Strange Animals

by Chad Kultgen

  This time, when Karen and Tanya pulled out of the parking lot, the photographers didn’t even follow them to her pediatrician’s office. Instead they merely took a few passing shots, and one of them even blew a kiss to Karen as they drove away.

  Karen had been seeing Dr. Kang ever since Dr. Prasad recommended her. Although Karen had never wanted to switch doctors, she liked Dr. Kang and thought she was doing an excellent job. As she and Tanya walked into the doctor’s building, they saw two more photographers outside. As they snapped a few pictures of Karen, one of them told her that he thought she was the hottest pregnant celebrity he’d ever seen, even hotter than Kim Kardashian.

  In Dr. Kang’s office, Karen went through the usual battery of questions and had a blood test to make sure everything was moving along as it was supposed to be. Dr. Kang said, “Everything looks good on my end. Is there anything that’s worrying you?”

  God was a waste of time as an idea, and humanity had only ever used that idea to subjugate people and cause misery. Studying the universe and the fabric of reality were the most important of all human endeavors, but so few people saw value in them that the sciences suffered from underfunding and understaffing. And, beyond that, the sciences had progressed to a level of such esoteric intricacy that it was near impossible for a lay person to understand even the basic ideas behind them, let alone the mathematical minutiae at their core. The best thing a nonscientific person could do was to help ease the suffering of as many people as possible in the course of a lifetime. Having children merely meant bringing one more person into existence who would have to endure that suffering and grapple with the same questions about reality and the nature of existence that everyone else did. These were things that Dr. Kang understood to be true.

  Karen said, “I don’t know. I’ve been having really weird and vivid dreams lately.”

  Dr. Kang said, “That’s completely normal. We don’t really know why that is. It might have something to do with hormones, but I tend to think it has more to do with your baby’s brain development at this stage. She’s really growing fast, and so is her brain. It’s starting to develop certain functional processes that weren’t there before. And, though your brains aren’t connected, your bodies are, and I personally think that once her brain starts producing chemicals like serotonin and dopamine, you’re very likely getting some fluctuations in your own levels because of her. Anyway, it’s nothing to worry about. Anything else?”

  Karen said, “Let’s see. Back pain, leg pain, stomach itching, trouble sleeping, difficulty walking, weird hairs, weird moles . . . You know. The usual.”

  Dr. Kang said, “Well, the good news is you’re almost done with all of that. The bad news is, you’re going to have to have the baby to end it, which won’t be very easy, of course. But I’ve already booked you a room at Cedars. Your delivery staff is the best I’ve ever worked with. I’ll be there to make sure everything goes smoothly, and in a few weeks you’ll be a mother.”

  Karen let that sink in. She knew that having a child meant she would be a mother, but that was the first time she’d heard the word used to describe her. It was strange, but it wasn’t as terrible as she might have once imagined.

  chapter

  thirty-two

  James had been in Los Angeles for almost a month, and he had been unable to decipher any of God’s signs since his arrival. He knew it wasn’t God’s fault. He knew God was sending him signs. It was his fault that he’d been unable to see them. He was sure this was because of Satan’s influence over the city. There was no other explanation. But that didn’t change how even though he’d been living very sparsely and sleeping in his car since arriving in the city and trying unsuccessfully to find Karen Holloway with no outside help, James was running out of money. He had enough for maybe two or three more meals and a tank of gas, and that was all. So knowing that God always helps those who help themselves, James decided it was time to find work. It wouldn’t have to be anything permanent, just something that would allow him to subsist in Los Angeles until God told him what to do next.

  He checked the Internet to see if there were any Dillard’s stores in Los Angeles. There weren’t, but he did find several malls, so he decided to start his job search there. He had plenty of experience on a cleaning crew and knew how to operate a floor buffer. He assumed it shouldn’t be too difficult to find work in a city that big.

