"Did you call me an onerous name? Yes, I'm sure of it. You did!"
"We're not in the workplace." Emma, reddening. Then: "Look, I'm sorry. That was unprofessional."
"No, I'm glad. It means we're making progress. Breaking down walls and so forth. You want some fresh orange juice? A decaf?"
Emma says, "Old Man Polk wants to see you, Jack."
I stop prancing and suck a short breath. "What? I thought he was fading fast."
"He wants a deathbed interview, believe it or not. To jazz up his obituary."
"Dear Jesus."
"This was not my idea, I swear."
"A perverse final request."
"I couldn't agree more," Emma says, "but Abkazion already said yes."
"Dipshit," I mutter. "Fellator of mandrills."
"I'm begging, Jack."
"Why me?" I growl, pointlessly.
"Evidently the old man admires your writing."
A side effect of the Halcion, no doubt. I peel off my Jaguars jersey and toss it over a lampshade. Next I tug absently at the waistband of my boxers, Emma eyeing me warily. She is in no mood to deal with a naked employee.
"Don't get cute," she advises.
"Don't flatter yourself." I stalk off to the shower. Twenty minutes later, I emerge to find Emma still encamped. This, frankly, throws me. She has put on her reading glasses to study an obituary I recently cut out of the Times.Wrapped in a towel, I stand there dripping on the floor like some incontinent nuthouse savant.
Emma glances up, waves the clipping. "This is a fantastic headline."
"That's why I saved it."
The single-deck head on the obituary said:
Ronald Lockley, 96, an Intimate of Rabbits
Emma says, "How can you notlook at that story?"
"Precisely."
"Even if you aren't a fan of rabbits, which I'm not." Then, as if she's reading my mind: "For God's sake, why couldn't I write headlines like this?"
I say, "Here's one: 'MacArthur Polk, 88, Wealthy Malingerer.'"
"Jack, please. I'm begging you."
Swathed in my damp bath linen, I lower myself carefully into the armchair across from Emma. My hair is still sopping and now I feel a droplet of water elongating itself on the lobe of my left ear. I pray Emma won't be distracted.
"Don't you worry. I'll deal with Abkazion," I venture brashly.
"It's not just him," Emma grumbles. "Mr. Maggad has taken an interest, as well. He went to see the old man at Charity and believes he's delirious, in addition to terminal."
Exultantly I tell Emma there must be a misunderstanding. Race Maggad III, who despises me, would never recommend me being assigned to a story as important as Old Man Polk's obit.
Emma drums her fingers on her knees. "Abkazion is baffled. I'm baffled. You're baffled. Yet here we are."
I stall, racking my brain. "I get it. Maggad, that conniving yuppie fuck, he's setting me up."
"For what, Jack? Setting you up for what?"
There is a tender note of pity in Emma's question, implying that I've already been so thoroughly shafted by management that there's no place left to fall. My chin drops. Scrutinizing the sparse, south-running trail of hair on my belly, I notice a few shoots of gray.
Emma says, "I'm sorry, Jack. Now go put on some clothes."
I lift my eyes to meet hers and say: "Jimmy Stoma for Old Man Polk."
"No deal." She shakes her head vigorously.
"Emma, do you know how much sick leave I've piled up?"
"Don't threaten me. Don't you dare."
"Tomorrow you will receive a letter from a prominent board-certified health care provider," I say, "attesting to the seriousness of my condition, namely chronic colorectal diverticulosis. By the time my recovery is complete and I am deemed able to resume a full work schedule, Mr. MacArthur Polk will be worm chow, darling. An intimate of maggots, to steal a phrase."
Emma stands up, fuming and spectacular. "You're unbelievable, Jack, getting a doctor to lie for you!"
Murkily I confide to having heavy connections in the gastrointestinal field. "But give me ten days on Jimmy Stoma," I say, "and I'll go see Old Man Polk at once."
"A week. That's all you get," Emma relents. "And we never had this conversation, understand? I was never here."
