Certain lives are preferable to others. If you have any choice at all, be the maharaja. Even better, be the maharaja’s second son: none of the responsibilities, but semi-clad women still feed you grapes. Or a fashion model who goes back to school and becomes an astronaut. The world would be intimidated of you both sexually and intellectually; that’s the best of both worlds right there. The patrician life is not morally superior to the that of the pleb, but Christ it’s a lot easier.

This applies to cats, as well. Street cats got their freedom, but all cats got their freedom because freedom’s just another word for violently demanding one’s independence. House cat’s just as liberated as a street cat, but a lot warmer in the winter and drier in the rain. Not to mention the food. The only thing finer than being a well-off house cat was being a bookstore cat.

A bookstore had everything a cat needed: shelves, and books to push off the shelves, and high vantages and low blinds, and sunbeams scoped and searched across the floor like high-security laser beams in a heist film; there was always a toasty corner. People, too. Preoccupied and side-stepping down the aisles with their heads lolled to the side: what fun it was to sit frozen until they were in range, claw at their ankles, bat at their noses THWOPTHWOPTHWOP and make them go running. And the mice. O, the mice. They’re fubsy, cats are, until you watch one with a mouse.

If a dog weighed 500 pounds, it would still be your friend; if a cat weighed 500 pounds, it would be a tiger.

This particular bookstore cat was a black-and-gray tortoiseshell that didn’t have a name, which didn’t stop customers from calling her all sorts of things. She was Lovey to Mrs. Dalrymple, who came in for romance novels, and Chief to Mr. Cranworth, who liked military history; most of the students from Harper College called her Dude. She didn’t answer to any of them.

“How can she not have a name?”

“The same way she doesn’t have a savings account: she is a cat.”

Mr. Venable was in his customary seat in the bookstore with no title trying to read Kill Me Like You Did Before by Crenshaw Walls. His feet were on the mess-covered table he used as a desk, and he was leaning back in his green-upholstered chair that only had a little bit of duct tape holding its innards in place. Hard-boiled fiction: guns, dames, unexpected corpses, wealthy old bastards, ingenues, The Los Angeles that never used to be. Sentences so short and punchy they made Hemingway look like E.L. Doctorow. He was having trouble keeping his double-crosses straight, and Augusta O. Incandescente-Ponui, whom everyone called Gussy, was not helping his concentration.

“It’s animal cruelty.”

“Ludicrous.”

“Everyone has a right to a name.”

“Bosh. Next, you’ll say everyone has a right to vote. Why are you pestering me?”

Gussy was neatening the tables. There were two, square, eight on a side, covered with stacks of books. Varying heights; they looked like topographical maps of great twin cities with no parks. They were always themed, and rarely just fiction and non. Boring, Mr. Venable thought. One table written by colonizers and the other by the colonized. Men and women. Straight and gay. (Although he was thinking about discontinuing the last one, as it always started arguments, mostly because he would always stick Mark Twain on the gay table.) This month was heroes and villains.

“Why is there a Churchill biography on the villain table?”

“Ask the Bengalis.”

“Okay, but why is there a different Churchill bio on the hero table?”

“Ask the British.”

“Are you going to be like this all day?”

“Ask your tee-shirt.”

Gussy was wearing a light-blue Downsider tee-shirt. There he was, all nine black and leathery feet of him and already slightly flaking around the edges of the cheap silk-screen. It was the image from the front page of the Cenotaph with the ripped-from-the-ground park bench above his head. Half of the neighborhood were wearing the shirts, and the other half was selling them, along with genuine Downsider masks, capes, whomping staves, and flamethrowers. (No one had yet seen the Downsider wield a flamethrower, but the large gentlemen that hung out at Cagliostro’s had recently come into possession of a truckload of the fiery weapons and, looking for a way to get rid of them, had slapped some hastily-made stickers which read DOWSIDER [sic] on the side. They sold like really, really hot cakes.) You could also buy your kid an action figure that almost sort of mostly looked like him (five bucks) or a limited-edition articulated sculpture for collectors (fifteen, and it was exactly the same product as the action figure but it came in a cardboard box).

She gathered up the fabric around the cloaked face, made it into a cotton (supposedly) mouth, addressed her the vigilante on her chest.

“Is Grumpypants gonne be grumpy all day?”

Then, affecting a deep and growly voice, said,

“Probably. Should I hit him with this bench?”

Back to her usual timbre.

“Oh, God, would you?”

Deep and growly.

“In the head?”

Normal.

“Absolutely. But don’t neglect the body. Work the body.”

“Both of you are fired,” Mr. Venable said

Gussy went back to the stacks on the tables. She had straightened them twice that morning, and no one had come in, but they were still out-of-kilter. She suspected Mr. Venable was doing it while she wasn’t looking, but then remembered that the Tedious Books About Baseball section had followed her home and asked her out the other night. Best not to throw around accusations too quickly in a magickal bookstore.

