December 5, 2010
“Our travel budget is kaput.”
Pete lowered the latest issue of The Journal of Plankton Research and doffed his reading spectacles, peering at me with that familiar difficult-to-decipher unblinking blank stare. “Our travel budget?” he asked. “If you have not noticed, Einstein, I do not own a wallet or possess a bank account.”
“You know what I mean,” I replied, a bit perturbed that he was more interested in reading about the flexible adaptation of the seasonal krill maturity cycle in the laboratory than in my checking and savings account balances or our future travel destinations.
“I’ve never had to work,” Pete gurgled. “I just mooch off the latest emotionally present, playfully creative, interpersonally delightful LWCC employee with a positive attitude. They really make my day.” He popped another sour Gummi worm into his mouth and reclined into his reading posture, adding, “Did you know that, under the influence of different light regimes, krill can flexibly adjust their seasonal physiological cycles to cope with varying environmental conditions?”
“Fascinating,” I replied, nonplussed. “I wouldn’t know a ‘krill’ if it stood up and burst into the ‘Hallelujah’ chorus of Händel’s Messiah in the mall’s food court during peak Christmas shopping season.” Actually I knew perfectly well that krill are tiny shrimplike creatures that are an essential component of the food chain. “I meant to say my travel budget for our globetrotting adventures.” Pete either did not hear my clarification or chose to ignore it. He wasn’t rude; he was simply engrossed in slime-eating sea creatures.
Meanwhile, my efforts at reconciling my checkbook using a solar-powered calculator that I keep in a gloomy desk drawer proved fruitless. I might as well have been chiseling hieroglyphic numbers on a marble cave wall wearing boxing gloves fashioned out of flank steaks. “Please keep your tail fin off the coffee table.”
“Sorry, Charlie,” he snickered, bringing to mind the StarKist® Tuna cartoon character who always faced rejection because he did not “taste good” but had “good taste,” as evidenced by his hip raspberry-colored beret and über chic Buddy Holly–inspired glasses frames. I was always mildly disturbed as a youth by the cannibalistic undertones of that particular advertising campaign. Pete was aware of this troubling fixation, one of my many phantasmal animation-based neuroses, and he pulled this one out of his arsenal of verbal barbs, brandishing it whenever I tried to impose my fastidious housekeeping practices upon him. He was the Oscar Madison to my Felix Unger. (Of course, one wouldn’t know it by my office. I call my organizational method “controlled mayhem.”) “I’m manufactured out of plush fabric and do not have an exoskeleton—or endoskeleton, for that matter—like some of my distant cousins. I don’t scar things. Or, more accurately, mar things. Our friendship may leave you scarred, but my polyester-blend caudal fin will not leave your table marred.”
I gave up on my bookkeeping arithmetic and semantic badminton match with Pete. “Since we don’t appear to have the funds for those exotic trips we had planned to Machu Pichu, Franz Josef Land, Patagonia, Bocas del Toro, Namibia, Positano—and your wise-acre selection, Finland—I was thinking something a little more…continental.” I removed my gallon-sized pickle jar from the shelf and dumped its contents onto the floor and began rolling pennies in coin sleeves.
“Like…?” Pete asked, attempting to narrow his hard-plastic, lidless eyes.
“How about Avery Island!” I blurted out, trying to sound excited. The words were decidedly more declarative than interrogative in tone and inflection.
Pete flopped upright, seemingly offended. “You mean the land of salt domes and jalapeño pepper crops, where TABASCO® Sauce flows like rivers of blood from an occupied iron maiden? The notion of inviting a fish to the Mecca of seafood seasoning would be tantamount to me saying to you, ‘Hey, human life form, let’s have a little Sunday afternoon jaunt down to the Gates of Hades!’” He was steaming now. Pete, the Petulant Poached Perch. “Don’t you know that hot sauce to fish is what holy water is to Linda Blair?”
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry! Chill your gills, Guppy Whisperer. I didn’t mean to offend you.” I patted his floppy dorsal fin. “Okay, I get your drift. Icks-nay on the ack-ilhenny-may actory-fay.” As I tried to think of an inexpensive destination within driving distance, I stacked my penny rolls like petrified Lincoln Logs. “How about the New Orleans Aquarium of the Americas?” As the words spilled out of my mouth, the last syllable sounding like a bumped phonograph’s needle skipping across vinyl grooves, I immediately realized the aquatic parallel and regretted the suggestion.
“That place is the Alcatraz of the undersea, a veritable submarine San Quentin!”
A silence washed across the room like hot wind over the Dead Sea. The room was so still that I half expected to hear crickets chirping, a cheap B-movie sound effect.
Then a brilliant idea hit me. “Fluker Farms!” Pete’s eyes seemed to bulge with excitement even more than they did ordinarily. “For over fifty years, Fluker’s has been the country’s leading producer of bait—mealworms, giant worms, super worms, night crawlers, red wigglers, fruit flies, hissing cockroaches! I’ll even treat you to a box of gourmet chocolate-covered crickets!”
“As long as there is no tackle involved, I’m cool with it.” Pete’s lips puckered and smacked and would have created a buoyant trail of voluminous air bubbles had he been in his natural habitat. Apparently, I had hit a home run.
As I gathered my penny rolls and the keys to my car, I had a parting thought. “I only have you for another week, Pete ol’ pal. I’ve really enjoyed our time together, and it is time to sign my name somewhere on your body with a Sharpie, like all of your previous recipient hosts. Before you go off ruining your teeth on cocoa-encrusted creepy crawlers, may I?” I found a green marker. Pete smiled widely with those big blue puffy boomerang lips, and I signed my name across his teeth. It looked as if he had seaweed stuck in his teeth. “Now that’s a smile! Your looks could krill!”
The disastrously bad play on words made him wince as if he’d been slapped by a perturbed stingray. “Don’t quit your day job, Jack Benny,” he quipped.
I pinned Pete under my arm, locked up the house, and strapped the toddler-sized perch snuggly into the front passenger seat of my Milano Red Honda Fit Sport. “All aboard, scallywags! Port Allen, here we come!”
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