The Care and Feeding of Exotic Pets

by Diana Wagman

  As she walked to her car, Stone Curtis, the only male student, trotted over. “I’m glad you asked that.”

  “Not a very comforting answer.”

  “Bullets win every time.”

  Winnie opened her car door, but he kept standing there.

  He smiled. “Do you want to have dinner sometime?”

  She was completely surprised. He was way too young for her.

  “I mean it,” he said. “Friday night?”

  He had that no color hair, a tarnished taupe that would never go gray, and his eyes were not green or brown but neither and both. He was stone-colored just as his name suggested. She had no idea why he was free to take self-defense classes at nine o’clock in the morning. Waiter, writer, independently wealthy. She had nothing to lose.

  “Sure. I’d like that.”

  He seemed pleased. He was prepared for her address with a piece of paper and a pencil waiting in his pocket. As she drove toward home she smiled out at the morning. She had a date. Only nine months after Jonathan had officially and legally left her for his farm-raised contestant with the perfect mammary glands. Jonathan would be sorry if Winnie and Stone fell in love. He would hate it if she found someone else, someone younger, so quickly. It could happen. One date could turn into a lifetime. Winnie and Lacy and Stone. Stone was an odd name, but solid.

  She was jittery with anticipation waiting for Friday, deciding what to wear. The afternoon of her date she volunteered to drop Lacy off at her dad’s, just so she could wear her new blue dress and say nonchalantly to Jonathan that she had met someone.

  “He’s a little younger than I am,” she said, “and kind of dreamy.”

  She loved the cloud that crossed Jonathan’s face, the way his lips pressed flat.

  Stone rang the doorbell right on time. Winnie opened the door, breathless, happy, and stifled an immediate sigh. He was so young. He had even spiked his hair for their date.

  “You look very nice,” he said, but she could tell he was expecting something different than her blue dress. She probably looked like his mother.

  “You look nice too.”

  Stone shrugged. “I thought we’d go see the new James Bond film.”

  “Perfect.” She would have to tell Jonathan they’d gone to a club. “Glass of wine?”

  “No, thanks. I’ll have a Coke at the movies.”

  “Sounds good.”

  In the car he cleared his throat and said carefully, “I like older women.”

  She didn’t like the way he drove with one finger on the steering wheel while he looked at her and not the road. She also didn’t like the way he laughed when she asked him to pay attention. And then he drove past the freeway entrance and took the longer route through Griffith Park. He said he preferred it.

  The park was dark. The headlights of an oncoming car illuminated Stone’s smooth face. He looked calm, determined.

  “What do you do?” Winnie asked him. “Why do you have Tuesday and Thursday mornings free for karate?”

  “I’m a pool guy,” Stone said. “I work for my brother.” He looked at her. “Yesterday I had to clean a pool after a suicide.”

  They came to the stop sign by the entrance to the old abandoned zoo. There were still cages up there, carved into the rocks, with broken bars and metal doors jammed open. Winnie had gone with five-year-old Lacy and she had climbed inside and pretended to be a jaguar, a monkey, something else, until a homeless man woke from under a pile of leaves and chased them both away.

  At the turn to Burbank and the movie theaters, Stone went straight instead.

  “Where are we going?” Her voice came out high and worried. She didn’t know him. She her hand inside her purse on her phone, her fingers poised over the buttons.

  “This is fun,” he said. “You’ll see.”

  The section of the park that ran along the 134 Freeway toward Forest Lawn Cemetery had always been a meeting place for men. Winnie drove that way occasionally when the freeway was crowded and she had seen men in pick-up trucks, men in small compact cars, and men standing back partially hidden in the trees. Once she had seen an older man, white haired and potbellied, walking out of the woods straightening his clothing. The men were different ages and ethnicities. She didn’t know if money exchanged hands or why the police allowed it to continue.

  Stone pulled over to the curb between two other cars.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Watch,” he said.

