Pegasus, Part VI "Just Friends"

I drive to Pegasus, and we sit for a minute in front of the store with the Rocket Sled’s motor idling.
      “Gonna be busy this afternoon?”

      “Who knows,” Rachel says. “We did get a bunch of new videos in, so maybe, yeah.” 

      “Okay if I come in for a while? I could keep an eye on the rats for you.”

      “Better not today, Sam. I’ve got some stuff I gotta get sorted. The rats are fine for now.” She looks down at her hands. She runs her thumb over the strap on her book bag, polishing the buckle. I think how much she looks like the woman in the lithograph: pensive, a little lonely, waiting to fly away.

      “You know, Rach’, I think we ought to go out sometime,” I venture.

     She doesn’t seem to get my meaning.  “Go out where?”

      “Go out. To dinner or something. A movie.”

      “Like on a date?” She’s surprised. A new light creeps into her face, a wary look.

      “Well, not exactly, but--”

      “I’m not sure that’s a good idea, Sam,” she says slowly. “I mean, we’re really good friends...” I imagine the woman in the lithograph with her hand on the horse’s mane, ready to swing up into place. “And you’re a great lab partner, but...” The horse’s wings unfold.

      I hurry into words. “Yeah, you’re probably right. We’re just friends. Besides, I’m pretty busy with school and all.” I give the Rocket Sled’s engine a little revving. “And you’ve got to work.” She nods. 

      “So,” I change the subject, getting businesslike, “what d’you think about the snake?”

      “About Sid?”

      “Yeah. D’you think we ought to give him the rats?”

      She’s distracted. “I don’t know. I can’t think what else to do with them.” She sighs. 

      We sit for another minute or two, and I begin to wonder if she remembers where we are, that I’m double-parked, that she has to go to work, but then she says, “My mom likes to tell this story: When I was about five years old, my grandmother bought me a pair of gerbils as pets. They were supposed to be two females--I named them Betty and Girl--but it turned out Betty was a male, because after about a month, Girl started having babies. Soon, we had a lot more gerbils than we knew what to do with. 

     It was summer, and my grandmother was having a yard sale, and my mother suggested that I put the gerbils in the sale, with a sign on them that said ‘Free.’ Well, little entrepreneur that I was, I insisted that we sell them for five dollars each, which is what I knew the pet store charged. We tried this for a while, but nobody bought any, so my mother crossed out the ‘Five dollars each’ and wrote ‘Free’ on the sign. 

      I threw a fit. Screamed. A real tantrum. My mother grabbed me and carried me into the house to calm me down. She and my grandmother tried to reason with me. Nothing worked. I demanded my five dollars each. Finally, my mother threatened to turn the gerbils loose in the foothills in back of our house. According to her, I burst into tears, cried, “NOOOO!” and said, ‘You know what happens. A big bird comes swooping down, swooping down, swooping down!’ My mother said that I made wild diving motions with my arm to illustrate the swooping bird. She said it was so dramatic, so perfectly descriptive of all those nature shows you see on the Discovery Channel, that she and my grandmother both burst out laughing, which, of course, made me angrier and set me off crying again.”

      Rachel stops talking and stares out the front window of the car. A man with a little dog on a leash comes out of the Post Office across the street from Pegasus. He pauses to adjust the clasp on the dog’s collar and unknot a kink in the leash. Rachel and I watch him.

      “So what finally happened?”

      She turns to me as if coming back from a long way off. “To the gerbils?”

      “Yeah. Did you give them away?”

      “No,” she says, and watches the man move off down the sidewalk. The dog follows reluctantly. The man gives a few sharp jerks on the leash, and the dog picks up the pace, its short legs pumping quickly to keep up. “No,” she repeats, her voice floating softly back into memory. “A couple of weeks went by and the weather got warmer, and one afternoon my mother and I climbed the hill behind our house with all the gerbils in a box--even Betty and Girl. And we let them go. I put Girl down on the ground, and she looked around for about two seconds, and then she ran under a big sagebrush. They all did. Never saw any of them again.”

      “And the ‘swooping down’? Didn't you worry about the big bird?”

