Rebecca slowly dropped to her knees to get a closer look at the sleeping Bengal tiger sprawled out beside the Chief's desk. As an afterthought, she reached up and locked the office door. At the sound of the lock twisting, the tiger's ear flicked and its whiskers twitched.
Rebecca tried to process the presence of the big cat as she scanned the room. The Chief's clothes were in tatters, scattered around her desk chair, which had four long claw-gouges down the middle, revealing the foamy, cream-colored puffy stuff beneath the upholstery. Two tiny earrings were studded in the tiger's rounded, swiveling ears, and the cherry-blossom-and-kanji bracelet was tight around the tiger's front leg, the pressure of the small chain cutting into the tiger's "wrist" and causing the surrounding skin to bulge.
It was definitely the Chief.
Rebecca had speculated all along that her boss was suffering from feline lycanthropy---a term that she had just coined inside her own head---but seeing a living, breathing, very very large predatory mammal wearing Chief Vick's jewelry and snoozing beside her chair was a completely different scenario altogether. The hypothetical had just become real and undeniable, and Rebecca had trouble believing that she'd been right.
"Poor Chief," Rebecca thought. "If it's freaking me out, I can only imagine what she's going to think." She sighed and whispered to herself, "Better get this over with." She gave the tiger's side a gentle tap. "Chief? Chief, wake up."
The tiger's head rose up and its jaws opened in a huge, fanged yawn. The eyes blinked and gave Rebecca a sleepy look.
"Chief, you're a tiger."
The tiger blinked again and shook its head as if to wake itself up as it pulled itself up into an upright sitting position.
"Chief," Rebecca repeated. "You're a tiger."
The tiger looked down at itself and yowled in shock and terror. It jumped to its feet, knocking over the desk chair and sending stacks of papers scattering across the floor.
"Chief! Chief, calm down! Someone will hear you!"
The tiger yowled again, a harsh throaty sound that was somewhere between a yelp and a growl. Rebecca had to stop herself from smiling when the noise brought to mind young Simba's early attempts to roar in The Lion King. "Chief, you need to be quiet. I'm sure you'll change back any time now. But we have to keep you hidden until you do. If anyone sees a tiger in the station, they'll panic."
The tiger quieted down the "roars," but replace them with pacing around the desk in circles, over and over, breathing hard.
"Chief, I know you're scared, but you can get through this. I promise. Why don't you just sit down?"
The tiger glared at Rebecca with its blue eyes and made several small, half-growl sounds, followed by flattening its ears, hissing, and then flopping to the ground, dejected.
Covering her mouth with one hand to stifle a giggle, Rebecca said, "Chief, I know this is frustrating for you, but I really do think it'll be okay. Lycanthropy works in a cycle, like a werewolf with the full moon. You changed into this slowly and it'll probably take the same amount of time for you to change back. But, Chief, apart from this being a pain and being scary for you, isn't it kind of awesome? I mean, how many people can say that they got to be a tiger? That's pretty cool."
The tiger flicked its tail in annoyance and glared at Rebecca.
Rebecca looked down. "Or not..."
Shawn could've picked the cheap lock on Lichelle's door in his sleep. Navigating through her messy living space, however, was a different story.
"Why do these artist types always have to be so messy and clutter-y? This must be how other people feel when they try looking through my stuff," Shawn remarked to himself. Then he grinned. "I am so never gonna change. Nobody's going to go through all this trouble just to see what secret stuff I keep in the bottom of my snack drawer!" He picked his way through the cramped space and over to the closet he'd neglected to search before. "Now, let's see what skeletons you've got in your closet, Not-Rebecca."
He twisted the knob of the narrow white-painted door and tugged it open. The closet was just as packed, disorganized, and tiny as the rest of Lichelle's living quarters, and Shawn took a few moments to memorize the order of the contents. If anyone ever messed with his stuff, he'd know it in a heartbeat because his chaos was organized chaos: not everything had a place and not everything was in its place, but he definitely knew where everything was. He knew that if he ever ran across someone with the same kind of system and didn't rearrange everything just right, that someone would catch him snooping.
Once he was sure he could take the closet apart and put it back together again, he started pulling out the layers of detritus, not searching for anything in particular, but for something strange that he could use against her.
Shawn had a theory about closets. You could tell a lot about someone by what they kept inside, just like anything else. Gus, for example, kept a coffee can full of emergency money in the top left corner of his closet, just behind the umbrella and an old shoebox. Lassie had a special shelf in his closet devoted just to his ties. Juliet's closet featured a hidden stash of catnip in case one of her feline children needed a pick-me-up. And as for Shawn, his own closet was a safe haven for generations of ThunderCats, Transformers, Knight Rider t-shirts, and a baseball bat he'd made for himself that one summer he spent working at the Louisville Slugger Museum.
