The Care and Feeding of Exotic Pets (7 page)

“Don't be a game show host,” she whispered. “You're too good for that.” And one slim-fingered hand slid inside his pants.

No wonder Winnie was such a goddamn basket case. Since the divorce, she said Daisy didn't call as much. They had lost touch. But that wasn't his fault.

He heard the noise again. He peeked outside. It was just a neighbor from across the street rolling out his trashcans. The guy was young, white, and looked like he'd just gotten out of bed. Another Los Angeles screenwriter or director or producer out of work and home in the middle of the day.

“I gotta go,” Jonathan said to the dog. “I wish I could stay longer, but I can't.”

He crouched and inhaled the salty, dirty dog smell. He closed his fists around Buddy's ears and held on tight. He pressed his forehead into the back of Buddy's neck. He needed to buy socks, but he couldn't remember where Jessica had told him to go. He and Winnie had danced in the aisles to the Muzak at the 99-cent store.

“Do you think I'm too old for a tattoo?” he asked Buddy.

Buddy wagged his tail.

As a present for their third anniversary, he was thinking of surprising Jessica with an intricate “J & J” tattooed onto his shoulder. It had to be high enough so a short sleeve would cover it next time they did
Tie the Knot
in Hawaii. He had asked the production assistant at work, a college student with ink up and down both arms, if it hurt.

“Shoulder's not too bad,” the kid said. “No offense, but it hurts more when you're old—older.”

“How old do you think I am?”

The p.a. had just shrugged, too smart to say what he really thought. “It's cool when older guys get tats. You know, ones that mean something to them, not just like, for beauty.”

As if beauty on Jonathan was a ridiculous notion. But it was going to be a drop-dead gorgeous tattoo. Romantic, but not too flowery. Jessica had already told him the best place to go, where all her young friends were doing it. Jessica had an amazing flower thingy in the curve of her lower back, just above her butt. A tramp plant or fan stamp or something. Of course if he put his tattoo up high enough for a sleeve to cover it, no one would ever see it except Jessica. He wanted people to see it. He wanted the p.a. at work to see how beautiful it was. It was a complicated decision. He still had a month to make up his mind.

Dave “Kidney” Hollister made sure the curtains were closed and the door of his motel room locked before he gently lifted his gray Samsonite suitcase onto the bed. He tunelessly whistled Michael Jackson's Thriller as he ran his hands over the hard plastic. He took the time to do an MJ type hip thrust and a spin. He attempted the moon walk. It was all a little ridiculous in a sixty-five-year-old overweight man in JC Penney jeans and a safari jacket, but he couldn't help himself. Today was his day.

“Okay, okay, I'm coming,” he said to the suitcase. “Daddy's coming.”

He undid the combination lock and slipped it from the handle. He rubbed his hands together before sliding back the catch. The top popped open. There were clothes inside, nothing but very dirty clothes, a lot of them smeared with a suspicious looking mustard colored substance. The perfect ploy, Kidney knew, to keep customs officials from digging too deep. He tossed the clothes on the floor and carefully, gingerly removed the suitcase's false bottom.

Five beautiful black-headed pythons, each in its own partitioned space, undulated and hissed at him. Three were the more typical tan with brownish stripes, but two had unusual cream and red markings. He was looking at a fortune in snakes. His fortune. They were exquisite, perfect living specimens. Reluctantly, he closed the suitcase so they wouldn't escape. He could
have stared at them all day, but they had been on a long, strenuous journey with him from Australia and he needed to feed them quickly before they attempted to eat each other. He took a Ben & Jerry's ice cream container from his backpack. That morning he had gone out behind the motel, in the dead grass bordering the 405 freeway, and collected some common western fence lizards. He opened the ice cream bucket and looked inside. Only one lizard had died. The others were busy gnawing on it. Good. They would be well fed when they became food. The circle of life.

Kidney opened the suitcase again and with his bare hand grabbed lizard after lizard, dropping them in, one by one, a meal for each python. He replaced the false bottom and closed it up. He didn't think his babies would mind dining in the dark. There was one lizard left in the container, plus the dead one. He put the top back on and put it in the motel fridge's tiny freezer. He grinned thinking about housekeeping finding his treat.

He whistled and danced a little more, looking at himself in the mirror over the dresser. His jacket said it all: adventurer, wild man, ready for anything. He would definitely wear it when he went out to celebrate tonight. He masqueraded as a photographer. His camera bags were all outfitted with false bottoms and hidden compartments. Today they were filled with blue-tongued skinks from New Guinea and chameleons from Madagascar. In the most protected pockets, he had geometric turtles, endangered and therefore worth a pretty penny, from South Africa. He had become a top-notch reptile smuggler with a superior reputation. He'd always—since he was a kid—been good at catching reptiles. Now he was good at bringing them into the country and selling them. Of course it was illegal and the penalties if caught were massive fines and some serious jail time. Fuck it. He couldn't think about that now. And anyway, his country
owed him. He had lost his job of twenty-two years when they closed the Saturn plant in Spring Hill, Tennessee. Twenty-two years working the line and nothing to show for it while management made out like royalty. They were the real crooks. He smiled at the suitcase on the bed. This was much more fun. Maybe the economic downturn had done him a service.

His penis was talking to him. He needed a woman. He wished he didn't have to pay for it, but the ones he liked never liked him. Not all on their own. If he was willing to spend the cash, he could get the hottest slut in town. Cash for the slash. But it was fucking expensive. Eighty bucks for a blow job in the back seat of his rented Ford Fiesta was criminal. A fool and his money are soon parted, his father used to say. He was not a fool, but he needed a little release. It was easier away from the States. The women of the jungles where he did his business were happy to oblige and they were usually free. He had gotten hooked on the taste of dark meat. He might even settle down with a couple of women on a plantation in New Guinea or someplace, but here he was in L- fucking-A, beauty capital of the world, and he wanted a hot little honey to ride. And he would have one, even if it cost him.

“Hey,” he said to his reflection. “Hey, baby.” He did the signature Michael Jackson move: pulling down on his imaginary fedora. He spun again, stumbling a little on the carpet. He caught sight in the mirror of his jowls flapping like the tails of his jacket, but he just laughed. He knew the chicks he wanted were only interested in the size of his wallet. “And after today, baby, it's gonna be gi-normous!”

He had meetings later, but first he had to call that kid and collect the money for his iguana. The kid said he wanted wild, not captivity raised, to strengthen the gene pool. Kidney told him that was wise, but he really had no idea. He wasn't a scientist,
but the kid wanting a great green iguana from him instead of a legal buy from a pet store meant a special trip to Paraguay next week and that meant extra goddamn money. Jesus, he was making a killing this time around.

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.

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.”