Nine Lives Last Forever

by Rebecca M. Hale

  There was a splash, followed by a sliding scramble.

  “Ha, ha, get back here buddy,” Monty said, laughing loudly. “Hey,” he called up. “Rupert and I nearly landed in the moat.”

  “Are you two coming back already?” I was starting to get impatient.

  Another sliding slurp emanated from the substructure.

  “Whoa, watch out there Rupert, the ground is really—slick.”

  A deep silence filled the hatch.

  “Is it muddy from the water?” I asked.

  “No,” Monty replied, sounding somewhat perturbed.

  “All of the water is in the moat.” He grumbled a further comment beneath his breath.

  “What’s that?” I yelled down to him. “I couldn’t hear you.”

  “There’s an awful lot of frogs down here. Thousands of them, I’d guess. I can’t hardly move without stepping on one. All of these frogs have . . . ahem . . . left their mark. The ground is covered with, well . . . it’s quite unpleasant really.”

  Monty’s voice took on an anguished tone. “I’m afraid it’s frog”—he sighed in disgust—“fecal material.”

  Chapter 36

  THE WINDOW

  THE CAT MONTY hoisted up through the hatch was far less white and decidedly less fluffy than the one who had dropped down it. Rupert’s furry, round body was covered with sticky patches of brown smudge; his mottled coat was now redolent with the musty, earthy smell of the substructure.

  Rupert looked at me gratefully as I wrapped my hands around his belly and gingerly pulled him up into the janitor’s closet. I carried him out to the hallway and carefully deposited him on top of the old towels inside the cart. Suspicious brown smears were now streaked up and down my front. There was no longer any need to worry that Sam might realize that I had washed his spare overalls, I thought ruefully.

  Monty’s head and shoulders emerged from the hatch as I returned to the janitor’s closet. He was besmirched from head to toe with the same brown smudges.

  “Here I come,” he announced, dropping his battered top hat on the floor beside the opening. With a heave, he hauled his body midway up the ledge so that he could squeeze a knee over onto the floor. After a moment of groaning exertion, he managed to stand up next to the hole.

  “Well, now we know where the frogs are coming from,” I said, staring at Monty’s rumpled tuxedo. I pulled the piece of paper with Oscar’s scrawled handwriting out of one of my pockets. “Now we just have to figure out where they’re going.”

  Monty raised a soiled finger and then pointed it down into the hole as yet another green frog zoomed up onto the floor of the janitor’s closet. Monty’s finger traced the frog’s path as it hopped out the door.

  The tiny frog glanced back at us nervously as we stepped into the hallway. Then, it took a long leap forward. “There it goes,” Monty said enthusiastically. “The same direction as the frogs we saw earlier.”

  A second frog peeked out the door of the janitor’s closet. It blinked up at us as its hind legs squirmed back and forth with indecision, and then it, too, scooted down the hallway.

  Isabella sniffed the air with renewed interest and made as if she were about to go after them. I scooped her up and siphoned her into a spot in the cart next to Rupert.

  “Let’s go,” I said as I grabbed the cart’s handle.

  “Hold on for just one minute,” Monty said briskly. “I’ve got a roll of paper towels in my office.” He pulled a key out of his pocket and unlocked the door next to the janitor’s closet.

  As I waited for Monty to rummage through his office for the paper towels, I glanced up at the window running along the top of the back wall.

  “Monty,” I called after him, remembering Sam’s troubled expression at the end of our last meeting. “What’s the story with your window?”

  “Ah yes,” he reflected. “The window.” He ran his hand over his head, trying to smooth out the mangled crest of his pompadoured hair. “You don’t want to get Sam started on the window story. We’d still be here listening to it if I hadn’t dragged you off down the hallway.”

  Monty strode behind his desk to peer out the rectangular opening, absentmindedly tapping the wall next to the Mayor’s photo as he walked past it.

  “You see, this is the window the Supervisor came through the morning he shot Milk and Moscone.”

