Derek Sikkema
A curmudgeonly janitor for the Miami Aquarium finds something to fight for when the last Amazon River Dolphin moves into the aquarium. Strong language throughout. Approximately 5,900 words.
A dolphin is a fat fucking fish. Jim was not my friend. He was not a person. He was a fat fucking fish. I did not love him. I promise you that.
My name is Jeff Higgins. I’m a janitor for the Miami Aquarium, the most popular aquarium on the East Coast. But popular doesn’t mean well-funded. Why would anyone go to an aquarium when smartphones offer everything humanity knows right in the palms of everyone’s fat ass hands? Six months ago, entry ticket sales dipped hard, and the aquarium’s chief officers flipped shit. They fired our old P.R. agent and brought in a new one: Linda. She made the auxiliary staff take these evening classes on marine biology. “The public eye watches all,” Linda said. I told her that I didn’t need her stupid classes. “We’ll discuss that later,” she said. Spoiler alert: we never discussed it.
I have a bachelor’s degree in Marine Science from the University of Tampa. I’m not stupid. And yes, a dolphin is a fat fucking fish. Seals are dog fish, different from dogfish. Manatees are blob fish, different from blobfish. Scientists, whose lab coats I have to clean by the way, decided to classify everything that doesn’t have gills as a mammal. Why not classify everything that spends most of its time in the water as a fish? Because ‘most’ isn’t scientifically accurate. Well, fuck you. People know what ‘most’ means unless they’re stupid.
Whatever Linda did, it worked. Entry sales spiked.
Then this dolphin came to the aquarium.
I was scrubbing down the Green Sea Anemone tank when I got buzzed on my walkie. “Clean up in the mammals dome. Someone’s kid puked.” I groaned, put my Windex away, and grabbed my cleaning supplies cart, lugging it behind me like a ball and chain. I started pushing people out of the way as I left the invertebrate
tunnels and wound my way through the bird exhibits to the mammals dome. I’d heard that the aquarium was keeping a dolphin there. “The last Amazon river dolphin,” our mammals biologist had said. “Just flown in from Brazil.”
I pushed open the doors at the other end of the sloping birds pathway and shoved into the mammals dome. The dome is just that: a huge dome filled with water that has a pathway crossing through the middle so that people can gawk at their smartphones while marine animals swim past. The path expands at the middle of the dome so people can update their Facebook statuses. OMG, the Miami aquarium dome is literally the COOLEST thing I’ve ever seen!!!!
I walked into the dome. Normally, there are manatees and seals dodging through the kelp, playing in the sand at the bottom, but today the dome looked unoccupied. All these people had crowded at the other end of the path. This dolphin had to be doing loop-de-loops or some shit. Screaming parents. Shrieking kids. Pretentious
scientists. Pompous hipsters. Fat asses. Wise asses. Jack asses. People. Most of them taking pictures on their phones. I got over to where the kid had puked, a spot in the middle platform, and looked out. The dolphin was drifting there, pink skinned with sunlight dancing across his back, frowning, too small for the big ass dome, his snout pointing out at the crowd like they were guilty of something.
One of the aquarium’s teenage docents, hired to tell people the life-spans of manatees and the diets of harbor seals, stood in front of the crowd. His name was Bobby. Some kid banged on the glass with his fists. “Hey, little buddy!” Bobby greeted. I chuckled at Bobby’s mockingly pleasant tone. “Could ya stand behind the dots please? Loud noise makes him cranky.” The kid banged on the glass again. I laughed again, put out a couple wet floor signs, and slapped my mop onto the puke.
“Are you sure?” A pompous hipster shouted at Bobby. “Are you sure it’s the last one?”
“Yep,” Bobby replied. “Jim is the last Amazon River Dolphin.”
That got me laughing. Jim. A dolphin named Jim. They gotta name these animals to keep track of them. I guess it also helps the guests see ‘themselves in the animal.’ But he’s not a person. He’s a fat fucking fish.
“Isn’t this salt water?” the hipster asked.
“We changed some piping, and presto! Fresh water!” Bobby responds. “Jim’ll be happy as long as he’s here.”
“Dolphins are social creatures.” The hipster’s voice was nasally and sharp. “How can he be happy?”
“We are his family! We have toys for him to play with and divers who’ll hop in sometimes and play with him for a while. Our goal is to keep him communicating with our scientists.”
