The Care and Feeding of Exotic Pets

by Diana Wagman

  Now they were all laughing, but not in a good way.

  “You put up with this?” The fat one asked Buster.

  “I find her endlessly entertaining,” Buster replied.

  He looked at Lacy and smiled and despite her fear she could not wait to kiss him again. If they lived. If they survived long enough to get the chance.

  The leader was not laughing anymore. He nodded. The quiet boy, the one who had not yet spoken, stepped up beside him. His head was flat on top, as if hit by a cartoon anvil. He worried a pimple on his cheek as he leaned close and said something in Spanish.

  Lacy scooted closer to Buster. He raised his eyebrows. They were both taking French—fat lot of good it did them.

  “What’re we gonna do?” The leader looked around as if the glass would answer him.

  “Hey, man, I know. Let’s get high.” Buster pulled his bag of pot and a little pipe from his jacket pocket.

  Lacy stared at her feet. That seemed ridiculous, absurd, the last thing these guys wanted was to smoke with Buster.

  “You just carry that in your pocket? Shit.” The quiet one spoke perfect English. “You are a white boy.”

  “No, no. Cops hassle us hippies like it’s still 1968. But this time—” Buster sort of nodded at Lacy as if he had intended to take her to the garden and get her high. “She doesn’t partake, but I was hoping—you know—the magical place, the handsome guy—”

  They laughed at that one.

  “Let’s see if it’s any good,” the fat one said.

  “Let’s see if the hippie is any good.” The sullen one talked to his leader, but kept his eyes on Lacy. “Doesn’t look like he’s much good for anything.”

  12.

  Kidney waited in the Tip-Top Coffee Shop on Lincoln Avenue. It wasn’t a very upscale kind of place, but he chose it for its easy access to the freeway. He liked to keep his options open. He had a rule against meeting his clients at the motel where he was staying. Too dangerous. You never knew who Fish and Wildlife had their eye on.

  The wood grain Formica tabletop was pitted and peeling at the corners. The coffee was okay. There were people in his business who lived the high life, who treated their clients to shark fin soup and gave their girlfriends combs made of endangered turtle shell or lizard skin boots. They were asking for trouble, begging to get busted. Still, he wouldn’t mind moving up a notch next time. Nothing too fancy, but maybe a Holiday Inn instead of the No-Tell Motel where he was; maybe a real restaurant instead of this crappy place. He looked out at the gray haze blurring the horizon, making even the gas station across the street fuzzy. What was in the air? Not moisture. He figured it had to be the famous Southern California smog. The sun was barely peeking through the gloom and it was 60 degrees, tops. The birds of paradise and all the bushes outside the window were dying. He had not expected LA to be so ugly. It was all strip malls and freeways and garbage in the gutters. There were fucking homeless people standing at every intersection begging for a handout. He realized the area around the airport was not Beverly Hills, but shit, this was the home of movie stars and Disneyland. He had imagined bright colors and warm sun. Happy tourists even in November. Maybe the people in Kantoba, New Guinea didn’t have HBO or hamburgers, but it was lots prettier and the poverty didn’t bother them or him. He’d only been in LA overnight and already his legs were twitching, he was so anxious to get back to the jungle. He was happiest out there collecting specimens. The jungle had a tangy, moist, exotic smell and the air was rich with a taste like almonds. The earth was black and damp and the leaves on the plants were shiny green and thick as flesh. They cried when you cut them, the water leaked from their stems like tears. And the creatures. Everywhere you looked. Bugs the size of mice. Birds as multi-colored as circus clowns. And luscious, lovely reptiles everywhere.

  In each of the two jungles he frequented he had a woman waiting for him. A cinderblock house, a bed that slumped in the middle, neither of his dark skinned girls wanted expensive gifts or more than they had. It was their pleasure to serve him and it was his pleasure to be served.

  He had to remind himself he was in LA for a purpose. He’d be on the plane home to Tennessee tomorrow, a few pockets lighter and a whole lot richer. Do some laundry, bang the wife, and back to the wild.

