by Julia Slavin
I admit I’m aggressive. It’s worked well for me in business. At twenty-nine, I was the youngest chief financial officer in my company’s history. But my success in business has worked in inverse proportion with my personal life. I love women. I want to marry them. I want to make them happy. I can’t leave them alone. I can’t stop calling them and asking where they’ve been. When I’m upset with them, I don’t play coy or distant. I come right out and ask who they’ve been with and why they haven’t called. What I consider zeal, women deem strangulation. My therapist claims it’s what I intend all along: for them to leave me. “All you really want,” he says, “is to be alone.” I don’t buy it. I find a tuna fish sandwich in front of C-SPAN at ten o’clock every night to be a very lonely sandwich.
“You gonna buy him?” Carl asked, after I’d moved back over to the tank, as if caught in an undertow. “’Cause there was a guy here before, a Texan guy, wanting to buy him. Said he’d be back after a drink.” I knew Carl was lying, but he was right. If anyone was going to buy the lobster, it would be a Texan. I do a lot of business with Texans. They get more Texan when they’re out of Texas. He’d buy it for his peroxided wife. And then show it off in the Admirals Lounge.
“Yeah, I want him,” I said, feeling the excitement of not knowing what I was going to do next.
Carl slid off the top of the tank. I heard the loud gurgling of the air pump. Then he produced a huge pair of forceps and grasped the lobster around the head. It started to bend and twist at the middle. The tank clouded. Water splashed out and wet Carl’s pants. “Fuck!” he yelled, and lifted the forceps over his head like he was going to stab something.
“Careful!” I shouted. He plunged the forceps back into the water and managed to get a grip around the lobster’s middle. It went limp. He lifted it out. Max spread his claws. There must have been a three-foot span. I was amazed.
“Looka that,” Carl said. “Hey, Scoopy,” he called to an airport worker who was pushing an empty wheelchair down the corridor. “P’seidon. King a da sea.” Then he dumped Max in a plastic-lined cardboard carrying box like he was trash.
I paid him sixty-five dollars and looked around for some seaweed or something to put in the box with Max so it wouldn’t be quite so inhospitable. But there were only lobster bibs and jars of cocktail sauce at the stand. I went to the gift shop and bought a Celtics T-shirt to put him on. At the counter, I opened the box. A claw raised up out of the top and flopped down on the side. The clerk jumped back.
“It’s okay,” I said. “He’s got bands around his claws. He can’t hurt you.”
“Oh.” She laughed, embarrassed. “I’ve just never seen one so big.”
“You gonna steam him or broil him?” the customer behind me asked.
“No, I’m not eating him. I’m taking him to an aquarium,” I said, surprising myself. This had just occurred to me, and I thought it was an excellent idea.
“I like ’em broiled,” the man said, ignoring my answer. “With buttah. But remember, you have to cut that vein on the neck while’s they’re alive. Then cut ’em down the middle so’s they lie flat. One that big I’d steam.”
“Thanks for the tip,” I said. Moron.
I called the Boston aquarium. They told me to call the zoo. I called the zoo. They told me they’d transfer me to the invertebrate house. “It’s a lobster, not a snake,” I said to the woman on the phone, who, because of her thick Boston accent, I took, wrongly, as an idiot.
“A lobstah is an invertebrate, sir,” she said. “A snake is a reptile.”
“Oh.”
“We already have a lobster,” the woman at the invertebrate house said.
“Can’t you take another?” I asked, holding the phone to my ear with my shoulder, my case of documents weighing down one hand, the lobster box weighing down the other.
“We have to fight to keep the one we have,” she said sadly. “They’re not considered unusual enough. Especially here. If you had a cuttlefish, or a Portuguese man-of-war …”
I walked through the airport feeling dejected. I’d missed the three-thirty and the four would be boarding soon. The lobster shifted his weight in the box. I put my documents down and gently tilted the box back so he was centered. I was heading for the gate when I heard the page. “Would the man with the lobster go to one of the gray courtesy phones.” A group of lawyers I recognized from taking the shuttle all the time laughed, and so did everyone else in the waiting area when the page was repeated.
