Rabbits Cry Different

He can tell the date is going terribly.

She neatly cuts her steak, exposing a cross-section of the shockingly pink meat. It’s a hot day. They should have eaten inside.

“So you work for an animal rights organization.”

“Yes,” he replies.

“And my work involves experimenting on animals.”

“That seems about the size of it.” The vegetarian bolognese is congealing around his fork. He can’t seem to get his appetite up. “What exactly do you do?”

Maybe it’s something academic. Pushing paper around.

She sips her drink, lips scarlet with cayenne. “Draize testing.”

He puts his fork down. “You’re telling me that when you finish that Bloody Mary, you’re going to walk into that building across the street and pour chemicals into the eyes of a defenseless little animal?”

“The small ones are easier to restrain.”

“How can you live with yourself?’

Her tight face doesn’t unravel, but a little color suffuses the bridge of her nose. She pushes her glasses up. “I see your rhetoric is as original as your personal ad.”

He feels excruciating embarrassment. “I—”

‘Why don’t you put your money where your mouth is?”

“I donate to charity—”

“You have your guilt changed like oil.”

“I’m aware of the limitations, but—”

“Billions of dollars are riding on these products. If I don’t do it, they’ll find someone else.”

“You make it sound so hopeless.”

“Well, there is one way.”

“Sorry?”

“A way to give the rabbits a little more R&R and a little less R&D.”

“I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

“If I found a different test subject, I could mark my report as complete.”

“What do you mean, a different test subject?”

“What I mean is, cut out the middle mammal.”

“Human experimentation?”

“Yes.”

“That’s barbaric.”

“Barbarism is inevitable. But unlike animals, a human can consent.”

“Well, that’s illegal.”

“In a formal setting, yes.”

“You’re confusing me.”

“Why don’t we go back to my place for drinks? You can take yours ocularly.”

“You’re having fun at my expense.” He pushes his chair back to stand up.

She speaks so sharply that he freezes. “You want your shampoos, your lotions, your creams, and all the other conveniences of modern society, but you can’t handle a little friction along the way.”

“That’s not fair.”

“I’m not going to sit here and evangelize the grand project of Western civilization. But regardless of how we feel about it, millions of people will use these products through sheer ubiquity. Tired mothers grabbing the brightest bottle off the shelf. Wide-eyed children submitting to a rinse. These things will flow into their lives without choice, without conscious thought. And the money demands that certain forms be checked off so they can enter the marketplace. And you decide what happens before I check off the forms under my supervision.”

He sits there, her words blending with the greasy pasta in his stomach. “Are you really serious?”

“It would be much more efficient. And safer for people. In the end.”

“Safer?”

“Do you have a nictitating membrane?”

“Not last I checked.”

“Then the test will be much more accurate. Rabbits cry differently.”

“People always said I was skittish like a rabbit. In school.”

“There you have it, then.”

He wrings the napkin in his lap. “It’s just so sad. They’re voting on a bill right now. A bill to end the suffering. But those labs. Your lab. Will be going until the last second. It’s like, I don’t know, getting shot by a sniper at the end of the war.”

“Maybe the bunnies will get a statue.”

“They certainly deserve one.”

She laughs. “You should have ordered a cocktail.”

“I don’t drink.”

“Some people need it for their personality.”

“I—”

“You’re not a good date. But you could be an excellent test subject.”

“Don’t pretend quality was ever a consideration. Rabbits are just cheap and easy to control.”

“Exactly.”

“I should really go.”

She pins him with her eyes. “I’ve found an ingenious little loophole for you and you’re running with your tail tucked between your legs.”

“It’s just insane.”

“You tell me I’m a monster, but when the time comes for you to operate in the real world, when you’re confronted with a rare opportunity to actually affect your surroundings, suddenly you want to go back to dropping quarters in the ice cream shop donations jar.”

“Would it even work? Wouldn’t you get in trouble?”

“It wouldn’t be my first time fudging paperwork. As long as the results are accurate, my reputation is sterling.”

The shadow of the Zhyber Valhalla lab has grown since they began their meal, creeping up the sidewalk toward him. He shivers preemptively. “It seems unrealistic to draw a causal link between my suffering and a rabbit being saved.”

“We have one product left to test. It will be tested on white rabbits, New Zealand white rabbits, in their numbered cages, rabbits I see every day. If it is not tested on those rabbits, they will have a reprieve. If the bill passes this weekend, it could be a most instrumental reprieve.”

He shakes his head. “I just don’t—”

“It’s hardly an unassailable logic, but I’m not sure you’re the one to assail it.”

He flags the waiter.

She leans in. “You had an experience with animals, didn’t you? Something personal. You know what it looks like when they—”

“Fine.”

The waiter arrives. He pulls out his wallet, then looks up to see her card already on the table. “My treat,” she says.

✦

Her house is anonymous and suburban, a pixel of HOA lawn. A modest one-story. He was expecting a larger house from the way she dressed.

She squeezes the glass dropper and fluid shoots up inside it.

“What is that?”

“It’s better if I don’t tell you.”

“I think I should know.”

“Unlike a rabbit, you can psyche yourself out.”

He goes silent for a few minutes. “Was I—was it really a bad date?”

She shrugs. “You’re not an incredible conversationalist.”

“I think I’m going to be sick.”

