. “Your answer, please. My time is valuable.”

“I guess I forgot to – ah – I forgot…”

“My patience has a limit,” she interrupted. “I have determined the source of the aroma for myself. It would seem that my personal facilities have not been serviced according to our agreed-upon schedule. Is this an accurate conclusion?”

“Yeah,” I replied with a weak shrug. “I guess I forgot to clean your box.”

“Ah. You realize of course that this is unacceptable.”

“Well, I had other stuff to do.”

“Indeed? It is your view that other activities carry a higher priority than my own personal hygiene?”

“I was down at the Strand,” I countered. “I have a lot of work to do there.”

“Describe it,” she commanded.

“Well, you know,” I began, with a sad, wheedling tone to my voice, “ even though there’s nothing going on at the Strand in the way of shows, I still got a lot to do in the building. I have the popcorn kettle all dismantled for one thing so I can do a bunch of deferred maintenance that’s hard to do when you’re using it every day.”

“Popcorn?” she snorted. “You hew-mons and your fixation on idle snacking. Surely you realize that steam-extruded vegetable starch is hardly of any meaningful nutritive value. You should follow the feline example, and snack on small rodents, which serve as a complete source of healthy protein. But continue, explain to me why these activities are of greater importance than your duties here.”

“The more work I can get done there now,” I argued, “the better prepared we’ll be for when we reopen. And not only that, I did some work under the sinks, cleaning the drains, making sure all the lines feeding the soda fountain are secure, that there’s no unexpected leaks or anything. Do you know what a mess soda syrup can make if it leaks and there’s no one there to deal with it? That’s the spreadin’est stuff in the world. Ever hear of the Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919? Soda syrup’s even worse!”

“As usual,” Miss Carol disdained, “you exaggerate.” She paused to nibble an imaginary speck from her flawlessly-groomed coat. “But I suppose that these tasks that you mention are of significant importance, since they relate to the ultimate source of our family income, and thus by extension to my own personal sustenance and comfort.”

“Thank you,” I murmured, my head bowed.

“But see to it that in future, your duties there do not interfere with your duties here.”

“I’ll reevaluate my priorities at once.”

“See that you do.” She turned, and approached her feeding bowl.

“Ridiculous fat barrel cat.”

“What was that?” She whirled around to confront me.

“Oh, nothing,” I assured her. “I was merely complimenting your distinctive physique.”

“As well you might,” she replied.

And I think I heard her purr.

SOCIAL DISTANCING, Chapter Five: In Which We Just Can’t Get It.

By Liz McLeod

Still Your House Manager

“Here!” came the sharp voice of Miss Carol the Fat Barrel Cat, a voice that to the nonconversant sounds like a rusty cellar door pulling open after an especially wet winter. “What’s the meaning of this!”

I knew what was coming, and I steeled myself for the ordeal.

“What’s ya problem now,” I snapped back, trying without much success to put my inquisitor on the defensive.

She stood in a posture of ripe indignity before her feeding bowl. Her eyes blazed with the green fire of her ancestral rage. I flinched. “What’s the meaning of this – ah – food?” she demanded. “You know my views.”

I took a deep breath, wrung my hands, and tried to stammer an explanation. “Well, y’see,” I began, “it’s like this…”

“Come to the point,” she interrupted. “I haven’t all day. My time is valuable.”

“I couldn’t get it,” I shrugged. “I couldn’t get it, that’s all. I had to get this other kind…”

“By Pasht’s whiskers!” she roared. Miss Carol seldom swears, so I knew she was seriously inflamed by my presumptuous actions. “You mean to stand there and tell me – here, LOOK AT ME when I speak to you – you mean to tell me that THIS is what you presume for me to eat?”

I could feel the cold sweat coming. “Look, it’s all they had!”

