Catnip (14 page)

His friend gave them a long, lingering look
and dropped his gaze to the ground. “Yeah, okay,” he muttered. “I’m
gonna miss the company, though. I don’t get houseguests too
often.”

Harry guessed his friend never got any
visitors at all, but then again, he was the same way…or had been.
Now, with the addition of someone special in his life, he felt
slightly more confident to tackle whatever came their way. Jason
had been a good friend, though, and he owed him big time.

“So where can we go?” Anastasia finally
asked. She pulled back from Harry and carefully cleaned her
whiskers with her hands.

Harry had an idea. “If I go to downtown
Manhattan and sneak into FBI headquarters, I can grab some of the
equipment in order to run more extensive tests. My computer isn’t
enough. What do you guys think?”

“Plan for failure,” Jason muttered. “New York
is now fascist city, man. The cops will be watching everyone.”

Anastasia also had a skeptical look in her
eyes. “I like you, Harry, but we need something that’ll work.”

For a moment, depression ruled. “Well, we
have to do something,” Harry said. “You got a plan?”

Jason sat lost in thought for a few seconds,
swiveled the screen around, fingered the keys, and finally snapped
his fingers. “I got it!”

Hurriedly, he tapped in a few commands, and
then pointed to the screen. “There,” he said. “Tell me it isn’t
foolproof.”

Harry walked over to stare at the information
and waved to Anastasia. She came over, and when she saw the
website, she started giggling. “I don’t know if I should get pissed
off at this idea or laugh at it.”

“Trust me,” Jason said with a grin on his
face. “You’ll fit right in.”

The streets were crowded. They’d started out
from Jason’s house at three, and reached midtown Manhattan at
around five in the afternoon, Harry let out a sigh of relief. The
trip downtown had taken around two hours, and every second the
tension mounted more and more, punctuated by glances out the window
by all three occupants and comments from Anastasia of “are we there
yet?”

“No, not yet,” Jason replied and glanced
nervously in the rearview mirror. “Relax, will you?”

“Don’t tell me to relax!” she snapped. Harry
kept quiet, mainly because his body was once again overheated due
to the clothes he wore and also because he’d been labeled Public
Enemy Number One.

“You’re gonna need a disguise,” Jason had
told him after breakfast had finished.

It had taken a long time to get everything
ready—time Harry could have used to work on his reverse matrix
formula—but in the end, even his girlfriend figured he could pass.
Just before leaving, he looked at his outfit in the mirror, turned
around to look at the back, and then swiveled to face front again.
“I look like a dork,” he lamented.

“It’ll have to do,” Jason told him wearily.
He’d been working on the makeup and costume effects without a
break. He took the time to roll his shoulders and shake out his
tired hands. “Listen, once we get there, I’ll walk you as far as
the entrance and then split, okay? You guys need money?”

Reluctantly, Harry nodded. “Whatever you can
spare, it would be cool.”

The tall teen shrugged and pulled out his
wallet. He riffled through the bills, took out a wad of twenties,
and handed it over. “It’s food money from my parents,” he said.
“Pay me back when you can.”

Harry’s thoughts returned to the present.
He’d heard of these conventions before, but had never thought of
going to one. Jason’s eyes shone, though. He probably attended them
all and knew everyone on a first name basis. “We’re going
there
?”

“Trust me.”

Driving had been an adventure. Since the news
of the bear-man broke, the police had come out in full force, in
cars, on foot, and on horseback. He saw a number of teens—none of
whom resembled him at all—hauled over and searched from head to
toe, heard their protests, took in the yells of “police brutality”
and “hey man, I didn’t do nothin’ wrong!” and felt guilty others
had to suffer for a crime he himself hadn’t committed.

Anastasia moaned, held her belly and rocked
back and forth in the back seat. Her sounds got louder and more
frequent as they went along and Jason nervously glanced in the
rearview mirror. “You’re not gonna get carsick again, are you?” he
asked.

“Just shut up and drive.”

Their journey continued, although they did
get stopped once. A cop—young, blond and earnest looking—waved them
over to the side of the curb and squatted down to look inside
Jason’s car. He glanced at the young couple in the back and asked
with a smile on his face, “Now what do we have here? Reunion at the
zoo, or is it something kinkier?”

