The Dragon Keeper (28 page)

“I know you, Meg. You act so tough and above it all, but you crave that same recognition. You need to feel loved and needed by those animals. You call Daphne my surrogate child? That’s rich.”

Trust her mother to make the issue about rewards. What was the point of doing anything, according to Theresa Whittaker, if you didn’t get something in return? Her whole life she’d hungered for those ribbons and trophies, and now she was trying to group Meg in with her, as if there were any similarity between shoveling shit at the zoo and parading a purebred whippet in front of hundreds of adoring eyes.

~

One day Meg hauled a bucket of dead rats to the exhibit and peeked through the window. Jata lay on a large boulder, a behavior she’d recently developed in the afternoons that was a natural mirror—Meg had read—to the thermoregulation activities of island Komodos. They stayed inactive so their bodies didn’t overheat.

When Chuck made her the primary keeper of the new Komodo exhibit, Meg had been shocked. She’d been working at the zoo for six months, busting her ass while more senior keepers put their gossip and smoke breaks before their animals, but the whole time Chuck acted as if Meg didn’t know a fish from a damn monkey. Then, out of the blue, he called her into his office and handed her the file for a
Varanus komodoensis
, an eight-month-old female wild capture, already crossing the ocean in a freight ship from Indonesia.

“I know your background is more domestic lizards and alligators, but we don’t have anyone experienced with Komodos on staff. I’ll expect you to liaison with the refuge and get the habitat set up prior to the specimen’s arrival. There will be a lot of research expected of you, Megan, above and beyond your position. Are you ready to handle the responsibility?”

“Yes. Yes, I’m ready.” There had to be something more professional to say—maybe ask about the budget or space she would have to work with—but only one question surfaced. “What’s her name?”

Chuck sighed, but she was starting to see how the tic that crunched his overworked eyes had more to do with him than anything he thought about her.

“Jata. It says the name is Jata.”

Jata was fascinating. When she arrived at the zoo, every behavior seemed new and mysterious to Meg. Why did she cock her head toward the viewing platform but not actually look around before she took a swim? How did her claws grip the rock when she climbed to the top? Why did her tail look long and stiff when she first arrived, then limp and dragging after she’d been at the zoo for a few weeks? Was she getting comfortable or depressed? Did she need stimulus or solitude? After exhausting all the zoological studies on record, Meg started calling other Komodo keepers around the U.S. and even Gus, Jata’s transfer contact from Indonesia. She watched the delicate mosaic of sage- and slate-colored scales until they blurred into a curious splotch that darted around the exhibit with the agility of a dog. Ben started to think she was obsessed and, considering the stack of books and absently scrawled notes littering her studio, it wasn’t hard to see his point.

The exhibit door had a built-in chute to send the food inside, but that was for later, when Jata tripled in size. At a little under three feet long and with jaws no bigger than the palm of Meg’s hand, there was no real danger. Meg unlocked the door and stepped into the exhibit.

Jata looked toward the door and zeroed in on her. That was the first thing Meg had noticed after Jata arrived, the intelligence that lingered behind those black eyes. They didn’t reflect light, Komodo eyes, and maybe that was part of it. Jata just took everything in with that piercing gaze and locked it inside.

This was usually Jata’s cue to run. She played the old duck-and-cover game every time she got her water changed or her exhibit cleaned, hightailing it for her little makeshift cave like they were going to shoot her—which they’d only done once for that stupid microchip—and then she waited until the door was shut and locked tight before reappearing. Today, though, she didn’t run. She stood up on the rock and darted her tongue in and out, maybe getting a whiff of the carrion in the air.

“Chow time, little one.” Meg dumped the rats in a pile on the dirt while Jata just stood there, staring. Instead of leaving like she normally did, Meg took a couple steps back, leaned deliberately against the back wall of the exhibit, and held her breath. Just to see. Jata looked down at the food and then up at Meg—a big, slow-motion yes—and then she climbed down the rock and walked over. Before digging into her meal, she glanced sideways at Meg one last time with her head cocked and humble near the ground, and flicked her tongue in one brief loop. Hello.

~

“Just say anything. It doesn’t matter. I’m looking for intonation and clarity of sound, not specific words.”

Meg pointed the microphone at Gemma Perkins, the new part-timer who was still working on her zoology degree at the U, who shrugged and took the mic with a smile creeping up one sunny-apple cheek.

“Hello. Perkins here, reporting for KP or Cage P, as it were. I do not create the assignments. Not this newbie. You say speak, and I speak. The newbie must be torn apart before she can be made whole. One must destroy in order to create.”

“Mmm-hmm,” Meg muttered, playing with the volume level on the computer.

“I have been in love with Meg Yancy since my first day, and I jump at the chance to help her science project, no matter what nefarious scheme it might be.”

“I think that’s good. We can break it up from there.” Meg nodded, noting the length of the sound bite. Laughter shredded her focus, and she looked up to see Antonio Rodríguez holding his side and leaning on her computer station.

“Do you want something?”

“You might want to check that last part,” he advised, winking at Gemma.

Meg tucked the pen behind her ear and glanced between the two of them. “Why, was there some feedback?”

Playing back the recording, she heard Gemma’s words this time—
I have been in love with Meg Yancy since my first day
—and her face started burning as Antonio busted out again, thumping the back of the monitor.

“Nothing gets past you, Yancy.”

“Go screw an intern, Rodríguez.” She slashed the file into pieces and started renaming them.

“Well, I would”—he leaned over the top of the screen, dangling muscular forearms into her line of sight—“but all my interns are on winter break. Isn’t that a shame?”

He was talking to Gemma now.

“You want me to tell you what I think about you, or are you just going to shove a microchip up my ass?” Gemma asked, with a voice like honey.

