The Care and Feeding of Exotic Pets Read online

  He popped out his cell phone from the special phone pocket on his jacket and texted, “Photos of your girlfriend are ready.” Cell phones weren’t safe, everything had to be in code, but he’d explained the drill to Oren when they had met six months ago at the Sacramento Reptile Expo. His website said ‘wildlife photographer’ and ‘reptiles my specialty’ and ‘all types available.’ The in-crowd knew what he meant. He worked hard to keep his business very private. Nobody even knew his real name. They just called him Kidney. It had been his moniker since he first began collecting reptiles, years and years ago, and he had told a group he’d give his left kidney for a Duvacel’s gecko. He repeated the phrase often enough, about enough different reptiles, that everyone started calling him Kidney. Fine by him. It was simpler this way. And safer.

  He sent out three more coded messages to clients, also about “photos,” and decided to go out to the pool to wait for the replies. The Southern California weather he had heard so much about was looking nasty, but he grabbed a beer from a brown paper bag on the floor and figured at least he could say he’d been to LA and had cocktails by the pool.

  8.

  Winnie was dreaming. “I don’t know what to say,” she complained. “I don’t know what to ask.”

  “Sssssssilly girl,” the voice said. “Assssssssssk.”

  Winnie had recently visited a psychic and while it hadn’t been a very satisfying experience, the plump, Armenian fortune teller had figured prominently in her dreams since then. In every dream, just as it had been in real life, Winnie knew she was doing it all wrong.

  In the dream, Madame Nadalia was hissing like a snake. “Asssssssssk your quesssssstionssssss.”

  “You’re the psychic,” Winnie said. “Can’t you tell me what my question is?”

  “Oh yessssssssssss.”

  “I wish,” Winnie said in her dream. “I wish.”

  Winnie drove past the psychic advisor every morning on her way to work after she dropped Lacy at school. The white clapboard house had plastic flowers in pots along the walkway and a purple awning decorated with stars and moons. A sandwich board offered help for every possible problem: love, career, money, and weight loss. Every morning she thought about stopping. That morning it had been raining. Traffic was stalled and as she sat in her car the purple neon star lit up suddenly and turned the raindrops on her windshield to lavender. It was a sign. There was an empty parking space right in front. The car next to her let her get over. It was meant to be.

  Madame Nadalia and Winnie sat in purple folding chairs on either side of a card table covered in a dark blue tablecloth with gold fringe. The dining room was set up as the fortune telling domain, glittery stars pasted to the walls, fake tapestries covering the windows, but through a beaded curtain, on the kitchen counter, Winnie saw a child’s GI Joe lunchbox, a can of Progresso clam chowder, and a blinking cell phone. From a back room she could faintly hear a morning television talk show.

  “I’m sorry,” Winnie began. “Should I make an appointment?”

  “Please. I was expecting you.”

  Madame Nadalia spoke with Dracula’s accent. She wore pink sweatpants and a red T-shirt appliquéd with an American flag. Her fuzzy slippers shuffled against the worn brown shag carpeting. She pulled a tissue from her pocket and dusted off the crystal ball.

  “Ask.” Madame Nadalia sounded annoyed. “Come on. Ask.”

  Winnie sighed. What did she really want Madame Nadalia to tell her? ‘Go to the grocery store on Tuesday. Make spaghetti for dinner. Buy the expensive laundry detergent. It costs a little more, but you’ll be happy you did. If you put a belt on that blue jacket it will make you look five pounds thinner!’ Those were the things she needed from a fortune teller. What to wear, what to cook, what to say to her daughter. She did not really want to know the future; she was afraid she already knew the answer. No, she and Lacy would never be close. No, there would never be another man in her life. No, she would never leave her boring job. Her life would go on exactly as it always had and then she would die.

  “Oh God,” Winnie said.