“ALL THEY HAD???” I knew instantly that I’d said the wrong thing. “IS THAT SO? Did you TELL them that I have a DELICATE DIGESTION? Did you INSIST on my rights? Did you PUSH your way to the front of the line? Or did you merely bow your head and accept this ridiculous can of – of – abbatoir’s sweepings – and expect me to SETTLE for it because it’s ALL THEY HAD?”

She glared at me. Miss Carol doesn’t raise her voice often, but the tensions of the times are getting to all of us. I could see her flanks heave as she regained her customary composure.

“Look,” I started, “it’s not that simple. This crisis – this thing we’re dealing with – is unlike anything this country has ever seen. Do you know what World War II was?”

Miss Carol sneered. I know she participates in a virtual wartime history symposium on the internet while I’m at work, and has been credited as a contributor to several notable works of scholarship dealing with feline contributions to the war effort. I didn’t mean to be condescending, so I reframed my question accordingly. “You know how they dealt with shortages then, right” She gave me a curt nod, emboldening me to continue. “They knew if something wasn’t done, that people would hoard, and that an aggressive few would end up with all the stuff while the majority couldn’t even get the basics. So they put in a Federal rationing program. You had to have government stamps to buy the stuff that was in the greatest demand, and everybody got a fair and equal share of those stamps. That broke the backs of the hoarders, and while nobody had as much as they’d had before the war, everybody got a reasonable share. But right now, we don’t have that. We have hoarding. We have people taking more than their fair share of the limited amount of goods available, and that means some of us have to go without. And that means sometimes I can’t get you the kind of food you need.”

“And you haven’t done anything about this?” Miss Carol fixed me in a stern gaze. “And why is that?”

“It’s not that easy,” I murmured.

“So I am to presume that nothing will be done?”

“No, the stores are doing the best they can trying to control the situation, but you’ve still got people who think the rules don’t apply to them.”

“Bring them to me at once,” she ordered, in a tone that could cut steel. “I shall readjust their thinking.”

“How about I just pass along what you have to say? I think the problem isn’t that people are hoarding deliberately – it’s just that sometimes they don’t think of how it’s going to affect other people.”

“I would prefer a more direct confrontation,” she replied. “But if you feel my words will prove stimulating to the public you may relay them thru the appropriate channels.”

“I’ll do that, I promise. I’ll say something like, ‘Folks, when you go to the store, remember there’s someone else out there who needs that stuff every bit as much as you do. And ‘everyone for themselves’ isn’t going to end up helping anybody in the long run – not even you. Buy only what you need, and leave enough so that the next person that comes along can get what they need too. And especially when you’re getting cat food. Remember that Miss Carol has a delicate digestion, and can’t eat beef, wheat products, or rice.’ Is that OK?”

“It will suffice. See that you deliver it without any of your usual threadbare jokes or strained witticisms. Unlike you,” she concluded, “I prefer to be taken seriously.”

SOCIAL DISTANCING, Chapter 4: In Which I Play Board Games With A Cat

By Liz McLeod

Your House Manager

“Now just a minute,” I wailed. “’Zyzzyx’ isn’t a word! You can’t play that!” I got up and flipped thru the enormous hardbound edition of Webster’s Second New International sitting atop the bookcase. “Nope, no such thing as ‘zyzzyx!’ Get it off the board there, it’s not a legitimate word.”

Miss Carol T. Cat glared back at me from across the board. Her eyes narrowed, and she assumed even more of an air of superiority than usual. “Zyzzyx,” she stated in calm and measured tones that sound to those not fluent in her tongue like the sqeaking of a rusty swivel chair, “is the name of an unincorporated village in the Mojave desert in California, formerly known as the site of the Zyzzyx Mineral Springs and Health Spa. Of course, to look at you, one would reasonably understand why you are unfamiliar with such a place.”

“Hah!” I retorted, feeling my dudgeon grow that much higher. “You can’t use proper names in Scrabble! It’s against the rules. Lookit – right there on the box cover, it’s printed right out. Don’t try to pull your funny stuff with me, you ridiculous fat barrel cat.”

