The lizard occupied a cupboard for a couple weeks. Every time I opened the door, I found him clinging to the wall, flicking his tongue above the dusty sack of green-and-yellow split peas. If he moved overnight, while I slept, he’d returned to his post before I groggily reached for honey nut cereal the next morning. His eyes rolled around googly but he wouldn’t dart off, perhaps thinking himself invisible. As far as lizards go, I wouldn’t have described him as gigantic, although big enough that I remarked to myself “Nah” when considering a shock move to eject him manually. My dog, The Reverend, had brought him to me, as a gift. I kept the back door ajar in summer as the swamp cooler wouldn’t function without a source of air; the door ajar enabled The Reverend to frequent the fenced-in yard, as a dog of his namesake saw fit. He arrived at my chair, while I typed very important sentences into my computer, with the lizard in his mouth. The lizard looked up at me with an electric expression like, “Get me outta here, Bud!” I asked The Reverend to drop him, a request that he honored, but when the lizard scampered away—first to the closet, then to the bathroom, then to the ceiling—The Reverend ignored me with enviable disassociation until I began to fry turkey burgers on the crumbling backyard grill. He and I sat together munching burgers, while hornworms (unbeknownst to us) munched the sweltering tomato plants in late afternoon shade. I un-bottle-capped a beer, one that The Reverend projected little interest in, before he laid his muzzle across my feet. The two of us, two men of the world, weltered in place. I experienced great wonderment at that juncture. People labor for decades before they re-tire, I noted; it seems like quite a long time before changing radials. The Direction of Man, I lectured The Reverend, in my philosopher-king voice, is either north-northwest or north-northeast, depending on whether he is left or right-handed: it has nothing to do with the Coriolis Effect. Time is both servant and oppressor, I added, damn its dispassionate reports!
