and there might have been some that died before we knew about them, and there might be some we just don’t know because they’re isolated, or in hiding, or never show up for reasons of their own. And it’s not always easy to tell how many there are supposed to be. I mean, there are supposedly three species of zebra, I saw on the TV, but I’ve only known one immortal zebra. Are the other two dead, or in hiding, or did they never exist, and you only get one zebra? I don’t know.”
“So I could be anything.”
“Well, you couldn’t be a prairie dog, and you couldn’t be a jaguar, and you couldn’t be a hippopotamus, because I know all of those. It’s hard to tell your ethnicity, without a face, but your skin’s too light to be from some places, if you wanted to cross off those possibilities. So there are lots of things you couldn’t be, but there are still lots of things you could be.”
“Okay, just two more questions. Why did Mr. Bigshot want to kill me?”
“Maybe you were talking dirt about his mother. But probably he just wanted to know what you were. When we die we turn back into our true form. Curiosity, you know.”
“Because cats are curious?”
Gloria was obviously beginning to get bored, looking around the room. “Mr. Bigshot is curious. I don’t know about other cats. He’s probably still interested, plus he’s mad about you thwarting him once, or three times now. And he must’ve read about you ripping all your clothes off, at your school. Ripped clothes are a sure sign one of us is around.”
“Arthur changed, but he didn’t rip his clothes.”
“Binturongs are small. I split a seam on the robe I was wearing, and that was a loose robe too big for me. Trust me, mention ripped clothes and all of us know what’s up.”
“How does Mr. Bigshot have people work for him? Is it because he’s the king of the beasts?”
“Don’t be ridiculous, I don’t have a king. I was a queen, once upon a time, but I don’t have a king. Mr. Bigshot has minions because he can beat everyone else up, now that the tiger’s gone. Or else no one wants to try their luck on him. So when he says he’s in charge, he’s in charge until someone comes around who’ll say no.” Gloria stood up. “I’m paying the check, you leave the tip.”
“I don’t have any money.”
Gloria sighed and dropped a dollar on the table. “Well, do you have any other questions?”
“I don’t know, um. Why is this place called Shoreditch? We’re nowhere near the shore.”
“It’s named after some part of London. Okay, it was great to meet you, Myron. I hope I was able to fill in some things for you. Best of luck.”
“Wait, you can’t leave yet.”
“Don’t worry, I’m just going to pay the check.” But she didn’t pay the check; she just left.
3.
The waiter accosted Myron when he tried to go, but he couldn’t bring himself to actually touch the boy, so Myron walked out unhindered. He had a lot to think over, but he was also in a state of panic. His whole plan, since he dragged himself away from the train tracks, had been to go to Shoreditch and ask Gloria what to do next. And now as it turned out, it wasn’t that she didn’t know what to do; she just didn’t seem to care.
Myron ran down the street, looking all around. Not long after he’d been adopted, when Myron was still so very confused and even spoke with a strange accent that some people said sounded Canadian, the Horowitzes had taken him to an amusement park. Already dizzy from the teacups, Myron had wandered away from his new parents in the crowd, and the half-hour before he, or rather a security guard, found them again was filled not so much with terror—terror is so common an emotion among children that a terrifying day is hardly remarkable—as with despair. This, despair, Myron was becoming reacquainted with as he tore through the streets of Shoreditch. Except he was hardly aware, yet, that it was despair he was becoming reacquainted with. He was too terrified.
With just such a complicated mixture of emotions blinding him, Myron knocked over two perverts and a policeman (who was too fat to follow him) and managed to avoid, narrowly, being squashed by a plumber’s van. “Gloria!” he shouted, again and again, and then he stopped, when