The Care and Feeding of Exotic Pets (16 page)

“You're in college?”

“Freshman.”

Her surprise must've shown. He shook his head. “I'm not what you think, huh? You thought I was a gangster? And mean. A pig like this?” He picked up a little red animal and dropped it on the sidewalk. It shattered and Lacy jumped back.

“No,” she began.

“Don't bother,” he said. “Whatever you think about me, I don't care ‘cause I think you're a rich white girl whose parents think it's liberal and cool to send their baby to public school.”

“I'm not.”

“I don't care.”

He was so disappointed in her. She turned away and he took her hand again. Then she spun around and faced him angrily.

“You don't know anything about me. My life is far from perfect. I have worries and troubles and… and things, just like you. Just because you're Latino, doesn't mean you're the only one with problems. You know? Being white doesn't automatically make everything so fucking great.”

“Whoa, calm down Girl. Okay. Point taken." He nodded at her grudgingly.

She hurried back toward Buster and he didn't try to stop her.

Buster's face lit up and he jumped to his feet when she returned. He stepped toward her, his chest like the prow of a ship coming into port. She smiled at him.

“We better go,” she said.

The leader had the pipe and Buster's plastic baggie of pot. He held them out.

“Keep it,” Buster said.

“Thanks, man. Take your pipe.”

Buster pocketed his pipe.

“You can come back, man, anytime. And her, I guess. But
don't bring anybody else.”

“Absolutely. I agree. The glass garden is not for everybody.”

Lacy glanced at the quiet college boy. Now he wouldn't look at her. He had not even tried to kiss her. She wondered what he would think if he knew she'd had her first real kiss just an hour ago. Right here. In this place.

“Bye-bye,” she said as if they were friends she'd met for ice cream.

Lacy and Buster forced their feet to walk nonchalantly all the way to the torn place in the fence. Buster crouched and went through first, then held the chain link back for her. Once on the other side, they broke into a run across the street to the car. Only after Buster had started it up and pulled away and driven around the corner did Lacy giggle. Then Buster laughed. They were triumphant, they had faced down bad guys and won, they had left with body and dignity intact. Lacy felt invincible. And it was all because of him.

“You were great,” Lacy said. “The pot was a good idea.”

“What did he do to you?”

“Nothing. He showed me these weird little deformed animals.” She did not tell Buster that he went to UCLA. Or that when he spoke to her he was not scary at all.

“You are so brave.”

“So are you.”

He pulled the car over. He reached for her and they kissed. It was the most romantic moment of her life. Her stomach fluttered and lurched. She could barely breathe. Danger was such an amazing turn on.

“My house?” he asked.

“Nobody's home?”

“Working.”

She nodded. She could not wait to be alone with him. She turned her cell phone off.

Jonathan watched the surfers at El Porto beach through the windshield of his car. He felt in his pockets, but he didn't have any quarters for the parking meter. Just like always. His friends back in the day would kid him about it, always made a big show of giving him parking meter money. Where were those guys? He hadn't stayed in touch.

The sky over the ocean was hazy with smog or moisture or both. In this light, the sand was more gray than tan. He opened his door. The breeze was brisk and cool and smelled of salt and seagulls. He shivered, turned his face to the lackluster sun and closed his eyes. It was chilly. It didn't smell as he remembered, but the waves were music to him, the song of his youth. He recognized the building rhythm, the crescendo and crash, and then the murmur of the water retreating. He left his shoes in the car and walked across the beach toward the water. It didn't matter if he got a ticket.

A surfer with gray hair was coming out of the ocean, walking backwards in his flippers and carrying his board. He turned around, kicked off his flippers and peeled his wetsuit down halfway revealing a potbelly covered by graying hair.

All over Los Angeles there were people who didn't work. Right now, at two o'clock in the afternoon on a Tuesday, people were sitting in coffee shops, or at restaurants, or shopping, or exercising. Jessica said it wasn't like this in her hometown of
Hamilton, Ohio. In Hamilton, the mall, the grocery stores, the tennis courts were empty during the day except for the occasional stay-at-home mom with a stroller. Then, after school, you'd see kids in the soccer fields and at the swimming pool. And later, after work was over, you'd see men out walking the dog or playing with the kids in the front yard while the little woman cooked dinner. Jessica said the LA lifestyle was a more enlightened—or enlivened? He couldn't remember the word—way of living. She said people could explore and promote their own natural lifestyle, not conform to an unhealthy schedule just because it was the norm.

