Tugger. Another is Rumpelteazer. Coricopat and Growltiger.”
“Prefer? You make it sound almost as if they choose their own names.”
“Almost,” Roosevelt said.
I shook my head. “This is radically bizarre.”
“After all these years of animal communication,” Roosevelt said, “I sometimes still find it bizarre myself.”
“Bobby Halloway thinks you were hit in the head once too often.”
Roosevelt smiled. “He’s not alone in that opinion. But I was a football player, you know, not a boxer. What do you think, Chris? Has half my brain turned to gristle?”
“No, sir,” I admitted. “You’re as sharp as anyone I’ve ever known.”
“On the other hand, intelligence and flakiness aren’t mutually exclusive, are they?”
“I’ve met too many of my parents’ fellow academics to argue that one with you.”
From the living room, Mungojerrie continued to watch us, and from his chair, Orson continued to monitor the cat not with typical canine antagonism but with considerable interest.
“I ever tell you how I got into this animal-communication thing?” Roosevelt wondered.
“No, sir. I never asked.” Calling attention to such an eccentricity had seemed as impolite as mentioning a physical deformity, so I had always pretended to accept this aspect of Roosevelt as though it were not in the least remarkable.
“Well,” he said, “about nine years ago I had this really great dog named Sloopy, black and tan, about half the size of your Orson. He was just a mutt, but he was special.”
Orson had shifted his attention from the cat to Roosevelt.
“Sloopy had a terrific disposition. He was always a playful, good-tempered dog, not one bad day in him. Then his mood changed. Suddenly he became withdrawn, nervous, even depressed. He was ten years old, not nearly a pup anymore, so I took him to a vet, afraid I was going to hear the worst kind of diagnosis. But the vet couldn’t find anything much wrong with him. Sloopy had a little arthritis, something an aging ex-linebacker with football knees can identify with, but he didn’t have it bad enough to inhibit him much, and that was the only thing wrong. Yet week after week, he wallowed in his funk.”
Mungojerrie was on the move. The cat had climbed from the arm to the back of the sofa and was stealthily approaching us.
“So one day,” Roosevelt continued, “I read this human-interest story in the paper about this woman in Los Angeles who called herself a pet communicator. Name was Gloria Chan. She’d been on a lot of TV talk shows, counseled a lot of movie people on their pets’ problems, and she’d written a book. The reporter’s tone was smart-ass, made Gloria sound like your typical Hollywood flake. For all I knew, he probably had her pegged. You remember, after the football career was over, I did a few movies. Met a lot of celebrities, actors and rock stars and comedians. Producers and directors, too. Some of them were nice folks and some were even smart, but frankly a lot of them and a lot of the people who hung out with them were so bugshit crazy you wouldn’t want to be around them unless you were carrying a major concealed weapon.”
After creeping the length of the sofa, the cat descended to the nearer arm. It shrank into a crouch, muscles taut, head lowered and thrust forward, ears flattened against its skull, as if it was going to spring at us across the six feet between the sofa and the table.
Orson was alert, focused again on Mungojerrie, both Roosevelt and the biscuits forgotten.
“I had some business in L.A.,” Roosevelt said, “so I took Sloopy with me. We went down by boat, cruised the coast. I didn’t have the Nostromo then. I was driving this really sweet sixty-foot Chris-Craft Roamer. I docked her at Marina Del Rey, rented a car, took care of business for two days. I got Gloria’s number through some friends in the film business, and she agreed to see me. She lived in the Palisades, and I drove out there with Sloopy late one morning.”
On the sofa arm, the cat was still crouched to spring. Its muscles were coiled even tighter than before. Little gray panther.
Orson was rigid, as still as the cat. He made a high-pitched, thin, anxious sound and then was silent again.
Roosevelt said, “Gloria was fourth-generation Chinese American. A petite, doll-like person. Beautiful, really beautiful. Delicate features, huge eyes. Like something a Chinese Michelangelo might have carved out of luminous amber jade. You expected her to have a little-girl voice, but she sounded like Lauren Bacall, this