The Dragon Keeper (8 page)

“Exactly. I want to present them well.”

“And,” he continued, with a pointed pause, “you have to be careful with what you say about these dragons. Miracle. Virgin.”

He ticked the words off on his fingers, pointing dead at her chest.

“These are words you should avoid whenever possible, especially if you’re interested in the security of your job. Remember where it got you last time.”

Clenching her jaw, she nodded. “Fine. Okay. I won’t say it—but other people will.”

She pointed to the mural of America and the roar of traffic behind it. “People who want to pay to see these hatchlings. They believe they’re miraculous. We can’t jeopardize them in any way or cheapen their value. Trust me, Chuck. Please trust me on this.”

He sighed and propped his hand on his hip. “You’ve made a good point. Antonio made similar assertions when we spoke earlier. With the veterinarian and primary keeper on the same page, so to speak, I think management will agree.”

The thought of being on the same page or even in the same library as Antonio still made her uncomfortable. Her cheeks burned when she thought about that morning, waking up in the nursery with her head lolling down his chest.

She’d scrambled up out of her chair, barely registering the cricks and cramps that shot down her spine from sleeping upright on hard plastic all night. Her head pounded from the champagne, and she’d quickly grabbed the cups and empty bottle, hoping to God no one had punched in yet and seen them passed out on each other. The whole camping-out plan seemed too intimate, too inexplicable in the fake fluorescent light of day. Antonio had woken up as she was hastily checking the un-hatched egg and two newborns.

How are they doing?
He’d stretched like a jungle cat, tipping backward over the folding chair.

She looked away.
Fine. No change since last night. I gave the newbies a cricket apiece. I’ll check back later to see if they ate them and take some more measurements
.

Hey
. He was talking, stretching, and reaching toward her, but she ducked out of the nursery and ran for the first discreet wastebasket she could find, empty champagne bottle stuffed under her arm.

It turned out that it had been six in the morning when all that business went down. She took a quick shower in the locker room, trying to scrub the night off her skin, and got to work doing anything she could find around the cafeteria until ten o’clock, when it opened and she raced inside, begging Guadalupe for a free coffee.
Those dragon babies keeping you up late?

Kids
. Meg had grinned and thrown her arms into the air.
What can you do?

Now Chuck and Meg reached the Visitor Center, where all the supervisors and admins worked. Above them, the glass walls of the upper management offices reflected the morning sun. Meg glanced up at the sleek surface, dying to run straight up there to tell them where to shove their media relations plan. She couldn’t afford it, though. The last incident had landed her a fat probation and who knew how many checkmarks on her file. She had to play it by their rules, in their language, font, and form. It was the only way to protect the hatchlings.

“Do you want me to write up an e-mail or a—memo—or something?” The word even tasted nasty. “I can point out all the studies that support this. The Species Survival Plan doesn’t specifically instruct about care, but there’s tons of data—”

He held up a hand in a mini Heil Hitler. “Don’t do anything. I’ll talk with the appropriate parties, and if we need some further information to make a decision, I’ll contact you.”

“You’re talking about tomorrow, Chuck. Are you going to hear back on this pretty soon?”

“You’ll hear as soon as the management team makes their decision and not before. And no matter what that decision is, you’ll cooperate with it completely or face suspension. After your probation last fall, I’d have no choice in the matter. Are we clear, Megan?”

“You read all my paperwork, right, Chuck?” Some of the hose coils were starting to slide down her shoulder, and she bounced the load back higher against her neck.

“Most of it, yes.”

“Notice how I sign everything ‘Meg Yancy,’ not ‘Megan’?”

“Actually, no.” He tucked the clipboard against his side like a football, which was his universal sign of departure. “Your signature is completely illegible.”

He turned around and disappeared inside the Visitor Center.

“Fucking bosses,” she muttered, making her way back to the reptiles.

She used the water hose to fill up the black tree monitor’s pond, scaring him up the only branch in the exhibit when she ducked inside. It was a bare-bones space; a small pond and a piece of driftwood were the only things keeping him company between the beige walls. She fed and groomed him once a week, according to his care plan, and watched his SAMs, of course, but the only other interaction he had was through the glass. Meg scrubbed it down from the inside and watched the visitors stream by. Some stopped and waved at her. Others watched the monitor for a second and read his description on the wall. The rest just glanced in as they herded their children on to Jata’s exhibit around the corner because that was the big attraction in the Reptile Kingdom. That’s why they were here. Meg watched them disappear around the corner again and again and felt herself slide away with them, wondering what Jata was up to this afternoon and how much longer it would take her to finish with this exhibit. Then she kicked herself.

She stayed with the black tree monitor longer than necessary, sweeping up nonexistent dirt and watching him watch her from the security of his branch. She wiped the glass down until she could see her reflection in the drifting crowd, until the walls closed in around her and it was easy to understand how a bird could have a view like this and throw itself away.

1 Week
before
Hatching

L
ike every fun moment in her childhood, just when Meg started to relax and get used to seeing him, her father left. He stayed a week this time around, which seemed about right. It would have been pitch-perfect if he’d brought her some hotel soaps and souvenir T-shirts from Ireland and promised to take her with him on one of his next sales trips. That simple gifts-and-promises strategy had served him unbelievably well for the better part of her preteen years; it was like her holy grail as a kid.

