The old man reached out his bony hand to solicit assistance from Newman in rising from his chair at just the moment that both heard the front door to the building being opened. “Sit there for now!” Mr. Rugg whispered with low-toned urgency, whilst signalling Newman to duck beneath a nearby table. “We haven’t time yet to—”
Mr. Rugg broke off his dictate as Newman secreted himself beneath the table. The very next moment young Clive Peller appeared in the doorway that joined the two rooms.
“David cornered the mamba in Evans’ office. But not before being bitten on the ankle. Where’s the kid who was here earlier? He lied about the snake leaving the north building.”
Young Clive disappeared into the other room but did not suspend his enquiry and commentary. Along with his voice came the sound of rattling and clinking as Clive prepared another hypodermic of antivenom solution. “I also think he’s the one responsible for all this. They said it was some dirty kid in trailer park clothes.”
Mr. Rugg walked to the doorway to speak face-to-face with the son of the Reptilarium’s owners. “The child was here, Mr. Peller, but he fled only a moment ago.”
“Probably for the best. They’re gonna arrest his little delinquent ass. The police are already on their way.”
“He was a quite frightened — a most frightened little man.”
“Now he’s going to be a most incarcerated little man. Dad’s gonna be pissed to the rafters. There are like twenty people out there with all kinds of scrapes and bruises and potential lawsuits dancing like sugarplums in their litigious heads. I can see my inheritance evaporating before my eyes. I could wring the kid’s Goddamned neck myself right now.”
A moment later young Clive was gone. In the succeeding silence Mr. Rugg returned to Newman, who sat upon the floor with his knees pulled up to his chest, his trembling hands gripping both legs.
“Upsy daisy,” said the old man.
“Can I not stay right here?”
“I would not recommend it, Newman. Let us put Bubbles to work to protect you. You’re not one of those occasional little boys who is afraid of snakes and snails and puppy-dog tails, now are you?”
Newman shook his head.
“So make haste, lad. We haven’t much time.”
Bubbles was sluggish. It took a bit of pulling and coaxing to get her to relinquish her preferred spot at the front of the cage long enough for Newman to squeeze and crawl past her. But once the two dead rabbits were produced, her nostrils flared and her tongue flicked, and Newman was well on his way to making himself a new friend. He had to admit that Bubbles was a most beautiful and colourful creature, possessed of ruddy brown skin overlaid with a series of large tan-coloured saddles. Closer to the tail the saddles became progressively lighter before breaking into half rings of cream, these contrasting most sharply with the stark redness at the tip.
“Don’t give the dead bunnies to her until you’re safely situated behind her. Then she’ll know for certain the reason you’ve come to visit and will be most appreciative.”
“And how will she shew her appreciation?” asked Newman, struggling through his fear to bring his question to full voice.
Mr. Rugg smiled. “But is it not obvious? She won’t eat you!”
It took scarcely a moment for the old man to rescind his bit of levity, but the damage had been done and Newman’s face had blanched.
“Now I know for certain that you’re a Dinglian,” said Newman as Mr. Rugg closed the door to the cage.“For no Beyonder at such a moment would have jollied me so.”
“I jollied you, Newman, to keep your spirits up. Now you sit tight and make no noise that a snake wouldn’t make, and enjoy your visit with Miss Bubbles. I’ll go off to find Miss Wolf and we will both pray that she’ll be able to safely deliver you from this land that does not love the Dinglian.”
Chapter the Fifteenth. Tuesday, June 24, 2003
us sat upon the couch next to the plain-looking young woman named Annette and was for a brief period quite happy. The oblong biscuits, which had mint-flavoured chocolate cream sandwiched inside, proved to be a most tasty delicacy, much appreciated by Gus’s unsophisticated palate. But this pleasure paled in comparison to that produced by the liquid delight that accompanied it: coffee — pure and unadulterated. And cups and cups of it! Enough, in fact, to make a Dinglian swoon.
“You like it? It’s ‘Breakfast Blend.’ Not too robust. I don’t like my coffee too bold.” Annette kept her head in an inquisitive tilt to one side, waiting patiently for some response from her coffee-gulping and biscuit-bolting matutinal guest.
“I do. I like it very much.”
“Glad to hear it. There are people who come here — my mother will back me up on this — who wear strange clothing, just like you’re wearing, and are always in a big hurry to be going Heaven-knows-where, until — that is — they get a whiff of the coffee brewing in my Mr. Coffee coffee maker and then suddenly it’s like they’ve just won the lottery! And we’ll sit here for an hour or two and drink our coffee in this most perfect and blissful silence until, you know, something finally motivates them to go, but I always think to myself: what a special little moment that was!”
Annette dropt her voice to a confidential whisper: “I know you’re all aliens, by the way. I’m totally convinced. Nobody else sits on a sofa and drinks coffee like a thirsty man in the desert and scarfs down all my cookies like you’ve never had a cookie in your life. And, well, it scared me at first. (Go ahead, take the last Milano. Mama can always get more at Wegman’s.) It scared me to think that here I was bringing Martians or whatever into my mother’s house, and I wondered for a while if it was really a smart thing to be doing, but look: none of you has ever hurt Mama or me and you’ve never probed us with instruments or anything. In fact, you seem to be quite harmless, you know, just happy to be out of whatever that observational facility is where they’ve been keeping you — just content to sit here on this sofa and drink coffee and eat Pepperidge Farm products with little ol’ me. So I just think, okay, it’s nice to have somebody here who isn’t my mother, since my disability — my psychological disability, not the fact that I wear corrective braces on my legs — keeps me from leaving the house and ever meeting anyone interesting. I mean it’s really, you know, nice. Was that T-M-I?”
“T-M-I?”
“Yeah, ‘too much information.’ Just shut me up if I go on too long. Anyway, after you go — I mean they go — I mean, you’re all from the same planet, right? — well, in she comes—her—my mother — smelling like cow manure — as usual — and standing there in judgement and saying, ‘Well, congratulations, Missy, you made a new friend. Another weird friend who will leave and never come back. And what have you accomplished, my lonely crippled daughter? What have you accomplished?’ Now Mr. Trimmers, let me ask you this: will you come back and see me again and prove my mother wrong this time?”
Gus nodded. “Once I find my boy, I’ll be happy to come for a visit on our trip home.”