Communicating!
“Well, he’s not gonna live that long anyway,” the hipster continued.
“Sorry, bud, but animals in captivity actually live longer. Jim is an aging male, but he’ll be around for a long time.” Bobby flashed a fat grin. He hopped off of his little block. “Follow me everyone! It’s time to feed him!” The crowd followed Bobby’s fact-spouting ass out of the room.
I finished cleaning up the puke and looked up at the dome. I don’t like a lot of things. I like my wife, who doesn’t want kids. I like my dog. I like beer. And I like the dome. The sunlight is nice. I like the space it gives the animals. Animal, in this case. They’d moved the dog fish and blob fish to other tanks. Jim was alone.
Jim swam over to me and drifted for a second. His long snout pointed at me. Then he looked up at the sun, and it shined down in his eyes. “Don’t get cocky, Jim,” I said. “You’re a fat fucking fish.” I liked to think that I was talking to him. Who knows? Maybe he heard me.
Jim drifted for a couple seconds. Then he paddled his tail and swam up to the ball that Bobby had thrown into the dome. I sighed and started lugging my cleaning cart back to Green Sea Anemones.
After the aquarium closed, I was making my window cleaning rounds, lugging my cart behind me and holding a bottle of Windex. Squirt, squirt, squirt, rub. Sigh. Squirt, Squirt, Squirt, rub. Sigh. Squirt, squirt, squirt, rub. Sigh.
I was cleaning the windows in the hall leading into Jim’s dome when I heard two voices. One was Linda’s, the P.R. agent. I cringed. The other was Marie’s, our top biologist. They were standing together on the dome’s central platform.
“200 Percent! 200 percent, Marie!” Linda said. “This dolphin is hot. I told you this dolphin is hot!”
“Yeah,” Marie replied. The light in the dome came from overhead electric lights, not the sun. It had gone down a while ago. Jim danced through the kelp, weaving through the green strands in the dim orange glow of the electric lamps. “I think that we should consider, maybe, limiting guest access,” Marie continued. Linda scoffed. “All these people…I don’t think it’s good for him, you know? He does have it. I mean, that is why he’s here, right? The Brazil aquarium couldn’t care for him anymore.”
“Keep giving him shots.”
“Well, that’ll slow it down, maybe. If we want to think about saving him, we should—“
“AHEM!”
I cleared my throat. They looked at me. I gestured at the dome wall with my Windex. “Next room, Jeff,” Linda said. I dragged my cart through the dome, the wheels screaming in the awkward silence. Linda and Marie started whispering. I rolled my eyes. Why should I give a shit about their conversation?
“WE ARE NOT TAKING HIM OFF DISPLAY!” Linda shrieked. “END OF DISCUSSION!”
That made my ears ring.
Later that night, I was mopping the space around the top of Jim’s dome where people watch our staff “communicate” with him, no roof separating it from the stars glaring down from the sky. I looked out at the black, unfathomable ocean as I mopped the rim of Jim’s dome. The aquarium was built right next to the ocean so it could keep pumping salt water through the building. My head wandered off.
Then that fat fucking fish just about pulled my mop into the water.
He’d jumped halfway out of his tank and grabbed my mop with his teeth. “HEY!” I yanked the mop back. I stood there for a second. His snout jabbed at me like an accusatory finger. He opened his mouth and the characteristic dolphin creeeeeaaaak came boiling out.
I sighed and flipped the mop strands in his face. “You wanna do it?
Jim dove away.
I kept mopping. Jim resurfaced and poked his snout out of the water.
Creeeeeaaaaaaak.
“What?”
Creeeeeeaaaaak.
He was swimming near a bucket of fish in a cove where the biologists feed and play with him.
I groaned and shook my head.
Creeeeaaaak.
I stared at the bucket for a long time. Fuck it, I thought. I walked to the cove, grabbed a fish, and tossed it to him. He caught and swallowed it. He kept swimming around the bucket.
Creeeeeaaaaaak.
I looked down at the bucket. Fuck it. I grabbed the bucket and threw the whole fucking pail of dead fish into the water. Jim started snapping them up, one at a time.
I sighed and walked back to where I was mopping bird shit off of the path. Then I turned and glanced back at Jim, snapping up fish left and right. I felt something warm prick at the corners of my mouth. I shook my head and looked down at the bird shit. “You know, it’s convention to ask about the wife and kids.”