  The first mall he visited was the Grove. It was an outdoor mall, so there would likely be little need for a floor buffer for the mall itself, but he reasoned that the stores themselves might be able to oblige him. After inquiring about employment at the general information booth, James was given an application. He filled it out and expected at least to be given an interview, but instead he was told that someone would look over his application, and if they had a position open, they’d call him back sometime in the next several weeks. This obviously wouldn’t help James in the moment.

  Next he visited the Westside Pavilion, an indoor mall that was much closer in nature to the mall he worked in back at home. He thought this would be an easier place to find employment, but after talking with another person at another general information booth, he was given another application, and was told again he would be contacted in a few weeks if they thought there was a position he could fill.

  James visited three other malls and two Targets, all with nearly identical results. It wasn’t until he visited the Beverly Center that he experienced something different.

  When he approached the information desk there, he was met with an experience that at first seemed even worse than what he’d encountered before. The girl sitting at the desk told him that they had no openings at the mall, and it would be a waste of his time to even fill out an application because the mall used a private outside cleaning company to come in every night. Then, just as James turned around to leave, the girl said, “Hang on, though.”

  God was definitely real, and he definitely performed miracles, and he definitely wanted everyone to love each other and get along. War and murder and every bad thing on Earth were the result of mankind’s bad choices. These things weren’t punishments from God. They were just the logical conclusions of humanity misusing the free will God granted us. Science was incredible, but it was just one tool among many that God gave us so we could try to figure out things on our own. Sex wasn’t necessarily only meant for marriage. There was no way that could even be possible, because sex had existed long before marriage. Having children wasn’t an active goal most people should have, but if a girl was to get pregnant, she should obviously have the baby and raise it to the best of her ability. And if the father wants to be in the picture, even better, but it wasn’t necessary. These were things that the girl at the Beverly Center information desk understood to be true.

  When James turned back around, she said, “You know, my boyfriend actually works for a cleaning company that does, like, medical buildings and hospitals and stuff like that. I don’t know if that’s something you’d be interested in, but I could give you his email or something.”

  James thanked her and told her he’d love any help he could get. As she wrote down her boyfriend’s email address, James noticed that she wore a golden cross around her neck. It seemed to glow a little bit as she was writing. James knew that this was his next sign from God. When it took her boyfriend only an hour to respond to James’s email and set up an interview on the same day, James was excited to be back in the very obvious service of God. And when James was hired at the end of his interview to be part of a cleaning crew working on a few floors at Cedars-Sinai as well as some surrounding medical buildings, he knew that God’s plan for him was moving much faster than it ever had before. And when he was given a nondisclosure agreement to sign, because some of the buildings he would be cleaning housed the offices of doctors who serviced celebrities like Angelina Jolie, Al Pacino, and even Karen Holloway, James knew that God was initiating the final phases of his plan.

  chapter

  thirty-three
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  In the weeks that followed Karen’s press conference, she found herself inundated with phone calls and emails offering her public speaking engagements and requesting interviews for various publications, radio programs, and television shows, as well as publicists offering their services, and talent managers and agents promising that they could make her rich and even more famous than she already was. She even received an offer from a TV production company to shoot a talk show pilot, featuring Karen as the host. She declined the offers, but they still kept coming. Her morning routine, which used to involve checking her website to see how much money had been donated, now included emptying her inbox of the requests. At first she had written back to each request, citing her lack of interest in the public spotlight, but eventually she had resigned herself to moving all such email into the trash without even opening it.

  Karen sat on the toilet with her phone in her hand, dealing with her latest and worst bout of constipation, and scrolled through her inbox. After deleting dozens of emails, she stopped on one that surprised her. It was from Paul. She hadn’t talked to her ex-boyfriend at all since their last moment together in their old apartment. He’d kept his distance from both Karen and the public attention that came with her project, and she’d respected that by not contacting him, even though she’d wanted to several times.

