Toby and I, having survived our cross-country move by the skins of our teeth, settled in nicely to the routine of Arizona living.
Right.
Our friend BD met us at the airport and got us back to his place; we would be staying with him for a few weeks before we got our affairs settled and an apartment of our own to move into. He brought us home and introduced us to Fossil, one of his roommates, and the bunk and possessions of the absent other roommate.
Toby decided he ought to call his parents. While he was listening to his mother, his eyes wandered about the apartment with nothing specific to do. They lit on a decorative tube filled with water and little flaky things and a plastic ship, sitting on top of the microwave. Toby loves snow globes. He picked it up and shook it.
Water and little flaky things spattered all over everything. The plastic ship hit bottom.
"Nooo!" Fossil yelped. "My sea monkeys!"
"Mom?" Toby said. "Mom, are you there? can you hear me? Mom?"
"You shook my sea monkeys!" Fossil cried, and rushed over to inspect the puddles on the kitchen floor for hapless sea monkeys. "Quick, Azz, help me rescue them!"
I grabbed a teaspoon. "Here, monkey monkey monkey," I called, scooping errant sea monkeys off the floor. "Do I just dump them in here or what?"
Fossil ran into the bathroom and emerged with something that looked like the inbreeding of a turkey baster, a gynecological device, and purple Lycra. "Dump them in gently." He took the monkey container and held it under the kitchen faucet, and barely turned the knob. A stream of water trickled into the monkey tank, filling it back up. The beached ship rose once more.
"It's all static! Azz, Fossil, my mom just got cut off!" Toby whacked the glowing Line 2 button to hang up and call his mother back. "There's no dial tone! Where's the dial tone?"
"What the hell is that ... thing??"
"Push the hangup button, why don't you. It's a thingy for sucking the monkeys."
BD came bursting out of his bedroom, where he was trying to do something on his older, slower, computer, while Fossil played with the new fast computer with the cablemodem. "Guys? What happened to my internet connection?"
Fossil gently slurped an errant sea monkey out of the dish drainer with his monkey-sucker, and dripped it back in the monkey-house. "I dunno, Toby was playing with the phone last."
BD snatched the phone from the fuming Toby, who was now slamming buttons at random and muttering obscenities in Gaelic. "Eeew! It's all wet! Toby, what did you spill on it?"
"Monkey juice," I said.
BD dropped the phone like a hot potato. "I hope you're using your calling card for those 900 numbers," he groused, and ran over to the sink, where he turned the hot water on full blast and began scrubbing his hands furiously with antibacterial soap.
"Careful!" Fossil yelled. "You'll scare the sea monkeys! You just washed them down the drain! Murderer!"
"What the hell were your sea monkeys doing in my sink? I thought I told you to keep them in their cage! We've already gone through this. Sea monkeys don't need jacuzzis! Dammit, Toby, be careful where you spray that stuff!" he added in an aside to Toby, who had given up trying to follow and was just cowering on the couch.
Fossil shook an accusing fist at BD. "Now that was not my fault," he began, unaware that he still held the purple monkey-sucker extended like a mutant middle finger.
The telephone rang. BD was still scrubbing his hands, Fossil was cooing over the remaining sea monkeys, and Toby was still cowering. I picked up the cordless extension. "Hello?"
"Azure? Azure, honey?" It was Toby's mother.
"Yes?" I said.
"Azure, honey, what happened? I heard a lot of static, and some yelling, and I was disconnected," she said.
"Aw, not much," I said, and waved a hand at Toby to get his attention. "Just some monkey business." I tossed Toby the phone.
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