In the Left Ventricle of the Human Heart

Jonah began the workday standing all alone in a giant, winding colon. A sign that read “Excretion Station” in blocky letters hung above him; beneath him, tile floors, which made mopping the excretions so much easier. There were always lots of excretions at the Science Museum of Oregon.

Today marked Jonah’s one-month anniversary with the Museum, and five months exactly since he graduated with his degree in Byzantine studies. He’d hoped to be alone with his thoughts on this special morning, manning Body: the Human Maze!—a cavernous basement exhibit, where enormous Plexiglas organs and bones formed eerie hallways, the worst nightmare of child and parent alike.

No dice. “Morning, starshine.” Jonah’s coworker Alistair came sauntering into the Excretion Station. “You look happy.” Alistair had worked at the Museum for an impossible four years and seemed unable to fathom that Jonah wasn’t thrilled.

“You look happy too, Ali.”

“Of course! Jonah, did I tell you about my last job?”

“You did.” Ali’d worked for the reptile house at the Clackamas Zoo, where an Asian pit viper took a taste of his left hand and messed it up pretty bad. Two of the fingers still wouldn’t straighten all the way out.

“Well then, cheer up,” said Ali, winking. Ali winked at him a lot.

 “Aren’t you supposed to be manning the exotic animal lab?” 

“Meh. First school-group isn’t showing up for another half-hour, and anyway they always like to watch the animals have breakfast.” Jonah looked down at Ali’s mangled fingers, then looked away just as quick. “Say, speaking of getting fed, what are you doing for dinner tonight? It’s Glenn Seaborg’s birthday, so I’m cooking General Tso’s. Did you know he loved General Tso’s?”

Jonah didn’t even know who Glenn Cyborg was. “Sorry, plans.” 

When Ali looked at him like he was a cruel master, Jonah felt a pang of remorse, remembering how it didn’t take him two hours to block the guy on Grindr. His profile’d read, “I love dark beer and science”; Jonah, he was more about pilsners.

Before either of them could say anything, there came the roar of children—definitely hundreds, probably thousands—rushing down the Museum’s epiglottis, deep into the nearby thorax.

Oh good, he thought, the preschoolers are here early, thank God. “Sounds like it’s time to feed those animals after all.”

“Sure is.” Ali glanced down at his fingers, then back at Jonah. “Oh, when you have moment, boss-lady said she wants to see you.” Another roar. Kids in the belly now. “Whenever you’re free.”

*

Lola was puffy, nearing forty, with a bad habit of punching the air when she said “science.” You’d never think she was in charge, or that she had her master’s in biochemistry, but she was and did. The degree was framed proudly, oddly, on the desk in her office, beside a nameplate that read “Chief Wonder Engineer.”

When Jonah walked in, she said, “Oh, you! Have a seat,” and Jonah had one. Lola hastily shuffled a stack of papers and tossed them in a drawer. 

“Am I, uh, not interrupting?”

“Never,” she said, smoothing her hair with the flat of her hand. “I always have time for my boys. I listen. In fact, that’s why you’re here.”

Uh-oh. “Whatever you’ve heard—”

“I heard you say, ‘if we’re going to stick our hands in the snake cages to feed them, we ought to have gloves.’”

Right. He did say that. Lola might have edited it for children, but that was the gist.

“So I got you these.” Lola reached back into her drawer and produced what looked like oven-mitts. “For the snakes.”

“Oh,” said Jonah. “Thanks.” He took them, held them up to his face. Someone had written the words Snake-Gloves (for Jonah) on either one. In Sharpie.

“I labeled them for you.”

“I see that.”

“There was no money in the budget, so I bought them myself.”

“They’re lovely.” And used. Scorch-marks all over.

“You really think so?” Lola beamed. “Well, I love my boys.”

There it was again. Jonah put the mitts on. Why? Safety, said a voice in his head.

“But,” said Lola, palms on the desk, rising, “some, I love more than others.”