“Sorry about the page,” the woman from the invertebrate house said. “I didn’t know your name.”
“Never mind,” I said. “You’re a doll.”
“Washington’s lobster died. They might be looking for a new one.”
Three voices later I was on with Katherine Crisp in Washington, Associate Keeper of Invertebrates. Katherine had a voice that went through me like heavy syrup. I can tell a lot from voices since I spend so much time on the phone. “You see,” she said, low and unwavering, “it’s not up to me. It’s up to the zoo constable.” A slight sexy lisp on constable.
“The zoo constable,” I repeated. I shifted my weight, trying not to become distracted by the movement I felt behind my fly. “May I speak with the zoo constable?” I asked.
“The constable is a board,” she said. “The board meets the second Tuesday of every even month.” It was July. I remembered what I hated so much about Washington, the city in a swamp, why I avoid business there. No one’s individually accountable: it’s always boards or committees or, worse, policy. “And it was the decision of the board not to replace the lobster.”
“Too common?” I said, getting angry.
“If it were up to me …” The city’s anthem. But I kept cool. There was a person on the other end of the line, a person who saw the world from her own personal vantage point. How could we both come out ahead?
“Okay,” I said. “I see a display. Mighty Max the lobster, rescued on his way to becoming Thermidor.” That got a throaty hum of a laugh. “And the sign goes on to say that a lobster this big is this old and would you want to eat a lobster this old?” I’d botched it, I knew.
“We’re not anti-seafood,” Katherine said. “In fact we have a display of spices and hot sauces.”
“I guess if it were a cuttlefish you’d feel different.” I was losing ground, if I had to go the self-pitying route.
“Cuttlefish change color and pattern when they’re threatened,” she purred. “Big hit with the kids.” Sometimes the best negotiating tactic is to keep quiet. Let your counterpart wriggle around with words and pauses. Let her spar it out by herself and come to what you believe on her own. “I mean, this is a zoo, not a shelter,” she said, after several quiet moments. “Are you still there?”
“I’m here.” I was closing in for the kill.
“I could suggest you take it back to the ocean,” she said. Silence. “But of course we both know what would eventually happen to it anyway.” Done deal. “Can you bring him down to D.C.?”
“I’m at an airport,” I said triumphantly. “I can get him to Timbuktu.”
As soon as the flight attendant buckled herself in I took the box out from under the seat and held it. Max moved gently on my lap, shadowing the rocking motion of the plane, on his way to salvation. But as I drifted off to sleep, the last thing I remember thinking about was Katherine. And I said it aloud to test it: “Katherine, Katherine.”
She didn’t look like what I’d imagined. Do they ever? I always imagine, and I’m not proud of this, but it’s what comes to mind, that they look like Veronica from Archie comics. Brown wavy hair and a ridiculous hourglass body with big pointed breasts. I said I wasn’t proud of the image.
Katherine had brown hair but it was short, short-short, high above her ears, which were small and lobeless. Something simple, she’d told her hairdresser. No jewelry. No excess. A few light freckles were sprinkled across her nose and cheeks, faded from lack of sun, from working all day in near darkness, and her skin wa
s so white she looked like she was standing under fluorescents. She was thin. So thin. Tiny breasts, if any at all. Dressed in the uniform of the other zookeepers, male and female, green polo shirt and navy khakis, she could easily be mistaken for a boy.
I saw her by the anemone tank, explaining something to a zoo volunteer. A tremendous pink anemone sucked on the glass just above her head. She curled her lip at something the volunteer said, then quickly closed her mouth when she looked at me and noticed I saw she wore braces. I was shocked by them. I wonder about grown-ups who get braces. Why did they wait? Was it the money? Were they too vain? Did they have an accident? In a practiced way, she spoke with her lips out and over her teeth to cover the braces and managed to talk without revealing them.
“You’re the man with the lobster?” she called over the volunteer’s shoulder.
“That’s me,” I said. She didn’t smile. Maybe her smile was on hiatus while the braces were on. Maybe I’d be the one to bring it back.
“I’ll be with you shortly,” she said.
