We finally came to stop in a large, stuffed parking lot. It was familiar in a nostalgic way with tall lights that held banners covered in the stripes of tigers or the spots of a jaguar, and the sounds of many, many children, some wearing onesies shaped like lions or carrying the plush toy of an elephant while being pushed in a stroller. A smell so unlike Milwaukee permeated the air, the so-very distant scent of hay and animals that weren’t Midwest livestock. I’d only been to this place once before, and I struggled in deciding whether I felt excited or overwhelmed. Either way, to keep my fingers from tapping against my thigh, I forced my hands to instead worry with the jacket’s undone zipper.

“The zoo?” I asked, lowering the headset from my ears; I took a moment to pause the tape.

“Yeah, why not? You said you liked animals, so, like, ‘what the hell, why not?’” He dropped the kickstand and hopped off the bike. He turned to offer a hand, but hesitated. “Unless I misheard or am remembering wrong. You still like animals, right? I sure hope not much has changed since we last hung out!”

Worrying the zipper intensified and I felt butterflies in my belly. This trip was meant to be for me?

“No, no, I love animals. Very much! It’s just I haven’t been here in a while. It’s… It’s been a long time for me,” I sighed, looking across the parking lot of minivans and school buses. “It was a school field trip, I was eight years old; I struggled because I wanted to read about the animals while everyone rushed to look at all the animals,” I shoved the walkman into my pocket, leaving the headset to hang from around my neck. “Teachers and chaperones were too focused on the kids that went faster and spoke louder than me when they pointed out every animal. It wasn’t until they got back to the school and did roll call that they realized they left me behind.

“I remember my dad picked me up. I’d spent my day in the zoo’s lost and found, they gave me a toy bear to play with while I waited, and they even let me take it home,” I smiled for a heartbeat at the memory of holding the plush polar bear against my chest while I read through the gift shop’s many brochures. “Mom took it away from me, telling me that I should remember to keep up with others, that others wouldn’t be patient with me as I grew older.” I never found out what happened to that bear.

Something in Jack’s face faltered, and he grimaced. “Oh, shit, Temp, I-” he rubbed at his jaw, then the back of his neck. “Look, if it’s, like, uncomfortable for you to be here or something we can-”

“No, Jack. I would… I would love to go. Like I said, it was a long time ago. I think I’d have a new appreciation for this place again.”

He regarded me with a strange look, lips pursed with a freshly-lit cigarette pinched between them. He sighed, “Well, I promise I won’t abandon you like your school did. Although, I do gotta warn you,” he leaned close, and there was a heat in my hand as he’d taken a gentle hold of it. “I would’ve been one of the kids that’d want to see all the animals as fast as possible - and that’s because animals are cool! I mean, how often do you see a freakin’ lion, Temp, huh? Never! So, if I get too wild, you must do somethin’ for me.”

My brows pinched. “What’s that?”

“Yank me back when I get to squirrely. I wanna practice real quick,” he shuffled just slightly ahead of me until there was a small distance between us, and our hands remained joined. “Now, pull me - like you’re gonna yank it outta its socket.”

I flinched. “But, Jack, wouldn’t that-”

“C’mon, trust me, just do it. I’ll bounce back!”

So I did. I half expected his arm to rip free from its socket, tearing in ribbons of gore and sinew as a result of the infection twisting his flesh. I could’ve killed him that way, I thought.

But he was fine. And I pulled him right into me. The impact sent both of us stumbling back half a step, and I completely flushed as my chest pillowed his head.

Hands still interlocked, his thumb brushed over my knuckles when he looked up at me, smiling wide enough so I would see the budding fang. “Perfect! Just like that! Do that whenever I get too wild and don’t sit still enough to appreciate animals, okay? I gotta use this to learn to appreciate the little things, y’know?”

He sounded as though his death was to occur tomorrow, within a couple hours, within a couple moments - and perhaps it was. I remembered how Dad and Mom were when he was sick, especially Mom when he passed. Amidst her grief and panic regarding diseases and how she was to manage, well, everything alone, she also voiced regrets. Regrets that we didn’t do more, like a road trip to Disneyland or camping up north, with Dad before and during his illness. Jack must’ve been afraid of losing such opportunities, and for that I was also afraid. It was a reminder that he was mortal. Temporary. And that made me ache. I gripped his hand tightly as I let him pull me towards the zoo’s entrance.