      “No.  Not that I remember. Somehow, by then, it seemed like the right thing to do. Kinda inevitable.” She pauses. “You know what I was feeling while Sid ate that gerbil? Respect. I was feeling respect for a snake. He was just so much more in charge than the gerbil was. More powerful.”

      Far off down the block, the man and his dog are tiny figures, miniatures fit for a doll’s house. They turn the corner and disappear. “Actually,” says Rachel, “the thing I remember most about that day on the hill was the sagebrush. How rich it smelled. Rich and dusty. And how Girl ran away from me right under it, like she knew just where she was going.”

      I lean over Rachel and open her door. “You’re gonna be late for work,” I say. She gets out and gives me a little wave goodbye. She shifts her book bag onto her shoulder and walks to the front door of Pegasus. I hear the jingle of the elephant bells as I drive away.

[To order a copy of the book, Walking Pocatello, call the Idaho State University Bookstore, (208) 282-3237, or send me an email.]

Pegasus, Part V "Sid Snacks"

The next morning there’s a sign on the lab door saying Animal Cognition class is canceled for that day and asking anyone who knows about the “break-in” to contact Dr. Troutman immediately.  Rachel and I go have a cup of coffee at The College Market.  We carry our cups out to the patio so Rachel can smoke her cigarette and we can talk privately about what to do with the rats.  But as much as we go over and over and around and around solutions, we can’t find one that’s really satisfactory.  After the second espresso, I’m feeling jumpy.

            “Well, I can’t think of anything else.  And I gotta go.  I promised Wat I’d drop off my physics notes before the test tomorrow.”
            “Oh, yeah.  Your friend Watley,” says Rachel, and her voice, which has been pretty much back to normal, is suddenly full of sarcasm.  “I’m so glad we let him in on this.”

            “He was just tryin’ to help, Rach’.”  I don’t want to get in an argument with her, so I stand and carry our cups back in to the coffee bar.  Rachel follows me inside.  She pulls a handful of change out of her jeans’ pocket and dumps it in the tip jar that sits on the counter near the cash register.  A sign on the jar says, “A dime is a terrible thing to waste.  Please tip your server.”

            I look at my watch.  “I think you missed your bus.  D’you need a ride?  I’ve got the Rocket Sled this afternoon.”

            “I can walk.  I’ve got plenty of time.”

            “C’mon.  I’ll drive ya.  Just gotta stop for a second at Wat’s.”

            “Oh, okay.”  The Rocket Sled’s parked around the corner, on a side street behind The College Market, and Rachel grudgingly gets in.
          When we pull up in front of Watley’s, I hesitate.  “Why don’cha come in?  You’d like his place--it’s pretty interesting.”

            “Interesting in what way?”

            “Well, it’s hard to describe.  He’s got a lot of unusual stuff.  ”

            “Like an eight-foot python?”

            “Well, yeah, but it’s not just that.  C'mon in.  Just for a second.  You’ll see.”

            Rachel snorts.  “You sure I won’t get fed to the snake?”

            I think it’s better not to say anything to this, so I just get out and open Rachel’s door and wait.  She sits there for a minute, then swings one leg out of the car, then the other, and follows me up the steps of the old house where Watley has his apartment.

            “I don’t wanta stay long,” she says as I open the screen and knock on the door.

            “We won’t,” I assure her.

I don’t exactly know how to describe Wat’s place, except to tell you that he went to the Philippines while he was in the Navy--before he came back to Idaho to go to college--and what money he didn’t spend there on drinking or women, he spent on “stuff.”  I say “stuff,” because there isn’t one good category that adequately encompasses all the things in Wat’s apartment.  It’s kind of like walking into a jungle zoo/art museum.  Of course there’s Sid in a huge glass aquarium that sits on top of a tall teak cabinet, but Sid isn’t the first or only animal you notice.  There are birds--big ones, five of them--in cages made from intricately-woven wire or bamboo or willow.  There are exotic species of fish and frogs and lizards in smaller aquariums, as well as a cage of gerbils Wat keeps for Sid.  “Sid Snacks,” he calls them, but, naturally, I’m not going to tell Rachel that.  The screeching and croaking produced by this menagerie sometimes overrules the music Wat usually has playing--reedy flutes and tinkling temple bells--and at night, the couple of times I’ve stayed over at his place, the sound of munching and scuttering makes it hard to sleep. 

