~*~
Unfortunately, Loretta’s people turned out to be considerably less than advertised. Her father was a mechanic named Ray who’d offered me a job at his shop in advance before we arrived, but his instant glare when we met told me that I didn’t match up well with whatever the appropriate specs were for the guy who was gonna end up with his daughter.
Mom was a waitress named Aubrey who was out when we arrived, and I’d been told by Loretta that she would probably be a non-factor in the approval process. She showed up at around nine, quiet and nondescript, but other than noticing that she had kind eyes she made no distinct impression on me whatsoever. Judging by her reaction to me, I got the sense that the feeling was mutual.
There was one sister who’d escaped from the family nest to head off to college, so she wasn’t in the picture. The one remaining figure was a hulking, 300-lb. brother named Al who worked security at the local Target.
Loretta’s nickname for him was Bubba Boo Boo, the boo boos being what he inflicted on me if I so much as looked at her the wrong way or did anything else to convince him of the impurity of my intentions. His glare was fiercer than Ray’s, and I was also informed that there was a paperwork trail on him at Target, which involved numerous incidents when he took out his anger management issues on various teenagers who had the temerity to try to shoplift on his watch.
The good news was that they’d rented us an apartment not far from their house, so we didn’t have to spend the night with them. We made no mention of Gizmo, of course, and thanks to a giant Carl’s burger we gave him just before we arrived, the little guy passed out and crashed during dinner with the folks. He was groggy when we emerged from their apartment, as if coming out of a coma, and upon discovering him safe, Loretta and I were quite relieved to have run the family gauntlet and passed the initial inspection without any disasters, natural or otherwise.
When we got to the apartment, we were also thankful to discover that it was furnished. The furniture was rented, decent looking at first glance but then full of the kind of well-concealed warts, dings and blemishes that comes with the territory with rented furniture. The garden apartment was dingy, but it had plenty of space, including an extra room for Gizmo, which left me optimistic that Loretta and I were on the verge of making a comeback after the rough trip.
My optimism faded quickly, though, once we went to bed. We decided to put Gizmo in the bedroom with us that night – this was Loretta’s idea, not mine – and sure enough, it didn’t take long before he once again began whaling away at the walls of the cage. We were sort of used to it by now, to the point where we’d each learned how to ignore it enough to get a bit of sleep.
At least until we heard the sharp crack near the end of Gizmo’s initial round of jousting. Loretta and I both bolted upright instantly; she reached for the lamp on the nightstand, while I scurried around the bed to check out the cage.
The damage was serious but not fatal. There was a large diagonal crack along the wall of the cage, similar to what you get when a pebble hits a windshield and starts exposing a fatal flaw in the glass. Upon closer examination, the crack was superficial – the glass in the cage was one of those double layer jobs, and the crack looked to have affected only one of the layers. I was fairly certain it would hold up until morning and perhaps for a while after that if our luck held up.
But neither of us was willing to take on that kind of risk. Loretta’s eyes were full of tears, and I knew she was close to the breaking point. She went over and sat by the cage, which seemed to placate Gizmo’s rambunctious nature for the moment. I made a move to come over and comfort her, but she turned and glared before I could take a second step, so I went to the bathroom to get a glass of water, then reluctantly went back to bed.
We left the light on and we took turns watching him for the rest of the night, which worked well enough to give us some peace. I might have gotten some sleep, I don’t really remember, but Loretta was a basket case by the time the sun came up, with deep, dark bags under her Disney-round eyes that were genuinely frightening. She looked like she was on the verge of a nervous breakdown, and I knew I had to do something about the cage the next morning.
Fortunately, I was able to get it taken care of fairly easily. There was a high-end pet store not far away, and I found an enclosure similar to the one Sneaky Pete had used, a big ol’ habitat that was more or less a perfect fit for the spare room.
And we actually had the money to afford it – I had the promise of an upcoming job at Ray’s garage, and Loretta was going to work as a waitress with her mom, which was hardly ideal but good enough to get us off to a decent start.