  Monty turned back to face me. “The basement windows didn’t have bars over them in those days. The man simply slid in here with his guns and ammo, took the back stairs up to the second floor, and bullied his way into the Mayor’s office. He shot Mayor Moscone; then he walked down the second floor corridor, pretty as you please, and shot Harvey Milk. It all happened so quickly, the guy was gone before anybody realized what had happened.”

  Monty leaned over his desk toward me. “The janitor saw the shooter sneak in through the window. He asked the Supervisor what he was doing, but the man just gave him the brush-off. The janitor was outranked, you see.”

  Monty shrugged. “It wasn’t the first time a Supervisor had squeezed in one of the basement windows. Apparently several of them had the habit of going through the basement to get around the security scanners on the main floor.”

  Monty bent down to the desk and opened a side drawer. He pulled out a roll of paper towels, ripped one off, and began wiping the larger smudges from his tuxedo. “At least this is a rental,” he muttered glibly.

  Another frog hopped past my cart in the hallway. “There’s another one,” Monty called out. “Keep an eye on it, will you? I’ll be ready in just a second.”

  I stood in the doorway, staring at the little green frog, watching its determined progress down the hallway. Monty dropped the used paper towel into a trashcan, strolled around the desk, and ushered me the rest of the way out the door.

  “Look! It’s turning the corner,” Monty cried as he sped off down the hallway. The slick soles of his dress shoes left a trail of brown smudges on the floor tiles behind him.

  “Wait,” I said, still pondering Sam and the window story. “The janitor who saw the Supervisor come in through the window, was that . . . ?”

  Monty was already ten feet down the hallway when he spun around to face me. “Sam’s father,” he said, nodding. “It wasn’t his fault. He couldn’t have done anything to stop it. But the man was never quite the same afterward. They say the guilt tormented him for the rest of his life.”

  I rolled the cart toward Monty as he spoke. He grabbed the opposite side of it and leaned toward me for a loud whisper.

  “The man finally killed himself about fifteen years after the murders, I think. That’s when Sam took over as head janitor.”

  Monty leaned back and tapped the side of his head knowingly. “Trust me, you don’t want to get Sam going on about his father. It’s a bit creepy. He talks about him as if he’s still alive.”

  Monty swirled his finger in the air suggestively. “Don’t get me wrong, I like Sam, but he’s a bit cuckoo, in case you haven’t noticed.”

  Chapter 37

  THE MYSTERY OF THE MIGRATING FROGS

  WE FOLLOWED A very self-conscious frog all the way down the dimly lit hallway. Every so often, the frog paused to look back at the motley caravan trailing behind him.

  Monty pranced back and forth across the tile floor, swishing his top hat and tails as he circled dance steps around the cart. I shoved the cart forward, ignoring his antics and trying not to trip over the rolled-up pant legs of my overalls.

  The frog neared the end of the hallway and turned toward us, his green face twitching with consternation. Monty bent his lanky body toward the floor, dropping to one knee to bring his face closer to eye level with our amphibian ambassador.

  “Hello there, little friend,” Monty said cordially. “Don’t mind us. You continue on about your business. We’re just here to observe.”

  Monty whispered a loud aside in my direction. “And follow you to the pot of gold.”

  Eying Monty warily, the frog thumped its right
leg against the tile floor.

  “Ah!” Monty cried out. The soles of his shoes slapped against the floor as he lifted off of his knee and jumped up onto both feet. Monty bent at his knees, so that he assumed a crouched position somewhat similar to that of the frog. With a dramatic flick of his top hat, Monty tapped his right leg against the floor, miming the frog’s thump.

  The frog took a moment to consider this overture. His red tongue slid out and slapped the side of his mouth. I watched, shaking my head, as Monty attempted the same.

  Isabella hopped up on her haunches to look over the edge of the cart. Exhausted by the lateness of the hour and his adventure in the substructure, Rupert snuggled down into the pile of blankets and settled in for a nap.

  On the floor in front of us, Monty continued to ape and impersonate the frog. “Come on, little guy,” Monty wheedled, still in his crouched frog-imitating stance. “Where are you going? I’m a frog, just like you. Lead the way.”

