Blanche had been taking her dogs to the dog park for as long as she could remember. Her favourite was the one near the East Bridge, beside that new quirky café. It had benches all the way around that often weren’t full, and she could rest her bad knee while the dogs played.
But Albert. What was she to do with Albert?
She’d taken him to every park in the city. Just as they’d pass the low wrought iron fencing, every time, they would last exactly thirty seconds before the screams started.
Blanche had known that having Albert was going to be a little different, but she’d thought to herself, you’re an old lady now, Blanche! A dinosaur, the kids say. Why, the ways of your youth are not the ways of the modern world. People are accepting now of differences, and why should you be afraid?
Alligators make perfectly good pets.
She’d found Albert while running the tap in her matchbox apartment to have a bath. Her daughters had sent her a box for her birthday with a note saying “sorry we can’t come this year!”. It had been filled to the brim with Blanche’s favourite bath bombs. She’d had her coffee and watched some reruns of a vampire film her dad used to like, and then thought she’d better kick off those ratty slippers, stop drowning her sorrows, and go celebrate her birthday in her own way.
She hadn’t had to go far.
Blanche still thanked her lucky stars she’d kept her glasses on long enough to spot him… the little creature was no bigger than her pointer finger, and for a moment she’d thought it was a bug. But then she saw his feeble little kicks, and how his tiny mouth opened to those miniature teeth, those shining eyes, and she scooped him out real quick.
But Blanche hadn’t known a thing about alligators. She knew they ate meat, but what kind? And what about one so small? She’d nursed a kitten once in her twenties, but did reptiles like dehydrated milk?
She’d thrown on her robe again and sat down in front of her old laptop with Albert in a small Tupperware and searched around. That was what got her up and moving, not a half an hour later, walking just a few blocks over with Albert hidden in her purse to the fishing tackle shop. The man behind the counter, a couple years her junior, nodded.
“Best worms this side of the Equator,” he said, sliding them forward. “I appreciate a woman who knows her invertebrates. Whatcha lookin’ to catch?”
“Alligators,” Blanche said. “Thanks for the bag.”
Back in her apartment, Albert — she’d decided to name him after her first husband, they both had too many teeth— was so weak. She thought for a moment she’d been too late. But she placed a bit of water in a serving dish, set Albert inside, and with a pair of wooden chopsticks, winkled out one of the worms.
As soon as Albert caught sight of it, his little body dashed forward, faster than Blanche had thought possible, and in two bites, the worm was gone.
She smiled. She was already thinking about changes to the apartment — a bigger tub, a separate shower because did she need a living room, really? It’d be a lot of work but… She’d fed Albert another worm. It might be a decent birthday, after all.
Now, though, as she trudged from the last park, seeing how Albert slogged along behind her — the tightness in his green shoulders, the dullness of his skin, how his tail dragged among the cigarette butts and fallen leaves — she wasn’t so sure.
“Come now, Albie, we’ll have a sit.”
It was a Tuesday morning, most people were already at work, and so this street by the old construction site was mostly empty. She sat down on a bench and Albert clambered up beside her. He rested his enormous spear-shaped head on her lap; she patted him absently while looking again at the paper map she’d taken from the train station. With a sigh, she took out a pen and crossed off the last park.
Something plopped onto her wool skirt and Blanche thought, in a moment of panic, God no, not another bird, but when she looked down, it was neither bird nor storm, but Albert’s big fat tears, pattering silently onto her lap. He shook silently as they fell.
“Oh my darling,” she said, kissing his snout. She ran her hand along his back, the way she’d done with her daughters. “We have each other, you know. And don’t tell the girls, but you’ll always be my favourite.”
A man across the street screamed and dove back into the bodega. A delivery person clutched their chest and tore around the corner. Blanche’s heart sank.
This had been coming for a long while. When Albert had been small, she’d taken him to schools, workshops, conservation conferences, and though the professionals always had a “talk” with her afterwards, for the most part, the children were happy, she was happy, and Albert was in his element. He and Blanche had developed this trick, where he’d stay stock still on the stage till all the children had filed into their seats, and then Blanche would click her fingers and he’d do a backflip. The kids always thought he was a statue! Albert and Blanche used to leave those shows with matching grins.
Those had been the good ol’ days. Her daughters didn’t come round much now, but Blanche didn’t feel that was really all that different from before, and nothing was better than curling up with Albert to watch a foreign film on her computer late at night.
But he was so big, she thought to herself. And he looked so… sad.
A pang of guilt struck her.
Something had to be done.
That night, while Albie slept beneath his heat lamp in the sitting room, Blanche made a list.
Release Albie back into the sewer, she didn’t even bother writing down.
Buy him a friend. But she’d tried that already; she glanced over at the menagerie of muddy stuffed animals— two baby alligators, a rhino, and his favourite, a large flamingo she’d bought in the final sales of a bankrupt toy store. He used to carry the last one around on his back, prancing around like a Macy’s Day balloon, but at this point it was more patches than the original pink cotton. Blanche sighed. She realized she was being selfish.
