Nine Lives Last Forever (19 page)

Sometime around three or four o’clock the following morning, Rupert had woken, a renewed hope in his stomach. There was a faint whiff of fried chicken in the air—he was almost certain of it—and it was emanating from a source other than his chicken-stingy person or those green chicken-smelling books. Somewhere in the apartment above the Green Vase, there must be a hidden cache of fried chicken.

Rupert began his search in the kitchen. It seemed like the most logical location. That was where Oscar had always prepared
his
fried chicken. Rupert sighed in reminiscence. He really missed Uncle Oscar.

Rupert hopped up on top of the kitchen counters, checking each one for a clue to the location of the fried chicken smell. He persistently nosed his way into each of the cabinets, meticulously inspecting the contents. He even peeked through the little window into the stove. There was no fried chicken to be found.

The refrigerator had been a bit of a challenge to break into, but he had long since learned that if he threw his body weight against the side of it, the refrigerator would rock back and forth until the door eventually popped open. Rupert diligently poked around inside the fridge, but quickly decided that such a cold environment was no place for his fried chicken.

The kitchen, he concluded, was chicken-free.

Rupert then moved on to the second floor’s small living room. He plowed his way through the dust bunnies that lived beneath the couch. He crawled through the inner workings of an aged recliner, sharpening his claws on the underside of its already frayed fabric. After another thorough investigation, he felt satisfied that there was no fried chicken in the living room.

The smell, Rupert thought, appeared to be coming from an elevated location, so he returned to the third floor where he continued his search in the bathroom.

The red igloo-shaped litter box would seem like an odd place for someone to put fried chicken, but people were always hiding things in there, taping little packages to the inside roof of its covered dome. That practice was rather irritating, Rupert thought, as he made an enjoyable dig through the sandy pile of litter. He should really institute a ban against it—unless, of course, the package contained fried chicken.

As expected, there wasn’t any chicken in the litter box, but the dig had given Rupert a good opportunity to think. His little feline brain was absolutely fixated on this single pressing issue. Where was this pungent chicken smell coming from?

Still pondering, Rupert hopped up onto the sink and stared at himself in the mirror. He carefully studied the white fluff of hair that collared his neck. Yes, everything looked appropriately fluffy. He counted his whiskers and was pleased to see that they were arrayed in perfect symmetry on either side of his pink nose.

The bathroom stop had been the most fun of the whole search, Rupert reflected, but he had still not found the source of this mysterious fried chicken odor.

Rupert left the bathroom just as his person and his sister got up out of bed, both of them complaining about the racket he’d been making. His person eventually made it down to the kitchen to serve him breakfast, but she had only offered him the same old dry cat food; no chicken had been provided.

And now, here she was, back downstairs in the Green Vase showroom, reading one of those green chicken-smelling books, acting as if no slight had occurred.

Honestly, this was no way to treat a cat. Rupert sat on the floor next to the cashier counter, scowling up at his person. He could not imagine a more egregious offense.

There was a noise on the street outside as a white van pulled up in front of the studio across the way. Rupert turned toward the window and watched with interest as a tall, skinny man got out of the driver’s seat.

It’s Monty, Rupert thought, as the man walked into the entrance of the studio. Maybe Monty has fried chicken in the van. A chicken delivery van. That sounds like just the kind of idea that Monty might come up with.

Rupert jumped aside to dodge the whirling of his person’s legs.

“I’ll be right back,” she whispered down to him as she sprinted out the front door.

Rupert propped the pads of his feet up against the glass paneling of the front door to get a better look. He watched his person scurry across the street and climb into the back of Monty’s van.

Rupert’s face crunched up in consternation. She was going to eat all of the fried chicken herself, he just knew it.

Monty emerged from the studio, climbed into the driver’s seat of the van, and shifted the van into drive.

“
Et tu
, Montgomery,” Rupert thought with despair as the chicken delivery van rolled off down the street.