(The shop had its own categorization system that some would define as “needlessly ultra-specific” and Mr. Venable would define as “that’s where the books go.” There was a whole annex dedicated to Sports; it was subdivided into Sports, Normal; Sports, Foreign; Sports, Unpleasant; and Sports, Unpracticed. The section on baseball was bifurcated into Tolerable Books About Baseball and Tedious Books About Baseball, and contained shelves marked Biographies, True; Biographies, Al Stump; Brothers, Alou; and The Ones With All The Math.)

“He literally saved us from a mugger,” she said

“Muggings are the price you pay for sidewalks. He beat that boy half to death.”

“Beat that criminal half to death.”

“We’re all criminals. Ask the Pulaski.”

“They lived right here. Right under us,” Iffy Bould said. “The village, I mean. They lived in tepees, but they didn’t call ’em tepees. Botchas or something. But, you know: cone-shaped. The rest of the neighborhood was valley and woods and nature and shit. But where you’re standing? That’s where they slept.”

“Shouldn’t it be a historical site or something?”

“Probably, but someone built a newspaper building on top of it. Hit that light, wouldja?

Lolly Tangiers had on a Downsider tee-shirt, too, but hers was hidden under a red western-style blouse that had white piping outlining the seams. When she first saw the shirts popping up on chests, she was pissed at the theft. It was her picture, goddammit; she had taken the shot emblazoned across half the tits and pecs in Little Aleppo and surely she was entitled to some sort of royalty, but couldn’t quite figure out who to send the invoice to. In the meanwhile, she bought herself a shirt. Might as well be proud if paid is out of the question, she thought.

The light switch was a lever, ten inches long and naked metal that went CHANK when you wrestled it upwards; the lights went on TAK TAK TAK plosh (the lightbulb blew) TAK in the Cenotaph’s basement where the archives were kept.

“Jesus,” she said.

“Never been down here before?”

The room was three times the size of the building above, maybe more, and it thrummed because the printing presses were spitting out that weekend’s circular. Rickety metal shelving in just-about-straight lines. Ladder in the corner. Tables with lamps lining the walls, but not enough chairs. Cigarette butts on the bare concrete floor. Cardboard boxes and the stink of Sharpie marker. The temperature was at the outer boundary of chilly: two degrees or so less and it would be cold.

“It’s a bit spartan.”

“You were expecting reading chairs and foot massages?”

“Carpet,” Lolly said. “I was expecting carpet.”

“Your generation’s soft.”

Iffy walked away from her. He was duck-footed and had rolled the sleeves of his pale-yellow shirt up. Stopped at a row of shelves and called back,

“Read me that first date.”

Lolly took the reporter’s notebook from her back pocket, flipped it open.

“November or December of ’21.”

He walked down the aisle, and she scampered after. When she caught up with him, he was putting a Kool in his mouth; she snatched it away.

“We’re in a room full of old newspapers with only one exit.”

His jaw was on his chest, eyes fiery.

“You’re shitting me.”

She chucked her chin out towards him.

“I don’t shit.”

“Do you wanna rephrase that?”

“No, I do not.”

Ever see a child who’s been separated from their parents smile upon their return? Huge and innocent and gleeful? Iffy’s smile was the opposite of that: tiny and cynical and vengeful. His lip moved a bit, that’s it, but it was big for Iffy. Lolly took the green soft pack from his shirt pocket, replaced the smoke, replaced the pack. Thought about patting it once or twice, but figured she shouldn’t press her luck.

“Never be afraid to chase a story into the bathroom,” he said, returning his attention to the shelved boxes. He grabbed one out, read the glyphs written in faded marker, snuffed disappointed air out his nostrils, slid the box back, went on to the next one. “People are more honest when they’re on the toilet. Maybe it’s the air on their balls.”

“You follow people you want to interview into the bathroom?”

“Sure, yeah. Better than that is to wait in the john for ’em. That way you can sabotage the toilet paper. Leave all the stalls with just the dregs of the roll. Not enough to  wipe your ass, but enough so that they don’t notice until it’s too late. Then you can trade answers for two-ply.”

“Is that ethical?”

“Depends on who’s in charge of the ethics committee. Ah, here we go.”

Iffy pulled a newspaper from the box; it was in a plastic bag like a giant leftover pork chop. Showed the front page to Lolly. 36-point headline.

WHO IS THE GENTLEMAN?

“I don’t know. Who?”

“You didn’t think this was the first time Little Aleppo had a costumed vigilante, did you?”

