ROADSIDE ATTRACTION
Robert McCullough
We got him from one of those places you see off the highway. You know the ones. You’ve seen them everywhere in the South – Georgia, Florida, Louisiana, and, naturally, Texas.
You also know how it goes. It’s a long drive from one end of the state to the other. Boredom sets in, one thing leads to another. And then you end up with a demon from hell in a box in the back seat.
In this case, the one thing that led to another was my current girlfriend at the time, Loretta. She was hotter than the sun – even the Texas sun. And I loved her, too, even though I knew right from the start that the odds of us lasting all that long weren’t very good. She was volatile and fiery, and we both had questionable histories. But you know how that goes, too.
One of the things that endeared her to me was her love of reptiles. Spiders and snakes, so to speak, just like that old Jim Stafford song. Or, to be more accurate, snakes, lizards, gators, salamanders...you name it. Basically, anything with scaly skin that crawls around on four legs. Ironically, though, the little demon wound up on two legs, although that was something neither one of us could have anticipated.
Anyway, the sign said Live Reptiles. Just the same as the other half dozen places we’d already passed. Unlike the others, though, it had just enough going on to draw you in. Totally shabby around the edges, it was so obvious we should have known better. But there was a gas pump and a little store with a cooler at the counter, stocked with cold soda and the necessary adult libations.
Which was just enough to get us in serious trouble.
So we stopped. Loretta jumped out of the car like the engine was on fire, which it almost was after frying our way on four wheels halfway across the country.
Loretta said her people were in Southern California, and I’d never met them, seeing as how we’d only been together for six months or so. So that was the alleged purpose of the journey, although it was more likely that both of us were just hankering for a road trip.
Up until Texas, everything had basically been going all right. Loretta and I were surprisingly compatible as road buddies, although I suppose maybe I shouldn’t be that surprised considering how much pent-up energy we both tended to have.
Loretta’s half of that energy exploded out of the car almost as soon as I turned the key and cut the engine. And Loretta was a sight to see when she exploded – long legs, short shorts, big hair when she wanted it to be, and full pouty lips that could melt me with a single smile or the lightest kiss. Plus those big ol’ brown eyes that could slay me with just a single glance, especially when she wanted something. And right now what she wanted was a stop at a roadside attraction with live reptiles.
She bounded out of the car before I knew what was happening, moving so fast that I barely had time to turn my head to see where she was going. Loretta is one of those women who’s preternaturally fast in heels, which is something I’ve never understood, although I’ll be the first to admit that it is a sight to behold.
When I finally located her, she was opening the door to the little store, which wasn’t much bigger than our dining room, to try and find the guy who was in charge. At least I assumed it was a guy, but with some of these places you never know what you’re going to walk into; especially when you’re with a gal like Loretta.
She disappeared inside, and I opened the door slowly, the better to disengage from the vehicle, which was definitely taking its toll on me. I’d been doing most of the driving, all of it, in fact, since Loretta can be somewhat erratic in that capacity, her being one of those people who has trouble coloring within the lines.
I stretched my legs first, and I felt one of my knees pop, which felt like some kind of omen. As I stretched I realized how road sore I was, and I sort of had to launch myself upward to get on my feet. I almost fell, but somehow I managed to stay upright, although there was some swaying and a slight loss of balance after the initial launch.
I looked around, surprised at how big and bright the sun was in this part of the country, almost as if it was right on top of us. Then I checked the price on the gas pump, which wasn’t too bad for a dinky little place like this in the middle of nowhere. I took a couple of steps to make sure all of my limbs were going to stay with me when I tried to walk. All of that seemed to check out OK, so I wobbled toward the door thinking I’d find Loretta inside.
‘Cept I never got there. Two things kept that from happening: the first was a squeal from Loretta, who burst out the door, yelling out my name, which is Roy, which is short for Leroy. Trust me, it sounded like neither of those at the top of her lungs. This was closely followed by “nobody’s here,” the volume of that exclamation set slightly lower, so that it didn’t come quite as close to bursting my eardrums.
But her assessment wasn’t quite true. Loretta was headed toward me at a rather high speed, so I braced myself for whatever was coming next, be it an embrace, another verbal explosion, or something else. It was impossible to know with that girl.
She never got to me, though. About three steps in front of me she stopped dead in her tracks, as if there was an invisible wall between us that Loretta had suddenly detected. I had my arms out to catch her, but it happened so suddenly that I looked like a goddamn fool, arms extended, waiting for something that never came.
