Turtles All the Way Down(9)
I stood up and shook Malik’s hand. “I take care of the tuatara,” he explained. Everyone seemed to assume I knew what the hell a tuatara was. Malik walked over to the edge of the pool, knelt down, lifted a door hidden in the patio’s tile, and pressed a button. A reticulated chrome walkway emerged from the pool’s edge and arched over the water to reach the island. Daisy grabbed my arm and whispered, “Is this real life?” and then the zoologist waved his hand dramatically, gesturing for us to walk across the bridge.
He followed behind us, across the metal bridge to the geodesic dome. Malik swiped a card near the glass door. I heard a seal break, and then the door opened. I stepped in and was suddenly in a tropical climate at least twenty degrees warmer and considerably more humid than the actual outdoors.
Daisy and I stayed near the entryway while Malik darted around and finally emerged with a large lizard, maybe two feet long and three inches tall. Its dragon-like tail wrapped around Malik’s arm.
“You can pet her,” Malik said, and Daisy did, but I could see scratch marks on Malik’s hand indicating that it didn’t always like being petted, so when he turned it toward me, I said, “I don’t really like lizards.”
He then explained to me in rather excruciating detail that Tua (it had a name) was not a lizard at all, but a genetically distinct creature that dated back to the Mesozoic Era 200 million years ago, and that it was basically a living dinosaur, and that tuatara can live to be at least 150 years old, and that the plural of tuatara is tuatara, and that they are the only extant species from the order Rhynchocephalia, and that they were endangered in their native New Zealand, and that he’d written his PhD thesis on tuatara molecular evolution rates, and on and on until the door opened again, and Lyle said, “Dr Peppers, boss.” I took them and handed one to Davis and one to Daisy.
“You sure you don’t want to pet her?” Malik asked.
“I’m also afraid of dinosaurs,” I explained.
“Holmesy has most of the major fears,” Daisy said as she petted Tua. “Anyway, we should get going. I’ve got some babysitting duties to attend to.”
“I’ll give you a ride home,” said Davis.
—
Davis said he needed to stop by the house, and I was going to wait for him outside, but Daisy shoved me forward so hard I found myself walking alongside him.
Davis pulled open the front door, a massive pane of glass at least ten feet high, and we walked into an enormous marble-floored room. To my left, Noah Pickett lay on a couch, playing a space combat video game on a huge screen. “Noah,” Davis said, “you remember Aza Holmes?”
“’Sup,” he said, without turning away from the game.
Davis darted up a flight of floating marble stairs, leaving me alone with Noah—or so I thought—until a woman I hadn’t seen called out, “That’s a real Picasso.” She was dressed all in white, slicing berries in the gleaming white kitchen.
“Oh, wow,” I said, following her eyes to the painting in question. A man made of wavy lines rode atop a horse made of wavy lines.
“It’s like working in a museum,” she said. I looked at her and thought about Daisy’s observation about uniforms.
“Yeah, it’s a beautiful house,” I said.
“They have a Rauschenberg, too,” she said, “upstairs.” I nodded, although I didn’t know who that was. Mychal would, probably. “You can go and see.” She gestured toward the stairs, so I walked up, but didn’t pause to examine the assemblage of recycled trash at the top of the staircase. Instead, I took a quick look inside the first open door I came to. It seemed to be Davis’s room, immaculately clean, lines still in the carpet from a vacuum cleaner. King-size bed with lots of pillows, and a navy-blue comforter. In a corner of the room, by a wall of windows, a telescope, pointed up toward the sky. Pictures on his desk of his family—all from years ago, when he was little. Framed concert posters on one wall—the Beatles, Thelonious Monk, Otis Redding, Leonard Cohen, Billie Holiday. A bookshelf packed with hardcover books, with an entire shelf of comics in plastic sleeves. And on his bedside table, next to a stack of books, the Iron Man.
I picked it up, turned it over in my hands. The plastic was cracked on the back of one leg, revealing a hollow space, but the arms and legs still turned.
“Careful,” he said from behind me. “You’re holding the only physical item I actually love.”
I put the Iron Man down and spun around. “Sorry,” I said.
“Iron Man and I have been through some serious shit together,” he said.
“I have to tell you a secret,” I said. “I’ve always thought Iron Man was kind of the worst.”
Davis smiled. “Well, it was fun while it lasted, Aza, but our friendship has come to an end.” I laughed and followed him down the stairs. “Rosa, can you stay until I get back?”
“Yes, of course,” she said. “I’ve left you some chicken chili and salad for dinner in the fridge.”
“Thanks,” Davis said. “Noah, my man, I’ll be back in twenty minutes, cool?”
“Cool,” Noah said, still in outer space.
—
As we walked toward Davis’s Cadillac Escalade, which Daisy was leaning against, I asked, “Was that your housekeeper?”