For a second there Johnny thought he smelled the girl, the girl that had sent the cops after him, the girl that was at his home when he returned—which had been quite a shock when he'd just spent weeks trying to forget about her, put her out of his mind—the girl whose name turned out to be 'Faye' and who was now friends with his little sister. He thought he'd just caught a whiff of her girly smell... but it was gone now, he must have imagined it. It was the middle of the night, what would the girl be doing here?
He had a cage filled with rats by his side, and he was patiently waiting for Marlon (one of his ferrets) to come out from under the floor. He had already swept all the sawdust of the floor and tomorrow he would tell Tuto to put steel spring traps under each pile.
He sat listening with pricked ears, he didn't hear Marlon. He believed the ferret must have chased out all the rats by now, but maybe he had bitten one to death, and was nibbling on it—he shouldn't but this happened, Marlon was young and not fully trained. Or maybe a rat had bitten Marlon, this too happened. Usually rats ran, but if Marlon had cornered one it might put up a fight, and most rats were larger and heavier than a ferret, they could be vicious and ferrets could get killed. Johnny would give him another ten minutes, and then he'd have to crawl under the floor himself to have a look.
Damn! He heard the door of the large hall above him open. It didn't lock, there was nothing of value in this old cobwebbed paper mill. He turned off his flashlight. It might be a policeman. Someone might have seen him or the beam of his flashlight, here in the mill, or earlier in the house, and they might have thought him a burglar. It wouldn't be the first time. This was why old man Williams always notified the police where he had his man working, but sometimes he forgot. He was getting older every day. It had never been a big problem, most policemen knew him by now (calling him 'Johnny the Mutt' behind his back), and when a rookie took him in, things were quickly settled at the station.
But Johnny couldn't get caught now, he wasn't supposed to be in town. He quietly started packing up his stuff, when he heard a voice shyly say, "Hello? Anybody here?" This was no policeman.
She couldn't see a cussed thing in the dark! She should have brought a cussed flashlight! Maybe she should try the house again. She hadn't dared to ring the bell—would people still be home when a ratcatcher came? There was nobody here, were there other rooms? She wasn't going to go further, she might hit her head, fall in a hole in the ground, or whatever, break a leg and get eaten by rats. Just as she wanted to try and say 'hello?' one last time, a voice from the dark said, "Hello?" She screamed like a girl in a horror movie.
"Whoa, calm down, it's me, Johnny," and he turned on his flashlight, showing himself, looking very ghoulish, but everybody looked ghoulish turning a flashlight on themselves.
"Oh, hi," Faye said, and waved at him when he turned the flashlight on her. (Waving? Come on, she thought, what was she, the Queen of England?)
"I'm sorry, didn't mean to bother you, I know you're working, Tuto told me, that you would be working here, so I knew you were working here, and that I could find you here," she was blathering, "I'm Faye," she concluded.
"I know, Pearly told me about you," Johnny said. He could smell how very nervous she was, afraid even, and he tried to think how to set her at ease. He was nervous as well to be suddenly talking to her, and felt all sorts of things he couldn't quite categorize.
"Pearly, good old Pearly," she said, and laughed oddly. "Ahem, how is she? Pearly?"
"Pearly's fine, she—"
"I'm sorry!"
"—excuse me?"
"I'm sorry. That's why I'm here, that's what I came to tell you. Sorry for, you know, for putting you through, well... all of it."
"Oh, it wasn't that bad, really..."
"How bad was it?"
"Really, don't worry about it, it—"
"No, tell me what happened. I want to know what I'm apologizing for. I mean first of all—I thought a lot about this, you know?—first of all I'm apologizing for what could have happened. A worst case scenario, what could have happened to you, to your family, to your community of lemurians that sort of depend on you..." (She realized she was on a roll, the words came out smoothly—which might be because she couldn't see who she was talking to: it was very dark, Johnny had the flashlight pointed downwards, drawing a circle on the concrete floor between them, like a spotlight to step into. She could barely see his outline, but talking to the dark was very similar to practicing what she wanted to say with her eyes closed) "...but I'm also apologizing for what actually happened. I already apologized to Pearly, and I tried apologizing to your mother—"
"Ah, mother," the voice from the dark said, "she always says 'apologies are the currency of the incompetent.'"
"And I tried to mend some of the damage I'd done, you know, since Tuto told us you provided for your family, I tried to provide something, support them a bit by giving them food. Because I felt real guilty about it all. So I'd like to know what happened, it can't have been 'not that bad', as you say, because you looked terrible!"
"Thanks."
"Well, you did. You don't look terrible now..."
"Thanks," he said, "you don't look terrible either," turning the flashlight on her.
"Thanks," she said, squinting her eyes in the light. Oh god, she thought, they were flirting, weren't they?
"Let me get my stuff from the cellar. I was just finishing up anyway. I store my case at my boss's house, near the animal shelter. Walk with me, and I'll tell you my story."
"Okay, great!" Faye was glad, not too nervous anymore. She had finally said what she came to say and he clearly didn't hate her, and he seemed as nice as she hoped he'd be.
He gave her the flashlight, and said, "Follow me down."
"Do I have to light your way?" she asked.
"No, I can see fine, just mind your own step, it's a mess here."
