Frank didn’t take long. “Think there might be something in the barn. Let me check.” Sure enough, buried deep in a pile of junk in the stall next to the rhino, was a metal tub almost three feet deep. He dragged it out to Annie. She had him put in the middle of the back yard, in the direct sunlight, and washed it out.

She said, “Now strip.”

Frank was too tired, too drunk to argue. He peeled off his sticky shirt, and slid his jeans down to his ankles while Annie aimed the stream of water into the tub. Barefoot, but still wearing white underwear, Frank took another swig of whiskey. “In,” Annie said, and flattened her palm against his chest and forced him backwards into the tub.

The water sent sparks through his brain. It felt gloriously cold. Annie grinned and worked the end of the hose along his skull, washing away the flakes of dried blood. She hooked the hose under his knee and let the water continue filling the tub. She handed him the bottle and said, “Drink up. I’ll be right back.”

She went into the vet hospital, leaving Frank alone with his bottle and the hose, shooting fresh, freezing water into his bath. He finished the bottle, deliberately blocking out the day, focusing solely on the field of star thistles and the jagged mountains. He finished the bottle, screwed the cap back on, and let it float around in the tub with him.

Annie came back out with a fresh grin and a bar of soap. She had Frank lean forward so she could work the lather into the short stubble that covered his scalp. “I liked your hair better when it was longer,” she said. “But I can understand why you cut it.” Her strong fingers firmly worked their way up his skull and he shivered. “Sturm told me you had some folks upset with you.”

His vision slipped into liquid darkness. “Sturm told you that?”

“Yeah.” Her slippery smooth fingers moved down to his shoulders, gripping and squeezing.

“When was this?”

“I dunno. The other day.”

The water felt warm all of a sudden; his vision sparked back over, and the quick sun was too bright. “What were you talking to him about?”

“I dunno. Stuff.”

“You talk about me?”

“Already told you. Yes.”

“What did he say?”

“He said you were a goddamn genius with all these animals. Idiot savant I believe is what he said.”

“Anything else?”

“No.”

“You sure?”

Annie sat back and wiped her forehead with her forearm. “What are you getting at here, Frank?”

Frank looked back at the mountains. “Are you here ’cause you like me…or did Sturm set this up?”

“Oh for god’s sake, Frank. I like you. Of course I like you. Thought we’d been through this.”

“But did Sturm tell you to come back here with me? Did he pay you to come back here with me?”

She stopped rubbing his back and flicked the soap off her fingers. “Who cares? I’m here with you. That should tell you everything you need to know.”

“No. That’s not…Did he pay you to be here with me today?”

“Christ, Frank. I’d be here whether he paid me or not.”

“So he paid you.”

“Yeah. Fuck, I wasn’t going to turn down money. It was cash, you understand.”

“Yeah.”

“Listen to yourself. It was a chance for me to be here. And he said he’d pay me, got that? So not only would I be here with you, I was going to get paid for it. Fuck, I wasn’t going to turn it down.”

Frank closed his eyes and sank down to his lips in the water. “Go home.”

“Just relax. I—”

“I said, go home. Get the fuck out.”

“Fine. Fine. Okay tough guy. Enjoy your bath.”

He heard her wipe her hands on her dress, hesitate for just a moment, then heard the cowboy boots striding purposefully through the overgrown lawn and out to the street and just like that, she was gone. He fought the urge to call her back. Fuck her. FUCK her.

He eyed the Jack Daniels bottle bobbing around in the bath and wished it wasn’t so empty. He had a couple of beers in the fridge, but they wouldn’t work. They’d just make things worse. But the pills he took from the trucker, they were just waiting for someone, they were waiting for someone with a need. Someone with a purpose.

* * * * *

Frank stood up in his bath and dropped the underwear. It was the first time he’d been naked outside since the night the quiet gentlemen had made him walk up those stairs to the alligator tank. Today, it felt good. He stepped out of the bath and pissed in the driveway.

Off in the distance, he heard shooting. But it never got closer.

There were two kinds of pills in the baggie. Strikingly vivid pale blue pills, the color of ice in the sun, and green and white capsules. Frank tore off a sheet from the prescription pad and folded the paper into quarters. He cracked one of the green and white capsules open and poured the white powder into the creases. He eyeballed it for a while, holding the folded paper up to the light, as if deciphering the chemical breakdown.

Frank scowled. He set the paper down and tossed one of the brilliant blue pills into his mouth and washed it down with beer. He poured the white powder back into the green capsule as best as he could. That one and the rest of the pills went back into the baggie. He slapped a long piece of duct tape across the baggie, opened the cupboard under the sink and wedged the tape and baggie up into the sink molding, in the narrow space between the edge of the counter and the front of the sink.

He took his beer back to his room and got dressed. On his way out front, he stepped into the small room at the back of the vet hospital. The pound. Although the dogs jumped to their feet, all wide eyes and wider mouths, thinking it was feeding time, they didn’t bark. They were used to him by now. Some even wagged their tails. He’d cleaned the concrete weeks ago, and now hosed it out at the end of each day. He kicked open the back door and emptied the bag of food on the ground. Then, before he could really slow down and think about it, he snapped open the lock and swung the door wide.

The dogs blinked uncertainly in the bright sunlight until the tiniest dog, the one that darted forward through the legs of the bigger dogs to snap at intruders, trotted confidently through the open door, crossed the small room, and bounced over the threshold. The rest of the dogs boiled through the open door and ran into the back parking lot, barking excitedly. A few paused long enough to gobble at the dry food on the ground, but the sheer intensity at being outside seemed to override any hunger in most of the dogs.

He went back up front, grabbed the last beer, and went out to sit with the rhino for a while. He took it slow with the beer, just listening to the crickets, the dogs’ distant barking, and the rhino’s breathing.

The slow-motion rhythmic pulsing of the rhino’s flanks nearly hypnotized him, when all of a sudden, time caught up with him and it seemed to be gaining speed. Lightning bolts started sparking through his limbs. He managed to slow down enough to reach slowly out and gently stroke the rhino’s head, the space between the ears.

The rhino closed its eyes.

DAY TWENTY-FIVE

The next thing Frank knew, he was lying on the couch in the waiting room with an unbelievable headache. It was the first time he’d felt a truly vicious hangover since the accident, but he didn’t think it was from the alcohol. He sat up and a thousand nails pounded into the glass of his mind. Waves of bleach stabbed at his eyes, his nose, his heart. The hospital had been scrubbed raw; he could eat off the floor.

He decided he needed alcohol. Immediately. He fought through the haze of chemicals like he was running through tear gas to the back door. It opened to a blast of heat and he stumbled out into a mess of mosquitoes swirling about in the early evening stillness. He swatted at a couple and felt more land all over his bare back, but at least it was better than breathing bleach. As he caught his bearings, Frank finally realized he’d been awfully busy.