Sentient Animals

Xena and I met the magic girl in the park. She was seven years old. Blonde-haired, blue-eyed. Traveling with her hippie parents in an old beat-up RV. The father smoked dope furtively, poking at the ashes of a dying campfire, glancing over from time to time while the little girl prattled. Short guarded looks.

"She's a nice dog," said the little girl, petting Xena. "Is she a puppy?"

"No, she's just a very small dog," I said.

"We're on our way to Mount Shasta," said the little girl. "It's a long trip. Five days."

"Don't you get bored?" I asked.

"No, 'cause we've got lots of MP3's," said the little girl. "And an MP3 player. Maybe a thousand MP3s. So I listen to them."

I nodded noncommittally.

"Lots of Beatles songs," said the little girl. "Every song the Beatles ever sang. I know all the words. Something weird happened just before we left."

"What was that?" I asked. The father was scoping us out again, that careful look that was not a look. The dope smell was pretty strong and I felt like walking over and scolding him: don't be such a fucking idiot, the cops patrol Veterans Park on a regular basis.

"I was sitting in my yard and a bird landed on me," said the little girl. "A wild bird. A crow."

"Wow," I said. "Crows are pretty smart birds. Usually they stay away from people. You must be pretty special. Were you scared?"

"No," said the little girl. "I talked to it."

"Did it talk back?"

The little girl laughed. "Birds don't talk," she said.

A disheveled blonde woman emerged from the RV with pot of something in her hand. The father called over, "Dinner's ready!" He said the little girl's name too but those syllables got lost in the breeze that was beginning to churn the ocean fog back up over Huckleberry Hill and down into the city basin.

"Gotta go," said the little girl. "You should try it. Sit very still. Maybe a crow will land on you."

Chummy crows are about the last thing I need right now. Feeling somewhat like a sacrificial goat being led to the altar, I'd made my appearance at the Cannery Row Company's headquarters earlier that afternoon, and on my lawyer's advice, signed the letter of intent for the commercial lease.

"It's non-binding," J__ L__ told me. "You have nothing to lose. This is very exciting!"

"Yes, it is, isn't it?" I said weakly.

"You know, you really have a gift for business, Patrizia," J__ L__ continued. "I think this venture will do very well for you. I'm seeing franchise possibilities."

Right. McHot Sauce.

Earlier that morning I'd cruised by Annie's. She's got an agent now, and either familial affection is strong enough to over-ride my generally spiteful and envious character or spiritual evolution has finally kicked in – I feel nothing but happiness and excitement on her behalf. Annie's a complete technophobe, of course, and will have nothing to do with computers. She types everything out on her ancient Olympia and then cuts and pastes her edits in like a second grade art project. The resulting manuscript was a complete mess so she hired a typist to the tune of $700 to make a perfect copy.

"Seven hundred dollars is a lot of money, isn't it?" she sighed.

"You know, Annie, I could give you a computer," I said. "It's so much easier to compose on a computer."

"Not for me, it's not," said Annie. "Just looking at those screens makes me sick. Forget about the Internet. That's just another control thing to make people forget they have bodies. The thing is if this book's a success, I can type the next one on garbage bags if I want to." She looked at me sideways. "You know, Patty – Ricky's got that house on Orcas Island. I know he'd be happy to let you use it. Lock yourself up for a month. Just write."

"No can do, Annie," I said. "I've got a fledgling business empire to manage."

We wandered down to the Capitola tchotchke stroll – a dozen stores selling ceramic mice and stained glass angels. I was after a particular button-down shirt I wanted to buy for Max, silk-screened with a portrait of Jim Morrison. He's Hot, He's Sexy, He's Dead. Fortunately or unfortunately, the store was closed. I ducked into another store and bought half a dozen silk Vietnamese hanging lanterns. See? People really do spend money on shit like this. I spend money on shit like this.

"Gotta watch that, Patty," said Annie. "That peculiar need to spend money in times of stress. That's dangerous."

"Hey, they were on sale!" I countered weakly.

"It's what I like to call elected stress," Annie continued. "As opposed to real stress which is when you have a tumor or a car crash."

"Janie's been writing me letters again," I said.

"I know, I know. She's worried about you. She means well."

"I know she means well. But the thing is reading those letters gives me acute anxiety attacks."

Later that evening I was out walking Xena and bumped into Heidi and Bill. Heidi was crying.

"What's wrong? What happened?" I cried.

"Brownie's dead," said Bill.

"She got hit by a car," said Heidi.

Brownie's the old brown stray cat that Heidi semi-adopted a few months back. A motley creature – burrs in her long coat, ingrown claws, a deformed hip that had obviously been broken years ago and healed without being properly set. Heidi had taken Brownie to the vet and combed out her tangles. A very sweet thing to watch Heidi hold the old brown cat and talk to her. Brownie resolutely refused to become a house cat; Heidi put bowls of food and water in the garden.

"How do you know?" I asked. "Did you find her?"

"She didn't come around tonight so we started looking for her," said Heidi. "And some people told us she lived in that house there –" she pointed at a blue and white Victorian. "So we knocked on the door. And you know what that that woman told us? She said Brownie was a mean old animal and she was so bashed up by the car that they'd had to put her to sleep!"

"That was a blessing, honey," said Bill. "Putting her to sleep."

"Brownie was the dearest little animal who ever lived," Heidi insisted. The character assassination was almost as upsetting as the death.

I ended up going over to their house and hanging out with them till midnight. Drinking rum and coke. "So what was going on with you on July 4th anyway?" Bill asked. "You were acting so weird and alienated."

"I get that way sometimes," I said. "I don't know why. The cosmic pinball machine goes tilt. I was raised by wolves. My emotional affect gets screwy."

I think our tipsy encounter session made Heidi feel better. We talked about journals – they were amazed and impressed that I'd been keeping mine since I was twelve. "Do you write every day?" Bill asked.
"No. Usually a few times a week. But sometimes I go months without writing. It's helpful for me – like practicing scales. Warms me up for my fiction and other stuff. And the other day I had the sudden flash – hey! this is a document that might even have some historical significance after I'm dead. Like Pepys' diary – what it feels like to be a woman in the declining years of the American empire."

"I wish I kept a journal," said Heidi. "But you know all I'd write about is stuff like Brownie."

"But that's a good thing," I said. "To loan your voice to the Brownies of the world. The defenseless little creatures just trying to live their peaceful lives."

She got tears in her eyes when I said that and I thought, well, good – I've given her something. She's such a feisty person most of the time, and that feistiness is one of the things I enjoy. I hated to see her so sad.

We did a big group hug when I said goodbye. I-love-you's all around.

"I don't know what we'll do if you guys ever move," said Heidi. "I think we'd have to move too."