Treasure Island!!!

had an immigrant’s mistrust of banks, kept a box of petty cash in the back room. A few times I had seen her open the box before she sent me out, like an errand girl, for feed. Now I removed the key from its hiding place and though the lock was very stiff, I turned it and threw back the lid. A faint smell rose from the interior, almost like scented toilet paper or over-ripe apples, but nothing was on top except a plastic tray containing a few pieces of junk jewelry, a pair of foam earplugs, and a harvest of bright red, floozy-length Lee Press-On Nails. I pulled up the tray with impatience, and there lay ten crisp one hundred dollar bills. Nancy! I’d never dreamed she had this much capital! If only she would trust me with it—and here I lost a few moments to a potent daydream in which I tore out the Library’s U-shaped circ desk and installed a slab of black walnut. Or Zebra Wood. Then I shook myself awake and pocketed the cash. I returned the key to its hiding place, and was about to make for the door when I heard a sound that brought my heart into my mouth—the door chime chirp, alerting me that we had a patron. As I came out of the back room, I saw it was a boy come to return a goldfish. He was about ten years old and walked, the little glass loaner bowl close to his chest, as if he had another ten years to make the journey from the door to . . .
    “Hurry up then,” I said. “You won’t drop it. I was about to close up.”
    Goldfish returns are the easiest, or should be, since you don’t have to interact with the pet. When you do a mammal return, you stroke the animal and make a big fuss to pretend you missed it. With the goldfish, I just checked to make sure its fins were still there, and dumped it back into the tank. I didn’t even pretend to know which fish it was. “Vinny, huh? Alberto, huh? Or is this Iphigenia?” “This is Percevaux,” the boy said. “Sure it is, good old Percevaux.” I grabbed the record book, found the boy’s name, and crossed it off. (Another way Nancy might have used me better: Hello, computer age!) “You’re all clear,” I told the boy. He had followed me over to the tank and remained there, watching Percevaux flick a fin. “It’s not the circus,” I said. “Come on, I’ll walk you out.” In my haste I forgot to lock the door.
    On the pavement the boy threatened to walk my way, but by lingering at the corner and pretending that I was about to catch a bus, I quickly shed him. You have to be careful in this job; certain kids glom on to a Pet Librarian as if to a celebrity. Something of the animal glamour attaches, the way it would for a zookeeper or a lion tamer. I don’t pretend to understand it, but fortunately this boy wasn’t too hard to shake. “You ever think about maybe getting a panda?” he said dreamily. When I roared, “No!” he scuttled off.
    For reasons I don’t wish to go into, I don’t have a car, and I was too impatient to wait for a bus, so I began to walk. Walk and walk and walk, past pizzerias and dry cleaners and fast lube franchises until I reached Cutwater Mall, a downscale place with a crappy food court and a hideous green and black linoleum floor rolling past stores with names like Gifts ‘n’ Things and Sox ‘n’ Stuff. My family used to go here before a better mall was built—one with skylights and a fiberglass reproduction of the Trevi fountain.
    The pet shop I wanted sat in a dark corner on the lower level, its floor seething with woodchips and hair. Puppies and kittens cowered in the front window, fish tanks bubbled and glowed along the sides. I threaded my way through the mess and found a regal teenaged girl, her hair done up so elaborately she appeared to wear a Zulu basket on her head. Lethargically she unpacked a crate of ferret shampoo.
    “I came for a parrot.”
    For the benefit of anyone who has never been to a mall pet store, the people who work there don’t know a thing about pets, nor would they care to. Without any affect she led me to aisle nine. There, in the fluorescent corridor, after rows of twittering songbirds, none of whom caught my fancy, I discovered a cage labeled “Yellow-Naped Amazon.” Its occupant was one foot high and came at my eye like a bit of migraine, its feathers so brightly colored the air around them seemed to pulse. I studied the hard curled beak and two glittering eyes, one of which studied me. Then the bird made an unearthly noise, a metallic call pitched to pierce through