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  The main path split into a service road at the crossroads and the road was closed by a chain-link gate and a sign, “zoo staff only”. Honor raised the shovel and released the clutch and dragged the fence down the service road until the exterior wall of the gorilla enclosure was in view. At that point the rock and adobe wall is perhaps twenty feet high so she knew to raise the blade as high as it would go and approach only as fast as first gear would allow, which is roughly the walking speed of an old man looking for an address.

  The bulldozer was stopped by a brief test of strength between machine and wall which machine soon won. The top half of the wall tumbled into the shovel and the bulldozer climbed over the remaining rubble and into the gorilla reserve. The gorillas seemed surprised to see her and responded as gorillas always will when confronted with a bulldozer, which is largely indistinguishable from their response to the sudden appearance of any heavy construction machinery. She waved them an emotional goodbye as she flattened the gate to the public area of the zoo.

  Honor pulled the front off the orangutan's tree house pavilion and drove through the front and out the back of the elephant enclosure. The lion watched his front doors bend in with a lethargic confidence, as though it was an expected development of passing interest, which he would address later. In fact few of the animals took immediate advantage of their freedom as Honor pushed in the bars of the leopard cage and tipped a palm tree into the tiger’s deep pen, forming a convenient gangway.

  Honor was on top of the world. No one tried to stop her, no one seemed to see her or the massive bulldozer she was riding as she released or tried to release the giraffes, the rhinoceros and the chimpanzees, who provided the greatest satisfaction as they immediately seized the opportunity to mingle with the tourists and occupy the food concessions.

  A large-scale zoo escape is hot, heavy work on the best of days and today was hotter and heavier than most. So after collapsing the wall of the aviary to release a squawking cloud of exotic birds Honor turned off the engine and listened to the jungle cacophony she’d created. Tired and dusty and thirsty but filled with the elation of a job well done, she hopped off the bulldozer and took a bottle of water from a peanut vendor who seemed to be just at that moment becoming distantly aware that he was covered in monkeys.

  Honor drank deeply and when she lowered the bottle she was looking upon the rule of unintended consequences. An elegant Sumatran Tiger was stalking a motionless herd of Japanese tourists with soft and silent and wholly unnecessary stealth. Honor scouted the exits, spotted the parking lot, and escaped the zoo. She had no memory of having had to deal with consequences but she felt certain that she didn’t like them, and in any case she was bored now and anxious to find another way to profit from her position as the only conscious person alive.

  The parking lot was remarkably undersubscribed for a major tourist attraction but of greater disappointment to Honor was the uninterrupted collection of mini-vans and people carriers and station wagons with artificial wood panels that people bring to the zoo. Conscious of the urgency building and roaring and screeching behind her she was about to settle on a yellow Range Rover for no better reason than a parrot had perched on it when she spotted the ideal ride to navigate a city-wide car accident — a black and candy-apple red Harley Davidson Electra Glide stood alone and illegal in the shade of the picnic area.

  She was stripping a wire from the brake light of the bike to use as a jumper when a distinctively human scream punctuated a sudden and total end to the entire orchestra from within the zoo and all was silence. Honor froze by instinct or because a lioness was walking from the zoo exit with the leisurely confidence that often accompanies four inch fangs and five inch claws.

  Honor continued her work crouched behind the motorcycle while the lioness sniffed the air and twitched her ears. Drawn by the shade or the scent of prey or an interest in motorcycles, the massive cat approached. Honor was the picture of still waters, utterly motionless on top while her hands worked frantically and blindly to bridge the ignition wire. She couldn’t bring herself to look down to verify her work and she knew that there was an exactly fifty percent chance that she’d bridged the wrong circuit or, put another way, the odds were two to one that she was about to be eaten.

  Good odds and time was up anyway. Honor stood and faced the lion and pressed the ignition button and nothing happened. Or any rate, the motorcycle didn’t respond. The lioness did. She stopped and gave Honor the sort of quizzical look that a heavy-weight boxer might give when called a sissy by an old man on crutches. Then she braced her shoulders and bared her teeth and coiled her muscles for a decisive leap.

