She took a job throwing scraps of food down to the baby dinosaurs, which were, to be clear, real dinosaurs, revived embryonically with the help of DNA extracted from blood found in the proboscis of a fossilized mosquito and brought thusly into the modern world. Matty and Patty, the babies, went for the meat almost delicately, with tapered claws that they worked like hands, and she could have sworn that Matty wiped his mouth with the back of a scaly arm afterwards. She was in love with them and in love with the owner of the zoo, who reminded her of her grandfather even though he was her age, maybe a year or two older. He maintained a rugged beard and wore unironic boots. For his part, he was the heir to a publishing empire who had opened the zoo with a fraction of his trust money (its total operating cost came to about a quarter of the fraction he had used to fund the research to bring back the dinosaurs), and the love he professed for her in return, often, on walks, at dinner, in bed, mid-act, was gainsaid by the fact that he was concealing the grisly deaths of three previous keepers, all of whom he had also dated. Money had bought the dinosaurs and it had also bought silence regarding their murderous ways. “Where should we eat tonight?” she asked him, oblivious, blissful.
©2020 Ben Greenman/Stupid Ideas
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