The Care and Feeding of Exotic Pets

by Diana Wagman

  He leapt to the front door and opened it.

  “Lacy!” he called. She was still looking down the street. “Lacy!”

  She turned toward him. She was taller than he imagined and her hair was lighter than in the picture. The sun was behind her and she glowed, she radiated, a spirit, a sprite, his angel. She had been sent to him. She was his. He reached a hand toward her. She would not move. She was frozen in that perfect moment where they saw each other fully for the first time.

  He heard sirens and he had time to wonder why before he saw police cars coming toward him from all directions. They squealed to a stop in front of his house. Three of them. Four. Half a dozen. How did they know? He could not believe Lacy had called them. It must have been that boy who was driving.

  He slammed the front door shut and locked it. Winnie was looking out the window. She saw the police. Lacy was being hustled back into a police car. The boy was being pulled back too.

  Oren grabbed Winnie by the arm and yanked her to her feet. She gasped from the pain in her leg. He had to think. He pressed the flat side of the knife blade against his cheek. The metal was so cool it made his skin tingle.

  “We have to convince them,” he said to Winnie. “They don’t understand.”

  “No,” she said. “No one understands.”

  “Except you.”

  She nodded and he loved her then. He really did. “Help me,” he said. “How do I show them who I am?”

  “Let me talk to them.”

  She shuffled toward the front door, but Oren knew he could not let her open it. A man’s voice came over a loudspeaker. “Oren Baines. Let her go.”

  He could not stay in the house any longer. They would be coming in after him. He needed time to convince them he had just been following a plan. None of it was his fault. He was not stupid. He had followed a plan. He had expected them to put his name in the paper, practically give him a medal for single-handedly turning a horrible witch into a loving, considerate parent. It was not his fault that Lacy had lied to him. It was not his fault. He dragged Winnie with him toward the kitchen. He could go out the back door. They could hide and get his car later. Winnie began to struggle.

  “No, no,” she said. “Not in there. Not Cookie. I can’t.”

  “We have to.”

  Someone in a helmet and a vest and dark mirrored glasses was pounding on his front door. The kitchen was the only safe place. He pushed open the swinging door, but Winnie’s legs buckled. She collapsed in the doorway. Oren caught her before her head hit the ground. Immediately Cookie started for her. The beating Oren had given him had only made him angrier. Oren pushed him away. He kept coming back. He would never give up. Oren looked down at Winnie cradled in his arms, her face so pale and slick with sweat. One strand of her dark hair crossed her face. He pulled it free. Cookie snapped and chomped. Winnie opened her eyes and smiled at Oren.

  “You’re a good boy,” she said. “As soon as this is over, I want you to come home with me.”

  They were hitting the front door with something. They would break it and then he would have to pay for that too. He started to cry. This was all too hard. Cookie would never leave her alone; after having a taste of her he would always want more. Winnie would never be safe. And Oren realized he would not be happy without her. He wanted to go home with Winnie. He needed it. With or without Lacy. It was Winnie he loved. He looked from Cookie to Winnie. Her eyes were closed and her breathing scratchy. Her leg was bleeding through the bandage. Cookie started for her.

  “No, Cookie. No.”

  He pulled Winnie to safety, left her lying on the living room floor, and then went back to the kitchen. There was no decision left to make. He was not afraid. This was just Oren doing what had to be done. He straddled his oldest, only friend and drove the knife deep through the thick, scaly skin into the flesh beneath. Cookie writhed, but he did not fight as much as seven feet, 165 pounds was able. His final gift to Oren was a quick surrender.

  The door broke open. Oren was afraid for Winnie. They would trample her. He hurried out to stand guard, knife in hand, iguana guts and blood spattered all over his white undershirt.

  The SWAT team rushed into the house. They saw Winnie’s blood covered body and Oren standing over her with the knife and opened fire. He was dead before she got her eyes open.

  34.

  A tropical bird hovered outside her window. It was iridescent green in the sun. The feathers shone and shimmied like sequins on a costume. It had a bright yellow beak and it looked right at her, turning its head this way and that, staring at her from one beady eye and then the other. The bird was going to speak, actually speak, and she was ready. Winnie had waited all her life for this moment when something incredible would happen only to her. She had known all along this day would eventually come. She had waited and she was ready. She tried to lift one hand to wave, but she was mired in the bed, weighted with cement blocks around her wrists and ankles.

  Oren, no, she thought. He did not want her to escape. He wanted her to stay right there, to sink into the mattress and disappear. Slowly, slowly, even her bones would disintegrate until they became piles of dust on the blue and white ticking, something to be brushed away. I won’t go, she tried to say to him, I’m not leaving you.

  The bird was getting impatient. Winnie forced herself to concentrate. Tell me, bird. Tell me.

  The mysteries of life were about to be answered.

  “I can see so far when I fly.” The bird's voice was deep and masculine. “Everything I see is beautiful.” It swooped away.

  “Oren,” she said aloud. “Did you hear that?”

  “Are you awake?”

  She turned her head. Jonathan sat beside her. Jonathan.

  “Oh,” she said. “What are you doing here?”

  “Jesus, Winifred. I was scared to death.”

