The Dragon Keeper (18 page)

“The sooner you decide, the better it will be for everyone, especially you. Believe me, there’s nothing worse than living in indecision.”

She dropped her hand into her lap.

“I’m glad you called, Magpie.” The old endearment sounded easy on his tongue, and a strange flood in her chest had the whole freaking story pouring out. She started at the very beginning, when she’d discovered the eggs with Gemma so many months ago. He let her talk for almost an hour, interrupting only to get a clarification or ask a question, and Meg began to feel as if for all these years he’d only been waiting for her to be ready. Maybe he was never supposed to rescue her at all; maybe she was supposed to find her own way home.

Afterward, just before they hung up, he said, “I think you just need to take a trip to Ireland. Come see the old man for a while. Use those tickets I gave you and bring whoever you want. Even Ben, if that’s what you decide.”

She shook her head, even though she realized he couldn’t see it. “I can’t leave the hatchlings right now. They’re too vulnerable.”

There was silence for a minute, and then he sighed. “You sound like your mother. She was always chained to those dogs, always putting them before anything and anyone else. Even when there wasn’t a show coming up for months, she couldn’t spend a day away from them. She’d sit out in their kennels talking to them, for Christ’s sake.”

A few months ago, Meg would have snapped or just hung up the phone, horrified by any resemblance to her rigid, trophy-hungry mother. Anyone who’d spent eight years of her childhood trapped in the crazy competition circuit would have felt the same way. But now, after everything that had happened in the last few weeks, tiny dragon claws clutched her chest and warmed her to the indisputable biology of the matter. Theresa Whittaker had been her own sort of keeper, as devoted to her dogs as Meg was to her Komodos. If she hadn’t been in that minivan, hadn’t watched her mother coddle and love and race and sweat and win, would she be a zookeeper today? If her father had taken her away from the dog shows into the world of normal kids, signed her up for a baseball team or a drama club or whatever those strange, happy kids had been doing, would she ever have known Jata?

“Maybe I do sound like her,” she said softly into the phone. “Maybe I am.”

18 Days
after
Hatching

T
he map was the first thing she saw; it was one of those Rand McNally U.S. travel maps that tented and creased like a deformed turtle shell, hiding all but the legs of her living room coffee table. Paco leaned over it, dragging a Sharpie between an erratic pattern of stars scattered across the Great Lakes and Plains. Ben sat on the floor on the far side of Paco’s legs, smoking a joint and talking through a haze of smoke that made his face look like an ash moon, gray and tranquil. As Meg walked into the room, he looked up.

“You’re home early.” He glanced at the clock, which was edging toward six. “Or early for you.”

“I’m going … shopping with Gemma and Allison.”

He coughed, scissoring his knees into his chest. “It’s not even Christmas.”

Paco laughed. Tall and bone-thin, he was the Olive Oyl to Ben’s Wimpy. She ignored him.

“It’s for that stupid reception. I can’t wear my uniform, and Gemma, well—she’s making me.”

Meg walked up to the nearest side of the couch, turning Paco into a human barrier between herself and Ben, and made a show of looking at the map. Ben continued his one-sided conversation—something about the new menu he wanted to try at the fairs. Paco grunted occasionally, but he didn’t seem to be paying much more attention to Ben’s chatter than Meg was.

She would have just hopped the light rail to the mall side of the America compound after work, except today was the day. It had been two weeks since she’d slept with Antonio—the first time—and she had to tell Ben before the guilt ate her alive. It was like acid in her stomach now, digesting little bits of her insides every time she saw him and acted as if everything were normal. Or normal for them. The whole thing was insane; she didn’t even know what she was cheating on. She choked on the word
boyfriend
. Lover, roommate, friend? None of it was really Ben. Didn’t everyone have some sort of Ben, a person who was just circling in the same habitat, putting up with you while you put up with him? Someone who met you in the middle to pay bills, call for pizza, and trade orgasms?

