Thomas Pierce - Hall of Small Mammals - Stories

Felix is a comedian, though he hasn’t told a joke onstage in almost a year, not since he started lending his voice to Gonuts on Pets! A huge hit with kids, the hamster has his own lunchboxes and T-shirts. It is despicably commercial, but the paychecks sure are nice. Felix is not especially proud of the show. The jokes are too easy; the laugh track irks him. When people ask him what he’s up to, he often doesn’t mention the show and says only that he’s developing some new material, something he hasn’t done since his Keep Your Hands to Myself tour that took him to Atlanta, where he met Bet. She was at a table near the front of the show. She was a barista in a coffee shop near the university, a student there, in fact, though Felix only learned that later when she called to tell him about Hank — or about the bundle of cells that would eventually become Hank.

There was never any expectation that Felix would relocate his life to Atlanta (and he certainly didn’t ask her to join him out West). But without any lawyers having to get involved, he started mailing her monthly checks, checks that sometimes Bet didn’t even bother to cash. She didn’t need the money. The checks were purely symbolic. Her father worked for a certain soda company — that’s what her father was always calling it, a certain soda company —and she moved back in with her parents once Hank was born. With their help, Bet was able to finish school and get a job in a gallery. Ever since Hank’s birth, Felix has been flying into town three or four times a year for long visits.

But now, after not dating anyone seriously since the birth, Bet is getting married — to someone named JT, the heir to a carpet-cleaning business, a “good man,” according to Bet. Felix is prepared not to like him. Though he usually makes these trips alone, Laura volunteered to come along for the weekend to provide moral support, to help him get through the engagement party.

Laura is emphatic that she never wants any children of her own, but the fact that Felix has a son does not faze her. “How many women did you sleep with while you were on the road?” she asked him when he first showed her a photo of Hank on his phone, as if she were calculating the probability of other babies in other cities. This was on their second date, at a Mexican restaurant, fajitas sizzling on a metal platter between them. Felix wasn’t sure how to answer her question. Too many women and he was a sleaze, but too few and he was inadequate. He settled on six and flashed three fingers on each hand. Laura nodded and announced, matter-of-factly, that six was a number she could live with. Ten months later, and they are on the verge of a more encompassing merger — of door keys, of bedsheets, of utensils, of wireless Internet accounts. Strangely, none of this scares Felix at all. He doesn’t know if he has Laura or his upcoming thirty-ninth birthday to thank for this sudden blip of maturity, but he is ready to embrace the change.

When the stewardess brings him his second whiskey and soda, he takes a long sip. Two gigantic hands descend from above. They latch on to the top of Felix’s headrest and pull it back like the arm of a catapult. Ready, set — when the man stands and releases the chair, Felix is rocked forward, some of the whiskey splashing over the plastic rim of his cup.

“Watch it,” Felix says to the man, who’s crouching beneath the bins. The man clears his throat and says nothing. Where is Felix’s apology? He glares up at the guy through the gap between the headrests. “Buddy, you made me spill my drink.”

“Your what?” The man has a face like tapioca pudding.

“My drink,” Felix says. “When you stood up, you made me spill it.”

“Oh,” the man says. “Sorry, didn’t hear you. My ears are no good with the pressure. These headphones are pointless. I turn the volume up all the way, and it’s just noise. All these movies to choose from and I can’t hear a word of dialogue. Plus I have to stretch every twenty minutes. Ever heard of DVT? If I don’t move around enough I might get an embolism.”

“By all means, then,” Felix says, “run a few laps.”

“You’ll have to excuse him,” Laura says to the man. “He’s been a little edgy this morning.”

“Flying will do that to you,” the man says. “They don’t make it easy, do they?”

“They don’t,” she says, reaching for the inflight magazine, and then she starts back on the crossword puzzle without further comment.

Has Felix been edgy this morning? Even if he has been, this man doesn’t need to hear about it. Quietly he says to Laura, “He bumps my seat and you ask him to excuse me ? What’s that all about?”

She pats his arm. “Here’s something good: you don’t know how to feel about the mother of your child getting married to another man, and you’ve brought me along because you want me to be a part of your life, and I love you for that. Here’s something bad: part of you doesn’t want me on this trip.” This technique of hers, the something-good-something-bad, is from a book she read years ago. She swears it is the key to strong communication, but Felix doesn’t care for it. Hearing something good doesn’t mitigate the bad. The bad is still just as bad.

“I do want you on this trip,” he says. “ All parts of me want you here.”

“Okay,” she says. “I’m glad to hear it. And here I am. I’m here.”

• • •

A miracle: the plane lands three minutes earlier than expected. They don’t have any checked bags. Unlike his usual visits, when he rents a car and stays for the entire week, they can be here only for the weekend. Both Felix and Laura have to be back on Monday for work on Pets! She does makeup for the show and two others on the network.

Down the long sunlit terminal, floor-to-ceiling windows above and on all sides, he drags their shared green roller suitcase across the hard white floor. Felix can imagine the distance between heaven and earth like this, bright and spare and seemingly endless. Laura strolls a few feet behind him, giant white sunglasses on her small face, pink oxford shirt knotted over one hip. At the bottom of an escalator, they pass between two sliding doors, and Felix scans the crowd for Bet’s dad, Mr. Ash, who was enlisted to pick them up and chauffeur them to the hotel, the Commodore, Felix’s usual haunt on these trips.

Mr. Ash is in his sixties, but hasn’t retired yet. Maybe he never will. In his work for a certain soda company, he often jets off to New Delhi and Shanghai, defending the company brand in places where trademark laws aren’t always enforced very stringently. Save for the wire-frame glasses always at the end of his nose, Mr. Ash has the look of an elderly football brute. The first time Felix met the man was right here in the baggage claim, the screens flashing arrivals, the swishing of so many suitcase wheels across the carpet. Bet was there too, of course, her belly round under a T-shirt, black hair cut shorter than Felix remembered it. Mr. Ash towered behind her like an Easter Island statue. It was the moment Felix had dreaded most ever since Bet’s first phone call about the Hank-in-progress.

“So you’re the comedian I have to thank for all this,” Mr. Ash had said, unsmiling, and then stuck out his dry freckled hand.

“So you’re the dad who probably wishes my plane had crashed,” Felix answered. Felix has a knack for saying the exact wrong thing. He says things defensively and without thought. Partly it’s what initially drew him to the stage.

“Is that him?” Laura asks now, and points toward a sharp-chinned man with fine brown hair. He is holding a piece of paper that says FELIX PENN in Magic Marker. It isn’t Mr. Ash.

“Felix?” the man calls out. “It’s got to be you. Bet told me to look for the middle-aged pirate.”