"I suppose any threatening member of the kingdom would do, but," Charles added slyly, "we needn't bring in mother-in-laws. Are we not men?" And this time Charles took Jean-Baptiste's hand and placed it on his own knee. To repay the favor, Jean-Paul didn't remove it right away. They looked at each other, duelists at sunrise; it would be a long day of foraging through the flora and the fauna, looking for wrong love in all the right places. Charles lit a pipe and looked for all the world like a bourgeois sui contente to Jean-Paul. The latter worried he was akin to a prehistoric pornographer, taking an unnatural interest in the probosci of assorted randy insects. He pictured notebooks filled with sketches of animal letches in flagrante. He couldn't wait to show them to Darwin's Wilson. But he felt he was disturbing the natural world's privacy. Even the sun hid behind clouds for a moment, as if blushing.
"He also said --"
"Who?"
"My colleague back at Charles Darwin. He said, 'I've seen homosexuality in the animal world you wouldn't believe.' I'll tell you, J-B, he had me picturing kundalini positions I hope I never see again."
"That's it? He said nothing else?"
"No, nothing. He mused out a window, philosophically. It all made sense to him, in syllogistic form. But we are men and mustn't dally in such delicate minutiae."
"What the f*ck are we out here for then?"
Before Charles could snark back, a bright yellow plastic boomerang clanged upside J-B's noggin. "Stop the Jeep," said J-B, peeved. He leapt out and picked up the upside down smile in the dirt, prepared to swoosh-swoosh it back to the presumed malefactor. He wasn't taking any sh*t. He hadn't duped anybody with terra nullius. Why should he pay for the sins of others?
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