As Rupert sat on the floor, mournfully looking out at the empty street, feeling sorely betrayed and unfairly put-upon, a long, winding creak issued from the back of the showroom. An old, rusty spring was being called into service after many years of inactivity.

His interest piqued, Rupert trotted across the showroom, listening for a follow-up to the first sound. Isabella leapt down from the top of her bookcase and stalked past him, quickly assuming the lead in the investigation.

Crrrreeeeak.
The coils of the rusty spring made another vocal protest.

Rupert tensed and crouched down behind the dentist recliner. Unintimidated, Isabella sauntered toward the stairs that led up to the second floor, her ears perked, her tail stretched out behind her. She put her two front feet on the first step of the stairs. Rupert crept nervously in behind her, hunkering down below her confident frame.

Rupert jumped back from the stairs and scooted to safety behind the nearest bookcase.

Isabella was undeterred. “Wrao,” she assured him. Calmly, she climbed to the sixth step and looked up at the ceiling.

Rupert slunk back to the bottom of the stairs, surprised to see that the low-hanging beam above the sixth step had swung down to reveal the rungs of a ladder. A moment later, a man wearing a pair of worn house slippers began climbing down the steps.

Rupert’s heart soared. The man was holding a plate—a special plate with a lovely, fragrant smell.

It was a plate of fried chicken.

IT WAS STILL
dark when I crawled out of bed the following morning. I’d given up trying to sleep with all of the racket Rupert was making.

He’d kept me up half of the night with his constant pestering—bouncing all over the bed, swatting at my hair, and howling at me with an oddly strangled caterwaul. It was no use trying to convince him that the smell on my clothes was from something altogether different than fried chicken. I’d been about ready to throw him out the bedroom window when he collapsed near my pillow and settled down to sleep.

But long before the clock hit four a.m., Rupert was back in action. At first, I tried to ignore the strange bumping sounds emanating from throughout the apartment, but after nearly half an hour of imagining the mess he might be making, I finally exited the bed and crawled into the shower.

It was Friday morning in name only when I trundled downstairs to the Green Vase showroom. Light from the streetlamp outside still shone in through the front windows. No one else in Jackson Square, it seemed, had been roused from their bed by the middle-of-the-night machinations of a chicken-obsessed cat.

With a groggy yawn, I settled onto the stool behind the cashier counter, pulled out the pair of green Mark Twain books, and began flipping through the pages to compare the contents.

After a couple minutes of side-by-side comparison, I realized that the older book, the one Harold had left on my counter, included an extra essay.
Early Rising as Regards Excursions to the Cliff House
was tucked in just after the famous frog story. I took a sip of my fresh-brewed coffee and began to read.

Before long, I found myself chuckling at Twain’s exaggerated recounting of his misadventures during an early morning carriage ride to the pre-Sutro-era Cliff House. In his hallmark tongue-in-cheek rant, Twain railed against the bitter cold, the soupy fog, the offensive smell of the horse blanket he had taken refuge in, and the alleged benefits of “early rising.”

I was almost at the end of the essay when a white van stopped on the street outside. I glanced up from the book as Monty jumped out of the driver’s seat and sprinted into his studio. He left the van stranded, motor running, in the middle of Jackson Street.

Monty typically used the van to transport paintings and other art for his studio. The large cargo area in the back of the van provided ample storage space for even his largest picture frames. Monty was probably preparing to load some items for an out-of-town show, I told myself sleepily.

But the events of the past two days made me think again. It was an odd hour for Monty to be up, about, and moving so vigorously. Like Twain, he generally preferred to sleep in.

Monty had left the motor running, indicating his studio stop would be a quick one, unlikely to involve multiple trips to load the van. Maybe he was up to something else, I thought—something related to his recent membership in the revitalized Vigilance Committee.

Rupert sat on the floor gazing wistfully at the van. Then, for some strange reason, he licked his lips.

