CoffeeHouse Angel

  "Unbelievable."

  "Is it dead?"

  "Where'd they find it?"

  Finally we reached the front windows. Grandma Anna stood inside, wringing her hands. Her apron had come untied. Other than that, she looked unhurt and very much alive. With a huge sigh of relief, my heart stopped its wild dance and my legs stopped shaking. I grabbed the doorknob, but the door was locked, the closed sign faced out.

  "Grandma?"

  "Don't let any of those people in," she said after cautiously opening the door.

  Elizabeth and I slipped inside. Grandma Anna locked the door after us. "What's going on?" I asked. Irmgaard stood behind the counter, clutching our big carving knife as if preparing to defend herself.

  "What's that smell?" Elizabeth plugged her nose. A stench, a bit like sewage, a bit like a wet dog, polluted the room.

  "It's the cat," Grandma Anna said.

  "The cat?" I went into panic mode again. Add to my checklist under talents: Panics Easily. "What happened to Ratcatcher?"

  My grandmother pointed. I gasped. Elizabeth gasped. Ratcatcher lay at the base of the picture window, stretched out in all her black-and-white glory. She turned her chubby chin up and meowed a greeting.

  "Oh. My. God." Elizabeth grabbed my arm. "What is she lying on?"

  "That's a wharf rat," Ingvar said from the corner table. "Wharf rats can grow to three feet in Norway. Never seen one that big, though."

  A stiff black rat body lay on the floor, its long rubbery tail stretched to the wall. Its mouth had frozen in a grimace, its limp tongue hung over a row of sharp teeth.

  Ratcatcher stretched across the rat's midsection, purring like a proud lioness.

  "Ratcatcher actually caught a rat?" I couldn't believe it. For a moment I felt proud of the old girl. Then I thought I might barf. Rats give me the creeps. I don't even want to touch them in a pet store, and those are the little ones. This rat was so big it could have been my dance partner.

  "Caught it and killed it," Lars said, jabbing his cane in the air. "Look at it. I'm guessing it's a forty-pounder."

  "I'm guessing it'll get into that book of world records," Ingvar said. "That cat's going to be famous."

  Elizabeth pulled me aside. "Where'd Malcolm go?" she whispered. "We've got to find him."

  "Why?"

  "Look at what your cat did. Look at all those people." She squeezed my arm. "Don't you see what's happening? Fame."

  "It wasn't the bean," I told her.

  "Of course it was the bean." She bounced on her toes, her boobs nearly knocking me over. "Don't you get it? Those beans actually work. This is like a fairy tale. We've got to find him and get another one." She stopped bouncing. "Oh crud, I've got to get back for my last class because we have a quiz. If I flunk one more quiz, my dad is going to take away the car. And then I have to go to my mom's stupid holiday work party.

  Double crud. I'll call you as soon as I can." She started to leave, then came back and whispered, "If you get another bean, don't you even think about eating it without me."

  Over the next few hours I learned a lot about rats. Never, according to a Nordby News reporter, had a rat that size been found in Nordby or anyplace in the entire world.

  Some museum in the Midwest owned a prehistoric rat skeleton, from the days when rats had shared caves with saber-toothed tigers. According to the Guinness Book of World Records, the largest modern-day rat ever found was a Gambian pouch rat, but it was much smaller than this rat. Our rat. The rat found in Anna's Old World Scandinavian Coffeehouse.

  My pastry-loving kitty cat had brought home the World's Largest Rat.

  My awe was short-lived. While catching a beaver-sized rat was great for newspaper sales, catching it inside an establishment that serves food and beverages was not so great for that establishment's sales. It was bad. Real bad.

  With no curtains to draw or blinds to pull, we had to endure the onlookers. A menagerie of faces continued to press against the picture window--eager, fascinated, disgusted faces. Mr. Darling's face appeared. He smiled, then started talking to Officer Larsen. "Go out there, Katrina, and see what that horrid man is saying," my grandmother said.

  Cold air cleared the rat's stench from my nostrils as I stepped outside. Mr. Darling spoke to Officer Larsen in a voice that reached the edges of the crowd. "The Health Department needs to be notified. Rats carry all sorts of communicable diseases--

  plague, botulism, mad cow disease."

