the zoo

      He drove in silence to the Manisses. “I’ll just leave the van here,” he said.  She was very subdued. He felt sorry for her. What must it feel like to see your children in an alternate life you had no part in. Not to mention the fact that the man with whom you made those children, who you presumably loved at one time, naked and sweaty, was now ashes.

      “Let’s go look at the animals,” he said.

      He put some coins into a machine and took out a package of food pellets. The dromedary and a llama were already hanging their heads over the fence expectantly.

     “They’re as out of place as I am,” said Kat.

    “This hotel is named after the Manisses tribe. Legend has it they were exiles from a mainland tribe. Rejects. They were enslaved by the white settlers who came here from England in 1661. Supposedly if an Indian could build a stone wall from one end of the island to the other, he would be freed. I doubt that story though.

    “Now the island has been overtaken by tourists and cottagers from Connecticut and New Jersey, and the descendants of those white settlers work for them. And the jobs they won’t do, we import people from Brazil, Eastern Europe and Thailand to do.

     “So we’re all exiles and newcomers. And if you look out over the ocean, we all seem pretty small and out of place.”

      “I get the same feeling in the desert in New Mexico. Have you ever been there?”

     “No. I can’t get that far from an ocean.”

     “There it’s all about the sky. There’s a lot of sky over the ocean, too. But it seems like more there. Or more extreme.”

      “I thought you lived in Greenwich.”

      “Ridgefield. In the woods. But I’ve had a tiny place near Santa Fe for years. Malcolm and I bought it when we were married. I spend a lot of time out there.”

      “Doing what?”

      “Painting, mostly. Kate once told me you paint, too.”

       “I do. Seascapes mainly. What do you paint?”

      “Skyscapes.”

      They both laughed.

      The animals gave up and wandered away.