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The boss made his entry along with the appetizer.
As usual, he had his elegant dinner jacket on and, in honor of the evening, wore
a top hat.

“I've heard about you, you joker,” Octopus began,
occupying the chair so that it completely disappeared under his eight limbs.
“You come up here, make fun of my arms, and I thought about killing you on the
spot. But it was lucky I refrained. Nobody runs like you, they say. Nobody,
except possibly me. I don't know if anyone has told you about when I ran from
the giraffes? It must have been fifteen, twenty years ago. This is what happened
. . .”

And then he was off.

Fox Antonio Ortega followed my advice and listened
attentively to Octopus's bragging while the appetizer was served and taken away,
while the entrée was served and taken away, and as the white wine with scallops
was replaced by a thicker red wine with the beef filet. Fox did not drink
anything, but raised his glass at regular intervals so that Octopus would not
harbor suspicions. The gangster boss himself drank without reservation. Dessert
was served, vanilla ice cream with warm chocolate sauce, and during one of
Octopus's pauses for breath Ortega stood up unexpectedly.

“Excuse me,” he said, “but it's extremely warm in
here. May I take off my coat?”

Without waiting for an answer, Fox let the large,
heavy coat fall to the floor at the same time as he took off the cap. Underneath
he had on a white T-shirt and a pair of worn jeans from which his long, bushy
tail stuck out. The Octopus fell silent for the first time during dinner. Mute,
he stared at the exquisitely stunning fox, who had been hidden so long in his
filthy coat. The gold-strewn fur, the eyes of onyx and the shimmering nose, the
proud ears and the majestic tail; it was a surprise for which Octopus was
unprepared.

“Unbelievable.” Callemaro sighed, as he was filled
with the envy that was unavoidable in a stuffed animal with the gangster's
vanity.

Fox Antonio Ortega remained standing and let
himself be observed. Without posing he turned to the left and the right, for it
was essential that Octopus got to see him from all angles.

Then Fox sat down, fixing his eyes on Octopus.

“I have a proposal,” he said. “I have the most
beautiful tail in Mollisan Town. I'm not saying that out of vanity, it's a fact.
I am prepared to exchange it for one of your arms.”

Octopus Callemaro thought he had heard wrong.

“I have a splitter with me,” Ortega continued,
holding out a small case with sewing notions I had given him. “I have needle and
thread. You have eight arms. Keep seven of them and get the most beautiful tail
that has ever been produced.”

“You're serious?”

“But only for this evening. Tomorrow I will have
changed my mind,” said Ortega, exactly as I had coached.

He stood up again and let his gorgeous tail sway
back and forth. Octopus was bewildered. The wine he'd drunk, the shock of the
fox's beauty, and now this crazy proposal.

“You mean you'll sacrifice your tail?”

“For love. But it's now or never.”

An ordinary stuffed animal would never have said
yes. An ordinary stuffed animal would have laughed and rejected Fox's proposal
as idiotic. We were manufactured in a certain way for a certain reason. Simply
because it was possible to tear up a seam and sew something else on was no
reason to do it. But the fox's swaying, sparkling red, bushy tail was far too
enticing for the black octopus.

“You get one chance,” said Octopus Callemaro. “One
chance. But if I don't like it, I take back the arm. And keep the tail.”

Ortega nodded but did not answer.

I had been particularly clear about that: In no way
could Callemaro perceive that Fox had won and gotten his way. Everything had to
happen on Octopus's terms.

Now the fairly intoxicated stuffed animal
instructed the fox in how he should proceed. Octopus was not cowardly, but
tearing up a seam could hurt if the work was performed by someone who didn't
know what he was doing. As long as you didn't get at the fabric but only the
threads there was no danger, and Ortega reassured the gangster that he had done
this sort of thing before.

“You can stay sitting on the chair,” said Fox. “It
will only take a moment.”

“But sewing on . . .”

“You won't feel it. You have my word of honor,”
Ortega assured.

Fox bent down and quickly put on the coat he had
thrown on the floor, then he rounded the dining room table and dove down on the
floor behind Callemaro's back.