The invertebrate house was nearly empty, most of the kids preferring lions and gorillas, animals that really look like animals. I stood by the sponge display while she signed some papers for the volunteer. I remember it was a big deal to have a real sponge in the bath or by the sink when I was growing up. They seemed to multiply in our house. I always found it rather disgusting, using an animal to wash yourself.
Katherine motioned for me to follow her to the back. “I hope your coming wasn’t in vain,” she said. “I still need the okay from the constable. Not to mention the space.” I watched her back, straight and rigid, as we walked. We passed the octopus display. I was relieved to read a sign that said they didn’t really sink ships or eat people, that they’re really quite timid and keep to themselves.
“Ah, my nemesis,” I said as we passed the cuttlefish, who was, at the moment, beige. He clearly had the best tank, the prime real estate.
“We’re getting another in September,” Katherine said proudly.
We passed an empty tank where the old lobster had lived. There were still rocks and sediment at the bottom. It looked like a nice place for my lobster to make his residence. Katherine saw my hopeful gaze. “Sorry. That’s for the new cuttlefish.”
She took me back to a large lab and storage area. Metal tubs lined the wall. Siphons, jars of pebbles, old pumps, trowels, and boxes of crystallized chemicals were piled on shelves. The middle of the room was taken up by a huge round Jacuzzi-looking tank where two horseshoe crabs lived. All this for a couple of horseshoe crabs. I remember as a kid there were always a couple of dead horseshoe crabs on the beach at Riis Park after a full moon, a few of the unfortunate ones that came to the shore to mate and couldn’t make their way back home. I’d included them with the wrappers, plastic cups, driftwood, and condoms that washed up on the beach, certainly not worthy of a tank at the zoo.
“Why are they back here?” I asked.
“For demonstrations. For kids.” She sank her bare arms into the water and picked up one of the crabs. “This is Esther.” Water dripped off her thin arms. “One of the last surviving cousins of the trilobites. A relic from 250 million years ago.”
She turned the crab over and stroked her underside. Esther’s legs stopped moving and she became still; bubbles formed at her mouth, or what I assumed was her mouth. “Look at that eye,” Katherine said, turning Esther back onto her stomach. “The most sophisticated eye in the universe.” It looked like a dot to me, like my lobster’s eye. “She lives in the mud but can see everything. Watch.”
She lowered Esther back into the tank, crossed to the other side, and dropped in a small freeze-dried shrimp. Esther rose from the bottom and glided over. The shrimp disappeared under her shell and Esther sank down into the sludge. Katherine dropped in more shrimp, and another horseshoe crab appeared, which Katherine introduced as Sadie. Then she turned to one of the worktables where I’d put down my box.
“Let me.” I reached to take over, but she waved me off. Her hands disappeared in the box. She lifted Max. He went limp in her hands. “He likes you,” I said, relieved.
“She,” Katherine corrected, and turned Max over on the damp Celtics shirt. “Eggs,” she said, stroking a dark area around the abdomen. “Or, as they say in the restaurant business, roe.”
“How old would you say he is?” I asked. “I mean she.”
Katherine shrugged. “Sixty. Sixty-five. Seventy.” I was stunned. “She’s going to be fine,” Katherine said, keeping her eyes focused on the lobster, swaddled in the green receiving blanket. “We’ll find a place for her. Either here or at another zoo. She won’t go to a restaurant.”
I felt all the stress of the day wash out of me.
“What did you name her?” Katherine asked, stroking her tail.
Now that I’d saved her I felt I could name her, my own name, not the name that heinous Carl at the airport had stuck her with. “Gina,” I said. I don’t know where I got that. I guess it sounded like Regina, my family’s cleaning lady. The one who used real sponges to get the floors clean. I always liked her. “Gina,” I said again.
“She’s beautiful, all right,” Katherine said. I felt proud. “I’ve never seen such a large crusher,” she said, shaking hands with Gina’s heavier claw. “Strong pincers.” Her tongue caught on her braces and she lisped: pintherth. I found it too sexy for words. I asked her to dinner.
