Chasing the Idea Rat with My Best Friend, Jaime

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Jaime hits me hard on the arm, nods toward the rusted metal grate covering a window well of the soot-blackened brick tenement we’re passing. A thick, pinkish-brown tail, maybe ten inches long, curls out from the grate, lying on the sidewalk like a taunting smile. I step forward, but the tail slides over the pocked, gray cement and through the bars.

“You get a look at it?” I ask.

“Probably just meat,” Jaime says. He pokes the grate with the toe of his sneaker. It moves half an inch, then fells back into place, not nearly as solid as it looks.

We pull together, and the grate comes off with a groan and a snap. It clangs to the sidewalk behind us when we drop it. The window well is a three-foot drop into a muddy, trash-filled puddle. A jagged hole has been gnawed through a corner of the water-stained piece of plywood covering the window. The tail and a slick, gray-furred ass are still on our side of that hole, but only for a second before a six-clawed hind foot pushes the body the rest of the way through.

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