“We’re on our way to a cosplay convention,
sir,” Harry replied, attempting to be as polite as possible under
the circumstances. He took a deep breath to quell his nerves, but
Anastasia’s moans got deeper and then she started breathing heavily
like a cat about to heave. Her back hunched up and either she was
about to spew or upchuck a furball. The cop took it all in with
batting an eye.

“Is she in heat or something?” he asked in a
lame attempt at sarcasm.

Anastasia didn’t see any humor in his remark.
“I’m carsick, you idiot,” she replied in a throaty, angry voice and
Harry grabbed her hands in order to keep her claws from coming out.
She shrugged him off effortlessly and stared at the policeman, her
eyes riveting him to the spot. “If you want to see me hurl, stick
around. I’ve got pretty good aim.”

A look of alarm crossed the policeman’s face
and it seemed he decided that he wanted to keep his uniform clean.
“Have a nice time,” he said. “Cool contacts you have,” he added,
and waved them through.

Relief flowed through Harry and he knuckled
the sweat away from his forehead, careful not to smudge the make-up
too much. The cop hadn’t gotten suspicious even though Anastasia’s
eyes were a dead giveaway. “That was close,” he opined.

His girlfriend shrugged and settled back into
the seat as they got underway again, still holding onto her
stomach. “It was as close as I want to get.” Then she stopped and
blinked. “Y’know, maybe this is a memory. I don’t know who I am,
but my body remembers what it’s like to get carsick.”

Jason passed a large plastic bag to her, just
in case. Fortunately, they encountered no further checks from the
police and no projectile vomiting on Anastasia’s part, and arrived
at the venue around five-fifteen. Jason pulled into a parking lot
around the corner and as they exited the car, he hauled out a bag
with Harry’s computer, disc, and flash drive in it, along with a
modem and a blank disc.

Harry took the bag, thanked him, and after
seeing his reflection in a department store window, remarked, “I
still look like an idiot. Everyone will know it’s a costume.”

Anastasia had walked around to stretch out
and sniff the air, and stifled a laugh as she took in the entirety
of his outfit. “Gee, I wonder why.” Then she
did
start
giggling and covered up her mouth.

He certainly looked…
different.
Due to
his black eye, Jason had used his sister’s mascara to draw another
black circle around the other undamaged one. He’d used a base of
light gray, glued some white whiskers on, and after Harry donned
his suit—gray and striped—he sat back and nodded his head with
satisfaction. “You look great, man. I should have been a makeup
artist.”

Jason had told him the suit would make him
look like a raccoon. He did look like a raccoon—a very skinny one.
“This is never gonna work,” Harry lamented.

“It’s going to work if you believe you’re who
I designed you to be,” Jason said. “I got this at a cosplay
convention a few years ago. You’re Ricky Raccoon, got it?”

“Halloween isn’t for another four
months.”

“Come on…”

Jason grabbed his arm and hauled him along
the sidewalk. As they made their way along, they saw a number of
other colorfully dressed people wandering around, some of them
taking pictures and laughing out loud at jokes or maybe the
situation itself, and their costumes didn’t look any better than
Harry’s did.

However, when the three of them strolled down
the street, they got a number of stares from the startled onlookers
as they neared the New York Hilton Midtown Hotel. “They’re for me,”
Anastasia said and her voice suddenly got dark.

Harry, sensing her self-consciousness, tried
to head off a potential breakdown. “That’s because you’re pretty,”
he told her.

She responded by kissing him and Jason shook
his head in mock exasperation. “You guys should get a room, you
know that?”

It was a pretty good idea, but right now he
and Anastasia had to hide out, and hiding out in plain sight seemed
to be the way to do it. Over top of the front doors he saw a large
banner that read
Annual Cosplay and Furry Friends Forever
Convention.
He wondered what his parents would think if they
saw him dressed up like this and then decided not to. It wasn’t
worth it.

“This is the biggest event of the year,”
Jason told them. He sounded disappointed. “Everyone who’s anyone in
the anime world is gonna be here. Too bad I can’t go in with you.”
He shook his head as if he’d been dealt the biggest injustice of
all.

