“Monty?” I asked tentatively as more members from the wedding party circled his prostrate body. “Are you okay?”
He didn’t speak for a long moment. Slowly, he lifted his torso up into a seated position. His thin lips stretched out toward both corners of his narrow face as he turned his head to look at me. His expression was flat, unreadable.
“Was that . . . a . . . frog?”
A PAIR OF bright green go-go boots stood on the third floor balcony above the Ceremonial Rotunda, anchoring an elderly Asian woman who had leaned over the banister to watch the melee unfold below. Dilla giggled to herself, enjoying the scene. Then, she trotted off down the third floor hallway, heading toward the opposite end of the rotunda and the side stairs that would take her down to the Mayor’s office suite.
Dilla was right on time for her afternoon appointment. She could hardly wait to see the Mayor’s response to her latest proposal—she just wasn’t quite sure what he would think about her outfit.
IT WAS EARLY evening by the time I made it back to a now dark and chilly Jackson Square. Two hungry cats greeted me at the front door of the Green Vase, purring loudly as a reminder that it was time for their supper.
I crossed the showroom, stepping carefully around the furry bodies that eagerly herded me toward the stairs.
Dilla’s package rested in my coat pocket. Wrapped up in brown kraft paper, it was a familiar book-sized rectangular shape. I patted the outside of the pocket, silently pondering as I started up the steps to the kitchen.
“Wrao,” Isabella chirped impatiently, swatting insistently at my tired legs. She raced up a few steps and turned to glower down at me as I lumbered slowly up the ascent. Rupert brought up the rear, urging me along from the steps below, occasionally shoving his head against the back of my knee.
To the consternation of my starving feline companions, I stopped halfway up the stairs and pulled Dilla’s package out of my pocket. Turning it over in my hands, I couldn’t help thinking how similar the shape was to Harold’s green Mark Twain book. I tested the pieces of tape that secured the folded flaps of the wrapping, but they were firmly attached to the kraft paper.
“Hmm,” I sighed, wondering if I should open it.
“Wa-oourrrr!” Isabella demanded fiercely.
“Yes, of course,” I replied. “Right away.”
I skipped up the remaining steps to the kitchen. Isabella paced back and forth in front of the cupboard that held the cat food, making sure I knew where I was supposed to go next.
Four eager eyes fixed on me while I pried open the plastic lid of a container and poured out a meal’s worth of dry food into each cat’s bowl. Satisfied munching sounds filled the kitchen as I sat down at the table and dropped Dilla’s package on its surface.
I leaned back in my chair, glancing at the room around me. While I’d done a lot of work on the Green Vase showroom since Oscar’s departure, the two floors of the upstairs apartment remained much the way he’d left it.
The living quarters were vintage Uncle Oscar—which is to say the only maintenance that had been done over the course of the last fifty or so years involved the application of the cheapest available materials unrestricted in any way by building codes or construction guidelines. The kitchen was probably the best example of Oscar’s creative handiwork.
From my seat at the table, I could count at least a half a dozen different patterns of wallpaper. Despite the liberal use of staples and tape to tamp the patterned sheets down, each one curled outward along its exposed edges.
There wasn’t a square corner in the entire kitchen. The leaning walls somehow managed to meet up with the room’s low ceiling, which sagged in places as if something large and bulging were sitting on it from above. On the upper half of one of the walls, a warped wooden board provided a shaky shelf for my uncle’s large collection of cookbooks.
An ancient dishwasher commanded the space next to the sink. I had long since given up trying to use it. Every attempt had resulted in a nearly unstoppable eruption of foamy soapy water that spilled down its front and out across the uneven tiles of the kitchen floor.
My uncle’s well-used wooden table dominated the center of the room. The grains in the table’s wood planking had swelled and softened over its many years of service, providing a smooth, if not altogether flat, surface.
It was here where Dilla’s brown paper package lay, tempting me to open it.