Miss Carol emitted a snort that fairly dripped with derision. After wiping the derision off her chin with a swipe of her furry paw, she tossed back her head and again addressed me. “How old is this copy of the game?”

“I might have thought as much,” my feline companion sniffed. “I think you’ll find, my friend, that the Official Rules of Scrabble were changed in 2010 to permit and encourage the use of proper names as valid for play. You may look it up on the internet if you doubt me. Really, you must learn to keep up.”

I wasn’t about to give her the satisfaction. I swept all the tiles off the board, including her – her – TRIPLE WORD SCORE for “Zyzzyx,” – and stood up in a huff, storming away to stew in private.

It went like this all weekend. With nothing else to do and nowhere else to go, I was reduced to playing board games with my cat. We tried them all. Monopoly fell by the boards early, after she misinterpreted my statement that “landing on Free Parking takes the kitty.” We tried Sorry, the “Slide Pursuit Game,” but she decided sliding her own voluminous avoirdupois across the board was more stimulating that actually manipulating the pawns. Parcheesi fell short when she batted the dice into a furnace register when a turn went against her. “Jeopardy” was no fun – not only did she never miss, she also corrected the information in the question book four times. Every game we played, every game we tried, left me more frustrated and her more smugly superior. I couldn’t stand it.

Finally there were only two games left. Chess I discarded immediately. I know she’s been playing chess-by-mail for years with this Russian Blue cat, and I’d never even get the game set up before she declared checkmate. The only other option was “Major League Baseball – You Are The Manager!,” a game using special dice and encoded cards to reproduce the actual performance of real ballplayers. The most recent edition available reflected the 1970 season, but anything is better than nothing. Or so I thought, until, after four innings, Miss Carol, managing the Baltimore Orioles, held a 15-0 lead over my woebegone Red Sox. I threw the card representing my pitcher down on the table in disgust. “Sonny Siebert!” I growled. “Who ever told you you could pitch.” And Miss Carol, in full Earl Weaver mode, just gazed inscrutably across the field at me, her expression offering the imperturbability of one who knows that Frank Robinson is in the on-deck circle. As she extended her paw again for the dice, I “accidentally” spilled my drink on the table, flushing the cards and dice away in a sudden rushing torrent. “Game called,” I snapped, “on account of rain.”

Miss Carol just glared at me, and turned to lick her behind in a marked manner.

She knows I’ll be back. She knows there’ll be more games. Because what else do I have to do and where else do I have to go?

This crisis better end soon. I can hear her in the kitchen right now, shuffling a deck of cards. She’s a demon at gin rummy, and I can’t afford to lose any more.

SOCIAL DISTANCING, Chapter 3: In Which I Receive Psychological Counseling From A Cat.

By Liz McLeod

Still Your House Manager

“I can tell you right now what your problem is,” declared Carol the Fat Barrel Cat, as she delicately nibbled at the most remote quarter of her rear haunches that she could reach. “You’re addicted to your job.”

“Hah,” I scoffed, meaning it to sting. “What would you know about jobs? When did you ever have a job?”

“Oh, but I have one right now, hew-mon,” she retorted, rolling over on her side. “My job is to keep you in line. I saw you last night, pacing the floor at two o’clock in the morning when you should have been providing me heat in the bed – and by the way, how do you call that a blanket? It’s a moth hole surrounded by a few pathetic shreds of old wool. You can do better.”

“Now just a minute,” I protested, brandishing a half-eaten sausage on the point of my fork and stabbing it in Carol’s direction for emphasis. “You know very well that I…”

With a lightning-like swipe of her paw, Miss Carol plucked the sausage from the fork and swallowed it in a few quick bites. She made an unintelligible remark as she chewed.

“I better not find that on the rug later,” I warned. “You got some nerve.”