Bring Albert to a zoo. She chewed her lip, but didn’t cross it out.
Find a wildlife educator. She dumped out her purse and all the years of business cards that carpeted the bottom. That was a possibility, but one that gave her chest pains.
Release him into the Everglades.
The next morning, Blanche fed Albert— quite a bit of her pension went to the butcher on 5th street— and picked up the phone.
“Yes, I’m just curious,” she said into the receiver, “do you have any openings?”
The closest zoo was fifty miles outside the city, and Blanche would normally have driven there. But she kissed Albert on the snout, promised him a fish from Alfonso’s when she returned, and hopped on the commuter rail into the woodlands of the upper state.
As she walked beneath the worn wooden banner and into the maw of a concrete crocodile’s mouth, she vaguely remembered coming to this place as a child. Time had not been unkind to the zoo, but funding had clearly been tight. As she walked past the gorilla enclosure, she could see a satisfied-looking, if ancient, silverback, sunning himself on a well-kept, if equally ancient, synthetic rock.
“Ah, Mrs. Levesque, it’s so nice to meet you,” a woman said as she shook Blanche’s hand. She smiled. “I’m Dr. Miranda García, the herpetologist here. Let me show you around.”
Dr. García guided her into the reptile enclosure, where they passed caimans and constrictors and crocodiles, where the water ran clear and the animals had been given seemingly as much room to maneuver as the zoo could afford. Blanche had heard bad things about some zoos, but this one seemed to be trying. Just as she was beginning to think, Albie might actually get on here, she noticed the enormous bull gator nestled at the back.
“Oh, that’s Freddie,” Dr. García said, and sighed. “He’s a bit of a bully, but mostly harmless. How big did you say your Albert was?”
“Uh, five… going on six,” Blanche answered. Her hand shook as she reached for the railing. Watching her, Freddie lifted his gargantuan head from the nest, spread his razor-sharp overbite, squared his shoulders, and gave a long, low hiss.
“Hm,” Dr. García said, watching Freddie with a growing frown. “And how much does Albie weigh?”
When Blanche made it home, she practically threw herself onto Albert. She’d bought not two but three local trout, and fried hers up in butter while Albie finished off the two of his raw. He chirped and nuzzled her hand.
She crossed zoo off the list.
The next morning, she made another phone call, to a man dubiously called “Ranger Don”. He was one of the only people she vaguely remembered from Albie’s school show days, a charismatic man perpetually caught wearing a Crocodile Dundee branded hat, and with a clear aversion to sleeves.
“Lovely to hear from you!” he said. “Let’s see what we can do here.”
Ranger Don met Blanche at the café by the dog park that she loved. It had changed hands recently and seemed to be going for a jungle vibe, which Blanche found kind of endearing. Sitting across from Don amidst the recorded chirping of birds, their booth draped with plush snakes, she looked again at the binder he’d handed her.
“It’d be similar to what you used to do before,” he said. His teeth were very white. “Lots of school shows with the kids, supervised for safety, of course. Susan’s been my number-one for a good ten years now, but she’s getting on in years, and I’m thinking she might like retirement. Boas live a long while, but no one lives forever. Albie might be what the show needs.”
Blanche nodded, looking through the photos, but not really seeing them.
“When you say retirement, is that… to a zoo, or a sanctuary or…”
Ranger Don, for the first time in the hour they’d been chatting, fiddled with his branded pen and pursed his lips.
“Well, you know, I prioritize my animals’ quality of life,” he said. “And if they’re in pain, or getting on in years, well…”
Blanche froze at the words quality of life. Something about the way he was staring intently at that plastic pen, and clicking it open-closed, open-closed. . .
“Well ma’am, I don’t mean to alarm you,” he said, and smiled a little sheepishly. “There’s a lot of money to be made in legally-trapped reptiles, and I have an agreement with a restau—”
Blanche threw the binder at him and tore out of the café as quickly as her orthopaedic shoes and winging hip would allow.
When she got home, she scooped up a bewildered Albert and cried onto his scales, clutching him as tightly as he used to clutch his stuffed flamingo. He cooed and chirped, pushing gently into her shoulder and flicking his tail.
“Oh my baby,” she sniffled. “I’m never gonna let anything happen to you.”
She burned the rest of the business cards in the oven, and dumped their cold ashes into the trash. Then she tucked herself and Albie under a blanket on the couch and watched Columbo till they both fell asleep.
Her daughters called her the next morning, as if they somehow knew it was the worst time to phone. Blanche didn’t answer, but sat with her cup of coffee at the edge of Albert’s pool. He was still sleeping, but even half-submerged she could tell he was depressed. Was his skin always that pale? Had he always been so thin? She fiddled with a rosary and reached again for the phone.