A month ago, when he had started doing presentations in the animal lab, Jonah’d learned a script about the mating habits of the Burmese python, which ended like this: “When done, the male’s gonads retreat entirely into his body.” This is what happened to Jonah, when he heard what Lola said.

“I’m done,” he told her. “I mean, I have to go. Have to clean the Lover’s Ear Canal.”

“It’ll just get dirty again!” she cooed. 

Jonah almost agreed, but it was the cooing that made him think better. “Well, I’m not getting paid to slack off.” He laughed real nervous.

“No,” said Lola, sinking back behind her desk. “That isn’t why you’re here at all.”

Jonah made for the exit, oven-mitts on his hands.

*

“So why don’t you just quit?” Jonah’s friend Cassie was on the phone. She’d been his classmate, but now she was getting her PhD with some of the finest Byzantine scholars on Earth. “There’s other shitty jobs, huh?”

Cassie, whose father was a bigwig at Columbia Tri-Star, had never worked any job before, let alone a shitty one. Probably also had something to do with why she got into every program in the country, while Jonah’d only managed the waitlist at Clemson. “Yeah, there are others. Took me four months to find this one, though. Meanwhile, bills and rent.” Something else daddy’s girl didn’t have to worry about. “I can’t quit. And I can’t rock the boat.” Especially since the HR-guy was on paternity leave. Progress.

Cassie said, “Well, keep trying, and something good will come your way, I just know it.” She sounded distracted, like she was making a very important sandwich, maybe cutting her nails.

“I actually just interviewed for this library gig.” A month ago, in fact—the day before he started at the Science Museum. “It’s mostly just shelving books, but somehow it pays triple what I’m making.” A pipe-dream Jonah knew wasn’t going to come true—still, he needed to hear someone ooh and ahh.

Cassie just said, “Cool,” and changed the subject to the Ecuadorian guy she’d just started boinking. Very buff apparently. “I mean, he kind of looks like my brother a little, but with a different nose. Is that weird?”

“Not necessarily.” Jonah made a peanut-butter sandwich and went digging for his nail-clippers while she listed her problems.

*

Jonah and Ali were in the animal lab, dangling frozen mice by their rigid tails over the waiting mouths of snakes.

“Good boy, Einstein!” Einstein, a Ball python, snapped up Alistair’s offering in a flash. “Who’s a hungry boy?”

Meanwhile, Jonah was having zero luck getting Mingus the blind kingsnake to so much as flick his tongue. “Come on Mingus, attaboy.” The fact they’d named the snake after a sighted musician, given the artform attracts the blind like—well—mice, was frustrating, like the animal himself. “Is he dead? I think he’s dead. Definitely dead.”

“He’s not dead.” Ali shut Einstein’s container, then snatched the mouse out of Jonah’s mitted hand. Seconds later, the rodent was halfway down Mingus’ unhinged maw. “Good boy, sweetie!”

“How do you do that?” Jonah asked. “Trust them?”

“You mean…?” Ali held up his mangled hand. His ring-finger and pinky impotently wiggled.

“Yeah. Once bitten and all.”

Ali shrugged. “Einstein and Mingus aren’t venomous. I have nothing to fear—actually, I feel really safe in this room, don’t you?” 

Jonah looked all around him, at the plastic crates filled with snakes and spiders and carcass-eating beetles, at the piranha tank, at Ali’s huge green eyes. “Not especially.”

Ali shrugged again. “Good thing you got those mitts, huh?”

Whatever. Jonah wasn’t getting bit.

*

Down the street was a gay bar where all the students went on Friday nights. He hadn’t been in six months.

Across the bar, a slender twunk was staring, and Jonah’s heart sank.

You’re not a student anymore, said the voice in his head, so Jonah went home and read a dog-eared Procopius.

*

Jonah made a clean cut down the length of the sclera, stopping when he reached the cornea. With both his gloved thumbs, he peeled the cow eye open.

