Night is when they  come out. They come out in droves or staggered lines, whispers or shouts, coupled or alone. They congregate at places like The Laughing Lobster, especially at Happy Hour, when people like me and Queenie sit at the bar, our heads and tongues, helium-light, and the liquor, a fog for the perpetually fogged. Queenie and I are part of this growing subterranean breed, the raccoon people, craving the muck, the dark alleys, the crevices and the spaces, the scraps we often mistake for food. We're too poor to afford daylight. We‘re too rich to squander the night. Some people just flat out deny that they're raccoons.

In fact, Queenie has a black eye that takes on a kind of bluish tint under the florescent light. She got mugged in daylight near Wal-mart‘s. I guess that black eye qualifies her for raccoon membership. And I rarely see Queenie in daylight. When I first heard that Queenie got mugged, I felt something round and bottomless open in my gut. Even though Queenie is not my mother, and I am too old to be a boy, there are times, when feeling lonely and insecure, as only a raccoon can know, that I crave the warm fur of her company.

Queenie and I trudge up and down the sloping sidewalks of Hazelnut Avenue. We just left The Laughing Lobster at Happy Hour and now we're on our way to Tingles. Up a winding incline, Queenie boasts how she is descended from a long line of Hapsburg kings and queens-- and in another life-- she entertained barons and nobles from Stuttguard, Saltzburg. It’s the same tall story she pitches every time. "Lieber Gott. Weren't we all once glitter and gold," she says in that shaky high-pitched voice, "and everything in between."

Sometimes, I ask Queenie if she remembers Vienna. The last time I asked her that, which was in the Laughing Lobster, about a week or a month ago, she took a swig from her high boy, licked her lips, and sat pensively for a moment, staring at her reflection in the bar’s mirror. “Is it raining in Vienna?“ she said. Then her eyes turned to two aquamarine stones, sitting in the cragged crown of her face, the stringy gray hair, unkempt.

She has a strange sense of time, often compressing vast spaces, splicing memories, talking about something that happened years ago, as if it occurred yesterday. Sometimes, Queenie will tilt her high boy and say, Chester, it was so hard getting you dressed for school the other day. Why do you hate school so much? Are you so frightened of the nuns?

Whenever she says things like this, I never correct her. I just let the silence between us linger, a shadow we both own and disown. Eventually, something evaporates.

All I ever do is walk, says Queenie, struggling behind me to catch her wind. I walk from the central wards to the center of town. Sometimes I walk in circles around the center of town. Do you know the price of bratwurst has gone up? Tell me, Chester. What do you do when you can no longer walk? When your legs stiffen and refuse your brain's commands. What do you do, Chester?

I shrug, distracted by the sudden flash, the twirling lights of police sirens, looming closer. Maybe a D. U. I. Maybe a heart attack at the wheel of the car.

I don't know, I say, what do you do?

You crawl on all fours until you can no longer crawl. Until you return to the sky, light as ein vogel, light as a puff of air. Pfft!

Sometimes, I could kick myself. We could have taken a cab to Tingles, but then we couldn’t afford a full Happy Hour. But one of the nice things about taxis is that they always pick up raccoons.

And although Queenie often acts like my mother, saying, Chester, do this or that, even though my name isn't Chester, right now, she labors behind me, her footsteps, heavy, clunking. I can hear the rasps of her breaths, the wheezing and the quickened tempo, the desperate plight of too little air. Recently, she has put on weight and I sometimes joke that she holds the whole world in her belly, and the world's oceans, its rivers and tributaries, in her reddened balloon-like legs. The doctors give me all these diuretics, she says, but they don't work, so I order another beer. She always thinks that is so funny. You can never truly appreciate a raccoon’s sense of humor unless you are one.

The night grows cold. A shiver works its way up my legs and back and I imagine it’s worse for Queenie, who wears her ex-husband's ratty old sweater. In the street, the Leather Kings cruise by in their new and shiny cars, showing off their indoor tans and their latest tattoos. Sometimes, the Leather Kings hunt and run over raccoons like me and Queenie.

A cat has nine lives, they say, but a raccoon only has two: the life it leads and the one behind closed eyes.

