Did Not Survive

by Ann Littlewood

  “Hi, Iris. Sorry. You startled me.”

  No kidding.

  “I’ll be done in a minute.” She went back to hosing.

  Just “sorry?” I dripped outside, trying to decide how mad I was. I decided and started rummaging in the supply closets lined up along the hallway across from the quarantine rooms. I found clean towels in one. Another was a utility closet for mops and brooms with a big sink on the floor.

  The sound of hosing stopped. I waited in the hallway by the door drying my face and hair with a little white towel while Kayla presumably put the hose away and wiped down the floor with a squeegee. The door opened, and she stepped out.

  My pitch was good. Two and a half gallons of water arced out of the bucket and landed on her chest. It wasn’t precision work, of course, and a fair amount hit her head. Face, actually.

  Kayla reacted with the same paralysis I had, but it was brief. I flung the towel away and was galloping down the hall when she reacted, but she was close on my heels when I reached the bathroom. That woman was quick, and I was racing under weights. I yanked open the door and slammed it behind me. I had to lean my full self on the door to get it closed and shoot the bolt. Panting, I shouted, “Serves you right! You got me first.”

  “It was an accident, and I am going to kill you!” She slammed her shoulder against the door, which didn’t split. Better construction than I expected. “Yellow-livered chicken! Coward! Scaredy-cat! Yellow belly! Come out and fight like a woman.”

  Then silence. A standoff. I’d run out of strategy, and I couldn’t spend the rest of my life barricaded in the hospital bathroom dripping on the tiles. For one thing, someone might want to pee. For another, I had work to do. Time was against me. “Now we’re even. Truce?” I yelled through the door. Weak. She would never go for it, and she would figure something out pretty fast, something evil.

  Silence. I waited, wondering what she was up to, and decided it was safer not to give her much time. I opened the door a crack, my foot positioned to block any assault. No Kayla. I threw caution to the winds and stepped out.

  Screaming like a banshee, Kayla leaped at me, all ten fingernails arching toward my face. I fell back against the wall and threw up my arms. She doubled over, choking with glee. “You look like…like…” Words failed her.

  “A drowned gerbil,” I suggested and slid laughing to the floor with my back against the wall. I climbed right back up. “Uh-oh!”

  Kayla started to say something, but I pointed down the hall behind her.

  Detective Quintana stood a safe distance back. “Whatever happened to you two better not happen to me. I’ve got a gun.”

  “Yessir,” I said. “How may we help you?”

  Kayla stifled a giggle.

  He said, “I thought I might have a chat with Dr. Reynolds, but I suppose I could arrest you both for assault with a liquid weapon.”

  A joke? From Detective Quintana? A giggle escaped me. No, more dignified than that. Sort of a chortle.

  Kayla said, “She’s not in her office?” At his sober nod, “She’ll be done with her rounds and back any minute. Why don’t you take a seat in the reception area by the front door? Can I get you a cup of…” She made a snorting noise. “…water?”

  “Thanks for the offer, but no.” He retreated back the way he’d come.

  “About that owl…” I said. Best to keep her distracted.

  Kayla sobered up. “He’s in Room 3. Could you catch him up? He’s the only thing in there, so it should be okay as far as quarantine goes.” She shed her soggy lab coat, which had done little to protect the low-necked, short-sleeve top underneath. It was pale green and now almost translucent, revealing a lacy little bra. Her necklace was jade leaves. Kayla found another of the white towels, swiped at her hair and chest, and gave it up.

  The owl anticipated the worst from me, but he was stuck in a small cage and his talons were ineffective against the leather gloves Kayla provided. He put up a fight when I grabbed his legs with more vigor than he’d shown the day before. Dr. Reynolds’ lice treatment, rehydration, and a couple of shots had perked him up considerably. I corralled the wings and stuffed him into a fresh cardboard box for the journey home. Kayla pointed out the bottle of anti-lice cleanser Dr. Reynolds had set out for me to use on all the raptor exhibits. I stuck it into a damp pocket.

  Kayla walked me to the front door. Quintana wasn’t there, so Dr. Reynolds had come back or else he’d given up. She said, “Even though you’re a total puke, I can’t tell you how glad I am that you’re doing the elephant thing. Is it working out okay?”