In the audience, children squealed. Fifth graders, from Merriweather Lewis Middle. Girls in jumpers, boys with tousled hair. Learned about mitosis just last week.

“This,” said Jonah, gesturing at the clear, mucous substances flooding out of the incision, “is the vitreous jelly.” Or was it the aqueous humor? Shit. Whatever. He pressed ‘zoom’ on the microscope that was projecting the eyeball onto a nearby monitor, and all the kiddies screamed regardless of what Jonah remembered from Lola’s canned lecture.

They love me, he thought. I’m terrible at this, but they love me anyway.

“Hey kids, want to see a cornea?” 

The children all screamed indistinguishably, and Jonah took the scalpel and dug out the smooth hard cornea—at least he thought it was the cornea—like a splinter, and the children all screamed indistinguishably again.

After the event Jonah was always afraid one of the science teachers would come up and scold him, but no, everyone just filed out the room, the adults cradling their throbbing ears, the kids hyped-up and shrieking. And always Jonah was left standing there, aqueous something all over his hands, like whatever just happened was between him and the cow.

Today though, today Lola was waiting for him, after. Back of the room.

“Boy, do you know how to put on a show.” Lola giggled, just like the schoolkids had. She took one step forward, two. “That was very entertaining.”

“And loud.” Jonah wiped his hands on a paper towel, trashed the eyeball. 

“My eyes were on you, all the time,” she said. More giggles. Chock-full. “You know how to put on a show,” she repeated.

Jonah felt like maybe he didn’t want to be complimented again. “I know I goofed on some of the terms. Fudged the script a little.”

“That doesn’t matter,” said Lola, inching closer. “Pish-posh.”

“Really?” asked Jonah, momentarily forgetting how awkward the situation was. 

“Jonah, if we really cared about science, do you think we’d have hired you? We care about selling tickets. We care about entertainment. Lucky for us all, you know how to put on a show.” Close enough to touch him now.

“You keep saying that.”

“I know what I said, thank you. And I meant it. I like watching you put on shows. It’s why I hired you, why I keep you around.” Suddenly her hand was on Jonah’s hip, fingers squeezing, thumb worrying the bone.

“I’m gay.” He blurted it out. “In case that wasn’t clear.”

“So was my husband. He still managed for a while, and he wasn’t half so good at acting as you.”

The voice in Jonah’s head said Yikes. “I have to piss.”

“I tell you what you have to do.” Lola’s hand moved down fast, fingers arching, aiming, and then—

“Excuse me.” A voice in the hall outside. Father, pleated khakis. Wife with a fanny pack, boy at her side. “Is this where the Micecapades are?”

“No!” Jonah screamed so loud the mother shielded her son’s ears. “Let me show you. I know the way.”

Lola put her hands behind her back and giggled. “Jonah will take care of you,” she said. “He’s one of our best workers. Has a real bright future here.”

“It’s very nice to meet you,” said the father, and his whole family agreed.

*

 “You still work at that shithole?” Cassie asked. The sum of her reaction to his Lola story.

“Yes.” Jonah didn’t know why he’d called her. Terrible listener. What did he need her for? “Meanwhile, my boss is harassing me. Isn’t that fucked? I’m her employee. And gay.”

“Well, good, if you’re being harassed, then you get to leave. Win-win.” Jonah started to explain to her that it was not a win-win, that he needed that money to live, but she interrupted him to talk about some guy named Carlos. “He’s like my third Latin this month. Why do Latin guys love me so much?”

Jonah had no idea.

“They’re very good lovers, you should get one.”

“There’s this guy at work that’s in love with me. Ali.” Where did that come from?

“Oh?”

“He’s always flirting with me. But: not my type, you know? Freckle-faced, short. Kind of a deformed hand. And he’s been at the museum way, way too long. He makes me feel trapped, and also maybe I hate him?” Jonah stopped and wondered who he was explaining this for.

“Huh,” came the reply. “Is this Alex-guy Latin?”

