Reptile House Read online

  They had once argued about falling out of love.

  “It can’t be,” she said. “If it’s real love, then it can’t be undone.” This is how she thought then.

  “Even if I never leave her,” he said.

  “You will leave her,” she said.

  Then Jim told her this story told to him by the friend of a friend: “A man and a woman were in love. I mean wild about each other. Nothing could part them. One day they drove down the road on an errand to a town they had never been to before. They disagreed about the best way to get there. She said turn left and he said right. To keep the peace he turned left, but he was still angry about it when, shortly after the turn, a dog ran into the road in front of their car. The man swerved and hit the dog. She left the man soon after.”

  “Everyone has a dead dog,” Jim said.

  “That’s a horrible story and a lie,” Ruth said.

  “Just think about it,” Jim said.

  Years passed.

  Jim came to the Lake less and less.

  Once, for their anniversary, Jim sent Ruth a box of twelve chocolates and she was grateful. He sent a lacy nightgown once and she wore it at night in front of a mirror and turned this way and that way to admire the lines and potentialities. Once, he gave her a ring with a blue stone and she wore it on the left, even around town, until the letter. After the letter she wore it only to measure whether she was shrinking or expanding.

  4. Don’t stay in swimming until you are very cold.

  She broke the surface at Flat Rock, which was three-quarters to Victory, give or take. Flat Rock was put in the Lake by some god as a couch for the miserable. She lounged. She thought of the nightgown and the mirror. Her teeth chattered.

  Once, long ago now, the waves had come up in a passing squall and swamped her canoe not far from Victory. She had fallen in, a rarity. She’d lost the line and bait right away and her book on her lap had sunk fast, gone, an argument on fallout shelters and first strikes from submarines. Her hip-waders had filled. Down she went. Good practice for drowning.

  On the way below, she saw a huge new rock she didn’t know, had never seen, but how was that? A newborn giant just off her shore? This is not how the big rocks came to live here. No, it couldn’t be, but there the huge new rock was!

  “Where is the mother? Where is its father?”

  “They died.”

  “Gone.”

  “Gone.”

  The big bass had darted under the huge new rock. Wasn’t that proof of the rock? A big bass swimming away, under the shoulder of the boulder? A big bass frowning hugely? One does not imagine a frown.

  “Concentrate, I tell you. There is only so much air in your lungs.”

  She had spun and turned away from the bass. She had fumbled with the wader buckles. Then came the threesome of landlocked salmon, a rarity. They had floated by after the bass, a fish parade. They had paused and watched her kick and tug for her freedom, but the buckles were just that stubborn.

  “Why not just breath in through your gills?” the threesome’s suggestion.

  Bubbles and frowns.

  “Leave me be!”

  “Concentrate.”

  She had squirmed one leg free from the waders, a lithe woman still. She had kicked airwards with the free leg, had risen some, then sank back down again. The leg was too heavy. The threesome of salmon had come very near to better study her troubles. They had turned. Then they dove toward a huge new gorge below. She had never seen this gorge either and stopped to study it. It was a thick, rough, new gorge cut deep into old gray lakebed. The gorge ran off into the murk, wide enough to eat her up, her cabin, every rock on the shore for a mile. So huge and still. Then she kicked harder, but still she floated down to it.

  “The buckle, the buckle. Attend to it.”

  In the end she outwitted the buckle. With both legs free, she kicked off the edge of the new gorge. The hip-waders dropped away. She floated up.

  “Yes, I’m certain of the gorge. See?”

  “I believe you. Swim hard now.”

  She pulled toward the surface.

  “Good practice for holding one’s breath. A full minute is above average.”

  “It’s nothing. I’ve done at least twice that.”

  “Oh, you.”

  “Swim harder now. Kick and pull. Up, now, to air.”

  She kicked.

  “But there have never been salmon in the Lake.”

  “I’ve seen salmon in my day. Swim.”

  She pulled at the surface. She did not look back to see if the hip-waders stood above the mouth of the new gorge.

  “Swim harder. Your life is short.”

  “Yes.”