  Honor chapter 2

  With the rapidity of a flip book Honor visualized her options and all of them concluded with her being eaten by a lion. There was no shelter nor distraction nor weapon. There was just the motorcycle. She smiled at the lioness in a manner that she hoped would convey that it was she who was responsible for the freedom the animal now enjoyed. The lion appeared unappreciative but still didn’t leap. Only her ears moved. Something had distracted her in Honor’s final seconds on earth.

  Then Honor heard it too. A growing mechanical wheeze like the sound of steam escaping was coming from all directions. It was a jet, flying very low and apparently evocative of some dark memory of lions in captivity. The jet burst into view and, with a parting glance that suggested that Honor was guilty of unsportsmanlike behavior, the lioness shot away across the parking lot.

  Honor was grateful for the intrusion but peripherally aware that it brought different consequences. A jet meant people. Conscious people who doubtless have firm views on the proper use of rental Ferraris and bulldozers. Honor set about correctly hotwiring the motorcycle and placing herself in a position from which she could reasonably claim ignorance of anything untoward that might have happened at the Los Angeles Zoo that afternoon.

  But then the sound stopped. Honor looked up to watch the passenger jet enter a powerless glide and dive out of view toward the ocean. She was once again the only conscious person on earth.

  Riding a motorcycle is its own sort of freedom. Riding a Harley Davidson at top speed on the sidewalks of downtown Los Angeles without a helmet moments after narrowly escaping death by lion is a sense of liberty very nearly approaching flight. Honor flew now toward the coast, guided vaguely by a need to drive a train or steal a yacht or eat caviar with her hands.

  The city was different from Honor’s short memory of it. It was still gridlocked and silent but there was movement now among the people on the streets. Tentative groups were loosely forming and some even gave the appearance of a wary sentience. Mostly, though, if they had any interest at all it was in raiding the fruit and vegetable stalls on the sidewalks of Chinatown or the scattered and sparse and understocked grocery stores Honor passed along Broadway as she entered the theater district.

  This wasn’t looting, though. It was more like grazing on fruits and flowers and unwrapped bubblegum and cigars and whatever else might confused for food by the debutant consumer. The citizenry was docile and unthreatening and gave the impression of a Disney movie placed in a Los Angeles populated entirely by orphaned baby deer. If there was any sign of menace it was in the subtle sameness of the little herds — some tall blond men in golfware or, quite possibly, clown costumes had assumed control of a delicatessen next door to a café under the administration of a dozen hare krishnas. Across the street four or five motorcycle cops had been joined by two security guards to occupy a candy store. The effect was subtly disturbing and suggestive of some developing peril but the only explicit effect was to make Honor realize that she was hungry.

  Honor found herself in the drunkenly ill-focused former downtown Los Angeles which looked like the genteel founding quarter of a much nicer metropolis that had lost most of its treasures in a rigged game of chance. The proudly patchwork gothic/deco/Spanish-residential Los Angeles City Hall and the comic-book detail of the Hall Of Justice seemed to be justifiably embarrassed to share their ne
ighborhood with the obstinately dull Civic Center and aggressively ugly police services building. But the courts and the county jail and sheriff’s office and LA Detention Center gave Honor a subversive thrill that she only partially understood, and she decided to play out her next adventure here.

  She rolled to a stop outside the Regent Hotel because it looked old and expensive and the sort of place that would have an absurdly over-priced wine list and just enough caviar on hand.

