A Paris Tradition

Chapter Two

Something long and dusty reached over Martine's left shoulder and relieved her of part of her burden. It jauntily waved a stolen bit of hay in her face before retreating, to be followed by wet chewing sounds. She struggled with the rest of the bale, which had been shoved off balance by the questing trunk, nearly dropping the hay before another pair of hands grabbed it and helped her push it up to the tree-height manger, designed to simulate the act of plucking food from branches. Several other bales already dotted the dusty elephant enclosure at Paris's Zoo de Vincennes. Turning, she tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and smiled gratefully at her companion.

"Thank you, Rémi." Then she spun on her heel and shook her finger at the offending appendage. "As for you, greedy, I ought to stop feeding you altogether! You weigh as much as... as much as..."

"An elephant," Rémi suggested helpfully in slightly accented French.

"An elephant! You, you... pachyderm, you!"

Appropriately chastised, the elephant in question snuck another bite of hay from the bale above Martine's head and ambled off, munching happily.

Aware that she'd finished on a weak note with the elephant, she rounded on Rémi instead. "And you! What on Earth are you doing here so early? I know for a fact you work overtime every day you're in, and I don't know what you do on your days off, but you don't seem to be sleeping at all!" Rémi had lost his mild grin and was beginning to look distinctly worried. "You've got bags under your eyes I could carry my shoes in, and don't tell me you're squinting like that because it's bright!"

" -Martine, I-"

"You're going to curl up on the couch in the office, that's what!" A thought struck her. "You're not ill, are you?" She grabbed his hand and started herding him quickly away from her delicate elephants, ignoring his feeble protests that no, he wasn't ill, he'd just not slept well at all the night before, no, he didn't need to go home, honestly. She ignored him handily, and made him precede her through the door to the office. She sat him down on the couch, told him in no uncertain terms that he was not to set foot to floor for at least two hours or she would feed the elephants something which would make his usual manure detail very unpleasant, and left, feeling a mild sense of triumph.

Martine liked the quiet Englishman. He worked hard, was always pleasant, and didn't complain about a job with bizarre requirements and odd hours. She worried about him, though. He never looked well-fed, and often looked exhausted. The man was downright skinny! She'd spent an afternoon once trying to figure out how he managed to keep up with the physical labour his maintenance and cleaning job required, and had thrown up her hands in frustration and gone on to the more rewarding task of analysing diets to see if the macaques' nutritional needs were being met.

She stopped at the wolf enclosure and had a look inside. The male deigned to flick an ear in her direction, but the rest of him remained sprawled in the shade, the very picture of insouciance. The females were snoozing at a respectful distance. She stopped at the wolf enclosure and had a look inside, idly noticing that an 'a' was missing on the sign, which read: "British Columbian wolf (Canis lupes columbianus) - on loan from V_ncouver, Canada". The alpha male deigned to flick an ear in her direction, but the rest of him remained sprawled in the shade, the very picture of insouciance. The other wolves were snoozing at a respectful distance. As she watched, one of them yawned. The little boy standing next to her gasped at the sight of the long canines, and ran off to tug at the sleeve of a woman who was presumably his mother.

"What's going on with you, hm? Silly wolves. Christophe's asked me to come in early tomorrow to see if I can find out what's going on, you know, and we've added some more video cameras. No more blind spots. I hope you'll behave yourselves tonight. I've got work to do, and I can't be spending time worrying about you. Don't think you can get away with things simply because you're guests. Do I make myself clear?" The male sat up and applied himself vigorously to relieving the itch behind his left ear. Martine nodded. "Right, then."

