The Cage by Audrey Shulman Page B

tended to stare at the salt and pepper near her as though he were describing something as clear to him as the salt shaker’s shape. She saw her own hands ripping up a napkin and wondered what she had in her fridge to make for dessert. After the argument he felt the issue had been settled and action would be taken. She felt they’d examined one side of it.
    After he left she began to wonder. She heard his voice saying “Bambis and Thumpers” again and again.
    The next time she saw him he handed her a portfolio showing his most successful work, so she could start to think about other subject matter. In the moment when her hand closed on the weight of the portfolio, she understood that he wouldn’t let this issue drop. At some point she would enjoy photographing animals as little as she enjoyed drinking coffee now. The skin along her backbone began to sweat. Nothing in her life was worth more than her work.
    After dinner, she kissed him one last time and then walked slowly home to change her phone number and leave on the first assignment she could find that lasted over a month.Some of her best photos ever had come from that assignment photographing the new exhibits at the San Diego Zoo. She’d felt so lucky just being able to stand there for hour after hour watching the animals, holding her camera. Her patience had been inexhaustible. The pictures had an almost confidential feel to them, as though the animals were bending closer to show her something secret.
    Once after that, at a company she worked for occasionally, she’d stepped around a corner in the hall to see him walking toward her, examining two photos in his hands. His hair had grown longer, his face thinner. She stepped back quickly around the corner and then into the women’s room, breathing as unevenly as if she’d run for blocks.
    She’d had other relationships since then, but they had been mostly physical with a clear line drawn by herself as to exactly how far the man could come into her life. Even with those who respected her rules, the relationships usually broke up within two or three months. She didn’t know if it was just bad luck or if she imposed too many limits. Other women she saw, no matter how hurt they had been in the past, still tried with each new man to be as intimate as possible. She wondered if she was wrong not to do so.
    Her last relationship had been the best, with a friend of a friend who had a pet otter she’d wanted to photograph. The man was as humorous and fast-moving as the otter, which had perfected the art of opening doors with its paws so it could join in on any water activity, from washing dishes to a shower. At the slightest slackening of her defense it wouldroll into the dishwater to curl up round a cup, ready to wrestle determinedly for ownership. Afterward, the dishes would have to be blown dry with a hair dryer to get rid of all the stray otter hair. When showering Beryl had learned not to jump at the otter’s smooth fur slicking unexpectedly round her ankles.
    The man and Beryl were both extremely ticklish and spent hours torturing each other, springing for the other’s weak spots in unexpected moments and trying to defend their own, wriggling and laughing, begging for help. Once when they were going out to dinner, walking along a crowded city sidewalk all dressed up, he’d reached beneath her jacket as though to hug her waist closer to him and instead yanked her underwear halfway up her back. She yipped and twisted in pain and they fell to the sidewalk screaming insults and grabbing at each other’s underwear. People passing them paused, looking back, faces blank and hostile.
    After six months he brought up the possibility of moving in together. She told him she would think about it. That same week she drove the otter and him to a lake near the Maine border. At the lake the otter shot out of the car and down the mud bank on its smooth belly, tucking its head at the