The Law of the Jungle

Moira was twenty-one years old when this happened. A lot of people think twenty-one is one of the ripest years in a woman's life - the succulent years, those on the cusp of the teens and the twenties. What kind of garden, you wonder, lets a fruit reach its peak and then hang obstinately on the tree, over-ripe and unplucked, another fifty or sixty years?

However you slice it, Moira was indeed twenty-one and quite definitely a peach. Tall, and fair, and gently curved, dusted with freckles and sunlight, bursting with health and probably vitamin C.

She had a boyfriend, Max. Max was well-favored physically, too. He was dark where she was fair, with thick hair and surprizing blue eyes. By all accounts, Max was a good soul: decent, and honest, and gentle with animals smaller or more foolish than he.

When Max and Moira would appear in public, she would hang off his arm so lightly that he would seem the more strong and stalwart for it, like an oak, tall and deeply rooted.

"Such a lovely couple," elderly ladies would sign, and even difficult older men would long for that time in their lives when they might have offered her their arm. The more peevish were inclined to sniff a dismissive, "Ken and Barbie," and return to belittling their peers.

It was at one such public appearance that Max and Moira encountered Rex. Now, as you read more of this story, you'll think I'm making up his name, it's simply too ironic. But I was there, and I'm sure.

Max and Moira and Rex were all guests at a wedding which was hurried but unabashedly grand. Max and Moira were friends of the groom; Rex was a business partner with the father of the bride.

While he was a handsome and imposing man, still, Rex was somewhat long in the tooth and yellow in the eye. He was at that age men reach when, if they were woman, we might politely call them "well-preserved," or snipe at their efforts to look young and fashionable, ultimately overlooking them altogether. Instead, since they are men, we ascertain their net worth. Ten thousand buys them a year's attractiveness. Over a million, and time is at their command. And Rex, well, Rex owned every clock and calendar for miles around.

It was actually Angela who introduced Rex to Max and Moira. Angela fancied herself the social secretary of the monied set, and in this case, whatever her motivations were introducing Rex to Moira, they probably weren't kind. She swept across the ballroom floor of the country club, trailing moss rose chiffon and the scent of expensive perfume behind her, Rex's arm firmly attached to her talons.

"Here's someone for you to meet," purred Angela, her dark eyes glittering. "Moira Desmond, this is Rex Hunter. Your father was once a writer for one of Rex's papers, Moira."

"How is your father?" asked Rex.

"He died ten years ago."

"And this," Angela added, with a dismissive sweep of her hand, "is Moira's friend, ah, Marty..."

"Max," supplied Moira.

"Of course. Moira is interested in journalism, too, Rex. She and my Stacey are in school together, of course Stacey is interested in magazines. Moira is looking at television. Oh, excuse me, there's Margot and Stanley and Morgot's got to say she'll be in our fashion show..." Angela was gone, leaving a hint of L'Heur Bleu and something just gone bad behind her.

Moira and Rex exchanged looks of privileged tolerance; Max was already forgotten. And in the hour that ensued, Rex began the wrecking of the sweet, tentative structure that Moira and Max had been brick by brick building. But that was appropriate, of course. Rex's fortune was made in unmaking. In his first business, he was known as the Duke of Destruction. He had parlayed a few pieces of bargain wrecking equipment into an enormous business, and was infamous for a series of Rambo-like television commercials featuring himself cross-armed in front of a squadron of handsome, beefy wreckers. Women all over the city and beyond were suddenly finding wrecking needs they had never before imagined.

"That," said Rex, referring to his commercials, "and a few well-placed friends on the city council," Rex acknowledged with some good humor. "Buildings of a certain age," he went on, "like some people, can stand a little while longer, but what's the real point of a few more facelifts, or disguising their age with cosmetics and expensive clothes? So there are, shall we say, merciful condemnations?"

Rex's team would enter the bilding, ripping copper from the walls, marble from the window sills and floors. Brass fixtures and fine woodwork would be peeled off and carted away. Parquet flooring would be lifted, piece by piece, and even tin ceilings would be salvaged. Naturally, these things had value of two sorts: there is the value they have while attached to the walls of an elderly building, and the value they have when sold to a developer who just happens to be the brother of the city councilman who has agreed that a brand, spanking new office park simply must replace the old, sagging, wrinkled apartment house.

"So why," said Rex, turning his full attention to Moira, "are you wasting your time in school?"

"What do you mean?" Moira had not yet developed an ear for subtext.

"A news producer isn't interested in your punctuation, or whether you know the history of journalism. He wants to know if you can get the story. Who do you know? How far will you go to chase down the lead?: Who will you screw to get your sound bite? It's the law of the jungle."

"You're trying to tell here she can't be a decent human being and a good reporter?" This was from Max, who for the better part of the last hour had hovered at the edge of the growing rapport between Rex and Moira.

"What's a decent human being?" countered Rex, after a pause in which he inspected Max as if Max were an out-of-place specimen in a collection of bugs.

It wasn't too many weeks later that Rex left town, taking Moira with him on a trip to the Yucatan.

Have you ever heard the story of the Snow Queen? In this fairy tale, Kai and Gerda are two young children who love one another dearly until one day, Kai gets splinters of wicked, magic glass is his eye and his heart, courtesy of the Snow Queen. Soon after that, he is carried away by the Queen in her sleigh.

"Climb upon my sleigh," she tells the unfortunate and blighted Kai, "And I will take you to see wonders beyond your wildest dreams."

In this instance, it is Moira who is carried off not by the Snow Queen but by Rex, the Duke of Destruction, and now to the Snow Queen's icy northern palace, but to the tropical seduction of the Caribbean.

Max learned where they had gone because I called and told him.