  She looked out the psychic’s living room window. The rain came down from gray cauliflower clouds. On the wall behind Madame Nadalia’s head was a paint-by-number portrait of Jesus. His blue eyes looked in two different directions, one at the ceiling and one frowning toward the kitchen as if the unanswered cell phone bothered him. His crown of thorns was made of little Christmas lights. A white cord dangled down to the socket.

  “You like that? My grandson made it for me.” Madame Nadalia got up and plugged in the cord. The white lights blinked on and off.

  “Beautiful.”

  “Yes. Good. Okay.” She took a deep breath and closed her eyes. Her eyebrows were painted on. Her dry auburn hair sat crooked on her head. A wig. “Give me your hands.”

  Winnie put both hands on the table. The woman took them and turned them palms up. She blew on each one. Her breath was warm and smelled of burnt corn.

  “You have a child.”

  That was not impressive. It didn’t take a clairvoyant to know Winnie was a mom. Her oversized shirt hung over her jeans; she wore sneakers and her hair was in a messy ponytail—plus she had parked her station wagon right out front.

  “A daughter,” Madame Nadalia continued.

  She had a 50/50 chance of being right. “Yes.”

  “Her father is gone. Wait. He lives far away.”

  Winnie frowned. Most Friday afternoons she made the trip across town to deliver Lacy to Beverly Hills. Some days it took forever to get there and even longer to get home, but it was not far in miles. In other ways however, Jonathan’s side of town could be considered another universe. Wealthy people, teams of gardeners, valet parking at the grocery store. Still, it was not as if he lived in another country.

  “Not that far away.”

  The fortune teller nodded. “No, but he thinks he does.”

  She was right about that. Winnie surrendered. “Tell me,” she said. “Go ahead. Tell me everything.”

  Madame Nadalia pulled a deck of battered tarot cards from the pocket of her sweatpants and put them on the table. She blew her nose on the tissue she had used for dusting and put it back in the same pocket.

  “Shuffle these three times. Then cut once to the left. You must concentrate on your question.”

  “What question?”

  Madame shrugged. She lifted a knobby arthritic finger to scratch under her wig. “What do you want?”

  “When you put it like that—” Winnie began, but then her cell phone rang. She dug in her bag for her phone and looked at the number. “Sorry,” she apologized. “It’s my mother.”

  She got up and walked to the front window. “Daisy.”

  “Where are you?”

  “This phone is for emergencies.”

  “You weren’t home,” Daisy complained.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Where are you?”

  “I’m at a psychic.”

  Her mother snorted. “A good one?”

  “Near home. I drive by every day.”

  “I can recommend the best. Gary. My Gary. He’s amazing. He’s here in New York, but he can read you over the phone.”

  “Is something wrong?”

  “I can’t believe you just walked in off the street. Look around. Does it look like the house of someone who knows the future?”

  Winnie looked at the ugly carpeting, the sagging floral couch, the glass shelf filled with porcelain angel figurines.

  “Well—”

  “Don’t give her any money. Go home. I’ll give you Gary’s number.” Her mother paused. “You don’t need a psychic anyway. You need a dating service.”

  Winnie sighed. “Daisy.”

  “Listen, I’m insanely busy. Can I talk to you later?”

  “You called me.”

  “I guess I just had a feeling I should. Go home.”

  Winnie hung up and walked back to the table. “I’m sorry,” she apologized again. S
he sat down, but Madame Nadalia stood. She scratched under her wig. She looked at her watch. She started for the kitchen.

  “Wait,” Winnie said. “Are you coming back?”

  “The things I have to tell you, you will learn anyway. Soon enough you will live them. You will meet a man. There will be much excitement, a trip to another place.”

  “All that is going to happen to me?”

  “I am only the weather report,” Madame said. “I can tell you it’s going to rain, but you’ll forget your umbrella anyway.”

  “No. I won’t. I promise.”

  Madame Nadalia shook her head as she went through the beaded curtain.

  “So?” Winnie tried to laugh. “How big an umbrella do I need?”

  “Ask your mother.”

