How To Tail a Cat

by Rebecca M. Hale

  The children’s jarring shrieks, of course, Clive could do without. Although it was impossible for him to imagine life without his youthful visitors, he felt a small modicum of relief at the end of each day when the last one had been escorted out the Academy’s front doors.

  • • •

  CLIVE WIGGLED HIS lengthy frame, spreading his legs to maximize his body’s contact with the rock. He sighed contentedly as the warmth spread through his joints.

  Given the limited options available to an albino alligator, he knew he’d scored the jackpot.

  Gators of his kind were unable to survive in the wild. The albino’s white skin stood out against the dark background of its natural swampland habitat, making young hatchlings an easy target for prey. Any newborn albinos that managed to escape being eaten soon suffered from their depigmented skin’s sensitivity to direct sunlight.

  In addition to these handicaps, most albinos had very poor eyesight, hindering their ability to hunt or scavenge for food. Clive, himself, was very nearly blind.

  As a practical matter, timely discovery by one of the alligator farmers who routinely inspected the many nests scattered across the coastal wetlands was an albino’s only opportunity for survival. A long-term gig in a well-stocked aquarium was a one-in-a-million shot.

  • • •

  CLIVE CAST HIS droopy eyes proudly around the perimeter of the Swamp Exhibit. The California Academy of Sciences was one of the most coveted albino alligator placements in the country. Despite the exhibit’s relatively small confines, he couldn’t help thinking he had the finest digs in town.

  Beyond the heated rock, which was by far his favorite feature, he also appreciated the mist makers built into the tank walls just above the waterline that kept his delicate skin soft and moist. The artificial tree that stretched high above the tank cast enough shadow to mitigate any harsh sunlight that might permeate the skylights in the elevated roof. And, of course, the Swamp was stocked with plenty of turtles to keep him company.

  Last but not least, there were the Academy alligator specialists, a busy team of scientists who catered to his every need. How many alligators, he wondered, had an entire crew of humans at their beck and call to keep them well furbished with floating fish pellets?

  Clive’s stomach rumbled with the thought. He turned his head toward the far corner of the tank, where he’d stashed a pile of pellets from the last batch the scientists had thrown in before leaving for the night, but his legs didn’t move. He wasn’t quite hungry enough yet to go dig them up.

  With another contented sigh, his chin dropped once more to the rock’s heated surface.

  • • •

  EMITTING A GRINDING gator grunt, Clive shifted his weight so that he could wedge his right elbow against a hot spot near the rock’s center.

  Having lived his entire life in a protected enclosure, his skin was generally clear of blemishes, scars, or scratches—with one exception. His right front paw was missing its outermost digit, leaving an exposed joint that occasionally twinged with arthritis.

  Perhaps the main downside to living on display like this, Clive reflected with a painful wince, was your inability to choose your tank companions.

  • • •

  CLIVE’S TOE INJURY was the result of a love match gone horribly wrong. Several months back, the aquarium had introduced a non-albino female alligator to the Swamp Exhibit in the hopes she and Clive might strike up a romance.

  He had been open to the idea at first, but he had quickly changed his mind.

  Mariah, he thought bitterly. That was one temperamental alligator.

  No sooner had the new alligator entered the swamp’s enclosure than she had proceeded to take over the place. After taking a massive bite out of one of the underwater supporting posts, she had mounted the heated rock—not to share, but to occupy completely. She hadn’t been the least bit amenable to his cordial attempts to discuss the matter or any of his offers of compromise.

  In the ensuing territorial dispute, Mariah had snapped at Clive’s right front paw, causing it to bleed.

  Immediately concerned, the Academy staff members swooped in and quickly transported Clive to a behind-the-scenes operating room. The next thing he remembered, he was waking up from anesthesia, minus one digit.

  By the time Clive returned to the Swamp Exhibit, Mariah had been dispatched to a zoo. Since then, he had been content in his bachelorhood, socializing with the swamp’s amiable and nonthreatening turtles when he needed companionship.