Creeaak.
“She’s good. No kids. They either turn into little shits who think they know everything or little smart asses who do know everything and want to rub it in your face.”
Creeeeaaaak.
“Yeah, once I was the little smart ass who knew everything.” I stopped mopping. Maybe Jim was listening. You never know. “I wanted to be a big biologist like Marie or some shit.” I shook my head. “But money for school beyond a B.S. in Marine Science didn’t exist. At least not for me. Neither did any jobs. So here I am.”
Creeeeaaaak.
I felt warmth pricking at the sides of my mouth and let myself smile, the slight bubble of laughter building in the back of my throat. “You’re like my dog. Can’t ever know what you’re—”
Creeeaaaaaak.
I looked up. The fish were gone. Jim was swimming near his pile of toys. I sighed, walked over, and kicked the ball into the dome. “Don’t interrupt me,” I said, returning to the bird shit by my mop.
Then the fat fucking fish punted the ball at my head. I didn’t mind though. That meant he saw people like I do. They feed you, but sometimes you gotta smack them upside the head. I might have even looked back and smiled. I don’t really remember.
This went on. Every week I had to wipe the bird shit off of the paths around Jim’s tank, and when I did, I’d always throw the bucket of fish that Marie had left out into Jim’s tank. He’d snatch them up like they were still alive and might get away. I talked sometimes, letting myself think that he was listening. I talk to my dog like that sometimes too. Sue me. At least she doesn’t talk back.
One night after the aquarium had hosted some kid’s birthday, I was mopping up around Jim’s dome.
Creeeeaaaaaakkk.
I looked up at the stars, down at the ocean lapping against the nearby shore. I walked to the pail of fish and scattered them into Jim’s dome. He started snatching them up again. The nearby beach was deserted except for a teen couple, laughing and falling over each other like they might last forever. I looked out at the ocean, leaning on my mop. Then I groaned and kept mopping up the bird shit.
Creeeaaaaaakkkk.
“What?”
Creeeaaaaaaakkk.
I shook my head and kept mopping, my eyes on the path. “Birthday parties are idiotic. Congratulations, you survived another year!” I put elbow grease into my mopping. “Big fucking deal.”
Creeeaaaaaakkk.
I walked over and kicked Jim’s ball into the pool. He hadn’t punted it at my head since the first night. I leaned on my mop and sighed. “The birthday girl’s family brought their dog in for her birthday. Linda flipped shit, but Marie approved it. A big golden, fluffy, fat, happy.” I kept mopping. “I’ve had lots of dogs, let me tell you.
Rover, Bailey, and Teddy. Then there was Goldy. She died when I was ten. It wasn’t pretty. She ran out of the cul-de-sac one day. We looked for hours. When we found her, she was on her last leg. She’d basically been stoned to death by the asshole kids around the block. They hated me. Well, everyone did, thought I was a teacher’s pet because I did my fucking homework. Anyway, the vet said there was nothing he could do, so three days later, we buried Goldy, and my parent’s didn’t cry, not one fucking tear, nothing, even though I was bawling my fucking eyes out, cradling the rock engraved with her name like it might–”
Creeeaaaaaakk.
I looked at Jim. He was bobbing in the water, his dark eyes looking up at me and his snout pointing at my feet. I stopped and leaned on my mop, realizing that I’d finished cleaning the path.
“That’s when I learned that people are shit heads.” I shook my head. “Worst day of my life. Even trumps the day my little brother died.”
Creeeaaaaak.
I shrugged. “We live. We die. Some gotta go sooner. Still, it’s kind of fucked up for an eight-year-old to die of fucking Leukemia.”
Creeaaaak.
Jim and I looked at each other’s eyes. He quietly jumped up and bit my mop. For a moment, I let him gnaw on it, feeling the edges of my mouth start to twitch as something warm and painful suddenly lurched its way to life inside of my body.
I yanked the mop away. Jim dove into the dome. I thrust my mop into my bucket of suds and snarled, “What the hell do you know? You’re a fat fucking fish.”
The next four weeks went about the same. I mopped the space around Jim’s dome, fed him, and kicked him his ball. Did Marie notice the missing pails of fish? Probably, but I doubt she cared. She was too busy trying to convince Linda to take Jim away from the public.