I managed to get the thing set up by the end of the afternoon on my own. Loretta had gone over to her folks, presumably to catch up on her sleep or do whatever she did when she was with family, which I really didn’t want to think about after the glares I had absorbed from Ray and Al. I managed to wrestle Gizmo’s cage into the room with the habitat, so all I had to take care of was the transfer.
When I went to move him, though, I noticed that the little guy had undergone a few changes. He’d grown a couple of inches, maybe even a tad more, so that he
came up just over my knee when he stood on his hind legs, which he did just about all the time now except when he was head butting his living quarters.
He’d also filled out some. Gizmo’s skinny, chameleon-like body was definitely a thing of the past – he looked like a cross between a little tank and a real-life version of something you’d buy at a dinosaur theme park. That fact made me think twice about how I was going to get him into his new home.
After studying the situation for a few minutes, I decided against the lift and carry option, mostly because he was giving me his sizing up look again. I opened the small equivalent of a reptile doggie door to the new enclosure, which was just tall and wide enough to fit him through, and then threw in a few pieces of a Carl’s burger to give him some extra incentive.
That brought me to the tricky part. Gizmo was watching me closely at that point, and I suspected that he knew exactly what I had in mind. I started to tilt the cage, gauging the angle so that when it was flat on its side he’d have nowhere to go but into the new digs.
He tracked my progress carefully, and as soon as there was a significant tilt to the cage, Gizmo went for it, whacking his head against the glass that was right in front of my face. The crack upon impact was different than any of the previous noises his head butts had produced, and a second split started, this one in the other layer of glass.
I also heard a different sound that was more of a glass-meets-metal kind of noise, with the glass losing the confrontation, and I realized that his cage no longer wanted to be a cage and wasn’t long for this world.
At any rate, Gizmo certainly recognized an opportunity when he saw one. He pressed his nose against the glass, so that he was just inches from my face. There was no mistaking the intention of his expression, so I pushed the cage over as fast as I could; making sure it was flush with the entrance of the new enclosure, with no gaps on either side that might serve as a possible escape route.
He lumbered into the new enclosure, remarkably quick given how awkward he often looked on his back legs. Gizmo looked around as if the whole setup was familiar, which of course it was, and then he began patrolling the perimeter of the enclosure, searching for a way out. After a couple of circles he gave up, at least for the moment, staggering over to the water bowl set out in the middle of the thing, then dropping into a supine position.
I watched him for a few minutes, shaken by the thought of him being so close to me with such obvious bad intentions. When I was sure he wasn’t going to batter the enclosure, I dropped some food in through the upper door. Gizmo looked up for a moment when he saw me stick my hands in, but he seemed to realize that it would take too long to get over to me, and the door was up too high for him to have any chance of success if he tried.
So it was done. As soon as I walked away from the enclos
ure, I realized that my shirt was soaked with sweat. And the effort made me conscious of my pent-up exhaustion from the trip, Gizmo’s antics and the tension between Loretta and I, along with meeting her family.
I thought about taking a quick shower, wondering when Loretta was going to come back, but I didn’t want to leave Gizmo alone right away, so I flopped down on the couch and turned the TV on, thinking I’d relax for a bit until Loretta got home.
I woke up several hours later. It was dark out, but Loretta had arrived and the lights were on. She’d cooked dinner, and for the first time the familiar smells made it feel like this place might become home. She made some kind of fish stew, an obvious acknowledgment of my preference for seafood, and maybe a bit of a peace offering as well.
She was all smiles when I got up and set the table as she dished out the food. But there was something phony about Loretta’s smile, which made me wonder if anything had happened with Gizmo while I was out cold.
She seemed happy enough, though, so I decided to let the whole thing pass, thinking optimistically that this thing with Gizmo, the new place and her family might actually work out. I didn’t actually believe that, but the stew smelled wonderful, and I figured a peaceful evening would be good for both of us.
Write On Press Presents: The Ultimate Collection of Original Short Fiction, Volume II Page 20