Chapter 8

“What’s wrong with him?”

He was the seventh person to ask me that morning, to say nothing of Lord-knows how many from the past two days. I told the guy the same thing I told the others: “He’s just having a bad day.”

“Day hasn’t even started yet,” he replied.

“Never too early to start being productive.”

Both of us turned around and looked at the lizard in question. He sat with to his sister at the far end of the car with rows of empty seats buffering them from the rest of the passengers. His head rode still against the sway of the train, and he stared back at us with a gaze that could freeze the sun into cinder. We quickly turned back and huddled. The rest of the passengers kept to themselves as they shuddered from the cold in the heated cabin.

“No seriously,” my trainmate whispered. “What the hell is up with him?”

“I honestly don’t know.”

“Aren’t you supposed to take care of him? Shouldn’t you know these things?”

“He only does this when he leaves home, and he won’t tell me why either.”

He bowed his head down and rubbed his hands together. He bent his head to his left and stole another peek back before snapping back against his seat and coughing. “Goddamn. You know what everyone’s saying right?”

“Saying what?”

He sighed and leaned in close to me.

“You know, people are getting kind of freaked out. They’re worried about him.”

“Hey, I’m worried about him too. I don’t know what’s gotten into him.”

“No, no, you don’t understand. Not worried about him. You know? Like, worried about what he might do looking like that. You get it, right?”

I took a minute. “Shit, what the hell are you talking about? He’s not going to do anything, what’s wrong with you people?”

He motioned for me to quiet down. “Remember that guy in General Carbide a few years back? The guy who shot up his department and killed twenty people? For weeks, the psycho was just like that, not talking to anyone and looking like he was going to murder something. Except no one said shit. And a bunch of people died because no one had the guts to. You get it?”

“Jesus Christ.”

“Look, I’m not saying the lizard’s going to do anything, all right?” Again, he looked back to rear seats. “But I’m saying that this sort of thing gets people worried. I can’t blame them, you know? And worried people do stupid things. You’re their guardian, right? That’s your job to look after this sort of stuff. You know, for your own good.”

I grunted at the notion and waved him off. “Yeah, thanks a lot for your concern. That’s something I really need to hear.”

“Just saying, pal.”

I dropped the grievance, and we rejoined the rest of the car in its silence. The guy had a point. I found myself in the front alongside my fellow Homo sapiens for a reason, and it wasn’t because I was in a sociable mood. I couldn’t sit near the creature that lurked the rear of the train, that same beast that looked as if it was about one tic shy away from sinking its teeth into someone’s succulent trachea.

Next to the menace on the inside seat was a sound-asleep Tia.

Basil’s attitude had gotten freakishly worse over the past few days. The first time with the itchy scales was him merely being a disagreeable tease. The next day, he became an old and crusty curmudgeon. A few days into it, and he became deadly. All the humanity a lizard like him could glean from the world broke apart and flung into the winds, leaving behind an animalistic shell. I didn’t know what to make of it. It went beyond just a simple stroke of grumpiness that’s the natural order of life. It was something primal. He radiated a malice that burned everyone around him, and people, naturally, started avoiding him. I couldn’t blame them.

For me, the day before was my last stand. I tried to take my usual spot next to them. “Hi Basil,” I said. “How’s it going? Are you fine today? Nice weather isn’t it? Does the train to seem to run rougher today? How was the last Iron Maiden?” Basil’s half of the conversation consisted of him staring at me through constricted eyelids, his jaws parted enough to remind me of the rows of sharp teeth he possessed. A furrowed expression draped a head that hadn’t been petted for days. I tried to peer past him over to Tia in a search of solidarity, but he moved his head to block my sight. The jagged, rough clicking he gave forced me over the edge, and I left for another seat. This morning, I didn’t even try to sit next to them.

Close to Summit, I took another a look back. Tia was still asleep underneath her brother’s shadow, and Basil himself looked at me with piercing eyes. I quickly twisted back into my seat. No one dared to move off their seats when the train stopped. We all sat staring into the seat in front of us and waited for the patting of claws to gallop past us. Tia yawned as she sauntered through the aisle. She smiled and waved at me when she made to my row, and I returned it. Basil, trailing close to her, speared me with a gaze of daggers. I shoved my hand into my lap and pressed against the seat.

It wasn’t until the pair hopped off the train and pressed into the courtyard before anyone had the nerve to exit.

A few daredevils—or ill informed—pressed their luck with the Isians. They tried to say hello them. “Hey guys,” or, “Hi there,” and maybe, “How’s it doing?” Dangerous fighting words. Basil grunted and clicked his tongue rapidly at them, and most got the hint and hurried off. One particular knucklehead, however, wasn’t playing with a full set. He knelt down and roughed his hands on Basil’s head and neck, like bum petting a mad dog. Basil furrowed his eyes and his clicks became sharper and more insistent.

“Hey there, little guy,” the idiot cooed. He reached over and tried to pet Tia.

Basil grunted and thrust himself between them. He hunched down, bared his teeth, and hissed. He swept his tail across the ground and blew up dust. The stupid fucker still tried to reach past him.

I burned through my daily supply of empathy for my fellow man just to run out and grab his hands away. A confused look overtook his face. He looked at me like a dumbass caught in headlights.

“Don’t you have something to give to Aimee?” I said, gripping his hands away from the hissing Isian.

“What?” he said. “Oh right! Almost forgot about their lunch.”

Tia’s perked her head up from behind her brother when she heard the words. “Oh! Whatcha get us?”

