Write On Press Presents: The Ultimate Collection of Original Short Fiction, Volume II
Page 18
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Before we could leave, though, we needed to solve the problem of traveling with this new addition to our lives. Loretta and Sneaky Pete had a brief and slightly contentious conversation about a travel cage, which Pete said he would gladly part with for an appropriate surcharge.
Loretta’s position was that his semi-exorbitant price should include such an addition, and they finally settled on a lower sum that increased the total purchase price only slightly. The cage he came up with was a glass deal that actually fit quite nicely across our back seat, although it did mean that our trunk now had to be stuffed to the brim.
The presence of the lizard in the back seat was unsettling, to say the least. At least for me. Every time I looked in the rear view mirror the little guy seemed to have his eyes locked onto me, as if I were his next meal. And I have to tell you, I saw those eyes in a nightmare that first night, a dark gore fest of a dream that scared me so much that I thrashed about to the point where I literally almost dragged Loretta into it, reaching across the bed in sweat-soaked fear.
But unfortunately, Loretta didn’t quite see it that way. Not at all. She absolutely adored the little guy. I think there was some kind of child substitute thing going on, which I found too creepy for words. She turned and cooed over the thing like it was a small child, to the point where I expected her to jump into the back seat and engage in some kind of cuddle fest.
All of this culminated with her naming the little beast shortly before we hit a motel near the New Mexico border that night. Loretta wanted to call him Gizmo, because she loves cheesy 80s flicks and “Gremlins” is one over favorites. She said the little guy reminded her of the tiny monster that hijacked the film, and apparently her heart as well.
In hindsight, I probably should have paid a lot more attention to that.
At any rate, the little guy gave us a pretty memorable first evening together. It started when we realized that the room we were given was out in the open, near the front entrance, which made it a pretty dicey operation to get the cage inside.
So Loretta had to go back up to the front desk and renegotiate our room assignment, a process in which I elected not to participate. I’d seen the clerk when we checked in, and I’m pretty sure he’d think the room switch pegged us as drug dealers, fugitives or something a lot worse. I was even more certain he had eyes for Loretta, so I let her negotiate that switch without any assistance or input from me.
The new room was all the way in the back. So far, so good. Once we removed the cage from the car, though, we noticed that Gizmo had created what I’ll gracefully refer to as a waste removal problem. And, of course, Loretta made it abundantly clear right away that I was the one who was gonna take care of that. So, that left us with the problem of what to do with sweet little Gizmo while I cleaned his cage. Fortunately for me, Loretta already had this figured out – we’d take the cage into the room, she’d remove him, take him into the bathroom with her, and I’d figure out a way to take care of his business.
Turns out there were only two problems with this plan. One was that there was really no place to dispose of Gizmo’s droppings. I saw nothing but miles and miles of Texas in back of the motel, which would automatically make my little project quite conspicuous. I worked around this by using the car as a kind of a shield, so that none of the motel’s other shady customers would see me, but I knew it was a nervous, half-assed plan at best.
The other, larger issue was Loretta’s bathroom experience with Gizmo. It took me about 20 minutes to clean out his cage, and while I was taking care of business I heard several odd squealing noises coming from the bathroom. I knew all of Loretta’s weird noises – and believe me, she had a whole bunch of them for all sorts of occasions – but I’d never heard her make those kind of peculiar sounds, not ever.
When I brought the cage back in and set it up in the corner of the room, Loretta was white as a sheet as she emerged with Gizmo in her arms. I asked her about it a couple of times, but she wouldn’t say a word, which was pretty unusual for Loretta, who normally grew decidedly more verbal once we were alone together.
I thought about pressing her about it, but something told me it wasn’t really a good idea at the moment. I figured sooner or later her natural tendency toward being a motor-mouth would win out, so I watched her put Gizmo back into his temporary home, at which point a little bit of color returned to her complexion.
I figured things would back to normal after that, but it turned out I couldn’t have been more wrong. First we had to deal with the issue of getting food for Gizmo, which we probably should have done before we settled in for the night.
