Mr Peanut - Adam Ross [186]
Shadow her, he thought. Keep her in sight. Intercept predator, if he appeared. And then, when the time came, tell her whatever you need to in order to escape.
The class handed their tickets to the guard and entered the Hall of Asian Mammals, Pepin a safe distance behind. It was quieter here and their pace slowed down, the kids breaking out of their tight formation and mingling in front of the exhibits, fogging the glass and busting wisecracks before moving on. His own attention was divided; he’d have to keep an eye out for Mobius too, though now that he had Alice in sight a calm came over him, the lower ceiling seeming to contain and protect them, the smaller hall narrowing and limiting sightlines. It was pleasant, actually, to tail her; a fantasy, rarely acted upon: to see his wife in her world, in her element, to watch her students—ranging in age, he guessed, from twelve to fourteen—responding to her. What a mother she would have been. A Hispanic boy in all black—pants, shirt, basketball shoes—but for the white gothic A stitched above the brim of his black baseball cap came up to her and asked a question. She bent toward him and put her hand on his arm, recognizing that the very act of asking was for him a show of vulnerability, out of character, and therefore in need of reinforcement; and as she answered him his face went open and alert, warmed by the gentle beam of her attention. Pepin walked closer, trying to overhear, so touched by the exchange that he was tempted to take her in his arms. But it was risky enough getting this close to her, so he stayed in her blind spot as he had with Mobius.
They turned right now, moving into the Hall of Asian Peoples. Koto music was playing over the speakers, and while it never sounded harmonic or rhythmic to him, the effect was doubly calming and made him hungry for sushi. He’d eaten nothing before he ran out this morning and lately was always hungry, eating more often, the hunger pains more and more acute, his obesity like a disease. It had to be. Reflected in the display case in front of him, his hair was shocked out like straw, his beard widened his face, the waist of his pants cupped down below his belly like a wide smile. He’d do something about it when he and Alice went away. They would feel good together again, about themselves and each other.
He shifted focus. A golden Buddha sat in the exhibit before him, his eyes closed in meditation, his hands laid gently over each other, his palms up and resting on his crossed legs, his head nimbused with cobras. The plaque read:
Buddhism assumes that human beings are caught up in an endless cycle of lives, and that one’s form in the next life depends on behavior in this life. The way out of this cycle is to understand how it functions and to live life correctly, with passion and with reason.
But he never understood the function until it was too late and was thereby always living incorrectly, so what would his next form be if he were to die now? Certainly something lower than human—a fearful creature, not predator but prey. Chubby, hairy. Mating a problem. A panda, Pepin thought. Yet the truth of the plaque’s description arrested him—an endless cycle of lives—and the promise of a way out, the Escher Exit, lifted his spirits.
I will not swerve, he thought.
He lost the group and panicked, so he trotted, then ran, turning a corner and nearly colliding with several stragglers from the class, hugging the walls behind the Semai hunter exhibit in front of which they’d gathered, Pepin shuffling to hide in plain sight behind Alice herself, close enough to reach out and touch her, to smell her, almost. The hunter, nearly naked but for a woven-cane bandanna and a noble-savage knapsack, had a blowgun as long as a pole vaulter’s pole aimed out of his mouth.
“Check out that swimsuit he