Mary laughs as the waitress comes over to us. “I hope you don’t mind. I ordered you a cinnamon macchiato.”
“You remembered.” The cup has a lid, and when the zurgle in front of me sniffs at it—nose to plastic—I can guess why.
“I tried it after you told me it was your favorite.” She winces and admits, “I didn’t like it.”
“That’s okay.” When the waitress puts our drinks down, I peek at her name tag to be polite. Curiosity gets the better of me, and I ask, “Who’s your biggest, Paisley?”
“Sampson.” She turns and points at a large yellow striped zurgle who pauses in licking his paw when his name is said.
“EventhatI would have expected.”
“I didn’t know they had a zurgle,” Mary says.
“It’s new, and he’shuge.”
“How big?” The waitress asks, brows pinched.
I hesitate, because the question was almost hostile. “He’s basically the size of a small lion.”
Her eyes go wide and then narrow. Her lips purse. “Do you know how old he is?”
“Um… no?” I get an uneasy feeling when she scowls. “What’s wrong?”
“Zurgles can choose how big they get. If yours is the size of a lion… there’s a reason. Usually, it’s to protect themselves.” She glances at Sampson and kind of dips her head as if to say “although…” but rather she says, “Someone told Sampson he was a ‘handsome big boy,’ and he decided that was the highest praise, so he gets a little bigger each time she comes in.”
“Kissu’s first Sisan was a woman. Maybe it was something similar?”
Paisley flinches, and I realize I used the word Kissu uses… notSian.
But she doesn’t mention it and I can almost see her doing the math.
The waitress stares at me for a long moment. “Would you be willing to bring him in?”
Something about the request makes me want to say “no” outright and unequivocally, but instead, I say, “He’s not mine, but I’ll ask.”
She’s not satisfied with it, but she leaves and I wrap my hand around my cup, wondering if I said too much to a complete stranger.
Taking a deep breath, I look at Mary who is now whispering sweet words to a darling calico zurgle.
“What are we doing with marketing toward zurgle-based future career paths?”
“What?” Mary looks up at me with her brows pinched.
“You definitely aren’t keeping zurgles a secret, but I think letting people know about the ways they can interact with them both in and out of their homes… Oh! Do you have on-planet zurgle artists? Because I bet there are women on Earth who would die to not only have the chance to bang an alien, but also to get to make a living by drawing these cuties.”
We could probably convince someone with a photo background to come over and try to figure outwhythey can’t be digitally captured, either.
Mary laughs at me, but it’s not unkind. “We can put that on the list of possible campaigns.”
“Good. I also think you need to push the health benefits more than you are.”
She scritches the calico’s chin for a moment before she turns to face me. “We want people to come for their mates,notfor universal health care.”
“I’m not saying you lead with it, but I do think that a few people who might have been on the fence before would sign the last of those documents if they knew about the dental work I got for free during my checkup…” I whistle, thinking about the cost of it on Earth.
“Whyare we talking about work?” Mary picks up her cup and blows on it before putting the lid back on to take a drink. “I haven’t seen any bonding paperwork come across my desk for you.”
“I’m sorry, is thatnottalking about work?”