“I got you—”

“It’s a surprise!” I interrupted. I pulled the guy up and shoved him toward the building. “Yes, a big, big damned surprise. Right? Go, Mr. Lunch Surprise!”

The guy paced himself away from us and looked back every other step. I encouraged him along with shooing motions and thanked God when the dumbass finally made it inside. I looked back to the Isians. They were gone. Beyond my sight, I heard distinct Isian hisses slithering through the air. I sighed. One down, about two hundred more to go.

I later found them huddled on Aimee’s desk with their rumps planted on the counter and their tails undulating behind them. Aimee was balancing a couple of food items on her hands and presented them with the smile of a showbot.

“And here is some creamy, authentic Gouda that someone just brought in. It will complement the black forest ham very nicely.”

Driblets of saliva slid from the Isians’ hanging tongues and onto the desk. One of them leaned in and absorbed the scent of gourmet cuisine through flared nostrils. It was Basil.

“So let me get this right,” he said. “You’re supposed to put this,” he pointed to the cheese, “with the ham?”

“That is what I am suggesting,” Aimee said.

“How does that work?” Tia asked. The crinkled cheese cellophane that wrapped the Gouda rustled when she poked it. “I mean, it’s… ew!”

“It smells pretty good,” Basil said.

Tia moved her head close and nudged her brother away to take a whiff for herself. She took a hefty breath in that soured her face. “No. No it doesn’t. You have no idea what you’re talking about. No, no, we’re not eating it with the ham.”

Basil fidgeted and then pointed at the cheese. “Well, if you don’t want it, can I have—”

Before he could finish, Tia snatched the ham and cheese and ran off with the item tucked under her arms. He looked on like a lost lamb. Aimee rubbed his back.

“I saved the Basilisk Special just for you,” she said. She brought out another cheese wheel from underneath her desk and placed it in front of him.

Chirping happily, he planted messy licks on her face and ran after his sister with cheese in tow. Aimee wiped her metal face with a cloth rag and brought it back to a polished, saliva-free shine. I came to the desk.

“Ah, Mr. Ivano!” she said when she saw me. “Long time no talk. How can this humble servant of Tetra assist you today?”

“This servant can get me some of that tasty-looking cheese,” I said.

“Oh, I am terribly sorry. But those materials are for authorized personnel only. I am afraid that you do not qualify.”

“Well, how about those egg rolls then?” I pointed to a trio of rolls that formed a pyramid on a white platter. They sat conspicuously on a stack of documents. “Surely I’m qualified for those, right?”

“No.”

“Dammit Aimee, it’s not like the twins are going to eat them anyway. Lemme have just one.”

“Those are for me.”

“What? No.”

She fished the top roll between a thumb and index finger and dangled the crispy cylinder over her upturned face. She opened her mouth and, after turning slightly to wink at me, dropped it down. The hapless roll disappeared into her mechanical maw in one fell gulp. I gawked, and she realigned her head and smiled a defiant “I-told-you-so” smirk.

“Oh god, Aimee. Oh geez!” I shielded my eyes from her, barely able to suppress a laugh. “You’re going to make Mr. Aimee a very happy bot, someday.”

“It’s an important skill to master,” she said.

“Yeah, well, I haven’t learned that one yet. I haven’t even learned how to take care a bunch of lizards.”

“Oh, nothing to worry about. You have been doing admirably. They look fantastic.”

“Look fantastic?” I leaned in close to her. “In case you haven’t noticed, one of them doesn’t look at all fantastic. Unless you mean ‘fantastically nasty.’”

Aimee planted an elbow on the desk and propped her head up on her hand. “You know, I have been hearing people mumbling about that sort of thing. But I do not believe it myself.”

“What’s to believe? Just look at him, he looks nastier than my grandpa after my uncle’s funeral. Everyone’s thinking the same thing. There’s something wrong with Basil, and the worse thing is that I have no idea what the hell it is.”

“He seems cheerful to me. Seems to rather like the cheddar I gave him.”

“Well… I don’t know. That was kind of weird, actually. Maybe it’s just you. But believe me, he’s nasty to everyone else. Even me!”

“Have you tried to talking to Ms. Neuman? She is bound to have some insight.”

“Arlene? No. Haven’t gotten around to it.” Haven’t gotten around to give her an excuse to accuse me of not meeting the Isians’ needs and do appropriately horrible things. Horrible things to me.

“Good, then you can do so personally at lunch.”

“What?”

“She contacted Summit this morning with a message for you. She said she wanted to give that lunch she owes you today, if was feasible for you. I took the initiative to say that it was and that you would meet her this afternoon.”

She pulled out a Tetra-emblazoned stationery from a stack on the desk and handed it to me. Handwritten in perfect monospace beneath it was a note: “Ms. Neuman is engaged with Mr. Ivano at noon. Location is Rosaria restaurant, 194 E Hampton Blvd. She will pick him up personally.”

I stared at the note for a long while before saying, “Thanks, Aimee.”

“You are very welcome, Mr. Ivano.”

Her obligation to me satisfied, she smiled and returned to her computer, leaving me to fend for myself. There’s nothing like anticipating a date with a certain impassioned biologist to set one’s day into overdrive.

---

Mark had, as usual, appropriated his distinctive half-shouting outrages right next to my ear.

“Goddamn things! How the hell is a guy supposed to get any work done here? Goddamn fucking animals!”

He stood his ground next to me and stared down his adversary at the foot of the stairs to the arena. The opposition was hunching down in the pit and glaring back with his jaw parted and tail swaying to the rhythm of a hunting heart. I had to dig my soles into the floor to steady myself against Mark’s shaking of the back of my seat.

