Mitchell’s plan for what remained of the morning was simple. He would get a coffee or something so that he might be able to flirt with Pamella, the lemur barista, and then retreat into the cool embrace of his office to ruminate on a couple of ibuprofens. He would then spend a few hours reviewing building code violation forms while listening to Spike and the Mad Dog bicker over the finer points of the Orioles’ coaching strategy.
Mitchell stretched, then bopped across Broadway to visit the loveliest barista in all of Manhattan. “Oh, Pamella,” he hummed. “How you’ve rearranged me.”
The Early Cenozoic had been recently redecorated. Vintage illustrations of coffee plants and terraced tea plantations hung on brick walls. The landlords were trying to attract more customers, Mitchell supposed. Not that they needed to. Their big front window faced City Hall. All the bureaucrats had to go there if they wanted decent caffeine. Not that every pen-pusher cared about decent. There was no accounting for taste.
Pamella was behind the register, staring into space with her perfect circle eyes. When Mitchell came in, she acknowledged him with a blink. He felt that this meant something. She didn’t blink at everyone that way. They had a complex understanding.
“Your face is a tuft of amber delight.”
She blinked again.
“The thought of you helps me survive the long hours in my dim office prison,” Mitchell continued. “You can’t imagine how they have us packed in. Like sardines in a tin. The thought of you keeps me going.”
“Oh stop.” Pamella plucked a leaf from a sad little potted plant on the counter and popped it in her mouth. “Don’t tell the bosses I’m eating the décor.”
“Never.”
“What will you have, Mitchell?”
Mitchell had been waging a subtle though as-yet-unsuccessful campaign to get the café to branch out into drinks more exotic than the usual coffee and tea. What wasn’t on their menu had become a subject of banter between him and Pamella. He would conjure something unusual, and she would dismiss his request. The birds who owned the place were conservative in their bulk orders. Therefore, Mitchell already had a cheek full of some guayusa he’d ordered all the way from Ecuador. All he really needed was hot water, which he could get in his office. But office water would not grant him visions of Pamella.
“Could I just get a cup of hot water?”
“I’ll have to charge.”
“For hot water?”
“They count the cups,” she grumbled.
“Would they charge for cold?”
“Plastic water cups are free.”
Not wanting to get her in trouble, he took out some money. He slid it, she slid it back. He returned it, and she gave in and sucked her teeth and thanked him.
“So, you’re drinking plain hot water? You’re crazy, boy.”
He showed her his ball of leaves in reply.
“Oh, I see,” she purred. “Secret herbs.”
“You know, my friend Al probably needs a little pick-me-up. I’ll take a green drink for him, actually.”
Mitchell wondered if Alfonzo knew Pamella’s name. The two friends hadn’t spoken of her, and Mitchell had yet to disclose his crush.
Though Pamella knew most everyone from the Hall by sight, many of his colleagues treated her as close to invisible. She was just another part of the service mechanism, like a door handle or a cup. Mitchell knew it was their loss, because Pamella was a radical, an intellectual, and a true inspiration. Through their casual banter, she’d turned Mitchell on to all sorts of new ideas. He longed to take her on a proper date, but was as yet too nervous to ask. He bided his time, read her pamphlets, and prepared arguments in favor of ginseng tonics and chicory foam.
Pamella twitched her furry donut-hole ears. As she gave him the drinks, she slipped alongside a little blue booklet. Mitchell took the pamphlet and hid it in his pocket, then blinked at her, five times slowly. They understood each other.
“Would you mind,” she asked, “sharing a smidge of your herb?”
Mitchell was surprised. Sharing saliva, even apart from kissing, felt intimate. He separated a lemur-sized bite of the wet herb and spit it delicately onto a napkin.
“You’re a peach,” said Pamella.
“See you,” he sighed.
“And the sea sees you,” she replied.
* * *
Once safely back in his first-floor office, Mitchell let his mind drift. His nerves buzzed and sparked as he watched the dark shapes of his colleagues swim by the frosted glass of his office door. Hooves and heels clicked, claws skittered, toe pads whispered along the cool floor.
City Hall was much too small a building for the metropolis it represented. It had been erected for another city—a smaller, more feral one, where beavers and dogs roamed the muddy streets trading bits of wood and flesh for tobacco and metal. They—whoever the old they was—should have razed or renovated the original building to better fit with the outsized city, but the state loves the European messages contained in cupolas, ornamental swags, and Corinthian columns. They weren’t going to destroy this symbol for anything.
Because of this allegiance to old animals, the current animals had to fight for space. Many departments were crammed together along each corridor and on each floor, and everyone wanted to be as close to the mayor as possible. Which floor you were located on communicated a lot about your political status. The least glamorous departments—Water, Sanitation, and his friend Alfonzo’s own ignominious Records—were located in the leaky, fungal basement. The mayor’s suite was on the third floor. Mitchell’s “office” had once been a utility closet and had neither heat nor ventilation—but it was private, had gold letters on the door, and was located on the respectable first floor. He was quietly proud.
Mitchell had devoted much effort to acquiring a space for himself. Getting it required a lot of complimenting and joking around with the right animals. A private office was how Mitchell kept his sanity. But maybe it was also how he’d lost his mind. Sucking up to and keeping track of a bunch of bureaucracy jackasses had taken its toll. He had to keep his friends close, or in the basement anyway, but a few fucking asshole idiots closer—down the hall.
Mitchell excelled in subtle bureaucratic games because he’d been taught by the best, his uncle Ernesto Cusco Llama. Uncle Ernie was one of those creatures who embodied the folktale of social mobility. He’d begun life as night watch at a cat food factory only to work his way into the more feral world of local government. He was the first llama in history to become a city councilor. A small plaque in a weedy triangle “park” near District 28 commemorated the fact.
It would be a lie to say that having an insider uncle hadn’t helped Mitchell. Ernie had convinced him to take this path in the first place. He’d extolled the values of public service at every holiday and family get-together. While Ernie took pains to avoid blatant nepotism, he wasn’t shy about bringing his nephew into the fold once Mitchell got the job. One could argue that shepherding family into one’s profession was the very definition of nepotism, but it was also how the system worked. “Just hum it off,” advised Ernesto, “and go about your business.”
This initial nepotistic boost didn’t mean that Mitchell’s job title was anything fancy. His uncle had died a while back, and no one in the Hall from the old days was still around. Whatever influence that had been had dissolved into dust and long ago been swept up. Mitchell was just a working llama schmo, just the junior administrator of management under the umbrella of the greater Housing Authority office. Most of his work involved fielding the inquiries of the angry, the troubled, or the disappointed. He spent a great deal of time putting animals on waiting lists and sending threatening letters to landlords who were trying their best to circumvent regulations. In practical terms, this meant that Mitchell dealt with many animals close to homelessness and another group of animals who were trying to take away those homes.