upon themselves when they’re drunk and womanless.
“Just keep him from killing himself, OK?”
“We work,” Pac says, slamming the car hood. “We play.”
“Playing doesn’t include getting stupid drunk,” I remind him. “Dr. Ruttonjee’s orders.”
Pac smiles as if I’m stating the obvious. “Yes, yes,” he says, “I know.”
“Oh, I found some cheap flights to the carrier event. Tell him that. It’ll give him something to look forward to.”
“I’ll put my eagle eye on him,” Pac says, pointing to his good eye. “I promise.”
We hug and he’s off, the Honda rattling to the lot’s exit. I want to put my trust in Pac, let go and focus on the competition ahead, but as he feeds into beach traffic and disappears, I’m bracing for the kind of soul-leveling trouble that’s bound to wreck my life.
10
The San Diego Zoo is locked down for the night, and I find myself alone in the Sunday after-hours with my former biology teacher, Christian. We’re secretly observing two Bonobo apes French-kissing behind a glass enclosure in the new Google Primate Building. Christian asked me to join him under the veil of witnessing a moment of discovery together, but I’m not naive. We both know what the next hour will bring, and honestly, I’m not putting up a roadblock when it comes.
I don’t know what it is about him, or maybe I do: the sleek Cal-surfer body and long, sun-torched hair, or the bad-boy pockmarks and wily blue eyes that give his face an air of convict-style danger. Add the cool ocean musk that he sometimes gives off, okay that, and figure in the teacher-student sexual tension that simmered over two years, and well, I think you know what gets me going. We never acted on it, but it came to a head in a yummy kiss that was cut short a few nights ago when Pac called to tell me my father was a roof statue.
The building is silent except for the muffled thumps and hoots of the Bonobo troop and the eerie click of the main door locks. And here we are, kneeling behind a cardboard blind that Christian jerry-rigged with a small horizontal slit. The 8K video camera humming in his hand captures the occasional ape kiss through the opening. Every so often, he’ll pull the camera away so we can view live. It’s not the most comfortable situation, and I can feel the hard terrazzo through the furniture pad against my knees, but being alone again, and close enough to feel Christian’s body heat, takes the edge off and sends my heart racing with anticipation.
“The Bonobo is the only nonhuman primate capable of post-conflict sexual resolution,” Christian whispers in an official way. “Or, in other words: they’re totally into makeup sex.”
“Is that so?” I say, following the script.
The troop sleeps near a shallow pool fed by a lush waterfall cast in the fading light from the skylights above, apart from the two apes we’re observing—Nugget, the dominant male, and a sassy girl named Popcorn, perch on the stripped lower branch of a tree. Nugget’s long tongue swirls around Popcorn’s mouth.
“He’s a fast kisser,” I say, whisper-laughing. “That thing’s a friggin’ airplane propeller!”
“I hate fast kissers,” Christian says, as an aside. I know from the other night that his kisses are slow and warm and wet.
“Think she’s into it?” I whisper. “I mean, animal consciousness being in the moment, the here and now? I mean, is it good, like, you know, the first time, all the time?”
“Good question. Why don’t you ask him?”
I peek through the slit and flinch at the sight of volcanic ape porn.
“Here,” Christian says. “Your turn.”
He offers me the camera and places his hands over mine to steady it. His hands are big, solid monsters—protectors—and they channel a soft heat that makes me go gooey. I focus the viewfinder on the apes and toggle my hips, trying to wriggle my plastic visitor’s badge, which is clipped to my tee, and stuck inside the belt line of my jeans. Just then, the badge lifts away and Christian’s rough fingertips brush against the bare skin of my hip, a move that sets me on fire.
“You don’t mind?” he asks.
“No, thanks. It was really bothering me.”
Christian’s trying hard to sound official, but it’s fun playing along. There were days after his class that left me with several fantasies. Like the time we were dissecting a leopard shark and he gently took my glove-covered hand in his, extended my finger, guided it to the fish’s heart, and said, “Right there, it’s the organ that’s still beating silly.” The gesture had me going for weeks, and I’d lay in bed at night, lazing in the day’s afterglow, dreaming that we were in a romantic embrace on the Eiffel Tower or in, say, Bali, taking in the terraced rice fields at sunset, just the two of us, alone in a perfect world.
Christian picks a piece of lint from my shoulder, examines it, flicks it away, and says, “You know you were one of my best students, don’t you?”
“Yeah, stupid,” I say, as he thumbs hair behind my ear. “I know.”
I’ve heard from two reliable sources that Christian’s modus operandi is to tick down his list of former students and invite them to places where animals mate, just to make his move. I know I’m probably fooling myself, but I hope that he can see me for who I am: not a five on a scale of ten or the chatty postgrad with shoulders broad as a boxer’s and a laugh that could break glass, but as a young woman with ambition and purpose and a whole lot to give to the right guy. The reality is, though, that after tonight, I’ll be shocked if Christian ever pings me again.
Our eyes meet. I swallow deeply. My body smolders.
There’s a long pause where the blue of his irises hold me. Christian leans in minty-fresh close, but his breath is more like hour-old double-whipped mocha. We kiss, a slow, salty tangle, while I hold the camera in one hand like a waitress handling a serving tray. Christian takes the camera and sets it down. On one knee, he lowers me to the pad like a movie star, adjusting himself so he’s staring down at me, palms flat at my shoulders, trapping me between his locked arms. The pad is rough under my back, and my sense of smell is all at once heightened: the pale damp of lettuce, settling floor cleanser, the ocean tang of Christian’s skin.
“What if someone comes in?” I ask, trembling.
“All the better.”
When he strips off his tee, his pecs are stone solid. His blond hair curtains his face, his features gone to shadow from the cast of the orange vapor lights above. Zippers rip, clothes unravel, and from there it’s all flesh and fingers, mouths on mouths and skin on skin. The foreplay gets so wild that we knock over the blind, and it floats to the floor. What I can’t see, and what I’ve only just come to realize, is that one by one the apes have come alive and knuckle over to us. It’s not until our lips break that I see Nugget and the rest of the troop slammed up against the glass, staring and hooting and carrying on like pervy spectators at a live sex show. Modesty gets the better of me. I want to steal my clothes and run, but then, in a single hard thrust, Christian enters me. My eyes close, the world fades, and suddenly I’m just—gone.
11
W ith dawn hours away, I stand on the crest of a bridge that spans a narrow channel feeding into the bay, the Ringside duffel Pac tossed inside my trunk heavy in my hand.
Christian’s still bittersweet in my head. I could tell by his embrace, a tentative “best friend” hug before we split off to our cars in the parking lot of Cordoba’s Mexican restaurant after the zoo, that he’ll never ping me again. Maybe it’s for the better. I mean, is a relationship that tweaks my brain in all kinds of stupid, love-sorry directions what I need right now, at this critical time when I’m staring down gold? I should be asleep, conserving every bit of energy for the big day, but if I leave Jax’s guns in the Charger’s trunk until I get back from Down Under, it’ll be eating