“Dammit Lyle, do something about him!” he yelled at me as if I was some mystic lizard guru.

“Do what? And why?”

“Him! I need to use the fucking projector and that goddamned thing is blocking my way.”

“Just go around him then? Use another path down?”

He bent the backrest down and shook the chair until it squealed, causing me to mistype a value and crash the simulation. “No, no, it doesn’t work like that,” he insisted. “That asshole just follows me and tries to block me out. Look at him, look!” He trembled a purple-veined finger toward the pit. “Look at that motherfucker!”

Basil arched his back and puffed out his frill. A deep hiss echoed through the lab, a not-too-subtle warning served to those who would dare disturb the treasure that he guarded beyond: the holo-platform, which was unused except as a lounger for Tia to lie on with her head cradled on a pillow of Gouda. Mark pounded down the chair down a peg and broke the pneumatics, dooming me to an eternity of staring underneath the desk.

“See, look at him!” he yelled. “That fucker wants me dead. Just look at those eyes. Those goddamn eyes! Those are the eyes of a cold-blooded killer. ‘I’m going to murder you’ eyes. Not if I get you first, you goddamn motherfucker, you hear! You ain’t getting Mark Ellis!”

“He’s not going to kill you, you goddamn idiot.” I gripped the desk’s edge and pulled myself up to see my screen. “Why would he waste his time on that? Just leave him alone and you’ll be fine.”

“No, you don’t get it Lyle. You just don’t know. Trust me, those eyes aren’t things that go away without a bullet right through each of them. Twice.” He straightened up and yelled to the arena. “And I’m not afraid, I’ll do it too!”

I pushed the chair out of the way and resigned to standing. “Right, you go on ahead then. I’ve got work to do.”

“Yeah.” He slunk down into my seat and wheeled behind me to avoid Basil’s tracking gaze. “Then, You don’t mind talking to him, right? You know, so it doesn’t have to get to that. It gets kinda messy, you know?”

“I’ll think about it.”

“Whenever, buddy. Just whenever.”

He cupped his hands around his face and slumped into the chair. In the contest of the alpha males, the victor is determined through strength, wit, will, patience, and teeth, elements in which Mark was decisively deficient. Whatever, I couldn’t spare a care for the world. I had other, graver concerns, and it was my time to be selfish. Sorry, Mark.

I mean, lunch with Arlene? At some fancy restaurant with some unpronounceable foreign name? She was serious? Jesus Christ. It had completely slipped my mind. I didn’t even have time to prepare! I wasn’t even dressed up. Not even a tie! Lunch with Arlene. Gee, thanks Aimee.

I was standing and keying random characters into the system like a well-mannered work-droid. When was the last time I went out on a date? College, I think, with someone from the physics department. Nice girl. It didn’t go much beyond dates to the campus cafeteria and library, and maybe a fling here or there in the bedroom when she felt frisky. You know, I had forgotten how hard that stuff was back in the day. Maybe that’s the reason why I stopped cold-turkey. Yeah, that was it. I was looking out for my health and well-being, is all. Living a healthy and prosperous life was such an understated virtue, and I was merely living ahead of the curve. Exceptional. Pah, relationships! Been there, done that, had my fill, time to move on.

I tapped through the bright red error screens the system suggested I interpret.

Just lunch right? Nothing amazing about lunch with a woman. I took Mom out for lunch plenty of times. Same thing. No big deal. Then, why was I tittering in my shoes?

I jumped when something poked my sides and jerked myself away from the tunnel vision of the screen. I got one startled look at Basil and fell onto my broken seat, which started rolling away from the lizard. He cocked his head to the side and peered at me curiously.

“Aren’t you going to go eat?” he asked.

I looked around the room. Caught up in my own stupor, I hadn’t noticed the lab had vacated. I rolled the seat back to my station and checked the screen. “11:53” one of the interface panels read. Appetites called to the SE-2 engineers early today. Funny enough, despite the lunch hour creeping closer, I realized I didn’t feel hungry.

“Ah, just finishing up some last things,” I said, pulling myself back to my station. “Why don’t you guys go and eat without me?”

Basil balked. “No. We’re not going out there with all those… people. Besides, Tia’s too busy trying to take pictures of herself.” He ejected a shot of annoyance from his nostrils. “She’s going to send them to that stupid friend of hers at the zoo.”

I lifted up and took a peek at the arena. Sure enough, she was posing for the lab’s optical scopes that angled out-of-spec to face her. A burst of images swelled on the projector after each shot, which she reviewed them one at a time. She then discarded the bunch and retook them with a slightly different pose.

“I see,” I said. “That’s nice of her. Those are good pictures.”

“No one cares, especially not that stupid friend,” Basil said. “I don’t get it, I don’t know why she’s so friendly with him. He’s just lucky that the zoo is far away from here. Just one less thing for me to worry about.” He trailed and stared off into the distance as if pondering some deep metaphor. “Anyway, when you’re in the cafeteria, could you get me some of those pot pies? I love them.”

“Sorry, guy. I’m actually going to go eat with Arlene today. You’re going to have to get it yourself.”

An excited female voice echoed from the center of the room. “You’re eating Arlene? Really? Oh!”

Clawtips clacked up the floor, and Basil rasped his tongue. He leaned against my chair and slid me away from my station just as Tia’s head propped itself above the partitions.

“Did I hear right?” she said. “Is Ly-lee really going to eat with Arlene?”

“Yeah, I guess,” Basil said.

