Into the New Millennium: Trailblazing Tales From Analog Science Fiction and Fact, 2000 - 2010 (54 page)

I drive home, trying to forget about the new guy at work, not even thinking about Annabelle's crickets, when a miracle happens. I glance to my right and see a small handwritten sign that says in haphazard letters "PETS." Now, I know every pet store in a fifty-mile radius, and this one is news to me. This neighborhood is nearly a slum—rickety houses converted into shops that lean precariously. I've always ignored it before. The shop is probably one of those that only sell dog chew toys, bettas-in-the-vase, and water dishes anyway. Waste of time.

I do a U-turn. You know that you have no life when the highlight of your week is finding a new pet store.

I park on the gravel lot where I can read another cardboard sign in the window of the pet shop: "If you want a gerbil, go away." I giggle and go in.

It's dim except for the rippling light from the aquaria. Some fish are flitting about behind their walls of glass while others just lie there, and somehow the contrast in their behavior makes me feel melancholy. It's a dingy place. There will probably be more dead fish than live ones, and I'll bolt before anyone comes to help me. I look closer. The tanks themselves are all quite clean, and there's not a dead fish in sight. Just an eclectic and healthy collection of cichlids and labyrinthine fish.

"Can I help you?" A guy, pony-tailed, ear-pierced and thirtyish, looks down at me. He does not seem eager to help.

I glare instinctively—this one is probably no better than the new guy at work. First day on the job, and he could think of no better introduction than to come up very close behind the lab tech (me) and say, "You look like you work out."

"Yeah, fifteen years of martial arts," I said brightly.

The rest of the guys snickered, and John, our clinical researcher and boss, dragged the new guy away.

The new guy was hurt. "What the heck is wrong with her? She doesn't like men?"

"Jess doesn't like people," John said on my behalf.

Well, I don't actually dislike people—I'm just happier by myself. I didn't point this out to John because then someone would try to convince me that I'm not really happy by myself.

If the pet store clerk doesn't help me forget the incident, the selection of fish does. I'm staring and drooling, which is dangerous for me when I'm broke and there are fish for sale.

"Can I help you?" he says again, and shifts on his feet impatiently.

"They're beautiful," I breathe. "Where do you get them?"

"Breed my own," he says with quiet pride.

"Oh," I say, pretending not to be impressed. "And what have you got against gerbils?"

"Nothing," he says, looking down at me again. "I just don't carry them. I don't cater to children."

"Do you have crickets?" I ask, recalling the appetite of my rapacious gecko.

"Yeah, but they're not for sale." He watches my reaction with a sly smile. "I give them away with the purchase of any herp."

"What if I already have a herp?" I say.

He smiles some more. "You can always get another one." True, I think. Annabelle does seem awfully lonely lately.

"You buy from me, and it's a free lifetime supply of food," he tempts. The devil. Longhaired devil with no ass. He adds, "That even includes Hikari Betta Bio-Gold. You have Siamese fishes, don't you?"

"How did you know?"

He averts his eyes. "You seem like the type."

I actually don't mind this guy hitting on me—as long as it means free crickets. I also find myself thinking that he is kind of cute. "I could always use another betta," my mouth says. "And maybe a gecko."

We go to look at the bettas. Roundtails, crowntails, doubletails, half-moons—I must've died and gone to heaven. I have enough will power to limit myself to two crowntails, and the guy puts them into plastic bags.

While he's doing that, I wander over to the lizards. I'm not disappointed—the cages are clean, and the selection is better than anything I've ever seen. Snakes, lizards, frogs, newts, and—oh my god, it cannot be—a tiger salamander. I look at the price tag. Damnation—sixty bucks. I can do without food for a week, right? Or take out a loan? Or move in with this guy. I look at him sideways, seriously evaluating his boyfriend potential.

"My name is Gus," he says as if on cue. "You want a ball python?"

"I already got one," I say. "His name's Paperweight."

Gus laughs. "Yeah," he says. "When they curl up all neat that's what they look like." He smiles, and looks into my eyes for the first time.

"You weren't supposed to get it," I say, and now it's me looking away. "No one does." I shake my head. This is all a dream—either that, or a disastrous spending spree in the making. Time to get out of here.

"Want to see my private stock?" he says. "It's in the back."