Miss Carol nibbled daintily at her extended paw to ensure that the no microscopic bit of sausage grease remained to soil her fur. “Let’s get back to you,” she said, in a firm voice that to the uninitiated would sound much like the hiss of a air brake. “Just what do you hope to accomplish with all this fretting? Do you think because *you’re* inconvenienced, because *your* routine has been fractured, because *your* life has been tipped on its back to wave its helpless legs in the air, that everything’s just going to settle right down and get back to normal because *you’re* frustrated and annoyed? Is that going to accomplish anything? Of course it isn’t.”

I saw her eyeing the few scraps of scrambled egg left on my plate and made a preemptive strike to claim them for myself. “You’re one to talk,” I replied in a peevish tone I knew would rile her. “Look how you get when *your* routine gets disrupted. Remember that time the guy from the oil company was here to fix the burner. Tromping thru the house with those big boots on, making all that noise and smell. And you hid under that end table in the living room for two days. Remember? You knocked over that stack of Artie Shaw records on your way there, and broke “Frenesi.” I haven’t forgotten that, you know, Miss Self Righteous Know It All Fat Barrel Cat.” I swallowed the egg with conviction, knowing I’d scored a thrust.

Miss Carol stretched out, doubling her length and halving her width, like some sort of non-Newtonian fluid contained within a semi-permeable membrane. Or like a lump of Silly Putty. Whatever. Her eyes narrowed to slits “We’re not talking about me, we’re talking about you,” she countered. “You need to think more like me. Look how I’m dealing with this. Do you realize how annoyed *I* am by your constant fussing and fretting and kvetching and the way you stare out the window expecting the Fed Ex truck to pull up outside with An Answer To It All? But do you see *me* fretting about it? No, you don’t. Because *I* know that Whatever Will Be Will Be.”

“I can’t stand Doris Day,” I snapped back. “Too saccharine. Helen Ward was a much better…”

“And that’s another thing,” she interrupted. “Enough with the Big Band references. You’re writing for boomers here. They don’t know who you’re talking about. Get with the program.”

“Now just a minute,” I yelled, feeling my thread growing ever more taut. “I’ll put up with a lot from you, but when you start with the music shaming…”

“You’ll do anything to deflect my arguments,” Carol said with a smug look of catly satisifaction firmly set on her face. “You know I’m right. The only way to deal with this situation is to accept it – and to understand that time is a linear progression. We are at this point on our timeline. Eventually, inevitably, we must arrive at a further point on that same timeline in which these events are part of the past.”

“I knew I shouldn’t have let you watch ‘Star Trek,’” I muttered. “Enough with the Spock stuff. Talk English. Or Catglish. Or whatever language it is you speak.”

“This too,” she exclaimed with finality, “shall pass.”

I had no reply.

“Now, If you’ll excuse me” she added,” climbing slowly to her feet and lumbering out of the room, “I have something I must do. That sausage isn’t sitting well. Good day to you.”

I sighed. This too, shall pass.

SOCIAL DISTANCING, Chapter 2: In Which We Try To Comprehend The New Reality

By Liz McLeod

Still Your House Manager

What’s the difference between Tuesday and Wednesday? Did you ever think about that?

Or the difference between Monday and Tuesday? Or Wednesday and Thursday? Is there actually any difference at all?

Or is the whole concept of the calendar just a fiction we create by social agreement to impose form on an otherwise structureless reality? Really, who even says there has to *be* a Monday, a Tuesday, blah blah blah?

This is the kind of thing you think about when you’ve breathed in too much Clorox. Time to take a break.

For me, it’s always been easy to tell the days apart. Monday I do the Strand banking and get the weekly report sheets and invoices together to be properly bookkept over in the office. Tuesday we do a matinee show and then I go get a hamburger and come back to do door duty for the evening show. Wednesday I prep shows for the coming week. Thursday, more show-prep and then I project the nighttime show. Friday, I finish up show prep, do any necessary maintenance, and then run two evening shows. Saturday, I work up the weekly staff schedules, and Sunday, sometimes, I come in to help with tech on special screenings. There’s always something Strandy that needs to be done, I know when it needs to be done, and I do it. So now what?