            The floor and three or four low tables are littered with sea shells and stones and clay and brass ornaments.  Two lamps made of paper-thin, saffron-colored slices of shell hang in opposite corners of the room above a long, upholstered sofa shrouded in batik scarves and buried in pillows of all shapes and sizes.  There are tropical plants everywhere, kept alive by fluorescent lighting and a misting system that Wat invented himself.  A huge turtle shell, three feet in diameter, at least, and ten inches deep, mounted on the back of a two-foot-tall ceramic elephant serves as a small pond for several varieties of miniature aquatic plants and lichen. 

          The walls are covered with a bewildering array of artwork: tapestries, paintings, carved masks. and hammered metal disks. Mobiles drip with folded-paper birds and painted gliders and lacquered moons and stars. The smell of sage is strong in the air, but sandalwood and an incense Wat calls “tcheetsi” rise in competing wafts.

          There’s more, but you get the idea:  it’s a little overwhelming, even after you’ve been there several times.  I can tell that Rachel doesn’t quite know what to make of it.  She just stands by the door, her senses assailed, until Watley clears a spot on the sofa and guides her to it.

            “I was just having lunch,” he says, indicating a tray of small porcelain bowls on one table.  “Have some.”  He hands each of us a pair of chopsticks in thin paper folders.  “Try this.”

            I sniff the steaming bowl.  “What is it?”

            “Adobong Báboy.  It’s pork, slow-cooked in vinegar sauce with spices.  I like it with bean thread noodles.  Try some.”  He holds the dish for Rachel who cautiously stirs it with her sticks, then scoops up a tiny morsel and tastes it.
            “Delicious,” she says, stabbing her chopsticks awkwardly around the bowl.  She lifts another portion to her mouth, leaning forward to catch a noodle that threatens to escape her inexpert sticks.  She eyes Watley suspiciously.  “Did you cook this yourself?”

            “Of course.”

            We continue to eat, Wat pressing us to sample crispy lumpia and a concoction of mung beans in a hot sauce he refers to as “fire marinade.”  Finally, all the bowls are empty, and the three of us fling ourselves back contentedly on the sofa’s many cushions. 

            I burp softly.  “S’cuse me.  That was great, Wat.  Didn’t know we were gonna get lunch.” 

            “Yeah, thanks.  You’re a pretty good cook,” says Rachel.  She leans forward toward the litter of dishes and runs a surreptitious finger around one of the bowls, chasing the last of the fire sauce.  As she lifts her finger to her mouth, she catches sight of Sid in his glass case.  Rachel pauses, finger in mid-air, and stares at the snake, who stares back with an unflinching eye. 

            Sunlight from the apartment’s east window, filtered through the fronds of a date palm in a rattan basket, scatters itself across Sid’s sinuous body.  His tan-brown-black-mottled skin glows like incandescent camouflage.  Sid adjusts his position almost imperceptibly, and his skin throws green highlights, ripples that make me think of light on the still water of a deep, deep lake.  But there’s nothing wet about Sid: I know from handling him that he’s not slimy; he’s smooth.  Petting him is like running your hand over the grain of well-polished wood.

            “Wanna touch him?”  Watley’s voice is low over Rachel’s shoulder.

            She shakes her head no.

            “Wanna watch while I feed him?”