  The hip-waders sank away into the deepest deep. Never to be seen again.

  “Who will you tell?”

  “I’m telling you, old friend.”

  Or, if the threesome of salmon had tipped and followed the hip-waders down in.

  “You won’t die this time.”

  “Good.”

  She had dragged her canoe to shore. She had breathed more air than she needed and dried off with an old shirt from the knot of the tree.

  She never found the new rock again, or the gorge, though she searched for both for years in her canoe, cutting the surface with her paddle and hands, digging holes in the Lake, and though she swam out searching with snorkel and mask, trolling in her stiffening body. In the end, she had mapped every foot off Victory Rock, two hundred feet in every direction, though surely the canoe had swamped no more than twenty feet away. She had circled, circling, had circled back. Sometimes she had rested on that old friend. Tracing the V with her toe, then diving off its ledge again. Once she had found the back cover of a book eaten at the edges on the beach by Elsa’s. Had the canoe swamped on some other Lake altogether?

  “Possibly. Such mistakes occur.”

  “A mistake?”

  “A mistake.”

  Years later, she had reported the missing rock and the missing gorge to Lake authorities at the town office. She told the men her story and they nodded and leaned over subsurface maps. They said they would look into the missing geological artifacts.

  “They might.”

  “It is wonderful they might look into it.”

  “I’m sorry for that rock and that gorge.”

  “Terrible, yes, to be missing.”

  On Flat Rock, she lounged a bit longer. The stone was a pleasant shape that hugged the hips. She snugged the cherry cap. Her legs dangled for minnows. The silly swimmers. Flat Rock was the most contented rock, with it’s nose always just out of the water in this early season.

  “But I am contented too.”

  “Of course.”

  “I have lived well,” spit and nostril.

  “Surely.”

  “Dying is just getting very cold.”

  “Yes.”

  “One must swim on.”

  “Indeed. Of course.”

  She pushed off Flat Rock. She kicked the shore away with her old feet. The Lake deepened. She kicked and pulled the last bit toward Victory Rock.

  After reading the letter, Ruth went to the closet in the main room of the cottage and started looking for something. She found the following: poles and rods jumbled, reels, creels, baskets, bobbers, spinners and sinkers, tangled line; an old motorboat key tethered to a life preserver; her father’s tackle boxes, uncle’s, cousin’s, all spilled out, decks of cards, flashlights, dead batteries by the tens and twenties; black bugs dead and alive; lobster pots, a soup ladle, muffin tins, pot holders burnt at the edges; broken dishes intended for repair set in a pile with a tube of dried-up epoxy on top; a magazine in Spanish with a picture of Frank Sinatra on the cover; misfolded maps of Romania, Chile, and New Mexico, and a road atlas of the U.S. with most of the states torn out; board games broken up like driftwood—Monopoly, Risk, and Clue—sets of Chinese checkers, backgammon, dominoes and chess; piles of Reader’s Digest dog-eared; the Farmer’s Almanac from 1963–68; newspaper
clippings—MOONWALK, KENNEDY’S DEAD, NIXON RESIGNS, and her father’s obituary from 1984 in lowercase; old fishing licenses and regulations for herself, her brothers, sisters-in-law, her father and mother, and people whose names she did not recognize, all alphabetized in a recipe index file with a rubber band around the whole; more dead bugs; a stuffed fish taken from one of the oceans and chewed by mice; a small pine box from the five-and-dime in town with the name of the Lake in gold cursive on top and someone’s rock collection inside; a marriage license with names smeared; a box of push pins.

  She didn’t remember where any of it came from.

  Once Ruth had fished one of his blue-lipped twins from the bottom of Clay Bay. She dove and got the twin. She swam and pulled the twin. She coughed and dragged the twin. She kicked and lifted the twin. She twitched and breathed for the twin. Skin to skin, lip to lip, tongue to tongue. He had penned and posted the letter five days later.

  Jim and his wife moved to Hawaii and sold the cottage. They were all old people by then. The wife had picked Hawaii. Nothing could be completely clearer.