She stares over her glasses at him. “I need you to have a neutral reaction to what I spill in your eye.”

“I’ll try to maintain my um, critical objectivity.”

“I thought hippies were supposed to enjoy acid.”

He jerks back, almost falling out of his chair.

“Relax. I was only joking.”

The clear liquid is invisible inside the glass dropper, betrayed only by a tiny air bubble.

“Err.”

“Yes?”

“What if I lose my vision?”

“Don’t worry. It’s only a single-blind study.”

His eyelashes beat defensively. “What?”

Something like a laugh scratches her throat. “It won’t be both eyes. We’ll leave the contralateral eye as a matched control.”

“But is it dangerous?”

“Based on the family of chemical, I don’t foresee permanent damage.”

“It’s just a very primal thing. Having one’s eyes threatened.”

“Yes.” The dropper floats above his face. “Left or right?”

He doesn’t know what to say. His mouth is dry.

“Well, it’s not as important as your left and right hand. But 70% of the population has a dominant right eye. So I’ll do your left.”

“Right.”

“Hmm?”

“I mean. Yes. Alright.”

“Hold still. This really doesn’t work unless you’re docile. Like a rabbit.”

“Yes. It’s just. These are my eyes.”

She looks down at his big brown irises. “Yes, they are.”

His eye is on fire.

He screams, then catches himself, the quiet suburban surroundings coming back into focus, then he has to make a sound again, so he whimpers, clutching the table. And then he realizes the sensation isn’t stopping, and—

✦

Her fountain pen scrapes at the paper. “A bit of swelling. 2 on the chemosis scale.”

A moan.

“Think of the rabbits.”

“Can’t think.”

“Copious amounts of lacrimation. Possibly due to subject’s emotional failings.”

He writhes in his chair like a salted slug. “When? When?”

“I’ll examine in one hour. Then you’ll get your rinse. But I’ll have to check again in 24-hour increments.”

“Fuck.”

“That kind of language seems unnecessary in a clinical setting.” She puts a TV dinner in her faux-wood paneled microwave, something starchy, meaty, and German.

He gropes for his car keys, knocking them off the table with his lack of depth perception.

“Driving seems unsafe, don’t you think?”

He looks at her through an eye blurring with tears. “I s-suppose so.”

“You can sleep here.”

“Where?”

“You see that my living room has a couch, do you not?”

“I’m used to sleeping a certain way. I have an ergonomic pillow—”

“If an animal can sleep in a cage, I think you can sleep on a couch.”

“You have a misanthropic streak.”

“I have all kinds of streaks.”

“The pain is really bad. You need to flush this out of my eyes.”

“You went through all this and you want to botch the results? Waste of an afternoon.”

✦

She reads a mystery novel, picking at the last scrap of her TV dinner.

“Hhh, how long has it been?”

She checks her rectangular wristwatch. “Just a little longer.”

His foot thumps uncontrollably on the floor. He’s going to bolt right across that pristine astroturfed lawn. Then her hand is on his arm, a vanishing, clinical touch, and they’re in the bathroom and it smells like potpourri and disinfectant.

She runs the bath, checking the temperature periodically. Then she touches the back of his neck, startling him with her wet finger. He sinks down, the tile floor hard on his knees.

“Get your head under there.”

“Okay, um—”

The stream hits his eye and he gasps, almost falling into the tub. Water runs into his mouth and he spits it out, coughing and crying.

“Can I—can I still see?”

“I think you might be the best judge of that.”

He blinks rapidly. “I think so.”

“It never ceases to amaze me, the things you find it possible to equivocate on.”

The fire drains from his eye, soothed by cool water. His brown hair has a dark wet streak.

“How do you feel?” she says.

He looks up with his oozing red eye, teeth chattering, a strand of hair coming loose and dangling over the contaminated water.

✦

The evening light is suffocatingly rich in the kitchen, all color replaced by burning orange.

He holds a can of sparkling water to his head, numbing the pain in his socket. Papers on the table attract his other eye. He flips through, bored. Receipts for such things as: Metal grid. Electric parts. Audio speaker. Panels of glass and metal. He finds schematics underneath, for wired surfaces and enclosed spaces, harsh angles without beauty. Skinner box. Pit of despair. He doesn’t recognize the other structures.

The basement door opens silently, well-oiled and perfectly fitted to its frame. “There you are.”

“Oh. I was just.”

“You know, it’s a funny thing. With the housing market how it is, even a Skinner box can beat the average apartment.”

“How do you figure?”

“Four square walls. Regular meals. Radiant floor heating.”

“Lucky rats.”

She ignores him and opens the refrigerator.

He steps on the pedal of the trash bin, about to throw away his empty can, then thinks to look for recycling. His vision is still irritated and watery, but he can make out newspapers, clippings of hair, a bottle of Cabernet. Of course, he thinks. She doesn’t recycle.

“Can you come with me for a moment?” She stands behind him with a can of cold-brew coffee. Her nail picks at the tab, a metallic sound that gets in his teeth.

“Come where?”

She goes to the basement door. “There’s something I want you to take a look at.”

“Is there a recycling bin?”

“You don’t need to worry about that.” She has a dry look that cows him, like he’s wasting her time on something routine.

His eye is sore. He covers it, and wet lashes tickle his palm. He follows the blur of her down the stairs.