  He rolled down her window, the park side window. A man emerged from the shadows. He had a buzz cut, tiny eyes, and a dark plaid shirt. He leaned into the car and at first he was puzzled when he saw Winnie and her frightened face.

  “You available?” Stone asked.

  The guy shrugged.

  “Can she watch?”

  He nodded.

  “Oh no,” Winnie said. “No. Absolutely not.”

  The man was waiting. Stone was trying not to laugh.

  “Come on, honey,” Stone said. “You told me next time you wanted to watch.”

  “This isn’t funny.” She turned to the man outside. His flesh was mottled in the single street lamp’s light. “We’re not staying,” Winnie told him. “This is his idea of a joke.”

  The man’s doughy face turned angry. He began to reach into the car. Stone laughed and peeled away from the curb.

  “Stone!” Winnie didn’t know what else to say.

  “Come on. My friends and I do it all the time.”

  Winnie looked at him and a shiver went through her. He was young and mean.

  “That was not funny,” she said.

  “Fucking faggots,” he replied.

  He pulled a U-Turn and drove back the way they had come. They made the appropriate turn toward the movie theater and Winnie exhaled. Then Stone put his hand on her thigh, up high and rubbed the blue fabric with his finger. She picked up his hand and dropped it in his lap. He laughed. He put it back on her thigh, but before she objected, he removed it and laughed again. It was a child’s game; he reached his hand out, then drew it back, then left it hovering over her thigh, but not touching her.

  “Your mother is Daisy Juniper, isn’t she?”

  The light—that old familiar light—went on. She had wondered why Stone asked her out. Now she knew. She nodded.

  “I can’t believe your mother is Daisy Juniper.”

  “Sometimes I can’t either.”

  “She’s hot. Daisy Juniper. Really hot.”

  Winnie heard the wistful lust in Stone’s voice. Just the thought of her mother reduced most adult men to teenagers; they erupted with instant zits and boners, inane teenage slang.

  “What was it like?” he continued. “You know, growing up with her? Did you—”

  Winnie answered the questions before he asked them. She had heard them so many times before. “She was sixteen when she had me. She’s never been married. She has been committed twice, but for insanity not drugs. She did lose her first Oscar in a poker game. Those are not body doubles—she does all her own nudity.”

  “You don’t look a thing like her.” Stone shook his head.

  “I really am her daughter.”

  He put his hands back on the wheel as he turned into the movie theater’s parking garage. Winnie hoped he would go up, but Stone took the route down and circled into the depths. She hated parking garages, terrifying on the best of days.

  “How long’s it been?” he asked.

  “Since what?”

  “Since you’ve been laid.”

  Stone’s cute face aged a hundred ugly years. The garage was empty of people but every parking space was taken. He kept driving down.

  He frowned. “You’re divorced. Older women need—”

  She did not want to hear what he thought she needed. “You can take me home,” she said. “Or you can stay and see your movie. I’ll take a cab.”

  “I don’t want to take you home.”

  “Then I’ll take a cab.”

  They had come to t
he bottom of the garage. There was one space left. He pulled in. Winnie undid her seatbelt and started to get out of the car, but he put his hand on her arm. It was not a friendly or apologetic grip.

  “Ha, ha,” she said, looking down at his hand. “You forget I know karate.”

  One fluorescent light sputtered and hissed, blinked off and stammered on. The cinderblock wall looked wet in the harsh light.

  “I have to go.” Winnie spoke as if talking on the phone, or to a friend she had met on the street. “I’ll see you in class.”

  He leaned toward her and nuzzled her shoulder, still gripping her arm. “I thought you would be fun,” he said. “I thought I could count on you.”

  A young couple, laughing and holding hands, got off the elevator in the corner. The guy wore a sweater very much like Stone’s. The girl wore tight jeans and a tiny tank top. She was talking animatedly and he was smiling as they searched for their car. Stone sat back and put both hands on the wheel.

  “We’ll miss the movie,” he said.

  Winnie jumped out of the car.

  “What the hell?”

