The Care and Feeding of Exotic Pets Read online

  “We’re going inside. Now.”

  “Why?”

  “You’ll see.”

  “I don’t want to.” She could not stop her tears.

  “I’m not going to kill you.” He reached in his pocket and pulled out a flat folded knife. It opened with a press of his thumb. The blade was long and partially serrated. “But I will hurt you if I have to. I will.”

  He did not look at her as he said it. He seemed to be staring at his knife, at his hand holding the dark handle, and then at his other hand circling her wrist.

  “I will,” he said again.

  He was young, younger than Winnie first thought. His skin was as smooth and flawless as Lacy’s. Had he grown up setting cats on fire, ripping the wings off butterflies, beating up kids for their lunch money? His fingernails were gnawed to the quick. His cuticles were raw.

  “Why are you doing this?” she asked. “Why me?”

  “Why did you get in the car?” He pushed the knife toward her belly. “Stand up.”

  Slowly, she got to her feet. She would go inside. There had to be a phone, window, a front door that did not need a remote to open. He took her arm and pulled her to the door that opened into the house. Hot air whooshed out and engulfed them, so intense Winnie coughed to get her breath. The heat was shocking. The house was on fire. She tried to stop on the threshold, but he dragged her inside.

  “It’s too hot. I can’t breathe.”

  “Shut up.”

  He kicked the door shut behind them.

  2.

  As soon as Lacy stepped into her first period class her cell phone went off, blaring the obscure heavy metal music she chose because it was the most annoying in class, in restaurants, in the movies. Her chemistry teacher, Mr. Bronson, sighed. He put his hands on his funny, womanly hips.

  “It’s my mom,” Lacy lied. “I forgot my homework and she’s bringing it.”

  She ducked out into the hall and answered her phone, breathless, laughing, “What do you want?”

  It was the guy, her twenty-five-year-old guy. Again. He would not leave her alone; he called all the time. She had never before been pursued.

  “Yes, yes. I just got to school,” she said into the phone. “My mother’s taking her car to the shop. She dropped me off on the way.”

  She smiled as he flirted with her. His voice was deep. She had told him she was eighteen—and a senior. She liked older men, or imagined she would.

  He asked her about her mother’s car—typical man—and she rolled her eyes. She didn’t care. “She has a really, really ancient Peugeot. Weird French car.” Then she remembered the lies she had told him. “It’s very rare—and expensive. One of two in the world.” Such bullshit and he bought it every time.

  “Are you okay?” he said. “Was last night horrible? Are you bruised?”

  She had also told him her mother had hit her with a hair-brush and locked her in her room. Some story about a sexy dress Winnie forbid her to wear, a dress Lacy did not really have and would probably never really wear. “It was okay. Listen, I have to go to class.”

  “I’ll call you right after school. Before orchestra.”

  “Okay.”

  She snapped the phone shut and slipped back into the classroom.

  “Turn your cell phone off, Ms. Parker.” Mr. Bronson did not turn from the board as he spoke.

  “I did.”

  Ten minutes later when her phone started screaming again—this time it was her stupid father—she was the only one who laughed. The rest of the class had seen it before. Mr. Bronson had seen it too many times.

  “That’s it.”

  “It must’ve turned on in my pocket.”

  “Get out,” Mr. Bronson said. “Go to the office.”

  “You’re kidding. C’mon, Mr. B, it was an accident.” She appealed to her classmates, but they offered no support. Not a smile, not a nod. She felt her face flush, the sweat blossoming on her forehead. She knew her carefully blown dry hair was beginning to frizz. “Okay. Fine. I turned it off. See? It’s off.”

  “Go.”

  Lacy waited for Mr. Bronson to change his mind. “This seems like a really important lecture,” she said. “I hate to miss it.”

  “Too bad.”

  “Yesterday, when Eric’s cell went off, you didn’t ask him to leave. I mean, just because mine happens to go off more often is no reason to punish me. Either there should be a policy of no cell phones at all—which I personally do not support—or you need to treat us all the same.”