Ortega began ripping, and Octopus sighed; he felt
the stitches being removed, but could not say that it hurt. Soon it was over.
Callemaro had seven arms; the eighth one was in Fox's coat pocket.

“That was unpleasant,” said Octopus. “I wonder if
this was a good idea.”

“It's going to feel better,” Ortega promised.

“If it hurts when you sew your tail on we no longer
have an agreement,” Callemaro declared. “If it hurts I want no part of it.”

Fox did not reply, but instead continued working in
silence for a few minutes, and Octopus was forced to admit that he did not feel
any pain; he hardly felt anything at all.

“There now,” Fox Antonio Ortega said at last,
getting up.

He went around the table again, holding up his coat
to show his tailless behind.

“And me? How do I look?” Octopus asked. “I want a
mirror!”

“You are very beautiful,” Ortega replied.

“I want a mirror!”

Octopus picked up a golden bell that was on the
dinner table and rang it. A moment later the waiter came into the room. Octopus
ordered a large mirror, and the waiter disappeared for a minute or two,
returning with an oblong full-length mirror, which he placed at an angle behind
Octopus. Even though the mirror was dirty and the room was in darkness, Octopus
could clearly see the fox's beautiful tail fastened between two of his own black
arms.

“I don't know . . .” he said, turning to
the waiter. “What do you think?”

“I think you're more handthome than ever,” I
answered, for I was the waiter that evening.

“Is that certain?”

“Thertain? You've lured the tail off of Fox and at
the thame time kept theven arms. You're a geniuth, Octoputh!”

This pleased the gangster king, and he toasted with
me and with Fox and took the opportunity to have a few more glasses between
these toasts. Then he got very tired, which was his habit after these dinners,
and fell asleep as usual on his chair with a pleased smile on his lips.

I removed the photograph of Fox's tail that I had
fastened to the mirror, and together with Antonio Ortega, who still had his own
beautiful tail stuffed into his pants, we slipped out. It was only as we were
climbing down the radio tower that Fox happened to think about me.

“But,” he said, “he's going to realize you were
there and tricked him!”

“Thertainly,” I said.

“But,” said Fox, “isn't he going to be angry?”

“I have a plan.”

 

The Heart

D
ragon
Aguado Molina was counting money. He was in the office he had set up in a room
directly above the restaurant kitchen. He loved the aromas from almonds baked in
saffron and the garlic-rubbed spareribs as he carried out his administrative
tasks. The furnishings were dull and heavy; dark red wallpaper, a brown swivel
chair behind the large desk, a yellowish glow from the porcelain shade of the
table lamp.

The dragon pretended to loathe bookkeeping. From
Tuesday to Saturday he carelessly threw money into the center desk drawer, and
on Sunday morning he sighed heavily.

“Now it's time to dirty yourself again,” he would
say. “You really ought to hire a bookkeeper to take care of this. But then
wouldn't you lose half of it?”

Then he would laugh, but was careful to sound
suitably resigned and went up the stairs with heavy steps.

If he was not interrupted—and he hated being
interrupted—it took him about fifteen minutes to count and recount the amount.
He then made a packet of bundles of cash and sent a courier to the bank's
deposit slot. Even if the following morning he could see that the account had
increased, the aching sense of uncertainty appeared: Would he be able to
convince the bank that it was really his account? What did they do with the
money? Were there large piles of bills sitting in a bank vault? Perhaps it was
all a fraud and he was deceived?

It was only when he sat at the desk with his neat
piles in front of him that he felt completely satisfied.

“Daddy?” said Beatrice, cracking open the door to
the office.

Two thousand three hundred seventy-six, thought
Aguado Molina.

“Daddy, am I disturbing you?”

She was dressed in a charming white dress with
short puff sleeves and lacing in the belt, which emphasized her dainty midriff.
In the rich plumage her figure was otherwise hard to see.

“Two thousand three hundred eighty-two,” Dragon
mumbled so that she would hear he was counting.

“May I come in?” she asked, opening the door.

“Two thousand three hundred ninety-five,” Dragon
answered.

