Fifty Degrees Below Read Online Free PDF Page B

certain privacy.
    Remembering a resolution he had made that morning, he picked up the phone and called the National Zoo.
    “Hi, I’m calling to ask about zoo animals that might still be at large?”
    “Sure, let me pass you to Nancy.”
    Nancy came on and said hi in a friendly voice, and Frank told her about hearing what seemed like a big animal, near the edge of the park at night. “Do you have a list of zoo animals still on the loose?”
    “Sure, it’s on our website. Do you want to join our group?”
    “What do you mean?”
    “There’s a committee of the volunteer group, FONZ? Friends of the National Zoo. You can join that, it’s called the Feral Observation Group.”
    “The FOG?”
    “Yes. We’re all in the FOG now, right?”
    “Yes.”
    She gave him the website address, and he checked it out. It turned out to be a good one. Some 1500 FONZies already. There was a page devoted to the Khembalis’ swimming tigers, and on the FOG page, a list of the animals that had been spotted, as well as a separate list for animals missing since the flood and not yet seen. There was a jaguar on this list. And gibbons had been seen, eight of them, white-cheeked gibbons, along with three siamangs. Almost always in Rock Creek Park.
    “Hmmm.” Frank recalled the cry he had heard at dawn, pursued the creatures through the web pages. Gibbons and siamangs both hooted in a regular dawn chorus; siamangs were even louder than gibbons, being larger. Could be heard six miles rather than one.
    It looked like being in FOG might confer permission to go into Rock Creek Park. You couldn’t observe animals in a park you were forbidden to enter. He called Nancy back. “Do FOG members get to go into Rock Creek Park?”
    “Some do. We usually go in groups, but we have some individual permits you can check out.”
    “Cool. Tell me how I do that.”
             
    He left the building and walked down Wilson and up a side street, to the Optimodal Health Club. Diane had said it was within easy walking distance, and it was. That was good; and the place looked okay. Actually he had always preferred getting his “exercise” outdoors, by doing something challenging. Up until now he had felt that clubs like these were mostly just another way to commodify leisure time, in this case changing things people used to do outdoors, for free, into things they paid to do inside. Silly as such.
    But if you needed to rent a bathroom, they were great.
    So he did his best to remain expressionless (resulting in a visage unusually grim) while he gave the young woman at the desk a credit card, and signed the forms. Full membership, no. Personal trainer ready to take over his thinking about his body but without incurring any legal liability, no way. He did pay extra for a permanent locker in which to store some of his stuff. Another bathroom kit there, another change of clothes; it would all come in useful.
    He followed his guide around the rooms of the place, keeping his expressionless expression firmly in place. By the time he was done, the poor girl looked thoroughly unsettled.
             
    Back at NSF he went into the basement to his Honda.
    A great little car. But now it did not serve the purpose. He drove west on Wilson for a long time, until he came to the Honda/Ford/Lexus dealer where he had leased this car a year before. In this one aspect of the fiasco that was remaining in D.C., his timing was good; he needed to re-up, and the eager salesman handling him was happy to hear that this time he wanted to lease an Odyssey van. One of the best vans on the road, as the man told him as they walked out to view one. Also one of the smallest, Frank didn’t say.
    Dull silver, the most anonymous color around, like a cloak of invisibility. Rear seat removal, yes; therefore room in back for his single mattress, now in storage. Tinted windows all around the back, creating a pretty high degree of privacy. It was almost as good as the VW van he had lived in