  “Not again,” a kid in the back groaned.

  “I agree,” Mr. Bronson said, “Not again. Lacy, get out of here.”

  She gathered her books and her backpack and headed for the door. Even her classmates were rejecting her. She paused at Marissa’s desk and made a face. She wanted Marissa to be her friend; she thought Marissa would commiserate with her about the cell phone, but Marissa just turned away. Her long dark Latina hair rippled and gleamed. A hot pink bra strap peeked from her tank top and graced one cappuccino-colored shoulder. Even Marissa’s underwear was perfect.

  “Close the door behind you, please.”

  Lacy left and closed the classroom door. The hallway was empty and that was a relief. Why had she been born so damn white? She was white, white, white with almost white hair that wasn’t even WASP-y straight, but curly, like some Aryan Afro. Which her mother refused to let her chemically straighten. Her stupid actress grandmother had the same white hair and skin, but her hair was shiny straight and on her the pallor was stunning. Lacy also had her father’s ridiculous curls, adorable ringlets when she was little that had gone nuts with puberty. Lacy hated her hair and her skin. Her translucent thighs and inner arms revealed every blue vein. Her areolas were the palest pink, barely visible on her breasts. In the dim light of a man’s bedroom, she would look nipple-less. Not that any man had seen her yet, but she had tried various lighting conditions at home as she posed in front of her mirror. She thought candlelight was the worst; her skin looked healthier, but her breasts became two round undefined orbs like the tits on a Barbie doll. Her mother said she spent too much time obsessing, but what did she know? She had straight dark hair and dark eyes. That great olive skin.

  Just thinking about Winnie gave Lacy a scruffy feeling in her stomach. Dry, as if she had swallowed dirt. Her mother was just so boring. She had that stupid job which she hated. She had that one friend who was always busy. She never went anywhere. When Lacy got home from visiting her dad, Winnie would be sitting on the couch reading, exactly the same as when she left. It wasn’t Lacy’s job to entertain her, was it? And since she had found that cigarette butt in her backpack (and she had been so damn careful!) she wouldn’t let up on her about smoking. Then it was the piercings. And her grades. Even when Winnie didn’t say anything it was there in her face; the disappointment absolutely obvious every time she looked at her.

  And now this. Principal Dickhead would call Mom for sure. Lacy could not go to the office. Her mother was at her stupid tennis lesson anyway. She dawdled in the hallway. Her next class was in fifteen minutes, but Marissa was in that class too. That was too much. She could just imagine Marissa looking at her, then whispering to her friends and all of them laughing. Then she had stupid English and horrible lunch and then European History and she had not done her homework and there was going to be a test. So she just bent her head and walked past the office toward the doors. Who the fuck needed school anyway? She could read. She could write. Wasn’t that enough?

  No one stopped her as she pushed open one side of the double glass doors. She paused briefly, waiting for a hand on her shoulder, the voice of Mrs. Lopez, the secretary, saying “Young lady? Where do you think you’re going?” but no one noticed as she went out and down the front steps. Or if they saw her they didn’t care.

  She straightened her shoulders and walked purposefully away from school until she turned the corner. Then she stopped. Where should she go? What would happen when she got there? What would M
arissa think when she missed the next class? Lacy’s head was filled with questions—as usual. Nothing ever seemed solid or definite to her. She was easily convinced of whatever anyone said, found herself agreeing completely and fervently. But then she would walk away and change her mind. Or forget what she had decided. The answer to anything might be yes. It could just as likely be no. She sighed. Marissa and her friends obviously knew the right answer to everything.

  Lacy fingered her cell phone. Her guy would be at work. That was the disadvantage to an older man. He had a job. He paid rent. Still, if she got stuck somewhere he would leave work and come get her. If she called him, she knew he would come right away. Her hair was curling; she could feel it frizzing up around her face as the wind blew. There was moisture in the air, possible rain. The winds were picking up. She watched a leaf skitter across the sidewalk. She walked and drifted into her fantasy.

