But when Seth left his office, Robin set the phone back down. He reached over to the window and fingered the blinds apart, looking for that big, strange custodian.

The same money? Would he? The kids did seem to like him. In fact, one of them was hanging from Dirk’s right biceps just then.

Robin tented his fingers and crossed his ankles on his desk. Seth Handy might’ve just saved the zoo two hundred dollars a week.

He laughed.

Dirk Rogers was promoted to tour guide that afternoon.

5

“Remember, Dirk, as tour guide you are the face of this great place. Yours is the smile these children will take with them into adulthood when they think back on the Hardy Carroll Goblin Zoo. You’ll be right there next to Trudy swallowing a steak, Eula beating her chest on the grass. Some of these kids will grow up and have kids of their own. And when they’re sitting around, scratching their heads, trying to figure out how to entertain their little turds, your face will come to mind and they’ll bring those little turds to our doorstep. Do you understand?”

Dirk understood. He’d never been promoted before. It was the sort of thing you cheered at the bar.

“If you fuck up, if we discover you’re no good at this, then you get fired, I fill your place, and we all move on with our lives. But do me a favor, huh?” Dirk’s boyish but brute face looked like a moron’s to Jacobs. “Don’t fuck up. Don’t make me look like a jerk. You do something ridiculous and I’ll make sure every employer in Goblin knows something about it. It’ll be hard to get a gig bagging groceries. Do you understand?”

Dirk nodded.

Jacobs felt a strange dark swirling in his belly. Christ, he thought. This guy makes you feel heavy, doesn’t he?

But who cared? The kids loved him. Rumor was the animals did, too.

“Mr. Jacobs?”

“What?”

“Do I get a different jumpsuit?”

“No. Same one.”

“And what do I do now?”

Jacobs smiled and rose behind his desk.

“Dirk?”

“Yes?”

“Now you get to work.”

6

The tours went like this:

Children congregated up to twenty minutes before the hour. Most of the kids were between six and eleven, but Dirk would see a million strollers, too. Stoned teenagers weren’t a rarity, either. It was kick, after all, hearing the animals described the way the big guy at the zoo did it.

Kids whined to their parents, swatted at bees, turned red from the sun, or huddled beneath a zoo umbrella to keep safe from the ruthless Goblin rain.

Without fail, at the onset of every tour, someone would yell, We want Eula!