  The hotel was an immaculate relic of an age when what things looked like mattered. Honor entered through a revolving door of wood and brass and beveled glass into an age when it made sense for a hotel to have a two-story, rosewood paneled lobby overlooked by an expansive mezzanine accessible by twin staircases, all resting on a tiled mosaic of Poseidon rising from the surf accompanied by a dolphin. The maritime theme was repeated on the walls by commissioned floor-to-ceiling paintings of ships in peril and bustling seaports. Poseidon's realm was scattered with deep velvet armchairs meticulously disordered so guests could read their newspapers and plan their trysts and doze in peace in what would normally be a crowded LA hotel lobby. The only light was from enormous leaded glass windows facing the street and the suspended dust particles gave the abandoned foyer the character of something frozen in aspic and undisturbed for generations.

  Honor was alone in the lobby. To the left was a bank of house phones and to the right the curtained entrance to a darkened restaurant with a brass sign on a pole “Welcome to Milo’s. Please wait to be seated.” Beneath the mezzanine was a marble-topped reception with cash registers and a brass desk bell. Behind that was a swing door and a key rack with old-school metal keys. On a whim which seemed ill-advised the moment she pursued it Honor struck the desk bell and was astonished by the sharpness of the peel such a little bell could produce in the awesome quiet. The door behind the reception desk pushed slowly open.

  A gangly young man in an ill-fitting brown plastic tuxedo moved tentatively into the narrow corridor behind the reception desk, his eyes fixed intently on the bell. His name-tag said “Darryl” and beneath that were little American and Spanish flags denoting the languages he spoke fluently yesterday, when he knew what languages were.

  Darryl took in the reception area as though seeing it for the first time and indeed he probably was. He’d only become aware of existence this morning and since that time doubtless assumed that the staff office with its seemingly unlimited supply of crackers and chocolate-covered mints and bottled water and monogrammed hotel pens represented the generous limits of the known world. The ringing of the desk bell gave him cause to doubt a lifetime of assumptions.

  Honor stepped back from the desk, unwilling to break Darryl’s trance. The clerk tentatively approached the bell, raised his hand, and struck it. He showed no change in expression but Darryl was clearly pleased with the effect and he repeated it, again and again, until the overlapping, high-pitched frequencies became in that space and time the most annoying thing the world.

  The curtains to the entrance of Milo’s parted and produced a large sphere of a man in pristine kitchen whites and his own nametag, “Milo”. He also had a butcher’s knife and the universal empty stare but his version was humanized slightly by the permanently furrowed brow unique to heads of state and accomplished chefs.

  Now Milo was newly born, seeing the world a few hours ago for the first time standing upright in a kitchen with a cleaver in his hand. He’d always had that knife in his hand. It was part of him, and quite possibly the most important part. It was certainly the only way he knew how to communicate. And there was something that he wanted to say.

  Milo walked slowly but deliberately to the reception desk, across from Darryl, who continued to entertain himself with his new form of self-expression. Milo seemed to see only the bell until he looked Darryl in the eyes and calmly chopped off his hand.

  The clerk managed to fuse shock and fear and pain and a soupçon of genuine curiosity into one extended and unidentified vowel as he picked up his right hand with his left and tried to put it back on. The chef observed the carnage he’d unleashed with the blank detachment of a lab technician noting the result of a satisfactory but largely predictable experiment. The clerk’s labors grew more desperate and unfocused and, in addition to describing a graceful arc of blood across the key rack, he knocked the desk bell to the floor where it bounced twice on its side and rolled to Honor before having a little wobbly spin and settling at her feet, dinging merrily all the way.

  After a brief internal struggle the chef formed another isolated thought — the immutable conviction that Honor and the bell were conspiring against him. He began maneuvers against them both. Honor backed toward the door, leaving the bell to fend for itself and very deliberately moving slowly and, even more deliberately, quietly. She waved a hand blindly behind to sense for unexpected chairs or the door. This was somewhat liberally interpreted by the chef as an act of aggression and he lunged, leading with his cleaver.

  Honor dodged and danced and behaved as randomly as she could muster, hoping to leverage her steep experience advantage against Milo’s decided lead in the sharp object category. She jumped from chair to chair and kicked over tables and tested the weight of an indoor palm before abandoning it as a potential weapon, all while offering what she hoped would be interpreted by a mindless chef as encouragements to return to his kitchen and see to his soufflé.