  And then she knew everything. Remembered everything. Too much. She closed her eyes again. She was in the hospital. Her head hurt and they had put uncomfortable bandages on her stomach and her left hand and wrist were in a cast. Her leg throbbed from Cookie's bite and she ached from the stitches the doctors had used there and elsewhere to repair the damage from his teeth and claws.

  But Cookie was dead. Oren had killed him. For her. He had killed his best friend for her. And Lacy.

  “Where's Lacy? Jonathan, is Lacy all right? Where is she?”

  “Yes. Shh. She’ll be right back. She went to get something to eat.”

  Food did not sound good. Winnie swallowed and tried not to think of the bowl of bloody water that Oren had held for her. The way he gathered her hair as she vomited. Was he there? In the hallway, waiting for Jonathan to leave? She thought she saw him dart across the open doorway. She heard him calling to her. He couldn’t stay for long. Her breath caught, she reached for him. Wait. Wait.

  “Oren,” she said. “Oren?”

  “You’ll be glad to know they got him. He’s dead.”

  She knew it before Jonathan finished his sentence. Her stomach clenched and cramped around the truth. She knew Oren was gone like she knew the curls of his hair, the paleness of his skin, his freckles like constellations, his fingernails bitten to small scabby crescents. His hand on her back as she leaned against him. Tears in his small, green eyes. His little boy face inches from hers, so close she could have licked the sweat from his upper lip. He brought her aspirin. He didn’t give her to the reptile man. What had she done for him?

  “You’re amazing,” Jonathan grinned, “The cops say you did an incredible job staying alive. Especially after he killed that other woman.”

  The girl in the back room. But she had only fallen. Oren had not killed her. Winnie squeezed her eyes shut. She heard the organ music. She smelled the hot sugar in the cotton candy machine. She knew he was at the hot dog truck. Welcome! Welcome one and all!

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

  She could have saved him. She could not have saved him. But he had saved her.

  “No
apology necessary.”

  Not Jonathan. Not him.

  “Don’t cry. You’re safe now. You’re going to be fine.”

  She hadn’t realized she was crying. She sneezed. Jonathan handed her the box of tissues. Gray, industrial curtains covered the hospital room's only window. How would that magical bird ever find her?

  “Jonathan.”

  “Yes?”

  He leaned closer. She caught the strong scent of his expensive aftershave and underneath it, faintly, of meat. She had to turn her head away. He was like a limb that had been amputated a long time ago and someone had dug it up and handed it to her to hold. She recognized it, the moles and the hairs and even the smell, but it had become alien and repulsive.

  “Open the curtains? Please?”

  Jonathan walked around the bed and pulled the curtains back. The California sky was so blue and cloudless, it hurt her chest to look at it.

  “Your mother sent those flowers.” Jonathan nodded toward an enormous, exotic bouquet. It took up half the room, but Winnie had not noticed it before. “She can’t come, she’s doing a play.” Jonathan shook his head. “Daisy,” he said with a sigh. “She wants me to tell you all the press you’re getting could start you on a real career.”

  “Press?”

  “There’s a swarm outside the hospital. My agent has been fielding all your calls. Lots of calls. They want you on talk shows; somebody wants you to write a book; one of those TV cop dramas wants you to do a walk on; a journalist wants to write your life story. Everybody wants you.”

  He waited for her to thank him. She closed her eyes again.

  “You’re smart,” he continued, “Still attractive. Victim, survivor, this true life crime stuff sells. You can strike while the iron is on.”

  “Hot,” she said. “While the iron is hot.”

  Winnie knew he was right. Now was the time. Now was really the time. Her mother, Jonathan, her friends and coworkers would all be so impressed.

  Jonathan spoke proudly, “You could really be someone.”

  He sounded like her mother. He sounded like himself. He sounded like everyone she had ever known. Except Oren. I am someone, she thought, I always was.

  Lacy came running into the room and threw her arms around Winnie, climbing right onto the bed beside her.

  “Mommy!”

  “Don’t hurt her,” Jonathan warned.

  “I’m okay.”

  “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.”

  Lacy’s curls tickled her nose and Lacy’s arms pressed on her sore neck and head. Winnie took a deep breath of vanilla oil and watermelon shampoo, cigarette smoke and baby girl all mixed up together. The same old blue sky, the same old ex-husband, the same old young beautiful wonderful daughter babbling about how scared she had been, how brave her mother was, how her new boyfriend had been a hero. Winnie held on tight.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I would like to thank Sabine Phillips, Executive Director of the Reptile and Amphibian Rescue Network, for answering all my questions and letting me spend so much time with her four beautiful rescued iguanas. Thank you to my wonderful editors, Elizabeth Clementson and Robert Lasner, for their invaluable guidance. For hanging in there with me, many thanks to my agent, Terra Chalberg. For reading and listening, thank you to Diane Arieff, Heather Dundas, Seth Greenland, Denise Hamilton, Sally Harrison-Pepper, David Ivanick, Dinah Lenney, Kerry Madden, Donna Rifkind, Leslie Schwartz, Lienna Silver, and Ellen Slezak. Thank you to the United States Fish & Wildlife Service and The Humane Society for all they do. And to Tod, Benjamin, and Thea, who are so good at my care and feeding: you make it all worthwhile.