They'd had this conversation post sex one late weekday morning. They were lying in Jessica's bed at her apartment while Lacy was in school and Winnie was wherever, unaware he was cheating on her. Jonathan hated that word. He didn't cheat. He fell in love. He fell in love with his job at the game show. He fell more and more in love with his eight-year-old daughter, her giggle, her ringlets, her skinny little arms around his neck when he got home. He fell in love with Jessica. His mouth opened with the memory, that perfect corn-fed body, the way her eyes widened when she looked at him, as if every time was the first time. You. It's you. Those days. He was in love with himself.

His toes curled, digging under the warm top layer to the cooler, wetter sand below. The wind blew and he was cold. Time to head back. Tomorrow he would surf. It had been too long.

“Do I know you?” the silver surfer asked.

Jonathan prepared his TV smile.

“'Cause you're staring at me like you know me,” the guy continued.

“Oh no, man, sorry, no, no, no. I wasn't looking at you. I mean I guess I was, but I wasn't looking, you know. I was just thinking. Sorry. I used to surf here three or four times a week.”

The guy nodded. “Look over there,” he said. “Just don't look at me.”

“Sorry,” Jonathan said again.

He turned around, his shoulders tightening in embarrassment. He took a couple of self-conscious steps back toward his car. There were houses in a line along the concrete boardwalk, with decks and balconies and sliding glass doors right there. They seemed so friendly. Inviting. Maybe this guy lived in one of these. Jonathan looked away. Now he didn't want to seem to be staring at the guy's house. He wasn't sure where to look.

He kicked through the sand to his car. He hoped he seemed laid-back, indifferent, lost in thought. If he had one of these houses, he could surf whenever he wanted to. Or he could sit out on the deck, drink a beer, and listen to the waves. If he got cold, he'd have a sweatshirt right inside. Even if he came home to one of these houses every day at five-thirty exactly, conforming to the norm, even so he could stand in his own living room and still be at the beach. He would ask Jessica about moving. He and Winnie had planned to live here when they could afford it. Winnie loved the beach, not as a swimmer or a surfer, but the sand and the wind and the attitude, she said. She loved the beach attitude. She wore that same one-piece red bathing suit all the time he knew her. Wait. That couldn't be right. In nine—no, ten—years she must've bought a new bathing suit. But maybe not. He only remembered her on the beach in that stretchy bit of red. How faded it got like a wagon left out in the yard. How she would step out of it at home and leave it on the floor inside out with a little scattering of sand. Sometimes it would stay there until the next time they went back to the beach. Princess Winnie. Not that it ever bothered him, the sand under his feet and in the corners of the shower. The salty tang of her skin under his tongue.

Jessica would like living here. She would look amazing in a bikini on the deck of that three-story yellow clapboard house right behind his car. He could surf in the morning, and then head into work totally chill, at peace, one with the ocean's qi. Jessica said it was restorative, or rejuvenating, or recuperating.

He got to his car and turned back toward the sea and saw the surfer dressed now in cheap chinos and a wrinkled button down. He pretended not to watch as the guy trudged across the sand with his battered surfboard and pushed it through the sunroof of some old, dented Japanese car. Jonathan got into his Porsche and relaxed in the warmth. It still smelled almost new. The leather seats were like a hug. He heard the guy's car struggle to start, finally catch and whine out of the parking lot. Jonathan shook his head, did a television laugh at himself. That guy had made him feel bad? That guy?

The wind blew a piece of trash across the sand. The beach was speckled with tar and waste. He couldn't move down here. Lacy's new school was very close to the Beverly Hills house and Jessica's yoga studio was only minutes away. Maybe when Lacy was in college and Jessica was making movies or whatever they would move to Malibu, someplace more private.

He looked at his watch and, as always, admired the weight and shine of it. The most expensive watch made, a wedding gift from Jessica. It was handsome, a thing of beauty that would be a thing of enjoyment—or whatever the phrase was—forever. The second hand moved in increments, not sweeping, but ticking off the seconds.