  “Milo? Is it?” said Honor when she’d put a divan between them. “Milo I need you to know, whatever happens between us, that as God is my witness I did not touch that bell.”

  If the chef was moved by this or disappointed in the small fib he showed no sign of it. He received it all as though it was perfectly normal and indeed from his perspective it might well have been — he was, in this regard, entirely non-judgmental. He wanted simply and exclusively to cut something off Honor, something that would give the same type and degree of satisfaction as that provided by the clerk’s right hand, and he redoubled his efforts. He also learned quickly and soon he stopped following Honor the long way around chairs and being startled by the mirror behind the counter of house phones.

  Honor’s advantage was rapidly fading so when she found herself with her back to the door it was an effort to resist the urge to dash through it. Instead she stopped and faced Milo and raised her hands in surrender. Milo raised his knife.

  Honor chapter 3

  “Okay Milo, that’s it. Let’s take this outside.” Honor turned and pushed through the revolving door in an easily duplicated maneuver that the chef didn’t hesitate to follow.

  And Honor was back in the lobby, having exercised her advanced understanding of revolving door technology to leave the chef blinking on the sidewalk at the sorcery that caused his adversary to literally and completely disappear. He looked back on the enchanted door with a melancholy nostalgia for the good times he’d had within, judged the past as lost forever, and turned to face an uncertain future for man and cleaver.

  Darryl was no longer struggling. He sat on the floor behind the reception desk and looked longingly at his severed hand while he rapidly bled to death. The spectacle served to remind Honor of the fleeting nature of life and that she was by now ravenously hungry. She pushed through the heavy purple curtains of the domain of Milo’s former glory and onto the threshold of yet another subtle and striking aberration from the instinctively normal.

  Milo’s restaurant was resolutely posh in that way that invariably misses the mark. The tables were small and never-the-less inches apart and uniformly ugly with yellow napkins clashing with royal blue table-cloths and carefully mismatched silverware. Each table had an almost exhausted candle and the room was otherwise lit only by the daylight that fought past the thick castle curtains over two floor-to-ceiling windows. It was cool and quiet and empty of customers but the service staff had occupied the booth in the corner and were squatting like pigeons on the bench and on the table itself and they had gathered between them all the bread-baskets in the building. It was t
his that Honor, in spite of a lack of experience of the hospitality industry, felt might be out of the ordinary.

  Light from the foyer announced Honor’s entrance and the waiters stopped nibbling on sections of stale baguette to look up at her as one mind, causing them to resemble a startled extended family of meerkats dressed adorably in identical royal blue tuxedos. Honor was immediately charmed. So were the service meerkats who until that moment had been unaware that anything more interesting than bread existed anywhere in the world and now in their midst was a female of the species.

  The silent stillness lingered for a moment like an awkward encounter at a funeral until the alpha waiter hopped to the floor and loped over to Honor and offered her a basket of butter rolls that were almost entirely free of spit. Honor received the basket as though graciously accepting a lesser entertainment award and took a seat at the centermost table. The maitre d’ crouched on the floor and peered at her over the flower arrangement. More servers approached and one-by-one and eventually simultaneously placed their offerings of baskets of bread, many of them empty, on the table. Honor took it all in with good grace but found herself wishing she’d selected an establishment with a less gimmicky menu.

  An expectant hush fell over the service staff as Honor selected from the baskets and the decision itself launched a pushing match the gravity of which was difficult to read. The maitre d’ objected to a basket of sliced pumpernickel placed directly over his butter rolls and he seized the offending waiter’s toupée and flung it across the room. The two busboys struggled without the benefit of language to highlight the advantages of their respective offerings of breadsticks and petits viennoiseries and the grunting grew worryingly unfriendly. Honor endeavored to cast oil on the troubled waters, selecting something from every basket, even the empty ones.