Late one Saturday night, as the Marlins played the Dodgers on the coast, Colonel Tom came down with a brutal case of what I diagnosed as lizard hiccups. Symptoms appeared shortly after he downed a cold Heineken and a slice of rich German strudel that Juan had brought from a renowned bakery in Ybor City.
By my wristwatch I timed Colonel Tom’s shuddering burps at eight-second intervals. Discomfort was evident in his lethargic demeanor and blotched, blackening cheeks. Juan had already gone home, so it was left to me to soothe the tremulous reptile. When I tried stroking his corrugated shoulders, Colonel Tom wheeled and snapped percussively. Then, for good measure, he raked a hind claw across my cheek, drawing blood.
“You ungrateful little shit,” I muttered, too harshly.
In response the monitor balefully reared his brick-sized noggin and displayed a well-armored maw, featuring rows of fine needle-sharp teeth. A large opalescent bubble of lizard saliva appeared, then popped moistly on the ensuing hiccup. From the TV set rose a hometown cheer as Gary Sheffield hammered a hanging curve into the left-field bleachers, sinking the Marlins in the bottom of the ninth. Colonel Tom promptly fluttered one eyeball and flopped over dead in my lap.
I didn’t move for fifteen minutes, frozen partly by shock and partly by the fact that the lizard’s glistening jaws had come to rest two centimeters from the crotch of my boxer shorts. A death-spasm chomp of those fangs would have sent me to the emergency room (where, I knew, no innocent explanation would be accepted for a deceased lizard affixed to one’s scrotum).
Once it was evident that the colonel had drawn his final breath, I pondered my options. The balcony offered a clear shot at the Dumpster, but that seemed a cold and indecent goodbye. This was, after all, a gift from Anne’s daughter. So I resolved to give the lizard a fitting send-off as soon as arrangements could be made. In the meantime I endeavored to preserve his mortal remains, which, given his bulk, wasn’t easy. The only way to fit the beast into the shallow freezer compartment of my refrigerator was to pretzel the long limp corpse into the shape of an ampersand.
To this day there he sleeps, Colonel Tom, frostily coiled beneath my ice cube trays and chocolate Dove bars. Every time I think about burying the poor bastard I get depressed.
Out of guilt I lied to Carla and told her the monitor broke out of the tank and escaped. Only Juan knows the truth, and I’m surprised he spilled it to Emma. I suspect she was pumping him for inside information to use against me in the annual employee evaluation. Even though Juan is my best friend, he’ll tell Emma whatever she wants to know if he thinks there’s a chance she’ll sleep with him. At least that’s how /always operated in the early stages of a relationship.
Maybe it’s better that she knows about the dead lizard in my freezer. Maybe it will upend her set notions about me, and make her wonder what other distasteful secrets I’ve got.
MacArthur Polk looks like death on a Triscuit. “He can’t speak,” the nurse informs me.
“Then what am I doing here?” I ask reasonably.
“I meant, he can’t speak normally. Because of the tracheostomy.”
The old man points gravely to a surgical opening in his throat, to which has been attached a plastic valve that resembles a demitasse cup. A clear polymer tube leads from the valve stem to an oxygen contraption beside the bed.
For the interview MacArthur Polk has been moved from the hospital’s intensive care ward to a private room. He aims a bloodless finger at the door, signaling the nurse to scram.
“Keep it short and sweet,” she whispers to me. “He’s not well.” She throws up an elbow in time to deflect a plastic bedpan that would have otherwise beaned her on the forehead. “He can be a pill. You’ll see,” she says.
As soon as we’re alone, MacArthur Polk begins fiddling with the throat valve, which enables him to speak by drawing air across the vocal cords.
“Little gizmo goes for fifty-two bucks on the Internet,” the old man rasps. “Guess how much the hospital charges—three hundred a pop! Fucking bandits.”