  Once upon a time I wore jeans like hers, jeans with a waist. “No problems. I take it you don’t want the job back, even though Damrey’s cleared.”

  “Nope. It’s all yours. She tried to smack me, and I think those elephant people are all kidding themselves. And being in that barn makes my clothes and hair smell like elephants for the rest of the day.”

  “Kayla, just wondering—did you ever see anyone leaving the elephant barn early, before the keepers got there?”

  “Dr. Reynolds and the police and that committee asked me. No, I never did.” She slumped into one of the chairs.

  The box with the owl wasn’t heavy, but it was awkward. I set it down on the little coffee table. “If you remember anything else, let me know.”

  “Why? I mean, why are you so interested?”

  Good question. I punted. “We all want to know what happened, right? Everyone’s trying to figure it out.”

  “Yeah, I suppose so. I guess Damrey really didn’t do it. But I don’t want to be around them anymore.” She made a face.

  “Elephant phobic? Can’t afford to be if you’re going to work here.” Like I had the right to lecture.

  “It’s a one-year job. Jean—Dr. Reynolds—said she’ll try to get funding to keep me for another year. But even my old clinic job paid better than this.”

  “So working here is just to pay the bills?” I thought of all the people eager to work with exotic animals, the flood of applications for every zoo position posted to the public.

  Kayla shrugged. “I’ll stay if Dr. Reynolds wants me to. She saved my bacon. I left the clinic when I got a job as office manager at a business that imports bamboo flooring, but the son of the owner and I…well, he pissed me off, and I quit.” She touched her jade necklace. “This was the best thing I got out of that relationship.”

  “Beautiful.”

  “Anyway, then I couldn’t find a thing and was totally depressed. I’ve got the vet tech degree and a bookkeeping certification and couldn’t find anything. I was a mess, and Jean pulled me out by the scruff of my neck. She was the dorm mentor in my freshman year in college, and we stayed friends. She’s the one who’s always there for me. I wish there was a career path for me here.”

  “I barely made it through two years of college.” Marcie had gotten me through those two years and thought I should finish up. She apparently didn’t have the same clout as Dr. Jean Reynolds, or I was a tougher case than Kayla. “Maybe you’ll get addicted to the zoo. I did. I started here as a volunteer with the education animals at school programs. A keeper position opened up, and here I am. Senior keeper is as far as my ambition goes.”

  Kayla stood up and plucked at the front of her blouse to unstick it from her skin. “I like being around the animals, and I like the people, especially Mr. Crandall. He’s such a sweetie. Mr. Wallace was always nice, too.”

  Zoo management had never eaten out of my hand.

  She combed through her wet hair with her fingers and shook her head to settle it back down. “I’ve got meds to do.”

  I nodded. “Nice hosing with you.”

  “Back at you.”

  Outside, I remembered I was supposed to find Dr. Reynolds and tell her about the ugly note from A Team Mom. Some other time. I stopped for a moment to study the area by the hospital where the van with Rajah had been parked. A black sedan was there now, presumably
Quintana’s. Whoever stole the van would have driven it back the way we’d come and gone left through the perimeter gate to Finley Road.

  Getting the van through the perimeter gate would be no problem—it was on a motion detector to let delivery and service vehicles out. Getting in required punching a code on a key pad, a code Hap shared with delivery companies. Maintenance staff knew the code also, but since I never used that gate, I didn’t. I knew the one for the employee parking lot farther down.

  Around the corner of the hospital from where I stood was Dr. Reynolds’ office. The day had turned warm, which I appreciated in my sodden condition, and the window was open. It was not my fault that I could hear her voice.

  “…hardly relevant and due to circumstances that won’t occur again. I can’t see how it will help your investigation to damage my reputation at this zoo, and it certainly won’t help the zoo. My professional competence was never in question.”

  I couldn’t make out the words from Quintana’s deep voice and stepped closer.

  “Yes, of course. I’m not going anywhere.” She sounded angry and maybe a little sad.

  More from Quintana.

  She said, “I’ll let you know if anything else occurs. You know your way out.”

