My heart was as black as sin. I felt ugly. I felt wasted. I felt destroyed. I paid for my coffee and then went out into the neon-jazzed night, to ride the flickering street back to my apartment. On the way I passed a hole-in-the-wall pet mart. What the hell, I thought, she could be right? Maybe a pet would help? At least it would give me something else to worry about, other than my pitiful self.
I went across to the mart outlet, thinking of a little puppy or a miniature kitten, and came away with a bonsai tiger.
It was in a secure cage, of course. I held it up under the pearl street lights . It was perfect. Diminutive, but perfect. About the size of a sewer rat, it paced up and down the cage, stopping occasionally to stare out, not at me, but at some distant land beyond. Its stare went right through me. There was no expression in its face, nothing I could read in the tiny bright eyes like sequins buried in the black and yellow fur.
A marvel of genetic engineering, my bonsai tiger was a real wild beast from a far off place, an exotic half-shadow creature which could hunt and kill as well as any full-sized big cat, albeit its prey would be of proportions suitable to its own length, girth and breadth.
Under the opal light it yawned with its small mouth, revealing two rows of sharp white teeth and a little red tongue. My perfect little tiger then flopped down, cat-like, and curled its tail over its legs. It was beautiful. My new pet was beautiful—and already I was beginning to forget the horrible empty ache inside me.
‘What was her name?’ I joked with my pet, as we skimmed along. ‘I don’t remember, do you?’
Once at home I put my tiger on a shelf below the stacks of computer manuals. Actually, to be more accurate, it was a female, a tigress, but the world was swiftly erasing gender nouns, so tiger was fine.
‘Sheba,’ I said. ‘A name fit for a queen. That’s what you are, my Lilliputian Queen Sheba of Blackhill Street.’
Sheba looked up, as if acknowledging her new name.
‘Excellent. We’re going to be a cool couple. Krystina will be proud of me. I’ll just look her in the eye when we meet, accidentally of course outside some bar or night club, and say, “I’m living with Sheba now. She’s great. We get on terrifically well,” and witness her surprise at how so together I am— how I still love her of course, evident only in my demeanour and the way I hold my head—but how I’m bravely getting on with life without her.’
My computer made a noise like a wet fart. They’re not supposed to do that, but they do. They do lots of things they’re not supposed to. I think it’s the only way bored programmers get their rocks off.
Sheba, however, let out a tiny roar—I thought of approval.
The voice at the mart had said to feed her steak. I was having fillet of lamb for dinner. I cut off a small corner and pushed it through the steel bars of the cage. Sheba pounced on it and began to rip pieces off it with her teeth. It was fascinating. Nature in the raw. Those geneticists were geniuses. To be able to make tiny elephants, tigers, lions, panthers, crocodiles! Never again would there be endangered species. We had all the codes now, we could make the animal whenever we wanted it. Some of the extinct creatures had been revived. There were even miniature mammoths and dinosaurs on the way. Sabre-toothed tigers. Mini plesiosaurs and in aquarium tanks. Cycad jungles.
Jungles! Now there was an idea. Why not get a rainforest or a jungle for my pet? Why not indeed? I phoned Krystina. She was in a theatre lobby with people milling round her. As soon as she saw my face she said, ‘I’m changing my number.’
I tried to catch a glimpse of the girl-stealing Mendal, but couldn’t be sure which of the skinny males in the picture was him . Krystina had said he was ‘sensitive’ which meant he was a geek. She had implied she had gone up the evolutionary scale, the chain of being, from Neanderthal to Modern
I went across to the mart outlet, thinking of a little puppy or a miniature kitten, and came away with a bonsai tiger.
It was in a secure cage, of course. I held it up under the pearl street lights . It was perfect. Diminutive, but perfect. About the size of a sewer rat, it paced up and down the cage, stopping occasionally to stare out, not at me, but at some distant land beyond. Its stare went right through me. There was no expression in its face, nothing I could read in the tiny bright eyes like sequins buried in the black and yellow fur.
A marvel of genetic engineering, my bonsai tiger was a real wild beast from a far off place, an exotic half-shadow creature which could hunt and kill as well as any full-sized big cat, albeit its prey would be of proportions suitable to its own length, girth and breadth.
Under the opal light it yawned with its small mouth, revealing two rows of sharp white teeth and a little red tongue. My perfect little tiger then flopped down, cat-like, and curled its tail over its legs. It was beautiful. My new pet was beautiful—and already I was beginning to forget the horrible empty ache inside me.
‘What was her name?’ I joked with my pet, as we skimmed along. ‘I don’t remember, do you?’
Once at home I put my tiger on a shelf below the stacks of computer manuals. Actually, to be more accurate, it was a female, a tigress, but the world was swiftly erasing gender nouns, so tiger was fine.
‘Sheba,’ I said. ‘A name fit for a queen. That’s what you are, my Lilliputian Queen Sheba of Blackhill Street.’
Sheba looked up, as if acknowledging her new name.
‘Excellent. We’re going to be a cool couple. Krystina will be proud of me. I’ll just look her in the eye when we meet, accidentally of course outside some bar or night club, and say, “I’m living with Sheba now. She’s great. We get on terrifically well,” and witness her surprise at how so together I am— how I still love her of course, evident only in my demeanour and the way I hold my head—but how I’m bravely getting on with life without her.’
My computer made a noise like a wet fart. They’re not supposed to do that, but they do. They do lots of things they’re not supposed to. I think it’s the only way bored programmers get their rocks off.
Sheba, however, let out a tiny roar—I thought of approval.
The voice at the mart had said to feed her steak. I was having fillet of lamb for dinner. I cut off a small corner and pushed it through the steel bars of the cage. Sheba pounced on it and began to rip pieces off it with her teeth. It was fascinating. Nature in the raw. Those geneticists were geniuses. To be able to make tiny elephants, tigers, lions, panthers, crocodiles! Never again would there be endangered species. We had all the codes now, we could make the animal whenever we wanted it. Some of the extinct creatures had been revived. There were even miniature mammoths and dinosaurs on the way. Sabre-toothed tigers. Mini plesiosaurs and in aquarium tanks. Cycad jungles.
Jungles! Now there was an idea. Why not get a rainforest or a jungle for my pet? Why not indeed? I phoned Krystina. She was in a theatre lobby with people milling round her. As soon as she saw my face she said, ‘I’m changing my number.’
I tried to catch a glimpse of the girl-stealing Mendal, but couldn’t be sure which of the skinny males in the picture was him . Krystina had said he was ‘sensitive’ which meant he was a geek. She had implied she had gone up the evolutionary scale, the chain of being, from Neanderthal to Modern
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