Even at 5:00 A.M. Bourbon Street was not devoid of life. As the last of the revelers were staggering back to their hotel rooms and the bartenders and dancers were counting their tips, the Quarter's distinctive cleaning vehicles were launching an assault. Small, shiny black three-wheelers with silver-white Texas longhorns emblazoned across the sides, they invaded like an army of dung beetles, sweeping up and washing away another long night's ordure. They dropped down a block for the more pleasant walk along Royal.Toward Dumaine, where the classic iron fence wrought in the shape of cornstalks kept guard over the gently decaying old hotel of the same name, a huge rat trundled down the gutter.He was sleek and fat and unafraid, putting Anna in mind of Templeton in Charlotte's Web."God, I hate rats," Clare said. Jordan flipped his cigarette butt at the little beast. "Did you hear a year or so back about rats eating that baby down here?""I did. Maybe the baby was dead before the rats came on the scene." She doubted that was true, but she shared it because, since Templeton was the only bona fide fur-bearing wildlife she'd seen in a while, she felt duty bound to protect and defend him.The farther from the tourist area they walked, the darker the streets grew.
