success at Rizzo’s, and I had ten years’ experience, knew every detail about each product we carried, from the Mojave tank murals to the Ultra-Health Heat Rocks. When he’d started here, I’d thought Drew would be my prot é g é , someone to take under my wing and mold. I wanted to share everything I had, pass my knowledge like bloodlines. But Drew took the easy way.
I was talking heat lamps with this fourth-grade teacher, telling her how ceramic was the way to go, would outlast glass, distribute tropical temperatures evenly for her classroom’s pet turtle. She wanted only the best, and that’s what I did. I went to retrieve a lamp from storage, giving a nod to the big sign proclaiming Rizzo’s number one rule: DON’T TOUCH THE SNAKES . Rizzo left us thissign in his absence, gone for a week at the International Repti-Mania Conference, leaving me in charge. Me and the sign.
When I returned to the showroom, the teacher was gone. I scanned the aisles from the front of the store. The evening sun bled orange through the massive wall of windows, casting my elongated shadow over the golden shimmer of shrink-wrapped boxes and tempered-glass tanks. It was late, and we’d had a slow day, the teacher being only my fifth customer. Once that evening sun struck me, I felt sluggish, ready to slink home, microwave a salisbury steak, and then curl up for a nap.
I finally found the teacher giggling with Drew behind the turtle-care aisle. I ducked behind a stack of turtle food. I wanted to catch Drew in the act, find out what he was doing to steal my customers and get all those bonuses. Hidden behind bottles of Vitamin C–Enriched Turt-lets, I watched Drew dance in a little circle, swaying his hips, waving his arms, and slapping the leather elbow pads on the blazers he always wore to make himself look smarter than me, professorial. He halted, swung his arms out in a ta-da gesture. The teacher smiled with dimples and wide eyes. From Drew’s right shirtsleeve, one of our adolescent boas poked its head, then slithered around his forearm, flicking its forked pink tongue at his palm.
I could’ve busted him right there, barged into his show, maybe used one of Rizzo’s snake-handling poles to hook him by the nostril. But I wanted more than just grounds for a write-up. I wanted him gone, so he could make way for new blood.
The teacher dug through her purse for the five-dollar admittance to go to the basement, where we housed the Realm of the Reptiles exhibit. I hurried ahead of them, down the steps behind the sales counter, where I could hide among the reptiles—the perfect place to strike.
It wasn’t much of an exhibit. A ramshackle version of the reptile house at the zoo. Ten- and twenty-gallon tanks cluttered the walls, crammed the hallway so that my arms brushed the glass, felt the skittering vibrations of lizards darting away to hide in theirplastic shrubbery. I pushed through the hallway. The smell of frying cockroaches and regurgitated mouse scalp hung thick in the basement. I hated being down there, the darkness only broken by the massive fifty-tanker at the end of the hallway, glowing in the main room of the exhibit.
A secret I revealed to no one: I was terrified of the snakes.
I was an expert on all manner of reptilian products, but that didn’t mean I wanted to drape a constrictor around my shoulders. Salmonella gathered for orgies on snake skin. Imminent sickness. Slow death. One touch and your skin would be infested.
Drew’s boots clomped down the wooden stairs behind me, the teacher’s giggles echoing over the hum of the UV lights. I squeezed into the glowing main room. In the main tank, Bertha, our mature black-tailed python, glared at me, her beady eyes sinister under the dark V on her brow. Ten feet of glossy, spotted skin uncoiled slowly. She made me shiver, my muscles contract, convulse. Like waking from a nightmare, where you don’t remember why you’re afraid but you feel it, the cold sweat, the
I was talking heat lamps with this fourth-grade teacher, telling her how ceramic was the way to go, would outlast glass, distribute tropical temperatures evenly for her classroom’s pet turtle. She wanted only the best, and that’s what I did. I went to retrieve a lamp from storage, giving a nod to the big sign proclaiming Rizzo’s number one rule: DON’T TOUCH THE SNAKES . Rizzo left us thissign in his absence, gone for a week at the International Repti-Mania Conference, leaving me in charge. Me and the sign.
When I returned to the showroom, the teacher was gone. I scanned the aisles from the front of the store. The evening sun bled orange through the massive wall of windows, casting my elongated shadow over the golden shimmer of shrink-wrapped boxes and tempered-glass tanks. It was late, and we’d had a slow day, the teacher being only my fifth customer. Once that evening sun struck me, I felt sluggish, ready to slink home, microwave a salisbury steak, and then curl up for a nap.
I finally found the teacher giggling with Drew behind the turtle-care aisle. I ducked behind a stack of turtle food. I wanted to catch Drew in the act, find out what he was doing to steal my customers and get all those bonuses. Hidden behind bottles of Vitamin C–Enriched Turt-lets, I watched Drew dance in a little circle, swaying his hips, waving his arms, and slapping the leather elbow pads on the blazers he always wore to make himself look smarter than me, professorial. He halted, swung his arms out in a ta-da gesture. The teacher smiled with dimples and wide eyes. From Drew’s right shirtsleeve, one of our adolescent boas poked its head, then slithered around his forearm, flicking its forked pink tongue at his palm.
I could’ve busted him right there, barged into his show, maybe used one of Rizzo’s snake-handling poles to hook him by the nostril. But I wanted more than just grounds for a write-up. I wanted him gone, so he could make way for new blood.
The teacher dug through her purse for the five-dollar admittance to go to the basement, where we housed the Realm of the Reptiles exhibit. I hurried ahead of them, down the steps behind the sales counter, where I could hide among the reptiles—the perfect place to strike.
It wasn’t much of an exhibit. A ramshackle version of the reptile house at the zoo. Ten- and twenty-gallon tanks cluttered the walls, crammed the hallway so that my arms brushed the glass, felt the skittering vibrations of lizards darting away to hide in theirplastic shrubbery. I pushed through the hallway. The smell of frying cockroaches and regurgitated mouse scalp hung thick in the basement. I hated being down there, the darkness only broken by the massive fifty-tanker at the end of the hallway, glowing in the main room of the exhibit.
A secret I revealed to no one: I was terrified of the snakes.
I was an expert on all manner of reptilian products, but that didn’t mean I wanted to drape a constrictor around my shoulders. Salmonella gathered for orgies on snake skin. Imminent sickness. Slow death. One touch and your skin would be infested.
Drew’s boots clomped down the wooden stairs behind me, the teacher’s giggles echoing over the hum of the UV lights. I squeezed into the glowing main room. In the main tank, Bertha, our mature black-tailed python, glared at me, her beady eyes sinister under the dark V on her brow. Ten feet of glossy, spotted skin uncoiled slowly. She made me shiver, my muscles contract, convulse. Like waking from a nightmare, where you don’t remember why you’re afraid but you feel it, the cold sweat, the
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