Val’s face. Their conversation had not gone unnoticed by the other patrons. Val could see them controlling their faces, trying not to butt in. When Barbra said, “You hurt your head, honey?” it was all they could do to keep from falling out laughing. Which, once upon a time they might have done, but these days? No one in that bar laughed about cash any more.
Dan took a sip or two. “Partner? And what I gotta do?”
Val shrugged. “If I knew I’d tell you.”
RATS
1.
Weeks passed, with me stalled on the precipice. All I had managed to do was decide that I needed to make a decision. Progress enough for some, and once upon a time for me, but now I was feeling strange and dissipated.
No wishes had been measured for nearly a month, but the after effects of the elimination of cats were quite pronounced. If there were more birds by day, rats had come to rule the night. The vermin population exploded. I’m not sure how that happened, being no expert on the life cycle of rodents, but the basic mechanism seemed obvious. Alleys at night were all tick-tick-ety as an ice storm.
My neighbors who once owned cats were driven to dogs for pest management, with the most popular types being small and humorless, originally bred for ratting, rabbitting, badgering, what have you. Unfortunately your modern day Chihuahua becomes bored or wounded rather easily. Plus there was the problem of nocturnity. Unlike cats, dogs could not be released from their yards into the rat-filled night. There were good rules against that. And even if there weren’t, a decently raised puppy declined the night shift. The only working part of the hypothesis was that a dog does enjoy killing a rat. The trick is getting the dog and the rat in the same room at the same time.
It was on one of Pebbles’ performance nights that I spotted my first tame silver fox. It was a Tuesday night, and Decatur was largely under-populated at that end of the Quarter. The only predator I had expected to encounter would be one demanding the contents of my wallet. Instead I saw the flash of mirror eyes ducking behind an orange construction barrel that was probably covering some dangerous, beery hole in the banquette.
(I should mention here that a brief coyote experiment had ended in miserable failure. Turns out, coyotes are lazier than house dogs, having quickly learned that the rats they pursued lead them to heaps of restaurant garbage that was always delicious, sometimes hot, and mostly clawless. After two weeks of that wild west adventure, the streets were strewn with stinking rubbish, and there were just as many rats as ever. Plus, the sight of a coyote skulking through an alley was almost as disturbing as encountering an alligator in your garden pond. It was an image that inspired cold fear, regardless of how majestically moonlit the beast might be.)
So I spied this alternative canid beaming at me from behind a rather obvious length of CUIDADO/DANGER/ACH-TUNG tape, and I thought that it might be a lost runt coyote or some grossly proportioned Pomeranian mix. I crossed to the other side of Decatur and continued toward the bar, all the while watching my little watcher watch me. As I drew parallel to it, the creature sat down and allowed its lovely little front paws to protrude from the shadow of its concealment. This was followed by a soft yip.
I stopped and turned, and soon the little bugger trotted across the street to meet me.
I was astounded. This thing had all the features of a wild fox except that it was blue and smoky with dark tipped ears that tilted forward in a friendly position. Common sense tells one that a fox approaching a human with any intention at all is rabid, but this thing emitted a vibration of inner sweetness that I found dazzling. It came to my feet and said yip yip before taking position behind my ankle.
I walked towards the bar and he followed me. My little wing man. But at the entry to Checkpoint Charlie’s we parted ways. He had no interest in coming inside, and after a few seconds of waiting at the doorway he cantered away.
I learned later that the little fellow was a sample of a tame silver fox, a Russian adaptation, imported as an experimental pet here in the states. These little guys were almost completely domesticated and could live like house cats in just about every respect, including using a litter box. They were jolly, loving, and happily nocturnal. They’d even lost their foxy funk. However, they’d retained a powerful caching instinct impossible to breed or train away. Efficient and enthusiastic ratters, they tended to stash their kills inside their masters’ homes, preferring upholstered furnishings such as cushioned couches with nice tight crevices for storing bits.
The bit about the caching was either unknown or insufficiently understood, and many tamed silver foxes were released by their adopters to roam the alleys like little gentleman bandits. Homelessness is always an unfortunate lifestyle, but if you must live under the stars some streets are more amenable than others, and I like to think that the loners of New Orleans catch more breaks than most. Whether you are animal or man.
So it is especially fitting that the night I spied my first tame silver fox, I also encountered my old friend Bobby Rebar. He too was homeless, socially inappropriate, and quite sweet in his squalid way. Bobby perched on a stool just inside the entryway to Checkpoint Charlie’s. “Robert,” I murmured and gave him a dollar, as if he were collecting the cover charge. He jammed the bill in his jeans pocket.
The stage was uninhabited but crowded with instruments and amps. Checkpoint Charlie’s is unremarkable except that it’s one of the larger Quarter bars, and just about the only place you can go for rock and roll or guitar driven anything.
The players were on a break, and I didn’t see Pebbles anywhere. The main floor tables were mostly empty, but there were a few folks on the upper level near the pool table. The bar was crowded though, with several skinny, hard white boys in shredded shirts pounding back beers. The band?
“Quiet night,” I remarked, and I thought that Bobby agreed with me until I realized he was merely bobbing to the music in his head. He discovered that the stool could swivel, so he twisted around like the agitator on a washing machine. His heavy old work boots swung counter to his knees. That’s when I noticed that his soles were caked in gore.
I walked briskly away from him, towards the bar, unwilling to process the meaning of what I’d seen until I’d managed to collect a beer from the barman, a stringy muscled, tattooed Cajun named Jean-Claude. I leaned in with all the young, hard men, thinking how much they looked like my Val, thinking that NASCAR might be an interesting sport to follow, thinking where the hell was Pebbles anyway?—thinking everything I could to crowd out the image of blood and meat packed into the treads of Bobby’s boots.
“Hey, you made it!” Pebbles came up behind me, and put both palms on my back so she could use my hulk as a sort of pogo stick. She jumped up and down, lightly. She was excited. She was nervous. She was unbelievably attractive.
“So I didn’t miss it?” I turned around to appreciate her. She’d tied her red hair into innumerable crazy short braids with little rag ribbons on the ends. Weird, but cute. She wore tight-tight jeans and a pale yellow T-shirt advertising Valvolene. I swear I don’t understand irony any more.
“No way man,” she said. She was breathless, flushed. Tipsy? “I’m up next. There’s like three of us, though.”
“Three singers?”
“Uh huh. And I’m soooo screwed.” She grinned like she wasn’t screwed that much. “One of the gals is married to the guitar player.”
I concentrated on her face, but I could see Bobby Rebar’s shadow in the distance, lurching about, doing all it could to distract me. I dived into Pebbles’ eyes.
Down the bar stood a fellow who had managed to drink himself to his full Rock Star height. He slammed down his glass to signal to his companions that it was time for them to drain theirs as well. He strolled our way, made a wet click in the back of his jaw that may have been meant as some kind of sexy cowboy noise, and said to Pebbles—without looking at her, I think it is important to note—“Ready Babe?” He strode towards the stage without waiting for her response.