Page 31 of Darling Beasts

If the guy was willing to pay it, Ozzie couldn’t say no, but, God, he could puke just imagining this masterpiece in the clutches of some dumb baby. “Maybe she’d be interested in some smaller Pooh memorabilia instead?” he tried. “I have an ink drawing of Pooh, Piglet, and Christopher Robin peering over a bridge, and another of Eeyore laying tits up in his bog...”

“The map is perfect,” Paul said, sliding his phone back into his pocket. “I’ll check with her tonight. Hopefully by the end of the weekend, we’ll close the deal, and this adorable scene will be up in the nursery.”

Chapter Nineteen

Gabby

We pulled up to the entrance. “Thanks, Tony,” I said as I leapt out of the car. “I really appreciate everything.” By everything I meant the drive, his discretion, and most of all the way he’d maintained a scary calm when I sprinted up to him in the motor court, demanding to be taken to the zoo. Now it was one full hour past my scheduled meeting with dos Santos, and I didn’t know whether he’d still be at work, but my symptoms were raging, and I needed to act.

I tried the administration building first, but the doors were locked. The park itself was open, so I made a beeline for the nearest obvious employee. “Hello! Hi! Excuse me!” I said, panting, practically foaming at the mouth. “I’m looking for Dr. Eli dos Santos. Any idea where he is?”

The girl—a teenage ticket taker—tilted her head, confused.

“HE’S THE CHIEF CONSERVATION OFFICER,” I shouted. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to yell. He’s expecting me.”

“He left ten minutes ago,” said a voice. I whirled around to find a tall man, in his early thirties, best guess, dressed in a plaid button-down, khaki pants, and scuffed-up Vans. “You must be Gabby,” the man said as the ticket taker shuffled away. He extended a hand and smiled with a set of impressively white teeth. “I’m Raj. From the message boards?Mydausjavanensis. The Sunda stink badger.”

“Raj! The San Diego PBSer,” I said, at once consumed by such a profound sense of relief I honestly could’ve wept. “It’s so nice to meet you,” I gushed, shaking and shaking and shaking his hand. “Someone who gets it. Wow. Sorry I missed the meeting. How was dos Santos? Is he such a turd IRL?”

“Beg pardon?”

“He’s just...” Biting my lip, I scratched my left arm. “His tendency to withhold information is extremely aggravating. Does he want to help or not? Anyway.” My eyes darted around. “I have a problem.” I pushed up a sleeve to reveal my bumpy, mottled arm. “I’m flaring and don’t know what the hell I’m supposed to do.”

Raj nodded, smiling with his lips closed. “Let’s take a stroll.” He gestured toward the entrance. “If you’re flaring, a zoo’s the perfect place to be. No one will notice an extra creature or two.”

“Brilliant,” I said, wondering if they’d let me move in.

***

A flamboyance of flamingos greeted us as we entered the zoo. I hadn’t considered this “stroll” might become a memory lane of horrors, but it seemed too late to back out. We swapped PBS origin stories as we ventured down Treetops Way.

Raj’s symptoms began five years ago, when a volcanic island collapsed into the sea, causing a tsunami in the Sunda strait, after which Raj was visited upon by a trio of baby stink badgers. Our early warning signs were similar, though Raj described the scent as “burnt tires.”

I told Raj about my bald eagle, the ocelots, “and a bunch more after that,” not wanting to get into it. Also, I was distracted by the intense itchiness and the buzzing of my phone with a barrage of incoming texts from my sister. There’d been a monkey. And poop in the barn. Talia was demonstrably irritated, but thank God it wasn’t some vicious carnivore that would’ve ripped everyone to shreds.

Urgent situation, I wrote.

Friend in need.

Planning to make it to dinner!

I had no desire to attend the tasting room summit but hated to leave Talia in a lurch. Flying under the radar was key with my sister, and bailing on dinner was the kind of thing she’d never let me forget. But, right now, I had bigger issues to tackle. The monkey showed up but I was still scratching like crazy. Would something else appear?

“I can’t decide which is worse,” Raj mused as we passed the orangutan enclosure. “A different animal every time would be stressful, but nonstop stink badgers suck. They’re basically skunks, but worse.”

I noodled on this, checking my arms, which were red but calming down. “Yeah,” I said. “You’d almost rather have a skunk, because baby skunks are pretty cute?”

“That’s what I’m saying,” Raj agreed.

“I’ve had some badger-adjacent creatures,” I said, mentally ticking through the list. On my left rib cage, eighteen dime-sized tattoos ran in two lines. An eagle head. An ocelot spot. A mongoose foot and so on. One tattoo for each flare, minus the flamingos. And monkey, I supposed. I hadn’t gotten around to them yet.

“Two otters,” I said. “I also had a ‘least weasel.’ The wolverine. He didn’t smell so great, either. Like stinky cheese.” A wolverine’s anal gland secretions were “complex,” said the guy who picked him up, and while there was nothing creepy about his reporting of this, it was not something a sixteen-year-old girl cared to hear from a wildlife rescue man.

We rounded the corner and saw the gorillas. OrGorilla gorillagorillas, who really knew. Raj and I exchanged looks. We were thinking the same thing.

“I don’t envy your stink badgers,” I said. “But at least you can create a plan of attack? I always have to come up with a new solution. And let me tell you, there aren’t a plethora of screaming hairy armadillo rescues around, much less one you can trust.”

“I never thought about that...” Raj said with a frown.

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