Fox startles awake on a redwood branch with a stolen green soup peacoat as his blanket. Scampering down the trunk, he jumps onto soil within the Transamerica Redwood Park. “I need to bite into San Francisco.”
Past a soapy fountain, he leaps over the gate. On Clay Street’s splintered concrete, he feels a weight in the peacoat’s breast pocket. Once Fox pulls out a Greenhill & Co. keycard, he gazes at Sienna Foxwood’s photograph, a woman with dyed auburn hair and a cosmetic smile. “Well, it’s time to go to work.”
In his verdant tree peacoat, Fox ambles his auburn fur body beside clothed Homo sapient skin. Through the glass doors of the Transamerica Pyramid, a security guard at the metal detector shuffles bipeds along without glancing at who has a tail and who has a suit. Fox taps the keycard, flows past as he has no weapons or implanted metal to trigger a red warning.
Elevator springs up to the 40th floor, he blinks before the Greenhill & Co. workers penciled into their cubicles. No one diverts their salaried sight away from their screen. Fox shuffles right, left, finally finds the only empty cubicle where he sits on the only empty seat in the only empty corporate trap of money.
A man in an onyx jacket bolts over. “Ms. Foxwood, do you know what time it is?” “I lost my watch along with the shaky concept of time.” “In this firm reality, it’s 9:03 a.m. I expect you to be here tomorrow at 9:00 a.m.” “I slept somewhere new last night.” “I don’t care where you sleep. I only care about your productivity here when you’re awake.”
After his authority thunders away, Fox scans over a smattering of snapshots pinned to the cubicle’s interior. In one, she beams beside crumbling ruins. In another, she kisses a bearded man on a high-tide beach.
While the sun whirls behind grayscale clouds, he earns his day’s pay by striking Sienna’s glowing computer god as if he’s striking flint rocks together to spark a financial language fire. All the while, Fox’s high-tide mind is transplanted to an ocean’s cerulean kisses, his fur wet with the water of escape.
At 5:00 p.m. in his lush canopy peacoat, Fox crowds his animal self before the elevator alongside business ties and tops. “Hey Sienna, I didn’t notice you earlier but you look different.” “I’m trying out a new foxy look. Do you like it?”