            Rachel moves her head half a shake, then stops.  As if we’re in a three-way staring contest, she doesn’t take her eyes off Sid, and I don’t take mine off her.  Beyond her, I see Watley get up slowly and go to the aquarium.  He’s careful not to cross Rachel’s line of vision.  He unhooks the latch, lifts the lid, sets it to one side.  Sid takes no perceptible notice.  Watley raises the lid of the smaller cage near Sid’s and pulls out a brown and white gerbil, holding it at the base of its tail, like we were taught to hold our lab rats.  He lowers the gerbil into Sid’s cage and replaces the lid, flipping the latch shut.
            The gerbil sniffs and snuffles around the glass cage, rising on his haunches to explore the limits of his new environment.  He doesn’t seem to notice the huge snake just inches away.  In fact, after a few seconds, he wanders nearer and sniffs at Sid.  At first Sid appears to be ignoring the gerbil: he keeps his eye on Rachel.  Then he begins to ever-so-slowly raise his head.  He maneuvers his lithe neck higher and higher until he’s looming just above the gerbil, who continues to sniff the air curiously.
            Now, the gerbil seems to sense that all is not well, and he makes a short, quick dart to the left.  Sid moves his head in the same direction, keeping it poised just above the worried gerbil.  The gerbil stops, confused, and Sid readjusts his position, ignoring everything but his prey.  I think of old movies I’ve seen--Westerns--where the bad guy and the good guy square off in the middle of the street, each poised to act or react, steely eyes locked, hands rigid over their holsters.

            Both animals hold these postures for one frozen moment, then--faster than I can tell you--Sid grabs the gerbil with his mouth.  His body convulses around the small furry rodent, his muscles wrenching gracefully.  The gerbil resists briefly, scratching the air, then goes limp.

            Like the scoop shovel of a bulldozer, Sid begins swallowing the gerbil, head first, with big, yawning gulps.  The gerbil gradually disappears, until only an inch of tail and one flaccid foot protrude from the corner of Sid’s mouth.  One last swallow erases all traces of the gerbil, and Sid flicks his attention back to us, his silent audience.
           Rachel has watched all this, and I’ve watched her, and so has Watley.  And now we’re waiting for her to say or do something, because, other than a slight flinch when Sid made his strike on the gerbil, she hasn’t moved.  I brace myself for a strong reaction, but all she says is, “Whew!”  She stands up and brushes a few stray crumbs of Crab Rangoon from her lap. 

            As if given his cue, Wat picks up the tray of empty bowls and chopsticks and carries it into the kitchen.  Rachel and I wait a little awkwardly in the middle of the living room, then call our thanks to him.  “Welcome,” he shouts above the sound of running water.  “See you later.”

Pegasus, Part IV "The Great Rat Caper"

Neither of us has a car, so I borrow one from my friend Watley. Wat’s a few years older than I am, and he’s the kind of guy who always wants to know the whole story, so I have to tell him about the rat-napping plan. Then Watley insists on coming along to--as he puts it--“drive the getaway car.” He also keeps referring to “The Great Rat Caper” in a light-hearted way that only makes me more nervous and sorry that I ever told him about it in the first place. Wat’s car is kind of a clunker, a ‘73 Buick station wagon that he calls the “Rocket Sled.” Right now, Wat is at the wheel of the Rocket Sled out in the parking lot behind the Life Sciences Building. Rachel isn’t too pleased, either, to have Watley come along, and although she admits that we probably could use a look-out, she knows as well as I do that once we’re inside the lab, there’s no way we’ll be able to hear him honk to warn us that Campus Security has shown up.
     I try not to think about that as Rachel and I creep down the stairs to the lab. Each of the old-fashioned locks on the lab doors in Life Sciences has a button right below the bolt that you can push in and that keeps the door from locking. Earlier that day, I’d put a piece of clear plastic tape over the button to hold it in, and we were hoping the lab assistant wouldn’t have paid that much attention when he pulled the door shut behind him and left for the day. At least this way, I tell myself, we aren’t actually breaking and entering. Well, we’re “entering,” but we aren’t “breaking,” and I wonder if the judge will make that distinction when it comes to sentencing us.

       Rachel spent yesterday evening studying late in the Life Sciences student lounge, and she reported that the building custodians all left before the lab closed for the night, so the only people we have to worry about are Campus Security, and they usually just drive around the outside of the buildings looking for odd lights left on or for anyone who looks “funny” or out-of-place.