I woke up this morning and the first thing I did was… No, I lie. I woke up this morning and the first thing I did was sense the fragrant breath of Carol the Fat Cat sitting on my pillow with her nose about six inches from mine. “Whoa,” I mumbled. “Social distancing.”

Her response was to lightly rake her delicate paws across my cheek. With claws extended to about one-eighth of maximum. Just to send a message. I squinted thru my myopia at the alarm clock on the nightstand, and realized it was somewhere south of 7 am. I sat up. What day is it? “There wasn’t any matinee yesterday,” I said out loud, “and I didn’t do a nighttime show. So it must be….”

Carol glared back at me, her green eyes narrowing with frustration. “None of that,” she snapped, in her distinctive crackly voice. (I translate for you. In her native tongue it was something like “Brrrraaaaaaap.”) “You well know what day it is. It’s the day when you give me Ocean Whitefish With Gravy. And you’re four and a half minutes late.”

“Make it ten,” I groaned,” falling back on the pillow. The claws extended to one-half and Carol brandished them menacingly. I sat back up, and threw the blanket aside. “Okay, whatever,” I conceded. “If that’s how it is.”

“That’s how it is,” replied Carol, dropping off the foot of the bed with a solid thump. She extended her tail to full mast and led me into the bathroom. I noticed I had about a third of a roll of paper left on the spool.

I looked at Carol accusingly. “Don’t even think of it,” I warned, knowing her proclivity for late-night de-spooling. “Stuff’s worth its weight in – well, you just can’t get it, you know?” Carol looked back at me inscrutably. I’d given her another hint as to possible extortion methods, and I felt like kicking myself. But I knew I couldn’t get my leg up high enough this early in the morning, so I dropped the idea and went about my morning ablutions. Carol never thinks much of such hew-mon habits as face washing and teeth-brushing, and she leaves the room in disgust when the shower comes on. “Don’t knock it till ya try it,” I try to explain to her, but she will have none of my suggestions.

So I go downstairs, unfurl a can of Friskies into her bowl, and shuffle into my home office to see if I’ve been dreaming for the past week. Not a chance. I look at as much of the news as I can stand and then at the calendar on the wall. What day is this? Wednesday? Thursday? Does it matter? After brewing and downing a cup of Red Rose in a single gulp – plain, no sugar or cream, steeped for at least fifteen minutes – matters begin to come somewhat into focus. I don’t really *know* what day it is, but I’ll call it Wednesday just for the sake of argument. I’m going to do some maintenance on the projector today. The filters need to be cleaned and the inside needs to be dusted. This is dicey work – any time you have the projector casing opened you risk problems with the xenon bulb, a murderous-looking device prone to exploding with great and violent force if it doesn’t get its way. I down a second cup of tea just to be prepared.

Carol leaps up on my desk and thrusts first her back end and then her front end directly into my face. I know the body language, and she emphasizes her point vocally. “MORE,” she squawks.

“NO more.” I retort. “Cat food’s getting in short supply, you know. You’re going on short rations till this blows over. You could stand to lose some weight anyway, Miss Fat Carol The Barrel.”

She gets her back up at this, and I know what’s coming. “YOU SHOULD TALK,” she sneers. “YOU DON’T LOOK LIKE YOU’VE MISSED TOO MANY DRIVE-THRUS.” We have this conversation every day.

As I pull on my coat and head out the door, I look back at her. She’s sitting on the kitchen floor, her back towards me, showing her utter disgust at the shoddy service I provide.

My world, the low hew-mon world, may be in a state of utter disruption right now, but for Miss Carol the Cat, it’s still business as usual. She always knows what day it is. In her calendar, it’s always Caturday.