  Karen opened the email, which read, “Hey, I know we haven’t talked in a while. I saw your press conference. I have to say I wasn’t expecting you to do what you did. You’re always full of surprises. Anyway, I don’t know if you’d have any interest in this, but if you want to, I’d really like to see you. Maybe get coffee or lunch or something. Let me know, and I hope you’re doing well. —Paul”

  Karen reread the email twice, trying to decipher any hidden meaning, anything Paul might have been trying to imply through his word choice or context, but she could find none. She had wanted to hear from Paul so badly for so long that when she finally did, she found herself wanting more from the message. The email certainly wasn’t negative in any way, but it wasn’t as positive as she would have liked, either. Paul was the one man she had ever really loved, and this email gave her a glimmer of hope that she could save that relationship, but it wasn’t affirmative enough to allay her fears altogether. Perhaps he just wanted to see her one last time before leaving town, she thought, or before moving in with a new girlfriend. So she replied with an email that read:

  “It’s really good to hear from you. This email is just as surprising to me as my decision might have been to you. I’d absolutely like to see you for lunch or something. Just let me know what your schedule is like over the next few days.”

  She pressed send and hoped to hear back from him soon. And she hoped his next email would contain some language that would give her an idea about what his intentions might be for this request to see her.

  It took an hour, but when the response finally came it simply read, “I’m pretty open. I imagine your schedule is the busier of the two, so I leave it up to you. You can pick the place, too. I’ll go anywhere.”

  So two days later as Karen sat in the lobby of the Cheesecake Factory in Woodland Hills, doing her best to avoid stares from a few patrons and agreeing to take one picture with a teenage girl who told Karen she was her hero, she still had no real idea why Paul wanted to see her. She was nervous about a great number of things. She hoped that Paul wanted to reconcile, just as she did. Beyond that, she was very visibly pregnant, and she wanted to look as good as she possibly could in a state that she considered to be uncomfortable at best. She noticed that she was starting to sweat and put one hand under her armpit to check just how intensely she was sweating. It was as she was pulling that hand out of her armpit that Paul walked in.

  He smiled and said, “Hey, wow! You’re really, really pregnant, aren’t you?”

  Karen smiled and said, “No shit.”

  They hugged awkwardly and then followed the hostess to their table. Once seated, Paul said, “So, thanks for meeting me and everything.”

  Karen said, “Of course. I was looking forward to it.”

  Paul said, “Me too.”

  Karen said, “Yeah, so why did you want to meet up? You didn’t really give me any idea in the emails.”

  Paul said, “I just . . . I mean . . . I guess, first of all, I wanted to thank you for keeping me out of everything. I couldn’t really stop myself from following the story while your site was up, and I know you got asked a lot about who the father was and what happened to our relationship and everything. I know it was tough, and I just wanted to say thanks.”

  Karen said, “Of course. You’re welcome. You know, you could have said thanks pretty easily with an email or something.”

  Paul said, “I know. I also just wanted to see you, see how you were doing with my own eyes.”

  Karen said, “Okay. Really? That was it? You just wanted to thank me and see me in person?”

  Paul said, “You always were such an asshole when I was nervous to talk about something.”

  Karen said, “I’m being an asshole right now?”

  Paul laughed and said, “A little.”

  Karen said, “Well, I’m really fucking pregnant, so I get to be an asshole. That’s how that works.”

  Paul took a deep breath, and he said, “Okay, look, here’s the deal. Through this whole thing, I’ve always loved you. And there was something about not being a part of any of this decision that just made me worry that I wasn’t that important to you anymore, like you just saw me as a sidekick in the relationship or something.”

  Karen said, “I’m sorry, Paul. You know—”

  Paul said, “Just let me finish this.”

  Karen said, “Okay, sorry.”