I point to a park bench and tell Queenie she can rest there. Tingles is a good twelve blocks, maybe more, and I don’t think Queenie will make it. If I were still working at the cab company, I could give her a ride to Tingles. Whenever I was on duty, I always gave Queenie a free ride and paid the charge. Then, I'd wink at her in the rearview, signaling that I knew her secret identity. There is strength in numbers, and someday, we will live openly in daylight.

On the park bench, I listen to Queenie gasp for air, wait for her to catch her breath. Under the street light, her cheeks puff out, her face turns to a deep shade of red. She squeezes her nose with thumb and forefinger, a makeshift clothespin. What are you doing? I ask.

She says she was going to sneeze and she couldn’t let that happen. She lets out a sigh.  

I think this must be one of those old superstitions that are carried for generations. Queenie, I say, it‘s not healthy to fight a sneeze. It’s not healthy to keep something in that wants to come out.

Nein, nein, she says, sneezing always brings her bad luck. Like many years ago, right before her eight-year old son was hit and killed by a car while crossing the street-- she sneezed. Right before her husband left her for a woman whose soul was as dark as a raccoon‘s secrets--she sneezed. If she sneezes, she says, she’ll disappear.

She begins coughing, a stack of gurgling phlegm-filled coughs, then tells me a story her father, she claims, once told her.

It was a drizzly night, and the roads were muddy, grayish.

She coughs and clutches at words, coughs and starts over.

It was a drizzly night, and the roads were muddy, grayish.

Somewhere in the Black Forest, a stranger, wearing cape and mask, walked into an inn, demanding room and board. He claimed he was God. The innkeeper, thinking the stranger nothing but a drunkard, laughed at him. Disgruntled, the stranger drew in a deep breath and exhaled. Everything disappeared. That, her father said, was how the world began and that is how it will end.

I don’t know if there is a hidden meaning to that story. And I won’t ask Queenie. 

Raccoons grow uncomfortable when you pry into something part of their family history. It’s like asking a Hapsburg princess, how she got her distinctive nose.

She starts coughing again, a whole spasm of it. Look, she says, digging into her pockets, go to the liquor store and get me a pint of brandy. Brandy is always good for what I got.

I tell her I’ll pay, although I won’t have the money to stay at Tingles, one happy raccoon, suffused with visions of daylight. Standing, I peer down at Queenie, shivering, leaning over. I once had a mother like her. And I was her rabbit, weakling son.

While I was growing up, my mother grew down. She always promised to take me places, to the botanical gardens in the park, the shopping malls, the rows of mansions that rich people owned, wide rectangular houses with at least three coats of paint. But whenever she said, let’s go somewhere, with that strange smile on her face, she always followed behind, her footsteps, lumbering, fading. After she died, I turned from a spoiled rabbit to a scavenger raccoon. I hoarded everything in the night.

I return from the liquor store, tucking the paper bag under my arm. The liquor store didn’t carry blackberry brandy, so, I bought a bottle of rum. I can hear Queenie now when she opens it. Lieber Gott! It’s just like you, Chester, she’ll say. I can’t trust you for one simple errand. I send you to get milk and you bring back a package of licorice.

Laboring up the sidewalk, I feel the wind pierce through me, an angry phantom. I look for the park bench where I left her. Queenie is gone.

I swivel and squint my eyes, scan the streets, the sidewalks. I imagine all the raccoons are safely cloistered in places like Tingles, or The Laughing Lobster, while the Leather Kings patrol streets, looking to cause another hit and run, another raccoon casualty.

Maybe I’ll chance the park. Maybe she’s sleeping there, under the gazebo. No, she would only do that in summer. I think even the muggers have deserted the park. It’s just that cold.

The wind slaps my face. I have to find Queenie. Because even though I’m no longer young, I was once some mother‘s son. And what’s a boy to do without his mother?

I search the broken sidewalks. The streets, cold and hard. Night is blacker than black. Silence. The amnesiac world is still. Maybe for now, the Leather Kings are hiding from the chill in parked cars, radios blaring. I turn and study the park bench, its chipped wooden boards--sagging, empty. There is nothing. No one.

Queenie must have sneezed.