So yeah, I talked to a dolphin and fed him a little more than he was supposed to get. No big deal.
If anything, I should have hated Jim. That fat fucking fish brought SO MANY PEOPLE to the aquarium! That meant more messes. All of them fat asses, smart asses, and wise asses, walking around looking at their phones when there are smart ass kids like Bobby standing around and BEGGING someone to talk to them.
Eight weeks after my first night with Jim, I’m making my rounds with the Windex and rag again, lugging my cart behind me as usual. I was wiping the tanks in the hall leading to Jim’s dome, when I heard two voices again. Guess who?
“It’s all over his liver at this point.” Marie.
“So what? We knew that would happen.” Linda.
“I think we might have slowed it down if we’d given him time in extensive care.”
“Extensive care puts him out of the public eye.”
“I think there might be more important things than the public, Linda. We are talking about his life.”
“More important than the public? Marie, this dolphin is radioactive! Do you have any idea how much money this dolphin has pulled in? I sure don’t because we’re still counting!”
Linda stared at her cell phone. Marie was staring at the Amazon River Dolphin fact board. Extinct in the wild, it read. Jim lazily swam around the dome. “Yeah,” Marie said. “O.K. I know we hired you to increase aquarium income, but the aquarium is here to educate people about these animals, you know? For as long as possible, right?”
“The public doesn’t want to be educated, Marie! They want to be entertained!”
Marie looked up from the board. “Linda.” Linda met her eyes. “Please?” They stared at each for a moment. Linda eyed Marie like a child that she might humor with a pre-dinner candy bar.
Linda scoffed. She took another look at Marie. “Alright, fine. We’ll release a statement that Jim’s going into extensive care soon. The people will trample each other to see him before he goes.” Linda walked away, towards the sharks’ dome. “But I want him back out in a week. We need to capitalize on this!” Marie glanced at the board describing Amazon River Dolphins one more time. Then she followed after Linda.
That’s when I stopped and looked at my surroundings. Fuck. I was eavesdropping. I was eavesdropping because of a fat fucking fish.
Later that night, I was mopping the space around Jim’s dome.
“Extensive care. Lucky you. I’d like to live in extensive care. Anything you need, they got.”
Creeeaaak.
“I’m getting to the fish.” I stopped mopping, glared at the stars, shook my head, and continued. “Like I was saying, they got all these monitors in extensive care. They’ll keep track of your blood pressure and your heartbeat and your temperature, all just by tracking vibrations in the water. It’s pretty badass. You’ll still have your big tank and everything. Computers can do some amazing things.”
Creeeaaak.
“Food’s the only thing on your mind. Just like my dog.” I finished mopping up a spot of bird shit and walked over to the pail of fish. “You’re pretty quiet tonight.” I tossed the fish into the water.
Fuck. I hadn’t been looking at the water.
Jim was drifting out in the middle of the dome like a lifeless log. The water lapped lamely at his sides as he floated, motionless, almost as if he were dead. My heart screamed in an electric jolt of fear. I replayed the sounds he had emitted that night in my head and realized that I hadn’t heard him splashing around. He had looked fine just two days ago. This was a fat fucking turn of events. Jim didn’t snatch up the fish like they were still alive. I watched the herring slowly float out to him. He ignored them, still unmoving for a long time. Slowly, he lifted his tail and dove downward.
I sighed, jammed my mop into my bucket of suds, and left. He’s a fish. Why should I care?
The next day…Oh, THE NEXT FUCKING DAY! Linda’s press release had circulated the planet overnight. All the people from before and more. Goth teens. Self-centered college students. Old folks on walkers. Parents with strollers. Whiny kids. Screaming kids. Shitty kids. Helicopter parents. Idiot parents. Shitty parents. Fat asses, wise asses, and jack asses assembled. All of them heading to Jim. Imagine that the Beatles had come back to life and were in that dome, playing “Blackbird” the whole time.
I was cleaning up someone’s Gatorade in Jim’s dome. I had a couple wet floor signs up. Most people were staring at their phones. Those who weren’t were taking pictures, crowding around the “Amazon River Dolphin” board, or trying to listen to Bobby’s mockingly pleasant spiel. I looked at Jim. He drifted away from Bobby,
to me. His snout pointed at the crowd like they had done something guilty. He reached me and my wet floor signs. People were snapping their cameras at him and me. I put my head down and groaned.
