“That crocodile’s looking at you, baby,” Bruce says, lighting another cigarette. “That crocodile’s thinking: mmmm.”
“I bet these animals aren’t exactly what you could call happy,” I tell him as we watch a polar bear, patches of its fur stained blue from chlorine, drag itself toward a shallow pool, a fake glacier.
“Oh come on,” Bruce disagrees. “Sure they’re happy.”
“I can’t see how,” I say.
“What do you want them to do? Light sparklers? Tap-dance? Tell you how nice that blouse looks on you?”
A keg is actually floating in the piss-yellow water and the polar bear avoids the water, pacing around it instead. Bruce moves on. I follow. He’s now looking for the snow leopard, which is high on his list of must-sees. We find where the snow leopards are supposed to be but they’re hiding. Bruce lights another cigarette and stares at me.
“Don’t worry,” he says.
“I’m not worrying,” I say. “Aren’t you hot?”
“No,” he says. “The jacket’s linen.”
“What is that?” I ask, staring at a big, strange-looking bird. “Ostrich?”
“No,” he sighs. “I don’t know.”
“Is it an … emu?” I ask.
“I’ve never seen one before,” he says. “So how would I know?”
My eye starts twitching and I throw the rest of the drink into a nearby trash can. I find a rest room while Bruce watches the polar bears some more. In the rest room I splash warm water on my face, willing myself out of an anxiety attack. A black woman is helping a little boy sit on the toilet without falling in. It’s cooler here, the air sweet, unpleasant. I fix my contacts quickly and leave to rejoin Bruce, who points out to me a huge red scar crisscrossed with massive black stitches that runs across the back of one of the polar bears.
Bruce watches a kangaroo hop worriedly toward a zookeeper, but it won’t let the zookeeper pick it up. It reaches out a tentative paw and hisses, a horrible sound coming from a kangaroo, and the zookeeper grabs it by its tail and drags the animal away. Another kangaroo watches, backed into a corner, terrified, munching nervously on brown leaves. The remaining kangaroo squeals and hops around in circles, then stops with a sudden jerk. We move on.
I’m still thirsty but all the refreshment stands we pass are closed and I cannot seem to find a water fountain. The last time Bruce and I saw each other had been on Monday. He picked me up in a green Porsche and we went to a screening at the studio of the new teenage sex comedy, then dinner, Tex Mex in Malibu. As he was leaving my apartment that night he discussed with me his plans for leaving Grace, who has become one of my father’s favorite young actresses and who Bruce tells me he never really was in love with but married anyway, for reasons “still unknown,” a year ago. I know he hasn’t left Grace and I am ninety-nine percent sure he will explain it all to me later but I am also hoping he has made the move and that this is the reason why he is so silent right now, because he will offer it as a surprise later, after lunch. He smokes cigarette after cigarette.
Although Bruce is twenty-five he looks younger and this is mostly due to his boyish height, his unblemished, consistently hairless, stubble-free face, his crop of thickish, fashionably cut blond hair, and since he does a lot of drugs he’s thinner than he probably should be but in a good way and he has a dignity that most of the men I know don’t have, will never have. He disappears up ahead. I follow him into some new world now: cactus, elephants, more strange birds, huge reptiles, rocks, Africa. A gang of Hispanic boys roams aimlessly, following us, playing hooky but probably not and I check my watch to verify that I will be missing my one o’clock class.
We met at a wrap party at the studio. Bruce came up to where I was standing, offered me a glass of ice and said, “You look like Nastassja Kinski.” I stood there, mute, made a concentrated effort that lasted nine seconds to decode this gesture. Three weeks into the affair I found out he was married and I cursed myself miserably that whole afternoon and night after he told me this at Trumps one Friday before he had to fly to Florida for the weekend. I didn’t recognize the signs that accompany an affair with a married man since basically in L.A. there aren’t any. After I found out, it made sense and things totally came together but by then it was “too late.” A gorilla is lying on its back, playing with a branch. We are standing far away yet I can smell it. Bruce moves on to a rhinoceros.
“They like to be here,” he says, staring at a rhinoceros that lies immobile, on its side, and that I’m pretty sure is not alive. “Why wouldn’t they like it?”