  She disappeared around the corner. The TV got louder and then a door closed and it was muffled again.

  Jesus twinkled. His right eye seemed to be staring at Winnie. She breathed an odor of infection, like the yellow pus of a child’s skinned knee. The rain fell harder as she opened the front door to leave. She almost laughed, she did need that umbrella.

  As she drove away from the psychic, Winnie wondered what it was she really wanted. She should want to go to college. She always meant to get a degree in something, but she kept putting it off and then she met Jonathan. Eight months later she was pregnant with Lacy.

  As a child she had wanted to be a clown. She loved making people laugh. She knew she wasn’t beautiful like her mother, but she was strong and flexible. She taught herself to walk on her hands and sometimes, when Lacy was at school or sleeping, she still flipped upside down and turned the pages of the newspaper with her toes. There was always clown college—two birds with one stone.

  She had never wanted to be an actor. Never. She knew too many, Daisy and her friends, and they were boring, myopic, and self-absorbed. Most of them were stupid. Of course her mother assumed she thought she wasn’t good enough, that she didn’t try because she knew she couldn’t compete. And that was fine with Daisy.

  “Don’t worry, darling. We can’t all be important. Maybe you’ll marry someone fabulous.”

  And then, to her mother’s smug satisfaction, she married Jonathan.

  Winnie thought she wanted a new man in her life, but then again, maybe not. The thought of sex on the dining room table as wine glasses crashed to the floor or bent over a kitchen chair with her skirt lifted just made her tired. The idea of loving anyone as much as she had loved Jonathan was exhausting. She had been addicted to him. They would spend hours together, eating, playing, cooking, screwing. Finally, he would drop her off at her apartment, kiss her, and tell her he’d see her tomorrow. She would go inside and walk in circles in her living room, unable to sleep or even sit down, and then she would get in her car and drive back to his place. She had no shame. She banged on his door begging for more. More, more, more.

  The only thing Winnie knew she wanted was to still be married. She had always wanted a lasting, meaningful marriage and Jonathan had ruined that. Daisy went through men like maggots through shit. Winnie had wanted to be steadfast and true, loyal as a dog and in love forever. It was the one thing her mother was not good at.

  “You’re the pot of jewels at the end of my rainbow—or whatever that expression is,” Jonathan had said on their very first date.

  “You make me feel invincible,” he said that same night in bed.

  “You’re dragging me down,” he said eleven years later. “You make me feel like a failure.”

  They were in the kitchen. She was making coffee and she went on making it. His game show had taken off; the ratings were astronomical. He had met Jessica, but she didn’t know it yet, only smelled something floral in the creases of his neck and saw a new satisfaction in his chest and shoulders. She thought it was the show, the makeup, his success.

  “I think you can do better,” she said, meaning better than the game show, not better than her and Lacy. “When is your contract up?”

  “You’re so negative,” he said, “You’re putting that harmful energy out into the universe.”

  “I can’t believe you just said that.”

  “I’m leaving.”

  “What about Lacy?”

  “I’m not running from the past, I’m going forward to my destiny.”

  “Where did you get this crap?” The answer streaked across her mind like a shooting star. “What’s her name?”

  And, a year later, long after Jessica had moved in with him, Winnie was still driving by his house. She would get a babysitter so she could watch through the windows as they cooked dinner, practiced yoga together, and went up the stairs to bed. A year later she was still calling in the middle of the night just to hear his voice. She bought every magazine with an article about Jonathan Parker, host of television’s most popular game show. She drew mustaches and warts on the photos of Jessica.

  But finally, eventually, more than two years after he had left her, she stopped. She did not drive by his house. She did not wait for the phone to ring. And she discovered she no longer wanted anything. She stopped masturbating, after twenty minutes of effort and even accoutrements she was still making To-Do lists in her head. She did not care what she ate, if she saw her friends, or what would happen next. She did not cry at movies. She was never frightened. She was numb. Perhaps that was what she should have asked Madame Nadalia. “Will I ever feel anything again?”

