We walked the public grounds after Bill returned to his office, having extracted a promise that I’d review the elephant panels by Monday and having shaken Benji’s hand one more time.
“I like him,” Benji said as we walked toward the Africa section.
“He likes you.”
“He told me you slept in a chair next to a baby giraffe for fourteen hours.”
“I was monitoring post-operative stability.”
“You were sleeping next to a baby giraffe becauseyou needed her to be okay,” Benji said, repeating Bill’s words almost exactly.
“Both things can be true.”
“When was this? The surgery.”
“Two years ago. In January.”
IfeltBenji do the math.
January, two years ago.
David had been in the hospital, and I’d driven to the zoo at 2 a.m. on a Sunday and spent fourteen hours repairing a giraffe’s leg because the giraffe’s leg was something I could fix.
David was something I couldn’t.
“Peter,” Benji said.
“I know.”
“You don’t have to tell me.”
“David was in the hospital. It had been a bad week. Bill called about the giraffe, and I went because the giraffe needed surgery, and I needed something to do with my hands that wasn’t sitting in a waiting room.”
Benji waited in silence. It took me a long time to set my next words free.
“I operated on a baby giraffe because I couldn’t operate on David. The math works out close enough.”
The sentence arrived from somewhere deep and old. I recognized it as David’s. He’d said it to meonce, about why I brought every stray home and why I couldn’t pass a shelter without stopping.
“You can’t fix the world, but you can fix a kitten. The math works out close enough,” he’d said.
I’d carried the phrase with me since.
Benji’s hand found mine. His fingers laced through mine and held on while we walked through the Africa section of a zoo on a Saturday morning. I let us be seen, two men holding hands in public in the middle of the day, and the letting was another door I walked through that day, quietly and without ceremony, but with my head high and heart full.
Lunch was at the zoo café, which was not a culinary destination but served a reasonable grilled chicken sandwich. Benji ordered without looking at the menu.
“I’m having the Flamingo Wrap,” he announced.
“The Flamingo Wrap is turkey and avocado in a pink tortilla. The pink is food coloring.”
“The pink is branding. I’m at a zoo. I want my food to acknowledge where I am,” he said, using Benji logic, which means little to none.
“Your food’s color is not a meaningful indicator of its quality.”
“Everything’s color is a meaningful indicator of its quality. This is why your wardrobe is ninety percent gray and navy, and this is the conversation we’regoing to have next.”
“My wardrobe is functional.”
