CARE AND FEEDING OF SKEETER B
The pet shop guy was right. Her feelings about the iguana really did change over time, beginning almost with indifference the day she browsed through his store to kill an hour before an interview down the street. She didn’t particularly want the job at Wilshire Beauty, where she bought her makeup. She had no retail experience beyond a summer of demonstrating Blendtecs at a health food store while in grad school, but the Help Wanted sign had struck her as a signal from the universe. A job, any job, would end her punching bouts with her dissertation. Plus she had rent to pay and spent far too much on makeup. This job came with a major discount. And to be honest, she was a natural salesperson, a piece of self-knowledge she took out and used when convenient, the way Carrie used her telekinetic powers. For example, when she returned to the pet shop after the interview and saw the little iguana basking in the light of its tank, its birdy eyes glazed with pleasure, she knew she could get this pet for free. Afterward, as the sales guy adjusted his pants, slapped down his hair and pulled a to-go box off a shelf, she asked for the tank too, what the hell.
She named the lizard Skeeter for his twitchy feet and scaly, oddly human hands. The B was for her own last name, Burlingham, which kind of made them related, a nice touch, given her alienation from her family. So there, folks. During the day, while she did make-overs at Wilshire Beauty, applying lipsticks and hair gels that lawyers and baristas took away in crackling bags, the iguana climbed his walls and ignored the lettuce she’d left, as if he’d read the manual on his care and feeding. When she got around to reading it, she hit the market on her way home for better stuff—collard greens, escarole, carrots he snapped, quick as a bird from her French-tipped fingers. In the green-tinged glow of night, this was an intimacy he trained her to expect, though at first it shocked her. He was a lizard. Yet unfailingly, he rose to greet her when she arrived, his face lifting like a shriveled god’s against the plexiglass. What man had ever done that? Admittedly, she’d been hopeless at picking them, homing in like a scud missile on malcontents, critics, and bullies till she’d finally sworn them off altogether. Of course, though, she hadn’t. Every day before leaving her apartment, she labored with compacts, brushes and creams to minimize her nose and enlarge her lips. She drew in cheekbones and erased bags. But Skeeter changed her inside. Gradually, as she prepared his meals, she started eating better herself. As he grew—and he grew very fast—she took to wrapping him around her shoulders like a boa and strolling through Pan Pacific Park, where people walked dogs and families ate boiled eggs on blankets. The iguana broke the ice. Guys who never would have looked at her came up to ask about her lizard, eager, it seemed, to hear about her hooded clamp fixtures and ceramic heat emitters and the new pen she was designing as Skeeter B was fairly bursting from his tank.
She took him to Home Depot for plywood, more plexi, hardware cloth, adjustable heating-vent covers, a battery-powered drill and organic craft paints with which she planned to duplicate his native jungle on sliding panels. He seemed to enjoy the ride, hunkering in a dog’s mesh-fronted carry case belted into the seat beside her.
In her bedroom, she let him roam free as she cleared out a large, bright corner and read the instructions for an ultrasonic misting system she’d ordered off the Web. Curious, he made slow, scraping explorations around her dresser and under her bed before popping out to lie near her contentedly in the sun. By the time they broke for lunch (mustard greens, peppers, peas), half the pen had taken shape. She glimpsed herself in the mirror on the back of her door—in baggy overalls and painter’s cap, her hair flattened, no makeup, just her and her crispy dinosaur cousin—and remembered a scene from another time. A man she’d taken home from a club had sat up in the dark, switched the lamp on, frowned at her and said, You’re not the most gorgeous girl on the planet.
Here was someone who disagreed. Who blinked as if basking in her light, who might have said, if asked, that out of all the jungles in the world, the high deserts, the low canyons, the wildest, craggiest alpine peaks, there was nowhere he belonged but here.
She could have hugged him, but theirs was a different bond. One that whispered.
Yes. You are. Gorgeous. And mine.