We paid for admission (I was shocked that Jack didn’t suggest that we find a place to jump the fence or somehow pose as chaperones to sneak in with the classes here on fieldtrips), and were greeted by a penguin exhibit within our first five steps into the zoo. 

As it was a weekday, the place wasn't as busy as I imagined it would’ve been on the weekends, but there were still schools that needed to entertain kids. There were children running to and from everywhere, oohing and awing at the animals, all while being pursued by stressed teachers and underqualified chaperones. Jack and I seemed to be the only two competent adults on the property, standing at the epicenter of  the chaos like the eye of a storm. Our hands still clenched one another, desperate to not let each other go and lose ourselves in the typhoon of children and parents. 

I felt panicked. I was frozen, and there was a sudden desire to run. What if the children saw Jack and all the bandages? What if a parent would confront him and ask what the bandages were for? What if the bandages slipped and they saw the infection bloating his eye and necrotizing his flesh? What if-

Jack’s squeezing hand brought me back to the present, and I sharply released a breath. Tension rolled between my shoulders, and my throat itched. The sounds of children and animals and adults faded into a distant buzzing that rang in my ears, reverberating against the walls of my skull.

“I think we can do things a little backwards,” Jack said, looking after the mass of kids moving down the path to the right of the penguin exhibit, the one that led to the zoo’s aviary, with an expression that hinted at envy. Swiftly, we headed down a path opposite of the school groups.

We passed through the portion of the zoo dedicated to farm animals, where you could pet and feed goats, with little interest until we reached the area for big cats, giraffes, and hippos.

Just as I had done as a child, I paused to read the signs at every enclosure, the first one being that of Panthera tigris tigris - the Bengal tiger. But I’d no chance to really read the plaque containing information about the tiger before I was nearly pulled off my feet. Jack, not realizing that I’d stopped, had been yanked back when I steadied myself. We nearly crashed into one another just like in the parking lot.

There’d been a split second when he glared at me with the frustration of a restrained child. “Wh- Oh, yeah, appreciating the animals. Sorry, Temp,” He regained composure beside me, stuffing his free hand into his pocket as he watched the tiger together.

Fur blazing gold and ebony beneath the sunlight, the beast laid sprawled across the stone ledges of its enclosure. Its mouth hung open, panting, revealing to us a maw of yellow teeth that’d have no qualms in ripping our throats open. It was a beautiful animal, and it filled me with both joy and an immense sadness that we were able to look upon such a creature but at the cost of its freedom. It never asked for this life, entrapment and denial of its heritage and nature to run wild and hunt in the underbrush. It must lay restrained within an enclosure, becoming the god to every child’s world for five seconds before they’d move on to another animal to devote their awe to. Could that happen to Jack if his infection, whatever it was, would be discovered?

“That’s a nice cat,” Jack remarked. I noticed his foot had started tapping, and he was swinging our clasped hands between us.

I found myself staring at our joined hands. His tried to encase mine, but, ultimately, it was mine that kept his caged within a pale, long-fingered grip. I became acutely aware of the heat stemming from his touch, and my palms went clammy. “You don’t have to wait for me, you know. You should be having your fun, too.”

“Did you read what you wanted to read?” He asked, not looking away from the tiger as it yawned and stretched its claws out before itself, as if trying to grasp as the sunlight glimmering right before it. He whistled softly and whispered, “Awe, big stretch!”

“I’ve not, but-”

“Read it to me then,” he looked up at me. “I wanna learn more about this guy, he seems chill.”

I stared down at him for a long moment, and the heat from our hands moved to my chest, then up my throat and into my ears.

“Well,” I started, “He is actually a she, and she was born in a zoo in Cleveland before being transported here,” I said, reading off the tiger’s plaque. “It’s a part of this breeding program, to save tiger populations.”

“Huh, you don’t say.” He said, and his thumb began to caress my knuckles again.