He stood up and retreated to the vet wing, still chuckling loudly, as Gemma nudged Meg with an elbow.

“Sorry about that. I just like to play, you know?”

“Well, you found the player.” Meg cocked her head toward Antonio and proceeded to splice files and move them around.

“Yeah, no.” She drew both words out like caramel, stretching her arms above her head. “I don’t mean like that. I have a toddler, and sometimes I forget to leave the teasing mommy at home, you know?”

“Okay, sure. Thanks for the recording.”

Meg inserted a CD and burned the files over, glancing at the keyboard, the monitor, anywhere that wasn’t near Gemma. She didn’t have anything against kids, really, as long as they didn’t throw their toys into the exhibits or whine about how boring the reptiles were.

Gemma kept stretching in her chair, contorting her body into strange letters. “Are you going to tell me what this is for, or am I going to hear myself dubbed over a kung fu movie one day?”

She shrugged. “Come see if you want.”

~

The trails thinned out as the last visitors made their way back to the parking lots and the light rail station. Meg motioned for Gemma to be quiet as they approached the viewing platform for Jata’s exhibit. She set a small boom box on the railing and hit play before tugging Gemma back behind a nearby shrub.

The CD sounded tinny and hollow, with plenty of clicks and bleeps between her spliced recordings. It played three voices: Gemma, Michael—the veteran mammal keeper—and Meg. A voice spoke for a minute or two, then the CD switched to someone else.

From behind the shrub, Meg touched Gemma’s arm and mouthed, “Look.”

Inside the exhibit, Jata rested halfway into her lagoon, submerging her back legs and tail in the water that rippled with reflected exhibit lights. Eyes closed, she paid no attention to the recording when Michael’s deep voice rumbled out of the speakers or when it switched over to Gemma’s casual declaration of love.

When Meg’s voice started, though, Jata’s head swiveled 120 degrees above and behind her body toward the viewing platform.

She searched the empty space until the voice switched back to Gemma, then she turned back around, disinterested again. The CD bounced from Gemma to Michael and back a few times. Nothing. No reaction. Meg hadn’t noticed she was still touching Gemma’s arm until Gemma covered her hand with her own and squeezed.

The next time Meg’s recorded voice played back, Jata immediately stood up and walked out of the water toward the platform with her head cocked to one side. Her eyes swept from side to side, searching for the body that went with the voice, and she licked the air to locate the matching scent. Jata recognized her voice. A bubble of excitement swelled in Meg’s chest as Jata came too close and disappeared from view under the platform ledge.

Jata knew her. Jata wanted her. Meg wasn’t imagining the hello in the dragon’s eyes, or the familiarity between them during her feedings.

The knowledge filled up every part of her body with a bright, basking glow. She squeezed Gemma’s hand with fingers that had become warm and slick, but just as Gemma mirrored her wide-eyed grin, she stuttered and sank down on the floor.

“What is it?” Gemma whispered.

Meg shook her head and shrugged, but she felt as if she’d been slapped in the face: Out of nowhere, her mother’s words had flashed into her head—
you crave recognition, you need to be loved
—like an insistent, clashing overlay as Meg’s voice looped around and around on the CD.

This is Meg Yancy. Does the Komodo dragon know me? This is Meg Yancy. Does the Komodo dragon know me?

32 Days
after
Hatching

M
eg slammed through the double doors separating the vet wing from the keeper’s cage a half hour before her shift was supposed to start. The cage was empty except for Chuck, who sat quietly on the bench directly in front of her locker. He wasn’t fidgeting or poring over lists. His clipboard lay ignored in his lap. Rather than acknowledge her, he dropped his gaze from her locker when she came in and looked to the floor as if for support. The incredibly un-Chuck-like picture sucked all the rage out of Meg’s limbs and filled them back up with a cold, knowing dread. She walked to her locker, keeping her back to him.

“Why the hell doesn’t my badge work on the quarantine room?” The words came out jerky and strange. “I got here early so I could see her, and I can’t even get in the door.”

“Clearance is determined by the veterinary department.”

“What department? Antonio’s gone.” She kicked her street shoes into the back of the locker and pulled out her work boots, trying to swallow the rush of fear at putting those two words together. He wasn’t
gone
. He couldn’t be gone. Chuck had to be there for some other reason. Maybe if she didn’t look at him he would go away. If she could just put on her work boots and get to work …

“Sandra Mienkewicz is taking over as head veterinarian for the time being. She’s proven very capable over the last few months.”

Sandra was the part-time vet, but Meg rarely worked with her; Sandra mainly handled mammals. “Tell her to get me some freaking clearance. I’m Jata’s keeper.”

“That’s why I’m here.” His voice was flat under the weight of things she couldn’t bear to turn around and face. “We have to go upstairs.”

~

He took her to the same boardroom that had been crammed full of excited and mystified people a week ago. Now it was empty except for two people: Gerald Dawson and Dr. Joyce Reading.

“Come in, Ms. Yancy. Have a seat.” Gerald sounded exactly like Chuck—quiet and dead sober.

She sat two chairs down from them, and Chuck awkwardly filled the gap, setting his clipboard down on the table. Stacks of papers and dog-eared books lay in front of Dr. Reading, but the space in front of Gerald was empty except for a glossy black pen, and its very aloneness held ten times the weight as anything else that could be sitting on that table. It drew the eye.

Gerald took a deep breath and began. “Yesterday’s incident was a terrible and tragic event, made worse by the number of guests who witnessed and, in some cases, recorded the attack. We are extremely lucky that Antonio Rodríguez was not killed. The surgeons tell us that he may still lose his leg; it’s touch and go at this point.”

Antonio would live. The sudden relief overwhelmed her, and she tried to reach past the sound-bite crap and cling to that piece of information. Her carelessness hadn’t gotten him killed. He was going to live.