When Meg was growing up, her mother had dragged her off to some dog show almost every weekend, packing her up in their minivan along with the dogs, kennels, food, suitcases, and all the paraphernalia of competition. They drove for hours, sometimes days, for the big shows, with Meg sitting in the passenger seat staring silently out the window while her mother talked endlessly about her rivals, their inferior dogs, her hopes for the show, and tidbits about whatever part of the country they were driving through that day. Sometimes Meg saw signs for pools or theme parks, but they only ever stopped to get takeout or to let the dogs pee and play fetch to stretch their legs. She’d probably stood at the edge of hundreds of rest stops, eating chips from a vending machine and throwing a ball until her arm hurt. That part was never so bad; the part she hated was the shows themselves. A hundred people crammed into some gym or onto a field, brushing and buffing and polishing their poor dogs as if they were some kind of sculpture instead of a living, breathing animal. The dogs loved it, her mother always said: Look at how excited they were to run the ring and jump through the courses. When Meg was little, she believed it, but as she grew up she learned what dependent creatures dogs were. They were happy when their owners were happy. They looked excited when they earned ribbons because they got a treat and some affection. The ribbons weren’t for the dogs at all; they were for the owners who took those little puppies and molded and trained them into winners.

It was easy to see stuff like that, to see the animals clearly, since she was always one of the only kids at the shows. For most of the owners, their dogs were their kids, and sometimes Meg wondered if her mother felt the same way—that the dogs were her real children and Meg was just some failed experiment in reproduction. Her father, at least, seemed to like her. Every weekend, she’d stand off to the side of the judging area by herself, watch her mother bask in the spotlights, and wish that her father would burst through the crowd and take her away. She daydreamed about it constantly, squeezing the life out of that hope the way only a reclusive, idiot child could, and he never once rescued her. Eventually she grew up and let go of the fantasy, and when they sat her down in high school to tell her they were getting divorced, her only question was why they’d waited so long. After that, she’d seen her father sporadically. He came for weekends in high school, dropped off care packages at her dorm rooms, and left chatty messages on her apartment answering machines.

On this visit, he’d taken her out for dinner every night and had even shown up at the zoo a few times with some random buddy in tow. He took each friend down to Meg’s exhibits and pointed and waved at her like a little kid. Clapped the guy on the back and said something, all smiles, nodding toward Meg. She turned to Jata one day and rolled her eyes. “Is this what it’s like all the time?”

Jata just dunked her head into the pool and guzzled some water.

One night, he’d brought some photos of Ireland to show her. There was a shot of a tiny, unmarked street that was apparently downtown, a castle that was near something famous she’d never heard of, lots of pictures of dark, low-ceilinged rooms from his cottage—before-and-after remodeling shots of walls, bathrooms, and a narrow, steep staircase—and picture after picture of laughing old men. She wasn’t sure, but it seemed like the same three guys aping in the cottage, parading down a gray beach, and propped up on barstools.
Best people in the world, Meg
, he’d said.
Believe me, I’ve met enough to know. But they can’t name a single spice apart from salt and pepper
.

Today Meg punched out for lunch and walked up to the cafeteria to meet him. The place was nearly empty at three o’clock in the afternoon; most people had already eaten their overpriced hamburgers, sipped their solar-heated coffee, and packed the kids off to see the afternoon dolphin show. Meg walked into the seating area, bright with sunlight from the bay windows that overlooked the river valley, and found her father sitting in a far booth. He’d already been to the counter and gotten two hamburger meals with fries and shakes. She grabbed the chocolate shake and started slurping, tossing the sandwiches a suspicious look.

“Don’t worry, yours is a veggie burger.”

It had taken him two dinners that week to remember she was a vegetarian, but after that he’d been pretty accommodating. Sales guys were good at that.

“Thanks.”

“Don’t thank me until you try it.” He bit into his hamburger and made a face. “It’s kind of like being back in Ireland already.”

They ate and watched the birds fly over the river.

“I couldn’t believe you today, Meg.”

She mopped up some ketchup with a handful of fries and shoveled them into her mouth. “Abou wha?”

“The feeding. It was amazing.” He stopped eating and just stared at her now.

Tuesday had rolled around again, so she’d done Jata’s weekly feeding for the public a few hours ago. She hadn’t seen her father’s face in the crowd, but he must have been in there somewhere. She’d chosen turkey again today, since Jata had weighed in a little porkier than Meg wanted at her recent physical. It wasn’t surprising, since most zoological specimens were fat and lazy next to their wild cousins, but Jata shouldn’t get too overweight too young. She could have twenty years left in her.

Meg shrugged off her father’s comment and slurped on her shake. “She trusts me, that’s all.”

“Don’t Komodos kill people?”

“Not half as much as we kill them. They don’t consider us a primary food source.” She flipped off the shake’s lid and started dipping her fries into the chocolate.

“And I wouldn’t consider that a primary food source.” He tracked the French fries from the shake to her mouth and cringed.

She laughed with her mouth full just as a white lab coat appeared next to their booth. Following it upward, she met Antonio’s amused face.

“Yancy, I didn’t know you could laugh.”

She swallowed and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “I’m on my lunch break.”

“I figured that out. Big brain and all.” He tapped his temple.

“What do you want?”

He turned to her father. “See, this is the Yancy I know. All business. No wasted syllables.”

“My girl’s efficient. She’s a dragon tamer, you know.” Her father smiled broadly across the table.

“Dragon keeper,” Meg corrected. “Jata’s not tame.”

“That’s my point.” Her father toasted her with his shake. “You can’t tame something that’s already tame. You tame wild creatures.”

“True,” Antonio said, but he was looking at her. He blinked and turned to her father, extending a hand. “I’m Antonio Rodríguez, head veterinarian.”

“Jim Yancy, Meg’s father.”

“I didn’t realize Meg”—he faltered—“had parents.”