  "That place must be filthy," a local said.

  "I'd never eat in there," her friend said.

  You don't eat in there anyway, I wanted to say. You lousy traitors. You turned your backs on us the minute Java Heaven moved in. But instead I said, "It's not filthy. We don't know how the rat got inside." They shook their heads, burning holes through me with their disapproving glares.

  Could I blame them? I'd be a bit hesitant to buy sandwiches at the home of the World's Largest Rat. Nothing worse than finding one of those wiry black hairs sticking to a tomato slice, or a rat footprint on your bread, or a rat turd floating in your soup. A beaver-sized rat makes a cockroach infestation seem like a walk through one of those butterfly gardens.

  "Anna's is clean," I pleaded. "Very, very, very clean. There's no reason to--"

  "Officer Larsen," Mr. Darling interrupted. "I insist that you close Anna's Coffeehouse before someone gets sick."

  "No one's going to get sick," I said, but nobody was listening because Mr. Darling had started to pass out Java Heaven coupons.

  "Come try our newest drink, the Vincent Mocha, in honor of our hometown hero." He beamed the most joyous smile I'd ever seen as he basked in our crisis. Just when he wanted to buy us out. How coincidental.

  I followed Officer Larsen into the coffeehouse and he delivered the bad news to my grandmother. "I'm sorry, Anna, but I'm going to have to call the Health Department."

  "Don't be such a nincompoop," Lars hissed at his son.

  "Dad, I'm just doing my job."

  "Why do you have to call the Health Department? That rat didn't live in here,"

  Grandma Anna said, her face turning blotchy. Irmgaard shook her head furiously.

  "See, Irmgaard is my witness. No rats in here. There's never been a rat in here."

  "She caught it outside," I lied, "then brought it in."

  "Now, Katrina, there's no need to fib," Officer Larsen said. "I know you don't let your cat outside." He rubbed the back of his neck. "I'm sorry, Anna, but I have to call the Health Department. Besides, if I don't, Mr. Darling will. He's got everyone riled up about communicable diseases."

  "There are no diseases in my coffeehouse. Ask The Boys. They've been coming here for twenty years. Have they ever caught a disease?"

  Ingvar fiddled with his pipe. "I got nothing to report."

  Ralph sipped his coffee. "Doctor says I got acid reflux disease."

  Odin moved a game piece. "You don't get that from a rat."

  I cleared my throat. "I think Mr. Darling put the rat in here."

  My grandmother turned her worried face up at me. "Katrina? What are you saying?"

  "He must have put that rat in here. It makes perfect sense. He wants us to close down and move."

  "That's a serious accusation. Do you have any evidence?" Officer Larsen asked.

  "No. But who else would have done this?" I searched the faces of everyone in the room, but no one nodded or backed me up.

  The Nordby News photographer pressed his camera against the window and a flash of light lit up the shop. Officer Larsen made his phone call. After the call he told us not to move the rat. He hung yellow tape around, as if it were some sort of murder scene.

  "Someone from the Health Department will be here tomorrow. In the meantime, call me if you need anything. Dad, I'll pick you up later." Then he left. The Boys bade their good-byes and wandered to the pub. Evening, brittle with cold, crept down Main Street and the nosey onlookers drifted off.

  "I can't stand looking at that thing," my grandmother sai
d. She threw a towel over the carcass. Ratcatcher peeked out from under the towel, purring louder as Grandma collapsed into a chair. Irmgaard rushed over with a cup of coffee. "Put a little rum in it, will you please?"

  As I stared at the long rubbery tail, my suspicion of Mr. Darling grew. How else could this have happened? He could have bought the rat from a circus. How could I prove that he was behind this? Can a rat be dusted for fingerprints?

  Irmgaard started tidying in kitchen. "Why bother?" my grandmother asked. "Did you see the looks on their faces? No one will ever set foot in here again. Over forty years in this town." She took a long sip of her coffee, then sighed. "Go on home, Irmgaard.

  Take tomorrow off. I'll call you and let you know what the Health Department says."

