A young man studies the posted bus routes from an odd angle so that I can see too. His thick, black hair is cut the way my barber used to cut mine before I was old enough to tell him what I wanted.
“Beszél angolul?” I ask him in guidebook Hungarian.
“Huh?” he replies.
“Do you speak English?”
“Of course,” he laughs, in BBC English.
“I’m trying to get here,” I say, pointing to the map.
“Oh, you want bus 206. That’s where I’m going. I’ll show you.”
As I get on the bus, I contemplate the temporary importance of bus numbers, how I find myself repeating 206 in my head because right now, those three digits mean me getting home, and tomorrow they will mean nothing. (It was 206, right?)
The young man is studying economics. He has lived in Hungary for four years. I forget his name two days later.
“Where are you from?” I ask.
“Iran,” he says. It surprises me a little because he seems so Western. He continues the ritualistic volley that is a traveler’s opening conversation.
“America,” I respond.
Silence. We look at one another as if someone had just farted — that’s the only way to describe it — like we are unsure if we should feel guilty about the situation or if it’s just funny. Something, over which one has no control, has slipped out mid-conversation. We laugh.
“I. . .I have a stupid government,” he says after a pause. I suddenly realize that organizing one’s thoughts and one’s failure to respond sound the same — like nothing.
“Yeah. . .me too,” I say, trying to meet him halfway.
“I liked my old president, not the new one,” he says, referring to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
“Yeah, me too,” I say, referring to President Bush. We both chuckle.
“This new one, he’s like a fundamentalist religious guy,” he says.
And, beginning to laugh before I even get the words out, I say, “Yeah, mine too.”
We look at each other and just nod at how deliciously crisp the conversation is. There could be a laugh track.
We get off the bus. “Americans, they are so extreme,” he instructs me as we walk. “When they do something, they do it. They, they rape a subject. So they are either really good or really bad.”
He looks left and says that I need to go right.
“It was great meeting you,” he says as we shake hands.
“Likewise.” *********
Around eight o’clock the next morning, I am awoken by someone tickling my feet. It is by no means time to get up. I turn my head and look at my feet with one of those clumsy Iaido martial arts motions, the ones that perform the task with the least amount of movement and allow you to quickly return to a motionless state.
It’s a cat playing with my feet. (Later in the day, I wonder why I was only startled to realize it was a cat, as if I would not have been surprised to look up and see a person tickling my toes while I slept.)
I should have been relieved to see the cat. But, well, let’s just say cats and I differ in opinion over whether or not they should exist. What has always bothered me is their intimidating self-awareness. Monkeys are smart, too, but in a goofy, welcoming way. But cats — why do they always seem smarter than you? They are the only animal that you can have a moment of awkwardness with. You walk into the room and they give you that sideways glance, like they can’t even be bothered to turn their whole body to look at you — this from an animal that is fascinated by yarn. Whenever I walk in on a cat this is what happens. 1) The cat gives me that look as if I’m interrupting him. 2) I give the cat that look as if I know I’m actually interrupting him from licking his own body and desecrating a sandbox. It’s a draw.
Then I try to pat it. And it’s like, “Oh, ok you’re purring. Yeah, I don’t actually know what that means.” You never know if you’re petting a cat correctly. A dog will telegraph it; it will lick you in the face and wag its tail. With a dog, it only gets awkward when you start to wonder if it’s enjoying it too much. But a cat will just release a half-interested purr and look away, as if to say, “This is alrightttt, but I wonder what’s on TV.”
I pull my feet under my blanket. Ten minutes pass. I feel a presence. I open my eyes to see the tabby cat eight inches from my head, looking at me as if it were perfectly alright for him to be there, as if he were about to do that half-smile half-yawn morning face, put his arm around me and whisper, “Hey, you want pancakes?”
Then he turns his head and reveals a red, infected, wet, leaking eye. I motioned him with my hand to leave.
After breakfast, I return to the room to see the cat sleeping on the bed. Motivated by a desire for playful revenge and upset by him not laughing at my “cat napping” joke, a lad from Australia named Peter and I tickle the cat’s feet. He shuffles and goes back to sleep.
We put a sheet on him and tuck it in up just below his front legs and deem the scene “funny” because we’re both pretty sure that we’re not allowed to say “cute.”
But he is cute, at least while he’s sleeping. Then again, that’s probably what he was thinking about me.
That, and how he is smarter than I am. After all, he did get my bed.
Steve Macone, a senior in the College of Communication, is a weekly columnist for The Daily Free Press. He can be reached at [email protected].