A kid waddled over the “no-step” dots. He had curly blonde hair. His grin was wide and dopey with wide gaps in between his teeth and his laugh was bubbly and nauseating and his sneakers were tiny and stumbling and laced by parents who had vanished into the crowd somewhere. He leaned his pudgy hands on the glass and stood there. I looked at him and groaned, continuing to mop. My peripheral vision caught Jim looking spectral in the sunlit water. “Fishy!” the kid screamed as he banged his hands on the glass.
The glass quivered, and I heard Jim creak in agony.
“Hey,” I said. The kid looked up at me. His dopey grin met my scowl. I gazed into green eyes thick with the soupy light of idiotic, ignorant innocence and wordless, meaningless, directionless happiness. My scowl tightened like a boxer’s bicep in preparation for the knockout punch. “Don’t touch the glass,” I growled. “Stay
behind the dots.”
The kid’s feet stomped like he had to piss but didn’t have the brains to express himself in words. He kept smiling, big, fat gaps in between his teeth that gleamed white by the attention of parents who thought he was an angel. A pretty little angel who could do no wrong. No fucking wrong. Even though he was a god damn person. The kid laughed. “Hee hee hee!”
He slammed on the glass with open palms and I saw the dome quiver like a whimpering animal. I heard Jim as he drifted close to the back wall of the dome.
Creeeeeeaaaakkkk…
I saw Goldy’s broken, bloody body lying stark against the black pavement of my cul-de-sac.
“Hey!” I shouted at the grinning little dunce, dancing like he had to piss but didn’t give a fuck about who would have to clean it up. “Don’t touch the glass!”
He laughed again, and I felt the tears wept over the stone engraved with Goldy’s name rage upward from deep within my stomach. The kid raised his hands to bang on the glass again, and I channeled the rising tears into something fiery and enraged and heaving that latched onto my hand, my hand that reached out and grabbed the kid’s arm as if he were brandishing a stone that might shatter the dome.
“HEY!” I grabbed the kid’s wrist. The crowd gasped. The kid’s dopey grin vanished, and the venomous words crept onto my tongue. “Don’t…touch…the glass. You little fucker.”
I stared at the kid, and the kid stared back at me like he didn’t know what he had done.
“Jeff!” I heard Bobby voice sail over the people. He stepped between me and the kid. The kid started crying. “That’s not how we treat children here.” A mom and dad crouched down by the kid, looking up at me like I had punched the little shit in the face. Bobby glared at me.
I straightened my back, blinked several times, and saw the child in front of me.
I snarled and left. Jim was drifting at the back of the dome.
Creeeaaaaakkkk…
Later Linda called me into her upstairs office. I walked into her room with windows that leered out at the other second floor office spaces. Two windows behind her let in the setting sun. She was typing on her smartphone. “Hold on,” she said. I groaned. She glanced up at me. “Kill the tone, Jeff.” I didn’t respond.
She lifted her head to me. “I heard about your stunt today. I could fire you right now.” I didn’t say anything. Her eyes tried to bore into me. I looked into them. “I want to,” she said.
Get the fuck out, I thought.
Linda leaned back. “But Marie told me that you’ve never attacked a child before. Thank her later because she’s saving your job. You know behind the scenes pretty well. From now on, you’ll be working there. Stay off the floor.”
Thank the Lord.
“Anything to say, Jeff?” I shook my head. “Good.” She returned to her smartphone. I left.
I started mopping up behind the scenes. Scientists are just as messy as everyone else. Jim spent another day in the dome. Then he went into extensive care. I saw him a lot then, but he was never alone, not even when the aquarium closed. Biologists were constantly measuring his heartbeat, blood pressure, and body temperature on this huge monitor. They took blood and dropped it onto these little tablets which read out cell concentrations. There weren’t any buckets of fish for me to throw into his tank, but I don’t think he was hungry. I don’t even want to know what he was getting pumped with. Animal chemo was not easier than
human chemo.
After a week in extensive care, Jim went back out in public again. Marie didn’t leave any fish out anymore. Jim hardly ever ate anymore.
Two weeks after he was put back in public, I was mopping the space around his dome. He was swimming limply around the space where a pail of herring might have been. “You’re having a good night. Haven’t seen that for weeks.”
