Amberville - By Tim Davys Page 0,71

coffee.

“Now you’ll hear,” said Sam, clapping his hooves with delight.

He was bubbling with giggles, little bells sounding through the room. Eric set aside the newspaper and inquisitively observed the exhilarated gazelle, who sat down at the kitchen table.

“Noah remembered me,” said Sam proudly. “I knew he would remember me.”

“Noah remembered you,” repeated Tom-Tom, who was infected by Sam’s exhilaration and giggled obligingly at his own amusement, “but Magnus knows if that was good or bad.”

“Sweetheart, I’ll say this: he opened the door,” declared Sam.

“The question is, will he open it next time?” asked Tom-Tom.

Sam giggled knowingly.

“But he’ll no doubt remember you again?”

“He will,” promised Sam. “Absolutely for sure he will.”

“I don’t want to know,” said Eric.

“For once, darling,” answered Sam, “I think you’re right.”

“I want to know,” objected Tom-Tom with a sneer.

“Reconsider,” said Sam.

They laughed as if they’d heard a funny story. Eric became impatient.

“And?” he said, getting up and going over to the coffee-maker to pour a cup of strong, black coffee for himself.

“Darling,” said Sam, trying to collect himself, “forgive me. It was like this. The camel told me where he got the list.”

“Just like that?” panted Tom-Tom, giggling like a little she.

“Just like that,” Sam confirmed, giving the crow a roguish smile that caused Tom-Tom once again to break into a loud laugh.

“And?” shouted Eric in order to drown out the crow.

“Excuse me,” Sam asked again, pulling himself together. “Noah got it from the Garbage Dump. The camel goes out to the Garbage Dump and picks up the envelope with the lists.”

“Ruth?” said Eric.

Sam shrugged his shoulders. “Darling, have you heard of anything coming from the Garbage Dump that doesn’t come from Ruth?”

“Ruth,” repeated Eric to himself. “Obviously.”

Eric Bear had met Rat Ruth on a few occasions in his life.

Together with Tom-Tom Crow, Eric had been assigned to escort a terrified ermine from Casino Monokowski out to the Garbage Dump early one morning just over twenty years earlier. He had no idea what was behind the break between the ermine and the casino. At that time, Eric was popping almost as many pills as Sam Gazelle, and even connections that were explained to him often remained unclear.

Tom-Tom carried the quivering ermine out to the car where Eric was waiting. They sat in the backseat. Eric drove as fast as he could up toward the Star, then continued out on Eastern Avenue and without touching the brakes was at the dump’s wooden gate just under twenty minutes later. There he tooted the horn three times, according to instructions. The black Volga limousine from Casino Monokowski was an often-seen vehicle at the dump—just like black limousines from other establishments—and the gates were opened at once. At the fork in the road immediately after the entrance stood a duck in black sunglasses (despite the fact that the sun had not yet come up) who waved him forward. Eric drove along the Middle Road, a ravine through refuse and scrap, eerily narrow and deep. Onward, onward he followed the road until he was suddenly forced to put on the brakes because a rat was standing in front of him.

The ermine and the crow in the backseat were thrown forward, but Tom-Tom pulled himself up quickly and burst out, terror-stricken, “It’s Ruth.”

Eric knew who Ruth was, even if he’d never seen the young Queen of the Garbage Dump. Dove always talked about her with equal amounts of respect and irritation.

“What the hell is she doing here, in the middle of the road?” whispered Tom-Tom with a hoarse anxiety that infected Eric. “You just about ran her over.”

The last statement was an anxious declaration which in the car’s mute compartment sounded like an accusation.

“Throw him out,” said Eric.

“What?”

“Throw him out!” repeated Eric.

And Tom-Tom understood, opened the back door, and heaved out the ermine. Whereupon Eric shifted gears and started to back up. He backed up as fast as he could for more than a kilometer before the ravine opened into a passage wide enough to turn in, and then they drove in silence toward the wooden gate that they both feared would be closed when they got there. But it was open, and on the way back along Eastern Avenue the sun came up on the horizon and they laughed at their adventure and for several months talked about that morning when Eric almost ran Rat Ruth down.

The second time Eric Bear met the Queen of the Garbage Dump was more than fifteen years later, at a large, polished conference table inside Sagrada