       “All we have to do if we run into anyone,” she says quietly as we grope our way down the darkened hall, “is act like we know what we’re doing. If anyone asks, I left my book in lab, and we’re going back to get it. In fact, I did leave my book in lab, on purpose.”

       “And how do we explain the two rats in the pet carrier?” I lift the empty plastic box I’m carrying.

       “Well, once we’ve got Oly and Number 16, we need to get out of here without being seen.”

       “Oh, of course.  How simple.”

       The green EXIT sign over our heads glows dimly, and the alert, red eyes of the M-and-M-sized lights on the smoke detectors watch us make our way down the hall to the lab. The lab door opens easily and silently. We close it behind us and flip on the overhead lights in the windowless room. Oly and Number 16 and the other rats blink at us curiously. All the rats are restless, churning the pine shavings in their individual cages and poking their noses through the wire mesh doors.

       I put the pet carrier on the lab table. Rachel quickly opens Oly’s cage and, grabbing him by the base of his tail, swings him into the carrier and shuts its door. I take Number 16 out of his cage.  I’m not wearing my gloves, and as usual, he tries to bite me, but luckily, this time he just nips me a little on the side of my thumb. I put him into the carrier with Oly. The two rats sniff each other, then turn and stare out the door of the carrier at us.

       I pick up the carrier a little too roughly, and Oly and Number 16 slide to one end of it, tumbling against each other. “Sorry, guys.” I cross to the door, holding the carrier as level as I can, and open it cautiously. I start out the door, then realize that Rachel is still standing in front of the bank of rat cages. “Come on, Rach’, let’s get out of here.”

       Rachel starts opening the doors of the other cages. “Let’s take ‘em all,” she says. She grabs Number 1 and swings him toward me. His little paws scrabble in the air, beckoning me back into the room. He tries to twist his body up over Rachel’s hand. “Hurry!”  she hisses.

       “Rach’, we can’t take them all.  There’s too many of ‘em. They won’t all fit in the pet carrier.”

       “Then get that box over there.” Rachel motions toward a battered carton full of discarded rubber gloves and stained lab jackets. She grabs the carrier out of my hand and sets it back on the lab table. Opening the door, she shoves Number 1 in with Oly and Number 16. He’s quickly followed by Numbers 2, 3, and 4.  The rats climb and fall over each other, their little Holstein-spotted bodies bumping clumsily. Various rat noses and paws and tails poke out the openings in the cramped carrier.

       “Rachel, listen! We can’t take them all! What are we gonna do with this many rats?”

       “Shut up,” says Rachel, and this isn’t the may-I-help-you voice she uses with the customers at Pegasus. She dumps the contents of the box on the floor in one corner of the lab. “Hold the flaps open,” she commands, handing the box to me, and I shut up and hold the box. Opening the cage doors one by one, she pulls each rat out of his snuggery and lowers him into the box. When the last rat is in the box, I close the flaps and follow Rachel out the lab door, nudging the light off with my shoulder.

       We hurry down the dark hallway and up the stairs. Rachel backs against the crash door at the top of the steps, pushing it open. Hugging the pet carrier close to her chest, she holds the door with her hip until I struggle through, then lets it go. It slams shut with an echoing boom that makes me jump and nearly drop my box of rats. Outside, the night is brighter than the basement hallway we’ve just been in, and I stop and blink in the glare of the Rocket Sled’s suddenly-flaring headlights.

       “Hurry!” urges Rachel, as a car passes the Life Sciences Building, heading down the hill. She runs around to the back of the station wagon and yanks open the hatch. She shoves the pet carrier through the opening. I thrust my box of rats in, and Rachel slams the hatch shut just as Watley revs the engine and puts the car into reverse. The brake lights flame angrily, warning us out of their way.

       “Jeez, Wat!  Watch out!”

       Rachel jumps in the front seat beside Watley, and I dive into the back seat, pulling the door closed behind me as the car scoots backward out of the parking lot. Watley shifts into first, then quickly into second, and we wheel out onto Memorial Drive and away from the Life Sciences Building.

