good, solid position. He feels anchored, grounded. The gun is still in his hand, he’s lowered it, but it’s at his side, pointed down.
His heart is pounding, his hair is wet with sweat, but he feels better somehow. He feels as if he’s thrown up, emptied himself, expelled something poisonous. The heat of his hatred seems to have been short-lived, a two-minute hate at best.
What comes next? Fitz thinks. After hate?
When it occurs to Fitz that this could be the germ of a song (“What comes after the hate?/Something something too late?”), that’s when he realizes he must be okay. The demon who possessed him must have departed, he understands, left him, like a fever, sweating and weak and a little disoriented but restored. He is himself again.
“Okay,” his father says. His tie is askew, his belt buckle off-center. He makes a cautious palms-out gesture, just the way you show a strange dog you mean no harm. He looks vulnerable, defenseless, he looks suddenly unarmed, unprotected, uneverythinged.
Something has passed between them, they’ve shared something, whatever it is, something that can never be put into words. Fitz knows he will never really write a song about it. There’s no word for what just happened, and nothing rhymes with it.
“So,” his father says. He looks as if he’s aged somehow from the time he stepped out of his building, lost some of that youthful buoyancy. He doesn’t look like a tennis champion now. He doesn’t look like an ace litigator. He looks like, like what?
“So,” his father says again. “Now what?”
A TALE OF LOVE AND WAR
10
“So, Curtis,” Fitz says. It’s easier than he thought to call his father by his first name. But why not? It’s a little late to be worrying about social niceties. “You’re not grossed out, are you?”
They’re holding paper cones full of diced fish parts. Below them is a rowdy pack of sea lions jostling each other, trying to establish a position, barking up at them.
Back at the Frog Pond, they reached an understanding. Fitz agreed to put the gun away, his father promised to be an agreeable companion, no back talk. No shooting, no bolting, that’s their deal.
“No,” his father says. “I’m not grossed out.” He’s unbuttoned the cuffs of his shirt and turned up the sleeves and has been looking into his cup. It is a smelly, fish-flavor snow cone, full of scaly chunks, some eyeballs, too. He gives it a little shake. But he hasn’t picked up anything yet.
Fitz has already tossed off almost half of his, aiming for one sea lion in particular on the periphery, a teenager, Fitz imagines, not so fat, a little less pushy. So far Fitz has made two successful long throws that have carried over the main gang and landed directly in this fellow’s mouth. Fitz feels a connection with him, like they’re buddies, a kind of team.
Now, finally, his father reaches into his cup, boldly grabs a big piece, as if to show how not grossed out he is. He tosses it off with a certain jaunty style, backhanded, with a flick of his wrist, like a Frisbee.
Fitz has always loved the sea lions. He loves their speed, their unapologetic appetite, their slickness, their capacity for mischief. He can’t prove it—and he knows a zoologist would probably scoff—but Fitz is convinced some animals have a sense of humor. Not giraffes—too nervous—not sloths or boars—too sluggish and slow-witted—but lemurs, say, otters for sure, and sea lions.
The zoo is still pretty quiet. They’re nearly the only ones around. In an hour or so, the school field-trip kids will be here, with their name tags and bag lunches, getting herded from exhibit to exhibit. But now, it is basically just the two of them and a few khaki keepers sweeping and hosing, one sleepy-looking guy picking up garbage with a sharp stick, a few gulls perched on the ledge of the sea lion enclosure, eyeing the fish but keeping their distance. Fitz and his father are out in the open, in public, but they’re alone, too. It feels private. It’s the kind of time and place that spies in movies meet to exchange their secrets.
“Okay,” his father says, “okay, big guy. You next.” He is talking to the most boisterous sea lion, who is sitting on the rocks directly beneath them, yapping up at them, head tilted back, looking like a goofy earless dog.
“All right,” his father says. “Here you go—a nice juicy piece.”
Fitz and his mom always talk to the