She clapped her hands together and clicked excitedly. “Oh, that’s so great! Ly-lee’s going to out to eat with Arlene! How wonderful!”

“Just great.”

He pushed me further away.

“How exciting! Isn’t this exciting? It’s very exciting!”

“Very exciting.”

“Oh, oh! I have to take a picture of both of you, Ly-lee. So we can save the moment and stuff.”

Basil hissed, the sharpness of which compelled me to grip edge of the chair. He kept me hostage to the chair and pushed me to the stairs. He pulled me up and pushed me up the steps. “Right, right,” he said while his sister kept babbling on. We reached the doors and he pushed me out. “Lunch with Arlene. Great! Why don’t you go now, Ly-lee? Go and eat, already!”

With his icy blue eyes frozen on me, I was only happy to oblige. I took a quick glimpse back into the lab and saw Tia waving goodbye in wide excited arcs. “Tell me how good the food is!” she called out. I stepped back, and the door met close to my nose with a slam, its servos whining in mechanical pain. I met the security bot that came to investigate with a nonchalant nod and went to the lobby.

The PA rang with a chime and announced it was noon. Mark was milling in the lobby with a man-sized sandwich (probably stitched together from the carcasses of three or four lesser sandwiches). He motioned me over.

“Hey Lyle, get over and get some of this. It actually doesn’t taste like it’s made of puke.”

“Eating out today.”

“Yeah? What fancy-ass place you going to?”

“Some Italian place or something. I think.”

“You think?”

“Well, I’m kind of going out to eat with someone.”

“Yeah? Not one of the guys here, I hope. They stuff you with the bill all the time, damn assholes.”

“No, it’s—”

A sharp Hey Lyle! cut me off. We both turned to meet the call and saw Arlene waving from Aimee’s desk. Marked gagged on his mouthful and spat out a crumb of bread. He pounded on his chest to keep from retching the remainder, swallowed, and gasped.

“Holy fucking hell!”

“Yeah, it’s her.”

He smiled a goofy grin at me, which gave way to a low-pitched chuckle. He slapped my shoulders and shook it. “Goddamn, Lyle. God-damn! My man, I knew you could tame that ice-bitch.”

“It’s just lunch.”

“You know what’s the difference between ‘just lunch’ and a chick in your bed? Three shots and a dick, my friend. You listen to that. Hell, you know what? Take the rest of the day off and do it right. God knows you need it.”

“Will I still get paid?”

“Hell no.”

I waved him goodbye and met with Arlene at the desk. She smiled, which I took as a sign that I was already off to a good start. “Ready to go, Lyle?” she asked. I nodded, and we were away. Just a platonic lunch at a fancy restaurant.

---

The main road entrance to Summit was someplace I wasn’t familiar with. I never took a good look at it before. It surprised me when I discovered Tetra had commissioned a gigantic lawn ornament to tower over the mouth of the main entryway. This being Tetra, it was just giant love-letter to itself: a reproduction of those tangled triangles of the company’s trademark, gilded in a golden sheen that swallowed lesser insignias. On the facets of the fixture, Arlene’s car wasn’t too proud to reflect through its yellow haze.

I felt nervous riding inside car, and it was because it was a nervous car to ride in. Everything inside brandished themselves in black and silver with metallic ornaments and styling. The flowing curves bonded together in a sort of chic mechanical modernism. The interior ate the bright noon sunlight before it could disturb the car’s luxurious gloom. An odor reeked in the cabin that smelled of chemical-cured rubber and synthetics, the kind of industrial smell that clung to your sinuses long after you left. I huddled close to my seat.

The only noise that sounded inside the car was the groaning squeaks from the leather seat that my rump wormed in. To took a few minutes of squirming before my ass warmed the material to a sit-able temperature, but that didn’t make the car any easier to ride in. I kept conscious of my efforts to keep from brushing against the upholstery because every errant fingerprint would depreciate the car by $700 or so.

I attempted to make out the model of the car before I stepped into it, but all I had to work with was some abstract symbol that kissed its hood. With a car such as this, an abstract logo was one’s only clue to its heritage, a mystery left to those not already in the know. The unprivileged and uncivilized were doomed to a lifetime of want and wonder. I didn’t ask Arlene what kind of car it was.

So I guess if you’re a biologist, you could commute in a sexy vehicle like this. Come to think of it, I was in entirely the wrong profession.

Arlene geared the car into the connector linking to a nearby freeway, not bothering to slow down when inciting the car to devour the circular ramp.

“I’m sorry for being so abrupt with this,” she said. “I hope it wasn’t a problem for you?”

“It’s fine,” I said. “I didn’t have anything else planned.”

“That’s good. I’ve just been so swamped the past few weeks, and the only reason I could do this now is because one of my appointments unexpectedly canceled this morning. I’m just glad you could make it.”

Lesser vehicles were but blurry dimples marking the rear horizon. On the fast line, we overtook several metro trains operating on the median rails and attracted curious gawks from their passengers. Summit being close enough to our destination, you wonder what was the point in speeding there. I guess if you owned a sports car, it was a statutory offense of the Spiffy Motorist Code not to. The traffic thickened just as we pierced into the heart of downtown.

“God, I hate this road,” Arlene mumbled. Out in the distance, a cancerous mass of vehicles piled underneath the shadows of the skyscrapers—a deadly mess of cars, blaring horns, and rage-filled motorists. I gripped into my seat as Arlene punched the car through the traffic. She wove past the stragglers and spiked right into an exit. Traffic lights at the off-ramp finally stopped her race driving sensibilities. Back on the freeway, the control beacons for all the cars flickered on in blue unison along the long string of traffic—we exited just in time before the traffic computers could wrestle control of the car away from her.

