Gisselle
“That’s really strange,” I say, observing how Leland the Lamb, that they’ve dressed up again today in a tiny Taronga Zoo T-shirt, ran straight to Merrick. “Why’s he turning his ass toward you?”
Merrick shrugs and nudges it away. “Off with you, you little bugger. Go find your mum.”
“Awww…he looks like he’s going to cry. You hurt his feelings.” I crouch and offer Leland a handful of whatever this stuff is. Sheep kibble? Looks awful. The lamb nuzzles my hand, and I feel a wet tongue slide against my palm. Kinda gross, but he’s just too cute. “That’s right. You don’t listen to the icky mean man. He’s just jealous because the name Leland suits you better.”
Merrick frowns and gives me a harrumph! “Why exactly are we here again, love?”
Oh no. He’s back to being Mr. Charming—love this and love that. I’m really not in the mood. Yes, I’m at a zoo, but that doesn’t mean I’m not feeling horribly disturbed. I just needed to hit pause and distract myself for a few minutes. This is my way of coping.
“Yanno,” I say, “I like you much better when you’re being yourself. So feel free to drop the macho, debonair act.”
“No act. I’m genuinely this charming and manly. Answer my question.”
I stand and wipe the lamb slobber on my jeans. “I came here yesterday, and it was the first time in years that I can remember enjoying myself. No pressure to get good grades, to pay the rent while I hold down eighteen units, to prove to the world I can be anything I want.”
His silky dark brows knit together. “But surely you must’ve had good times, going out with your mates—drinking beer, dancing?”
I shrug. “Kind of? I mean, yeah, sure, I went out every once in a while, but it never felt fun. Something always nagged away in the back of my head—don’t spend too much, don’t drink too much, you should be studying right now.”
“I never would have guessed that about you.”
“I don’t think I realized it until yesterday.” I swivel my head and look at all the tourists and families. “I’ve never been out of the country. I’ve never traveled and gotten a taste of what I’ve been working so hard for.”
“Which is?” he asks.
“To change the world one story at a time.” I want the stories people wake up to and read in the paper to be about everyday heroes who are doing good things and making a difference—not some depressing crap about doom and gloom. I mean, think about it, if everyone is so focused on the world’s ugliness, then their energy goes into believing we’re all fucked. But if we put our collective energy into seeing the good, maybe we’ll find solutions instead of problems. Action follows thought.
He toggles his pursed lips from side to side. “That’s very noble.”
“You think it’s silly.” I reach down and pet a drive-by goat that nearly tramples a kid to get at his fresh cup of kibble.
“Not silly,” he says. “I think you’re not tainted by the world yet, and that’s why you believe you can change it.”
“And?” I push, sensing there’s more.
“Today you’ve got a firsthand dose of the cruelty people are capable of. I just hope you don’t lose that spark.”
Now I’m catching on. “Like you had once upon a time.”
He shrugs noncommittally.
A part of me knows he’s right. Since I met him, I’ve been on the peripheries of some pretty ugly stuff: A woman-killer senator who was made to have an “accident” so that a janitor wouldn’t have to watch his little girls and wife murdered; a greedy commercial real estate developer who terrorized a neighborhood in order to put dozens of small-business owners and their families out of business; and a front-and-center seat at today’s murder.
“I have seen a lot of horrible crap since I met you,” I say, “but I think it’s only made me more determined to change things. Not the other way around.”
Merrick gazes at me with those deep brown eyes flecked with gold, and suddenly I feel like…like… I don’t know. It’s something way beyond lust. The way he’s looking at me makes my chest buzz. I want to run away, but at the same time a flaming asteroid hurtling from the sky couldn’t move me. The need to be here with him feels like the nail-biter climax from the best suspense movie you’ve ever seen, plus the biggest tear-jerking happy moment of your life (finding your lost puppy), added to seeing a man so hot you stop whatever you’re doing and just absorb the heat.
He steps closer, our bodies inches apart, and looks down at me. “I’m definitely going to kiss you right now.”