  I don’t think that the frog was the least bit convinced by Monty’s ruse, but he did finally turn and hop the rest of the way down the hallway. With a last disconcerted glance back at us, he turned the corner and disappeared.

  Monty’s face gleamed with excitement. “I really think I got through to him,” he said proudly. “I think we connected—you know, on a man-to-frog level.”

  I sighed, ruefully reflecting that I had willingly involved myself in this ridiculous caper.

  With exaggerated hand gestures, Monty motioned for me to follow him as he tracked after the hapless frog. Reluctantly, I wheeled the cart forward, flicking on the flashlight I’d commandeered from Monty when he emerged from the hatch in the janitor’s closet. As Monty and I rounded the corner, I swung the beam down the length of the corridor.

  I had to set aside my doubts regarding the logic of Monty’s frog theory as he and I both stopped and stared at the scene in front of us.

  A pile of frogs had congregated on the tile floor at the bottom of the basement stairs that led up to the first floor. There were hundreds of frogs, waddling this way and that as if they were mingling at a cocktail party—a moist green ribbiting mass. We watched, amazed, as one by one, they each took their turn leaping up the stairs.

  Isabella was plastered to the edge of the cart, her eyes fixated on the surreal landscape in front of the stairs.

  I glanced down into the middle of the cart to check on Rupert. He had rolled over onto his back so that his stomach pouched upward. All four feet were folded and hanging limply in the air.

  The frogs didn’t seem to notice us at first, but as we edged toward them, the flashlight’s focused beam grew stronger, and the throngs began to stir. Their croaking sounds took on a more concerned tenor.

  The wheels on the cart ran over a divot in the tile floor, causing a loud squeak. Like a flock of wild birds, the frogs took off, en masse, up the stairs.

  It was an amazing sight—a dark, flying tangle of muscular back legs and webbed, streaming feet, the bodies of individual frogs almost indistinguishable in the hurtling pack. The frogs reached a flat mezzanine midway up the stairs and rounded its turn in perfect unison, disappearing almost instantly up the rest of the staircase.

  Monty and I stood at the foot of the stairs, struck dumb by what we’d just witnessed.

  “Wa . . . wow!” Monty’s stuttered exclamation broke the awed silence. He rotated his head toward me and shrugged his shoulders questioningly.

  I had no response for him; I’d never seen anything like it.

  “Wrao,” Isabella ordered sternly, her eyes plastered on the stairs. Her tail whipped wildly back and forth, fanning the air above Rupert’s snoozing head.

  “Here, Monty,” I said, turning off the flashlight and tucking it into one of the overall’s many pockets. “Help me carry this thing up the stairs.”

  Monty grabbed one side of the cart while I latched on to the other. Together we hefted it up the stairwell, our progress closely monitored by Isabella, who switched from side to side to look down at the steps. Rupert rolled back and forth with the shifting equilibrium of the cart, never once opening his tightly shut eyelids.

  We rounded the mezzanine and began the second half of the ascent. A croaking murmur, similar to the sound from the substructure, echoed off of the stone walls around us, drowning out the clumsy clunking of my footsteps.

  Isabella draped her body over the edge of the cart. Her front legs slid down the outside as she surveyed the floor around us, checking for any straggling frogs that might have been left behind by the larger group.

  The frog sounds continued to increase in volume as we reached the first floor, the crescendo resulting in a near deafening chant.

  “Wrao,” Isabella called out insistently, urging us on.

  I complied with her instructions and pushed the cart forward into a short tunnel-like foyer. A narrow slice of the rotunda could be seen through the opening on the opposite side, shining with a ghostly spectral glow.

  Monty walked beside me, his earlier bravado diminished, his top hat trembling in his hands. The slapping of the flat soles of his dress shoes was barely audible over the energetic humming of the frogs.

  We stepped out onto the pink marble of the rotunda. The colonnades and balconies above us were showered in moonlight streaming in through the ring of arched windows circling the dome’s false ceiling. The moon’s meager lighting amplified as it reflected off of the polished marble, throwing shadows that enhanced the shapes carved into the stone and plaster, giving darker, more menacing expressions to the frozen faces.

