A family joined them and a stroller separated Luke from Katie. As the dad read aloud the plaque in front of Aquila’s enclosure, the family crowded close, hoping to see the cat move.
Aquila was as still as Katie, though, both lost in their own thoughts.
“I wish I could have met your dad,” Luke said.
“You probably would have got along well.” She didn’t look at him when she said the words, and for some reason it bothered him.
Even though he’d never met her father, Luke doubted they were much alike outside of their profession. He’d never have sent his children off to be raised by a relative. He, like every employee here, loved the animals, but not over family.
A missed softball game or romantic dinner was one thing. A missed childhood another.
“I—” Before he could tell her how unfair the comparison was, yet another family joined them and an additional stroller separated Luke from Katie.
The two parents hoisted their little ones up for a better look, encouraging the kids to find the panther. The little girl located Aquila first, although the little boy tried to take credit, too.
“Pretty,” the little boy said.
The father of the group dutifully read the plaque in front of the exhibit: Aquila is from Africa. Although called a black panther, he is really a black leopard. He is fifteen years old and can dance to “Girls Just Want to Have Fun.”
Luke hadn’t had time to come up with decent copy for Aquila’s inscription, and Adam hadn’t yet painted him on the wall in front of the animal park. It didn’t matter. Aquila was a draw. Even now the family lingered. Aquila was doing his part, without a single movement, to help keep Bridget’s AZ Animal Adventure going.
If only they could keep him alive.
As a privately owned animal park, Bridget’s received no state money, so Luke was constantly double-checking the figures. They earned money from admissions and concessions, but the lifeblood of Bridget’s was donations given by families, corporations and nonprofit groups.
He needed to keep the investors happy, show them that Bridget’s was a well-run, growing operation. He had to support the animals and the people who worked for him.
Her father had had to support the animals, too, but the fact that they’d lived in cages said it all. They were half of the equation. The other half being Bob himself and the attention he craved.
Jasper had been his only long-term employee.
When the family closest to him and Katie moved on, Luke sat beside her on the bench. “I went online and found some YouTube videos of your dad.”
She didn’t act surprised. “There’s probably plenty. His second-favorite place was in front of a camera.”
“What was his first?”
“In front of a live audience.”
Luke believed her. In the clips, he’d watched Bob Vincent brighten under the spotlight and at the attention of the late-night hosts. He hadn’t seem to notice that the late-night hosts were more focused on Ollie, the orangutan, who actually served tea; George, the brown bear, who weighed in at six hundred pounds and would join Ollie at the table—not to have tea but to hold hands! As for Candy, the spider monkey, she gathered up the teacups and arranged them on the talk show hosts’ desks.
Oh, the hosts were very glad Bob was there—to stand between them and the wild animals.
“You were in a few of those clips, looking very young and very serious.”
“I was always scared to death.”
“You didn’t look it.”
“I was taught to never show fear, never run. On that stage, I had an important job, especially with Aquila, who was my charge. I had to make sure he didn’t get frightened or feel like he was being backed into a corner. I made sure all my movements were calm and I was as still as possible.”
“I only saw a few clips with Aquila. He never left the cage.”
“That always pissed my dad off. Tyre wasn’t responding to Dad’s training. And though Aquila and I were doing great, because of my age and some laws, I couldn’t handle him during a live show.”
“That explains why I saw Aquila attempting to dance to ‘Girls Just Want to Have Fun’ in a cage where he didn’t have enough room to turn.”
Katie laughed, letting down her guard for a moment. “I remember that show. Aquila didn’t really get to dance. It was more like he backed up, raised his shoulders, backed up some more and then playfully leaped forward.”
“He stole the show with his haughty ‘I don’t have to act cute, I am cute’ attitude.”
“That he did,” Katie agreed.
Luke had watched the clips, trying to understand the man and his techniques. It only took a few clips for Luke to realize how distant Bob was. He used a clicker to give commands to the animals. He touched them, but not much. And, unlike the animal lovers Luke knew, Bob was more aware of where the cameras were than what the animals were doing.
Katie, meanwhile, had interacted with the animals. She’d smiled while accepting pretend tea from Ollie. She’d gently put a napkin on George’s lap and held his hand while she did it. She’d helped Candy, their spider monkey, clean up the cups.
But anyone watching could see that her smile grew wider and her face truly lit up when she was with Aquila. She’d quietly danced right along with the cat, up close to the cage, comfortable in a way her father wasn’t.
Aquila was her love.
But she’d clearly not been posing for the audience like her father. She didn’t even look at the cameras. She’d not been selling the animals and their tricks to the public.
“You didn’t care for it much, did you?” Luke asked when the family changed their position, vying for a better viewing spot.
“What?”
“Being on television with the animals.”
She gave a half grimace. “Why do you say that?”
“In the clips I watched, you were always quiet, elegant and willing to do whatever the animals needed, but you never seemed comfortable.”
“No, the lights were always hot, and the animals, except for Candy, were always disgruntled and off their routine. I was always afraid something would go wrong because the people around us weren’t animal people. Once, a secretary moved to pet Aquila’s mom. She’d have lost a finger if my father hadn’t stopped her. We had signs warning people not to approach the animals without talking to my father first, but it’s as if people thought the signs didn’t apply to them.”
The family with the stroller finished taking pictures and moved on. Katie, back to being tense, still watched Aquila. After a moment, she said, “I don’t think panthers were meant to be performers. My father should have figured that out with his mother. She was beautiful, which is why he kept her, but she wouldn’t be trained. The only thing she did to earn money was let people look at her and give birth to two cubs that made it out of infancy. That’s when my father finally made some money on her. He sold the photographs to every magazine and news show that promised a check.”
“I’ve never seen them, but I hear you were in quite a few of those photographs,” Luke said.
“Like anything in my father’s menagerie, I didn’t get a choice. He said ‘Smile’ and I smiled.”
“We don’t focus on tricks here,” Luke said. “We focus instead on natural behaviors. If an animal wouldn’t have the behavior in the wild, we don’t develop the behavior here. The only