SOCIAL DISTANCING, Chapter 1: In Which We Adjust To The New Reality

By Liz McLeod

Still Your House Manager

I am a creature of routine. Always have been, always will be. And for the better part of fifteen years my routine and the Strand’s routine have been one, tick tick ticking its way along the familiar mileposts of the Midcoast show business calendar. Fall and Winter? Not a time of falling leaves, gentle snows, and Ho Ho Ho, but Opera Season – Saturday Matinees and Tuesday Encores breaking up the flow of the film calendar, and a couple times a month a live concert to keep things lively. Spring and Summer? Simply that all-too-short interval of long days and short nights and propping the front door open to let the popcorn fumes out that comes between the Camden Conference and CIFF. Season after season, year after year, that’s the way it’s gone. Well over 6000 movie shows, close to 300 live concerts, almost as many opera screenings, and I’ve lost track of all the other events. You get the idea.

And now, bupkis.

You know what it’s like when you’re riding a speeding subway car and it has to come to a fast stop? But you keep moving and let go of the pole and crash into the person in front of you? Well, this situation is like that, except of course without the close personal contact. Keep your distance, bub. Six foot minimum.

Or to quote a great Duke Ellington tune, “Don’t Get Around Much Any More.” Look it up on the You Tube if you don’t know it.

Not that I ever got around much in the first place. For the best part of a decade and a half the Strand has pretty much been the extent of my social life. Show business is like that. Your job isn’t to have fun yourself – although I try to violate that rule as often as I can get away with it – but to make sure everyone else is having fun. So I spend most of my waking hours here, either preparing for shows or doing what has to be done once they start. Contrary to what you might have heard, though, I do have a home other than the theatre – a modest little working-class house in the North End of Rockland, the kind of place with a bathroom the size of a broom closet, steep stairs that desperately need to be painted, a kitchen with no ventilation other than an open window, and a living room that gets sunlight about half an hour a day. But as the realtor who sold it to me said, “it’s got plenny a’ chahm.” It’s not much, but for twenty years it’s been my home. It’s just that when you coop me up there, take away my daily work routine, I get antsy. Jittery. Stir-crazy.

I don’t get many visitors, other than a couple of Strand Kids Emerita who serve as my de facto Next Of Kin. One of them dropped by the other day to check in on me and see how I was handling these latest developments. She found me hunched like a pot-bellied Gollum over my kitchen table, shoving cold French fries into my mouth with both hands.

“You don’t handle capitivity well, do you?” she observed with insight.

“Mgggggrpph!” I replied, hunching lower over my plate as if to defend it. “MUSTN’T TAKE THE PRECCCCCCIOUSSSSS!”

“Ah,” she nodded. “You’ve been grocery shopping.”

And indeed I had. I’m not what they call a prepper by any means, so I don’t actually keep much food in the house other than what I need for each day. Most of my meals, given my work routine, tend to be eaten on the run, and the waitstaff at the Rockland Café and the Waterworks Pub know my order before I even sit down. But we live in a bewildering new era now, and I’d hit the store hoping to pick up a bit more than my usual daily routine of Boston Globe, cat food, and lottery tickets. So I ventured deep into the empty-shelved aisles of the nearest supermarket – passing red-eyed throngs trawling the aisles for any lone misplaced roll of toilet paper -- and emerged, somewhat shell shocked twenty minutes later, with two cans of Hormel Chili, two boxes of matzo, an industrial-sized jar of peanut butter, a can of Vienna sausage – can you tell I go in for fusion cuisine? – and of course six cans of Friskies Filets.

I might not be dealing well with household captivity, but Carol – she’s my eleven-year-old, equally pot-bellied feline housemate – will be living large.

Now, just because the Strand is closed doesn’t mean I’m not working. There’s plenty of maintenance and upkeep required to keep the building ready to reopen once this situation blows over, and I’ll be there for the forseeable trying to keep up with it all. And from time to time I’ll take a minute to jot down a few lines reflecting on, hopefully, the lighter side of this rather unpredecented situation. I’d invite you to drop by the house some time, if you ever get around to the North End, to sample my famous Chili Matzo Delight, but, you know, Social Distancing and all…