  On the floor around us, a myriad of green forms dotted the radial designs spiraling out from the foot of the central staircase. The group of frogs we’d followed up from the basement was but a small fraction of the numbers populating the rotunda, milling on the pink marble, and slowly making their way up the staircase.

  Chapter 38

  UP, UP, UP

  MONTY AND I left the unwieldy cart in the center of the rotunda so that we could continue to follow the trail of frogs up the central staircase.

  Isabella leapt out onto the pink marble floor, causing a scattering of frogs in the two feet of space surrounding her front feet. I carefully rolled the sleeping Rupert over and scooped him up into my arms. His mouth stretched open in a sleepy yawn that he cut short when he caught sight of the surrounding sea of frogs.

  Familiar brown smudges were beginning to appear on the floor beneath the dome. City Hall, I thought, was going to need an extra cleaning crew in the morning.

  Isabella started immediately up the stairs, continuing along the path of the frogs. I took a step forward to follow her, but suddenly stopped, perplexed.

  “Monty?” I asked nervously. “Where are the security guards? Even if they weren’t at the front desk when you came in, shouldn’t there be at least one person on patrol in here somewhere?”

  Monty shrugged, unconcerned. “They probably went out for a doughnut. I imagine it’s a pretty boring post most nights.” He waved his arms across the frog-filled expanse of the rotunda. “But wait until they get a look at this.”

  It seemed awfully strange to me that this enormous frog invasion had so far gone unnoticed by anyone responsible for the upkeep or security of City Hall. Apprehensively, I began the climb up the central staircase.

  Monty used his top hat to clear a path along the steps, fanning it at the frogs to usher them away from our feet. One slanted-eye look from Isabella was all it took to convince even the largest, most stubborn frog to step aside.

  The frog numbers began to thin as we reached the Ceremonial Rotunda at the top of the staircase. Several frogs had gathered around the bronze bust of Harvey Milk as if it were a designated resting spot along their pilgrimage.

  Monty paused to investigate the grouping around the bust, but Isabella cut him off with a herding blow to his calf.

  “Wrao,” Isabella meowed sharply at him before setting off down the second floor hallway. Her tail waved in the air like a flag as she followed t
he dwindling numbers of frogs—the few who still had the fortitude to plod onward to their unknown destination.

  “She’s even more eager than I am to find this stash of gold,” Monty said, glancing back at me.

  I nodded grimly and wrapped my arms tighter around Rupert. I hadn’t yet voiced my concerns to Monty, but I had the sneaking suspicion that something else entirely might be waiting for us at the end of this odyssey.

  I looked out over the railing to the open space of the rotunda as we continued around the second floor hallway. More and more frogs were coming up from the basement. The first floor seemed to be alive, thousands of individual movements coalescing into the single pulse of a massive green beast.

  All along the hallway, we continued to pass frog after weary but determined frog. Some irresistible inner force seemed to be driving them forward.

  At the opposite end of the second floor, just past the turnoff for the Mayor’s office suite, we trailed an exhausted but resolute frog to a side staircase leading to the third floor. Isabella crept up a few feet behind the frog as it hopped along the marble.

  Once the frog entered the stairway, Isabella leapt past it and began trotting up to the third floor. Monty’s dress shoes skipped along behind her as I brought up the rear, still carrying Rupert in my arms. The group of us continued on, traveling ever higher within the upper reaches of the rotunda.

  By the time Rupert and I stepped out onto the third floor corridor, Isabella and Monty had already keyed in on yet another pilgriming frog. This one was resting in front of a door marked “No Entry.”

  The lock on the barred passage had been released. The door was cracked open a couple of inches, ample space for a frog’s width.

  The frog scooted through the narrow opening as we approached. Isabella nosed at the crack, trying to wedge her head into the frog-sized space. Monty stepped up behind her, grabbed onto the handle, and swung the door wide.

  Inside, a narrow stairway scaled skyward, lit only by an occasional bare lightbulb mounted onto the sides of rough stone walls.