“O-okay.” My heart starts pounding like an unbalanced washing machine. Kachunk-kachunk-kachunk! It almost hurts. I’ve never felt it beat so hard.
With a fiercely carnal gaze, he slides a warm hand to the nape of my neck and locks eyes with me. He lowers his head, and I watch those sensual lips close in.
This. Is. Happening.
“Excuse me, you two,” says a shrill female voice. “This is not a heavy-petting zoo. There are children present.”
Her voice is like a frigid bucket of ice water. Shoved up my hoo-haw.
Merrick and I pause and look around us. Yup. They’re all staring. Parents, children, and farm animals.
We step away from each other, waking from our lustful daze.
“Apologies, it’s just that my girlfriend,” Merrick points to me, “and I met here one year ago. In this very spot.” He leans down and whispers something into the romance-killer’s ear.
The woman, who’s wearing a zoo T-shirt that matches baby Leland’s, clutches a hand to her chest. “Oh. Oh! I’m so sorry. Carry on,” she says with gusto.
He nods with his fake-as-hell—but handsome nonetheless—smile and turns back to me.
“What did you say to her?” I grin, knowing it had to be one hell of a spectacular lie.
He takes my hand, his eyes never leaving my face, and kneels. “Bertha Shartzmugal-Humphry, ever since I saw you in your neon-pink bell-bottoms and an I-heart-horn unicorn crop top, I knew you were the girl for me. Will you be my wife?”
I narrow my eyes for a fraction of a second, just so he knows he’s about to pay for this public humiliation. Shartzmugal?
“Bubba.” I press my hand over my heart. “Bubba Buford Shartzmugal-Humphry, I don’t care that you’re my cousin-uncle-grandpappy-stepbrother. Love is blind!” I shriek and jump up and down, clapping excitedly. “I do!”
The confused, mildly grossed-out spectators clap with even milder enthusiasm.
Merrick gets to his feet, a contagious smile pasted on his lips. “Touché, love. Touché,” he whispers in my ear.
“You had it coming, honey.” Really though, I’m not mad. I know he did that to distract me, maybe make me feel better after a really rough morning.
His smile melts away, and our eyes meet again. Somehow, I know it’s about to happen. I’m about to fall in love.
Leland
Growing up, my mum always said to be careful what I wished for. To which I would silently respond like your typical teenage arse: I wish for a hot woman with a small mouth. Meaning, I didn’t see much value in women’s opinions.
Before you judge harshly, though I deserve it, there is something you should know: My mum and dad were also arses. The idealistic sort who came from wealthy families. They attended posh schools, fell in love, became doctors, and decided to live their lifelong dream of doing volunteer work in Africa when I was about eight. Shortly after our arrival, my mum saw how miserable I was and had a severe guilt attack.
“We can’t do this to Leland,” she said. “We have to take him back to England.” There were no real hospitals—the reason for them being there—no paved roads, no TVs, and no schools. I liked that last part.
“We’re educated doctors. We’ll see to his needs,” my father said. He convinced her that a life living off the land and the grid, in harmony with nature, was better. Right then and there they decided that while they’d take care of my Western education, they’d ask the tribe’s chief to essentially “adopt” me in order to help with my cultural immersion.
I miraculously survived, learned the language, and spent the next four years learning to hunt, make fire, build shelters, and dismiss women. Especially during their cycle. Out to the mud hut with you and your demons! Out, I say!
It was right before my thirteenth birthday—when I told my mum I wanted to take a wife because the gods had blessed my armpits with man-stench and hair, and the girl in the next hut over had given me a hand job—that my mum put her foot down.
“The gods have not blessed you, Leland!” my mum said. “You are a very naughty boy! Bad! Bad! She’s the chief’s daughter. He’s going to kill you.” Though the chief treated me like one of his own sons, we were outsiders, welcome to stay as long as we respected the lines he’d drawn. We couldn’t interfere or try to introduce our evil modern ways. And absolutely no hanky-panky with his daughters when I came of age, since they were already promised to a powerful chief in another tribe, who’d promised them many goats.
