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From the outside the Pet Castle looks like a regular building, but inside the decor is lush andconfusing. Neither Joe nor Helene has ever seen anything like it; it looks like both an enchanted forest and a Swiss chalet. Walnut beams crisscross overhead, and a waterfall rushes down from the second level. Tropical birds scream from the rafters, and the pond is crowded with goldfish. Joe looks disappointed.
    â€œWhat is it?” Helene asks.
    â€œI don’t know,” he says glumly. “In a setup like this, they can never catch the one you want.”
    â€œMaybe they’ll let you catch it yourself,” she says. “Do you know what you’re going to name it?” She’s assumed Joe is the kind of person who comes up with witty names for pets.
    â€œNothing at all,” Joe says. “If you name them, they just die. That’s the whole secret behind goldfish.”
    Helene nods and walks away so he won’t see her looking taken aback. She squeezes between customers and rows of cages. Excited children keep bumping into her.
    An animated woman with a tiny terrier under her arm is chatting with a salesperson. “My puppy’s fine now,” Helene overhears. “The instant we get in the car, he just goes right to sleep.” The salesperson nods vigorously. “That’s as it should be,” he says with a heavy European accent.
    Helene finds the kittens, her favorites. There are at least twenty of them, squirming and crying in a big glass showcase lined with newspaper. They climb all over each other trying to get close to her. She sees one kitten step right on another kitten’s face. This is not a good advertisement for cohabitation, she thinks. The European salesperson arrives at her side and says, “You want to hold?”
    â€œOh, no thanks,” she says. It would just make it impossible. Once she held it, she’d have to keep it. And she doesn’t even know where she’ll be living in one month’s time. If only they were literate, Helene thinks suddenly. She wouldn’t mind having a pen-pal here at the Pet Castle. But what could you write to a kitten? How would you explain to it why it couldn’t come live with you? The salesperson wanders off and the kittens mewfrantically. Helene wonders if they are as innocent as they appear to be. “I doubt it,” she says aloud.
    From behind her, a small raspy voice says: “I doubt it.”
    She whirls around, and there’s a smug black myna bird on a perch. “What the hell,” she says. The bird edges toward her, then edges back. “Tell me something else,” Helene says, but the bird is silent. It bobs its head, shakes out its shiny black wings, lifts its feet and sets them down, one small round eye trained on Helene. It is definitely telling her something, but what,
what
? But maybe its strange movements are enough; maybe this, the fact that she and the bird are speaking to each other, is all she is supposed to know. She turns and sees Joe up on the second level, grinning at her and waving a goldfish in a plastic bag. Maybe this is what life will be like with him, she thinks. One small miracle after another.

the oysters
    Pat Boone—not
the
Pat Boone but only a graduate student in Agricultural Science—was driving the oysters down to Mulberry to have them irradiated. He was used to being the wrong Pat Boone but was nevertheless miserable, careening down Interstate 75 in the windless predawn, gripping the wheel of the Food Science van with his troubled pink fingers. He thought he might have a fever; he kept sneezing and his freckles kept getting in his eyes like gnats, reflecting off his pale face and blinding him. He whizzed past lit signs and enticements, antic neon red coffee cups with legs flashing on and off, simulating dancing, and bold messages in balloons above them urging him to WAKE UP. He was awake but dreaming, dreaming of Maura Malone. He saw bits of