Grizzly bears walk upright out of the steam, white towels draped over their shoulders. Foxes chase rabbits down the mirrored halls. An octopus hangs from the sling. The tattooed rat tells me there’s a horse in the hot tub. The rat goes quiet; I watch him quiver against the steam room wall. A bear gets him. He disappears without a squeak.
We pride ourselves on being more dangerous than the average petting zoo. It’s eat, or be eaten, on Bear Night at the baths.
An otter glides the length of the pool, water streaming his sleek belly, his eyes closed in private joy. I dive after him and he wakes, becomes an eel. I am a shark. The eel reaches the end of the pool, becomes a newt and darts away. I am a bullfrog. A ‘gator takes a fancy to me, but before his jaw snaps I am gone.
The otter, the eel, the newt in the triple X video lounge is now a cougar cub. I am my very best lion. His warm feline eyes survey me—god how I love him when he is a mammal! He is a gray-footed ferret. He runs. I pad through the maze, roaring and arranging my mane. Has a escaped? Look, a mouse! He starts to scram, I catch his tail. He’s about to be a short snack but now he’s a wolf-dog with ideas of his own. I am a bear, I cling to him as he turns into a tiger. I can be a tiger but his is a snake so I am a mongoose and he is a hornet. I am a wasp. The maze splinters, falls away. He is an elephant, a tusker. I am a mammoth, extinct until recalled by desire. We joust, we tussle, the other animals race away as from a fire. Can I be fire? I blaze, he rises up above me. Steam.
He is gone. He has escaped. A parrot appears above me in the air. He returns to me, green and yellow, in a flash of furious wings. “Make a wish!” he cries. “Make a wish!”
He knows what I want, but I can be a parrot too, and I squawk.
Twin explosions in the air, our other species rush past like books of pictures flipping fast as we try to be at once and in all parts together men.
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