Instead she wheeled to her right, which naturally made me wonder what she was wheeling toward. So I wheeled to the left. And then we saw the damnedest thing, something that stopped both of us in our tracks.
It was the owner of the joint. Or at least that’s what we both assumed. It was hard to think otherwise – he was Texas long and lean, the epitome of a Longhorn cliché, with snakeskin boots, string tie, tight jeans, and the obligatory oversized belt buckle, complemented by one of those pencil-thin mustaches that either makes you think John Waters sleaze or the period elegance of some old-time matinee movie idol.
And in this case, it was definitely the latter.
Loretta sized him up immediately, popping the pieces of gum she must have added while she was inside looking for the guy. If I was lucky, she hadn’t stolen them or simply helped herself, thinking maybe she’d pay for the gum, maybe she wouldn’t. You could never tell about that sort of thing with her.
“So where are the snakes?” she asked pointedly.
He smiled, and then emitted a noise that was almost a laugh, but not quite. Then he eyed her with a look that told me he knew exactly where the snakes were.
“Oh, I ‘spect they’re around here somewheres,” he replied slyly.
“You do a show or something?” I asked, deciding to intervene before things started to careen out of control.
“Three times a day,” he said succinctly, the obligatory toothpick suddenly appearing from the corner of his mouth.
“Uh huh,” I watched to see where the toothpick was going, “When’s the next one?”
He made a point to look down at his watch, which was one of those big, flashy, all hat jobs. “That would be at three.” He paused and looked at both of us, taking us in separately.
“You folks sticking around?”
Loretta’s head was instantly on a swivel, giving me one of those looks she had that was kind of a cross between “please do this” and “you better gimme what I want if you know what’s good for you.”
I looked around for an escape route, but there was nothing but Texas plains in all directions.
The owner grinned.
“Looks like you’re stayin’ for a bit,” he cackled. Then he extended a long, lean paw toward me.
“I’m Sneaky Pete, by the way. Pleased to meetcha.”
I looked at his hand for a second too long, wondering if I was implicitly entering into some kind of Faustian deal if I shook it.
“Likewise,” I said, noticing that it felt a little like lizard skin.
“I’m Roy.” I did the intro honors quickly with Loretta, trying to keep my voice as neutral as possible.
“You folks going cross country?” he ask
ed.
“Yeah. How’d you know?” I asked, not liking where this was going at all.
“Lucky guess.” He gave me the grin that said pure John Waters, and suddenly I had no need to ask where the sneaky part of his name came from.
“We get a lot of that.”
I looked down at my watch, which was one of those tiny, quiet little sports things.
“We got some time to kill before three, assuming we’re staying,” I said, watching Loretta’s ethereal visage darken into a slight scowl. “Any suggestions?”
He shifted into salesman mode. “As matter of fact...”
Then he pointed back behind the tiny building.
“Got some stuff back there that you might wanna see.”
Loretta was all over that one, her face lighting up like a Christmas tree when the angel goes on top.
“Really!?!”
Sneaky Pete reached up and touched the tip of his tan cowboy hat, “Oh, yes, ma’am.”
He gestured around the corner. “You a fan of snakes and such?” he asked, the grin widening so much that it might have embarrassed even Mr. Waters.
Loretta grinned back, obviously enjoying the drill.
“I do love my reptiles,” she purred softly.
“Well, then you’re gonna love this,” he said. “Follow me.”
So we did. I made it a point to keep myself in between him and Loretta, just to keep things on the safe side. She had a habit of sparking things with men she’s just met, and I’d been on the wrong end of that one way too many times.
Once we got behind the building, I saw a couple of rows of cages, most of them housing the kind of innocuous reptiles you’d expect to see in this kind of place. The smaller ones contained snakes and lizards. A couple of larger ones housed small gators. There was another building back there, or maybe it was just an enclosure, it was hard to tell behind the large wall facing us.”That where you do the shows?” I asked.
“Yup.”
“You hire out for that?”
“Nope. Do it myself.”
That definitely piqued Loretta’s interest. She managed to get around me as we walked past the initial cages, glancing at the first row of snakes. Nothing had claimed her attention so far, but I knew it was only a matter of time. She sidled up to Sneaky Pete, close enough to be almost touching his forearm, and I knew instantly from past experience where this whole thing was likely to go.
“So what’s the best you got?” she asked, her tone stopping just short of brazen.
Sneaky Pete smiled, this one slightly more muted than the last couple.
“Oh, that would be the last cage in the back row,” he said. He looked right at her, not so subtly taking in an eyeful of cleavage.