She pulled some garlands of seaweed out of a freezer and made an underwater nest on one side of the tank and positioned some large rocks. Then she lowered Gina into the tank. “They’ll keep to themselves,” Katherine said, and dropped in more frozen shrimp.
As we walked into the hazy July evening, we shielded our eyes from the light, our pupils the size of dimes from being in the dark. “It must be fun to work in the dark all day,” I said. “It must be cozy.” Katherine pulled a pair of Jackie sunglasses from her day pack, the only accessory she allowed herself. I thought she looked elegant. Her pale skin and skinny body began to look almost fashionable in her zoo uniform.
We looked up and down Connecticut Avenue. I didn’t know where to take her for dinner. Certainly not a place with shellfish. And there were all those foods that could get stuck in her braces and embarrass her. She chose a place with coal-oven pizza, which she ate in tiny bites with a fork, carefully opening her lips, out and over the braces, pursing them down on the tines. She kept catching me staring at her mouth. I wanted to see the braces. I wanted to know what was wrong with her teeth.
“You know, I never liked zoos much when I was a kid,” she said, pushing her plate back and folding her hands on the table. She’d eaten one piece without the crust. I was faced with five more slices of our large plain pizza.
“I can’t imagine a little girl not liking the zoo,” I said. But I could imagine Katherine. A pale skinny girl in a party dress with crooked teeth. Or maybe they were buck. Buck teeth and braids. That was Katherine, I was certain.
“But I see their value now,” she went on. “For young people. To observe and respect animals. If one person can be stopped from throwing plastic into the water, or realize the importance of not cutting down trees or widening roads into the bay, then we’ve done some good.” We gave the rest of the pizza to a guy bumming money outside the restaurant and went back to the zoo.
As we walked through the entrance, past the bat house, the flamingo cage, the okapis, I put my hand on the small of Katherine’s back. Her bones poked through like sticks. She moved away. We strolled along not saying anything.
The zoo was oddly quiet, now that the kids had gone and the animals had stopped performing. I begged for two cones from a snow-cone vendor who was closing up, and he gave them to us, no charge. We sat on a bench near the prairie dogs and she crossed her thin legs, the foot of her top leg reaching all the way down to the cement. She bit into her snow cone. “Ouch,” she said, and held her hand to her mouth.
“Cold?” I asked, looking at her mouth, hoping for the slightes
t peek.
“Mmm,” she said, giving me nothing.
I kissed her. She kept her mouth closed. I turned my head away and sat back, looking at the sun, which was just setting behind the lions’ den. I kissed her again. This time she opened her mouth. I felt her tongue go from cold to warm. Then I started to move my tongue around. I wanted to feel the braces. The hard next to the soft. Steel on velvet. But she protected the precious metal with her tongue and I couldn’t get in. We started a pushing match with our tongues. She was winning. I wasn’t anywhere near. I put my hand on her breast and felt a hard nipple through her polo shirt. She moved my hand away and stopped kissing me, looking around to make sure no one had seen. I put my hands on her bony shoulders and tried to turn her body toward me but she stood up. She took my hand and we walked back to the invertebrate house, not saying a word.
Back in the invertebrate house, I stood before a cockroach display while Katherine dimmed some lights and raised others.
“Must not have been too hard to put this display together,” I said, as an icebreaker, but then realized she must hear that one all the time. They were crawling on top of one another. The bugs on the bottom, resigned to being stuck, waiting it out until the bullies went elsewhere. I tried to look at them as nature, as beings that have been here as long as time, but there’s no way around it, they’re disgusting.
I felt something on my waist behind me. I jumped. “It’s just me,” Katherine said. She slid her hands around my sides to the top of my belt. I hoped she wasn’t going to try to undo my belt or rub her hands over my crotch because I wasn’t ready. I’d lost the mood, watching the cockroaches. I started to turn around but she wrapped her arms tightly around me and was smoothing her hands over my chest. She was strong for someone so slight. I tried to pull my stomach in as she brought her hands down over it, tried to improve my posture as she rubbed her face on my spine. Most of all, I tried to remember what I’d found so attractive about her.