The first Wednesday in November, she ran into Balthazar on her way home. The ancient forty-year-old lion was her downstairs neighbor, and she didn’t see him come out very often. But when she made it to the stairs, she heard a whispery growling voice from behind her, “Missy?”
She turned around and saw the old lion, sitting in a wheelchair behind the half-open door to his apartment.
“Yes?” She felt a little uncomfortable as she approached him. She had never really talked to Balthazar before. Her only contact with him had been the sound of his comm drifting through the door.
“Come closer, hearing’s shot.” He waved her over with a hand that arthritis had twisted into a nearly useless paw. It was an uncomfortable reminder of her own mortality—and how the more the pink gene-techs fiddled with something, the more age would ravage it.
Angel walked up to the door.
Balthazar had been a huge morey. Had he been able to stand, he would have been close to twice her height. His eyes were clouded, his teeth were chipped, but the mane was still regal. Even in decline, the leonine moreau had the bearing of royalty.
Which was why Angel nearly burst out laughing when she saw that the blanket that covered his legs was covered with cartoon characters. She kept a straight face and asked, “Can I help you?” She was still in waitress mode.
She stood in front of the lion, looking up at him even though she was standing and he was seated. He coughed a few times, and asked in a hoarse whisper, “Angel?”
She nodded, trying to avoid staring at the old blanket. Gray rabbits, black ducks, other things too faded for her to make out. The blanket looked almost as old as Balthazar himself.
“You’re with that fox who’s been in and out for the last week.”
“Yes, yes.” And she was getting impatient because that fox was probably waiting for her upstairs.
She could see his comm in the living room beyond him. It was playing some sort of animation, a black duck going on about how something was “despicable.”
“He left you something.”
“What?” Angel found her attention drawn back to the old lion.
“Here.” With some difficulty, he pulled out a plain-wrapped package the size of a wallet. There were no markings on it at all. He passed it to her.
Angel hefted the package, feeling a little confused. “Byron left this with you? Why didn’t he just give it to me him—”
“Said he had to leave.” The lion erupted into another fit of coughing, shaking his head, and rippling his mane.
Angel held the package and was enveloped by a very bad feeling. “Thank you for holding this for me.”
“Cost me nothing.”
Angel nodded and headed toward the stairs.
“Missy?”
She turned back toward the lion.
“None of my business, but I don’t trust him, too smooth.”
“You’re right. It’s none of your business.”
Balthazar grunted and began to wheel his chair back into the apartment. Before the door shut completely, Angel thought she could make out a chanting refrain from his comm, “Rabbit season, duck season, rabbit season, duck season . . .”
She had no idea what it meant, but it didn’t make her feel any better.
• • •
The package was still sitting on the coffee table in front of the comm, unopened, when Lei came home. Lei asked about it, and Angel had the bad sense to tell her.
“Why haven’t you looked in it?” Lei asked her, picking up the small plain-wrapped bundle.
“I don’t—” Angel retreated into the kitchen. She didn’t want to look at the thing. She’d yet to get to the point where she had a lock on what she was afraid of. Instead of thinking about it, she started to fix herself dinner.
Lei didn’t leave it alone. When a few minutes passed without an answer from Angel, she followed her into the kitchen.
“Open it,” Lei said, brandishing the package. Her brown-furred canine face was twisted somewhere between a growl and an amused smirk.
“Let it rest,” Angel said as she tried to get past her and put her bulb of soup in the micro. A thin brown-haired arm blocked her. Playing defense, Lei had the advantage of a much longer reach and about 80 centimeters of height—if you didn’t count Angel’s ears.
Lei slipped in after the arm. “I won’t until you open it up and read the thing.”
Angel tried to break through one last time and only got a nose full of canine-smelling fur.
Angel tossed the bulb on the kitchen floor in disgust. It bounced once. She had wanted it to burst open. She stormed out of the kitchen and threw herself down on the couch. “Mind your own business.”
Lei followed her out to the living room and tossed Byron’s package on the table. “I don’t understand you. What’s your problem? What did Byron do?”
Angel shook her head. “Nothing, I just know . . .”
Lei paced in front of the couch, tail swatting the air. “Know what? He’s handsome. He’s charming. He has money.” Lei paused and made a sweeping gesture. “He likes you better than he likes me, God knows why. He’s—”
“Too good to be true.”
“What?” Lei stopped pacing and turn to face her.
Angel looked at the small bundle on the coffee table. “Someone had to wake up.”
“Bullshit!”
Angel shrugged. “Par for the course.”