In the office, Remus was having difficulty following orders. It wasn't that he didn't want to. His joints all ached, his head felt disconnected from his body, and his thoughts were trying to outrace his pulse. The sofa was comfortable, with arms the perfect height for resting a head on. It smelled faintly of animals and hay, which was both comforting and maddening at this time of the month. The day before a full moon night, Remus' skin itched terribly. He squirmed. He needed to be out doing things, not sitting still with nothing to take his mind off of the coming transformation. Martine meant well, but she didn't know. He plucked at a thread that was coming loose from his sleeve, temporarily absorbed in seeing how much he could pull before the hem came down. He stopped himself before his sleeve fell apart completely. He needed to cut the thread and stop it from catching on anything. His searching eyes lit on the desk, focusing on a stack of papers with a sticky note on them. "To be filed", the note said. His eyes widened as he read the title on the first sheet. "Visitor numbers from... three years ago! File under... 'S', I suppose, for 'statistics'. Ah yes, here are some older ones."

When Martine came back to check on him two hours later, at the end of her shift, she found Rémi fast asleep on the floor surrounded by piles of paper, leaning on an open file cabinet. She frowned slightly - he couldn't be comfortable like that, surely. She reached to wake him up so he could move to the couch, but stopped herself. He really did look exhausted, and at least he was asleep. She plucked a cushion off the floor and managed to get it between his head and the cold metal of the cabinet and grabbed a leftover jacket from the hooks by the door to tuck around his thin shoulders.

She stood back to admire her handiwork and frowned. There were more creases on his face than there had been that morning, drawing down the corners of his mouth. As she watched, his lips twitched, and his eyes flew open, looking blindly around the room in a panic. The jacket and cushion fell to the floor as he scrambled to his feet. She grabbed his arms to keep him upright as he slipped on a sheet of the paper, and he looked at her and bared his teeth in a snarl.

"Rémi! Rémi, it's Martine!" She shook him slightly as her voice took on a pleading tone. "Look at me Rémi, please, it's Martine, you're all right, it's all right, please, Rémi, look at me!"

"Who?" Slowly, his face grew calm again, and his eyes focused on her. The fear was in his voice this time. "Martine? Martine are you all right, I didn't hurt you, did I, I'm so sorry!"

She cut him off. "No, Rémi, you didn't hurt me, just startled me a little." She peered at him suspiciously. "Are you quite certain you aren't ill?"

"No, no, I mean yes, I'm certain I'm not ill. What time is it?"

"What? It's nearly six o'clock. The zoo is closing."

"S-six o'clock? No, no, that's not right, it can't be."

Martine could see the seeds of panic starting to sprout again. "Yes, Rémi, six o'clock." Focus his thoughts on something else, that was what she had to do. "Your shift starts in five minutes. Would you like some help with the elephants?"

"No! I mean, no, thank you. That's quite all right - you must be tired. I'm all right, honestly. The work will help me clear my head. Look, there's your coat. Why's it on the floor? Here you go, it's a lovely colour by the way, don't forget your handbag, have a good night!"

With that, Martine found herself deftly deposited outside the office, the jacket very nearly on, clutching her purse in one hand, and the door closing behind her.

"Goodnight to you too, Rémi. No, the door didn't hit me on the way out. Yes, I shall see you tomorrow, Rémi." She sighed and glanced back at the door worriedly, then shook her head and left. The man was an adult and perfectly capable of looking after himself, she told herself sternly. If he was ill, he would tell her; he cared about the health of the animals every bit as much as she did. Nobody worked with the animals if they were sick. Shrugging, she took the jacket off. It wasn't hers - it had been in the office since January, and didn't seem to belong to anyone.

Arriving home, she set her alarm for four o'clock before she forgot. The thought that Christophe would be well-advised to pay her some extra money for the overtime crossed her mind briefly, but her thoughts quickly returned to the wolves themselves; had such behaviour ever been documented before? She checked the time - she had some hours before she would be able to sleep - and pulled some old animal behaviour textbooks from her bookshelf. It wasn't particularly recent information, but she didn't much want to put her shoes back on and walk to a cyber-café. She curled up on her bed to read and had reached a section on dominance struggles common to most canine species when the book fell from her hand and her eyelids drooped.