How to Moon a Cat
Page 26
I was growing rather exasperated by this conversation. “All right,” I said briskly. “Enough beating around the bush. I came here to talk to you about my uncle.”
Mr. Wang cleared his throat uncomfortably. His fingers fiddled with the wisp of his beard as he looked up at the ceiling. “Well, you see . . . ”
Just then, the front door swung open and Monty paraded inside. “Greetings, friends and neighbors!”
NOT FAR AWAY from Wang’s flower shop, in a narrow North Beach alley around the corner from Jackson Square, a man in a rumpled linen suit pulled a red bicycle to a stop behind a newly opened restaurant. Succulent smells floated out of the kitchen, the hallmark of the proprietor’s signature dish, crispy fried chicken.
Whistling contentedly, Clem parked the bike inside a small shed, which contained, in addition to a wide array of cycling equipment, a number of curiously shaped boxes and crates. After securing the lock on the door to the shed, he walked around to the front of the restaurant where an eager crowd of joggers had gathered.
A man in a dirty green baseball cap and shredded overalls worked his way through the crowd, handing out rubber masks and explaining the rules of the contest. After completing the designated route and returning their masks, each of the runners would be treated to a full meal inside the restaurant.
WILL SPIGOT AND Harry Carlin stood near the center of the group, stretching their limbs in anticipation of the coming sprint.
Spigot turned to Carlin, a wry grin on his face. “You know what they say, Harry?”
“What’s that, William?” Harry had an impish look about him, as if he were a small child about to do something he knew was prohibited. His ruddy face exuded the joy of a schoolboy anticipating a coming prank.
Spigot pointed up at the sign of an Italian bistro next door to the chicken restaurant. “When in Rome . . . ”
MONTY’S INTERRUPTION HAD doomed my chances of getting anywhere with Wang about the man in the kangaroo costume. Any voicing of an Oscar-related question within Monty’s earshot would have set off an avalanche of ridiculous theories that I was unprepared, at this time, to refute. Reluctantly, I had allowed myself to be corralled out of the flower shop without a discussion of the Oscar topic.
Silently, I pushed the cat stroller back toward Jackson Square. Monty chattered away, oblivious to my frustration.
“I’ve got an important meeting with the Mayor this afternoon,” he said, clearing his throat importantly. “A life coaching session in his office at City Hall.”
With a groan, I tilted my head skyward, praying for a diversion that would spare me from another one of Monty’s life coaching seminars, but there wasn’t a cloud to be seen. I accelerated the stroller to a near jogging pace. Unfortunately, Monty had no trouble keeping up.
We finally rounded the corner of Jackson Street, and I sighed with relief at the sight of the Green Vase. As we neared the entrance, I noticed a cylindrical package leaning up against the front door. Monty continued to babble on about his life coaching skills as I picked up the parcel and studied the label, which contained my name scrawled in an eerily familiar handwriting. After a gulp of hesitation, I twisted off the end cap and carefully tilted the container sideways. The frayed edge of a rolled-up fabric slid out the opening.
“I’m trying some new techniques with him.” Monty continued on with his one-sided conversation. “He’s making great progress. Should be ready to tackle a whole tankful of frogs in another couple of weeks . . . ”
Carefully, I unfurled a large rectangular flag. The cloth was limp and ragged, as if its fibers were barely holding together. A red cotton strip had been sewn across the bottom rectangular length. On the canvas’s upper-left side was a five-pointed red star. An upright grizzly bear stood at the center of the flag, looking up at the star. The bear’s rear end had been modified with the addition of a thick kangaroo tail.
“Good grief, that’s hideous,” Monty said, peering over my shoulder.
Before I had a chance to respond, a loud boisterous noise rumbled in the distance.
“Hello, what’s that?” Monty asked, craning his neck toward Columbus.
Suddenly, a large crowd of joggers rounded the corner and turned toward us. There were twenty, thirty, maybe forty members in the group. Each one wore a rubber Mayoremulating mask over his head. Their feet were clad with a wide variety of running shoes. There was nothing in the way of clothing in between.
I turned to look at Monty, who was in a state of shock. Even after his three previous streaker experiences, he was unprepared for this surprise attack. His eyes bulged, his mouth fell open, and his cheeks puffed out as if filled with water—he looked like an engorged mosquito. Then, he spun around and sprinted off down the street, waving his arms wildly in the air and hollering at the top of his lungs.
As I watched Monty’s fleeing form, the crowd of naked runners swarmed around the stroller and quickly swept past, a mobile mass of flashing skin, bobbing rubber masks, and flopping body parts.
A moment later, the street fell silent. I looked down into the stroller and shrugged my shoulders. Isabella yawned, as if unimpressed by the display. She had sat stolidly in the stroller throughout the event. Her brother, however, had a different reaction entirely.
Rupert had huddled in the carriage compartment, his eyes crossed in confusion, his whiskers trembling with uncertainty. Now that the runners had passed, he turned a tight circle on the pile of towels in the bed of the stroller and started digging a hole.
AT THE RESTAURANT around the corner in North Beach, Clem and Harold waited on the front steps for the racers to return. As the pack pulled up panting and began to re-clothe, they related the responses of the tall, stringy man, the woman with the long brown hair, and the animals inside the stroller.
Harold slapped Clem across the back of his shoulders. “See, now that’s what I’m talking about. That’s how you moon somebody,” he said with a proud grin. Then, picturing Rupert’s confused face, he added, “That’s how to moon a cat.”
Titles by Rebecca M. Hale
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