  I took my owl and stepped away from the building, Rajah forgotten for the moment. Dr. Reynolds was the last person I would ever think was hiding something. Something that Quintana had found out and come to talk to her about. Something Kevin Wallace had found out?

  I heard the car behind me and stepped to the side of the road to let Quintana drive by. He gave me a little wave. I watched the gate open as he pulled up in front of it. He waited and drove through, turning onto Finley Road.

  Across the road, near the employee parking lot gate, stretched a grassy hill with a few trees on top. A bird watcher sat halfway up the hill with binoculars obscuring his face, a backpack at his feet. The man was facing the zoo, not the best habitat for wild birds. No pileated woodpecker or western tanager around that I could see. An Anna’s hummingbird tweeze-tweezed on a phone line above me, bushtits zipped around in a maple on the zoo side of the visitor fence. I took one more look around at the van’s probable path and gave it up.

  Her professional competence was never in question…what the hell did that mean? What was in question?

  Chapter Fifteen

  The deadline loomed, my future was at stake, and I had no idea what to do. I took a poll.

  Marcie said over the phone, “I don’t think you should. You have enough on your plate with a new baby. A new job is too much.”

  Linda looked up from her crossword puzzle and said, “Bring it on! Mr. Crandall can tie a four-foot rope to our left wrists like they did in old California. He hands us each a hoof knife, and we fight to the death. The winner is Queen of Bears and Felines.”

  Dr. Reynolds paused in her weekly inspection of the aviary. “I don’t see why not. Felines has not had a senior keeper to represent it at meetings with Kevin…with the foreman. Neither has Bears. You have feline experience, and you’ll be able to work that area as soon as the baby’s born.”

  Hap put down a crate of broccoli. “Whoa! Are you serious? You in management meetings? Not that you wouldn’t be good at the job, I mean, you’d be great…”

  Denny waited at the time clock to tell me this: “I figured out why you’re falling apart. It’s your Saturn return. Saturn is back in the same position it was when you were born. You’re getting reborn, including the painful part. Everything changes, everything falls apart. So you’ll be a new person. Or maybe you already are, I’m not sure where you are in the process. You have to decide your new relationship with power: totally corrupting or leveraging your positive energy.”

  I didn’t ask Calvin. What if he said it wasn’t a good idea? That I wasn’t ready to be a senior keeper? That would sting.

  I didn’t ask Jackie, because she would spin it into some deep psychological disaster I was courting, either way, and then tell everyone.

  I had no idea how strong a candidate I was, but the odds of success were at least a little better if I actually applied. Soon. If Mr. Crandall didn’t choose an applicant from the current staff, the position would be advertised nationally and hundreds of people would apply.

  I could always turn the job down if it was offered. I couldn’t decide whether that would be smart or hopelessly lame. Maybe it would get me black-listed, forever rejected as a senior keeper. Better to decide up front whether I wanted the job or not.

  Easy to say.

  When I left work on Wednesday, I did not drive straight home to feed my dogs. I took a different freeway exit and cruised across the Columbia River to Oregon using the broad, wide-open Sam Jackson Bridge instead of the old Interstate Bridge with its thicket of green struts overhead. After winding around through a light industrial area—you-pull-it junk yard, a body shop, Foster Feed & Seed—I parked in front of Oakley Signs and Banners and hauled myself out of the Honda.

  The black Dodge Ram parked in the next space spoke truth: my father was inside. He stood at a thick plank propped up on a workbench. Five numbers were carved into the surface, and he was carefully filling them in with gold leaf. The contrast between the gold and the rough wood looked sharp. “Hey,” he said, “come to see how honest people earn their living?”

  “No, that’s two doors down. I came to see sign painters slacking.”

  The shop was barn-like with a high ceiling, concrete floor, and a row of windows along the back. While he finished laying the leaf, I examined a round cracked mirror on a chair. “Wolcutt’s Barber Shop Shaves Haircuts Beard Trims” ran in blocky old letters along the top and bottom. Dad said, “Aaron found that at a flea market. We’re trying to date it, maybe 1920.”