Creeeeeaaak.
He swam away from the pail-less platform and circled the dome’s rim. I kept mopping. He swam over to his pile of toys. I mopped my way over and kicked a ball into his dome. I stopped, leaning on my mop, as I watched him poke and push the ball around with his snout.
“I heard the biologists talking about euthanasia earlier, but I don’t see the problem.” Jim punted the ball out of the dome. It lazily rolled past my feet. I nodded. “I see.”
Jim swam over to my edge of the dome. He pointed his guilty-labeling snout away from me. Then he leapt up and grabbed the bottom of my mop. I felt a warm tingle at either side of my mouth and permitted myself to smile.
“Jim, you’re a fat fucking fish.” I gently pulled my mop away and thrust it back in my tub of suds and started to walk away.
Creeeeeeeaaaak.
I turned around, and my eyes found Jim’s. His gazed back at mine. For a moment, I thought I could I almost see words in them. I wondered if river dolphins had tear ducts. What if Jim were crying right now and I had no way of knowing because his tears couldn’t fall? What if he had been crying all along and I just hadn’t been capable of hearing him because all I ever heard was the sound of a slowly opening door? Against my will, my thoughts took a selfish turn and looked inward. Was there any way I could ever know that Jim gave more than two shits about me?
I wanted to smile, laugh, joke, something. I wanted to look away, turn, leave, pretend that his eyes meant nothing. He’s a fat fucking fish, I thought. He’s a fat fucking fish. But as I stared back into his bloody, drooping eyes, I just saw the words that I thought were there, that I wanted to think were there. I felt something liquid and hot pushing its way to the front of my face. And I pushed it away.
I turned and walked the hardest steps that I’d ever had to take, mumbling as I went, “Thank God you’re not a fat fucking human.”
That night was my last with Jim. Three days later they took him into extensive care again. Four days later he died. Cancer is a bitch, human or dolphin.
Two days after Jim died, I was cleaning the chrome hallway leading into his extensive care unit, a larger tank in the next room. Iron cabinets and countertops flanked me and boxed me in like a prison. I was dragging my cart behind me, and it felt like someone had filled it with solid steel. My jaw was tight and my eyes locked on my Windex bottle. I heard a couple voices from around the corner wrench my ears.
The first voice was Linda’s. “The dolphin’s death announcement goes out tomorrow.”
I froze. I felt my jaw and my muscles all lock together. I stood there, frozen, focusing all of my strength on this raging tension in my stomach.
Marie replied, “Yeah.” Jesus. Really Marie? Is that really all you can say when…
I felt acrid, unbreathable air plowing down into my lungs with each inhale, feeling my stomach and body struggling to maintain control over this rage thundering up my spine and into my brain.
“Marie,” Linda said. “Go home. You need sleep.” I shook my head. I clenched my bottle of Windex. I felt like hurling it at the stupid, imprisoning chrome cabinets that surrounded me. I saw Goldy again, lying stark, bloody, and mutilated against the black sidewalk. Her ears had been beaten inward. Her jawbone was shattered and spiked. Her fur that had once been as golden as Jim’s back the first day I saw him was matted and tainted by blood still drying in the unrelenting heat of the sun.
And Marie said, “Yeah.” That’s all she fucking said. That’s it.
“God damn it…” I muttered under my breath. “Jesus fucking Christ, Marie…God damn it…”
Linda sighed, and it sounded like my mother’s sigh as she stood over my ten-year-old body that was cradling the stone inscribed ‘Goldy: The Bestest Dog There Ever Was.’ I felt the tension in my stomach surge. The words were in my mouth, as putrid, vile, and unnecessary as vomit. But they were there. My mind strained to stop their regurgitation. I wanted to swallow them, forget them, un-see the words that floated in front of my eyes. I knew that to speak them would be pointless. It wouldn’t make a difference. I gritted my teeth. My hand clenching the Windex trembled. I shook my head, feeling tears raging towards my eyes like an undammed river.
“He pulled in more people than we could have ever estimated,” Linda continued. “He was our biggest attraction ever.”
“FUCK!”
The word burst from my stomach with all the tears and memory and tension behind it. I stepped around the corner. Marie stared at the empty water in Jim’s empty extensive care tank, her back to me. Fucking Linda turned around and glared at me with wide, astonished eyes.