“No.”

Cassie said, “Then I don’t know how to help you,” and kept going on about Carlos. Later, when he got off the phone, Jonah drew a bath and cried into the hot water.

*

Come Monday, there was a new hire. Everyone gathered in the break-room to meet him.

“This is Frankie,” said Lola, clapping the small of his back. “Frankie just graduated with a degree in medieval history.”

Frankie had huge lips, blond flecks in his dark hair, that gold-tinted skin that Time says everyone will have once all the races have united. He looked lab-grown.

Lola said, “Frankie, your first shift will be so special. You’ll train for our signature event—the Micecapades. Normally you wait months to train, that’s how highly I think of you. You’ve got a bright future around here!” Her eyes traveled across the conference room, found Jonah’s eyes, which were dead-set on Frankie’s jeans. “Jonah, why don’t you join him? Time you earned your keep.”

So the two of them shuffled to the Hester Holmann Memorial Auditorium, where the marquee read “MICECAPADES DAILY, 9:30, 2:45” (“Set your watches,” admonished knock-off Mickey on a nearby poster). 

If you’ve ever seen a soccer match where a player had part of his ear bitten off, then you will understand the principle behind the Micecapades. Twelve mice are placed into a large plastic cube, center-stage, and the museum staff struggle getting them to resist their cannibalistic urges long enough to swat at a ping-pong ball in something vaguely resembling volleyball, then basketball, then yes, soccer. The kids eat the Micecapades up; unfortunately, so do the mice.

“Yeah, if they get gnawed at too bad, wait till they die, then put them in the break-room freezer,” explained Teddy, the way someone might explain directions to Applebee’s, or how to tie a Windsor knot. “Save money on snake food that way.” Teddy’d been with the Museum ten years; Ali called him a “lifer.”

“So you studied history?” Jonah said to Frankie, his voice squeakier than any poor mouse. “So did I. Love that past, you know.”

“The past is fun,” said Frankie, “but I’m more focused on the future now.”

“Right. That’s great too.” Jonah bit his tongue trying to force it to say something better.

“Guys, pay attention, this is important.” Teddy was in no mood today, and absently stroked his long wispy beard into forks, a kind of accidental Fu Manchu. He gestured to a cardboard box. “This is Darlene. She is a practice mouse.”

“Hi, Darlene,” said Jonah, uncertain.

“Now what you’re gonna do is poke the practice mouse with this rod until she plays with the ball. If she puts it through the hoop five times, she gets a treat. This is called the Pavlovian response.” Teddy’s beard was tied in knots around his fingers. “Any volunteers? New kid, how about you?”

Later, when they were done cleaning up blood, Frankie asked Jonah if this was going to get any easier. “Or am I just stuck here?”

The voice in Jonah’s head said, Be honest. “Trapped like mice, buddy.”

Frankie smiled softly, teeth of Grecian marble, and for the first time in a long time, Jonah felt like he’d done something worthy of praise.

They left the auditorium together, but Lola grabbed Jonah’s shoulder as they passed her in the hall. “Better impress me fast,” she whispered in his ear. Hot breath. “I think just found somebody who’ll be real easy to train.” 

*

Cassie said, “Oh yeah, how’s that boss-thing going?”

“Fine,” he replied, changing the subject back to Frankie.

*

“Well, I hate him.” Alistair couldn’t stop thinking about Frankie either. Never mind they were down on their knees, both of them, scrubbing up a real gusher of an excretion some pasty kid’d upchucked all over the Liver Room of The Human Maze.

“I know, Ali.” Right now, the more pressing matter was the unreal amount of liquid filth splattered across the “Hepatitis ABCs” info-panel. It was dripping bad. “Elbow-grease, please.”

“Certain things just bear repeating is all,” said Ali, not scrubbing any harder.

Jonah shook the Clorox bottle, thought back to how he’d turned down that offer of help from the pasty kid’s au pair, and spritzed the ralph some more. 