“That’s where I keep my special stock.”
“Show me,” she replied, her eyes locking onto him with an “I know what you’re looking at” expression on her face.
His grin smoothed out slowly as he turned and walked us toward the last aisle. Most of the cages were the same as the others, medium size wire deals, slightly shabby, but nothing that could get Sneaky Pete busted by the law, if indeed there was any law out here. The critters they contained were about the same, more snakes and lizards, although there were a few smaller caimans that seemed to catch Loretta’s eye.
Except for the last cage in the the last row, the one all the way in the back. That one was a real terrarium, and a big one, too, taller than head high with glass windows and a solid metal housing that was lined with ornamental wood. It would have gone for a few hundred at least in a decent pet store, and Loretta and I looked at each other, wondering what this guy was trying to pull on us.
Content-wise, things weren’t nearly as impressive. At least not at first glance. The cage contained two or three lizards, definitely bigger than the rest, but nothing that would set Ripley’s on fire.
There was a scared-looking gecko flitting about inside the habitat, which had been stocked with sticks designed to look like trees, along with a few plants.
The gecko looked as though its life depended on finding a suitable hiding place, and later we would realize that it probably did. There was also a large iguana that was slightly fierce looking, although on closer examination it was probably even more frightened than the gecko.
It was eying the third lizard, which didn’t look like much until we started studying it. Its body was firm and thick, with huge back legs and slick skin. Every few seconds it would rear up on those hind suckers, at which point the gecko and the iguana looked like they wanted to head for the hills, had there been any around.
I glanced over at Loretta and raised my eyebrows a bit, to see if I could get some kind of take on what she was thinking. This was usually pretty easy to do, but she just kind of cocked her pretty little head in confusion, which told me that she didn’t know what it was any more than I did.
At that moment, Sneaky Pete snuck in between us, suddenly living up to his moniker. “Bet you’re tryin’ to figure him out, huh?”
He put his hand on Loretta’s shoulder, and almost touched me with the other one, which definitely made me want to take a shower.
“A monitor?” Loretta guessed. I was thinking along the same lines, so I decided to shut up and wait for Pete’s answer.
“Nice try,” he said, his voice oily as he rubbed his hand on Loretta’s shoulder. I started to wonder which one of these critters I’d get eaten by if I took a pop at this guy.
“I could see where you’d notice the resemblance, but they’re illegal in most states, so I could get in trouble if I sold one of these guys and it ended up in the wrong part of the country.”
He smiled, “Actually, it’s a chameleon,” he said, “South American, or so I’ve been told.”
Loretta and I both wrinkled our noses at the same time, making our skepticism obvious. Loretta especially knew her reptiles, and some of that knowledge had rubbed off on me. If this was a chameleon, then those must have been itty bitty skinks that Lucas and Spielberg used to film those scenes in Jurassic Park.
“You’re serious,” Loretta answered, her voice dripping with sarcasm.
“I am indeed, ma’am,” Sneaky Pete shot back. Then he took his hand off her, finally, and lifted his palms.
“Actually, that’s about the total extent of my information.”
“I see,” she said, her voice suddenly steely.
“So where did you get this thing?” I asked, trying to steer things toward clarity.
“My best dealer,” Pete said with pride, along with what seemed to pass for sincerity for him. “He imports from around the world. Been working with him for years.”
I resisted the temptation to ask what else the guy might have imported, not wanting to stir things up further.
“So what are you doing with him?” I asked, nodding at the mystery lizard.
Sneaky Pete studied the lizard with an expression that gave me no further clues about how he felt about the little guy in the enclosure. “Nothing, for the moment,” he said, his voice more reflective, “Haven’t decided yet. I’ve shown him a few times, but no bites so far. I might approach a couple of my zoo contacts, but things haven’t come to that point yet.”
“Bites?” Loretta said, licking her lips and honing in on the word.
The grin returned, “Yes, ma’am.”
He licked his own lips, reflexively, clearly trying to gauge Loretta’s interest level.
“Is he for sale?” She followed up.
“Maybe.” I could almost feel him reeling her in, and suddenly I had a bad feeling about where all this was going.
“How much?”
I reached over and touched Loretta slightly, but she brushed my hand away brusquely.
“Well...I might be persuaded to part ways with him.” He paused and balled his hand into a fist, then blew into it, as if about to roll a set of loaded dice.
“Hmm...let’s say five hundred?”
