* * *

Greg Tampico does not text back. Greg Tampico always texts back. A chill creeps your neck as the stuffed aardvark, standing underneath a floor lamp, watches you pace in your living room. The way it’s mounted, the front right claw slightly lifted, the long-snouted head slightly askew, ears alert, akimbo, the aardvark appears to be in the middle of walking to someplace important, like you have interrupted it doing its job, and the last thing you need right now is to feel you are, like, bothering somebody in your own house, but the creature’s expression, while you never thought much about it in Greg Tampico’s walk-up, here in your living room with your furniture precisely chosen to look like a townhouse Ronald Reagan might have enjoyed, is now looking, let’s face it, like, incredibly odd, and you know that as soon as Congress is back in session and representatives Rutledge and Olioke are back in the townhouse, you will have to suffer their questions about the aardvark, and frankly?

You have no idea what in the hell you’re going to tell them.

You go upstairs. You want to take a shower. Your shower is a Kohler Vibrant Brushed Bronze WaterTile Ambient Rain Overhead Rain Shower which cost $4125, so you like taking showers.

The water is cold. It feels good. It’s so hot out.

You must be feeling this way from the heat, you think, and since Greg Tampico is not texting back, you decide while drying off with your $339 Hermès Sarcoline Terrycloth Body Towel that the easiest solution is to drive the aardvark to Alexandria and simply return it to him.

Motherofgod, you think, what a pain in the ass, as you dress yourself, head to toe, in light casual summerwear from J. Crew.

When you return to the living room, the aardvark looks at you like you are ridiculous.

“Oh no you don’t,” you say.

You have spoken out loud to a stuffed aardvark. You feel ridiculous.

You go into the kitchen and eat a few grapes.

While in the kitchen, which is floor-to-ceiling white subway tile decked out in $6000 worth of Williams-Sonoma that you never use, an epiphany: you open a cabinet. You remove a flour sack. It is a clean, white flour sack with a ragged edge to make it look vintage, and your decorator bought all these freaking flour sacks, you have no idea why, but they’re folded like new T-shirts in a cabinet in your kitchen, so you grab one and go back to the living room.

Though you feel stupid doing it, you cover the face of the aardvark with a flour sack.

Then, using your back and your knees like your old gym teacher taught you, you actually hoist the bastard, carrying it downstairs to the small, dark garage of 2486 Asher Place where your car, a black Chevy Tahoe, is waiting.

You leased the Tahoe just a few weeks ago for $600 monthly, and how pleased are you that the Tahoe is already proving itself useful as you fling open the rear doors and pull down the back seats. Remarkably, the aardvark fits. It’s like the engineers planned it: THE TRUNK, LUXURIOUS AND ROOMY, CAN FIT A WHOLE AFRICAN AARDVARK!