CHAPTER TWELVE Where is Holly Now?
TOMATO'S GIRL IS MISSING and BEAUTIFUL ACTRESS: KILLED BY DRUGS GANG? Those were the stories in the newspapers during the next few weeks. Later, they reported: TOMATO'S GIRL SEEN IN RIO.
The American police didn't try to bring her back, and soon Holly's name disappeared from the newspapers. I saw it only once in a report on Christmas Day, when Sally Tomato died in Sing Sing. He was an old man with a sick heart and he died in his bed.
The winter months passed slowly. I didn't hear anything from Holly. The owner of the apartment building sold her things - the bed with the shiny white cover, her pictures, her chairs. She loved those chairs.
A new tenant moved into the apartment. His name was Quaintance Smith and he had a lot of male visitors. He was as noisy as Holly. I often heard loud music, and voices, and men shouting. But this time Mrs. Spanella didn't say anything.
"He's a nice young man," she said to me. "I like him."
She always smiled when she saw him. She even gave him something for his eye each time one of his "friends" hit him.
But in the spring I received a card. The message was written in pencil and signed with a lipstick kiss.
Brazil was terrible, but Buenos Aires is wonderful. It's not Tiffany's, but almost as good. I'm spending all my time with a handsome Spanish man. Do I love him?
I think so. I'm looking for a place to live. (The Spanish man has a wife and seven children.) I'll send my address when I have one. Then she wrote in French: Much love.
She never sent the address. Maybe she never had one. I was sad because I wanted to write to her. I had a lot to tell her. I sold two stories. The Trawlers were divorcing and fighting about money. I was moving out of the brown stone apartment building because it was full of memories of Holly.
But most important, I had news about the cat.
I kept my promise and I found him. For weeks after work I walked through the streets of Spanish Harlem. Many times, I saw a red cat with yellow eyes - but it wasn't him. He was gone, lost in New York.
But one day, one cold Sunday afternoon when the winter sun was shining, I found him.
He was sitting in the window of a house. The paint around the window was new. The room looked warm and comfortable. There were plants in pots on each side of him.
He had a name. I was sure that he had a name now. He was in a place where he belonged.
I hope Holly has found a place where she belongs, too.
- THE END -