Smacking her lips to catch a crumb from her whiskers, Isabella sat back from her food bowl and gazed up at the table. Her immediate hunger satiated, she was now ready to investigate the package. Her sleek orange-tipped tail pointed into the air as she sauntered over to me, expressing her interest in the item that had so frustratingly delayed her supper.
She reached the table and hopped up onto the chair beside me. Her sharp blue eyes studied the package intently as she sniffed it with the pulsing pink cushion of her nose.
“I think, maybe, I should open it,” I suggested. My arms crossed over my chest as I stared down at the package.
The white whiskers on Isabella’s pixielike face twitched while she pondered my proposal. She raised a slender white paw and delicately poked at the package, jumping back when the paper crinkled beneath her touch.
Isabella hunched down into her chair so that her eyes were flush with the surface of the table. Her tail swung back and forth assessingly.
“Mrao,” she opined after careful consideration.
I decided to interpret that as an assent. Sucking in my breath, I reached out for the package. Isabella watched as I slid my fingers underneath one of the folded flaps and pulled it up. Then, I spun the package around and freed the opposite side.
Isabella popped her head and shoulders up over the table as I lifted the edges of the packing paper and exposed the item wrapped inside.
It was a second green book of Mark Twain essays, nearly an exact replica of the one Harold had left on the cashier counter downstairs, albeit in a newer, more pristine condition.
Rupert issued a polite belch from the cat food station as I flipped through the pages of Dilla’s book to the first selection. Isabella rested her head in my lap while I began to read her Mark Twain’s tale about an excessively talkative miner and his Calaveras County frog.
Chapter 9
BENEATH THE DOME
LATER THAT NIGHT, deep within the substructure of City Hall’s recently refurbished foundation, two pairs of round, protuberant eyes popped up from the surface of a stream of water that had begun to fill the moat circling the building’s underground perimeter.
Unnoticed by almost all of City Hall’s human occupants, a green garden hose had been poked down through an opening in the floor of a basement mop closet, threaded around several of the foundation’s rubberized columns, stretched to the edge of the building’s substructure, and fed into the surrounding moat. A steady trickle had been percolating out of the mouth of the hose for over a week, resulting in the accumulation of several feet of water in the moat’s concrete base.
First one and then the other of two slippery, wet creatures emerged from the moat, splashing slightly as they hopped out onto the embankment. They crept slowly into the substructure, following the snaking path of the hose, their small mounded shapes mingling imperceptibly with the silky darkness that closed in around them.
A thick canopy of beams and joists sank down from the ceiling, providing an inverted topo-map of the building above. The two frogs crawled deeper and deeper into the substructure, passing a countless number of concrete columns, each one middled with an enormous black rubber isolator.
At long last, the hose led the traveling pair up a steep incline to an opening in the ceiling—a square hatch denoted by a weak, muffled light, emanating from a source somewhere in the basement level above.
The larger frog squatted beneath the center of the hole, sizing up the distance to the edge of its rim. The powerful muscles of his back legs pulsed, tightening the stretchy, elastic skin on the top of his knobby kn
ees. With one explosive movement, the frog’s back legs activated, and his body soared up through the opening, landing with a heavy, skidding plunk on the floor in the room above. The second, smaller, frog quickly followed, his tiny body springing lightly through the hole.
The pair sat silently for a moment, studying their new surroundings. The room held a mop bucket, a broom, and a strange-smelling cart with an orange-shaped air freshener tied to its handle. A long rectangular window ran along the top of the back wall. Scattered rays of light angled in from a streetlamp to provide a faint etching of illumination.
The larger frog led off on a hop across the tiled floor, and the second frog fell diligently into formation behind him. The frogs’ feet suctioned against the flat tile surface as they progressed toward a door on the far side of the room. It was slightly ajar, its three-inch opening allowing more than enough space for the two frogs to pass through.
