And Rivera is all, “Out here.”

So I unzip Foo’s pants.

And Cavuto grabs my arm and starts to drag me away, so I was forced to give Foo only a minor good-bye kiss that brushed his lips like a breeze from the tomb and left a little bit of a black lipstick streak on his cheek.

And I’m all, “I will never forget you, Foo. They may tear us asunder, but our love will endure for eternity.”

And he’s all, “Call me when you get home.”

And I’m all, “I’ll text you on the way.”

And he’s all, “Abby Normal, you rock my stripy socks.” Which was totally romantic, because he doesn’t wear stripy socks. I cried and my mascara melted in sorrow.

Then Cavuto’s all, “Oh for fuck’s sake.” And he starts to lead me out the door, but turns to Foo and goes, “Is that your tricked-out yellow Honda downstairs?”

And Foo is all, “Yeah.”

And Cavuto’s all, “You know it’s full of rats, right?”

And Foo’s all, “Yeah.”

And so I am a prisoner of the dreaded Motherbot and Foo faces the menace of Chet alone. Gotta jet, my sister, Ronnie, is asleep and I’m going to Magic Marker a pentagram on her shaved head. L8erz.

As they were walking away from delivering Abby Normal and her mother to the apartment building in the Fillmore, Cavuto said, “You know, if I’d had Allison there around when I came out to my dad, I think he would have understood a lot more why I like guys.”

“If the vampire cats’ victims turn to dust, most won’t even be reported unless someone sees the attack,” Rivera said, hoping Cavuto’s train of thought would head on to the next station.

“She’s so obnoxious,” said Cavuto. “Like a whole Saturday night drunk tank full of obnoxious packed into one little body.”

“Maybe if we get a cadaver dog,” said Rivera.

“Okay, but don’t bitch about how the car smells later, because I want chili and onions.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

“Cadaver dogs. You were saying we should go to the ballpark and get cadaver dogs for lunch.”

“I was saying no such thing. I was saying we should get a dog that’s trained to sniff out cadavers to help us find the clothing of the victims.”

“Oh,” said Cavuto, who didn’t want to think about vampires. “Sure, that makes sense. So, Barney’s Burgers for lunch then?”

“You buy,” Rivera said, as he popped the locks on the unmarked Ford and climbed in.

They drove eight blocks down Fillmore Street toward the Marina, before Cavuto said, “She’s right, you know? I am a bear.”

Rivera put on his sunglasses and took a few seconds adjusting them on his face to buy time before he answered with a sigh. “I’m glad you decided to come clean about that, Nick, because observing your six-foot-three-inch, two-hundred-and-sixty-pound, growling gay personage for the last fourteen years would have never betrayed your true identity, given my dull, homicide detective powers of observation.”

“Your sarcasm is the main reason Alice left you.”

“Really?” Rivera had wondered. Alice had said because he was too much of a cop and not enough of a husband, but he had suspicions about her testimony.

“No, but I’m sure it was on the list.”

“Nick, in all our time as partners, have I ever indicated that I wanted to discuss your sexuality?”

“Well, not beyond using it to threaten suspects.”

“And have I ever offered to share the details of my sex life with Alice?”

“I just assumed you didn’t have one.”

“Well, that’s not really relevant. I’m just saying, I’m fine with you just the way you are.”

“Mantastic, you mean?”

“Sure, go with that. Although I was thinking more of large and furry, yet afraid of tiny girls.”

“Well, you can’t hit her, she’s a kid,” Cavuto whined.

They found parking in a garage near Barney’s. Rivera pulled into a no-parking spot (because he could) and shut off the engine. He sat back and looked at the wall in front of them.

“So, vampire cats,” Cavuto said.

“Yeah,” said Rivera.

“We’re fucked,” said the big cop.

“Yeah,” said Rivera.

A flock of wild parrots lives in the city of San Francisco. They are South American cherry-headed conures-bright green with a red head, a little smaller than a typical pigeon.

No one is quite sure how they came to the City. It’s likely that they are the descendants of animals caught in the jungle, then released to the city skies when they proved too wild to be kept as pets. They fly over the northern waterfront of San Francisco, foraging for fruit, berries, and blossoms, from the Presidio at the entrance of the Golden Gate Bridge, over Pacific Heights, the Marina, Russian Hill, North Beach, and all the way to the Ferry Building near the Oakland Bay Bridge. They are social, squawky, silly birds that mate for life and advertise their presence with a cacophony of beeps and cheeps that inspire smiles from residents, bewilderment from tourists, and hunger in predators, mostly red-tailed hawks and peregrine falcons.

The parrots spend their nights high in the trees of Telegraph Hill, beneath the great concrete phallus of Coit Tower, sheltered from attack from hawks by the evergreen canopy overhead, and from all but the most ambitious cats, by the sheer altitude. But still, they are sometimes attacked, and although gentle creatures, they will fight back, biting with their thick, built-for-seed-crushing beaks.

Which is what happened.

The next morning after he witnessed the cat attack in the SOMA, the Emperor of San Francisco was awakened from a nest he’d made in one of the little stair gardens on Telegraph Hill, to hear parrots squawking in the trees. The sun was just breaking the horizon behind the Bay Bridge, turning the water red-gold under a blue morning mist.

The Emperor crawled out from under a pile of carpet padding, stood, and stretched, his great joints creaking in the cold like ancient church doors. The men, Bummer and Lazarus, poked their noses out of the gray cloak, snuffled the dawn, then, with the call of the parrots, resolved themselves to morning and emerged like urgent butterflies to search for the perfect spot for the first wee of the day.

The three watched as fifty or so squawking parrots circled Coit Tower and headed out toward the Embarcadero, where, suddenly, they all stopped flying, burst into flames, and fell like a smoldering storm of dying comets into Levi’s Plaza.

“Well, you don’t see that every day,” said the Emperor, scratching Lazarus’s ears through the bandages. The retriever was a doggy version of The Mummy, wrapped ears to tail in bandages after his last encounter with the vampire cats. The vet in the Mission wanted to keep him overnight, but the retriever had never spent a night away from the Emperor since they had found each other, and the vet had no accommodations for a large and burly monarch, let alone a feisty Boston terrier, so the three had bunked together under the carpet pad.

Bummer chuffed, which translated from dog to: “I don’t like it.”

As the famous frog sang, it’s not easy being green.