Their dad was at least standing on the floor, his back to the wall, looking terrified while trying to seem in control.
Louise felt guilty. It had never occurred to them that their father might be scared of snakes too.
Her entrance line was “What happened?”
Jillian glanced up and managed not to grin ear to ear with triumph. “I dropped the box,” she did a little voice waver of distress. “Wiggly got loose.”
“Oh no!” It was Louise’s scripted last line. At this point she was supposed to bravely pick the snake up and put it back in the box. She scanned the room but the python was nowhere to be seen.
They had rehearsed “the distraction” in their bedroom with a rolled-up towel cord standing in as “Wiggly.” They’d discovered they couldn’t contain Joy anywhere; somehow she escaped from everything they put her into. With her loose, they couldn’t practice letting the real snake loose and catching it again. Somehow they’d overlooked the fact that the python might actively attempt to escape. The videos they’d watched on handling big constrictors all featured very slow-moving snakes.
She glanced questioning to Jillian, who shrugged and spread her hands.
“Louise,” their father’s voice cracked. “Get the snake and put it in the box. Please! Now!”
“Okay,” she said to at least seem like she was obeying him. She dropped down to hands and knees to peer under desks and behind filing cabinets. So many places it could hide.
“Is it poisonous?” one of the men sitting on a desk asked.
“No, it’s a constrictor.” Jillian joined Louise on the floor. “They kill their prey by coiling around it and choking it to death.”
The man had been extending his foot down, and he paused, freezing in place. “Kill its prey?”
Where was the python hiding? There were many nooks and crannies, but most of them Jillian would have seen the snake moving across the floor to reach. The box canted sideways marked where Jillian dropped it. The desk that Laura Runkle was standing on, still screaming, was next to it. Just beyond the desk was a door marked “Masturbatory Chamber.” She had a weirdly strong feeling that the snake must have slipped unnoticed into the room beyond.
Her father let out a yelp as she opened the door and stepped into the room.
The snake was on the floor, as she had expected, coiled in a pair of men’s pinstripe trousers. There was a businessman perched on a table, clutching a magazine to his front.
“No! No! Don’t come in!” the businessman cried.
And her father snatched Louise up and carried her out of the room.
“I need to get the snake.” She squirmed in his hold.
“I will get it,” he said firmly.
“But—but—” She didn’t want to say he was scared of it, but obviously he was.
“I will deal with it.” He caught Jillian by the shoulder as he walked past her and pulled her in his wake. He carried Louise all the way to the back of the warren of cubicles and sat her down in a chair. “Stay here.”
A minute later he returned looking ashen but holding the box.
“I’m sorry, Daddy,” Louise said. “I didn’t know you—you didn’t like snakes.”
“I grew up in rattlesnake country. I know that they’re not the same, but fear is not always rational. I’m sorry, I know you want a pet, but Daddy just can’t deal with the idea of a snake in the house.”
* * *
Tesla kept faltering as they backtracked to the pet store, returned the snake, and made their way to the subway. She had forgotten to turn off the magic generator. She was afraid he was breaking down but she didn’t want to call attention to it. If their father decided he could troubleshoot Tesla, he might find all her changes to Tesla’s programming and the nactka in his storage bin.
Luckily just as they reached the stairs down to the subway, their father’s work called and he wasn’t able to push off their demands.
“Let me put my kids on the express and then I’ll be back.”
He kissed them both on top of their heads. “Go home. Straight home. I’ll be tracking Tesla and will be worried until I see he’s home.”
Jillian barely waited for their father to be out of earshot. “You got it?”
Louise nodded, watching Tesla’s head twist and turn. The subway train came rumbling in and the robotic dog shuddered and pressed up against her.
“Come on, boy.” She patted the wide shoulder. “Keep it together until we get home.”
If Tesla broke down before then, they were going to have a complete mess on their hands. There was no way they could abandon such an expensive machine on the subway system, but if they had to call their parents, they could discover everything.