  His first delivery had gone well; the client, a weird old Chinese lady with a “personal menagerie,” had been thrilled with the blue-tongued skinks. One of them was looking a little worse for wear by the time he handed it over, but luckily that was her problem now. He had her two thousand dollars in his pocket and one of the good things about illegal transactions was the no returns policy.

  “Can you get me something two-headed?” she had asked.

  “Are you serious?”

  “Do you think me terribly macabre?” She giggled like a teenager.

  He wasn’t sure what macabre meant, but if it was crazy he was with her.

  “I have everything,” she went on. “The entire reptile genus is represented in my home zoo. Now I need something unusual.”

  The unusual didn’t live long in the wild. In fact, the only freaks he ever saw were dead. “I’ll see what I can do,” he said. “It’ll be expensive.”

  “You know me,” she giggled again. “Made of money.”

  She had actually been flirting with him. She was seventy-five, if she was a day. He shook his head. He absolutely could not tap that, no matter how much he wanted to see that zoo of hers. Little withered Chinese tits, thighs sagging like the bedroom curtains. Plus, then she’d want special favors, special prices. Nope. This was business and later tonight he’d find someone young and hot to help him celebrate.

  He ordered another cup of coffee. Two of his chameleons had died on the trip, but the rest had gone to Dr. Herp’s Emporium just off the Venice Beach main drag. Kidney didn’t know what to expect, but it turned out to be a sweet little place and he was glad to make a new client. The Doc looked like a brainless surfer, right down to the flip-flops and puka shells, but he was very happy with the chammies and impressed by their quality. Then he showed Kidney his secret room where he kept an incredibly rare Anomochilus weberi, known to the common folk as a Weber’s dwarf pipe snake. Kidney’s mouth had literally watered looking at the little thing. It was only about a foot long and black with pinkish spots.

  “One of nine that’s ever been found alive,” Doc said.

  “Where’d you get it? You go to Sumatra?”

  “Traded for it. Let go an entire clutch of Nephrurus Wheeleri Cinctus and a cage full of my favorites.”

  Kidney was impressed. “Would you sell it?”

  “You can’t afford it. No one can. Maybe Bill Gates.” The Doc had laughed. “No, dude, I wouldn’t part with him for love nor money. Just look at him.”

  Together they had watched the snake do basically nothing for about fifteen minutes. That was the thing about snakes, they didn’t do much. It was one big reason Kidney liked them. He had a puppy when he was a kid. It never sat still, then it ran out in the street and got hit by a woman in a car who had a fit and yelled at him about it. Like it was his fault.

  Kidney patted the Doc on the back. “That’s something.” He vowed to put Sumatra on the list for his next trip. “I’m gonna try to find one.”

  “Good luck, dude. Great surfing in Sumatra!”

  The black-headed pythons were still at the motel digesting their lizard lunches. They were rare, but their beauty was nothing compared to the Doc’s secret snake. That morning he had thought he would be sad to sell his bevy of pythons, but now he was anxious to be rid of them. The delivery was for late this afternoon. It was a special deal. The guy had serious cash. Kidney had agreed to drive them to the guy’s house up above Sunset Boulevard, in the nice part of town. He wanted to shower and put on a fresh shirt before that. Now he was waiting for Oren and his money. Oren had texted he was on his way. With the forty-five hundred dollars Oren was paying him, he could finance a trip to Sumatra. He could buy Oren a good-looking female i
guana for two hundred bucks in Florida on the way back. Oren would never know the difference and capturing an Anomochilus weberi would make him the fucking Michael Jackson of reptile collectors.