I gagged and coughed, realizing how badly we were being p
layed, and Loretta reached over and stomped on my foot with hers, hard enough to cause real pain, especially with those damn heels.
Sneaky Pete laughed, looking at me like I was some kind of yokel fool.
“Too rich for your blood, huh?”
That was all it took to tip Loretta over the edge, “We’ll take him.”
My eyes turned into saucers, and I reached over and tried to gently take her hand. She squeezed mine back hard enough to break a finger or two, so I let go, thinking self preservation. “Ummmm...sweetie?” I said, trying to hide the panic in my voice, “We really don’t have that much.”
“Yeah we do,” she shot back, glaring at me.
I reached over and pulled her away from Pete for a brief private conversation, knowing the gesture could get me hurt. “Loretta,” I began, hating the shakiness of my voice, “Honey? That’s our traveling money.”
Her glare deepened, along with the furrows on her forehead. Those were serious storm warnings, and for a moment I was slightly afraid.
“Let’s check it out,” she said quietly, her voice simmering on low boil, “I think we’ve got something here. If we do, I want to go with it.”
I nodded, wanting only peace in our time, or at least for a moment. She looked back over at Sneaky Pete, who was watching the exchange with obvious amusement.
But he, too, felt the wrath of her glare, and he quickly managed to wipe his face clean of any obvious expression.
“Can we check him out?” She asked, her tone dictating the acceptable answer.
“Of course, darlin’,” he replied.
She took a half step toward him, and for a moment Pete obviously regretted his use of the familiar at the end. “I always let my customers do a full check on the merchandise.”
He stepped back, holding his palms up, just in case there was an attack. He made a one-handed gesture toward the enclosure, which temporarily placated Loretta, who wheeled toward it as Sneaky Pete started fishing around in his jeans pocket for the key to the door of the terrarium.
Loretta put her face next to the glass while she waited, studying the denizens inside. Things seemed to have calmed down a bit – the iguana and the gecko looked slightly less fearful, mostly because the chameleon had turned his focus to Loretta, casting a benign, inscrutable pair of reptile eyes on this newest possible threat to his world.
A staring contest ensued, until finally Loretta delivered her judgment. “That ain’t no chameleon,” she said, turning back toward Sneaky Pete, as if daring him to rebut her. But Pete said nothing, clearly unwilling to engage in another round of verbal volleying.
“You want to go inside and check him out?” he queried instead, holding out the key.
“Sure. Is it safe?”
“Of course,” Pete replied, although there was kind of a hitch in his voice that made me think something else might be going on beyond the obvious swindle.
Loretta snatched the key from him before he knew what was happening, and then in short order she was inside the terrarium, standing stock still just beyond the door, awaiting the creature’s response to her incursion.
For the most part, there was none. Or at least what I could see looked fairly innocuous. The lizard, which was about a foot tall, turned toward her slowly, its movements clearly geared toward some inner timing mechanism to which we weren’t privy. It watched her carefully for about a minute, which went by very slowly.
Then it did the oddest thing. With what seemed like great deliberation, at a pace that made it seem like the movement was taking place in slow motion, the lizard reared up on its hind legs. Then it simply stood there. There was no threat or hint of anything adversarial in the motion; it just appeared that the thing belonged upright.
The front legs were obviously shorter than the back, a feature that was decidedly un-lizardly. Oddly, the way they dangled in front of the torso once the creature was upright made it look like a gesture of supplication, as if it might be praying or asking for something.
We watched to see what it would do. Sneaky Pete was staring warily at me, and I realized that my jaw had dropped a bit. The slight smile on his face told me that he’d seen this part of the drill before. I couldn’t completely see Loretta’s expression from outside the enclosure, but her lips looked to be curled up in the beginnings of what might be a smile, so I took it on faith that she was pleased with the encounter.
As for the lizard, it remained upright, staring straight at Loretta. I couldn’t tell if she was staring back or not, but when the creature was seemingly satisfied it looked down at the dirt in front of it, as if considering taking a small step forward. For a moment we all thought this was a possibility, but then it looked back up at her, as if intent on completing the staring process. Finally it dropped back down to the ground, at which point the gecko and the iguana instantly looked decidedly more nervous.
When the exchange was clearly over, Loretta stepped slowly back toward the door and removed herself from the enclosure, carefully watching the lizard as she did. She closed the door and locked it, testing the door to make sure the lock was fully engaged. Finally she turned to Pete and delivered her verdict.
“We’ll take it,” she said, her tone indicating that there was no possibility of objection or negotiation, from either myself or Sneaky Pete.
So we did.