Lightning People (22 page)

Del suppressed the rage firing inside of her. She fought the words crowding her tongue
. If I hadn't acted, this animal wouldn't be alive
.

Abrams pointed to the door.

“My office. Right now,” he ordered and retreated with the fast confidence of knowing she'd follow close behind.

She walked slowly down the steps and through the dark hallway. She passed through the break room, ignoring the staff that silently followed her with their eyes. Abrams stood, hand on doorknob, to let her pass before slamming it shut and closing the metal window blinds.

He petted his tie as he sat deep in his chair. The wheels wheezed with his weight against the floor.

“This notebook isn't authorized paperwork.”

“It's my own,” she said, her voice flickering between insolence and remorse. “I still fill out the dailies in the binder. I just wanted to be a little more thorough in my observations. I know we aren't technically supposed to keep our own records, but it's not exactly a violation, Dr. Abrams, is it?”

She considered the ridiculousness of this moment, of having to fight to keep a job she had imagined quitting so many times, sitting in this very seat across from his desk to deliver the long-awaited good-bye. She would have been happy to tear a page from the notebook and write out her resignation letter, but that would not have been quitting on her own terms. What she had before her, as Abrams twisted in his seat and brought one leg over the other, was the possibility of being fired, as if she hadn't devoted the last decade of her life to this department.

“That's exactly what it is, Ms. Kousavos. A violation. I'm not sure if you understand, but what we are responsible for at this institution is a curatorial program that involves a dangerous, poisonous, rare, and priceless collection.” He overarticulated each word. “We follow a strict policy set up over an eighty-year history to ensure the safety and well-being of these species. We cannot, we will not, allow staff to make their own rules and set their own conditions. You are not a visiting professor. Understand?”

Behind him hung a poster of a loggerhead tortoise swimming unhurriedly through green, sun-mottled water. As always, Del noticed the likeness between the tortoise and her superior—the same lipless grimace, beaked nose, and flattened, bald head.

“Of course I understand,” she replied. “I've been here the longest of anyone out there. Dr. Abrams, I believe I'm owed a little consideration. If you want an apology for opening the cage alone, I'm happy to provide one. But this is just a notebook. No more.”

“An apology.” He laughed with irritable glee. “No, I'm afraid that's not enough. I am aware that you have a specific interest in rattlesnakes and for the past months I have allowed you to take a little extra time with the rattlers while compromising your other duties. That's going to end. This notebook looks to me like a personal research project.”

“It's not a personal project,” she lied. To his credit, Abrams had a good mind for assessing situations. It was so often the least compassionate people who gauged human behavior so succinctly.

“It looks like an outside study. We have researchers here already, tenured professors, experts who have waited years for an opportunity to observe these animals. It is a breach of contract for you to do research on the department clock. I've been too lenient.”

Del reached for the notebook on the desk and expected Abrams to keep it locked under his fist, but he let her take it.
That was too easy
, she thought nervously. Like it was the last thing he was going to let her do.

“I have let you name it. I'm afraid you've confused naming with owning,” he said. “It is not uncommon for a young staff member to mix these emotions. But you're a zoo employee, not a pet owner. You don't have a personal relationship with these animals.”

She stiffened in her seat. From a certain angle, the tortoise looked like it was balancing on top of Abrams's head.

“Ten years. I've been here ten years,” she repeated. “When have I ever thought I owned anything?”

“I don't dislike you, Del.” He cracked a smile and studied her face as if he were looking at a photograph, free to roam the contours of her cheeks, eyes, and lips. “I know that you're with us on a work visa and I want you to understand that I wouldn't jeopardize your status in this country without serious reason.” She looked down at the wedding band on her finger, but decided it was best to use that last weapon on her own terms, when she was ready. “I'm giving you a warning. Strike two and maybe we will have to reassess your situation. I'd hate for that to happen.”

Photographs hung around his office, group shots that mostly looked like faded portraits of colonizers on safari, sidling up to a jeep or standing in front of a giant turtle shell with proud, arrogant smiles. Del only appeared in one picture, taken in front of the building with a more multicultural congregation of employees, less tall and rigid and neatly arranged. It had been taken seven years ago to commemorate the zoo's centennial anniversary, and out of those twenty faces only three staff members remained.

“I have always tried,” she replied with careful restraint, “to be professional.”

Abrams breathed with satisfaction.

“Good. Then I think it's best if you spend some time away from the animals. A little vacation from the nursery just to get your bearings. And, so you know, we are donating the baby rattler to a research project. I don't want to hear a word of protest from you.”

“What project?” she asked, so flustered she didn't bother to disguise the shock.

“The professor I introduced you to a few weeks ago. She's studying the effects of venom.”

“What effects?”

“That isn't important, is it?” Abrams swiveled back in his chair and ducked under his desk. He reappeared with a stack of brochures printed in yellow lettering. WELCOME TO THE REPTILE HOUSE. COLD BLOODS WILL WARM YOU. He might as well have been pointing a gun. “You'll be passing these out at the entrance for the next few days,” he said with a smile. “Face time with the public. A good way of remembering one of our chief responsibilities is educating more than ourselves.”

The brochures had been Francine Choi's punishment for killing a rattlesnake. And now they were Del's punishment for saving one. Yes, she should have taken the day off. Soon, hopefully, she would have every day off. Del made a silent promise right in Abrams's office to quit the day that Apollo was donated to animal testing.

MADI TRIED TO look her brother in the eye as she sat frozen on a stool in his studio. This attempt was frustrated not only because of the two blinding towers of tungsten lights trained on her but because Raj's eyes were mostly hidden behind his camera.

“Do you remember Raphael?” she asked, rubbing her neck.

“Raphael? The guy you thought you loved, what was it, eight years ago?”