  Women, he thought as he carefully rotated his right front leg to flatten his pared-down appendage against the hot spot.

  • • •

  STILL MUTTERING TO himself about the moody Mariah, Clive’s eyelids fluttered to half-mast, and the first wheeze of a dozing snore buzzed through his snout.

  He was on the verge of falling fast asleep when a movement at the balcony caught his attention.

  Slowly, Clive roused his senses and focused his diminished vision at the swamp’s top rim. To Clive, the rocks and tree trunks inside his swamp were fuzzy images. He even had difficulty telling his turtles apart.

  He could barely make out the blurry shadow creeping behind the row of standing seahorses, but the figure struck him as slightly different from those of the security guards that roamed the Academy at night.

  Just then, a man’s husky voice whispered over the edge of the enclosure.

  “Psst, Clive.”

  This was followed by the familiar splatting sound of a fish pellet hitting the water.

  “Over here.”

  Clive needed no further encouragement. His stomach had awoken, this time roaring with hunger.

  The alligator’s snapping jaw quickly found the disc floating near him.

  Chomp.

  Chapter 18

  OFF THE EMBARCADERO

  HOXTON FIN STRODE along a nearly empty sidewalk, heading down Market Street toward the Ferry Building. The bulk of the financial district’s traffic had retired for the evening. Only a few Muni buses and the occasional taxicab bumped along the pothole-strewn roadway.

  Despite the late hour, the day’s heat had yet to dissipate. The air was unusually heavy and clogged with exhaust. San Francisco’s signature breeze had temporarily vacated the city, leaving it to suffer in sweltering stagnation.

  Hox wiped the back of his hand across his sweating forehead. Then he reached for his collar to loosen an extra button at the neck of his shirt. He’d already removed his jacket, tucking it into the top of his backpack.

  The weather was beginning to wear on him. He found it difficult to think under these conditions and, worse, impossible to write.

  He, like his city, depended on the wind.

  • • •

  THE CLEANSING BLAST cleared out all the toxins, both environmental and emotional, that were constantly created by the crowded metropolis.

  Yes, in other parts of the world, people managed to live in cramped quarters without the aid of a clearing wind. Some of those spots were even more densely packed than San Francisco, with citizens crammed inside tiny beehive cubicles stacked, row upon row, into honeycombed towers of uniformity.

  Hox had visited such places, and he had come away from each experience with a certain amount of incomprehension.

  The average San Franciscan was not amenable to the conforming rigidness that kind of lifestyle necessitated. The Western heart was not so easily tamed.

  • • •

  A WALK OVER any of the city’s residential hills proved the point. Houses, though tightly knit together, were painted with a distinguishing array of colors. Garish gables overdecorated many front facades. Each living space, no matter how small, was an important creative outlet. You’d be hard-pressed to find any two buildings that looked exactly the same.

  In a city made up of such ardent free spirits, the cooling ventilation of the Pacific kept the excesses of all that individualism in check.

  The wild whipping force ripped at hair, clothes, and makeup, de
feating all but the most rigid styling mechanisms. It was a great equalizer, giving everyone, no matter his or her race or social stature, a uniformly windblown look, channeling the area’s boundless creativity into matters beyond an individual’s physical appearance.

  In Hox’s view, it was the wind that had developed San Francisco’s laid-back, easygoing acceptance as well as its entrepreneurial spirit.

  • • •

  WITHOUT THE WIND’S tempering release, conflicts quickly began to build.

  Everywhere, it seemed, petty squabbles were breaking out. Hox couldn’t step foot inside the newspaper’s offices without encountering some senseless argument raging at full red-faced volume.

  As Hox neared the Ferry Building, he cast a hooded glance at an elaborately coiffed woman, who was painting her lips with a colored gloss as she hurried to catch the next boat.

  He led out a gruff snort. This stagnant air led to far too much primping.