“I mean, what’s he think he’s doing here? He doesn’t need this place.”

“Elbow-grease.” The ralph was dripping faster now, like Portland drizzle, but infinitely more depressing.

“Nosy brat asked me why I work here. First conversation—I tell him, I’ve been here four years, and he says ‘Why?’.”

Jonah quit with the spritzing. “So what did you say?”

Ali narrowed his eyes to the size of nail-clippings. “What did I say? We’re talking about what he said. Said it like I was a fucking moron.”

“Sorry, sorry.” Spritz, spritz. “It’s just, it’s an interesting question is all. I mean, I don’t want to stay here four years. Or four days, if I didn’t have to.”

“Why?”

Jonah pointed at the display of the diseased liver, its plastic coating frothy with vomit. “You don’t feel like you’re in-between things? This, and the next great chapter of your life?”

Ali smirked. “‘Next great chapter’? Really, Jonah?”

“We’re wiping up vomit, Ali.” Jonah didn’t see why he had to remind him, they were right in the middle of it. “Don’t you want something better for yourself?”

“Better? What does that even mean?” Ali put his washcloth down. “What if I’m fine where I am, Jonah? What if I think there’s something worthwhile right here?” Ali locked eyes with Jonah. His fingers contracted, released; they trembled.

“Well, then maybe you’re a fucking moron after all.”

Ali smiled—lips only—until he couldn’t anymore. “You’re right. It’s time to go.” He rose, leaving Jonah on his knees.

*

Jonah started spending all his breaks with Frankie. He basked in all those perfect smiles, laughed when he laughed, and sometimes even smiled back. Nothing ever happened between them, and the voice in Jonah’s head said Frankie wasn’t gay, but that didn’t matter. Made Jonah feel good, was all.

Good enough to take Frankie to lunch, to celebrate his one-week anniversary. Got them a booth at The Periodic Table café, salads and Cokes. Jonah was splurging. 

But the celebration was quiet, and by the end of their allotted fifteen minutes Frankie seemed to lose interest even in the salad and had become preoccupied by building a pyramid out of cherry tomatoes.

“Something on your mind?”

“Do you ever feel,” asked Frankie, “like you’re trapped? Or held back, somehow?”

“In a blue moon,” he replied. 

“Well when you do feel that way, do you know what it is? The thing holding you back?”

Jonah watched Frankie heap another tomato onto the pyramid, then try and catch it with his spoon as it rolled off the top. He failed, and it landed on the linoleum floor. “No.”

“I mean, at school, I picked up history real quick. I can tell you everything that happened from Charlemagne to Calvin, and in Medieval Latin. My paper on the Albigensian Crusade almost got published, even.”

“Wow,” said Jonah, “sounds like you should go to grad school.” Like a lot of people.

“I thought so too, but then, just because you’re good at something, that doesn’t mean you should do it for the rest of your life, right? If your heart isn’t in it?”

“Right.”

“I mean, being good at history, that’s like, being good at the past. Except we don’t live in the past, right?”

“Right.”

“And since I’m in the present. I ought to try and be good at that.”

He’s vapid, said the voice in Jonah’s head, beautiful and vapid.

Frankie stabbed his spoon into the pyramid, scattering the tomatoes all over his plate. “Just not as good as I hoped I’d be.”

 “Well, the future will get here soon enough.”

“And with it, my student loan payments. Great.” An alarm told them that their break was up, and as they went to turn their cafeteria-ware in, Frankie reminded him that, “Lola wants to see you. See us both, actually.”

“I know.” She’d told him that morning to stop by when he felt like learning something new. “You really care about your future? Tell her you got too busy, then stay that way indefinitely.”

He laughed at that, and Jonah wondered just how bad at the present Frankie really was.

After lunch, he was scheduled to run the Micecapades, and it wasn’t until after the last poor loser was carefully refrigerated that Jonah saw he had a missed call to return. 