  9.

  “Fuck!” Oren shouted. The text had come too soon. Kidney wasn’t supposed to arrive until next week. Next week. When all of this would be over. “Fuck!” he said again. Now what?

  He opened the door to the bedroom. She was still out, snuffling a little as she breathed. She was tied down. Could he leave her? He couldn’t. It would take an hour to get all the way down by the airport and an hour to get back and he had his plans. His plans.

  “Can’t wait to see the pix,” he texted Kidney. “Working today. Tomorrow?”

  The answer came back almost immediately. “Today only.”

  “Fuck!”

  He knew Kidney was the best. He knew Kidney would get him the best iguana possible, but Oren didn’t even have all the money. That was part of the plan too; get this rich mom to fork over the thousand dollars he was missing. He was sure she would give it to him later, after they had talked, when she understood what he needed from her. The money was the least of it. She would be grateful to him. She would thank him for opening her eyes. She would think a thousand dollars well worth it, cheap even. Shit, shit, shit. When would she wake up? He leaned over her and hissed her ear. The way his mother used to wake him, “Ssssssssss.”

  He looked down at her dark head. Her scalp was visible through the damp hairs. She smelled bad. Later he would let her take a shower. Good, he thought. She would appreciate him. She would know he was not a bad guy. He had thought carefully and prepared a list of questions. Eventually she would begin to understand the meaning of this—the good cause it was for. Years from now it would be a story they would tell. He had not imagined that before, but all at once he could see it. Sitting around the table, maybe it was a holiday, Thanksgiving or Christmas. A long table filled with food and everybody drinking expensive champagne. There would be children and old people too.

  Tell it again, someone would say, Oren, tell how you met Winnie.

  He took a deep breath. It would all work out. It was still early. She could wake up now and he could take her with him and they would have time for everything. He put his mouth close to her ear and hissed again. He tried not to breathe in the cooked vegetable smell of her dirty hair.

  “Ssssss,” he said. Like a cat when it was angry. “Sssss.”

  But she did not move. What was the difference between being asleep and being unconscious?

  He went through everything step by step. He would have to force her into the car. He would have to keep her tied up; otherwise how could he drive?

  He needed the gun from the box in the closet. It was not a real gu
n, just a cheap bit of plastic. It was as light as air, but it was flat gray and a very realistic copy of a Glock. He had bought it for a Halloween costume and even the people at the party had thought it was real. They had stepped away from him, smiling as if to keep him happy. Two girls had left the party as soon as he arrived in his trench coat with the plastic gun. As if he were the type to have a gun. He did not do drugs or even drink beer. He did not speed. He never broke the law.

  “Sssssss,” he hissed again.

  Maybe she would cooperate just because. Because he brought her the water and the aspirin. Because he was nice, a nice guy. He had no idea if he would hurt her if he woke her up. He had moved her when he wasn’t supposed to, and she was still alive. The bump on her head wasn’t that bad. Waking her was probably fine. And he had to. He did. Today only, Kidney had said. Today was the day.

  “Get up,” he spoke through clenched teeth. “Wake up!”

  Winnie’s eyes fluttered open. When her eyes focused and she saw it was him, she tried to turn her head. She tried to get away. It hurt her to move. He could see that.

  “Wait,” he said.

  But she closed her eyes and slipped away from him.

  “I wish,” he thought he heard her say. “I wish.”

  “Wake the fuck up!” Oren said to her. He jostled her shoulder again. Her head flopped and she frowned in her sleep. “Wake up!” Was she pretending? Her eyes had opened for a moment. He touched her again and she flinched and moaned.

  Why me? He thought. What am I going to do? He pounded his fist into his leg. And again. Stop it. Stop it!

  He couldn’t wait anymore. She had to get up. He tipped the glass of water over on her face. Not all of it, but most. She coughed and sputtered, her eyes opened.

  “Come on,” he said.