“Hello, yes,” she said, “I’m wondering about a flight to Florida . . .”
The tickets were expensive. Blanche pulled up her bank account again on her computer, as though it would somehow look different than it had five minutes ago.
She patted Albert’s head where it nestled, eyes closed, on her lap.
“Love you, sweetie,” she whispered. She knuckled her eyes.
She knew Albert could tell something was wrong, but Blanche tried not to give anything away. She took him for his walk that morning, skirting past the pond so he could bellow at the ducks, and brought him home the long way. Her chest pains had returned, and when Albert caught her rubbing a hand over her chest, he bulldozed himself up onto the couch and squawked at her. His big slitted eyes bore into hers, as if to say, what’s going on with you?
“You know I love you,” was all she said.
The flight would be early in the morning. But as her mother’s old clock chimed 11pm that night, Blanche — restless as she were — rolled out of bed and reached for her clothes. Albert’s snores floated over from the sitting room; the door clicked quietly as she shuffled outside.
Her city did sleep, unlike some, but that didn’t mean everything shut down at night. Blanche hadn’t really planned it, but her feet took her towards the old dog park, and the neon sign that read Giovanni’s Jungle Café — Open 24 Hours.
Blanche stepped inside and found a booth at the back, engulfed in fluorescent animatronic macaws. Real canaries fluttered in an enormous cage, singing louder than Blanche would have ever thought possible for such a tiny bird. The air smelled of waffles and cheese. She set her bag on her lap and looked down at her hands.
In her mind’s eye, she saw Albie the day she’d found him. He’d been so small, so helpless…
God, had she made a mistake? Would he be alright, in that sanctuary?
She pulled out her phone and made the mistake of googling “Everglades”, only to be swamped by news of funding cuts to conservation programs and grim accusations against the local government and—
“What can I get you?” a server asked.
Blanche closed her phone and tried to hide her shaking hands beneath the peeling tabletop. She managed to glance up; their name-tag read Tina.
“I like your pin,” Blanche said with a sniffle. “Is it an alligator?”
“Yeah, kind of the unofficial mascot,” they said with a smile. “We’ve been trying to install the big animatronic, but,” they shrugged, gesturing over their shoulder to where a rather absurd looking life-size reptile smiled down at them. Wires stuck out of its back, its eyes pointed in different directions like a chameleon, and it had been painted a vibrant forest green.
“It’s not working?”
“Something about the circuit breaker,” Tina said. “Gio’s optimistic but between you and me, that thing’s gonna end up in the trash. Easier to get a real one, eh?” Tina laughed. “But what can I get you, hun— coffee? Or maybe a beer?”
Blanche looked back and forth between the animatronic and Tina.
“Coffee, please,” she said. She almost couldn’t hear her own voice— her heart was beating so fast— as she continued “and, uh… any chance Gio is around?”
Blanche had to get up early; the last thing she wanted was to be late.
“C’mon, Albie! Rise and shine!”
This bigger apartment was closer to the park, and as it was on the twelfth floor, it even provided a great view of the dogs running back and forth. Albie waddled out of the sitting room where he’d been sunning under the lamp. Blanche affixed his little jacket which she’d crocheted, and his galoshes and beanie. Clicking him onto the leash, they both rushed out into the snowy street.
5:00 a.m. was a rough start, but Blanche had gotten used to these dark winter mornings. Something about the chillingair, the moon, and the lights beginning to flicker in the skyscrapers downtown, like stars in the sky, filled her with energy. Albie felt it too —even in the snow, warm in his winter gear, he had a little spring in his step.
“Sorry we’re late, Tina,” Blanche said, the bell above the door tinkling as they came in.
“If this is what you call late, Albie’ll make employee of the month for the third time in a row,” Tina said. They knelt down and unbuckled Albert from the lead. “You ready for your shift, my dude?”
Albie grinned and clicked, and waddled after Tina to the stage above and to the side of the café counter. Giovanni’d padded it with memory foam and installed a sunlamp and misters on all sides. He shook his tail as he clambered up.
“You staying today?” Tina asked, already moving behind the espresso machine to make up Blanche’s coffee.
“Yes, please,” Blanche said. “I still get a kick out of it.”
Tina grinned. “Me too.”
Blanche sat, drinking coffee on the house, and watched Albie work. Every time the children jumped when “the alligator” opened its mouth and did a backflip, and every time they remarked “how life-like” it was, Albert’s eyes sparkled. He cooed with contentment, and from time to time looked over to Blanche as if to say, look at me, Ma! Grace and Helen had even come down to see him, and feed him on his breaks. Then they looked sideways at Blanche as she sipped her coffee.
“So you’re really ok, Ma?” they asked. “You don’t need anything?”
“Not for the world,” Blanche replied. “Though I think Albie could use a few more bath bombs.”