"Right. And you never ogled my bare alabaster calves. Hey, I'm about to pulp some orangesstay for juice."
"Rain check," Emma says curtly.
At the door I hear myself thanking her, for what I can't imagine. She pockets the reading glasses in favor of snazzy blue Ray-Bans, new driving shades. "Look," she says. "I really am sorry about that a-hole remark."
"Nonsense. We're bonding, that's all. We're a work in progress."
"Juan says you keep a lizard in your kitchen freezer. Can that possibly be true?"
"An extremely large lizard, yes. Would you care to see?"
"Under no circumstances, Jack," Emma says with a guarded smile. "Though I wouldn't mind hearing your version of the story."
"Maybe someday," I say, "when I'm not feeling so puny."
11
When Anne moved out of my apartment, Carla gave me a baby Savannah monitor lizard. She said I wasn't responsible enough to take proper care of a puppy or a kitten, or even a parrot. Lizards require no companionship, only grubs, water and sunlight. "Even you can manage that," Carla assured me.
I named him "Colonel Tom" because he joined the household on January 21, the anniversary of the death of Colonel Tom Parker, the man who made a king of Elvis Aron Presley. Carla provided a terrarium and a starter bag of mealworms, which Colonel Tom the lizard gobbled down in three days. Quickly he advanced to crickets, palmetto bugs and beyondhunger incarnate, a perpetual eating machine. Before long he outgrew the terrarium, so I moved him to a fifty-gallon dry tank with a bonsai tree, a water dish and a vermiculite beach.
Lizards are not strung with the high emotions of, say, a cocker spaniel. On a good day Colonel Tom's mood ranged from oblivious to indifferent. Only at mealtimes would he respond approvingly to a human presence, blinking a cold eye while cocking his knobbed saurian head. The rest of the time he skulked inside a toy cave that Carla had found for him.
One evening, after a few beers, I took him out to show Juan, who sensibly armed himself with a mop handle. We watched a baseball game on television, and Colonel Tom lay across my lap for five innings without so much as twitching his tail. "He looks parched," Juan observed. "Fluids, Jack, ahora!"
I poured the lukewarm dregs of a Sam Adams into an ashtray and raised it to the monitor's scaly mandibles, and to my wonderment he gingerly extended a tongue as pink and delicate as a Caribbean snail. My lizard, it turned out, had a thing for beer. Inspired, I offered up the remnants of a Key lime pie, which Colonel Tom inhaled savagely. The frothy dollop of meringue clung to his chin like a jaunty white goatee. Juan and I were both drunk enough to be enthralled.
From then on I brought the lizard out on TV nights for beer and dessert. Sometimes Juan would drop by on his way home from work, and a few times he even brought dates to see Colonel Tom in action. The young monitor grew rapidly, soon surpassing three feet in length. The unnatural diet began to soften his prehistoric countenance and bloat his once-chiseled flanks to droopy saddlebags. In retrospect I should have recognized the transformation as plainly unhealthy, though Colonel Tom's disposition had never been rosier. Juan swore the lizard manifested a fan's appreciation of baseball; the fundamentals, if not the finer points. Certainly Colonel Tom was most attentive and bright-eyed when draped across my lap, but I always suspected his spirits were elevated not by the heroics of the Marlins' bullpen so much as the promise of more pastry and distilled hops.
Late one Saturday night, as the Marlins played the Dodgers on the coast, Colonel Tom came down with a brutal case of what I diagnosed as lizard hiccups. Symptoms appeared shortly after he downed a cold Heineken and a slice of rich German strudel that Juan had brought from a renowned bakery in Ybor City.
By my wristwatch I timed Colonel Tom's shuddering burps at eight-second intervals. Discomfort was evident in his lethargic demeanor and blotched, blackening cheeks. Juan had already gone home, so it was left to me to soothe the tremulous reptile. When I tried stroking his corrugated shoulders, Colonel Tom wheeled and snapped percussively. Then, for good measure, he raked a hind claw across my cheek, drawing blood.