       All the way down the hill, Wat fires questions at us--primarily, “What’s in the other box?” and “Did anybody see you?”--but neither Rachel nor I answer him. I can feel an odd, invisible cord extending over the back of the seat, connecting me to her, and I find it difficult to breathe, worrying that she’ll turn around and either yank me closer or cut me loose.

       After a few more blocks of silence, Watley abruptly swerves the Rocket Sled into the parking lot of the Circle K store. He pulls on the brake and turns in his seat. “So, what’s goin’ on?” he asks me.

       I aim a finger at Rachel. “Ask her.”

       Watley looks at Rachel. “Yes?” he says, expectantly.

       Rachel throws me a look I can’t decipher: not warm, but not exactly unfriendly, either--unhappy, maybe. “They’re all in the box,” she says. “We took them all.”

       “All the rats in the lab?”

       “Yes.”

       “How many is that?”

       “Fourteen.”

       “Sixteen,” I correct. “Counting Oly and mine.”

       Watley laughs one, short Ha!  “You have sixteen rats back there?”

       “Yes.” Rachel doesn’t sound unhappy; she sounds defiant.

       “And what is it you’re going to do with sixteen rats?”

       “Well, I’m not sure. Find homes for them. Sam and I can each keep a couple, and--”

       “I have an idea,” I interrupt. “Maybe you can put a sign up at Pegasus.”

       “Saying what?” says Watley. “’Stolen rats need good home?  Inquire within?’”

       “Oh, yeah, you’re right.” I fall silent again. Behind me, the rats scratch and scrape the sides of their carton. I remember that we didn’t take any food pellets, and I hope that the rest of the rats like Froot Loops as much as Oly does.

       Rachel still says nothing, and Watley’s voice gets businesslike. “Well, where are we taking them?” he says, and his question makes me realize that I don’t know anything about where Rachel lives or--new thought--who with. I guess I’ve always just thought of her as being either next to me in rat lab or behind the counter in Pegasus, which makes a certain kind of sense, because every time I’ve looked for her in those two places, she’s been there. This makes me think about the stages of early cognitive development that we read about in Child Psychology, and I try to remember which stage I must be stuck at, with the kind of concrete logic I’ve been applying to Rachel’s location. 

       While I’m grappling with this, Rachel and Wat are sorting through our options. It turns out that Rachel has a roommate--female, I’m relieved to learn--but not one who will understand large boxes of stolen rats, and that the basement of Pegasus might be okay, but only until Monday when her boss is sure to come in, which only gives us five days to find homes for fourteen rats. I know I can’t take them, because my landlady snoops, and I’ll be lucky if she lets me keep Number 16.

       “I have another solution,” says Watley slowly, and I get a tingling sensation on the back of my neck, because I think I know what he’s about to say. I don’t have to look at him to know that there’s this calm, it’s-all-for-the-best expression on his face; I’ve seen it before when he’s introduced someone or something new to Sid. I watch Rachel’s face, or what I can see of it in profile.

       “I have this snake,” says Watley and stops. Rachel just looks at him, waiting for him to go on. The tingling has turned wet now, and I wipe a hand across the back of my neck. The rats have stopped scratching for a moment; they’re listening, too. Number 16 is so smart, he probably knows the word “snake.” I imagine him explaining it to the other rats in a whisper.

       Watley goes on, “His name is Sid. He’s a constrictor. Actually, a reticulated python. Big: eight feet long.” Rachel murmurs politely, but I can tell she’s still thinking about where to take the rats; she doesn’t see what Sid has to do with anything. Wat pauses again, and, suddenly I’m thinking about the customer in the blue windbreaker that day I went to Pegasus to visit Rachel, the way he leaned forward toward the Adult Section, then pulled back, changing his mind. Wat’s voice leans forward and hesitates, but Watley’s not wearing a blue windbreaker, so he says, measuring each word out evenly, “I feed him live small animals.”

       This time he has all Rachel’s attention.

       “No,” she says. Just “no,” and it sounds final to me, but Wat argues.

