| |
 |
 |
avie was sleeping, which made a nice change. He’d been colicky all week, and Carl and Diana had taken turns staying with the kid in his room, attempting to stem with their presence his crying and mewling, but to little avail. As Carl got out of the car and went around to the passenger side to take his son so that Diana could get out, he hoped that Davie wouldn’t suddenly wake up, hoped that the sudden jostling and jarring as they carried him into the shop wouldn’t bring him back to consciousness, and with him the screaming. But it was okay—as they entered the store, Davie slept on, nestled in Diana’s arms.
The front part of the establishment was cramped and cluttered, but clean. Sundries sat jammed onto narrow shelves, strings of herbs and bulbs hung from the low ceiling, and bundles of strange textiles spilled out from barrels and bushels. As they moved to the counter, the proprietor came out from the back room. He was bald and tall, his wrinkled skin a pale gray in the dim light, and he wore a robe of unidentifiable fabric swathed around his cadaverously thin body.
“Can I help you?” he asked, his voice dry and precise. He didn’t smile.
“We need something for . . .” said Carl, gesturing at his son. “We heard that . . .”
“Ah, yes,” said the storekeeper. “Follow me into the back, please.”
They did, passing more merchandise as they wound through the little labyrinth of racks and shelves, and as they progressed into the depths of the shop the air began to get thicker and mustier, redolent with the heavy smell of exotic spices. Carl followed the man, but kept glancing back at his wife to make sure she was still there, was still set on the decision they had made. She smiled at him, gently jogging the baby in her arms as she walked, and he smiled back.
They reached the back room, and the storekeeper moved to the side so that Carl and Diana could enter. Around them, stacked floor to ceiling, filling every available inch of wall space, were cages. The inhabitants, disturbed by the arrival of all these people, began to caterwaul, making an unholy racket with growls, chirps, whimpers and yowls. Carl grimaced as the din hit him, and shook his head. The smell was stronger, here, too.
“Perhaps you should look around for a bit,” said the bald man. “Finding what you want may take a while.”
“Carl,” whispered Diana. “Look!”
Davie was awake. It was probably the noise of the creatures in the cages that had done it, and Carl waited for his son to begin screaming, to add his voice to the cacophony that surrounded them—but the baby was quiet. His eyes were wide open, and he stared with a curious intensity at a point across from him, at one of the cages. Carl turned his head to see what Davie was looking at, and saw it. . . .
“Can I take a look at that one?” he asked the man, pointing at the cage that held Davie’s attention. There was little motion in that particular enclosure, though to either side of it, things were throwing themselves up against the mesh and screaming incoherent exhortations, as if begging Carl to let them out, to take them home.
The proprietor didn’t speak, but moved to the cage in question. He reached into his robe and extracted a heavy ball of keys, selected one, and unlocked the door. Carl moved over to join him, and so did Diana, and when the door was swung open they both bent over curiously so that they could peer inside.
“Would you like to hold it?” asked the man.
“Please,” nodded Carl.
The storekeeper reached in and extracted the thing, and Carl took it. He was struck by the cool of the creature’s skin, and the pebbly leather feel of it. Small black hairs jutted from it in random patches, but they weren’t as bristly as they looked—rather, they felt smooth and silken, like a woman’s hair. The thing had three multifaceted eyes in its head, bulging out like a fly’s would, all of them open and focused on Carl. As he watched, one of the eyes suddenly ceased its regard of the man, and swiveled toward Diana and Davie.
“What do you think, hon?” he asked.
“Let me hold it,” she said. “Here, can you take . . .”
“Allow me,” said the shopkeeper. Diana looked surprised for a second, then smiled and acquiesced. She handed Davie over into the man’s waiting hands, then reached out for the creature her husband held. As he released it, it uncoiled two long, spidery arms and grabbed Diana’s hands.
“Oh, it’s strong!” she exclaimed. “Yes, you’re a big strong one, aren’t you, you little darling!” She cooed and purred over it, and it made a plaintive, mewling sound.
“It’s hungry,” said the proprietor, still holding Davie casually in his arms. Davie was watching the whole scene with a kind of intensity that fascinated Carl. You couldn’t get the kid to pay attention to anything for longer than a couple of seconds, but here he was watching the beast like it was the finest entertainment. “If you’ll allow me, I’ll go feed it . . .”
“No, I’ll take care of that,” said Diana. “Carl, we want this one.”
“You’re sure?” asked her husband. “We can look around some more, maybe find something you like better . . .”
“No, we want this one,” she said again. Then she turned to the bald man.
“It’ll need to be fed a couple of times a day,” he said. “And it’ll probably need a bigger crib than the one you have right now.”
“It can sleep with us for a couple of nights,” she said firmly, “until we can get it a nice bed.”
Carl shook his head amusedly. Once Diana made up her mind, that was it. “I guess we’re taking this one,” he said.
“Fine,” said the shopkeeper. “May you have every joy with it.”
“Let’s take him home, honey,” said Diana, looking with love down at the thing in her arms. “We need to get him fed.”
“It’s a ‘he,’ is it?” asked Carl, laughing.
“It is now,” she said firmly. “Our new little guy . . .”
“You understand the terms?” asked the proprietor.
“We do,” said Carl. “And we’ll be leaving, now. Are we square?”
“We are,” said the man. “And you understand, of course, that there are no returns. Some people get tired of their new acquisitions . . .”
“That won’t happen,” said Diana firmly. “Thank you, sir.”
“You’re welcome,” said the man. Then he turned, put Davie into the now-empty cage and swung the door shut. The baby crawled as best he could to the mesh of the door and watched his parents silently, with wide eyes. Carl waved bye-bye to him, put his arm around his wife’s shoulder, and they turned and walked back out through the store toward the car. Halfway there, seeing that there was no one else in the establishment, Diana shrugged free of Carl and reached up to loosen her blouse. She raised the creature to her now-exposed breast, and Carl looked at it fondly as it opened its mouth, flicked out a forked tongue and clamped forty or so needle-sharp teeth gently on the flesh of Diana’s teat, and began to suckle. This was going to work out all right, he thought, and held the door open for his wife and new son. |
|
|
