TASTINGS

PROLOGUE

The alligator was behind the first door on the right.

Brian was stunned that his former college roommate had managed to keep it alive for eight, no, ten years. Not the sort of house pet one expected to find on the thirty-seventh floor of a luxury high-rise, but there had been that white ibis, Daedalus, that took up half their room in college. Edgar had managed to keep Daedalus a secret their last two years at Cornell, leaving the ibis in the University Hospital for Animals late one night before senior finals. In the beery haze of their quadrennial, Brian had found it charming that his roommate needed a piece of the bayou with him. That viewpoint won him the largesse of Edgar, who discovered a talent for commodities trading the summer after they graduated. He longed for Edgar’s monetary skill.

Edgar, his angled cheekbones and languid limbs guaranteeing a cluster of women in their room, was a Classics major with a fondness for Ovid. Brian was not surprised he named the alligator Icarus, only that he had made a home for the baby he picked up off the middle of a steaming Mississippi road. The name was Edgar’s Southern Gothic way of keeping it in the family. That nostalgic attachment to the bayou was also why Edgar built the pond in a large walk-in closet – that troublesome first door on the right – as soon as Cullman & Kravis had finished decorating his Manhattan apartment.

Brian walked down the hallway, his bare feet freezing, trying to untie the knot in the sash of the borrowed robe. He’d have to remember to ask Edgar where he’d found the perfect robe, like a warm hug of ivory softness. He untied the knot and smoothed out the sash without lifting his sleepy head when he reached for the knob of what he thought was the bathroom. The door swung open. A snout appeared. In a mere fraction of a second, his eyes registered that the habitat Edgar created was impressively realistic with a long irregular pond, rocks, twigs, dirt, plants. Artificial Spanish moss hung from the ceiling. A puff of humid air hung like a ghost in front of him as he tried to jam the door shut again. His shoulder hit hard against the wood as he shoved against it. Edgar had been specific in the notes he left for Brian that the bathroom was on the left. Brian’s not being able to tell his right from his left had taken an alarming turn.

All he wanted was his two weeks in Manhattan – regroup after his business losses and find a way to approach his mother for money without having to actually ask, then see a few shows, visit the Met, maybe Yankee Stadium, and pay his respects at Ground Zero. Not wrestle alligators. The light slanted across the top of the door. The ticking of the grandfather clock in the foyer harmonized with the timer on the coffeemaker. The smell of fresh coffee filled the room, overpowering the zoo smell he’d released. His arms began to ache. He tried to force the door shut again, but the snout was out and not about to go back in. How could something half his size and horizontal be this strong? Fear might help mothers lift cars off their toddlers, but it wasn’t helping him.

He made a quick turn to try and use more leverage with his legs and back. He could almost feel those teeth on his legs, tearing flesh and muscle, severing veins and arteries. He lowered his head to wipe his face off on the thick Egyptian cotton now barely covering his shoulder. He tried to shrug the robe all the way back on. He closed his eyes for a moment as he pressed back, his bladder screaming, and wondered about the limits of Edgar’s forgiveness, especially where Icarus was concerned. Edgar had been patient when Brian departed from commodities trading into derivatives the decade after college, though Edgar did manage to emphasize the irony that intended preventatives of risk allowed exposure of exponential proportions. An alligator chewing his leg off would qualify as a risk of exponential proportions. Brian crashed and burned, not as spectacularly as when Leeson bankrupted Barings, the oldest merchant bank in London, but enough to take a respite from the financial world and try his hand at running a business. Why a bar seemed a good idea at the time still mystified him. Edgar on the other hand, demonstrated a winning mix of mastery, daring, and patience, taking his place among the city’s finest financial minds. The longer Edgar spent in New York, the more he emphasized his drawl, his connection with that damned swamp, even though he would live in Manhattan the rest of his life. He found the city lucky. Besides, every time he went home, a friend or relative died, so Edgar became irrationally cemented in New York. Bayou and all.

Brian opened his eyes to find himself featured in several of the professionally framed photographs on the wall facing him. He could hear Icarus breathing. If it got loose, would it attack? Brian again imagined those enormous teeth slicing through his ankles. He remembered a woman in Florida killed by an alligator on land, then dragged back into the water. It was easy to envision himself attacked on pricey Brazilian walnut and dragged into a cement pond. Edgar would come home to find his dismembered foot or maybe only a toe in the closet and a fat alligator.

Brian focused on the photo. There were his two sisters with him in the middle on Edgar’s porch down south. All three of them had their mother’s dark wavy hair and alabaster smile. Alison, the smart one, and Emma, the creative one. He was the athletic one, a little smart, a little creative, a little bit of a screw up. His sisters were as pretty as actresses and as cunning. Until their mother’s decline, he’d taken it for granted the three of them would be always that close, not that anyone was really close to Alison. The smart one was intimidating. He wondered what would happen when their mother died and what would happen to all that money their father had left her. Their father’s stinginess with feelings for his offspring matched what he bequeathed each of them in his will. What about their mother? Would she split it evenly, who was the executor (or, God forbid, executrix), would any of them get anything or would it all go to some ridiculous charity? Too many questions and he had a more pressing problem. The gamey breathing turned to vigorous snorting.

The third photo from the right nearly made him forget why he was braced hard against the door. He was standing in front of Solitary, the bar he’d recently closed near Boston. He had happy eyes in the photo. He’d hoped to give Edgar a nice return on his investment, not report a loss.

Alligators are remarkably fast. Icarus skittered over travertine marble heading for the balcony. It was a blur of swishing slate colored scales and Brian swore its eyes glowed red as it passed. The French doors were open. Maybe the brute wanted to sun himself. Edgar would be livid – this was beyond the bounds of Southern gentility – but at least he could lead the beast back into the closet. The last thing Brian saw was the tip of the tail slipping over the edge of the balcony. It was a hell of a long way down. The grandfather clock chimed a dirge. Brian got on his hands and knees and crept to the balcony. He didn’t care that he was thirty-seven floors up from Manhattan concrete – no one was going to get a look at his face if he could help it. He dropped onto his stomach and inched to where the tail had vanished. Bile rising, he looked down. Peeking over the edge of the balcony, he was surprised to discover that Icarus was about the same size as a New York taxi. That half-inch of bright yellow was parked right in front as if to invite comparison. Brian thought if the sidewalk were a vivid blue, the poor thing would be not unlike Matisse’s Icarus he’d planned to see at the Met. Thirty-seven floors below was not a paper cut-out, but a dead alligator in a horrible awkward curve, awaiting the inevitable early morning jogger from the Ritz Carlton around the corner to find him splayed on Fifth Avenue. No witnesses and no one squished. The busiest city in the world was quiet. Not an insignificant miracle, but he was still screwed. His host was blasé about money. He could take a business loss in stride, even turn it to an advantage, but Edgar would have no sense of humor whatsoever about his precious alligator flying too close to the sun.

Brian had few options. He could quickly pack and slink down thirty-seven stories and leave Manhattan for parts unknown, wait and confess, or go back to bed and pretend nothing happened. Bed or stairs, bed or stairs…