So Shawn knew that in this closet, he would find the secret to Lichelle Bennett's identity. Maybe she was a boring fuddy-duddy or a cat lover or one of the people who worked the hand lathes at a baseball bat factory. Whatever she was, the evidence would be found inside her closet, and Shawn was going to show Gus some definitive proof that this woman was just as defective and ridiculous as every other woman Gus had ever tried to be with.
Secretly, Shawn hoped that Lichelle would be like Gus' version of Gina so that finally, his best friend would understand what it was like to have a girl constantly calling him up and begging him to get married and go out for cheesecake.
As Shawn neared the back of the closet without finding anything other than normal clothes, plastic boxes of art supplies, and several pairs of stylish boots, he began to be discouraged.
But then, underneath a folded-up black tank top, Shawn found everything he was looking for and nothing he expected.
"Oh, my God. Gus!"
It was 8:30 pm and raining in Tokyo, and Gus was already having the time of his life.
"I hope you don't mind that I showed up a little early," he said as he opened the door of the restaurant and stepped aside to let Lichelle walk out first.
"I wouldn't exactly call three hours early 'a little early,' but no, I didn't mind a bit. In fact, I was glad. I had a really great time with you tonight, Gus," Lichelle replied.
Gus smiled. "I never knew what fancy restaurants were like in Japan. This was a wonderful new experience."
"It was a new experience for me, too." Lichelle returned Gus' smile.
"I'm confused. I thought you said you'd been here before."
Lichelle nodded. "I have. But the experience of a date... That's new to me."
Gus shook his head. "No way. A pretty, smart girl like you? You had to've gotten plenty of dates."
"No, never. This is only my fourth one. Ever."
Gus didn't know what to say, taken aback at finding someone who'd been on fewer dates than he had. "I'm glad you enjoyed it, and I hope I could make this special for you."
Lichelle frowned. "You did. It really surprised me, because I didn't expect that. I didn't expect you, Gus."
As he listened, Gus watched over Lichelle's shoulder as a biker wove through strands of lined-up cars. He could see the biker was heading toward a puddle in the side of the road, and he quickly edged himself between it and Lichelle. When the biker plowed through, droplets of mud splashed the back of Gus' pants legs, but Lichelle was still dry.
Lichelle stared at him with an expression that Gus, if he hadn't known better, would have defined as awe. "You really are a nice guy, Gus. I don't believe it."
Gus smiled. "Believe it." He reached out to take her hand. "Let me take you home." Lichelle smiled. "I'd like that."
"JulesJulesJules!" Shawn shouted as he ran up the stairs of the ryokan, holding the object he'd found in Lichelle's closet, still wrapped in the black tank top he'd found it in.
"Shawn!" Juliet whispered as she opened the door of her room. "Stop shouting! These walls are literally paper-thin!"
"Jules, it's Gus!"
Juliet frowned. "What happened?"
"I can't find him. I called him once and I got the busy signal, and I looked for him in all the local hotspots and I couldn't find him and I called him six times over the past couple hours, and Jules! He's not answering! It went straight to voicemail!"
"Okay, okay. Calm down, Shawn. We'll find Gus. Where did you last see him?"
"I left him with Lichelle, that girl that Lassie met and the one that Gus and I met!"
"What girl?"
"Lichelle! Lichelle! The Not-Becca girl! Didn't Lassie tell you?"
"No. He didn't tell me anything."
Shawn groaned, dropped the small bundle he was carrying, and grabbed Juliet's shoulders. "Listen to me. There's this girl in Tokyo who looks just like Becca and she runs an art studio and we met her on the street today and she and Gus have been hitting on each other a lot and I didn't want them to end up together because what if Gus decided to move to Tokyo to be with her and then I'd be all alone and I can't lose my best friend again and I went to her house and I looked through her closet to find something I could use to break them up and I couldn't find anything so I just kept digging and digging until I got to the back of the closet and this is what I found!"
Shawn snatched up the bundle and tore away the tank top. Juliet stared at the small, innocuous thing her boyfriend was holding.
"Is that what I think it is?" she asked.
"It is," Shawn said.
"How do you know?"
"I'll explain later, but right now, we need to find Gus!"
"Where should we start looking?"
"The only place in this area that I haven't looked is her apartment. I came to you first. I really need your backup, Jules."
"You got it," Juliet said as she charged down the staircase. Shawn followed her close behind.
He dropped the collectible Hello Kitty clock on the floor outside Juliet's door as he went.