He wasn’t even in this habitat for part of the year. She stared at the map and counted the days. Soon he would migrate south, leaving a bunch of half-filled notebooks, a scattering of roaches, and the ghost of an empty waiting room with pale, skin-colored walls.

Ben passed the joint to Paco, still talking, and she thought she caught something with her name in it.

“What?”

“I want to go with you to that reception thing. See the miracle babies.”

Paco shook his head and mumbled something in Spanish as he exhaled a cloud of smoke and drew a curvy line between St. Louis and Cedar Rapids.

“Give it up, man,” Ben said, swiping the joint back. “They are miracles, better than nature intended. Right, babe?”

“Why do you want to come with me?” The acid turned into a vacuum, sucking her heart and lungs down into the pit of her stomach. Antonio would be at the reception. Ben and Antonio in the same room, breathing the same air, swigging the same beer.

“See the kids, babe, like I said.”

She met Ben’s eyes for the first time since walking into the room, trying to keep herself steady, but her gaze slithered down somewhere closer to his chest. “It’ll be a circus. Sponsors and bigwig donors all milling around, while management tries to milk everyone for money. You’d hate it.”

“Exactly,” he said as he puffed. “I know you’ll hate it, too, so I’ll come with you and keep you company.”

“I’m talking about the mayor of St. Paul and the media. Chuck even told me today that they invited Nicole Roberts.”

Bet lit up at the name, which was the exact opposite of her reaction when she’d gotten the news. “Perfect! That’s perfect. I’m coming with you for sure. I’m not going to let you face her alone this time.”

“Just make sure the heretic leaves the Virgin out of it this time, okay?” Paco didn’t even look up as he said it. He was connecting Joliet to Wichita and writing dates next to each city.

“Why am I the only heretic in the room? Do you see a rosary around Ben’s neck?”

Paco said something in Spanish that sounded like spitting.

“What was that?” She took a step closer.

“Rosaries aren’t necklaces.”

“Doesn’t matter. Doesn’t matter.” Ben flexed his arms into the air like an overly excitable bear waking up after a long hibernation. He waved vaguely toward both of them. “Don’t worry, either of you. We’ll get her where it hurts. You leave her and the media machine to me.”

“No.”

She fled from the living room, choking on the word. Even the thought of seeing Nicole Roberts again made her nervous and sick. She’d been panicking since Chuck had told her about it a few days ago, and having someone there to support her, to keep her from making any more mistakes, was exactly what she needed. But why was Ben all of a sudden—now that she’d completely destroyed any hope for their relationship—being exactly what she needed?

Pulling her uniform off, she hugged her elbows into her ribcage. Maybe she was making too big a deal out of this. She’d just seen Antonio this afternoon, and he’d barely said hi to her.

She’d been catching up on some paperwork with a few other keepers in the cage when Antonio had passed through on his way to the vet wing.

“Hey, Rodríguez.” She’d jogged over. “You seen the hatchlings today?”

She’d felt pretty smug about it. It had been four days since they’d transported them to the community tank in the baby building, and there wasn’t a scratch on any of them, not even a chipped claw to be found.

“I’ve seen them, yeah … but it can’t be right.” If his pupils hadn’t been normal, she’d have thought he was stroking out. His eyelids were red-rimmed, as if he’d been staring at a computer screen too long, and he’d jumped when she’d called his name, then looked confused.

“It is right. There’s no law that says dragons can’t get along.”

“I have to go. I have to check something.” It wasn’t their usual nonchalant nothing’s-happening-between-us behavior. He wouldn’t even look at her, and before she could say anything else, he disappeared behind the double doors. She stood there, watching the door swing shut and feeling inexplicably rejected until she remembered their last conversation. He still thought she was hopeless. No faith in humans, he’d said.

“Meg, what’s the deal?”

Ben had followed her into the bedroom and lounged on the mountain of balled-up blankets in the middle of the bed.