  5. Don’t plunge into cold water when exhausted or overheated.

  She swam out and out. The crawl proper, as her father taught her, the breaststroke, then the dog paddle as she tired looking for Victory. She floated on her back to rest. Shore seemed a mile between her toes. She turned and turned. Her legs twisted. Where is Victory? She sank, determined to find bottom, but her feet never touched and she pulled at water to get back to air. She treaded, the most efficient form of staying alive, then tucked under again to spin and search the water with open eyes. Where’s the rock?

  “A rock that big does not just depart unannounced from a lake.”

  “No. It’s considered rude.”

  “Father?”

  “But if a rock does depart unexpectedly, the swimmer should wait patiently for its return.”

  “Is that the next instruction?”

  “Yes.”

  She treaded and turned, treaded and turned.

  She did not completely believe in telepathy anymore. She didn’t think she believed in completely anymore. A dive for a twin was only reflex. The loons were rarely saved.

  Ruth’s best friend was Elsa for years. Elsa was German and once had a dog she’d stolen, kidnapped from some substandard people at the foot of the Lake. The dog had been shaved and its hair dyed from blond to brown after the theft to prevent detection, identification, and all subsequent injustice. Ruth admired Elsa very much.

  6. Don’t get panicky when in danger.

  She floated. She counted the cabins on shore and lost count at three. She knew it was the wrong number except in case of fire, panic, or dynamite, which can kill even the most enormous rock, anything, a hill, a mountain. A big enough bird could pluck the rock from the Lake and away, a mistaken mouse, anything at all is possible with the right size talons. A mere rock stands no chance, a girl child.

  She went under for the first time.

  Smug. The thing with him was. If she had to say.

  She once talked to him, mouth-to-ear, on the cot in her screen porch. Sound carried so far over calm water.

  “A rock as big as Victory Rock must have been deposited by a glacier during the retreat of the last Ice Age.”

  “Fascinating,” he said. They were playing with each other’s private parts.

  “It’s known as an erratic,” she said kissing his nose sweetly.

  “I like that word,” he said with enthusiasm.

  “All those other stones are from the glacier too,” she said. “The small ones everywhere on the bottom and shore. Even the tiniest ones.”

  “Who cares about them,” he said, annoyed.

  “Do you get it?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s out of place,” she said. “That’s why erratic. See?”

  “Yes. Come here.”

  “Out of scale.”

  “Yes. I get it.”

  “Completely out of scale.”

  “Yes.”

  She bobbed up and breathed once. Then she went down the second time. All swimmers will bob up a third time.

  At night, with her eyes shut, she had chipped away at the rock until it was a pile of pebbles, practically sand, small enough for the fish to eat it by mistake.

  The dog barked somewhere.

  It was probably Elsa’s dog off its tether again roaming the beach. She liked that dog. Elsa’s place was so near the road, dangerous to animals. She might look for it later. Tie it up. Down the steps to the dock to the canoe to the beach.

  Blue Nevus

  Preamble to the National Space Agency Employee Manual

  1. Safety first.

  “Hey, Roger, what the hell is that blue thing on your arm?” said Stan Penrod in Locker Room One. He was zipping his old NSA jumpsuit, which was too tight for him.

  “Hey, Roger Cotton. Hey, men. Come look at Roger Cotton’s arm. There’s something on it.”

  The men stopped dressing and undressing.

  Stan Penrod’s voice had military training. That was part of it. Although retired, Stan Penrod’s voice was still like the tip of a missile, a fact that cannot be discounted here. Or at least noted. Stan had been short-listed for the Ulysses Program in the middle of that century. The body ages at a particular rate, but the trained voice declines more slowly. Modern medicine has noted this.

  “My God,” Stan’s voice beaconed more softly. “It’s like a little blue caterpillar walking on dough.”

  The naked men and half-dressed men and men in towels on the edge of the cloud of steam which billowed from the shower entrance turned. They looked at Roger Cotton on Bench 6, slumped and gray with his clasped hands. Though Stan Penrod is tangential to the story at best, peripheral at best, a distraction.

