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.
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
