Excerpts from
Animal Behavior
A story about being with someone you don’t even like—and the weird ways you try to excuse it.
It was her chameleon.
That was why I stayed.
I admit that to her in the middle of the bar, in the middle of the dance floor. Strobe lights are streaking across her face, so I don’t have to worry if tears are, too. Eventually the lights turn into dots. Little, neon green ones. One lands on the tip of her nose, which twitches like a rabbit’s. Another lands on her cheek and—shit. There’s a tear.
She doesn’t say much. Nothing intelligent anyways. There’s definitely a “What?” and a “The fucking chameleon?” that fall past her glossed lips, and I start to get annoyed because how could she refer to Cam that way? I want to explain to her that, as she stands before me, beautiful even as she blends into the background, maybe she deserves to be lonelier than that little chameleon back home.
“Madi!” Her friends come running over, the tallest one taking the lead and planting herself between Madi and I. I stare where her face should be, noting that it’s a lot less scary in the dark. She reminds me of a snake, not only because she is long and thin and her tongue seems to jump out at me, but because I think if I move, she’ll unhinge her jaw and swallow me whole. “What’d you say to her, asshole?”
“Just the truth,” I say.
“You mean that you’re a dick?” she says. “We knew.”
“Well, not really.”
“You wanted to just fuck her and go?” This is from another friend whose name I can’t remember, but she has a frizzy mane of hair. “So fucking go!”
“Get out of here!” It’s a whole chorus of girls now, joined by drunken strangers in stained pullovers and skimpy cheetah prints. A gorilla comes up to me and tells me I have to leave, but as I walk through the chattering monkeys and birds with their screeches, I catch one last glimpse of Madi. Her girls are hovering over her now, trying to pick the bugs out of her hair, and she seems to fade more and more into the vodka-soaked ground. It’s terrible to be studied and prodded like this. Now she knows.
* * *
I learned that Madi was a major carnivore because of the perfect crust she could sear onto a steak. “Do you see that?” she said, nodding towards the pan, and I did. The meat was like rust and its fat was golden, covered in tiny, sizzling bubbles that made it look as though it was glittering. Madi smiled at the steak and licked the tip of her canine tooth. A drop of grease popped up onto her arm and she flinched, but didn’t complain. She tipped the pan, scooped up some of the butter and oil and meat drippings and quickly poured it over the steak. The smell of it all, of garlic and rosemary, seeped into our clothes, and I wouldn’t appreciate it later, but for now my mouth was watering.
“How are you so good at this?” I asked. I reached from my place on the counter and touched her arm, ran my thumb along the wrinkly part of her elbow.
The oil in the pan sang. “Gordon Ramsay Youtube videos.” She pointed her spoon at me. “Get on it.”
The oven alarm went off, along with the alarm on her phone, indicating that two or three other dishes needed her attention. I hadn’t even realized she was cooking more than the meat. In fact, before I’d gotten here, I’d thought about grabbing some fries from McDonald’s in case this dinner was a flop.
“You setting up a whole five-course meal for us?”
She took my question as gratitude and shrugged all the way up to her ears. “It’s nothing, I like to cook.”
Cooking to me meant boiling some Kraft Mac n Cheese and leaving it on the stove for too long. It didn’t involve folding butter and cream cheese into mashed potatoes until they looked like clouds caught in a pot. Or spending three full minutes deciding between circle or square-shaped plates. The smell of the food hung over me in a tantalizing mist as Madi carefully dolloped and smeared and drizzled things onto our plates, finally placing the steak atop it all just so. I could’ve dug in right there, sitting on the counter. She could lean her hip against the sink as she ate standing up, and then I would turn on the TV. I wondered if she watched Rick and Morty.
But Madi took our plates to her little table. Even lit a couple candles before inviting me to come sit with her. I glanced around and realized we wouldn’t be able to see the TV from there.
Once I sat down, though, and looked at her in the candlelight, I realized the flames turned her smoldering eyes golden, like a lion’s. Her long nails took on a sort of power and her hair became a mane like none I’d ever seen before. I figured I didn’t need a TV, I figured the waiting had been worth it. As long as I got to watch her dig into her prey. Maybe she would forego the fork and knife and tear into the steak with her canines, send the blood of it dripping into her mashed potatoes.
In a moment, that “maybe” turned into an impossibility. She cut her meat into tiny pieces and ate with her mouth closed. Whenever she laughed, she would cover it and then lean over, smiling prettily. “Do I have anything in my teeth?”
I decided maybe I could pull the animal out of her if I showed her what it would look like. After jabbing my fork into it, I lifted the entire steak to my mouth and sunk my teeth down. But after two, three pulls, it didn’t give. My shoulders dropped and I picked up my knife.
“How’s the steak?”
Medium.