you’re a little hypnotist,” she said. “You’re really something.”
She smiled at the little green dinosaur because she believed it liked her. As a child she felt she had the ability to communicate with animals, driving the baboons into a frenzy at the zoo by planting thoughts of freedom and rebellion into their heads, or calming a skittish horse by speaking gently into its ear of brown oats and alfalfa. She never told anyone about it—after all, who would believe her? But she felt a connection to the little green reptile, and so she told it to march right up to its food dish and eat. It must have liked her quite a lot, she thought, because it remained propped against the glass, its tiny fingers twitching, saliva dripping from its puckered mouth.
Faith didn’t know how long she and the creature stared at one another, silently commiserating about the challenging task of befriending Ed. At one point she thought she saw the little green head nod, its black eyes full of the wisdom of the ages, and although at the time she did not know it, somewhere inside the recesses of her heart she began to nurture an admiration for the wreck of a man who lay snoring on the sofa behind her, a man with the wisdom or intuition or simple dumb luck to acquire such a stoic and majestic pet.
“My wife never liked him.” Faith turned to see Ed rising slowly, almost gracefully, into an upright position. He rubbed his head and nodded toward the aquarium. “Little Richard,” he said. “Carmen never liked him.”
“Why not?”
Ed took a deep breath. “Well, first off, he stinks. And he drools. And he never liked her.”
“He’s just following his nature,” she said.
“That’s right,” said Ed. “That’s right. Come to think of it, that was something my wife didn’t like about me either.”
“Well,” said Faith, choosing her words carefully, “who we are is who we are. But how we behave … well, now that we can control.” She looked to Little Richard, her confidante, her sounding board.
Ed just laughed. “I wouldn’t place any money on that,” he said. “Take last night, for instance.”
Faith was wildly curious about the events that had culminated in Ed’s bail being doubled and his car looking like it had lost the demolition derby. But she held back; she would emulate Little Richard’s detached calm.
“It was Carmen,” he said. “My ex. I don’t hate her, although I’d like to. She lives in Oakley with some guy owns a junkyard. I’ll tell you what, that guy can take a car apart.” Ed laughed, rubbed his left eye. Then he stared right through Faith, and she knew he was watching Carmen with someone else, watching his car being broken apart like a puzzle.
“Ed,” she said, “you don’t have to talk about it.”
“She come sashaying into the Tap Shoe like she owned the place,” he said, “wearing some checked ruffled number looked like a goddamn kitchen curtain—pardon my French—hanging onto her grease monkey like he was a magnet. I ignored them, I did.” He looked at Faith, his expression one of defiant sincerity.
“Why, sure you did,” said Faith. “What else were you supposed to do?”
“Then the little monkey says, ‘That him? That the guy? You there,’ and Carmen’s trying to shush him but he keeps on until I offer to buy them a drink. How do you like that?”
“That was very generous,” said Faith.
“The monkey walks over and calls me Diamond Jim. ‘Diamond Jim’, he says, ‘big shot. Buying rounds with money you stole from this lady and her twin boys.’ He points to Carmen, and she looks sorry. Sorry that she lied about the money, sorry she came into the Tap Shoe in the first place, sorry she’s tangled up with this monkey. She tells him let’s go but he keeps on until his voice becomes like kindling, like a lit fuse, like a trigger. I get up to leave—Boyle’s already reaching for the phone—but then I’m suddenly outside myself. It’s like I’m watching someone else punch this guy in the gut, lay him out like a rug.”
Faith, simultaneously exhilarated and repulsed, couldn’t speak.
“Maybe if he’d gotten in a punch they’d have hauled him in too. Instead, they scraped him up and threw some ice on his face. Boyle didn’t notice it until he locked up, but he came straight to the jail to tell me the monkey’d taken a crowbar to my car—had the crowbar and everything. Found it hooked into the passenger-side window.”
“Well, that’s cowardly,” said Faith. “Downright cowardly.” She felt the unfairness of it. She felt sorry for the defenseless Buick, its cracked windshield, a gaping hole where the grille once was. As if to express his outrage, Little Richard began leaping about the aquarium, his wiry fingers hooking into the mesh on the ceiling.
“He wants out,” said Ed. “I don’t blame him. It’s no good to be locked up. People pointing fingers, staring.” Ed watched his reflection in the aquarium glass. “It’s no good,” he said, shaking his head slowly. “I should let him out.”
“Let him out! What if he gets into something? He could get hurt.”
“I don’t mean let him out here,” he said. “I mean let him go.”
“You mean set him free?” Faith stared at Little Richard as he dangled from the mesh, watched his small chest bounce with each quick breath, tried to read his thoughts. “Yes,” she finally said, “I think it’s what he wants.”
“It’s what we all want.”
“Where would you take him?”
“I dunno. How ’bout a swamp? Somewhere there’s plenty of bugs.”
Faith wrung her hands; she hadn’t expected this. Just like Marvin, Ed had preempted her, stolen the moment she had selected to make her point by embroiling her in another quandary, though she soon realized that this one did not feel fraught or even overly complicated.
“So now he can change his life,” she said. “Just like that.”
“Yes,” Ed said, the words hovering over them like a benediction. “Just like that.”
Ed took a deep breath as if readying himself for a long stint underwater, then rose and without a word approached the aquarium, opened the lid and scooped Little Richard into his palm. “Okay, buddy,” he said, turning to Faith. “Let’s go.” She wasn’t sure if he was talking to her or to Little Richard, but then Ed took her hand and the three exited Ed’s house to the amusement and great satisfaction of the neighbors.
They marched down the front steps and climbed into the passenger side of the Buick after the door opened with an excruciating whine. Faith would have offered to drive, but she’d grown so flustered when Ed took her hand that she’d simply followed. Slowly and silently they made their way toward the outskirts of town. The driver’s side mirror flew off like a projectile when Ed made a right-hand turn at Brimley, and as they bumped along the gravel road that led to the Racine Nature Preserve, the license plate skittered off into the gutter.
“It’s no good being locked up,” Ed said to Little Richard as they sat on the damp earth near the edge of a small pond. “Eating whatever they give you, being stared at or ignored. Being called a freak.”
“No