  “Hey, Roger, that blue thing looks very bad,” said Stan and waved his cigar.

  The men of the Y gathered closer around Roger Cotton’s biceps, breathing in Stan’s smoke. The cigar was a violation, of course, but who was going to stop Stan Penrod?

  Roger Cotton leaned on a tower of clean, white towels just delivered to the bench by gloved staff.

  “It’s nothing,” said Roger Cotton. He covered the blue thing with his hand.

  “Looks like cancer,” said Alonzo Porter in his racquetball gear.

  This was back when everyone died of it. The towels fell. The buzzer sounded. Men looked at the clock above the door and hurried with their things. They ran off to the pool, the weight room, the Jacuzzi tub.

  “I’m late,” said Stan Penrod. He took up his racquetball gear. “Have that thing looked at, Roger.”

  Stan Penrod exited the swinging door to Locker Room One. He crushed out the cigar in the water fountain on his way. The few remaining men rewrapped their towels.

  “It’s only a Blue Nevus,” Roger said to the lockers. “I’ve had it checked out.”

  “Never heard of it,” said Alonzo Porter at the drinking fountain, a baritone.

  “It’s well known and totally benign,” said Roger Cotton. “A Blue Nevus is naturally occurring, nothing at all. The doctors said so.”

  “Doctors,” said Alonzo. He disappeared into steam.

  “But blue is not a color the skin should make,” said Max Robinson, a minister, who would live to be one hundred and fifty-two. “It’s a worry. Remember, cancer is also naturally occurring.”

  “Yes, that’s right,” someone said.

  “And Ebola is naturally occurring too,” said Alonzo, who had forgotten his shampoo. “There have been outbreaks in South America moving northward.”

  “I need water,” said Roger Cotton.

  Albert Bunting filled a Dixie Cup and handed it to Roger. Roger drank. The men watched his Adam’s apple go. The men lost interest. The last of them took showers or talked of other things or went away.

  “What’s Martha say about this blue thing?” said Albert Bunting. They sat on Bench 6 and leaned on their knees.

  “Martha’s in Omaha,” said Roge
r.

  “I see,” said Albert Bunting, who had a cold and blew his nose. “Pardon me.”

  “Thank you for being kind,” said Roger Cotton. “They promoted her to oxygen washers. Omaha is the epicenter for that research, as you know.”

  “Of course, of course,” said Albert Bunting and he draped a towel over Roger’s arm like a cape. “Well, I’m glad you’re starting tennis.”

  Roger Cotton nodded, “Yes, me too. It relaxes the mind. I’ve also been doing yard work, raking and pruning.”

  Albert Bunting took a shower. Roger Cotton sat and waited for the locker room to clear.

  When Alonzo Porter dried off, he was looking thin and ill but he and Albert Bunting shaved in the mirrors and had their usual talk: about the recent bicycle thefts in Lennox with no suspects at all, about their frustration with the head master of Lennox Science Academy, they were both on the Board, and about how worrisome it was to see acceptance rates of LSA graduates declining at the Air Force Academy.

  “The lifeblood of the school is draining,” said Alonzo Porter. “I hate to see the school jeopardized like this.” Alonzo spoke in the same gruff tone as always, but the volume was lower, much lower, Roger Cotton noticed as he pretended to read a tennis magazine.

  After they rinsed their faces, Alonzo and Albert talked of Kelsey Starr’s recent visit for her thirty-sixth birthday. It was her last trip home before the preflight quarantine. They discussed a rumored Kelsey Starr boyfriend.

  “I hope it’s true,” said Albert Bunting. “She deserves happiness.”

  “She’s really taken her sweet time,” Alonzo Porter said. “Her eggs are dying. Her mother was getting frantic about it according to Jason.”

  Roger Cotton listened to their happy talk. Barbecues and invitations. He studied the ceiling, mildewed and cracking. Rebar broke through and the ceiling crumbled down. When the men were gone, Roger Cotton tried his locker, but forgot his combination. The basement of the Y would be renovated soon after and a decade later the Y would be moved to a retrofitted building on Appleton and Markley.