The koalas stared out of their enclosure, bored with their lots or certain some other shoe was about to drop. They paid no mind to the eucalyptus branches the zookeepers had prepared. They paid no mind to one another. They paid no mind to the patrons, Craig and Jess included. Craig had had it.

“Zoos should be better,” he said.

Jess took a long look at the koalas before responding. “I used to think that, too,” she said. “I don’t go enough for it to really matter, though, not in any real way.”

“You’d go more if they were better.”

“Maybe. I doubt it, though. People are only so interested in anything—me less than most.”

“What if it was an alien zoo?”

She couldn’t look away from the koalas’ blank stares. “Like the book?” she said.

“No. Not a zoo run by aliens. Forget it. Stupid idea.”

“It’s not stupid,” she said, unconvinced or distracted or both.

“That does it,” he said. “I’m going in.”

“Careful,” she said.

“I always am,” he said, grinning, as he limbered up for the climb.

He was up the fence before anyone took notice. Jess was just remembering how nimble he’d always been—so few occasions to be nimble in his line, in their lives—when she heard the kid.

“I wanna go in, too,” said the kid.

Then came a gasp or two, nothing compared to the reaction when he punched the first koala he came to.

“Ungrateful bastards,” he said, and he said it loud enough to hear clear across the habitat.

The koala didn’t pay him any mind. It didn’t move away or jump at him with its teeth or claws. It just took the punch, took it like a man, and dropped from its tree. Then came the real gasps—crying, too.

Jess thought to say, “Give ‘em hell,” but she kept her mouth shut. No point rocking the boat, the boat so squarely facing the koala’s side of the scuffle as it was.

“Why would he do that?” said a woman to her left.

Jess laughed. “Why wouldn’t he?”

Security: that was the answer. Despite their longstanding disuse, they moved quickly. Then it was all hauling Craig away and relief in the spectators and a sense of satisfaction that Jess hadn’t felt in so long.

Craig shouted, “Wait for me, babe,” from his side of the growing crowd.

“I will,” she shouted back. “You know I will, baby.”

She didn’t.

Assaulting a koala proved a graver offense than either of them had suspected. Beyond that, the court had ordered visits with a psychiatrist, one whose evaluation of Craig involved words like “dangerously” and “unbalanced” and “person,” words that took on greater authority when Craig spoke on his behalf during sentencing.

“My only regret,” he said, “is not getting to the rest of them.”

The months weren’t hard so much as they were months. Time had afforded certain distances in Jess’s perspective of her relationship with Craig. It had brought new neighbors, as well—The Jogger, for instance. Ultimately, waiting was a matter of time, and time, along with Jess’s particular attention span, had found waiting wanting.

For their first date, The Jogger took Jess to the zoo. She’d told him it was her “very favorite place of all.” He’d smiled at that, smiled his jogger’s smile and said in his big-boy voice, “Then that’s just where we’ll go.”

She thought about Craig as they walked, but only so much. Mostly she thought about his alien zoo, what it might be. She asked The Jogger what he thought.

“I think,” was his reply, “you’re about ten kinds of alright.”

She smiled. “I’d’ve bought seven.”

The sex was rough, comforting. She smoked a cigarette in his room, afterward. She liked the look of how uncomfortable it made him.

“My old man’s in jail,” she said.

“Sounds like a winner.”

“I’m waiting for him.”

He ran his hand over her back. “Well,” he said, “I guess you’re doing a solid job of it.”

“He punched a koala,” she said.

“For you?”

“What?”

“You’re prettier when you don’t talk.”

She smiled. “I know.”

“Sounds pretty crazy,” he said.

“Yeah,” she said. “That’s what they say. He’s nimble, though, something like a real man, maybe, but different, too.” After a silence of distracted stares at blank walls, her cigarette spent, she added, “I think I should go.”

“Yeah,” said The Jogger. “I think that’s probably a good idea.”

“I don’t know from good ideas,” she said. “See you around?”

“You know it,” he said with a wink. “You fucking know it.”

Timestamp: 02.07.08 at 10:13 AM. Filed under: Fiction.