  Then he caught a glimpse of his own reflection in the glass wall of a nearby storefront. The image elicited a groan.

  The painstakingly prepared spike down the center of his scalp was still perfectly in place.

  • • •

  HOX FOLLOWED MARKET Street’s bottom hook past the trolley turnaround outside the Ferry Building and set off down a sidewalk lining the inner lane of the Embarcadero.

  He soon reached the restaurant where he was to meet his late-night appointment, but he was in no hurry to step inside.

  Hox stood staring at the palm trees planted in the roadway’s median. The tropical plants—that in the typical San Francisco fog looked so improbable—suddenly seemed far more appropriate. Their crown of fronds was better suited to the sizzling heat still radiating off the pavement than November’s more typical drizzling rain.

  He lifted his gaze to the western span of the Bay Bridge. A row of antlike vehicles sped across the lower deck, their antennaed headlights shining against the bridge’s metal rigging.

  Hox desperately wished he were riding in one of those cars. He would rather be headed anywhere else than inside this restaurant.

  • • •

  WITH A BELLIGERENT sigh, Hox reluctantly turned his back on the water to face a multi-story gray stone building.

  Located in the middle of a block, the structure housed a high-end hotel on its upper floors and, at street level, the restaurant that was the scheduled meeting place for his evening appointment.

  His source had insisted that the rendezvous take place in secret. The man had made him promise that the information received would be treated on a strictly off-the-record basis.

  Hox rolled his eyes, remembering the phone call. He knew the conversation held only the pretense of being confidential.

  When the Previous Mayor penned his next op-ed for the newspaper, the column would no doubt include enough details for those in the know to piece together not only with whom he had been dining and what they had discussed, but also what they had both eaten.

  • • •

  HIS SQUARE JAW clenched with resignation, Hox shuffled through the restaurant’s front doors, past the unmanned station for the seating hostess, and into the dining room.

  The building’s interior was appointed with dark wooden flooring, matched by a wainscoting of similar texture that covered the lower half of the walls. Plantation shutters blocked out the windows, completing the sense of being closed off from the Embarcadero’s often bustling thoroughfare.

  The tables were covered with blue-and-white-checkered cloths, lending a small amount of brightness to the space. Each setting was ringed with white ceramic tubs filled to the rim with hardened butter and beer glasses holding bundles of long, slender breadsticks.

  The restaurant primarily served clientele from the nearby financial district. A few hours earlier, the dining area and adjacent bar would have been packed to capacity with lawyers, stockbrokers, and financial analysts who had just left their offices for the day. This late in the evening, however, most of those patrons had shifted to dining establishments located closer to home.

  Hox glanced around. Other than a handful of out-of-town conventioneers, the place had emptied out. As he had expected, the Previous Mayor was nowhere to be seen.

  He shuffled over to the table held on permanent reserve for the PM, pulled out one of its heavy oak chairs, set his backpack on the floor, and dropped into the seat.

  To the anxious waitress who immediately hurried up, he waved a thick hand and said gruffly, “He’s expecting me.”

  Before the woman could disappear, he added, “I’ll take a Guinness.”

  • • •

  FORTY-FIVE MINUTES LATER, Hox stared sulkily at the wall, absentmindedly twirling a breadstick in his fingers as he sipped his second beer of the night.

  His meetings with the Previous Mayor were always lengthy, drawn-out affairs. Half the time, the old man didn’t have anything worthwhile to share. All of the time, he was late.

  Hox knew the PM loved to torment him. He, in turn, hated playing the stooge. But with an important story brewing at City Hall, Hox couldn’t afford to mutter anything but “I’ll be there” when the PM called to set up a meeting.

  It had been almost eight years since the PM left his elected office, but somehow the man still managed to know everything that was going on in San Francisco’s local government. Hox had tried for years to replicate the PM’s sources—and failed.

  It put a serious dent in his journalistic pride, but he had finally concluded he had no choice. He had to submit himself to the humiliation of these meetings.

