Seize the Night

laugh through our pain, because He stirred an enormous measure of absurdity into the universe when He mixed the batter of creation. I'll admit to being hopeless in many respects, but as long as I have laughter, I'm not without hope.
    I quickly scanned the study to see what damage had been done, switched off the light, and then followed the same routine at the entrance to the living room. They had caused less destruction than Beelzebub on a two-day vacation from Hell, but more than the average poltergeist.
    Bobby had already turned off the lights in the dining room. By candlelight, he was addressing the mess in the kitchen, sweeping shattered china into a dustpan and emptying the pan into a large garbage bag.
    “You're very domestic,” I said, assisting with the cleanup.
    “I think I was a housekeeper to royalty in a previous life.”
    “What royalty?”
    “Czar Nicholas of Russia.”
    “That ended badly.”
    “Then I was reincarnated as Betty Grable.”
    “The movie star?”
    “The one and only, dude.”
    “I loved you in Mother Wore Tights .”
    “ Gracias . But it's way good to be male again.”
    Tying shut the first garbage bag as Bobby opened another, I said, “I should be pissed off.”
    “Why? Because I've had all these fabulous lives, while you've just been you?”
    “He comes here to kick my ass because he really wants to kick his own.”
    “He'd have to be a contortionist.”
    “I hate to say this, but he's a moral contortionist.”
    “Dude, when you're angry, you sure do get foulmouthed.”
    “He knows he's taking an unconscionable risk with Toby, and it's eating him alive, even if he won't admit it.”
    Bobby sighed. “I feel for Manuel. I do. But the dude scares me more than Feeney.”
    “Feeney's becoming,” I said.
    “No shit. But Manuel scares me because he's become what he's become without becoming. You know?”
    “I know.”
    “You think it's true—about the vaccine?” Bobby asked, returning the battered toaster to the counter.
    “Yeah. But will it work the way they think it will?”
    “Nothing else did.”
    “We know the other part is true,” I said. “The psychological implosion.”
    “The birds.”
    “Maybe the coyotes.”
    “I'd feel totally super-mellow about all this,” Bobby said, returning the butcher knife to the cutlery drawer, “if I didn't know your mom's bug is only part of the problem.”
    “Mystery Train,” I said, remembering the thing or things inside Hodgson's suit, Delacroix's body, the testament on the audiotape, and the cocoons.
    The doorbell rang, and Bobby said, “Tell them if they want to come in here and bust things up, we have new rules. A hundred-dollar cover charge, and everyone wears neckties.” I went into the foyer and peered through one of the clearer panes in a stained-glass sidelight.
    The figure at the door was so big that you might have thought one of the oak trees had pulled up its roots, climbed the steps, and rung the bell to request a hundred pounds of fertilizer.
    I opened the door and stepped back from the light to let our visitor enter.
    Roosevelt Frost is tall, muscular, black, and dignified enough to make the carved faces on Mount Rushmore look like the busts of sitcom stars.
    Entering with Mungojerrie, a pale gray cat, nestled in the crook of his left arm, he nudged the door shut behind them.
    In a voice remarkable for its deep tone, its musicality, and its gentleness, he said, “Good afternoon, son.”
    “Thank you for coming, sir.”
    “You've gotten yourself in trouble again.”
    “That's always a good bet with me.”
    “Lots of death ahead,” he said solemnly.
    “Sir?”
    “That's what the cat says.”
    I looked at Mungojerrie. Draped comfortably over Roosevelt's huge arm, he appeared to be boneless. The cat was so limp that he might have been a stole or a muffler if Roosevelt had been a man given to wearing stoles and mufflers, except that his green feline eyes, flecked with gold, were alert, riveting, and filled with an intelligence that was unmistakable and unnerving.
    “Lots of death,” Roosevelt repeated.
    “Whose?”
    “Ours.”
    Mungojerrie held my gaze.
    Roosevelt said, “Cats know things.”
    “Not everything.”
    “Cats know,” Roosevelt insisted.
    The cat's eyes seemed to be full of sadness.

20
    Roosevelt put Mungojerrie on one of the kitchen chairs so the cat wouldn't cut his paws on the splinters of broken china that still littered the floor. Although Mungojerrie is a Wyvern