“Why do you want to come with me? You never came to the zoo when the dolphin had her baby or when we imported the python. Why now? Why are you suddenly so interested?”

“This is stuff for the history books, Meg; this is the animal revolution. Virgin births? Come on, people start religions around this stuff, and it’s happening right now. Here! At your zoo. All that stuff that I document from the news is old. Wars, famine, terrorist attacks. It’s the same old human story. This is finally something new.”

She shook her head, hugging her arms in tighter as the draft chilled her skin. “It’s not new. You’ve already seen the articles from the other zoos. It’s parthenogenesis. It’s just”—she shrugged—“science.”

He sat up farther, leaning over the mound of covers. “Yeah, but the other zoos have only started reporting these virgin births in the last few years.”

“Just because humans finally start to notice things doesn’t make them new.”

She grabbed a shirt from her dresser and pulled it on. Getting up from the bed, he pulled her toward his chest, rubbing the goose bumps back down into her arms. He’d seen that she was cold.

“So, along with the rest of the world who’s not as smart as you, now I’m noticing the zoo and Jata and the babies. I want to come with you, okay?” He smiled. “We’ll party.”

She dropped her forehead to his chest and let his arms wrap around her. His heart thumped lightly, a dancing joint-laced beat she knew as well as the soft hills and valleys of his body. She was comforted, warmed, and completely defeated.

“Just don’t make a scene with Roberts, okay? It’s a really important event for the zoo. I could lose my job if anything goes wrong.”

“Don’t worry, babe. You’ll thank me afterwards. Trust me. And when did you become Miss Corporate America anyway, huh? Remember the Meg that used to challenge her professors and lead PETA demonstrations on the capital?”

She didn’t answer. That Meg wouldn’t have cheated on him either.

~

“Now turn the other way.”

Meg sighed, considered mutiny, then obediently shuffled in a circle in front of the dressing-room mirrors. Allison sat on a puffy footstool with her knees drawn up to her chin, her entire concentration focused on the electric-blue dress that had taken Meg’s body hostage. They’d been in the department store for half an hour, trying on anything Allison shoved underneath the dressing-room doors. This blue number was actually a step up from the last one, a baby-doll rainbow dress that had physically gagged her.

“This one isn’t right,” Allison finally decided. “It makes you look sick.”

Gemma joined them in a tie-dyed halter dress, pirouetting gracefully in front of her daughter. “How about this?”

“Hmm. Maybe.” Allison’s forehead scrunched up as she thought. It would be pretty adorable how seriously the kid took this whole business, if Meg weren’t one of the lab rats. She elbowed Gemma in the side.

“You know this is your fault for not buying her Barbies.”

Allison shook her head. “Barbies are creepy. Girls in plastic boxes. Maybe you should try the rainbow dress again.”

Meg crossed her arms and tried to look intimidating. “Your stock is plummeting, sweetheart.”

“What does that mean?” Allison’s eyes brightened at the prospect of learning something new.

Gemma checked the price tag of her dress and cringed a little. “We’ll teach you, and then you can make Mommy lots of money on the stock market.”

“I’ll go get some more.” She bounced off the chair, but Meg caught her in a bear hug before she squeaked by them. Allison giggled and pretended to fight her way free. It was kind of addictive, hearing that laughter and knowing she was the one who had caused it. It almost made this horrendous shopping trip bearable.

“Get black ones this time,” she growled into Allison’s ear. “If I see pink, there’ll be consequences.”

She turned Allison loose and watched her scamper away, unable to completely stifle the smile on her face. If she and Ben had kept their baby, it would be toddling around by now. Meg could almost see Allison holding its hand, leading it around, teaching it how to choose really ugly dresses.

“Check the clearance rack, honey,” Gemma called as they walked back to their dressing rooms. The salesgirl, a friend of Gemma’s, was keeping an eye on Allison up front. Maybe she’d start showing some mercy toward them and send something back that didn’t look like a parrot at the prom.