  Her hair was long and straight. She stood on a street corner—no—in a parking lot by a 7-11 in a sketchy part of town. A red car filled with boys, maybe a pick-up truck, maybe a low black car with tinted windows, circled her. The boys taunted her, wanted her, called out things about her legs and her ass and what they would do to her. He came squealing into the lot in his silver Audi. Or his hipster classic car. Or his outdoorsy Subaru wagon. He fishtailed to a stop beside her and she leapt into the passenger seat.

  “Thank you,” she breathed. A single tear on her cheek.

  “I want to kill those guys,” he said. “If anything happened to you…”

  They would lean together for a kiss. The first kiss. Her first kiss ever.

  Next time they spoke she would ask him what kind of car he had. She imagined a nice car, a good car, but she wouldn’t care if he drove an old beater. He was a person to whom exterior, material things did not matter.

  She had never actually seen him—not live and in person—only a photo he had emailed to her. That’s all he had seen of her too, the one picture of herself she liked that she posted on her page. And the photo of the tattoo she wanted. That silly photo had brought them together. He’d thought it was really her leg—that she already had that tattoo. He left a comment, then she replied and they started to chat. She sent him a quotation Mr. Bronson had put on the board by some dead guy named William Durant, “Forget past mistakes. Forget failures. Forget everything except what you’re going to do now and do it.”

  He wrote back, “Yes! Today is the first day of the rest of your life!”

  She had never heard that before and it struck her as amazing. It was so, so true. That was it. They were obviously connected. She wrote him that he had inspired her. He replied she had lifted his spirits, made him glad to be alive.

  “Hey. Hey, Lacy.”

  She was startled out of her daydream. Buster, a skinny loser she had known since elementary school, hung out his car window. His brown hair fell in his eyes. She could see the green T-shirt he always wore.

  “Hey,” she replied.

  “What’re you doing?”

  She shrugged.

  “C’mere.”

  She walked over to his car. His eyes were red.

  “Wanna get high?”

  She shook her head no.

  “Wanna ride someplace?”

  She couldn’t go home, but she had to go somewhere. “Sure,” she said.

  She went around and opened the passenger side door. Buster threw sandwich wrappers and magazines and earphones and clothes and a dilapidated notebook into the back seat.

  “Sorry. This car is like my office.”

  It smelled of old food and unwashed clothes. There was a shriveled apple core covered in dust and lint on the floor mat. Lacy cracked her window.

  “Where to? Your chariot awaits.” He tapped his fingers on the wheel in time to music obviously playing only in his head.

  Would Buster take her to Rose Tattoo? She wanted to get her nose pierced. Or she thought she did. The ring in her belly-button had hurt so much, but Roger at the place said noses were just cartilage. She had been thinking about it for a while, but she didn’t really want Buster to come along. What if she cried?

  “Got a cigarette?” she asked.

  “Are you kidding? My body is a fucking temple.” Buster opened the ashtray and pulled out a joint. “I smoke only the purest, finest, organically grown weed.”

  Lacy laughed. You had to laugh at Buster. He grinned happily. He pulled out into traffic without looking and a car coming up behind honked.

  “Bless you, neighbor!” Buster waved his hand out the window. He lit his joint. “I know just where to go. I will take you to an amazing place.”

  The SUV behind them pulled around and the driver flipped Buster off. Buster just shook his head. “Negative energy will get you nowhere, my friend.” Then he looked at Lacy. “What’re you doing out of school? You’re not a deviant.”

  “My cell phone went off and Mr. Bronson kicked me out of class.”

  “Those cell phones will give you brain cancer.”

  “I usually just text.”

  “It is a fucking gorgeous day.”

  Lacy frowned at the gathering clouds, the palm trees bending in the wind.

  Buster continued. “Life experience on a day like today is as important as anything you could learn in a classroom.”

  Lacy leaned forward to look up through the windshield. “Maybe it’ll rain.”

  “Fuck no. Warm. Sunny. So Cal, man. So Cal living!”