He tossed the sixty-year-old broadsheet to her, and Lolly held it up in the light so she could see through the almost-clear mylar. There was a blurry photo of a large man in a trenchcoat, hat, and gloves; eyes in shadows, but she could see something under the brim of the fedora.

“Is that one of those burglar masks?”

“Domino mask. Yeah, apparently.”

“Doesn’t really hide his identity.”

“Nah. Also, that was a Town Father. Guy named Leonard Locke. Everyone knew who he was pretty much the first day he started fighting crime. And by ‘fighting crime,’ I mostly mean beating up ethnics.”

“Why’d they call him the Gentleman?”

“He would leave his calling card. Said ‘Courtesy of the Gentleman.'”

“He who has a thing to sell, and goes and whispers in a well, is not as apt to make a dollar, as he who climbs a tree and hollers.”

Iffy half-turned, half-smiled.

“I think I read that on a sugar packet.”

“I know I did,” Lolly said. “What happened to him?”

“Got shot right in his little mask.”

“Domino mask.”

“Yeah. And that was the end of that.”

“Plep.”

“Off! You have an entire bookstore at your disposal! Why must you lie upon the page I’m trying to read?”

“Mlaaaaargh,” the tortoiseshell cat with no name complained; Mr. Venable swatted at her behind (lightly) and she did not stir for just long enough to let him know that, when she did vacate her spot atop the opened hardcover, it was solely of her own free will. She padded across the table to Gussy, paused for scritchy-scratches right above her eyebrows, leapt silently to the floor and off into the rows of books.

“She knows what she’s doing.”

“Someone in here should,” Gussy said.

“May I continue?”

“Please.”

“After the Gentleman was a sizable gap. Everyone was having too much fun in the Twenties, and too broke in the Thirties for any sort of extra-lawful heroics. Luckily, along came the Forties.”

“No one’s ever said that about that decade.”

“The Second World War Two was one of the very best things to ever happen to Little Aleppo, First of all, the neighborhood was at no time located in Europe or Asia.”

“Good decision.”

“None better has been made! Always keep at least an ocean in between yourself and a war. If you can keep an ocean and an entire continent, all the safer. There are hundreds of neighborhoods which made the poor choice to be located in Berlin or Nanking, and look what happened to them. Shoddy planning is what that is.”

Gussy rolled her eyes and sipped her terrible coffee from a white mug that read HARPER ZOO: WHERE ANIMALS ARE. There was a cartoon under the logo of an elephant with a dog riding atop her head.

“Second of all, the harbor. This is one of the spots on the West Coast from which the war effort shipped itself towards Japan. Cargo and men. Both issued forth from the Salt Wharf, and both were taxed quite viciously.”

“That’s not very patriotic.”

Now he sipped his terrible coffee from a blue mug with HARPER OBSERVATORY: WHERE THE STARS SHINE etched above a drawing of the Observatory, which was the exact shape of the White House, but bigger and with a giant telescope sticking out from where the Truman Balcony should be.

“The business of America is business, Gussy.”

“Is there a guy in a costume punching criminals or not?”

He turned the page of the folio-sized book on the table in front of them. It was a special collection the Cenotaph had done in 1981 with every single front page going back to the 1850’s, one after the other, in living black-and-white. Only 100 were printed, and Mr. Venable had around two dozen of them in various sections all around the shop. (One was in History and one was in Fancy Reprintings and one was in Will Not Fit In Your Bookcase and so on.)

THE ADMIRAL OF ALEPPO
STRIKES AGAIN!

Another blurry photo, another large man in a costume: Navy whites, with the Gilligan hat and the scarf that made it seem a musical number was about to break out. And a domino mask.

“Not as good as the Gentleman.”

“Mm.”

“Name’s awful, bad outfit.”

“But he was a patriot, Gus. We were at war with the Japanese, and so the Admiral of Aleppo would go to Chinatown and beat people up.”

“China and Japan are two entirely diff–”

“Best not to think too deeply about it. The past was so much stupider than you can ever imagine. Besides, all the Japanese in the neighborhood had been interned by then.”

“Best not to think too deeply about it.”

He held up his mug and she clinked hers against it.

“He lasted longer than the Gentleman, at any rate. Almost the whole war.”

“What happened to him?”

“No one knows for certain, but multiple vaguely-reputable accounts have him accosting a group of men he believed to be Japanese spies who were actually members of the 442nd Infantry. That would be the Nisei Division, and those men took remarkably little shit.”

“They ever find the Admiral?”

“Not a single scrap.”

Gussy scooched Mr. Venable out of the way with her hip; the wheels of his chair squeaked on the wooden floor. She peered.

“You can see his whole face.”

“Mm. Sanford Stone. Professor over at Harper. You’ll never guess what he taught.”

“Law?”

“Huh. You guessed. Gussy, you are much more intelligent than you look, I must admit.”

