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certain wall. Three corpses, actually, if you count the ladies
done in by the monkey."
    I stopped writing in mid-sentence. The ink
made a spidery blotch on my paper.
    "It is none of my affair," I said.
    "Of course not, Eddy," said the raven.
    "Gessler supposes me some vengeful Montresor.
But I tell you, I am Fortunato ." I set my pen aside and
turned to face the bird. I could see him only where the firelight
danced feebly upon his beak and in the oily sheen of his feathers.
"It is my tongue that falls silent behind the suffocating
wall."
    "Not Burton's?"
    I felt a cold wrenching of my gut.
    "Burton is alive," I said, and turned back to
my work.
    "Still, someone is not."
    I ignored him and wrote until my eyes swam.
If Tap kept up his endless commentary, I let it dissolve into the
fabric of silence. I looked up when I heard his wings flutter.
Pluto was creeping in under the window frame.
    "Ah, here he is, fresh from the Night's
Plutonian shore!" Tap cried.
    The cat leapt from the window sill and padded
across the floor towards me. I braced myself for an attack, but the
creature merely jumped into my lap. He curled up and began purring.
I had to raise his head in my hand to see his missing eye to ensure
that it really was Pluto.
    "That's a nice kitty," Tap said. "I like him
better than the one that tries to kill me."
    "Shut up, Tap," I snapped, but without the
force I had intended. The deep melancholy that had threatened me
all day had finally descended upon me, brought on by Pluto's
uncharacteristic tenderness.
    "Aww..." Tap said, when he saw that I left
the cat where he lay, purring on my lap.
    "Tap, give me some peace. My sorrow
overwhelms me..." I muttered as I laid my head down on my desk.
    "So your father never loved you," Tap said.
"So what?"

 
     
     
     
     

Chapter
4

     
    When I opened my eyes, I felt as if I were
staring into the sun itself. I screwed them tight against the blaze
and immediately realized that cold air enveloped me. Tap's window,
I thought. Damn the bird! How could I continue to
accommodate the creature's comings and goings if it meant I must
freeze to death?
    I gradually opened my eyes and found to my
dismay that I lay not at my desk with Pluto purring tenderly in my
lap, but in the gravel path at the foot of Virginia's tomb with a
freezing sheen of dew covering me like a wet blanket. I jerked my
head up with a start and found the full light of day staring me in
the face. I saw to my horror that the sun was already high in the
sky. I stood quickly, brushing the dust from my clothes and
smoothing my hair, wondering how many passersby must have seen me
curled up on the ground. It was a wonder that I had not been
awakened by a policeman's billy club poking me in the ribs.
    I rubbed the sleep from my eyes. As I did so,
I felt the ache in my cheek where Pluto had scratched me the day
before. Just as I ran my fingers over the claw marks, I saw him
padding swiftly across the path in the same spot where I had last
seen Olimpia as she had walked away. I thought of calling to him,
but decided against it for the futility of the endeavor. Pluto had
only answered my beckon once before and probably never would again,
despite his seeming change of heart of the previous evening. He was
hunting rats now and I would just as soon avoid him when his blood
was up. I was afraid he might be planning another ambush for
me.
    I was about to move on when my fingers
alighted on a strange welt on the side of my neck. I had noticed it
there once before, just below the level of my collar, but I had
thought it long ago healed. I pressed it and felt the same soreness
as I had from the claw marks. This old wound, however—whose origin
was a mystery to me—was a puncture and not a slash. I could feel
the little hole in the middle of the raised flesh. I assumed the
renewed soreness of my old bug bite—or whatever it was—was
accounted for by the damned cat.
    I never would have foreseen this turn in my
life: I was plagued by