Before I could say goodbye to my friends and the chief’s daughter—whom I loved with every throbbing ounce of testosterone in my pubescent body—the three of us were back in London. Noise, cars, traffic, crime, and more human beings and food than I’d seen in years. I nearly shit myself at the grocery store. Pizza, chips, sausage, cheese, biscuits, chocolate—it was a miracle I didn’t put on a few hundred pounds that first month because I don’t think I stopped eating.
Then came the first day of school. Terrifying. Cold. Unwelcoming. I knew no one, since we’d settled into my grandparents’ home in a different neighborhood than we’d lived before. But the tiger hunter in me—the one who thrived on danger—was determined to rise to the challenge, neckties and all. And though the environment of the first world looked different, the chief of my tribe had taught me a very valuable skill: “A leader is more than age or muscle, Leland. The bones of our ancestors feed the trees with their knowledge, and the trees grow fruit. The leader isn’t the strongest because of his body, but because of his mind. When he looks at the land, not only does he see the trees, he knows which ones are the strongest and which have the best fruit.”
In other words, learning made a man strong, but using one’s brain, to discern what’s important and where to invest one’s energy, made a good leader. A good leader helps his people survive and thrive by playing smart.
Not that the boys in the village weren’t forced to endure extreme physical challenges, too. Running, throwing spears, carrying an eighty-pound gazelle for fifteen miles on a hundred-and-ten-degree day. Barefoot. Compared to that, I found sitting through my mum’s lessons a piece of cake. My new school was not much different. Lessons. Books. Homework. Easy.
People were another story, despite being an instant hit. I was a handsome devil from a well-to-do family, so the girls treated me like an exotic treat. “Oh, he’s just like Tarzan.” The other boys followed me because I feared nothing. I had killed dangerous animals; I ate them. But despite my popularity, I never could understand my classmates. They obsessed over things I didn’t grow up with—video games, shows on the tele, cars. I hid my awkward lack of cultural knowledge by laughing along or falling back on the old insult trick. “You like that show? Wanker.” No one ever argued because I was their chief. On the inside, though, I felt lost. That village was no longer my home. But neither was England.
“We’re your home. Your tribe,” my father would tell me.
About a year later, he left again for Africa. This time alone.
“He never could breathe in the modern world,” my mum said the day he went. “But don’t worry. He’ll be back soon.” A lie she had to tell herself, I think. But I knew he wasn’t coming back, and suddenly, I was a boy without a real tribe or home, who grew up to be a man without one either.
The point to all this is that I see something in Gisselle. While I’ve been focused on myself, searching for something I may never find, she is trying to be a real leader. She sees the trees. She wants to help people find the fruit. But above all, she understands people in a way I never will.
I think I could really fall for her. I wonder how many goats her father wants for her, I wonder wryly. The real question, however, is would a woman like Gisselle ever really want to be tied down? The wind has caught her sails; meanwhile I’m ready to start planting trees and putting down roots. Maybe grow a few mangos and get a goat. Or a lamb in a T-shirt.
Who am I kidding? I’m never getting out of this arrangement I’m in. These are the sort of people you don’t say no to, and I understood that when I signed up. It’s the reason I don’t have serious relationships. While I do work for myself and pursue some stories of my choosing, I never know when they’ll call for “a favor.” Sometimes, I’m gone for months. Sometimes, I’m unsure if I’m ever coming back. Bottom line, it wouldn’t be fair to a woman if I truly cared for her. And it’s not like I could take her with me. Like Gisselle said, some of these places aren’t safe for anyone.
Least of all a woman I love. Not that I love Gisselle, but why toy with the possibility?
Gisselle and I walk back to my rental in the parking lot at the zoo, and I see the looks she’s giving me. She thinks she wants this. She thinks she wants me. But she has no clue what sort of life she’d be signing up for with me. A lonely one.
“So, what are your plans after you get home?” I ask.
“We’ll see where the wind takes me.”
Now that’s ironic. What did I just say about her sails? It’s proof that she’s got her path, and I’ve got mine.