So that's it. "In the back?" I say, indignantly. "What, you're going to offer me a joint?"

Gus seems puzzled. "Don't have any pot, sorry," he says. "I just have some stock that I don't display here; the USDA might get upset."

I smirk, catching on. "I thought DEP was in charge of smuggled animals."

"Yeah, but mine were genetically engineered, and the USDA is the one that gets all worked up about that."

"Engineered?" I say, picturing mice with ears on their backs. "By whom?"

"Me." Gus demurs and looks into the floor. "They're pretty cool, if I may say so myself."

"You're a genetic engineer who runs a pet shop?" I ask, mentally pinching myself.

"Yeah," he says.

I don't wake up. I follow Gus between a giant newt tank and a chameleon cage to a door that has a biohazard sign, and ‘KEEP OUT' written over it in grease pencil.

"I do have beer," Gus says, "but it's warm."

I nod, he pulls the tab, and Red Dog foams all over him.

I see two tanks in what was once a dining room. One is a fifty-gallon, and maybe a hundred sits behind it on a stainless-steel stand. I notice a camcorder on a tripod beside the tank.

I gasp as he goes to switch on a naked bulb that hangs on its cord, forlorn. In the smaller tank I see about a dozen small angelfish, their stripes shaped to form letters. I get it, they're fake, because they are arranged to spell out:

BATHING

HALF ASLEEP

"Watch this," he says, coming up behind the tank. He taps the glass.

They instantly shuffle and fan out to spell:

ALPHABET ANGELFISH

"Sweet Mary Mother of God," I say, and mean it. They're alive.

"Amen," he says, and means it.

"How do they do it?"

"I tweaked their pigment expression," he says. "Then I trained them to keep in line. You know, self-advertisement." He sighs. "I have way too much free time."

I finish my beer in silence, and Gus, bless him, hands me another. "You like them?"

"Like them? They're amazing!"

"What's your name?" he says.

"Jessica?" I say, too shaken to think of something wittier.

He grabs a big plastic bag and fills it with water. I see that the larger tank has a hundred or so Alphabet Angels, and he deftly chases some with a net until the bag has a J, an E, two S's, I, C, and an A.

He hands me the bag, and says, "Seventy-five to eighty, neutral pH, tropical flakes. I wouldn't put anything else in with them."

"I won't," I promise, with a nod that's almost a curtsey. The devil. "How much are they?"

"It's a gift," he says. "I have to ask you to be discreet, though. Okay?"

"I understand. But I don't know if I can accept these." I'm lying. I wouldn't give them up for the world.

He shrugs. "Where else would you get personalized angels?"

As I turn to go, the smaller tank of ALPHABET ANGELFISH stirs in alarm. My bettas are staring fiercely at the alphabet school, and one flares his fins. The angels write:

HELP

A FLASHING BETA

"Cute," I say, but Gus is already out front. He hardly says another word as I leave with my bagful of alphabet fish, the two bettas, four dozen crickets, a salamander, and a lifetime mate for Annabelle. Hope she likes him. Hope Gus calls.

Three months after meeting Gus, I finish slathering the latest poison my boss John has brewed up onto Petri dishes with bacteria, and take off my lab coat.

"Someone's in a hurry," John sings, glistening the hundred-watt spotlight of his bald head at me. "Got a date?" The perennial lab joke.

"I don't date," I glower habitually. "Although there is a guy who'll be coming around later." I just can't help bragging about it.

"Pizza delivery?" Steve-the-not-so-new guy says. Some men just can't take rejection.

"Yeah," I say. "I prey on innocent greasy pizza boys—their blood tastes like garlic, and their—"

"All right!" John cracks up. "But seriously, who's the mystery man?"

"A pet shop owner," I say. "A man who wouldn't whore for the biomedical companies. A man who brings me crickets and beer instead of asinine flowers. I'll see you all Monday." I make my exit. "Oh, and my cats call him ‘daddy'."

Sweet stunned silence.

I enter PETS, and see that he is cornered by a Japanese guy and his scrawny kid who are determined to buy some shubunkins. Gus grills them about pond volume, depth, filtration system, and proximity to trees. Buying stuff off Gus is painful; he does not like selling his stock. I have never seen a man so determined to fail in business.