Loretta refused to stay with him, so I got stuck handling that while Loretta beat feet to get to the local grocery store, which we knew would close at 8 when they rolled up the town for the evening. I said a prayer to the mayhem prevention gods in which I briefly addressed Loretta’s driving problems while also reminding God about the issues that would come with having a serious accident this far from home.
That was when I realized we were gonna have a real problem. Gizmo started to get agitated as soon as Loretta left. At first I thought this was cute – they’d obviously bonded quickly, and I thought it was kinda sweet that he’d already attached to her so strongly.
Then he started to charge the walls of his cage. This was both comical and slightly frightening; he’d rear up on his hind legs, stagger for a step or two, then get his feet underneath him and gather a few more steps of momentum before he literally ran head first into a glass wall.
The little guy was pretty sturdy, though, and it didn’t take long for him to figure out that he needed to balance and charge right away to make any kind of headway. After a half dozen practice runs, I was starting to wonder a little about the integrity of the glass, which was taking quite a pounding.
So I went over and banged on the glass a few times with the flat of my hand. This had the intended effect, stopping the lizard dead in his tracks, at least for a few minutes. As soon as he came to a halt, though, Gizmo stared up at me with those reptile eyes, making me feel like I was square in the center of a rifle periscope. I couldn’t tell if he was questioning my intentions or sizing me up, but neither option made me feel very good.
Finally he settled down until Loretta came back, so I figured I’d done the right thing by rattling his cage a bit. Loretta was clearly spooked by the whole thing, but she’d brought back some greens and some ground chuck for Gizmo. The downside was that she was so freaked out that she forgot to pick up everything else on the list I had given her, so I knew in advance that breakfast the next morning was gonna be pretty sparse.
We were both wiped out from the drive, so we hit the sack within minutes after her return. Gizmo’s disposition picked up instantly once she was back, although when she saw that, Loretta instantly turned a whiter shade of pale. I watched the little guy while she showered, then she did the same for me, at which point it was lights out for the night.
Neither one of us could sleep, though. Loretta is kind of a restless gal, a twitchy sleeper whose sudden jerks and spasms make for an interesting adventure from dusk till dawn. The good news is that she frequently needs, um, release, to get her through the night, and I had a notion that she’d be pretty horny after the day’s adventures with Gizmo.
I was feeling pretty twitchy myself, so when Loretta didn’t start something right away I took the initiative, running my leg over hers to get things going.
Normally this would have led to an explosive coupling, but she turned away from me, so I knew something weird was definitely going on. I could also tell from her breathing that she was awake, so I decided to risk verbal communication.
“Ummm, sweetie?” I whispered. “You OK?”
“Uh huh.”
I tried the leg thing again, this time less obtrusively.
“Sure?”
“Uh huh.”
When she offered no resistance I kept going, hoping to stir something up. Her response was neutral,
though – she didn’t move back toward me the way she usually would have, but she didn’t pull away either. But there wasn’t much room left in the bed, so she didn’t exactly have anywhere to go.
It was right about then that I felt the reason for her sudden shyness. As I continued to rub with my foot, I started to notice that the skin of her legs wasn’t exactly smooth. There were little nicks and cuts here and there, including a couple that Loretta must have covered with band aids. I inadvertently touched one of the bandages a second time, and she jerked her leg away like I’d poked her with a cattle prod.
“Ummm...sweetie?” I whispered again. “What’s goin’ on?”
“Nothin’.” I could barely hear her response, which was half swallowed by the pillow.
“Sure?”
“Uh huh.”
Given the number of monosyllables I was getting back, I knew it was time to let it go for the night. The rest of the evening was a restless adventure, with both of us tossing and turning and bumping into each other.
On any other night there might have been some sparks, but the only action either of us got that night came from listening to the noises coming from the cage, as Gizmo went back into his glass-charging routine some time during the middle of the night.
After an epic nightmare, I woke up to the sight of a big orange ball, rising slowly, clearly visible through the flimsy motel curtain. I wasn’t really asleep, though. I figure I might have gotten a couple of hours of shut eye in there somewhere, but I felt like the night had been almost as active and unsettling as the day had been. And I had a very strong feeling that the coming day was gonna be just as turbulent.