  Sucking down the Guinness’s dark, bitter liquid, Hox tilted his head to peek through the wide slats of the nearest blinds. The lights on the Bay Bridge twinkled against the dusky night sky.

  There was no telling what time the PM might finally show up.

  He’d better order an appetizer.

  • • •

  HOX HAD EATEN halfway through a plate of fried calamari when a gray felt bowler slid across the table in front of his plate.

  The Previous Mayor’s gravelly voice greeted him with feigned surprise.

  “Hox—man, what have they done to your hair?”

  “Hello, Mayor,” Hox replied, raising his glass with a surly grimace. He suspected the PM had already been thoroughly briefed on his unfortunate run-in with the television station’s stylist.

  As the PM took his seat, the waitress rushed up with his regular cocktail. Hox arched his eyebrows in annoyance. The woman had taken far more time servicing his orders.

  “Good evening, Eleanor,” the PM intoned smoothly. “What’s the fish special tonight?”

  Hox listened impatiently through a tedious discussion of the menu, which involved numerous questions about ingredients and possible modifications—the answers to which Hox felt certain the PM already knew.

  At last, the PM stroked the short gray mustache over his upper lip and voiced his selection.

  “I’ll take the fish,” he said with a certainty that suggested he had made up his mind long before hearing all the other options.

  • • •

  THE PM TOOK a measured sip of his cocktail. Then he carefully set the dainty glass on the checkered cloth, rested his wrists on the table’s edge, and folded his fingers together.

  “Thank you for meeting me, Hox. I have some news to pass on about the business at City Hall.”

  Cautiously, Hox pulled out his notebook and leaned forward.

  The PM raised his hands above the table, palms outward, a rebuffing gesture meant only to draw the reporter in.

  “Of course, I don’t pretend to be an expert on the matter. A man like yourself has many reliable sources.”

  Hox rolled his bottom lip inward, silently gritting his teeth.

  The PM raised an index finger to his cheek and tapped it thoughtfully. “But—I do have an insight that might be slightly . . . ah . . . different from the other information you’ve been gathering.”

  Just then, the waitress approach
ed carrying a plate piled high with greens. The PM smiled as she whipped out a pepper grinder from her apron pocket. Hovering the grinder over the dish, she gave the cylinder the PM’s preset number of twists.

  The PM inspected the plate and issued a gracious nod, signaling her to depart.

  Hox drained the Guinness as he watched the PM reach for a side cup filled with dressing. Slowly, the PM poured the creamy substance over the mound of lettuce. Then he used his knife and fork to thoroughly mix the two together.

  After munching down a mouthful of salad, touching his lips with a napkin, and loudly slurping from his water glass, the PM bent his head toward the impatient reporter.

  “Obviously, each one of the supervisors would like to get the nomination for him- or herself . . .” The PM tilted his head to one side, as if dismissing the possibility. “But everyone knows that’s not going to happen. They’ll never settle on one of their own. There’s too much infighting.”

  Hox licked his lips, hungrily anticipating the PM’s revelation. Maybe the long wait here at the restaurant had been worth his time after all.

  If he found out the identity of the dark-horse candidate the city’s political elite were about to push for interim mayor, then he might just have to take back all of the vicious things he’d silently muttered about the PM over the course of the last two and a half hours.

  “One of the outsiders, then?” Hox asked eagerly. “Come on, Mayor, give me a name.”

  The PM took another forkful of salad and repeated his ritual. Hox was about to leap across the table and strangle the man when at last he made his reply.

  “I believe you’re familiar with . . .” The PM paused, his brown eyes twinkling.

  Hox held his breath, pencil at the ready.

  The PM whispered conspiratorially, “The Current Mayor’s Life Coach.”

  Hox bored the pencil into the notepad, breaking the lead.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” he grumbled bitterly.

  He reached into his rumpled coat pocket, pulled out a wad of cash to cover his drinks and appetizer, and threw it on the table. Screeching his chair back, he stormed out of the restaurant.