  An official looking SUV drove past before he could read the insignia on the door. Kidney craned his neck to watch it go. He had to be vigilant. He was careful, but anything could happen. Dr. Herp’s place was pretty public and Kidney had walked in with a big camera bag. He was smart; he also carried a manila envelope of photos that he left behind. They were downloaded, printed, and color copied, but he never told anyone he was a good photographer. He left the pics behind every time he did a delivery. He was very, very careful, but sitting in the coffee shop, the thought of jail made his bowels constrict and his throat go dry. He was older and not pretty by any standards, but he knew jailhouse rape was about power and control. He would pay whatever fine the Feds asked, have his passport revoked, leave his wife, run away and live in Mexico forever, as long as he didn’t have to go to jail. Fish and Wildlife was cracking down. Reptile trafficking ranked second behind drugs for the amount of money that changed hands. It was a six billion dollar a year business and that meant the Feds hated it. And why? Kidney tapped the tabletop in frustration. ‘Cause he was making money and they weren’t. They pretended they were worried about the animals. If they only looked at the facts, they’d see he was helping the reptile population by protecting some of them from their natural predators and making them available for breeders. To say nothing of the people who could never travel to Borneo or Peru on their own. Oh God! Jail! They were gonna legalize marijuana. Why not reptiles? When Kidney was a little bean, his pop had gone to Australia for work and come home with a pygmy python. Pop had spent the equivalent of ten bucks and carried it home on the plane in a glass jar as a gift for his son. Now transporting any reptile from Australia was verboten.

  The SUV continued out of sight. Kidney checked his watch again. Oren had said an hour. Ten minutes to go.

  A couple walked into the coffee shop. She was blond and skinny. He wore a fedora. They were both in sunglasses. They were somebody, weren’t they? Other people turned to look. He took out his phone to take a picture, then turned away and stared out the window again. What would movie stars be doing in a dump like this?

  13.

  First he tied her hands behind her back, but then she couldn’t sit in the car comfortably, so he untied them and retied her wrists together in front. He started to put her in the passenger seat, then changed his mind and made her sit in back, then changed his mind again, made her get out and get in front. All the while he muttered and cursed under his breath, “Shit” and “Why the fuck is this happening to me?”

  “Why the fuck do you think this is happening?” Winnie finally said. “Are you an idiot?”

  He slapped her, not as hard as any other time, but she decided to stay quiet. She sat still in the front seat while he tied her ankles together. He wore a ridiculous orange baseball cap with a pet store logo; she couldn’t see his face but his hands were shaking and he seemed nervous. Something was not going right for him and she was glad.

  It was a relief to be out in the cool air. He had let her put her jacket back on. He had given her a brush to straighten her hair. She felt better. She was out of his horrible house. She could get away from him now that she had fresh air to breathe and room to think.

  She couldn’t help asking, “Where are we going?”

  “That’s for me to know and you to find out.”

  Without thinking, she sneered, “What are you, ten?”

  She cringed away from the smack she was sure was coming, but he just slammed her door shut and went around to his side of the car. She watched through the window as he took an envelope out of the pocket of his leather jacket. He opened it and she could see money inside. A lot of money. If he had money, what was he doing with her?

  “What’s your bank?” he said as he slid behind the driver’s seat.

  “What?”

  “Which bank do you go to?”

  “Citibank.”

  “I want you to get me some money.”

  “More money? Looks to me like you have plenty.”

  “Yes. Mom. I need more money.”

  “Okay. Okay.”

  At the bank she would be able to communicate with someone. She would show someone the cuts on her stomach, the marks the ropes were making on her wrists. A teller would know what was going on. They were trained to know.

  He closed his door. He put the key in the ignition, but then he just sat there, without moving. It was as if he had stalled. He stared at the garage door without blinking. Finally, he laid his head back and closed his eyes.

  Winnie landed on the horn with both hands.

  He punched her hard. She flew across the seat and her head hit the window. She crumpled against the door. She couldn’t hear, she was underwater and the sounds undulated and throbbed. She began to cry.

  “Fuck!” He banged the steering wheel. He reached above the visor and hit the remote.

  Winnie pressed her tied hands against one ear as the door lifted and the neighborhood appeared. Empty. No one on the street. No one had heard the horn. Not a dog or a bird. Life had evaporated.

  “Stop crying. Stop it. Or I’ll give you something to cry about.”

  How many times had his mother said that to him?

