It was very easy getting there too. I dipped my fingers over the pool curb; sleeping ducks floated by, heads tucked, webbed feet dragging. Occasionally, a foot would paddle in sleep. Unaware, the duck would turn like a rowboat pulled by one oar, and bump the pool curb; wake, and squabble with the cement; churn off, doze, paddle and sleep again. Oh, the rhythms of that first-shift watch were lovely.
Gallen's heartbeat was no more than a flutter on my palm, as if some elf inside her were blowing softly on the pale skin under her breast.
'It's so quiet,' said Gallen. 'When does Schupp come?'
'Schrutt,' I said, and woke a duck. He croaked like a frog.
'Well, when does he get here?' said Gallen.
'Not for a while,' I said, and watched the casual first-shift guard stretching and yawning in the good, white light coming out the Small Mammal House door.
'This is the good guard?' said Gallen.
'Yes,' I said, and immediately had kindly feelings toward him - seeing him go off through the zoo, softly clucking his tongue to special friends. The boxing Australian, and his cherished zebra horde.
'This is the one who leaves the red off?' said Gallen.
'Infrared,' I said. 'Yes, this one's all right.'
And when he was being considerate enough not to wake anyone in the House of Pachyderms, we went back to our hedgerow and snuggled along the fence line, legs scissoring - with each other's elbows for pillows on the roots.
'Now,' said Gallen, 'this guard has another watch at eleven?'
'Quarter to eleven,' I said.
'All right,' she said, and lightly bit my cheek. 'Eleven or quarter to. What's the difference?'
'Detail,' I said. 'Detail is the difference.' Knowing myself that details are, of course, essential to any good plan. And, of course, knowing the need for a plan.
I was working on one; like every good plan, I was taking first things first, and first was O. Schrutt - the nabbing and stashing thereof. After which, I do confess, my thinking was still a little too general. But under the hedge I was calm again, and Gallen seemed so much in this anticlimax with me that I at least had an easier conscience toward her.
In fact, after the guard's round at a quarter to eleven, with the zoo sleeping heavily around us, I initiated suggestive nuzzles in Gallen's rich, thick hair - patted her behind, and attacked with suchlike ploys - because I thought our hedgerow was just too snug to abuse, or not use at all.
But she turned away from me and pointed through the hexagonal holes in the fence, indicating the sleeping, overlapping mound of Miscellaneous Range Animals huddled in the center of the pen. 'Not with them there, Graff,' she said. And I thought: Really, this animal business has been carried far enough.
I even felt foolish, but I got over it; Gallen was all of a sudden climbing on me with nervous ploys of her own, and I thought she'd changed her mind. But she said, too sweetly, 'Graff, don't you see how nice it is in here? What do you want to do anything for?' She performed disgusting nibbles on my chin, but I wasn't to be so easily fooled.
I admit I was a bit defensive; I drew back in the hedges. She whispered after me, 'Graff?' But I kept backing down the fence line from her, on all fours, getting all bushed over in the hedge. So she couldn't see me, and she said, too loudly, 'Graff!'
There was a violent clubbing sort of sound from the Monkey Complex, and some heavy, hoofed animal clattered back and forth. One or two Big Cats cleared their throats, and Gallen said, 'All right, Graff. Come on, it was just an idea.'
'Been your idea all along, hasn't it?' I said, peering from deep in the hedge. 'You just stayed with me to try to talk me out of it.'
'Oh, Graff!' she said, and what was left of the range herd picked themselves up and cantered down to the opposite fence line.
'Shut up, Gallen!' I whispered, hoarse.
'Oh, Graff,' she whispered back, and I could hear her take her little catch breath, setting up a good sob. 'Graff,' she said, 'I just don't know what you want to do, even. Really, I can't imagine why.'
Really, I can't either, I thought. It's hard to make any decisions when you're as reasonable as I am. But for decision-making, little helpful things, like swamps, come when you least expect them.
I was suddenly aware that the zoo was awake - and not, I thought, from Gallen's slight blurting. I mean, it was really awake. All around us, creatures were balancing in frozen crouches, three legged stances, anxious suspension from the squeaking trapezes in the Monkey Complex. I checked my watch and realized I'd been too casual for the occasion. It was after midnight. I hadn't heard the bell for the changing of the guard, but the first-shift watchman was gone. The zoo was poised. I listened to the footfall on the patch along our hedgerow. I saw his combat boots, with pants tucked in. And the truncheon in the sheath that's stitched so neatly in the left boot.
There wasn't time to warn Gallen, but I could se
e her silhouette up tight against the fence line, hands over her ears; I could see the profile of her open lips. Thanks be, she saw him too.
And when he'd passed by us, spinning his light once or twice and jolting himself off balance so his keyring jangled under his armpit, I dared a headlong look out in the path, through a root gap, and saw him strutting robotlike - his head and epaulettes above the horizon line the hedgerow made against the night. He turned a military corner on the path; I waited, and heard his keyring ringing in the empty Biergarten.