And that shuts up Toby Castle. At least until you reach Asher Place when more photographers, upon seeing your Tahoe, spill out of the children’s playground like termites from old wood. And it’s not even remotely like you have seen in old movies with guys in nice suits holding cameras with great popping bulbs; these guys are in fucking tracksuits—cheap-ass shiny tracksuits—holding cheap gym bags from Target, and all their money has gone into expensive digital shutter cameras, pepper spray in their bags, and Toby screams again when one of them jumps in front of your car and starts shouting, “Alex! Congressman Wilson!” and flashes away, and before you get inside the garage of 2486 Asher, they’re flashing up the back of the Tahoe.

“The aardvark!” one shouts, like it’s Beyoncé or something, and you nearly run a guy down as you punch the garage door opener, press the gas pedal, and careen the Tahoe into its parking space. When you’re in, you punch the opener again like you hate it.

“Jesus Fucking Christ!” shouts Toby.

“I know,” you say. But you’re home now. “It’s over,” you say.

You apologize to Toby for how crazy it is out there and swear that this will all pass soon, and you are really glad she is with you tonight, and as you say these things to the girl Toby Castle you realize that you are starting to believe them.

“Not them,” Toby says. “You! What’s in the back, Alex? Is that the fucking aardvark?”

Why yes, it is indeed the fucking aardvark, you explain, and the cops have allowed you to keep it until the permit business is cleared up, and what’s the big deal? It’s stuffed!

You are lying. You understand more than she does that this is a big deal, that all Officer Anderson has to do now is find the FedEx man who delivered the aardvark to your house to get the name Gregory Tampico, and there is, let’s face it, a very solid chance that Anderson will find the name because he has already asked you to produce the FedEx number that came with the delivery, though he knows that you’re not about to give it up to him—Well golly, you appear to have lost it, you’ll say—and that’s when Officer Anderson will start making inquiries at the FedEx main office about routes, about certain glasses-wearing, beard-sporting delivery drivers, and as you lead Toby Castle up from the confines of the garage and into your townhouse, you suddenly feel desperately unsafe, like, it’s so not okay to leave the aardvark in the Tahoe because you haven’t had a chance to fully inspect it, and what if Greg Tampico had actually stuffed something inside the aardvark? What if one of the paparazzi breaks in and finds it?

You are panicking. You know this.

You know that you are panicking.

You grab a flashlight off a shelf and tell Toby to go upstairs without you, you’ll be there in a minute, and you return to the garage, open the rear of the Tahoe, and turn on the flashlight.