While waiting for cross traffic to shuffle its turn past us, she released the wheel and rested her hands on her lap. She turned to me. “So, Lyle, I haven’t been able to really talk to you for a while. How’s it going?”

“It’s been good. As good as working in my department can be, anyway. I don’t think I’ve actually slept in the last month.”

“Yeah. It’s not any better at Wyvern. It’s hell right now. I love working there, but it’s just nice to have time to eat out once in a while. A nice, quality place with nice, quality food, you know?”

“Sure.” I didn’t really know.

“I’ve heard this place is pure quality, and I’ve been dying to try it out. I love Italian.”

She peered through the traffic like she was anticipating the light to turn, but it remained red. She took off her glasses and folded them into a padded eyeware compartment on the roof before, and then re-gripped the wheel.

“You sure it’s safe to drive without your glasses?”

“My glasses? Oh, they’re not for my eyesight. I just get tired of wearing them after a while. There’s an extra spot there if you want to put yours away too.”

“Mine are real. I can’t see a damn without them.”

“Really? You never corrected your eyes?”

“Nope. Glasses are cheaper.”

“I’ve never met someone who had actual vision problems. You know, we have a visions lab at Wyvern. If you stop around headquarters sometime, one of the techs could fix them up for you. Free for friends of the institute.”

“Thanks, I’ll keep that in mind.”

She took a sharp left into the boulevard’s overpass when the light turned green.

Riding through the lights and sounds of the heart and soul of the city, I felt a bit embarrassed. To me, most everything here was unfamiliar, even though I lived in the damned city for years. I locked my head to the passenger-side window, gazing out onto the spectacle like a child lost in the world. High-powered businessmen and women in skin-cutting suits mingled with ladies dressed in sequins walking their dogs in strollers. Street vendors hassled from the sidewalks and grizzled street survivalists, looking dignified in their woolen caps and wizened beards, slept in the corners. The glow of signs and advertisements bathed the place in a perpetual brightness even when we slunk underneath the shadows of skyscrapers. The cabin’s seal wasn’t enough to stop the bustle from penetrating as a soft muffle, but it thankfully kept out the smells I imagined lurked outside.

Maybe I didn’t come here because of the buildings. Big and tall and imposing, exactly how your big real estate magnates like them. But they all ended up looking familiar. You saw the same concrete and the same clear windows and the same three basic colors (gray, blackish-gray, and grayish-black). Each building tried to scream “individuality!” with maybe a pair of roaring lions guarding the entrance or an “artsy” sculpture that looked like something M.C. Escher vomited out after eating a geometry textbook. I paid no attention to them. I had Summit’s Spire for my self-important high-rise wankery, and that was enough. I’m a monogamous man.

“Oh, that must be it,” Arlene said and pointed a plain office complex in the distance. As we neared it, though, a passionate shade revealed itself on one of its corners. The color slathered themselves on panels that clothed over the building’s concrete. Above, they wore a checkerboard awning like a cap, which covered over about a dozen tables in the open air. The tables each possessed a pair of black chairs but were too petite to support two actual people. Large lettering forming “Rosaria” overlooked them all, crafted in a flowing script that begged for a few squints to decipher.

Arlene parked on the curb next to a valet staffed with a human and a robot. The human valet immediately crossed over to open the driver-side door and offered his hand to help Arlene out from her seat. I had to see myself out, contorting my body in odd ways to extricate myself from the car and nearly kissing the curb with my knees.

“You keep good care of her, yeah? She’s my baby,” Arlene said to the valet when he planted himself into the driver’s seat with a goofy grin. He gave a thumbs-up and pulled out to the street.

It was a pretty swank place. The windows had a one-way tint to the outside, which offered a bright view out to the world while protecting patrons from reality. Inside was your typical hip roost that you would expect fashionable twenty-somethings to perch in town. At least, what I assumed a hip roost to look. You know, marble countertops, vague lighting that made food hard to see, people wearing hats that looked “European,” music consisting of one instrument and no melodies, and the whole thing. I could imagine that it was the identical to any other fashionable eatery, except the waitstaff wore poofy suits and everything smelled like garlic.

The host greeted us when we walked in. “Ah, bella donne!” he said, obviously referring to Arlene. “A pretty lady for a pretty day at a pretty restaurant. How may I help you? Seat for one? I have the perfect place for you, a beautiful seat for a beautiful woman, eh?”

He sounded like something from a Learn to Speak Italian video.

Arlene giggled and said, “No, for a table for two, please.”

“Eh? Two?” The host looked around and shot a wide-eyed glance at me. He pointed to me and asked, “Two?”

“Yes, two.”

He stared at me a for a few moments, and then he shook his head and poked a few bits into a terminal. “Ah, si. Two.” He motioned us to follow him.

He led to a corner of the restaurant where the couples tables lived. We got a small table that sat underneath a replication of The Last Supper projected on a luminescent screen on the wall. The virtual painting throbbed and ebbed under multicolored spotlights that danced to some head-throbbing beat. On the table itself, a ceiling-attached lamp illuminated a charcoal map of the Mediterranean printed on the tablecloth. The host pulled out one of the high seats and led Arlene onto it by the hand. I took my own place underneath the Apostle Judas.

“The waiter will be with you,” said the host after handing us menus. He looked back at me and shook his head. I could hear him mumble “two” when he left us.