Beatrice stepped into the office and closed the
door. She went up to one of the dark brown leather armchairs in front of the
desk and sat down.

“Two thousand four hundred,” said Dragon.

With that, he had rescued the moment. The stack in
front of him was complete, and he used a rubber band to secure the even
amount.

“My beloved daughter,” he said, slipping the bundle
into the desk drawer and directing his concentration at Beatrice. “My sweet
cockatoo. My only love.”

He discreetly placed a couple of envelopes over the
uncounted cash still on the desk.

“What's on your mind?”

She looked at him and tipped her head. She tried to
imagine how terrifying those sharp teeth and that spiky tail were to his
enemies, but it was impossible. He was her father.

“Daddy, I haven't heard a word, and now it's been
almost a month.”

“That's how they can behave, these suitors,” Dragon
teased.

“But, Daddy, I'm serious. Why hasn't he contacted
us?”

“I don't know, honey,” Dragon replied.

“I know that he loves me.”

“Darling, there is not a stuffed animal in all of
Sors who does not worship the ground you walk on.”

“Stop it, Daddy,” she asked. “He loves me. I know
that I love him.”

“You're still so young,” Dragon replied, looking a
little embarrassed. “You don't know what you're saying. Love is a
. . . something else. You will probably live to experience it
someday.”

The noise from below in La Cueva interrupted him.
It sounded like a stack of dishes falling to the ground, or perhaps a tray of
silverware. And it continued. Rattling and crashing, followed by the sound of
broken china. What was going on?

Dragon Aguado Molina stood halfway up, opened the
right-hand desk drawer and took out a pistol. It was the heaviest caliber money
could buy, a weapon as much to hit someone in the head with as to shoot.

Beatrice Cockatoo started panting.

“Daddy, what is that?”

But Dragon did not reply. Beatrice's question was
rhetorical. She knew exactly what it was. Dragon Aguado Molina's daughter must
be able to defend herself, and he had seen to it that she could. He had
personally trained her when she was little, albeit with a smaller weapon.

He went around the desk with the pistol in his
little hand. On the lower floor the noise had ceased, and it was silent. Much
too silent.

“You stay here,” he whispered to Beatrice.

But before she could answer, the door swung open.
The dragon raised his weapon. Beatrice screamed.

Fox Antonio Ortega stood on the threshold.

“Fox!” Beatrice Cockatoo exclaimed, pushing her
father aside and throwing herself right in the surprised Ortega's arms.

She pressed herself tight to him and threw her
wings around him in a way that could not be misinterpreted. Without being
directly brusque, Fox freed himself from the love of his heart. Cockatoo sighed
contentedly, and took a step back to better enjoy the sight of him. Not even her
most intense fantasies did him justice. She wanted to be his. Forever.

The fox was confused.

The reception had been contradictory, to say the
least.

To make his way up to the second floor, he had been
forced to fight with Dragon's henchmen all the way through the bar and up the
stairs. Now here inside waited the love of his life and Dragon himself with a
drawn weapon.

Fox Antonio Ortega did not know whether he should
be overjoyed or scared to death.

“It's you,” said Dragon, ignoring his
hypersensitive daughter. “You're back. What do you want now?”

Dragon lowered his weapon just as Vasko Manatee and
his brother, Luciano Hyena, showed up in the doorway behind Fox.

“Sorry, boss,” panted Manatee, who had a tear on
his chest out of which beige cotton was protruding. “We tried to stop him.”

Dragon cast a worried glance at Beatrice, and
silenced his shamefaced bodyguards with a wave.

“Almost as if you didn't want me here,” said Fox
Antonio Ortega.

“Nonsense,” said Aguado Molina. “We have an
agreement, after all.”

He went back to the desk, sat down on his
comfortable chair, and set the pistol on the envelopes that concealed the
money.

“And what brings us this honor?” he asked.

Fox Antonio Ortega took a few quick steps up toward
the multifanged imaginary animal, whereupon Manatee and Hyena crossed the
threshold into the office. Dragon stopped them with another wave.