Anonymous Rex (23 page)

I arrive alive and intact at the Prince Edward ten minutes ahead of schedule, giving me ample time to peruse the crowd. A surprising number of dinos here—at least half the audience is of our kind, I estimate, and that’s much higher than the national average of 10 to 12 percent. Odd, but I imagine it’s either a fluke of statistics or that the show has been produced by one of our kind.

I wait on the curb like a nervous teenager waiting for his prom date, growing more apprehensive with every passing minute that Sarah will not show. Has she stood me up? The other patrons have filed inside, and I’m sure the show is about to begin. I look around, peer into the darkness for a car, a limousine, any sign of Sarah. Nothing.

“Mr. Rubio?” It’s not Sarah’s voice, but it’s calling my name, and that’s a start. I turn to find the ticket taker, the poor thing so hypoglycemic she’s almost see-through. “Are you Vincent Rubio?” I tell her that I am, and she says, “Your ladyfriend called, said she’s running a little late. Your ticket was at will-call, so … here.” I am handed a ticket, ushered through the doors, and into my seat—third row, center, between a group of Asian businessmen and an elderly couple who already look bored.

The theater is decked out in jungle paraphernalia, leafy trees and papier-mâché caves plastered onto the walls. Tiger-striped and leopard-spotted fabric drape the stage, ambient roars and elephant trumpets fill the air, and whereas the motif might work in the dinner theaters of rural Santa Barbara, it’s downright pathetic here on the Great White Way. The curtains are closed, the audience buzzing, and an illuminated sign, thirty feet long and fifteen feet tall, hangs proudly from the rafters.

It reads:
MANIMAL, THE MUSICAL
! And I know I’m in for a long, long night.

I have to admit, I was a big fan of
Manimal
, the TV show, back in ‘83. I got a kick out of watching Dr. Jonathan Chase battle crime, getting all heated up and turning into jungle animals at the drop of a hat, but I must have been the only one, as the show lasted about three months before it was canceled and left in the dumping grounds of low-budget, high-concept television. But even the most die-hard of
Manimal
fans couldn’t sit through two and a half hours of a half man/half leopard crime solver singing and dancing his way through a drug-smuggling investigation.

The first song is called “Incredible Leopard Man, I Love You,” with lyrics such as
Yes I knew you were part feline / so for you I made a beeline
, and it’s at this point of the evening that I decide to turn off my brain, as its services are no longer needed.

Twenty minutes pass, during which time I am treated to two more
musical numbers and a four-legged tap dance, when I feel a tap on my shoulder.

“Is this seat taken?” comes a whisper, and I turn, ready to defend the empty seat with all the valor I can muster while wedged into these cushions.

“Actually, it—” And then I see the reams of red hair cascading over bare shoulders, a bright yellow cocktail dress that announces its presence from clear across town, and a familiar figure packed into it all. My heart pounds against the muscles of my chest like King Kong beating his cage. “It’s saved for a friend,” I say.

Sarah casually lowers herself into the cushioned seat and leans over, whispering into my ear. It tickles. “Would your friend mind if I took her seat?”

“I don’t think so,” I respond, keeping my voice even as I try to bring my heart rate back to normal. “I really only met her yesterday.”

“And she’s already a friend?”

I shrug. “She must be. She asked me to the theater.”

“She has house seats.” She crosses her legs, adjusts the skirt. “What’d I miss?”

Forcing myself into a library whisper, I attempt to catch Sarah up on the main plot points of
Manimal: The Musical
. Trouble is, there aren’t many. “Let’s see … we’ve got this guy running around, he’s human, but he’s also a cat. And there are some smugglers.”

We silently endure a series of songs about leopards, lions, badgers, drug smuggling (
Buy an ounce or buy a pound / cocaine makes the world go round
), and more leopards, and eventually it all winds up before intermission with a particularly morose Dr. Chase lamenting his woeful state as a creature of two worlds. The audience applauds—Sarah and I mindlessly follow along—and the houselights flick on. Fifteen minutes to get in a good stretch before the second act.

“Would you like a drink?” I ask. “I can bring you something from the bar.”

Sarah shakes her head. “They won’t let you drink in the theater. I’ll come with.”