Actual hard menus that you could fondle, some class! I was so used to ordering from a computer I almost forgot how these things worked. You had to scan your eyes manually to the next item. Since this was a fancier restaurant, the menu’s list had no pictures and no descriptions to whet the appetite. It made itself even more difficult considering there wasn’t a lick of comprehensible English anyone on the damned thing. I saw letters of the alphabet that I recognized, but they jumbled together in a mess of made-up words.

“These all sound so delicious,” Arlene said as she perused through her menu. She flipped the menu page over and gasped. “Oh! They have scallops, I haven’t had good scallops in forever. So many good things.”

I turned my menu to the same page. Nowhere in hell did I find the word “scallop” printed anywhere on that leaf. “Yep, the scallops sound good,” I said.

“Would it make me a horrible person if I said I’m craving to eat scallops with gnocco fritto?”

“Of course not. I crave that all the time. Just this morning in fact.” I thumbed through the menu to try to figure out what a “nocko freeto” was.

“So much I want to eat. If I only had a whole day! Ah, oh well.” She tapped on an item on her menu. “I’ll have to settle for this. Good old faithful.”

“Yeah?”

I held up my menu to my face and tried to steal a look out of the corner of my eye. I figured I could get the same and not look like a complete fool, but I couldn’t see what she tapped on. Fuck it.

“So, what are you getting?” I asked.

She closed her menu flat on the table. “I’m not telling.”

“Why not?”

“Because, you’re just going to laugh at me. Going to a nice restaurant and ordering the most ordinary dish in the world.”

“No, really. What are you getting?”

Arlene laughed. “I’m slick to your game, Lyle. You go ahead and order the best thing you can. There’s a lot of good stuff here and I don’t want you to hold back because it’s too expensive.”

I pulled the menu up and crawled back through it like a hieroglyphics-studying archeologist searching for the pharaoh’s sacred lasagna menu.

“So Lyle, how are you going along with the twins?”

“We’ve been getting along pretty well.”

“I know that. Tia’s been sending me messages on how ‘awesome Ly-lee’s place is’ and ‘how great Ly-lee is’ and how she ‘wishes she could stay with him forever’ and everything. I’m asking if you are getting along with them.”

“Oh. It’s been good. I mean, there were a few problems in the beginning, but they’ve been behaving since.”

“So, you don’t have any problems with them? None at all?”

I thought about it and said, “No, no problems.”

Arlene nodded. She picked up her purse and opened it on the table. “Good, good. I guess I don’t have to tell you how much I disapproved of the idea of them staying with you. I know you mean well and it’s nothing against you, but you weren’t exactly qualified to take care of Isian lizards, you know? But I’m glad to be wrong. You’re probably doing better than most of us could.”

“Thanks. I try.”

She pulled out a slip of paper from the purse and waved it to me. “I just got this approved this morning.” She placed the sheet on the table and pushed it to me. “Here, take a look.”

“What is it?”

“I managed to get you a compensation package for housing the twins. For food, housing, and miscellaneous expenses. The sheet has the amount they’ve set aside for you.”

I pushed the paper back. “No, no. I can’t take this. I’m not doing it for money. I’m just helping out friends, that’s all.”

“Just take a look at it,” she said and slidS it back to me.

I hesitantly took the sheet, flipped it over, and nearly choked on my own spit. Holy fuck, the paper was a protected breeding ground for zeros! I haven’t seen so many before in one place at one time. I had to pull my jaw from table and plant it back into my skull. “Is this thing broken? It’s showing the wrong number.”

“That’s your monthly payment.”

It would be a damn shame if I had a heart attack and died never having collected any of the money, because I felt like I was about to make good acquaintances with Mr. Cardiac Arrest right there. The slip fluttered away from my fingers and onto the table. Arlene confused my speechlessness as acceptance, saying, “Good, I’ll try to get your payments as soon as possible.”

I could only nod my head. God, why the hell couldn’t have giant lizards invaded my life sooner?

Before I could come to my senses and mount another half-hearted protest, the waiter came. He asked Arlene for her order first. Her mouth opened to give it to him, but she stopped and glanced at me. She clamped her mouth shut and motioned the waiter down so she could whisper into his ear. The waiter nodded his head, and she chuckled.

“You don’t think that’s horribly boring?” she asked.

The waiter replied, “Not at all. We serve only the best here, there’s no shame at all.” He turned to me. “And for you, sir?”

I pulled my menu back to my face and raked through the items one last time in a futile effort to look informed. I marked out words that seemed difficult to say and left what I hoped I could pronounce in retarded Italian (and, optimistically, choose something that was edible). It didn’t fucking help.

“Okay, I’ll take the guh… guh-oo-chee? Guh-oo-chee dee, no. I mean, the funghi rip… rip-ee?”

The waiter gaped at me while Arlene looked on with a bemused expression. I took a deep breath and began again.

“Ah, none of those. This is the one I want, the osso…”

“Ossobuchi in vino,” Arlene said before I could finish massacring the fine language.

“And one ossobuchi,” said the waiter. He reclaimed the menus and left me to wallow in a pit of my own humiliation. Arlene smiled at me and didn’t say anything. The waiter came back later with a pair of complementary drinks: bellowing glasses half-filled with some pungent red wine. I gulped it down like a lump of coal.

Arlene handled the stem of her glass and swished the liquid around a bit, and then settled her glass back down as it was. She tapped on the tablecloth and traced her finger across the map. Her finger brushed along the Mediterranean states in a wide circle and paused at each state so she could say its name. She continued with all the countries on the map and stopped on the middle of the cloth, where she just smiled.

