Ike

 I watch the lizard on the old stone walls. The walls are tall, extending maybe thirty feet above my garden. Gray and black stripes zigzag across the lizard’s back. His tail is neon blue. When he sees me watching, he freezes. I want to catch him. I walk toward him, slowly, like a tree gravitating across the garden. As soon as I am almost within grabbing distance, the lizard bolts, remarkably quick with his strange, reptilian, tolting gait. This scene repeats many times, day after day. I am obsessed with catching the lizard. Why I want the lizard, and what I plan to do with him, I cannot say. I name him Ike. I wonder if he will bite. I don’t care. 

I realize that I need more time to plan, more time to research best methods for capturing reptiles. I call Miss Timmons, who is my supervisor at the hospital where I work in housekeeping services. I explain to her that I have a situation that must be resolved and that I need to take my accrued sick time as well as my vacation time, effective immediately.

 “But Kenny,” Miss Timmons says, not sounding at all happy, and clearly not comprehending the urgency of my situation, “that would come to quite a large stretch of time.”

 “Yes,” I say. “Good.” Miss Timmons tries to persuade me otherwise, albeit unsuccessfully. She even threatens me in a nice way, telling me that the ‘higher-ups’ might see this as cause for termination. 

“That’s okay,” I say. “I have to get off the phone now, because I don’t want to miss an opportunity.” I can tell by the silence on the other end of the phone that Miss Timmons is at a loss for how to answer. I save her the trouble of coming up with a suitable reply by hanging up, but not in an angry way. People can tell when you hang up in an angry way. I think you can tell more about people when you can’t see their faces than you can when you are standing right next to them. Your intuitive senses kick in to compensate for the loss of the visual sense. Intuition is more useful because it can deliver a greater quantity of information than your eyes can. 

I wonder if I can use my intuition to somehow assist me in capturing my lizard. I want to examine him in detail, I want to see what color his belly is and count his toes and see if he has hooked little toenails. I suspect he does and that is the reason he can scurry across the old stone walls so effortlessly. I make a trap out of a large Mason jar and a stick and some duct tape and a piece of string. I put it in the patch of zinnias where I have seen Ike catching flies. He comes down the old stone wall, jumps to the dead tree trunk lying at the base of the old stone wall, and then he disappears into the purple bougainvillea bush and reappears on the far side. He then looks left, looks right, and crosses the bare patch of mulch where he is vulnerably exposed, and rushes into the jumble of zinnias. I watch him catching flies in the deep green jungle of flowers with the pink, red, and orange blossoms. 

I put my trap exactly in the middle of the zinnias. I have rigged up a little door out of a square of heavy cardboard and duct tape. When I pull the string, the cardboard will fall down, flat against the opening of the Mason jar. It should work, as long as the cardboard weighs more than  the lizard, which I think it does.

          Wrong. Ike easily pushes his way out of the Mason jar, so now, at least, I have gathered more data, which is that Ike weighs more than a four inch by four inch square piece of heavy cardboard. I will try again and this time I will duct tape some pebbles to the cardboard to increase the weight.

This evening, after a day of unsuccessful lizard stalking, I am tired. I have not eaten  because I have been too busy with the lizard. My daughter calls and asks me if I’m taking my medication. I tell her that I am, which is a lie. I won’t take it anymore because it makes me fat and tired and life loses its zest, and I enjoy a zesty life. I wish I had quit my job long ago. The cat is already curled up in bed, lying on the fuzzy blanket when I finally turn in. It is past two am. I have been online, researching lizards and how to catch them. I remember that I have not fed the cat today. I get out of bed and fill her bowl with kibble in the kitchen.

I spend many days —and many nights, too, with a flashlight—trying to trap Ike. I test many different different types of traps—nothing works. Ike won’t go near the Mason jar again. I think more about why this lizard is so important to me. I wonder if he is trying to give me a message? Maybe that is why he will not let me catch him. He does not want me to look at his belly or count his toes. He wants to deliver a message from someone. I cannot sleep and I cannot eat. I cannot do anything except wonder what the lizard is trying to tell me.

There is a knock on my door. It is a policeman. He says my daughter has been trying to call and why am I not answering my phone and that she is worried about me and she is arranging for a social worker to come help me with my medication. I tell the policeman that I am fine and I am an adult and I take my medication regularly like clockwork. As previously mentioned, this is a lie, the last part about taking my medication, but I think the policeman believes me because I speak very calmly and even though I am still in my pajamas at three in the afternoon that is not so very unusual. Lots of people who are taking a vacation from work—and that is what I am doing because nobody has notified me that I’m fired—stay in their pajamas all day. I don’t have time to change into regular clothes because I might miss my big chance to capture Ike and discover what message he is trying to deliver. 

I worry that Ike is scared of me. I make traps of different styles that are friendly looking. I draw girl lizards and insects on them and tape zinnia blossoms around the entrance to disarm him. None of them work. I sit for hours on the log where the lizard likes to sun, with a butterfly net in one hand. I am completely motionless. The lizard does not come near. I must find out what he wants to tell me. It’s important, something urgent, something dire; I am sure of it.

I go across the street to the little market with the iron bars on the door. I call into the dark interior and say that I need a quart of milk. The woman takes my money and passes the milk through the iron bars. I go back home. I will give the cat some milk to make up for the fact that I keep forgetting to feed her. The cat is in the kitchen when I go to put the milk in the refrigerator. She is eating something. I look more closely. It is Ike, and only half of him remains. The half that remains is a mangled mess in the cat’s mouth. She growls at me and runs away with Ike’s half corpse dangling from her mouth. Ike’s tail has fallen off and is lying in front of the refrigerator. It is neon blue and wiggling.