By the time we make our way out of the lower orchestra—human men are leering, soaking in Sarah all the way and though she’s not my species I’m still walking tall—the few bars in the Prince Edward are
packed with throngs of theatergoers already half in the bag, anxious to get a different perspective on the second half of this opus. Sarah and I step to the end of the line, behind a dino couple guised up as an elderly husband and wife. Their smells—a fireplace, redwood logs burning steadily—are nearly indistinguishable from one another, and though I know it’s just an old dino’s tale that the scents of a husband and wife become more and more similar over the years, every day I find empirical evidence leading me to believe it.

The elderly couple turn around—they must have picked up on my scent—and nod their heads at me, a friendly how-do-you-do that we dinos occasionally give to others of our kind like a classic car owner honking at a fellow enthusiast who’s also driving by in a 1973 Mustang Fastback. But then they see Sarah—and then they smell Sarah, or, more correctly, then they
don’t
smell Sarah—and the smiles fade, replaced instantly by grimaces of revulsion.

She’s a witness!
I want to scream,
Maybe a friend, but nothing more!
Then again, I don’t want to protest too much.

“The line is long,” I say, searching for something, anything to break the silence.

“Sure is,” says Sarah. “If we wait for our drinks, we probably won’t make it back to the theater in time to catch the beginning of the second act.”

“Yeah. Yeah. Wouldn’t want to miss that.”

“So you like it?” she asks, seductively twisting her skirt with a petite fist.

“The show? Of course. He’s a man, he’s an animal … he’s a Manimal. How can you miss?”

“Ah.” She seems disappointed.

“You?”

“Oh, sure. Sure. I mean, what’s not to like, right? You’ve got leopards, and …”

“And tigers,” I chime in.

“Right. And tigers.”

We’re lying. Both of us. And we both know it.

Giggling, we run hand in hand across the lobby, down the stairs, and out of the Prince Edward like two schoolchildren playing hooky for the very first time.

•  •  •

An hour later we’re still chuckling away, the most infectious part of the laughter having died out fifteen minutes ago. For a while there we were in trouble, one giggling jag setting off the fuse of another, neither of us able to control ourselves long enough to order from the menu at a small Greek tavern we found near the theater. Eventually, I was forced to bite my tongue, cutting off the laughter but nearly replacing it with tears and a trip to the hospital—one of my caps had come loose, and my naturally spiked tooth jammed into my tongue with a force I wasn’t expecting. Fortunately, I was able to fake a bathroom emergency, fix my tooth, ensure that my tongue wasn’t going to flop out of my mouth and onto Sarah’s lap during the course of dinner, and make it back to the table in time for a second run at the menu. Now we wait, we talk, and we drink.

“No, no—” Sarah takes a sip of her wine, her lips leaving a precious red imprint on the glass, “it’s not that. I can see where
someone
would like it.”

“But not you.”

“Not me. Anthropomorphism is nice and all—”

“Big word, ma’am—”

“—but it’s hard for me to accept a whole society populated by humanoid felines, operating under some obscure self-imposed rules, running around undetected by the rest of us.”

“Not realistic?”

“No, not entertaining.”

Our appetizers arrive, and we nibble on hummus,
tzatziki
, and
tarama
, lapping up the dip with wide slabs of pita. Our waiter is as Greek as they come—for this Halloween eve, he has dressed as Zorba in an open-backed vest—and he reads off the day’s specials with gusto, each word a meal unto itself. Sarah asks for help with her selection, and I suggest the Greek Platter, figuring I can always pick at whatever she isn’t able to eat.

I even go so far as to gingerly pick as much basil and dill from my portions as possible, the action almost automatic, fork dipping and removing before I have a chance to regulate the movement. Whatever we’re doing now—Sarah and me—somehow feels right, and this is the first time in a long time that I don’t feel the need to chew an
herb. For her part, Sarah asks for my helpings of basil to be added to her plate, and since it won’t affect her like it would me, I’m glad to oblige.

Squinting into the dim light of the restaurant, Sarah carefully scrutinizes my face, her forehead rumpling into precious little foothills. Her eyes roam my features, dropping around my nose, my lips, my chin.

“Do I have food on my face?” I say, suddenly self-conscious. I rapidly wipe my chin and lips with my napkin, flicking the cloth around and around, hoping to soak up whatever Greek delicacy has managed to moonlight as a facial.