“Portland City Library,” a woman answered, and Jonah’s heart throbbed. The job, he got the library job. He didn’t have to spritz ralph anymore, it hit him like a mouse playing volleyball.

“But it’s been over a month,” he told her. “I thought you’d never call.”

The woman laughed. “Good things happen to those who wait, I guess.”

“I guess.” Soon as he was off the phone, he ran up to Lola’s office to tell her he was putting in his two weeks. Didn’t even finish thinking up shtick about how grateful he was for the chance to blah-blah-blah—just opened the door, barged in.

Saw Lola with her lips on Frankie, her hand. His hand, a white breast. Beneath Lola’s kisses, Frankie was shivering, and Jonah watched and wondered, how? How did she make him move like that?

Frankie was the first to notice. “Jonah,” he said, almost panting the name. Lola said, “You’re late.”

“I’m leaving,” he told them. “Two weeks.” Then he darted down to the bathroom to look at his feet.

Two weeks. Why’d he say that? Why not just go?

The voice in his head said, Good things happen.

*

A boy, a pretty boy with a lean, cut body was going to come to Jonah’s and get laid. They’d been chatting all night.

“send me ur address”

Jonah was typing it out when the boy wrote, “i cant w8 2 get my hands on u”

Jonah blocked him, and read Procopius, and never thought of the boy again.

*

They were feeding the snakes again when Ali said, “I heard you’re leaving.”

“Who from?”

“Frankie. Told me you gave your two weeks.” Then, “You weren’t going to tell me?”

Jonah ignored that, kept his eyes on the serpent. He had Einstein today, who ate his mouse, no problem. “When did you start talking to Frankie?”

“When it became obvious he’d be sticking around.”

Jonah grunted. He shut the cage, latched it, double-checked. “And what clued you into that? Lola’s hand up his ass?” 

Ali said “Don’t say that.” Whispered it.

“Sure.” Jonah looked back down at the cage. He watched the mouse—now bulbous in the python’s throat—begin its slow travail through the digestive system. It could take weeks, he remembered Lola saying. One of her scripts. 

He remembered something else.

“The snake is an opportunistic eater,” she’d said. “Remember that, opportunistic. It means, so long as there’s an opening, they’ll take what they can get. They’ll eat their own skin if they have to, or their young, or their eggs. That’s opportunism.” She’d then punched the air. “Science!”

Not two feet away from Jonah, Ali stood dangling a freezer-burnt mouse over the head of blind Mingus. “Here boy, here boy.”

Opportunism. “When she did it to you, did you resist?”

Ali just said, “Here boy.” Beneath him, Mingus swayed his onyx head.

“No, of course not. Christ, why? It’s not like anyone gets promoted around here!” Opportunistic eaters. Jonah wondered, are we the skin, or the eggs? “Ali, did you fuck her when she told you to?” Babies, they were little babies with a hungry mother.

Ali closed his eyes. “Don’t ask me this, Jonah.”

“Why? What happened? Did she fuck you?” Nothing. “She did, didn’t she? Ali, why did you let her? You’re gay, and better than that. I mean it!” Not even the sudden strange softness in his voice could draw Ali’s gaze. “Hey, don’t look at the snake, look at me.”

“Jonah, I don’t want to talk about—”

“Fine, let’s talk about what happened to me instead. You want me to show you where she touched me?” Jonah grabbed his crotch, balled it up, and shook it. “Right here. Beat you to it, Ali.”

Ali looked. 

“Oh, that got your attention. Come on, come get a handful. I know this is what you’ve wanted, all this time. Congratulations! It’s your turn. Everybody gets a turn, everyone that wants it.”

“I don’t.” Ali held the dead mouse perfectly still. “Not like this, I don’t.”

“Just touch me already.” When Jonah charged at Ali, there was no thought involved, only speed. He grabbed Ali’s free hand and started pulling him down. “Just take what you want, you hideous coward.” 

