These things never go as planned.
"Dad! What are those monkeys doing?" Danny was wide-eyed, open-mouthed.
"Fornicating," I said.
"What's that?"
"It's like fighting," I said.
A tall guy next to me, obviously another divorced, weekend-dad with two small, identical girls, each clinging to a hand, nodded his head. "You can say that again."
There were lots of small, fidgety monkeys that seemed completely baffled by their cages, as though they had been caught earlier that day and were still thinking, "What the hell? I'm trapped! I'm getting the hell out of… what's this? I can't get out this way either!
What's going on here?"
In a large cage with black bars, a reddish-brown orangutan slumped in the crook of a tree. His boredom was palpable and made me ashamed of my scrutiny. Forget spying on people having sex or practicing some special perversion. What is sadder, more dismal, than witnessing another person's boredom, the slow, dim-witted crotch-scratching lethargy that is often the existential lot of a person alone? You might note that orangutans are apes, not people, but that didn't keep me from hurrying Danny on to the Lion House, which, if possible, smelled worse than the Monkey House.
And on we went: to the zany otters, the bloated hippos, the absent rhinos (on vacation? escaped? indisposed? deceased?), the really tall giraffes, and into the raucous bird house. As a father and font-of-all-knowledge, I read out-loud the various plaques that described the animals, their habits, their character, their troubles, and Danny listened politely. Other weekend fathers were also reading these plaques to their kids, and I felt a certain disdain for their efforts. As if they knew anything beyond what they were reciting! Pathetic.
We came to a great, curving arc of glass, a vista which promised a view of-yes!-penguins. I had much to say about these amazing birds, the saga of their days fresh in my mind, and was dismayed to find myself gazing at brown concrete curves, blackened and desolate, an emptiness as unwelcoming as some demolished urban block. A sign announced that the penguin habitat was closed for renovation, and my mood worsened, which, I confess, caused a bit of bad behavior. A guard caught me trying to teach an intellectually overrated grey parrot (said to have a vocabulary of over two hundred words) to say, "Kiss my ass"-and Danny and I were escorted out of the building.
That left the Reptile House, and Danny loved it, loved the brightly colored poisonous frogs (not reptiles at all, but always welcome in reptile houses), the lethal, arrow-headed vipers, the boas and the immense anaconda. And the penguins! I couldn't believe it when we came upon them. But it made sense. They had to stay somewhere, and here's where they were, slumming with the reptiles. Since birds evolved from dinosaurs, it even made some taxonomic sense, I guess.
I was glad to see them, shuffling around in a glass-fronted cage that might, at one time, have housed alligators or crocodiles.
They weren't Emperor penguins. According to the plaque, these were Fiordland Crested penguins, an endangered species, with long, pale-yellow slashes over their eyes, like an old man's eyebrows.
"Danny, did you know-"
"They have captured these penguins! What crime the penguins perform to make them prisoners, I do not know. The snakes! Hah, that is easy, they bite the peoples, and they are, anyway, Satan's spawn, as is said long ago in your Bibles."
I jumped, I think. I turned, and there he was.
He was dressed exactly as he had been last night. The lights in the Reptile House were muted, and his pale flesh seemed to glow with a faint blue sheen. He had restored his eyebrows since I'd last seen him, and he appeared to have added purple lipstick to his cosmetic effects.
"It is good to meet you again, Mr. Sam Silvers. I hope you remember me. I am Derrick Thorn."
"What are you doing here?"
He nodded vigorously, as though I were a good student who had asked a clever question.
"I am enjoying the seeing of the animals that are here for their offenses." He spread his arms and turned slowly to the left and right to demonstrate how his enthusiasm included all the creatures in the room.
Odd didn't begin to describe this guy.
"Did you follow me here?" I asked.
"I am coming after you did. Would that be to follow? You told me you were to come to this zoos with the child person of your support."
"I did?"
"Yes, and I am pleased to be here and to witness the progeny of your troubles."
"Well, fine. Look, I've got to be going. Derrick, you have a nice day."
I grabbed Danny's hand and headed for the entrance. Derrick shouted after me, but I didn't turn around.
"I will be pleased to be having the nice day, Sam Silvers," he shouted. "I will make for you the nice day also. I have not forgotten our bargains."
The temperature had dropped, and the snow was falling with new purpose, frosting the parking lot, glazing car roofs and fenders. I dug through the glove compartment's summer detritus (daytrip maps, sunglasses, suntan lotion, an amusement park brochure) until I found the ice scraper.
I got out of the car and went around to the front windshield where I began scraping a gritty mix of snow and ice from the glass. From within, Danny waved at me, grinning.
Back in the car, I had to sit for a minute, catching my breath, as though I'd been engaged in heavy labor.
"Dad, who were you talking to?"
"Just some guy I met recently," I said. I looked at my son. Danny was frowning, puzzled.
I leaned over and ruffled his hair. "Your mom says you've got a girlfriend."
Danny grinned. "Her name's June. She's got a snake for a pet."
"All right!" I turned the key in the ignition. "My kind of woman," I said, as the car moved slowly forward.
I returned Danny to his mother, the usual sense of loss already rising in my chest like black water.
"I tried to call you on your cell," she said. She knelt down in the doorway and brushed snow from her son's hair and shoulders. She looked up at me. "It's out-of-service. Why's that?"
I shrugged. "I decided I didn't need a cell phone."
She stood up for a better, unimpeded glare. "If this arrangement is going to work, I need to be able to get ahold of you. The roads are bad. I was worried."
"Nothing to worry about," I said, squeezing Danny's shoulder. "We had fun at the zoo, didn't we?"
"It was great!" Danny said, and began to catalog its many wonders. Feeling hollow in a superfluous-dad sort of way, I waved a goodbye and headed for the car.
I stopped at the bar on the way to my apartment. If I was going to quit drinking, it might make sense to move to other lodgings, but I wasn't going to, was I? I dispatched two beers and went on up to my apartment, pleased with my restraint. There were two six packs in the fridge, and I drank them, unintentionally. As I remember it, I drank a single beer and didn't wish to leave an odd number of beers, so I drank another one. After that, my reasoning grew convoluted until it occurred to me that drinking
all the beer in the fridge, thus leaving none to tempt me in the morning, would be a good start on a new, beer-free life.
My phone rang in the chill of the morning, and I burrowed under the covers, a rabbit fleeing the hounds, and I heard my answering machine click on-"This is Sam Silvers. I'm not here"-and Victoria 's voice: "Sam."
I leapt from the bed and snatched up the receiver, hearing the fear in her voice, and knowing, instantly, the precise sound of