The Cohabitants 23

By their second summer together the days were like waves on the beach, indistinguishable from one another. They had found their flow. While he was doing a seasonal tune-up of the irrigation system in the gardens, she diddled with the plants nearby, and their conversation ambled around Pablo Escobar’s wild Cocaine Hippos in Colombia. She imagined the hippos like herds of bison on the Great Plains, migrating across South America. When they were done eating Colombia, they could mosey on south to Ecuador or north to Panama. Maybe they would even cross the mountains, get used to the cold, and show up in the wetlands around Mexico City, or better yet, the Rio Grande. In the blink of an epoch, there could be Cocaine Hippos in Texas.

He laughs even though he’s just burned his finger with the blow torch. Stifling an urge to get out the first-aid kit, she marvels at the durability of his good cheer. He ignores the injury and walks off to the garage for another tool. She lusts after him. He has good legs. In his boat, he digs around for a five-eighths-inch wrench that he didn’t ask her to fetch because she was so unlikely to find it. When he’s back on his knees over a hole in the ground, he notices her sunning her legs in the grass and thinks how lucky he is to live with a woman who gardens bare ass in a skirt. 

As the morning passes, they continue to debate the idea of an ecosystem being defenseless against such a large invasive species. The man conjures a frog virus that mutates to wipe out the whole herd of hippos, and of course, the woman fixates on how to clean up the mess. That’s a lot of compost.

While she makes them turkey sandwiches for lunch, the conversation meanders pointlessly. Could Cocaine Hippos eat their way to El Paso? Would “The Wall” stop them? What if the Colorado River runs dry? Hippos have been called lake cows. The man wants to open a restaurant called The Lake Cow Grill. He would serve Texas BBQed hippo ribs, hippo bacon, and hippo ham salad. The woman searches for hippo recipes on her phone.

That night as they’re falling asleep, he puts his arms around her and ponders the sweetness of the day. “You know, if we live as long as the Carters, we’ve got thirty more years of this.” 

She grimaces. The idea of another three decades makes her feel young and old at the same time. “Let’s be realistic.” 

He squeezes her. “You’re right. Thirty years is a long time.”

She imagines Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter as beams of light; opens her phone and clicks on the calculator. Thirty years is 10,950 days. That’s a lot of oatmeal. She puts her phone away, doesn’t say anything.

Then in the morning the man sits down where he always sits at the kitchen table and gives a conspicuously dreary sigh.

She thinks, oh god, now what? 

And he says, “Only 10,949 days to go.” 

She laughs. “Looking forward to it.”