  After a long hug, Irmgaard left. I sat across from my grandmother. Surrounded by Ratcatcher's purring and the rat's stink, we sat for a long time, stunned. What had been most important to me that morning--Vincent's betrayal-- seemed totally unimportant.

  We had a bigger rat to deal with. "Don't you think that Mr. Darling did this?"

  Grandma Anna frowned. "You shouldn't say things like that, Katrina. He may be arrogant and a bit of a bully, but putting a rat in our shop would be below even his standards. I just can't believe he'd be capable of such cruelty. It's just bad luck, sweetie. Either that or..." She looked at the ceiling. "Or someone up there is trying to tell us something."

  Eighteen

  My grandmother didn't sleep much that Friday night. Neither did I. I kept thinking that the mutant rat might have some mutant friends with revenge on their minds. I swear that at one point during the night, something walked across my legs. The night-light stayed on after that.

  They say it's always darkest just before the dawn. Here's how dark it got.

  Saturday morning's headline in the Nordby News read: Ratcatcher, the Coffeehouse Cat, Catches World's Biggest Rat.

  Thanks to the wonders of technology, that article spread all over the world with the click of a Send icon. Isn't that great? Readers in London and Cairo shivered when they read that a rat with a six-foot tail had been sleeping in our pantry. Of course there was no proof that it had been sleeping in our pantry, but an unnamed owner of a certain organic coffeehouse speculated that it had been sleeping there.

  Readers in Paris and Moscow squirmed when they read that a rat with feet the size of a St. Bernard had been scurrying all over our counters. Readers in Monte Carlo and Stockholm gagged when they read that a rat with droppings the size of peanut M&M'S had been lounging on the tables, probably licking the salt shakers. Again, speculation provided by an unnamed source.

  Ratcatcher's kill launched all sorts of editorials about rats and disease. Did you know that it only takes a single flea from a rat's back to start an outbreak of bubonic plague?

  Stores worldwide ran out of rat poison. One ginormous rat meant that there might be other ginormous rats lying in wait to conquer the world. Some environmentalists blamed the rat's size on pollutants. An unnamed source blamed its size on an endless diet of krumkake and sardine sandwiches--weird Old World food that no one should be eating in the first place.

  I wanted to dump sardines right on Mr. Unnamed Source's head.

  When television stations picked up the story, the focus turned from issues of health to Ratcatcher herself. Her cute, chubby face, a welcome contrast to the gruesome death clench of the rat, was plastered everywhere. "Can we interview her?" a CNN reporter asked.

  "She's a cat," I said.

  "We'd love to interview her. Can we set up a time? Is she sensitive to bright lights?

  Has she ever used a microphone? Does she have an agent?"

  "She's a cat."

  Grandma and I hid upstairs. Since we didn't usually have Saturdays off, we weren't really sure what to do with ourselves. We ate some scrambled eggs and puttered around. I couldn't focus on homework. I wanted to call Vincent but didn't. Anyway, he should have called to say he was sorry.

  But what if he wasn't sorry? What if he had meant those mean words? I was just this bothersome friend without a life and our friendship had run its course. He had moved on to better and prettier things. I missed him terribly. Being accused of spreading bubonic plague would have felt a lot less horrid with Vincent by my side.

  "What's this?" I asked, picking up a brochure that lay on the table.

  "Mr. Darling sent that over." She waved it away in disgust. "He bought one of the units for his mother. Poor woman."

  The brochure was for Retirement Universe, a sprawl of pink and yellow cottages in South Florida. Each cottage looked exactly the same, and so did the residents with their silver hair and leathery bronzed skin. Couples dressed in plaid shorts and polo shirts rode golf carts and laughed as if they were having the time of their lives. I'd never seen my grandmother in shorts. Face would probably retire in a place like that.

  "So much sun isn't good for a person," Grandma Anna said. She glanced at the wall clock, then drummed her fingers on the table. "I wish the Health Department would show up and take that horrid thing away so we can get on with our lives."

  "Grandma, what if they close us down?"

  She rubbed her tired eyes. "I don't know."

  "How bad are things? I mean, how much money do you owe?"

  She took her dish to the sink. "You know I don't like to talk about money."

  "But we have to talk about it. It's obviously a problem. I've seen the bills downstairs."