She slapped her hip against the arm of the chair and he went sliding away several feet.

“I don’t suppose that’s it?”

“Have you ever known Little Aleppians to only try a bad idea twice?”

“If…wait…if everyone knew who these guys were, then why didn’t they do anything about it?”

“They always skedaddled before the cops got there,” Iffy answered. “There wasn’t any forensic evidence or any of that crap back then, so the cops would have to catch them red-handed and they didn’t seem interested. Maybe if they were punching rich people. But, you know, the guys denied it. Here it is.”

Iffy and Lolly were surrounded by boxes marked 1968 and it was very cool in the basement of the Braunce Building. It was the sort of space that seemed to require a keeper, but they were alone to sort through the loose archives and on the honor system when it came to returning their finds to their proper position. Newspapers only make sense in order. They’re not like novels; you can’t mix up all the stories because you feel like being an artist. He pulled a box from the shelf, opened it, extracted a paper.

Lolly took it from him, read out loud.

The Silent Majority Makes
Himself Heard!

“That’s terrible,” she said.

“The headline? Yeah. Goose wouldn’t let that go out.”

Lolly scanned the first few grafs of the lead story.

“He beats up hippies?”

“And negroes.”

In the artwork on the front page of the two-decade old Cenotaph, The Silent Majority was wearing a gray flannel suit and Trilby, with the inevitable domino mask.

“He looks familiar.”

“It’s Trusted Meese.”

“From the news?”

She squinted in real close.

“Holy shit, it’s the guy from the news. What the fuck?”

“Eh. No one really knows. He was going through a divorce. He only kept it up for a year. He quit because he hurt his knee. Or he started dating again. One of those.”

“But everyone knew who it was?”

“Yeah.”

“Did we print the story?”

“No.”

“Why the fuck not?”

Iffy blinked twice, three times at her; he wanted to light a cigarette but knew that she would yank the butt from his hand again, and he could not take that, so he just ran his fingers through his gray hair.

“C’mere,” he said, and plunged into the basement. Walking quickly and duck-footed, the days flitting past him, headline after headline promising the world’s end and coupons for 20% off take-out orders at Cagliostro’s. When they got to the northwest corner of the room, he stopped and so did she. There were no shelves and no boxes and no stories and no bylines, just a blank patch of ground that was a different shade of slate than the rest of the concrete flooring.

“See that? For years, everyone in the neighborhood knew that this building was on top of the old Pulaski village. Everyone knew. But we never printed the story. You know why?”

“No.”

“No facts. No evidence. So one day, the guy who taught me everything I know, guy named Ronkowicz, he comes down here real late at night with some archaeology students from Harper and a jackhammer. Didn’t have to dig down too far. Found the remains of the hotchas, or watchas, or whatever they were called. And then–then–he wrote the story. You understand what I’m saying?”

“Yeah.”

“Just because something’s true doesn’t mean you can print it.”

They walked up the two flights to the newsroom in silence, and as they entered the buzzing floor she said,

“What do we need all these papers for?”

“You’re gonna write up a local history of these idiots. Put the new one in context.”

Lolly’s ears reddened and she said,

“I’m gonna write it?”

“Yeah. Your first byline?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Don’t fuck it up. You got an hour.”

But the buzzing was odd, not the usual clackety racket–in fact, there was no typing at all–but a gargling gladhanding and cheery nonsense spouted through forced smiles; it was happy, too happy. Iffy and Lolly searched the newsroom for the cause of the glitch and there he was: Shit Salad. He was standing twenty feet from them with a crowd around him.

“Who’s that?”

“Your boss,” he said. “Little Big Pete Braunce III, owner of the Cenotaph. Also known as Shit Salad, but not to his face,”

“Why is he called that?”

“Dumb as shit salad, and just as unwelcome.”

“Uh-huh. Big guy.”

“Yeah.”

“I mean, enormous. Notably large.”

“Right, yeah. Big boy.”

“Hell of a chin.”

“I guess, sure.”

Iffy pulled his soft pack of Kools from his shirt pocket and did not look at Lolly at all, just straight at Shit Salad. He sucked a smoke from the pack with just his lips and dug around in his pants for his matches.

“Can you see his knuckles?”

He found the matches, peeled one off, lit it FFT.

“Yeah, I can see his…”

Shit Salad’s knuckles were bruised and cut up as though he had been in a fight or several.

Iffy’s cigarette dangled from his mouth and the lit match floated halfway to its target.

“Shit.”

“Shit Salad,” Lolly answered.

Iffy’s match finally resumed its journey and reached its destination PHWOO he shook it out, and tossed it in the general direction of an ashtray on the desk next to him as the headlines went around and around in circles even though the rules said they could only march in straight lines in Little Aleppo, which is a neighborhood in America.