I wander to the back and flip on the light. The ALPHABET ANGELFISH are watching and spell:

I SHAG

BEHALF PLANET

Out front the Japanese fellows have passed the test, and Gus looks like he's just sold his children into slavery. The deed is done, and the customers leave happy. Gus takes a new sign, a printed one that says ‘No tobacco sales to anyone under 18.' He crosses out ‘tobacco' and posts it. That's my Gussy.

"Do you really ‘shag' on behalf of the entire planet?" I say, and he just laughs.

We head to my place, and I sigh, thinking that over the weekend he will have to rush out at least five times to check on his animals back home and at the store. Gus is apparently tired of it as well, for he says, "Jessie, would you like to consolidate the cats?"

I give him a level look. "Are you asking me to move in with you?"

He nods.

"Sure," I say. "Let's move to the store so that everything is at hand."

"Actually, there's a house for rent two blocks away from it, with a fireplace."

The devil. Somehow he knows that I would start imagining the two of us and the five cats seated around the fire, the room warm enough for the fighting fish, all forty of them lined up neatly on the bookshelves, the chirping of the crickets drifting in from the kitchen. Somehow he got me past the question of
whether
we should move in together directly to the one of
where
. The devil, the devil.

"We can check it out tomorrow," I say.

He nods again but seems preoccupied. "Jessie," he says, "have your fish been acting funny?"

"Which ones?"

"The angels."

"Well, the J had a ghastly accident with the disposal, and one of the S's swallowed a hook," I say, and hastily add, "Just kidding!" once I see his face. "They're fine. Why?"

He shrugs and waves his hand in dismissal.

We enter my apartment and both cats run up, mewling and rubbing against Gus. Both! Humph. Only Paperweight the snake is glad to see me. Gus opens a beer and starts making sandwiches. We're at that comfortable stage where food comes before groping. The phone rings.

I pick up. It's my mom. "I'm busy," I say into the phone.

"With what?" she asks suspiciously.

"I'm carving the names of Metallica members into my thigh," I say.

Gus snorts beer through his nose, coughs, and flips me off.

"Who's there?" asks Mom, who has hearing like a bat.

"Just the plumber," I say. "I lured him in under the guise of a leaking faucet, so he can impregnate me . . . All right, yes, I do have a boyfriend—sorry to have kept it from you. Well, I have to go now . . . he's all hopped up on goofballs and setting the kitchen on fire again."

"Can I talk to him?" She is seriously out of her mind.

I scowl into the phone. "Mom, you don't want to talk to a serial killer, do you?"

"Jessie," Mom says.

I sigh and thrust the receiver at Gus, who accepts reluctantly.

Mom chirps happily for a good five minutes, and Gus only says, "Mmmm," and "Uh-huh," and then, "Thirty-four. Rochester. No ma'am, never killed anyone. No, never been married either. NYU." He rolls his eyes at me. "I own a pet store."

I hear Mom's triumphant "A-ha!" Everyone seems to think that I'm using poor Gus for the sake of the bestiary. I feel genuinely hurt.

"Yes ma'am," Gus says. "Of course. I'd love to!" He hangs up and looks at me, dizzy. "I think we're having dinner with your parents next Sunday."

I give him a reassuring hug. "It's not too late to enter a suicide pact."

We munch on ham and cheese sandwiches. Gus still seems preoccupied.

"What's wrong?" I say. "My mom?"

"No." He sighs, his lovely brown eyes sadder than usual. "Mind if I check on your fish?"

"No," I say. "Although I resent the implication."

He smiles. "I just want to see them, and I swear that I have never doubted your ability to take care of them."

"All right then," I say, and follow him into the living room. The term is actually accurate—this is where everything lives. I do not have much furniture—just a futon, a coffee table, and a TV. The rest is bookshelves—some have books, the rest contain aquaria, terrariums, and any combination thereof.

Gus puts his beer on a coaster and makes a beeline for the alphabet angels. He taps the glass and watches them intently. "A-ha!" he screams, and points at the tank accusingly.

They have lined up facing the glass, and they spell out JESSICA.

"You see?" Gus seems agitated.

"So?" I say. "They do that all the time. I don't know when you trained them to do that, but-"

"I didn't," he says, and he's dead serious.

"But I thought—well, then, who did? It wasn't me."