       “It’s not a bad way to go. He just squeezes them, pretty fast, and then swallows ‘em. It’s the nature of things. If they were wild animals, this is probably what would actually happen to them.” There’s a pause, and I open my mouth, but Watley flicks me a look out of the corner of his eye, so I shut it again and let him go on. “It’s a hell of a lot better,” he says brutally, “than having your brain cut open and then being in an experiment until they don’t want you any longer and they kill you and throw you in the incinerator.”

       Everyone in the car holds their breath after this last sentence, until Rachel blows hers out in a shout. “You sick fuck!” she yells at Watley, and I flinch because I’ve never heard her say anything like that, and yet, I think, if anyone might have an opportunity to say it, it would probably be Rachel, working around all that porn all day.

       Watley’s used to this kind of reaction. At least, he’s used to this reaction to his feeding live animals to Sid. He’s probably not used to people calling him a sick fuck because he tried to shock them into doing something, and in fact, I can’t remember him speaking quite so bluntly to anyone before, even me, and I’m one of his closest friends.

       The air in the car waves and vibrates for a few seconds after Rachel’s outburst. Then Watley shrugs, puts the car back in gear, and drives with his eyes straight ahead. He usually honks the horn when we drive through the Center Street underpass --giving the drunks in the tunnels a Rocket Sled wake-up call, he says--but this time he doesn’t.  

      Watley pulls up in front of Pegasus without a word and sits behind the wheel with the motor idling, while Rachel and I climb out and unload the rats. Rachel fumbles for the keys while I hold the flaps of the carton closed against the rats’ restless nosing, and then we carry the box and the pet carrier quickly through the store and down the back stairs to the basement. 

       The basement of Pegasus is jammed with surplus furniture waiting to be mended or cleaned and put on display upstairs. Boxes of miscellaneous household items lean crazily against pipes and walls and each other, a few of them neatly taped shut, but most of them gaping, their contents springing and escaping out the top, like the rats in my carton are trying to do. We find a warm place for the rats behind an old sofa near the furnace, and I punch air holes in the sides of the box while Rachel brings two small bowls of water from the restroom upstairs.

       “Found these under the counter,” she says, producing a bag of Cheetos and a plastic-wrapped cheese sandwich. “It’s a little stale.  I think it’s Miles’s lunch from last week.” She divides the sandwich and the Cheetos between the pet carrier and the carton. The rats stop nosing the flaps of the box and set to munching the food. There’s some scrambling for pieces of the sandwich, and one of the rats steps in the water bowl, but generally, they all seem content.

       “Tomorrow I’ll come in early and find some more boxes,” says Rachel, and her voice has lost the edginess it’s held most of the evening. “We can divide them up so they’re not so crowded. I’m taking Oly and Number 16 tonight, though.” She snags Oly out of the pet carrier and starts stuffing him in one of the deep pockets of her jacket.

       I hold out my hand for Number 16. “I’ll take him with me.” There’s a half-second of hesitation, then she hands him to me, dangling him from his blunt-edged tail. “Mind if I borrow this?” I ask, lifting a dented wire birdcage from the debris piled on the sofa.

       “No.  Nobody’ll miss it.”

I put Number 16 in the birdcage and hook the latch on its door. Number 16 holds on to the wires of the cage like a felon in one of those old prison movies. I try to make a joke. “All he needs is a little tin cup he can run across the bars and yell 'Screw!' at the guards." Rachel smiles politely, but she’s clearly not in a joking mood. Holding her jacket pocket closed against Oly’s nuzzling, she climbs the basement stairs in front of me and snaps off the light when we get to the top. We stand for a moment, listening, and I imagine the rats scuffling in the darkness, but I can’t hear anything, really.

       At the street door Rachel says, “You go on. I’ll lock up and walk home. I live close.” I don’t argue; the Rocket Sled’s still waiting by the curb, so I say goodnight and get in. Rachel doesn’t wait for us to drive away before she pulls the door of Pegasus shut, turns the key, and starts walking up Center Street. We have to wait for the red light, and she passes us without looking and turns the corner, walking quickly. When the light turns green, Watley guns the Rocket Sled across the intersection.


*Photo of Pegasus at night courtesy of Connie Rodriguez-Flatten, 2011