Ali shrieked, flailed. Something hissed. Maybe they all hissed. Next, two fingers, struggling to contract, bled. Speckles on Ali’s workpants, on his shirt.

“Oh, God.” Jonah let go, blinking. “Ali, Christ, I’m so sorry, I don’t know why—”

Ali said, “Not again.” He said it numbly, over and over. “Not again, not again.” He cradled the snakebite. “Don’t look at me.” He fled the lab for the bathroom next-door.

Jonah, equally numb, remained with the snakes. I didn’t just do that, he thought, no, that was something parasitic, something that saw an opportunity I couldn’t. And the voice in his head said, Don’t look at me.

Inside his cage, blind Mingus had retreated to his hidey-hole beneath a smooth stone. The mouse was nowhere to be seen.

*

Cassie called him, but he didn’t answer.

*

On his last day, Jonah stood in the left atrium of the Human Heart Room, waiting for the next stage of his life to begin. Soon he’d be shelving books at the library, soon he’d never see anyone from the Museum again.

Ali was gone already: two weeks of sick leave. Lola said he had swine flu, and Jonah wondered how much she really knew. Not enough to fire him, clearly. He thought, Ali would never betray me, not even when I deserve it, out of cowardice he wouldn’t. Or love, said the voice in his head. Or love. You should feel worse, but Jonah couldn’t make himself.

And so he wandered The Human Maze, hands in his pockets. “Hey, don’t climb on that,” he sometimes muttered, but no one heard him. And Jonah, all he heard was throbbing, from the hi-fi speakers in all corners of the Human Heart, and from the corners of his head. 

He rounded a corner, into the left ventricle. Veins for walls. Children were climbing them—up, up—in spite of the sign saying DON’T in pulmonary purple letters. Lola was there, preoccupied.

“Free tickets to the Micecapades for whoever comes down fastest.” Under her breath, she whispered the name of Jesus.

Frankie was preoccupied too, close behind, watching her teeter on her stubby legs, clawing at the kids. Glassy-eyed, like he was dreaming.

He woke. “Hey, Jonah.”

Jonah said hey back.

“I’m sad you’re leaving.”

Jonah said, “I’ll miss you too.”

“So you’re not mad? About Lola,” he explained.

“Ancient history.”

“I know you two had a thing going. She told me.”

“I’ll bet.” In the distance, Lola had a little boy by the ankle, pulling him down.  

“And fuck Jonah, I know how it looks, but she says they’re about to hire a full-time animal-dude. I can have a future here.”

Animal-dude. “That’s great.” 

 “Frankie!” Lola, out of breath now, crept up behind him, huffed a command. “Watch them a second.” She blew into his ear, and he took off running. Then to Jonah, she said, “What are you looking at?”

The voice in Jonah’s head said, an animal, but he kept silent.

“I just want you to know,” she said, “that you really could’ve had a future here, if you’d wanted it.”

He kept silent.

“But it takes humility to do this job. You think anybody ever dreamed of telling children not to tap on a tarantula exhibit? Went to school for that? Or wanted to be divorced at thirty-six, working with you?”

He kept silent.

“Humility’s your problem, Jonah. Think you’re so much better. Well, the people who work here weren’t born to be judged. No, if you don’t have humility, then there can be no future for you here. Not like sweet Frankie.” She motioned for him to leave with her. They were almost to the atrium when she stopped to brush the hair out of his eyes. She giggled.

“You’re an animal!” Jonah shouted, and it resounded through the chamber, fidelity higher than speakers could manage.

Lola paused, cocked her head. “Didn’t you learn anything working here?” She placed a finger on her lips, mouthed the word, ‘listen,’ and Jonah listened, to the ceaseless pounding of the Human Heart around them.

“Everything is animal,” she said, “inside.”

As if agreeing, the two little boys from earlier ran past him, barking like dogs, racing for the Lymph Node Jungle. Lola shook her head and followed, and left Jonah alone with the pounding Heart, waiting.