The Lizard Brain

You get a glass tank. Forty gallons. Nothing else.

No bubbling filter to manufacture calm. No water to obscure the view. Just heat lamp, gravel that reeks of copper and piss, one plastic fern from the Petco on Ventura. $47.99 after tax. Thursday. The same day the Samsung went dark.

Position it dead center where the television lived. Sixty-five inches of 4K nothing replaced with something worse. Your father's text arrives while you're still assembling the lamp: Minimalist phase? Read receipt on. Power move. Your mother's name hasn't appeared on your screen since April seventeenth. Four months. Eighteen days. You keep her contact starred anyway.

Inside: one bearded dragon. Pogona vitticeps. Desert dweller. Riverside bred. Tagged #B-4471 at the reptile expo where divorced men go to feel responsible. Brown scales that flash gold under halogen. Like your Centurion Card used to. Back when it worked.

The throat pulses. Eighteen beats per minute. You count because counting replaces Xanax. Because numbers don't lie or leave or stop returning calls. Third eyelid sliding sideways. Wrong direction. Story of your life.

Marta shifts the plastic fern.

Croatian accent. Tuesdays and Fridays. Cash only since June. She trusts you exactly as much as she should. The fern moves two inches left while she Windexes fingerprints you don't remember making. Drunk you is prolific. Sober you just watches.

The lizard: full stop.

System crash. Blue screen of death behind gold eyes. Every synapse firing blanks while its universe reformats.

Watch:

Blink.

Nothing.

Blink.

The tail twitches. Once. Twice. Reboot complete.

This rock? Never seen it. That shadow? Predator. The heat lamp? Divine intervention. Same tank. Brand new cosmos. Every time. Groundhog Day with scales and without Bill Murray's eventual enlightenment.

You observe from Tamil rosewood that cost forty-seven thousand dollars installed. Imported when importing meant something. When you signed papers without reading them. When tomorrow was a place, not a threat. Six feet from the tank. You measured. Optimal viewing distance according to the forum posts you read at 3 a.m. instead of sleeping.

Thumbnail between molars. Iron flavor. Your father had this habit too, before the first coronary. Genetic gift. The eviction notice makes good paperweight at least. Twenty-two days overdue. Under the Vitamix that still wears plastic wrap like a body bag. Wedding gift from your mother's sister. She knew.

Movement. The lizard approaches driftwood, begins grinding against bark. Desperate. Mechanical. Familiar.

"Jesus. It's actually depressing."

Max. Appears Tuesdays like a subscription you forgot to cancel. Brings Pellegrino and performs concern. Leans in your doorway, all Balenciaga and last night's someone's cologne. The kind of beautiful that costs more than it's worth.

"I'm thinking about names."

"For that thing?"

"God."

Max crosses to the kitchen. Barefoot. The bottles: tock tock against Carrara marble. That sound. Exact frequency of wedding rings hitting countertops.

"God." Processing.

"Small. Paranoid. Watches everything. Shits where it eats."

"You're projecting."

"I'm finally being honest."

The lizard freezes mid-thrust. Max exists in its universe now. Threat assessment: pending.

"How much?"

"The lizard?"

"The whole setup."

"Three-fifty. Cash."

"From where?"

"Dad."

"He know about the eviction?"

"He knows about the tank."

Max opens Pellegrino. That crack. Tiny controlled explosion. The lizard sprints to its corner. Plastic fern fortress. Safe until it forgets what scared it.

"Your mom called me."

Your spine locks. Instant rigor mortis. "When?"

"Last week. While you were at the reptile expo."

"What did she want?"

"To know if you were using."

"And?"

"I said no."

"That's a lie."

"That's a kindness."

The lizard emerges. Tongue testing air molecules it won't remember tasting. Everything new. Everything terrifying. Everything forgotten in three-second cycles.

Your phone: seventeen notifications.

Ashley viewed your story but left the message you sent her two days ago on read. Rock moved.

Chase Bank would like to discuss "options." Rock moved.

Your dealer's new number from someone who knows someone. Rock moved.

LinkedIn congratulations: you're in the top 5% of viewed profiles. Algorithmically successful. Functionally extinct. Rock moved.

Your amygdala fires. Identical to the lizard's. Same freeze. Same flood. Same where-the-fuck-am-I-now.

Except.

Max sets down the bottle. Leaves a ring on marble that'll stain. "She also asked about the trust."

"What trust?"

"Don't."

"I don't know what—"

"The one you drained. February through April. Hundred and thirty-seven thousand dollars."

"She knows?"

"She's always known. She was waiting for you to tell her."

"That's why she stopped calling?"

"No."

"Then why?"

Max looks at the lizard. It's found a spot where streetlight creates false warmth. Settled there. Content in delusion. "Because you didn't even try to lie about it well."

The timer clicks. 8 p.m.

Heat lamp dies. The lizard's universe ends. Cold equals death equals hide. Scrambles under plastic fern. Waits for danger it won't remember surviving.

Your phone buzzes. Dad: Transferred 2k. Account closes next month.

Next month. Like tomorrow. Like April seventeenth. Places that exist in theory.

Max leaves. The bottles remain. Two soldiers. Standing guard over nothing.

You text Ashley: hey

Read immediately. Typing bubbles appear. Vanish. Appear. Vanish. Your tank rearranging itself.

Pull knees to chest. Hermès denim from the before times. When you wore stories instead of apologies. The fabric whispers money in some places, screams it in others. Designed to fall apart beautifully.

Ashley posts a story. Sunset at Nobu. Someone's hand on her wine glass. Masculine. Submariner catching light. You zoom. Hate yourself. Zoom more. Screenshot. Hate yourself even more.

The lizard's eyes: two gold coins in streetlight. Unblinking. Some predators hunt by movement. Some by staying perfectly still. Some by forgetting they're hunting at all.

Your mother called once after finding the pills. Two minutes. Seventeen seconds.

"I'm trying," you said.

"No," she said. "You're watching yourself try. There's a difference."

The lizard doesn't try. Doesn't perform. Exists or doesn't. Binary. Clean. You envy the simplicity while recognizing the envy as another performance. Watching yourself watch yourself envy a lizard.

Meta enough?

Movement. The lizard has discovered the false warmth pocket. Streetlight through blinds. Not real heat. The suggestion of it. Enough to fool a reptile brain.

Your phone: Mom is typing.

One minute. Two. Seven.

She stops.

The universe shifts an inch. Your brain scrambles for footing. The tank remains exactly the same and completely different.

You practice forgetting. Fail. Practice remembering. Fail better.

The lizard sleeps. Or doesn't. With eyes like that, who knows?

Morning will come. The timer will click. The lamp will resurrect everything. First sunrise the lizard's ever seen. First warmth. First day. Every day, birthday. Every night, funeral.

You stay on the floor. Rosewood worth more than most cars. Watching something that doesn't know it's being watched. Or doesn't remember. Or doesn't care. The distinction matters less than the watching.

Somewhere, Marta tells someone in Croatian about the American boy who bought a lizard instead of paying rent. Someone laughs. Someone gets it.

Somewhere, your mother stares at an unsent message. Deletes it. Writes it again. Deletes it.

Somewhere, Ashley orders another bottle. Lets another hand pay.

The lizard twitches. Once. Perfect stillness. Perfect forgetting. Perfect.

You keep watching. Keep waiting.

For what?

For the lamp to click on. For the phone to ring. For the rocks to stop moving. For evolution to reverse itself. For forgetting to become easier than remembering.

The lizard doesn't answer. Doesn't need to.

Already forgotten the question.

Already moved on to the eternal now.

Lucky bastard.