I shook my head at my cat’s ridiculous behavior and returned my concentration to the van. If it weren’t already packed with picture frames, there would be plenty of room in the back of it for me to sneak inside and ride along undetected.

After the previous day’s unplanned bus ride, I was loath to experiment with another impulsive form of transportation, but my reticence was overcome as the image of the black-and-white photo flashed into my memory. The frogs, the Mark Twain books, and the sudden reappearance of Frank Napis, I sensed, were all somehow linked to the group in the photo. I was slowly being dragged into whatever scheme this renewed Vigilance Committee was cooking up, and I had the sneaking suspicion it involved more than mere political maneuvering.

I considered my options for another half second; then I grabbed my shoulder bag, snatched up my coat, and sped around the corner of the cashier counter to the front door.

“I’ll be right back,” I assured Rupert, who glanced up at me with concern. He followed me to the door, a forlorn droop in his fluffy tail. He put his front paws up against the glass as I closed him in. I looked down at his sad, dejected face and vowed to prepare him some fried chicken when I returned.

A light flicked off in the second floor study above Monty’s studio. I heard Monty’s flat feet slapping loudly against the slats of the steps, indicating that he was returning to the first floor. If I were going to make my move, I had to do it now.

I scampered across the street to the rear of the van and snuck around the far corner of its back bumper. With a tug of the handle, I pulled open the back door and peeked inside.

The racks cinched into the floor that usually held Monty’s picture frames were all empty, and there was none of the extra padding he typically carried to safely transport his artwork. I had to decide, quickly, just how curious I was about Monty’s next destination. There was a good chance, I thought with a sigh, that I would regret hitching this ride.

Without further hesitation, I hopped inside the dark metal interior and carefully secured the door behind me. A moment later, I heard Monty jangle the studio’s front exterior lock.

I caught a glimpse of Monty’s tall shadow circling around to the front of the van as I crouched down on my knees and hid behind the partition that separated the driving area and the cargo space. Wincing from the painful hardness of the metal floor, I listened as Monty wrenched open the driver’s side door, slid into his seat, and slammed the door shut. Before I had time to second-guess my decision, Monty snapped his seat belt into the buckle and hit the accelerator.

I clutched the frame of the nearest empty rack to steady myself as the van sped smoothly forward and then swung around the corner at the end of the block.

The van rumbled swiftly through the vacant streets of the yawning city. Only the earliest of risers had begun to emerge from their slumber. Streetlights occasionally flashed into the dark cavern of the van’s interior, but I quickly lost navigational track of where we were headed. There were no windows on the back or the sides of the van, and I dared not poke my head up to look out the front window for fear of being spotted.

So far, Monty appeared oblivious to his extra cargo. Several times, I nearly yelled out to alert him of my presence, but my gut instinct told me to wait. I was going to feel awfully silly if he were simply driving to Sonoma to pick up a painting.

We’d been briskly traveling through the stop and go of city streets for about twenty minutes when the road beneath us suddenly smoothed out to a quieter ride. Holding my breath, I risked a quick glimpse over the seat partition out through Monty’s front windshield.

A dense net of trees had closed in around us. Painted lines on either side of the road’s black tarmac demarcated bike lanes, and a chalky trail of well-maintained sidewalk snaked a running path through the grass along the curb.

Even though I’d been closed off from all visual clues in the back of the van, I was fairly certain we hadn’t crossed any of the local bridges, meaning that we were still within the confines of San Francisco’s peninsula. Given those parameters, there were only a few possibilities for our current location, and, from the glimpse outside, I had a good guess of where we were. I’d taken many a glorious jog through this multi-acre green zone. I was willing to bet we were driving through the long rectangular length of Golden Gate Park, heading, I suspected, toward the beach.

Before long, the van was greeted by the quiet roar of the ocean, and I chanced another peek out the front windshield. The eastern edge of the Pacific stretched out before of us; its swath of deep, churning blue lined up against the pale morning gray of the lightening sky. We had reached the ocean end of Golden Gate Park.