Seize the Night

sleeve and said, “Bitchin' shirt.”
    “Thanks.”
    “I've seen Doogie,” Sasha said. “He's putting together a package of equipment, ordnance. It's now … just past three o'clock. We'll be ready to go as soon as it's dark.”
    “Ordnance?” Bobby asked.
    “Doogie's got some really fine tech support.”
    “Tech support?”
    “We're going to be prepared for contingencies.”
    “Contingencies?” Bobby turned to me. “Bro, are you sleeping with G. I. Jane?”
    “Emma Peel,” I corrected. To Sasha-Emma, I said, “We may need some ordnance. Manuel and two deputies were here, confiscated our weapons.”
    “Broke some china,” Bobby said.
    “Smashed some furniture,” I added.
    “Kicked the toaster around,” Bobby said.
    “We can count on Doogie,” Sasha said. “Why the toaster?”
    Bobby shrugged. “It was small, defenseless, and vulnerable.”
    We sat down—four people and one gray cat—to eat, drink, and strategize by candlelight.
    “Carpe crustulorum,” Bobby said.
    Brandishing her fork, Sasha said, “ Carpe furcam. ”
    Raising his cup as if in a toast, Bobby said, “ Carpe coffeum. ”
    “Conspiracy,” I muttered.
    Mungojerrie watched us with keen interest.
    Roosevelt studied the cat as the cat studied us, and said, “He thinks you're strange but amusing.”
    “Strange, huh?” Bobby said. “I don't think it's a common human habit to chase down mice and eat them.”
    Roosevelt Frost was talking to animals long before the Wyvern labs gave us four-legged citizens with perhaps more smarts than the people who created them. As far as I've seen, his only eccentric belief is that we can converse with ordinary animals, not just those that have been genetically engineered. He doesn't claim to have been abducted by extraterrestrials and given a proctological exam, doesn't prowl the woods in search of Big Foot or Babe the blue ox, isn't writing a novel channeled to him by the spirit of Truman Capote, and doesn't wear an aluminum-foil hat to prevent microwave control of his thoughts by the American Grocery Workers Union.
    He learned animal communication from a woman named Gloria Chan, in Los Angeles, several years ago, after she facilitated a dialogue between him and his beloved mutt, Sloopy, now deceased. Gloria told Roosevelt things about his daily life and habits that she couldn't possibly know but with which Sloopy was familiar and which apparently the dog revealed to her.
    Roosevelt says that animal communication doesn't require any special talent, that it isn't a psychic ability. He claims it's a sensitivity to other species that we all possess but have repressed, the biggest obstacles to learning the necessary techniques are doubt, cynicism, and preconceived notions about what is possible and what isn't.
    After several months of hard work under Gloria Chan's tutelage, Roosevelt became adept at understanding the thoughts and concerns of Sloopy and other beasts of hearth and field. He's willing to teach me, and I intend to give it a shot. Nothing would please me more than gaining a better understanding of Orson, my four-footed brother has heard much from me over the last couple years, but I've never heard a word from him. Lessons with Roosevelt will either open a door on wonder—or leave me feeling foolish and gullible. As a human being, I'm intimately familiar with foolishness and gullibility, so I don't have anything to lose.
    Bobby used to mock Roosevelt's tete-a-tetes with animals, though never to his face, attributing them to head injuries suffered on the football field, but lately he seems to have shoved his skepticism through a mental wood-chipper. Events at Wyvern have taught us many lessons, and one of them, for sure, is that while science can improve the lot of humankind, it doesn't hold all the answers we need. Life has dimensions that can't be mapped by biologists, physicists, and mathematicians.
    Orson had led me to Roosevelt more than a year ago, drawn by a canine awareness that this was a special man. Some Wyvern cats and God knows what other species of lab escapees have also sought him out and talked his ear off, so to speak. Orson is the exception. He visits Roosevelt but won't communicate with him. Old Sphim Dog, Roosevelt calls him, mute mutt, the laconic Labrador.
    I believe that my mom brought Orson to me—for whatever reason—after falsifying the lab records to account for him as a dead puppy.
    Perhaps Orson fears being taken by force back to the lab if anyone