Cyrus pushed through the shadows. His whiskers slipped across mud, sediment, and broken chips of wood. He scampered through debris and pitch blackness, his nose low to the ground.
He stopped, sniffed, and caught a skewed whiff of old, evaporating scotch that had lost its astringency.
The scotch evoked Rocco"s voice, and he was back at the Wicked Cat again surrounded by the din of clinking glasses, hushed talk, and the Grateful Dead playing a little too loud from the speaker in the corner of the room.
"Suppose you run into money trouble," Rocco said. "What would you do?"
"Huh?" Cyrus asked.
"You have a job, and boom—you don"t have a job anymore," Rocco said. "What do you do?"
"Find another job," Cyrus said. "Duh."
Rocco lifted his glass of scotch. "What if there aren"t any jobs?"
"I