  She didn't say anything. She leaned against the counter.

  "Do you think that maybe we should go ahead and accept Mr. Darling's offer?" I hated to ask, but it was the obvious, though repulsive, solution.

  Her shoulders stiffened. "I'd rather take money from the devil." Then her shoulders sagged as if her courageous facade had become too heavy to wear. "But we may have to." At that moment, her voice soft, her eyes weary, she seemed older than her seventy years. I'd gotten used to her slower movements, to the growing number of pills on the bathroom counter and to the more frequent naps. But then and there her vulnerability hit me hard. She was the adult. She was my family. Her vulnerability was my vulnerability.

  Late Saturday morning, Ratcatcher finally abandoned her kill. After chowing down a piece of coffeecake, she retreated to my bedroom and fell asleep in my laundry basket, bored with the whole rat thing. To the disappointment of the gawkers who continued to gather outside the window, we kept the towel over the carcass. As ordered, we didn't touch the stupid yellow crime tape.

  Elizabeth called a hundred times that morning to shriek about how famous my cat was and to ask if I had seen Malcolm. I hadn't seen Malcolm, but then again, I hadn't left the building since the rat incident. Vincent never called. Turned out the swim team was away in Eastern Washington for a weekend meet. I know for a fact that there are newspapers in Eastern Washington. Surely he had heard about our disaster. Guess he was still pissed about my story in World Mythology class--about my calling him a traitor. But I couldn't forget his comment. I had a life. It was falling apart, but it was mine.

  The Health Department official arrived in the afternoon. Every time we asked a question he said, "I can't answer that question until I've run a full inspection."

  "But what if someone else put the rat in here on purpose?" I asked. "Isn't that against the law?"

  "I can't answer that question until I've run a full inspection."

  "But doesn't this seem strange? Rats don't grow this big in Nordby."

  "I can't answer that question until I've run a full inspection."

  He got real snippy about the towel. He picked it up with a pair of tongs and stuck it into a garbage bag. His thick greasy hair was coated with some kind of gel. Who does that? And he kept a puckered expression on his face as if everything displeased him.

  "A rat this size is nothing to mess around with," he said, taking out a gas mask.

  "I didn't mess around with it," Grandma Anna told him. "I just didn't want to look at it."

  "Let's hope y
ou didn't mess with it." He held up the mask. "Bubonic spores and other contaminants can be carried through the air."

  Well, that's just great. Good to know, after we'd been breathing the air all night.

  He put on the mask, then a pair of gloves. I turned away as he stuffed the dead rat into another garbage bag. When he had packed up all his gear he said, "I'll be back on Wednesday at ten a.m. to conduct a full inspection. Until then, this place is closed."

  "What?" My grandmother spit the word. "I can't stay closed until Wednesday. I'm running a business."

  "That's the best I can do. I'm the only inspector for this area." He tacked a sign to the door. Closed by the Health Department Until Further Notice.

  "Do you have to put that there? People will think the worst," Grandma Anna said.

  "I'm afraid they already do," I mumbled.

  Mr. Health Inspector heaved the bagged rat over his shoulder. "Don't remove that sign or I'll fine you five hundred dollars. It's the law." He left.

  My grandmother called Officer Larsen. "A sign. Right on the door. You come over here and take it down. Right now....What do you mean you can't? My husband worked for the police department for thirty-five years. That ought to account for something." She slammed the receiver. "How can we survive if they won't let us stay open?" Then she called Irmgaard to tell her the bad news.

  I vacuumed the carpet for fifteen minutes straight, then sprayed some air freshener.

  As far as I could remember, the coffeehouse had never felt so gloomy. That yellow Health Department sign might as well have been neon, the way it glowed. Attention: Death Trap! Grandma retreated to her bedroom. She told me that she needed some time to herself. With an entire afternoon looming before me, I packed up my things and took the bus to Elizabeth's to do homework. I put on my grandfather's huge goose-down parka to protect me from the winter's cold and the coldness of judgmental stares.

  Millie was driving the bus that day. She asked about Malcolm. I told her I hadn't seen him. The bus hummed as it turned off Main Street and drove up Viking Way, past the school. The lady next to me worked her knitting needles.