  I drifted around the shop, ran a finger along the rim of the big sink stained with years of washing out brushes and rollers, admired the tidy tool rack, the screwdrivers and hammers lined up neatly. A huge Christmas cactus hanging under the skylight looked even more limp than usual, so I poured a mug of water into it. The water ran out immediately, so I took it down and set it in a bucket to soak properly.

  I sat in a tall swivel chair and twirled while he dabbed another scrap of leaf into the top curl of a six. The shop was soothing.

  “You coming for dinner?”

  I sighed. “No. I have to feed the dogs. Need some input.”

  “Input. Is that the same as advice?” He put the little booklet of leftover gold leaf into a drawer in the workbench.

  “Could be. There’s a senior keeper position over Felines and Bears that’s come up. Take a step up the food chain or stay a grazer? More money, more meetings, supervising other keepers.”

  “You want to supervise other people?”

  I thought about that. “Not much. It’s mostly the money that appeals.”

  “I thought you were doing okay financially.” He cleaned a brush at the sink.

  “Surviving.”

  “We could help.”

  “You could save for retirement.”

  “It’s a three-bedroom house. Could rent a room.” He spun the brush dry and stroked it smooth. Hung it up on a nail with similar brushes.

  True. A paying housemate. Would that be the same amount of stress as a bigger job? I hopped down and wandered to the back windows and looked out at cabin cruisers and drift boats on trailers waiting for the boat repair shop next door. “I’m going to need flexibility with the kid. Might be harder to get if I’m a senior keeper. I hear babies get sick a lot.”

  “Yup.” My father took a rag, dampened it under the faucet, and wiped the top of the workbench.

  “I’d like to show Mom that I’m on a career path.” The Christmas cactus had soaked enough. I set it in the sink to drain.

  He took a push broom and swept the floor where he’d been working. Bits of gold leaf took flight and floated at knee height, glinting in late afternoon sunlight from the windows.

  I held the
dust pan. “No, taking care of the baby is what matters. I’m not going to torque my life to impress anyone. But I’d love to get back to Felines, and it might be fun to help design new exhibits.”

  He put the brush away.

  I emptied the dust pan into the garbage can and hung it up.

  He re-hung the plant and put little paint cans away, organizing them by a system that wasn’t clear to me on the metal shelves that ran along one wall.

  “Linda’s going to apply. I’ve got more experience. I think I’d ace her out, and this opportunity won’t come around again for a long time.”

  He stepped out of his white coveralls, splotched and dribbled with many colors, and hung them up on their hook.

  “But I’d be happy to see her get the job, and I like Birds better than I thought I would.”

  He washed his hands using paint-removing goo, with special attention to his fingernails.

  “Thanks, Dad. I appreciate the help.” I leaned close to give him a peck on the cheek. Fresh paint will always smell like security to me.

  “So which is it?”

  I smiled. “Give Mom a hug for me. Bye now.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  The Vulture’s Roost featured four dozen different beers, twelve of them on draft; three kinds of bad wine; and raspberry lemonade. I stirred ice cubes with a straw and wondered whether berries or chemicals contributed the intense pinkness. The vivid cheese on the nachos didn’t look any safer, but I was too hungry to pass them up while I waited for a burger.

  Hap had whooped at me as I clocked out after a blessedly uneventful day. “Cowboy up, Oakley! We’re going to the Buzzard for team building. We’ve been bummed out too long. Time for Brew Therapy.” He had rounded up Arnie, Kayla, Linda, and Denny. Ian, looking confused and reluctant, failed to escape. It was Wednesday and tomorrow was my day off. Why not attempt a little fun?

  Vulture’s Roost, AKA The Buzzard, wasn’t far, and we swept into their little parking lot like The Invasion of The Smelly People. We sat in a half circle at a corner booth, a scarred plank table in front of us, pressing gently against my belly. I was between Linda and Ian. The tavern wasn’t crowded and the music was an inoffensive mix of Hank Williams and Jimmie Dale Gilmore. Some of us were still in the pants-and-shirt style of uniform. Those who wore coveralls were in the clothes we’d had on underneath. Kayla wore a low cut top in a crinkly silver fabric, silver disks dangling from her ears. The woman had more style in her little finger than I had in my entire bulging body.