“Italy,” she said. “I’ve always wanted to go there.”

“Doesn’t everybody? It’s only one of the most romantic places in the world and all that.”

She gave a chuckle, a sort of apathetic laughter punctuated with a sigh. “You don’t have to tell me. My honeymoon was supposed to be there.”

The revelation took me aback. All this time, I haven’t even considered the possibility. But it made sense. A smart, young women, you wouldn’t think? I washed off the residue of wine in my mouth and sat up. Just a regular lunch out with a friend. People do it all the time.

“Oh, that’s great,” I said. “How was it? Worth the hype?”

“Ha! I wish.” She slapped her palm against the table. “I said my honeymoon was ‘supposed’ to be there. I never got that far.”

“What? The airline canceled your flight?”

“More like the groom canceled the wedding.”

I slunk back down into my seat, embarrassed. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know.”

She waved the apology away. “Don’t worry about it. It was years ago, like an eternity. Nothing left to apologize for.”

“What kind of person cancels a wedding after he commits? That’s pretty goddamn low.”

“A person that knows what he’s getting into,” Arlene said. She took a light, contemplating sip from her glass. “He knew. He knew it would be better to break my heart early before things got too complicated. He was a smart man.”

“I don’t understand. How was that a good thing? How can you not be angry at him?”

She shook her head and gestured her hands toward herself. “Look at me, Lyle. Does this look like a person that’s able to commit to a long and loving relationship? I did eighteen-hour days at Wyvern, seven days a week at one point. I can’t count how many times I’ve said ‘No honey, I’m working late,’ or ‘Sorry dear, I’ll have to catch dinner with you maybe tomorrow, Rho has the flu,’ and everything else. Yeah, I was mad when he broke it off. I was furious, hated the world, hated him. I wanted to rip his damned throat out. But now I realize it wasn’t fair for either of us. It was a good thing.”

She drew another taste of wine and sighed. “I wouldn’t have been a good wife. I was too absorbed with myself. He knew back then what I know just now. I was already married, married to myself and my work. Still am, I think. I guess my temper didn’t help either. Pathetic, isn’t it?”

“No, not all. There’s nothing wrong with being independent and loving your work. I mean, I find that quality attractive in a woman,” I said. Arlene looked at me with a upturned, curious brow, and I jerked back when I realized what I blurted. “Ah, I mean, I think it’s a good quality for all people, you know? I mean, not just women or you or anything.”

She settled her eyes down to the table. “Ah well. My fiancé was astute. He did both our lives a favor, even if I didn’t see it back then. That’s why I loved him, and why I can’t be upset with him. Not anymore. I just hope he found someone that can make him happy.” She chuckled, shook her head, and sipped her wine. She turned back up to me. “How about you, Mr. Don Giovanni? How’s the lucky gals in your life?”

“‘Lucky’ isn’t something you call the poor things that gets caught by me. Fortunately for the women in the world, I haven’t had a bite in years.”

“You can’t catch or you just never bothered setting out the line?”

I shrugged.

“Well sir, whatever it is, you’re in good company.” She held up her wine for a toast, and I brought my empty glass up to meet it. “To the single life, Mr. Ivano.”

I nodded, and she emptied her glass. After she settled the glass down, Arlene cradled her chin with one hand and crawled her fingers over the tablecloth with the other. She made wistful circles over Italy. “Someday Signorina Italia, I’ll get you,” she said, and continued tracing the tablecloth. I studied her hand and noticed she wore no wedding ring, a revelation that would’ve helped me a few minutes before. The waiter brought our meals.

“Buon appetito,” he said and left.

I stole a look at Arlene’s great entrée embarrassment while she patted a napkin over her lap. I wasn’t prepared for it. “Spaghetti and meatballs?” I said incredulously. “Are you kidding? That’s what you couldn’t tell me about?”

She rubbed one of her cheeks with the back of her hand and looked down to her plate. Her cheeks flushed to match the tomato sauce, and she said, “I come all the way to a nice Italian place and I order the most stereotypical Italian dish in the world. To be fair, this is actually bucatini, not spaghetti. I think it holds the sauce and flavor better, honestly.” She giggled when I gave her a mocking shake of the head. “Let me eat my pasta like the five-year-old I am and you enjoy your fancy ossobuchi, good sir.”

I looked at my own plate and became disheartened. Disheartened and confused. A fist-sized square block of something sat on the plate, garnished with an assortment of inedible-looking materials and a single parsley snip. A green sauce oozed the piece like a moat. The pasta meal easily dwarfed the thing, even though I was sure they cost the same. Mindful of Arlene eagerly twirling pasta around her fork, I poked at the mysterious block with my own.

“Oh God, this is so good,” Arlene said. She slurped in a mouthful and polished her lips of sauce. She speared one of the meatballs. “Look at this thing! It’s the size of the moon!”

“Yeah, looks great,” I said. I took a small bite of the ossobuchi. It was the strangest damn thing ever. It was greasy but light, and I couldn’t feel the texture as it disintegrated in my mouth in a menagerie of interstitial juices. The thing felt like a mutant crossbreed of beef and cotton candy. I gulped the pellet down and wished I still had wine.

“How’s your veal?” Arlene asked.

My fork clanked onto the plate. “This is veal?”

“Yeah, ossobuchi. Veal shanks. That’s what you ordered.”

Ah, the exquisite taste of misery. How wonderful Italian cuisine is! I coated my fork with the green goop and licked the nutrients off. Funny enough, I didn’t feel that hungry anymore. In her own little pasta heaven, Arlene didn’t notice. She pulled up the second of her gargantuan meatballs.