“Six. And the
R
sounds like an
H
.
Haf-ael
. Brazilian. Portuguese.”

“Don't move so much. I'm trying to get you, not your blur.” Hunched forward in the position of a defensive linesman, Raj held his camera an inch from his eyes, waiting for his sister to stop moving. She fixed her hair to make sure the part cut evenly down the center of her scalp.

“Well, the point is, when we broke up, I always harbored a particular animosity for Brazilians. I didn't allow bossa nova to be played on cab radios. I refused to eat at those restaurants where you turn a card over when you want more meat. I'd meet someone from Rio and go cold. I wouldn't even put out my hand.”

Defeated, Raj balanced his camera on his shoulder as a sign that
Madi was being an uncooperative subject. Even when she wasn't speaking, her eyes blinked, her feet fidgeted, and her lips expanded into an exaggerated smile when he had specifically asked for no smile. No fidgeting. No blinking.

“Stop it.” He reached forward and pried her hand from her hair. “Film is expensive. This isn't digital. Do me a favor. Close your eyes. Relax your face. And then open them again. It isn't about how you think you should look. Let me judge that.”

“How can I not squint from all the light you've got on me?” she said incredulously. “It's like I'm under deep interrogation.”

“When you see the pictures, it'll look natural. Put your arm back on your lap. That's it.” Raj snapped a few more shots, leaning from left to right to capture off angles, hoping to cleave the angularity in her face. For a good thirty seconds, Madi managed the blank, saturnine expression of the mildly brain-dead (admittedly biting the insides of her cheeks just enough so Raj wouldn't notice). But selfconsciousness got the better of her. She erupted into a laugh and then collapsed on the stool, rocking against her knees.

“I'm sorry,” she gasped. “I can't help it. I'm not good at this.”

Raj put the camera down on his desk, returning to face her with crossed arms impatient at the fingers. “Now you know why I don't shoot people anymore. There's no use. Would music help you relax?”

“Help me relax?” she mocked. “You sound like you're pressuring a teenage model into removing her bra. How can I relax when I know you're going to use these for some future exhibition with my face blown up so huge that everyone can study my wrinkles? And if you don't mind, can you please manage the illusion of high cheekbones?”

Raj had shot portraits of his sister for the past five years, nodding through her protests as he positioned her on the stool each time and told her not to move. She'd always complain, but secretly Madi was flattered. The shoot had become something of a yearly ritual, and afterward Raj would buy her dinner and they could finally talk without the interference of the camera. The truth was that Madi liked to have her picture taken by him, even sitting in front of the white scrim in the blazing heat, because it proved that they still factored in each other's worlds. Only occasionally did Madi worry
that the results of all these photo shoots would one day manifest in some exploitative series framed on gallery walls.

Raj cranked the small fan in the corner a notch higher, although the increased current merely ruffled his curly hair. Sweat the shape of an arrowhead stained the front of his V-neck T-shirt, and thin black hairs stuck against his collarbone.

“Staring in direct light only increases the lines on my face. I'm squinting. Am I squinting?”

Raj waited for his sister to reclaim her expressionless mouth and eyes. Then he picked up the camera for another round of shots.

“The reason I brought up Raphael,” she continued.

“Yeah, Rapha. Didn't we call him that?”

“What I mean is, even when the Brazilian economy refused to keep tanking and started going global a few years ago, I was secretly pissed. Stupid President Lula and his Labor Party making economic trade deals all over the northern hemisphere. All this anger. All this venom spit toward a corrupt South American democracy. A whole population cursed a zillion times in my head to endless poverty simply because I had some unfinished issues with that prick from Ipanema who, let's face it, never had any real potential. Can any man have a serious stake in love if he sing-songs English like he's molesting you?”

“Why don't you stand?” Raj suggested, taking a second to exchange a spent film cartridge for a fresh one.

“Mind if I keep sitting? So my point . . . ”

“Always a point. Yes, you're squinting.”

“It's exactly like your not coming to India with me, your absolute refusal to consider the option. You hate Dad. But Dad's not India. So come with me because you don't know shit about the country and maybe you'll end up finding inspiration there.”

“That's not why I'm not going.”

“I know what you say,” she moaned. “Anyone who spends ten minutes with you knows what you say, and we're all pretty sick of hearing it. You don't want to do work for corporate interests, blah, blah, blah. That artist nonconformist act is so tiring. But I have a new proposition. You'll come to India as my companion. I don't
even expect you to shoot anything. I'll pay for your trip myself. No company commitment. No pictures of call centers. Just me funding some forced experience on my older brother. It's my present. We leave in ten days. That's as simple and uncompromising as it gets.”

Raj turned off one of the light towers, changing the angles on Madi's face and throwing her shadow against the wall.

“Thank god,” she said, leaning down to grab a towel on the floor. She dabbed her forehead lightly, trying not to smear her makeup. “We can spend a week together sightseeing. We can go to the Taj Mahal if you want or the Gothic church in Goa. Whatever you want. Like old times.”

Raj read the light meter that hung around his neck and adjusted the aperture.

“What old times?” he asked without looking up. “We never took a vacation together. We never once went anywhere. We lived in Florida, in a house sprinkled in seashells. Dad never took us—”

“He took us to Tampa,” she interrupted with a noting finger. “You threw up. You came to visit me my sophomore year, and look what that did. You moved here after that, didn't you? Okay, we haven't traveled much together. But wouldn't it be fun, the two of us?”

“Tons,” he said and then lifted the camera to his face, where he appreciated the excuse of not having to look directly at her. There was nothing so damaging as staring into his sister's eyes and rejecting her advances. Because in those eyes he could find what they did share—the attempt to force the other over to their side by their own stubborn will. “No, Madi,” he said calmly. “I can't go. Too much work to do right now.”