  Paul said, “I think that was the reason I left you. I just felt like, if you could cut me out of a decision that big, then you could cut me out of anything in your life. I felt pretty disposable, I guess, and I didn’t know how to deal with that. But over the course of this whole thing, I started to get why you did this, and I remembered how much I appreciate the dedication you have to your ideas, and the way you want to change the world. And those are all reasons why I fell in love with you in the first place. And when I really boiled it down, and honestly asked myself, if you had asked me about your plan before you went through with it, would I have been supportive or not? I know I would have been. I would have had to think about it, and I’m sure it would have freaked me the fuck out, but I would have been behind you all the way. You really did affect the world, Karen. That’s just fucking amazing to me. So eventually I realized I had no reason to be mad or hurt by your decision. I only wanted to be with this amazing girl who I love and adore and who is doing things in the world that are fucking incredible. So, to answer your question, I asked you out for lunch because I wanted to tell you that I would love to give us another shot and be in your life and hopefully be in our daughter’s life. And that’s basically it.”

  Karen sat across from Paul silently for a few seconds, weighing what he just said to her.

  Paul said, “So I guess I thought you might have a kind of immediate response to this, you know, one way or another.”

  Karen said, “You’re the only person I’d ever want to be with. And, if you want the real truth, a huge part of the reason I decided to do what I’m doing is that this baby is a part of you, too. I love you, Paul.”

  Paul got up from his seat and crossed the table to kiss Karen. She started to cry and said, “I would not be crying normally, but this shit really screws with your hormones.” They both laughed and kissed again. A handful of people nearby were staring and talking, and it occurred to Karen that they were probably speculating about the identity of Karen Holloway’s mystery man.

  Paul went back to his seat, sat down, took Karen’s hand, and said, “Why’d you pick the Cheesecake Factory?”

  Karen said, “I’ve been craving some dulce de leche cheescake like you wouldn’t fucking believe.”

  They ate their meal and talked ab
out the future. Karen told Paul that she’d be happy to have him move back into their apartment, and Paul told Karen that he would be there every step of the way for the rest of her pregnancy. For the first time in a long time, without giving a thought to public opinion or the possible repercussions for her now-completed project, Karen was simply happy.

  chapter

  thirty-four

  As James vacuumed the carpet in the hallway of a doctor’s office, he listened to a a podcast of Pastor Preston’s sermon from the prior Sunday. Pastor Preston said, “Brothers and sisters, I know there’s been a lot of talk about Karen Holloway, and some of you might still be on the fence about her and her decision. But I’m here to tell you today that the Lord has spoken to me, and he’s told me that we have been given a glorious miracle right here and right now. Karen Holloway, whether she knows it or not, was moved by God’s perfect grace to save the life of that child. She was an enemy to our Holy Father. She was an agent of Satan. We all saw that, and we all feared what she might do to that poor helpless soul, but Jesus Christ wouldn’t let that happen. And it wasn’t because of money, it was because of prayer. I know I prayed every day for that baby’s soul, and I know you did, too, and now—”

  James took his earphones out. He couldn’t tolerate the hypocrisy of Pastor Preston’s sermon. It was Pastor Preston who had condemned Karen Holloway as an agent of Satan and declared her unborn child to be the Antichrist, but now, as she was on the verge of delivering that child into the world, he seemed to have changed his position. James knew that Pastor Preston wasn’t as devout as he once thought, certainly not as devout as himself. But he knew, even as he thought this, that he was wrong in judging Pastor Preston. James reasoned that a man who had spent his entire life in the service of Christ couldn’t actually be at fault. The sermon and Pastor Preston’s change in attitude must have been the work of Satan, who was clearly muddling the minds of as many people on Earth as he could to prepare them for the coming of his son, the Antichrist. If not even Pastor Preston was safe from the Devil’s trickery and manipulation, then James knew he was in even greater danger. He rationalized that he might be the last agent of God left on the planet who hadn’t been duped by the evil plan of the Devil, who might still have the ability to stop Satan from carrying out his own plan to usher in the Antichrist. He might be the last hope for the entire planet, and because God told him nothing to the contrary, James felt this must be true. He said a quick prayer asking God to grant him strength and to help him overcome every obstacle Satan might place in his path.