Lei sat down and hugged Angel’s shoulders. “Don’t you see how silly you’re acting?”
“It’s not silly.”
“How long have you two been going out?”
Angel reviewed the dates in her mind to get the passage of time straight—the football game, the Hyatt Memorial, Golden Gate Park, Chinatown . . .
“Thirteen days.” Only thirteen? Yes, today was November fifth, only nine.
“And this is the second night you haven’t spent together?”
“First. Wednesday we never made it back here.”
“So I managed to get one good night’s sleep out of those last thirteen days—”
“We’re not that loud.”
“You’re stressing ’cause you aren’t going out tonight?”
“Well—”
Lei shook her head and chuckled. She rubbed her knuckles in the space between Angel’s ears. “What’re you going to do, graft yourself to him? Maybe he just had the urge to go to the john a few times and hold it himself.”
Angel sighed. Lei was right. She knew Lei was right. But she couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong. “So I’m not rational.”
“He didn’t do anything to bring this on? Did he?”
“No.”
“He didn’t break any plans you had tonight, right?”
“We haven’t planned anything in advance yet. Just seems to happen.”
“So what’s eating you?”
Angel reached for the package. No, he never said one damn thing that could explain the awful feeling she had in the pit of her stomach. “I don’t know.”
Maybe it was what Byron didn’t say. “He’s keeping stuff from me.”
“Ah,” Lei shifted around so she was sitting on the coffee table and propped her muzzle in her hands. “He’s married.”
“No!” Angel leaned forward and tried to stare Lei down, but her roommate’s expression told her that she wasn’t serious. Still, the suggestion made her nervous.
Maybe the problem was that she was so caught up in someone she knew so little about. She’d been so sure she’d dived into this of her own accord. Why did she feel that she had lost control somewhere?
“What, then?” Lei was asking. “Tell me.”
Angel sighed. “Everything. Nothing. What does he do for a living?”
“He hasn’t told you? Have you asked him?”
Only the once, Angel thought to herself and cursed. If only he didn’t make her so self-conscious. As if she constantly had to cover for the fact that she was raised on the streets, a well-used rabbit who’d been homeless for half her life.
Angel flopped back on the couch and stared at the ceiling. “Moonlit strolls, romantic dinners, dancing—with my feet, dancing—watching the sun set in the Pacific and watching it rise over the bay, talking, talking, talking . . .” And nothing ever got said, she thought. Nothing but the right things to say.
Lei tapped her on the shoulder and Angel lowered her head to face her. “Well, open the damn thing.”
“I’m afraid to.” Too soon into this and Angel had an uncomfortable emotional attachment that seemed too fragile.
Too much, too soon.
“Don’t be a wuss.”
Angel glared at Lei and ripped the wrapping off the package.
At least a dozen ramcards fell out, all emblazoned with a holographic blue and white thunderbolt—the San Francisco Earthquakes logo.
“Holy shit.” It was all Angel could manage to say. She stared at the tickets, feeling real silly.
“Your expression is priceless.”
“Box seat season tickets, the fifty yard line, where the hell did he get—?”
“I wish I had a camera.”
Angel picked up a note that’d fluttered out of the package. In Byron’s flowing script it said, “By now, my little angel, you’ve peeled yourself off the ceiling. There are two sets of tickets, and while I am NOT an Earthquakes fan—no matter how much you threaten me—you better take me to the Denver game.
“I want to be with you right now, because there is a very important question I have to ask you. However, I have to deal with some leftover responsibilities first, then I can think about the future.
“Love, your Byron.”
Angel let the paper slide through her fingers.
“What?”
“‘Important question—’” Angel said, suddenly unsure of how she felt. “Am I misreading that?”
Lei picked up the note and began reading it.
“The future?” Angel felt her heart accelerate and told herself that she was getting irrationally emotional again.
“Oh, my,” Lei said.
Angel got off the couch and walked to the door, paced back, walked to the window. “Is that all you have to say? ‘Oh, my?’”
“He could be talking about anything—”
Angel stared out the window. “Damn.” Angel rested her forehead against the glass.
Lei walked up behind her. “What’s the matter? You look worse off than before.”
Angel shook her head. Why couldn’t he wait a little while? Why’d he have to force things so damn quickly?
“Angel, you’re crying . . .”
“I’m not crying!” In a much quieter voice she said, “I’m not ready for this.”
Lei rested a hand on her back. Angel felt herself shake under Lei’s hand and realized that she was crying. “Damn it. I don’t want to lose him—”
“Shh, you aren’t going to lose him.”