“You can if you want to,” Anastasia said.

Jason shook his head. “Nah, this is for you,
and besides, just in case you need to contact someone, I’d better
stay home.” He pivoted to face Harry. “Text if you need me,
okay?”

After a moment’s hesitation, they did the
bro-hug thing again. “See ya,” Jason said, and backed off. “Go up
to the third floor. It’s the Grand Ballroom Suite. Just pay the
entrance fee and you’re in.” He waved goodbye and ran around the
corner.

“You first, Ricky,” Anastasia snickered and
gestured at the door.

Harry grimaced at the nickname. He shuffled
forward and stalled out…his courage was failing. Anastasia took his
hand and said firmly, “We’re here and we’re going in.”

She led him inside, where they took the
escalator up and stood in line behind a number of people wearing
equally colorful costumes and makeup, and Harry felt more out of
place than ever. “It’ll be okay,” Anastasia whispered. “We’re
together, right?”

He gained a measure of confidence in her
presence and the line eventually moved along. While waiting,
Anastasia asked him what the plan was. He scanned the immediate
area and quickly laid it out for her. Stay for at least thirty
minutes. Leave and then walk over to FBI headquarters. Make a call
from a payphone and say that the fugitives had been spotted in
Central Park.

As he spoke, her eyes got wider and wider.
“You realize that’s about the dumbest plan in existence,” she
said.

“If you’ve got a better idea, let me know,”
he responded and continued to outline the steps. “After I make the
call, you’ll slip inside the FBI building, search for the
equipment, and steal it.”

By now she had the look on her face of a
person who’d just listened to what amounted to a suicide mission.
“And you expect me to creep in there and steal what you need?” she
asked.

“Well, yeah.”

Anastasia shook her head. “I like you a lot,
but this calls for some mental health work,” she stated.

The comment embarrassed him, and after
thinking about it, yes, it
was
a dumb plan, but he reasoned
the men in black wouldn’t expect Anastasia to return. Therefore, it
had to work.

A nudge from her brought him back to reality.
She pointed straight ahead and they entered the hall. A young woman
wearing an obviously handmade bear costume—it sagged and had been
patched in many places—sat at a long table with a cashbox next to
her and greeted them with a friendly wave. “Hi, welcome to the
convention. Are you with the Furry Crew or the Cosplay Crew? We
have to know for our records,” she apologized.

Harry glanced at his date. “Uh, the Furry
Crew,” he mumbled.

The woman nodded and checked something off on
a piece of paper. “Can I have your names, please, your names and
your genotype?”

“Uh, my name’s Harry and this is Anastasia,”
he answered and cursed himself for not giving a false name. Then
again, he was in costume, had a lot of makeup on his face, and
figured no one would know him. “She’s a cat and I’m Ricky
Raccoon.”

The woman didn’t seem to sense anything
wrong. She simply scribbled their names on badges and handed them
over.

“Here you are,” she said and pointed inside.
“We have a liquor bar going. That’s extra and its cash only. We
also have soft drinks and the food is buffet style. Oh, and that’ll
be a hundred dollars per person,” she added.

It cost that much? He sighed softly, dug the
money out of his pocket, and handed it over to the woman. She
tucked it into the cashbox and nodded at Anastasia. “I love your
costume.”

“Thanks,” she said in a voice which meant
say nothing else and I might let you live.

Harry gently put his hands on his
girlfriend’s shoulders and steered her away before she decided to
rip the other woman a new one. They joined the crowd and Harry
murmured, “Oh, yeah, you’ll fit right in here.” He stifled a cry of
pain when his date extended her claws and ever so slightly pricked
his skin. It was meant as a warning…he hoped. “Sorry.”

“Yeah…fine,” she muttered.

The ballroom-sized place was packed. There
had to be over three thousand people here. Wall-to-wall costume
party time, and with the furry crowd, everyone wore suits, mostly
homemade ones, masks, limp tails, and more, but they seemed to be
having a good time, laughing and talking animatedly. The anime
women dressed in short skirts and cutesy, frilly outfits while the
guys favored either Spandex and masks or Japanese-style dress with
short
happi
coats and faux swords or knives.