“Is that all you can fucking say, Linda?” I said. “Is that all you can FUCKING say?” I looked into her eyes and saw them quivering like the dome being pounded on by that little asshole kid from before. I hurled my Windex bottle at the floor between us. Linda flinched back. The bottle burst, unleashing a vast puddle of soapy blue fluid. “That he was the biggest attraction the aquarium has ever had?”
“Jeff, what the hell are you doing?” Linda replied.
“Because I’m here to tell your fat fucking face, Linda, that the biggest damn attraction at this bullshit you call an aquarium is the smartphone, no matter what you and your fucking numbers say.”
Linda stepped forward as something inside her dove away and her eyes trembled. She waved her hand like she might conjure a protective wall of statistics. “Step off, Jeff. Step the hell off. I will fire you so fast–“
“MARIE!” I suddenly screamed. She didn’t turn. She kept staring into Jim’s tank. “Stand the fuck up for something! Anything!”
“Don’t pull her into this, Jeff!” Linda replied. “Explain yourself, your language, your…What are you doing, Jeff?”
“What am I doing?” I said. “What the fuck am I doing? What are you doing? Do you ever think, Linda? Jim was the last Amazon River Dolphin, and what did you do every time you were around him? Stared at your fucking phone! Why the fuck did you waste so much God damn time on your phone?”
“Shut up, Jim!” She replied, trembling. “Shut the hell up!”
“HE WAS SPECIAL!”
“Get out,” Linda said. She pointed a finger back the way I’d come. “Get your things, and get the fuck out.” I stared at her for a long time. Neither of us moved. The water filter for the tank groaned in the background. I squinted and tilted my head. Linda remained tight and frozen.
Why did she wait until then to fire me?
I stood there. Linda’s eyes tried to bore into me. I looked back and saw them quivering and terrified. I glanced at her finger raised firmly towards the hall from which I’d emerged, as if she were ordering a monster back into its dark hole.
That’s when I understood.
“Oh,” I said. “So that’s why.”
“Get out,” Linda said. She twitched. Marie’s head sunk further into her shoulders. I nodded at Marie’s back.
“Marie,” I called. “It’s all good. I understand. I know now why you’re a fucking coward.”
“Jeff,” Linda said. Venom lurked in her eyes with all the toxic poise of a snake backed into a corner. “Get…out.”
I actually laughed. I looked from Linda to Marie and back to Linda. “Neither of you gave more than two shits about Jim, did you? You couldn’t afford it.”
“Get out.” The clouds opened up outside and bathed the extensive care tank in moonlight that reflected into the room and purified it, washing it clean of befuddling shadows that stood between me and how I finally understood Linda.
“Because he was doomed from the minute he got here,” I said, leaning forward and spitting the words on the ground in front of Linda. Her head fell marginally, as if to stare at the wet, sticky words on the floor, a mess that not even the Windex pool could wash away.
Terror rose up from beyond her eyes and lashed at me like a whip.
“GET THE FUCK OUT, JEFF!”
I leaned back, lifted my eyebrows, smiled, bounced on my heels once or twice, turned, and left that room, with those sticky words staring Linda in her fat fucking face from that floor awash in blazing moonlight.
I didn’t stay out. A week after I got fired, I came back as a paying customer. I’d heard they’d set up a tribute to Jim down in the dome after they put the seals and manatees back in. The moment I got in the aquarium, I went right to the dome. Linda had set up a big black monitor that said, “Amazon River Dolphin” at the top. Just seeing it made me mad. But hell, that’s all Jim ever was to them. A biochemical sack with a lifespan, diet, and habitat only in the aquarium to bring in more visitors.
Bobby was standing there on his block. Now his questions were about dog fish and blob fish again. He glared at me as I walked in. I looked around. Wise asses, fat asses, and smart asses. All staring at their phones.
I looked back to the screen that said “Amazon River Dolphin.” Screens like it had helped Jim live a lot longer than he would have without them. They let the biologists know what was wrong with him. It all was useful. I know that.
“What happened to the dolphin?” A nasally hipster asked Bobby.
“Sadly, the last Amazon River Dolphin has passed on.”
“HEY!” I shouted at Bobby. Everyone in the room looked at me, and I said, “His name was Jim.”