“It’s not that,” she giggles. “It’s … I mean … the mustache.”

“You don’t like it?”

Sarah must see my injured look, as she comes back quickly with, “No, no, I like it! I do! It’s just that when I saw you … what, last night … you were clean shaven.”

I have no response to this. Costume additions are usually meant to be attached step-by-step in order to give the impression of a natural process—the Nanjutsu Pectoral series, which I considered buying during my vainglorious years, for example, must be slowly built up over a series of months—but mustaches, as far as I know, have always been a one-day journey into machismo.

“It’s fake, right?”

“Of course not!” I reply indignantly. “It’s just as real as the rest of my body.”

Sarah, giggling again, impulsively leans forward and tugs hard on my facial hair. This wouldn’t usually hurt, but the light layer of epoxy beneath my mask transfers her yank to my hide beneath, and my “Ouch!” is genuine.

Embarrassed, abashed, Sarah turns away, melting into a sanguine flush. “I’m so sorry,” she says. “I really thought …”

“We grow hair fast in my family,” I say, trying to bring our previous light soufflé tone back into the conversation. “My mother was a terrier.”

Sarah laughs at this, and I am pleased to see her chagrin get up and excuse itself from the table. “If you don’t like it,” I continue, “I can shave it off.”

“Really, I like it. Promise.” She crosses her heart with a slim finger.

We eat some more. We drink some more. We chat.

“How is the case going?” she asks, refilling her wine glass as she talks.

“Is this a business dinner?”

“Not if you don’t want it to be.”

Is this a come-on? I play it safe. “No, no, it’s fine. Case still wide open. Leads, leads, leads, that’s the PI’s life. Put it together, hit frappe, and see what spins out.”

Sarah finishes off the bottle of wine—good god, can she drink—and orders up another. “You still haven’t interviewed me yet,” she points out. “Not really.”

“It’s not polite to grill your date.”

“Is this a date?” she asks.

“Not if you don’t want it to be.”

We smile at the same time, and Sarah leans across the table and pecks me on the forehead. She leans back, dress clinging tightly to her bosom. Soft swells of flesh rise up from the neckline, nipples standing at attention, and I find a strange desire to … to touch them? Impossible. I think of the pile of bills waiting for me back in Los Angeles, and the illicit thoughts burst apart and vanish.

“I’d rather we get down to it now,” she continues. “Ask me what you need to ask me. I don’t want you thinking things about me that aren’t true or not thinking things about me that are true.”

“You know my case is about Mr. McBride. Raymond. It’s not—not really—but close enough.”

“I know.”

“And you feel comfortable talking about him?” Usually I could give a shit over how witnesses feel—I think of that annoying Compy, Suarez, and my stomach turns in knots—but I allow myself a few special dispensations now and again.

“Ask away,” says Sarah. The waiter pops over with a second bottle of wine, and Sarah doesn’t bother inspecting the label, sniffing the cork, or tasting the sample before bolting it down by the glassful.

With no notebook handy, I’ll have to make do with memory. “How long had you known Mr. McBride? Before …”

She appears to think it over. Then—“A few years. Two, maybe three.”

“And you met … how?”

A wistful look clouds her eyes and her fingers crawl aimlessly about her neckline, drawing my attention down, down, down …“At that charity event,” she says. “In the country.”

“Which country?”

“The country. As in the countryside. Long Island, I think, maybe Connecticut.”

Doesn’t matter. “And Raymond was hosting?”

“He and his … wife”—again, some serious animosity there, the words scorching the surrounding air—“were throwing it at their second home.”

The questions come quicker, easier, fluttering off my slightly damaged tongue. “Why were you there?”

“My agent took me. It was a charity event. I was being charitable.”

“But you don’t remember the charity.”

“Correct.” She clumsily places a finger on her nose with one hand and points at me with the other. Drunkard move, but cute.

“Fine. So there you are hobnobbing with the rich and famous—”

“Mostly rich. I don’t think I saw anyone all that famous.”

“Just a phrase. So you meet Raymond that night …”

“Daytime,” she corrects, and now I’m oh for two. “It was a long affair, if I remember correctly. I arrived in the early afternoon, and didn’t leave until the next day. Everyone stayed over at the house.”