Page 50 of Kiss an Angel

Something inside her snapped. She was tired of being everyone’s whipping boy. She was tired of being swatted by baby elephants and treated with contempt by humans.

“Move it yourself!” She threw down the pitch fork and stomped away. She’d had enough. She was going to find Alex and demand that plane ticket. Nothing she could face on her own was as bad as this.

A great roar reverberated through the lot. With it, her skin began to burn from the heat, and her parched throat demanded water. She saw a hose running from the water truck toward the menagerie, and she hurried toward it, feeling vaguely panicked because she had never been so overheated.

Once again, she heard a roar, and she looked up to see Sinjun’s cage baking in the sun. Waves of heat bounced off the asphalt and made the tiger’s orange-and-black stripes shimmer.

Not all the animals were inside the menagerie tent. Some of them had been left in a small fenced-in area between the menagerie and the big top. Chester, a mangy-looking camel, was tethered not far away along with Lollipop, a cream-colored llama with bedroom eyes. A large piece of mildewed white nylon provided a bit of shade for them, but nothing shielded Sinjun from the low angle of the sun that beat through the iron bars. Like her, Sinjun seemed to have been singled out for abuse.

He stared at her with a sad sort of resignation, not even bothering to pick up his ears. Behind him, the llama made a strange clucking sound, while the camel studiously ignored her. The heat from the asphalt soaked through the soles of her sneakers and burned her feet. Perspiration trickled between her breasts. Sinjun’s eyes seared her soul.

Hot. I’m so hot.

She hated this place where animals were kept in cages to be stared at. The llama’s strange clucking rattled through her ears. Her head ached, and the smell of mildew from the nylon sun shade made her stomach queasy. She took an involuntary step backward, wanting to distance herself from the sun and these sad animals and the awful heat. One of her sneakers squished in a puddle of water. She looked down and saw a leak in the coupling of the hose that fed the animals’ watering trough.

Without even thinking about what she was doing, she ran along the length of the hose until she found the brass nozzle spilling water into the trough. Picking it up, she turned it to shut off the flow of water. It dripped cold in her hands.

She squinted from the glare bouncing off the dirty white sun shade, then felt Sinjun’s eyes burning through her already melting skin.

Hot. I’m so hot.

She looked down at the dripping nozzle so cold in her hands. With a savage twist, she lifted the hose and sent the cool water flying directly into the tiger’s cage.

Yes!

Immediately she felt relief seeping into her body.

“Hey!” Digger came running toward her, moving as fast as his arthritic knees would carry him. “You stop that, missy! You stop that right now, you hear?”

The tiger flashed his teeth at him. She whirled around and sent the spray of cold water directly at the old man, soaking the front of his grubby work shirt. “Stay away!”

He reared backward. “What’re you doin’? You’re gonna kill that cat! Cats don’t like to get wet.”

She turned the water back on the tiger and felt the cool relief moving deeper into her bones, just as if she were spraying her own body. “This one does.”

“Stop it, I said! You cain’t do that.”

“Sinjun likes it. Look at him, Digger.”

Sure enough, instead of retreating from the water, the tiger was reveling in it, turning his body into the cold spray. As she continued to douse him, she wanted to tell Digger that this wouldn’t have been necessary if he’d done a better job caring for the animals, but she knew he was overworked, and she held her tongue.

“Give me that!”

Neeco had come up behind her, and he reached out to swipe the hose from her hand. She’d had more than enough of Neeco Martin, and she refused to let it go.

Water flew. She gasped as she took the full force of the spray in her face, but she didn’t relax her grip on the hose.

He wrenched her wrist. “Stop it, Daisy! Hand it over.”

Sinjun’s maddened roar vibrated through the heavy afternoon air, drowning out the bustle of everyday noises. The cage shook as he threw his huge body at the bars, almost as if he were trying to get at Neeco to protect her. Startled, the trainer dropped her wrist and turned toward the chilling noises.

Sinjun flattened his ears against his head and hissed at him. Daisy jerked the hose free.

“Damn crazy tiger,” Neeco muttered. “Someone should have put him down years ago.”

Daisy sent the spray of water back into the cage. Speaking more from bluster than conviction, she said, “He doesn’t like it when you mess with me.”

“Look at that, Neeco,” Digger said. “That sonovabitch likes the water.”

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