On the other side of the door, a long hallway stretched out to the left, dwarfing the two glistening figures with its emptiness. Without hesitation, the frogs set off, proceeding with long horizontal leaps. At the end of the hallway, the pair made a right turn into a wider corridor. Midway down this second hallway, they stopped in front of a short flight of stone steps and paused to catch their breath.
The larger frog waddled up to the perpendicular edge of the first step of the staircase, his ample girth jiggling as he moved. He gave a wise look to his smaller companion, blinked, and croaked hoarsely.
“Ribbit.”
With that, the larger frog leapt up into the air. His hefty bulk barely cleared the top of the second step. Huffing slightly, he turned and looked down to encourage his sidekick.
The smaller frog shifted his weight back and forth, anxiously leaning from left to right. A long, stringy tongue zipped out of his mouth and smacked up against his right cheek. He squiggled his back legs eagerly; then his small form rocketed into the air—easily landing with one leap onto the top of the third step.
The larger frog considered this development, the wide rim of his lipless mouth curling inward as the smaller frog peeked down over the edge of the higher step.
The smaller frog pumped out his own, slightly higher pitched, croak.
“Ribbit.”
The challenge issued, the duo vaulted up the stairs from the basement, their springing bodies slapping against the stone steps until they both landed, nostrils flaring for oxygen, on the building’s first floor.
The frogs ambled amiably around a corner and continued on through the arched tunnel of a foyer, finally emerging at the edge of City Hall’s cavernous rotunda. Their webbed feet slid across the pink marble floor as they crossed into the open center area under the dome.
The larger frog turned to offer a congratulatory croak to his froggy friend, but, before he could issue it, the sound withered in his throat—as he looked up at the towering marble staircase leading to the second floor.
AN HOUR LATER, two exhausted frogs panted together in the Ceremonial Rotunda at the top of the central marble staircase. The muscles in their legs pulsed wearily as they rested.
The smaller frog hobbled over to a bronze bust mounted on a marble block base. A jovial man with a protuberant nose and flapping ears looked warmly down at him.
The larger frog joined the smaller one and together they stared up at the quote inscribed on the block. It was a well-known catchphrase of the man commemorated in the bust.
You’ve got to give them hope.
As if inspired by the inscription, the frogs turned to look out over the rotunda. Moonlight soaked the soaring spaces of the room, playing eerily off of the carved stone faces, casting a myriad of shadows in the finely shaped plaster.
The larger frog lifted his head and nodded up toward the top of the dome, still hundreds of feet above them. The smaller frog gulped, and then turned, determinedly, down the hallway toward the next flight of stairs.
THE SOFT, GENTLE rays of dawn were beginning to glide through the arched windows of the rotunda when the two exhausted frogs hopped wearily up the last step. They had reached City Hall’s highest interior room, a tiny attic space in the steeple that rose above the crest of the dome.
Human footsteps crossed the room to greet them.
They waited, patiently, as a grimy, freckled hand gently reached down and picked them up.
Chapter 10
AN EARLY MORNING RIDE TO THE CLIFF HOUSE
THE WEE HOURS of Thursday morning had yet to take hold when Harold Wombler’s rusty pickup truck sputtered clunkily onto Jackson Street. Harold killed the motor halfway down the block, pushed in a knob to dim the headlights, and slowly coasted to a stop in the middle of the pavement outside of the Green Vase.
Harold turned his hunched torso to look across the cab through the passenger side window. Tilting up the rim of his faded baseball cap, Harold studied the darkened window of the apartment above the showroom across the street. There was a rippling in the blinds as a cat’s tiny white face poked out from beneath the bottom slats. Otherwise, no one seemed to be stirring.
A shadow moved in across Harold’s view. The passenger side door of the truck opened, creaking loudly with the protesting squeal of unoiled metal springs.
“Morning, Harold,” a man’s sleep-slurred voice mumbled as the shadow climbed into the cab and collapsed onto the passenger side of the truck’s bench seat.
Harold tugged his cap back down over his head and glanced warily at the entrant.