  She ran up the ramp toward the upper levels. On the next parking level up there were cars arriving, more people around. She merged in with a cluster of people and went with them into the elevator. As the doors closed, she saw Stone drive past, tires squealing on the slick garage floor.

  The elevator opened into the lobby of the movie theater. A long line snaked away from the ticket window. She took out her cell phone. There was no one else to call.

  “Where are you?” Jonathan said. Not hello, not anything else.

  “I’m at the big movie theater in Burbank.”

  “Where’s your date?”

  She began to cry.

  “Are you all right? Winnie. Answer me.”

  “I’m scared. He scared me.” She knew she sounded like a child, but Jonathan’s voice was deep and parental.

  “I’ll come get you.”

  “Really?”

  “Are you in a safe place?”

  “I’m in the lobby.”

  “Stay there until you see me pull up out front. Don’t go anywhere, not even the bathroom, alone.”

  “Don’t tell Lacy.”

  “What do you think I am? Nuts?”

  Winnie almost laughed. “Hurry,” she whispered.

  “It will take me thirty minutes. But you know what? We can keep talking. Keep talking to me. What movie were you going to see?”

  “James Bond.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  She heard his keys jingling. A door open and close. He kept talking to her, about Bond, about movies, about the time he met Sean Connery at a party. His voice was so well modulated and professional, even as he was starting his car and driving with one hand. Even as he was coming to rescue her.

  When she and Jonathan were first sleeping together, he could make her cry with laughter by talking like a radio announcer in bed.

  “Yes, that’s right. Only $19.95 buys you all the cunnilingus a woman could want.”

  “Hurry,” she said again. “Please.”

  Twenty-seven minutes later, Jonathan pulled up in his stupid Porsche and Winnie leapt into the passenger seat. He grinned at her, then frowned. “I meant to tell you earlier, you look really good.”

  She told him what happened and he laughed.

  “Bad date,” he said. “That’s all it was. Good cocktail party story. Especially that visit to AIDS Alley.”

  “Is that what they call it?” Winnie stuck out her tongue. “Gross.”

  He patted her thigh and left his hand there, right where she remembered it. “I’m glad I was home.”

  “You’re my knight in shining armor.”

  “Still?”

  “Still.” She put her hand on top of his.

  At her house, their house, the house where they had lived together, he offered to come in, check around and make sure Stone wasn’t lurking under the bed. Winnie accepted. She wanted him inside, back in their house. Once she got him there, as comfortable as an old pair of jeans, she was sure he would stay. He would have to. In the kitchen, she poured him his favorite vodka on the rocks and one for herself and looked into his eyes. This is it, she thought. My life resumes tonight.

  “You know what?” he said. “I’ve got a guy who would be perfect for you.”

  “Oh really?” She knew he was kidding her, talking about himself. She kept her voice low so he had to lean in. “Do I know this guy?”

  “Maybe. You might have met him a while ago.”

  “He was gone and now he’s back?”

  “No. I think he’s always been in LA. But he was in a relationship, and now he’s divorced.”

  Winnie frowned.

  “You know Don Miller, right? Not very tall, but a handsome guy.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “I could call him. Give him your number. Or better yet, you call him.”

  He could have punched her; it would have been less painful. Jonathan setting her up on a date. Jonathan acting as her pimp. She had been waiting for his kiss. He was looking in his cell phone for the number. The vodka bubbled in her stomach.

  She should have known then, known for sure it was over. Instead, later, alone in bed, it was his look she kept thinking about, the way his eyes took her in. It was Jonathan driving up to rescue her. His laugh and his hand on her thigh. He still loved her. He did.

  Winnie leaned against the wall in Oren’s hot little house and wondered what Jonathan would do when he found out she was missing. She imagined his anguish when the police found her body. Through the door she heard Oren pacing. Then she heard his phone ring—a different ring—the same awful song that Lacy used on her phone with offensive lyrics, loud, strident, discordant, designed to be annoying. Oh Lacy. Lacy. She heard him answer, “Where have you been?”