“Basil loves meatballs,” she said. “I should order extras for him. There are two things that make him the happiest lizard in the world: cantaloupe and this.”

Speaking of the devil. I sat the fork down and wiped my mouth off with the napkin. I took a moment to select the correct words from the “Don’t Piss Off Arlene” dictionary.

“Hey, about Basil,” I started.

“Um-hmm?” she mumbled with a mouthful. She swallowed before she spoke. “What about him?”

“He’s been fine ever since they’ve been staying with me. I mean, happy and carefree just like his sister.”

“Oh sure, that’s great. I’m glad to hear that.”

“But lately, he’s been sort of… off. He’s been a bit moody. He doesn’t talk to anyone and seems like he’s always upset. He hasn’t told me anything, even when I ask if anything’s wrong. I just hope that I haven’t done something wrong or anything. I hope I’m not. Am I being too paranoid?”

Arlene stopped in mid-slurp and looked at me. She took in her mouthful, swallowed, dropped her fork onto the table, and wiped her mouth. I didn’t take it as a good sign and braced myself.

“Tia,” she said after a slight silence, “is she like this too?”

“No, she’s fine. It’s just Basil.”

She stared out past me, her eyes shallow with thought. “What day is today?”

“The sixteenth. Why?”

She pulled up her purse and ripped it open, snapping the silver brackets off from the fastening. “Oh, God. Oh God, oh God!” she repeated. Her hands tore through her purse and flung bits and materials out from the bag. She pulled out a micro-com and tossed the purse to floor, which spilled out the rest of its contents.

“Christ, I’m such an idiot!” she said as hers fingers ran across the small screen. “Such a goddamn idiot!”

“What’s going on? What’s happening?”

“I’ve been so damned busy all this time and I completely forgot. What hell is wrong with me? How can I forget this!”

Her eyes shut closed, and, after a moment’s reflection, she slapped the device down on the table. The unsettled cackling of plates and glasses clashed against her sigh.

I hesitated, wondering if I should disturb her, and then asked her what was wrong again. She placed her chin on her hands and breathed in. “Tia’s in estrus,” she said.

“What?”

“Estrus. She’s in heat. You know, when a female becomes fertile?”

I shook my head and waved her to stop. “Yeah, I know what it is, but what the hell does that have to do with Basil?”

“Basil is… well, he’s a bit protective. Every time his sister gets into heat, he has this urge to shield her from other males.”

“‘Shield her from other males?’ You’re kidding me?”

“Nope. He just feels like he has to protect his sister from unwanted suitors, that’s all. It’s kind of cute, actually. I mean, if you had a sister that you loved and cared for, you’d probably do the same, right?”

“We’re all humans! This doesn’t make any sense.”

“It’s one of his personality quirks. He just ends up taking a bit far regardless of species. I don’t think he can help it, honestly. It’s probably the pheromones. Beem doing it since adolescence.”

I sat back and absorbed the information. A big lizard goes around and threatens everyone with a look that says he was going to tear out a throat or three, and it’s all because he was freaking about his sister’s period? Sure, why not? It wasn’t that much weirder than everything else from the last few months.

“Okay, fine,” I said. “What can we do about it, then? We can’t continue on business if he keeps this up.”

“Oh, it’s harmless. No one should feel threatened by him.”

“Well, everyone is.”

She shook her head. “Isians have a variety of vocalization and body language to express themselves. It’s very subtle. He may look angry when he does this, but he never actually is. It’s just posturing. It’s not like he hisses. That’s when you really know they’re upset.”

I didn’t mention anything else.

Arlene searched around the table and cursed when she saw her purse on the floor. She got off her chair and began collecting its contents. “Anyway, that’s why we usually keep Tia on hormonal inhibitors,” she said. “But with everything that’s been happening lately, I completely forgot about it. She must have hit proestrus on the seventh. I’m not going to hear the end of it from Natalia.”

The seventh—the day we went to the zoo.

She gathered her belongings, stood, and cursed again when she tried to close the purse and discovered the clasps were missing. She rubbed her forehead with her palm and sighed. “I’m sorry, Lyle. I’m going to have to cut our lunch short. I have to get back and start making new arrangements to take care of this. Forgive me?”

“It’s no problem, I understand,” I said, secretly thanking God it was over.

“In the meantime, just give the twins some space. Make sure people in Summit do too.”

“Everyone?”

“Everyone with a Y chromosome, anyway.”

“How about Tia? I mean, to take care of her. Anything special or something? This is kind of new for me.”

Arlene smiled. “We’ve been doing this for eons, Lyle. Don’t worry about her, she’ll be fine.” She pulled some paper bills from her purse and placed them on the table. “Here, this should pay for the meal and a cab back to Summit.”

I tried tp ush the money back. “No, no, you don’t have to. I’ll take care of—”

“You take care of the Isians until I get back, okay? I’m counting on you.”

“But the money—”

She leaned in and pecked me on the cheek. “Bye Lyle,” she said. She hurried out the restaurant.

I sat alone with a piece of veal, a half-plate of pasta, and a bunch of money, just like nature intended. I stabbed my veal with a fork and watched in child-like glee as the foamy meat held it upright. The waiter came on a courtesy visit to the table.

“Did your partner leave?” he asked.

“Yeah.” I gazed onto my plate and deliberated whether I should make a second go at it. I turned to the waiter. “Say buddy, you wouldn’t know of any good pizza places around here, would you?”