  Winnie had been hit by another guy, a boyfriend, long, long ago in Manhattan. She’d thrown a full beer can at him and only just missed hitting him in the head. He had grabbed her throwing arm and slapped her face. What she mostly remembered was how anticlimactic it had been to slam the door of his apartment behind her and then have to wait for the elevator. She stood in the hallway with his handprint on her cheek and her smeared lipstick and red, snot filled nose. She prayed he would not open the door and see her tapping her foot. The elevator finally came; the doors opened agonizingly slowly and revealed a small man inside with his very small dog. He politely said nothing as the tears dripped off her chin. The white, fluffy dog licked her shoe and then her bare ankle. She remembered the rough dryness of its tongue. She had been seventeen. One year older than Lacy. At seventeen she had already slept with three guys, one of them old enough to be her father. Maybe he was her father. He was a lawyer. Her father was a lawyer and Winnie couldn’t remember what he looked like.

  “Mom,” Winnie said when she got home.

  “I hope you hit him back.” Daisy was reading a script at the kitchen table.

  “I threw a can of beer at him.”

  “Get him?”

  “It hit the wall and exploded.” The stain had looked like fireworks.

  “They’re all the same,” Daisy replied. “Shits, all of them. Except this new one of mine. He is—amazing.”

  “I think I’m bleeding.”

  “Where?”

  “Inside my mouth.”

  “No scar, no worries. And if it’s hard to eat, you’ll lose weight.”

  She must have been joking, but Winnie could not remember. Daisy came over to give her a rare hug, but Winnie waved her away. “I just need a shower.”

  She hated her mother’s touch. Daisy’s hands were always cold, her fingers like frosty twigs. She was so brittle, one squeeze and she might shatter. She cultivated her Ice Queen image, never getting a tan, always wearing her white blond hair in a straight, chilly flow down her back. People used to ask if Winnie was adopted. Now they asked Winnie if Lacy was. Both of them, Daisy and Lacy, had such pale skin, platinum hair and big eyes the color of sky reflected in snow. Standing between them Winnie felt like a clump of dirt bookended by glaciers.

  What would Daisy do? That was the question teenaged Winnie always asked herself. How would Daisy handle this? Even now, curled against the door of a crazy man’s car, she could not stop her brain from asking what her mother would do. Daisy would never let a kidnapper kill her. Daisy would charm her way out of it. Winnie had never been very charming. She would end up dead. The thought of her mother’s fina
l and eternal disappointment made her cry harder.

  “I said, stop it,” he growled. “I mean it.”

  He was turning out of the neighborhood onto a street with shops. She saw the post office and a grocery store. She sucked in her snot, wiped her eyes with her tied hands and sat up straight. She saw people walking in and out of these buildings, going about their day as if everything was just the same as always. She stared at a woman, about her age, in jeans and a striped sweater, talking on a cell phone in front of Starbucks. That woman could help her.

  “Don’t,” he said.

  “I wasn’t—”

  He took the gun from his pocket. She had forgotten about the gun. How could she have forgotten about it?

  “If I’m going down,” he said, “you’re going with me.”

  “Did you hear that on a television show?”

  He jabbed one finger deep into her thigh. She grunted, opened her mouth to scream.

  “Don’t. Just don’t,” he said.

  She saw a branch of her bank up ahead. It was small, with a single walk up ATM out front, but there it was. The rotating sign was like a hand waving her in. Security guards, tellers with buttons under the counter. She almost giggled, giddy suddenly with the promise of rescue. But he was driving past.

  “That’s my bank,” she said.

  “Shhhhh.” He shook his head. “Just shush.”

  “I thought you wanted money.”

  “Not there.”

  He drove on. A different bank appeared. He turned in to the drive through entrance.

  “This isn’t my bank,” she said.

  “You think I’m going to let you get out of this car and talk to a teller? You really are stupid.”

  Winnie’s despair blocked her throat. The tears came again. Of course he would pass her bank to go to one where they could stay in the car. Of course.

  He reached in the back and got her purse from where he had thrown it earlier. He fiddled inside until he found her wallet. “Get your card. C’mon.”