Angel stood there, crying, unconvinced.
• • •
Thursday morning. Angel wasn’t ready for the breakfast crowd. As her shift drifted toward noon she was so distracted that she confused orders at least once, giving a young tiger a plate of greens and giving a trio of white rabbits the tiger’s plate of bleeding hamburger. She could scratch two tips right there.
Sanchez rode her even harder than usual, even coming out of his little shoebox manager’s haven to order her to pick up the pace. All the time her mind kept drifting off the orders and on to Byron.
Foxy knew she’d freak if he popped the question unprepared. Of course he did. And she had to live in one of the three states that recognized moreau weddings as legit. The only state that recognized interspecies marriage—even the Catholic Church in its latest liberal wave had yet to go that far.
If she still lived in Cleveland, she wouldn’t even have to think about it. But then, in Cleveland, she’d have more pressing worries—like stray gunfire.
It was unnerving for her to realize that if she was going to marry anyone, Byron’d be it. Worse, he obviously knew it.
Yeah, right. She was going to marry anyone? Bloody fat chance, as Byron would say.
“Yo, fluffy!” came from part of the rodent brigade of the lunchtime crowd. “Where’s my fries?”
Spuds for the spud. Obviously she had to stop whatever she was doing so a fleabitten member of the rat patrol could get his daily allotment of grease. She almost served the ratboy a handful of abuse, but Sanchez had come out of hiding to lord it over his lunchroom kingdom and his look said, He’s a customer—
Angel returned Sanchez’s look with one that said, Yeah, a rare breed here, and got the rat’s fries from the kitchen.
Byron and her, she thought. It was too soon.
She shook her head. Whatever happened, she’d be asking the same question a week, a month, a year from now. And she was getting older. Balthazar was an uncomfortable reminder of that. She was doing well for her age, but twenty was three years the far side of middle age for a rabbit.
At least with Byron she wouldn’t have to worry about kids—unless they wanted to go to a Bensheim clinic and make some.
Angel had a vivid mental image of a litter of rabbits being infected by Byron’s seductive Brit accent. It brought a smile wide enough to make the old cut on her cheek ache.
Was she really thinking about this, seriously?
“Where’s my ketchup, fluffy?”
Angel looked at the black rodent and wondered if it was some genetic quirk that made all rats assholes. Angel looked at him, street kid, pissed at the world, age pushing double digits. He was making points with his friends here by harassing the help. Rat would probably die of old age before he had to work for a living.
The fries were steaming from the fryer and Angel had an urge to insert them into that shiny pink nose of his. Instead she said, as sweetly as she could muster, “Just a moment.” She couldn’t bring herself to say “sir.” It’d dock her a few points in Sanchez’s book, but at this point she didn’t give a damn.
She was heading off to get a bottle from another table—the rat had probably stolen the one that was supposed to be on his—when she found herself facing two pinks.
From a decade plus on the streets she ID’d the pinks as pure cop the instant she laid eyes on them. Not just the fact they were pinks in a morey joint. Cop emanated from the shoddy suits like the bald one’s cheap cologne. The barely hidden shoulder holsters didn’t help. A matched set, and from the way they spaced themselves out of arm’s reach from each other—there wasn’t much love lost between the two.
The one on the right was Asian, jet black hair, razor mustache. The other was balding, rumpled, and carried a gut that could have comfortably hidden Angel in its girth.
She was still in waitress mode, so she asked, “Can I help you?”
“We’re looking for a Miss Lopez,” said the Asian.
The urge to simply bolt for the door and disappear became overwhelming. Why’d Frisco PD want her? She was clean—except for the damn gun in her underwear drawer. Angel began cataloging all the shit leftovers in Cleveland. There was a lot of six-year-old crap nobody had tagged her for yet.
She was thinking of stonewalling when Sanchez bellowed. “Get your butt moving, Lopez.”
So much for stonewalling. The balding one pulled out an ID and flashed it at her, too quickly. “Detectives White and Anaka, San Francisco PD. We need to talk to you.”
Angel bent around the Asian and grabbed the ketchup squeeze bottle off the table. “What about? I’m working.”
She was going to go about her business and get the rat his ketchup. But something about the way the two cops smelled made her hesitate. There was a little too much nervousness hanging in the air around them.
Instead of delivering the bottle, she stood and waited. The cops’ manner was beginning to worry her.
“Miss Lopez,” the balding one asked, “do you know a vulpine moreau by the name of Byron Dorset?”
She didn’t even feel the bottle slip out of her fingers as she asked them what had happened.