The man’s lanky form was cramped even in the truck’s spacious cab. His freshly shaven face shone from the recent application of a citrus aftershave; damp brown curls bounced off the top of the man’s head. He wore a pair of gray wool slacks matched with a long-sleeve sweater and a neatly pressed collared shirt. Metal cufflinks formed in the shape of merrily hopping frogs hung at both wrists.
“You got the message then,” Harold grumped as his passenger struggled to fasten the uncooperative metal buckle of the seat belt.
“Yup,” Monty replied, his sleepy voice waking with sarcasm. “Subtle, Wombler. Really subtle.”
Harold allowed himself the pleasure of a smug grin; then he cranked the engine and rolled off down the street.
From the few bits of paint remaining on the truck’s chipped and dented shell, it was difficult to guess the original color of its exterior. A jagged crack branched its way across most of the windshield. The plastic molding of the dashboard was blistered and hardened from years of unprotected exposure to the sun; the remains of the glove compartment rested at Monty’s feet on the passenger side floorboard.
Monty carefully shifted his legs around the glove compartment and directed his half-lidded eyes toward the driver.
Harold wore a heavily stained T-shirt beneath a pair of quickly disintegrating overalls. A shredded flannel shirt that was missing the majority of its buttons draped over the bent curve of his shoulders.
Most of Harold’s greasy, black, dandruffy hair was covered by a dingy baseball cap. The yellowed whites of his eyes sunk into dry, blotchy skin that sagged loosely below his jawline. Slumped forward in the driver’s seat, gripping the steering wheel with his wrinkled, gnarled hands, it looked as if the truck were being piloted by a withered worm.
The streets of Jackson Square were dark and deserted as Harold swung the truck left at Sansome. Few cars moved along the city streets. Most of the residents of San Francisco were still tightly tucked in their beds.
A few blocks later, the truck slowed at an empty light for a left-hand turn onto Broadway. All the while, the truck’s engine cycled roughly in a coughing, stuttering manner.
Monty shivered and wrapped his arms across his chest, trying to warm himself against the damp chill rushing in through the gaping passenger side window. He had given up wrestling with the immovable handle that would have been used to roll up the glass partition.
Monty stared out the open window at the silent street as the truck chugged up Broadway, passing through the poorly delineated convergence of
Chinatown and North Beach. A gaudy collection of strip clubs, their neon signs flashing flesh-promising adverts, pressed up against a handful of sooty dim sum joints and specialty grocery stores whose banners were marked more prominently by their Chinese characters than the faint English subtitles printed underneath. The price of every inch of space in downtown San Francisco was at such a premium, there was no room for gradual transitions.
The truck rumbled with the roar of an escalating avalanche as it worked to pick up speed. The increased vibration threatened to dislodge the more loosely attached of its parts.
“Where are we going?” Monty tried to yell over the racket.
“Cliff House,” Harold replied bluntly. The truck hit a deep pothole that caused the front bumper to scrape against the pavement before the cab jolted up wildly on the recoil.
“Why?” Monty hollered, straining his voice to be heard over the engine as he reached between his knees to steady the bouncing glove compartment.
“For the view,” Harold spit out through pursed lips.
A taxi screeched by in the open left-hand lane as both vehicles entered the Broadway tunnel. The brick and concrete walls swallowed the truck, amplifying the already deafening squall of the motor.
The taxi quickly disappeared into the distance, leaving the truck to trundle alone through the cave of the empty tunnel. The round opening on the opposite end appeared first as a blinding halo of artificial light before slowly softening into the contours of a streetlamp-lit street. Monty tried to tuck his cold-numbed hands into the bottom hem of his sweater as the truck emerged from the tunnel’s exit and a fresh blast of chilly air shot through his open window.
Once free of the tunnel, the road sloped upward toward the wide boulevard of Van Ness. Harold scaled back the engine to an uneven idle as they waited at the light. He turned his stiff neck to look at the passenger seat.
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