When My Heart Joins the Thousand(45)

It’s not that I don’t trust him. True, the idea of allowing someone else into my space is uncomfortably intimate, but the larger reason is more straightforward: my apartment is objectively disgusting. I’ve grown accustomed to it out of necessity, but I don’t see any reason to subject him to the oppressive cheesy smell or the earwigs lurking in the bathroom.

“You said your lunch break is at one thirty?” he asks.

“Yes. I just need to clock out, then we can meet somewhere and eat together.”

“How about the dolphin exhibit? The map says there’s an underwater viewing area. It could be a nice place to sit.”

I stop walking.

I avoid the dolphin exhibit when I can. It’s a very large pool, almost fifteen feet deep, and being near any deep body of water tends to trigger feelings of unease and anxiety. If I suggest a different meeting place, however, I’ll have to explain why, and I really don’t want to explain this. I’m not even sure how I could.

“Alvie?”

I close my eyes briefly, collecting myself. My lunch break is only a half hour. I should be able to endure it for that long. “I’ll meet you there.”

I clock out, grab my lunch from my car, and walk to the dolphin enclosure. A long, curving cement path leads into the underwater viewing area. It’s dark, with rough pebble-textured walls, like a cave. Stanley is already sitting on the low stone bench, bathed in blue luminescence. He looks up at the sound of my footsteps.

I sit next to him, clutching my paper lunch sack.

“What’ve you got?”

“Bologna on white bread.” My usual. Affordable and filling enough, if not terribly nutritious.

Beyond a sheet of clear Plexiglas lies the expanse of the dolphin pool. With its smooth, curved white walls, it looks like the inside of a giant egg. The two dolphins, Charlie and Silver, glide smoothly through the blue. They’re Ms. Nell’s favorite animals, probably because they bring in the most guests.

He watches them. “Dolphins always look so happy, don’t they? Like there’s not a thing in the world that bothers them or makes them angry.”

I swallow a mouthful of sandwich. “Bottlenose dolphins can be very aggressive, actually. Males will band together to attack and kill porpoises. No one knows why. Porpoises don’t share their diet, so they aren’t competitors for their food supply. Killing them doesn’t give the dolphins any obvious evolutionary advantage. Apparently they just don’t like them.”

His brows knit together.

Charlie glides close to the glass, one dark eye staring out. His smiling mouth opens, showing rows of tiny, sharp teeth. Faintly I can see my reflection sitting next to Stanley’s in the Plexiglas. Just an inch of solid material between us and all that . . . water.

A lump of sandwich sits in my mouth, dry and tasteless as paper. I force it down my throat.

Stanley rests his forearm across the top of his cane. “You don’t idealize them, do you? Animals, I mean.”

I lick a drop of mustard from my finger. “They’re no more inherently good or evil than humans. They’re a lot like us, actually. We all eat, we all mate, we all struggle to survive. We all kill, though we humans try to hide that fact from ourselves. This bologna was a living creature, once. Well, probably several.”

“I guess so. But killing for food is different.”

The dolphins swim past again, followed by a flurry of bubbles. It’s my imagination, I know, but it seems that I can hear the water—a dull rumble in the center of my head, a vibration in my marrow.

Silver lets out a high-pitched call—eh-eh-eh-eh-ee! Like mocking laughter. The water makes rippling patterns on the concrete floor. I move my foot away from the dancing spots of light.

“Alvie?”

The rumble in my head grows louder, drowning out my thoughts. The pressure builds and builds inside me, and suddenly it’s too much. When I close my eyes, a vision explodes in my head: I see the Plexiglas cracking, then shattering. Water pours out, flooding the viewing area. Water sweeps over my head. The world is blurry, and when I gasp, water rushes in. It presses in around me, cold and dark. My head breaks the surface, but a wave bears down on me, roaring, and drags me under again, into blackness—

Stanley touches my arm, and I give a start. My eyes snap open. The Plexiglas is intact, the water blue and placid behind it.

“Hey,” he says. “What’s wrong?”

My own ragged breathing fills my ears. The half-eaten sandwich slips from my hands and lands in several pieces on the floor. “I have to go.” I stumble up the curving cement path, into the sunlight. I huddle in a ball on the ground and rock back and forth on my heels, cradling my head in both hands.

When the brain haze clears, I hear Stanley calling my name over and over. I hear his slow, unsteady footsteps coming closer and closer. His shadow falls over me. I don’t want him to see me like this. Panting, trembling, I lurch to my feet and turn away.

His hand comes down on my shoulder. I’m not expecting it, and a sickening jolt of pain goes through me, like an electric shock. My body reacts automatically: in an instant, I’m on my feet. In another instant, I spin toward Stanley, and my fist sails toward him, independent of my volition. Time slows, stretching. I see his eyes grow huge. I see him flinch back and duck his head, squeezing his eyes shut.

I’m going to hit him. I’m going to hit him, and I can’t stop myself.