  Almost every day was warm and sunny in LA. The relentless sunshine depressed her. She was so easily sunburned. Her hair preferred air conditioning. And the weather was boring. She and her mother agreed on that one point. Her mother. Why was she such a bitch lately?

  “Stop over there.” Lacy pointed at a bodega on the corner. “I need a pack of cigs.”

  3.

  Jonathan let himself in. He still had his key on the same ring Winnie had given him seventeen years ago on their honeymoon. If Jessica knew he carried the keys to their house and his Porsche and her SUV on the old ring, she’d run right out and buy him a new one, but she thought the sterling silver seashell was a souvenir from way back, before Winnie, from his surfer days. Even though it said Tiffany’s right on it, like he would have been able to afford anything from Tiffany’s back then. She wasn’t the sharpest crayon in the deck—or whatever that expression was. She was cute and she was fun. Of course, if she found out he was hanging out at his ex-wife’s house she would not be fun. No. That would not be any fun at all.

  He took a deep breath. He could smell coffee, Winnie’s good coffee. He went into the kitchen. He stood by the counter in front of the window, in the very spot he remembered Winnie standing when he told her he was leaving. There was her blue mug. There was Lacy’s cereal bowl. There was the cutting board covered in scraps from Lacy’s cut up apple and her peanut butter and honey sandwich—she never took anything else for lunch. He licked his finger and pressed down to capture a single tiny crumb. He put it on his tongue, swallowing the morsel of his ex-wife and only child.

  The dog scratched to come in. Jonathan opened the back door.

  “Hey, Buddy.”

  He bent down to pet the black and white mutt. He and Jessica had a hypoallergenic designer labradoodle. Very sweet, but nothing but fluff between its apricot-colored, curly hair-not-fur ears. She was two-years-old and barely knew her name. Buddy sat down and thumped his tail on the floor.

  “You waiting, huh?”

  He took a dog biscuit from his pocket, hid it behind his back and switched it from hand to hand, back and forth. Then he put both hands out in front of him.

  “Which one, Buddy? Which one is it?’

  Buddy nosed his left hand. The dog got it right every time. Jonathan gave him the treat, also hypoallergenic and apricot-colored, plus organic, but Buddy seemed to like it just fine.

  Jonathan made his rounds. He went upstairs, straightened a kindergarten photo of Lacy on the wall outside the bathroom, and then checked to make sure the faucet in t
he sink wasn’t dripping anymore. He had fixed it last time he came; he was pleased he had done a successful job. He was a handy guy when he got the opportunity. He stepped into Lacy’s room and shook his head at the mess. When she moved in with him, this would have to change. She needed responsibility. He was going to give her driving lessons, but he would not buy her a car until she proved she was ready for it. He walked past the master bedroom, but he couldn’t go in. Today he even averted his eyes. He didn’t want to see the unmade bed, the book on her nightstand, the dust on his.

  He went back downstairs to his special chair. He had taken nothing when he moved out; Jessica didn’t want any reminders of his old life. Except Lacy, of course. The give of the cushion, the scratch of the worn upholstery, the faint smell of dog, was all as it should be. He picked a piece of lint off his expensive long shorts. They weren’t particularly comfortable, but Jessica had bought them for him. They were what everybody was wearing and they made him look young. His shirt had the logo of a skateboard company across the back, even though these days the only wheels he rode were on his car and the stationary bike at the gym. Nobody would know that looking at him. He weighed almost the same as when he’d first met Winnie. Of course, his hair was a little thinner, and he had help keeping it this shade of blonde, but he had his fans. Plenty of them.

  She was at tennis. She said she couldn’t have lunch, so she was probably out for most of the day. He leaned his head back, closed his eyes and then opened them again. He wanted to see. There was the piano they had inherited from a friend who moved away. The dent in the coffee table where seven-year-old Lacy had dropped her roller skate. The ugly painting on the wall, a thrift store find she loved so much. Her old twenty-seven inch TV. His eyes caressed each. It was as if he had never seen them before and as if he always saw them, as if he carried these items in his pocket wherever he went.