Even as he was admiring it, he knew he shouldn't be watching the second hand. He should never pay attention to the ticking, the slow slip slip from one second to the next. Stop it, he told himself. He tried to look away, but then the feeling came. It rushed into his chest and the back of his throat, that horrible,

desperate feeling of his life passing, moment by moment. With every click of the second hand, he was aware of his existence, his being, winding down. He heard his heart beating, throwing away his precious allotment. His heartbeats were limited. There went one. And another. And another. He felt each breath. He wanted to catch his life in both hands, but there was nothing to grab. He was dying a little with every second. It was a familiar feeling, too familiar lately and he hated it. It was like when he was a kid and would become aware of his tongue. In his mouth. Behind his teeth. Taking up breathing room. Unable to think of anything else. Recently, at night, in bed, he had taken to counting the beats of his heart, afraid to stop, as if his counting kept it going. And one. And two. And three. And four. When would it stop? When would it stop?

Jonathan opened his car door and gulped the air. He swung his bare feet around to the pavement and bent his head to his knees. He tried to avoid looking, but he caught sight of his feet. His feet. These could not be his feet. Bony and translucent, the veins prominent, the toenails gone yellow. His father's feet. His grandfather's feet. Jessica had a framed saying in the den, “Nothing is worth more than this day." He wanted to make this day special; he wanted to make every moment count, but how? How could he make each moment of his life the best it could be? He had to eat and shit and shower and drive in traffic and do his job. He had to smile and please people and to do that he had to get his teeth whitened and his hair frosted and spend an hour every day at the gym. So was this it? Was this not wasting his life? Sitting in his car watching other people surf?

Oh, God! Oh, God! Tears came then, but a man's tears that offered no real release, only further awkwardness and shame.

He forced himself to get back in the car, to start the engine, to turn on the radio so he could concentrate on whatever the
announcer was saying. Instead it was music, classical, written by some dead guy who had left a mark on the world. No one would watch his game show years from now. No one would care that he had been alive. What was he doing here? What was he doing with it? He unfastened his watch and tossed it behind him, out of reach in the back seat. He would drive home right away, as quickly as he could. He needed Jessica.

Winnie knew exactly where she was. Oren was taking her through Inglewood, west toward the airport. Manchester Avenue was six lanes wide and flat, a straight line through the traditionally black neighborhood of older homes, small shops and many churches. A lot of the stores were boarded up and out of business. Even the ‘for lease' signs looked old and forgotten. Three middle-aged men clustered in front of a liquor store smoking cigarettes; one of them had a bottle in a brown paper bag. Winnie saw two young, white hipsters going into a restaurant that advertised ‘authentic soul food.' She could hear them telling their friends later how cool it was, what brave pioneers they were. A young black teenaged girl laughed with a friend. Her bouncing, tightly curling hair reminded Winnie of Lacy. She closed her eyes. At that moment, she knew Lacy was sitting in class absently playing with her hair, twisting one ringlet around her finger as she had since she was a toddler. At home, the dog would be sleeping on the sofa. Jonathan was annoyed she never called, but he wasn't worried. She was not missed yet; no one knew she had been abducted. Would she make the evening news? Not tonight. Not until tomorrow at the earliest. Daughter of famous movie star. Ex-wife of famous game show host. Missing, presumed dead. Finally she would get her own moment of fame.

Oren—she was glad to know his name—tapped the steering
wheel. A steady one-two rhythm like a heartbeat. Where did he get these ideas about her? That she had servants. That she would lock Lacy in her room at night. Was there a tabloid that had made her out to be a witch? Jonathan Parker's horrid ex-wife. But no one cared about her anymore. Oren was definitely not anxious to call Jonathan for a ransom. He had something else in mind. Something worse, she was sure. His father had killed his mother. Beaten her to death. Buried her in a cornfield. She could expect the same. He was taking her somewhere, some remote place to kill her slowly. The knife. The gun used as a hammer. His feet in his white sneakers. His fists. Like father, like son. She heard Jonathan at her funeral, “The apple doesn't fall far from the bag—the branch—whatever.” She pictured Jessica, Jonathan, and Lacy around the dinner table. She hated that image in her mind when Lacy went there just for a weekend. The thought that it would be the rest of Lacy's life made her sick. The three of them. Lacy's family. She imagined Christmas, Easter, Fourth of July, Lacy leaving for college, Lacy bringing her first boyfriend home. And when that boyfriend broke her heart, Winnie could not believe Jessica would comfort her, tell her he wasn't good enough for her anyway. Jonathan thought Jessica would be great with Lacy. He had said she would be a wonderful influence and could teach Lacy so many things.