  He walked away from the door so she couldn’t hear anything else. Oh, she thought, why did he use that terrible music? It made her sad, so, so sad to hear it. She slid down the wall and curled up on the carpet. She wanted to go home. Not to the home she had left that morning, but back in time to when Lacy was little and Jonathan still loved her. She wanted them both. She wanted Jonathan. Her Jonathan. The dry carpet odor filled her nostrils and scratched the back of her throat. The fibers dug into her cheek. Five years after their separation, three years after his marriage, in a room full of pickled freaks, she could admit she was still waiting for Jonathan to return. All this time, she had expected a late night phone call, the receiver filled with his tears and apologies. One day she knew he would knock on her door with his hands open at his sides and the familiar contrite hunch to his shoulders.

  That would never happen now. He could not save her this time. This heat, this white carpet, this collection of carnival freaks, the smell of rotting vegetables and lizard piss were it for her. Her life would end with this unhappy, insane boy. They would find his skin under her fingernails, his red hair on this white T-shirt. No trace left on her of the man she loved or the daughter she adored.

  25.

  Lacy didn’t want to get out of the car. She did not want to leave Buster, ever.

  “As promised, my lady,” he said, “in time for orchestra.” They were across the street from school. End of the day. To Lacy, the white stucco building, the flagpole, even the kids spilling out the doors onto the sidewalk, looked picturesque and old fashioned. Simple, ordinary children leaving school for the afternoon to play and do homework and drink milk at dinner. She had moved so far beyond them now.

  She looked at Buster. He looked in the rearview mirror. She looked down at her hands. He looked out the window. But when she looked at him again, he was looking at her.

  “When are you done?” he asked.

  His brown hair fell in his eyes. His lips were parted. Those lips and all the places they had been. Did he think she was a slut?

  “What?”

  “When are you done with orchestra?”

  “Five-thirty
.”

  “I’ll pick you up.”

  “Really?” Her chest swelled, her arms felt as if they would float to the ceiling. “You don’t have to do that.”

  He bit his lip—those lips—and frowned.

  “No, no,” Lacy continued in a rush. “I want you to, but, I mean—my mom can come.”

  “Call her. Tell her you’re being borne home on the wings of love.” Then he blushed. The “L” word—even in passing—was too much for either of them.

  Lacy giggled and sighed at the same time and then had to cough. There was an excess of air in her lungs.

  Buster leaned toward her, she leaned in, they bumped and then they kissed, a little goodbye kiss. She sniffed the smoky, slightly unwashed smell of him. She sucked it in, to keep it until five-thirty when she saw him again.

  She floated down the corridor to her locker. She pulled her cell phone out of her back pocket and turned it on, wishing she had a girlfriend to call. Maybe she would see Marissa. Maybe Marissa had seen her with Buster. Instead, she ran into her history teacher.

  “Feeling better?” Mrs. Lee asked. “We missed you in class today.”

  “Oh. Yes. Much better.”

  “Good. See you in class tomorrow. Better call someone for the homework.”

  Even Mrs. Lee could not deflate her. Homework. What a quaint idea. She grabbed her flute from her locker. Her phone vibrated. Four messages. The first was from her father. She deleted it without listening. The next message was from Oren, her online man. He sounded squeaky, bad, nervous about something. The next was from him as well. And the next. In the last message he was actually screaming at her. Who the hell did he think he was? Then she had a little pang that somehow he knew what she had been doing. She thought about Buster’s bedroom and she flushed. He couldn’t know. He couldn’t know that she had fallen in love—that was it, wasn’t it?—with Buster. Buster.

  She called her mom first. Winnie’s cell phone rang and rang but she didn’t answer. It was obviously turned on. Lacy had told her a zillion times to get a ring she could actually hear. Poor thing, so out of it. Lacy felt benevolent and magnanimous and left dear old Mom a sweet message on the cell and then at home. Then she dialed Oren. Perhaps she could help him. She could do something nice for him before she told him not to call her anymore.