"Hello?" Max's voice sounded strained as he answered his phone.

"Hello, Max, I'm a friend of both Moira and Rex."

"Who is this? Where is she?"

"It doesn't matter who I am. What matters is that Moira is in trouble."

"What do you mean? Where is she?" he sounded something between angry and agonized.

"She's with Rex, of course."

"Oh." He sounded deflated. "What d'you mean, she's in trouble? IS he a nut or something? Would he hurt her?"

"No, no, nothing like that. I mean, not physically. He'd never take a chance like that. I mean, she's with him, she's young, and he's just toying with her. He will damage her."

"So what?" Now he sounded belligerent, hurt. "This isn't nineteen fifty. She's a big girl. If that's where she wants to be, let her."

"The law of the jungle, right Max? I thought you cared about her."

"I do. I did. What am I supposed to do? If she wants to leave me for him and all his money, what am I supposed to do, lock her up?"

"She's young, Max. She has no idea what she's getting herself into, or what kind of man Rex is. For Rex, young women like Moira are just... fruit. Dessert. Is she ambitious, this Moira of yours?"

"I guess so, and she's not mine. She works hard in school. She has plans."

"She probably thinks a grand and glorious career at one of Rex's network affiliates will come out of this - a partnership with the electronic Citizen Kane. Rex... well, Rex isn't exactly the Marquis of Queensbury."

"So, I still want to know what I'm supposed to do about it? Who is this, anyway?"

"As I said before, who I am really has no bearing on your girlfriend's fate. I'll tell you where they are, and I'll make it possible for you to go and get her. That's the deal."

It's odd, but in fairy stories, when one lover has been abducted by a wicked witch, the other one needs no coaxing to set off on the rescue of his missing darling. Well, in this case it took a little more convincing, as well as the necessary funds for Max to make the trip to Mexico, but in the end he did make the trip. It's important that the hero perform at least some noble act to make the story come out right.

Moira and Rex were staying on the strip of beach known as the Mayan Riviera. Rex had explained to Moira that he wanted a feature series on world tourism, and the Mayan Riviera was literally invented, created, solely for the purpose of luring tourists. And while they were there, of course, there were casinos and diving and ruins and creamy beaches and exclusive clubs to sample.

The difference in the air was the first thing that struck Max as he got off the plane in Cancun. The air on the plane was synthetic: controlled oxygen, little moisture, and unscented except by coffee, polyester, and a faint whiff of electric wires.

Here, the air was full of promise, laden with life, teeming with tales of flowers dropping heavy and blown onto the jungle floor, a small monkey scaring a parrot out of a fruit tree, fresh, cool water in a cenote lying still and silent over bones and jade from centuries-old sacrifices.

It was easy enough for Max to locate Moira and Rex. Max simply looked for the biggest and most expensive hotel with the best beach and the most spectacular view.

But he decided not to reveal himself to them right away. Instead, he wandered, by rental car, further down the coast into the jungle of the Yucatan.

Here, the jungle is just barely held back by the hand of man. A road has been dragged through the roiling vegetation, running south from the upper tip of the peninsula where Cancun is located, all the way to the mosquito coast of Belize. The road is constantly threatened on both sides by vegetation so dense that it looms like a wall along either edge of the macadam, ready to snap closed on the unsuspecting traveler, forgetting forever that there ever was a traveler, or even a road. But men keep shaking their machetes and their saws at the jungle as they pass, and the jungle hangs back, slyly creeping a little closer to the road again whenever the men have turned their backs.

Max stopped in a small fishing town along the coast, and in this town, he made his plans.

To tell the truth, he wasn't even sure at this point why he was in Mexico, or what he could do, or if he should do anything anyway, but somehow he had gotten caught up in the scheme and story, and had recklessly decided to play out his part. So here he sat, under the thatch of the outside patio of a bar called Masqueras, and drank the local beer called Cervesa, watching the morning sun over the ocean.

He  needed more money. Money to stay in Mexico, but more importantly, money to help Moira make up her mind. Persuade her? Was buy her putting too fine a point on it? Probably not, he reflected, glumly lining his empty Cervesa bottle up next to the other two. The law of the jungle. The spoils to the victor.

That's what Rex had said it was, anyway. The strongest a nimal got the rewards: the choicest food, the most comfortable resting place, the most comely females.And in our world, claimed Rex, the fittest animal was the man who earned the most, who dominated in business, who headed the enterprises.

Max had tried to argue him down. With all his wit and eloquence and sincerity, Max had reminded Rex that human beings were more complex than animals, that their gift for survival was their over-sized brain. They couldn't run down prey with speed, or claw and fang it into submission. Instead, human beings relied on their intelligence and craft to win their battles.

"Precisely," agreed Rex. "So the man who outfoxes the other dominates. The man who is quicker and craftier can use the others to his advantage. He wins."

"But because we're human," Max had objected, "and because we have intelligence and imagination, we don't have to dominate. We can choose to survive, all of us. We have the possibility of... the capacity for abstractions like compassion and fairness, and love, unrelated to the law of the jungle."

The fact that Moira was in Cancun with Rex and Max was at some bar in a sleepy beach town, morosely drinking beer at eight in the morning and concocting some rescue mission for Moira was proof of the effectiveness of Max's argument.

"The casinos," Max announced, to nobody in particular, slapping his hand down on the rickety card table, making his beer bottles jump and tumble.

"Senor?" asked a small, but perfectly made Mayan man, sitting at a nearby card table, with a much more impressive line of bottles in front of him.

"The, uh, casinos," Max repeated. "I'm a pretty good gambler. I need some money. You speak English?"

"Si," said the Mayan, looking somewhat annoyed. "You want to gamble?"

"Si," agreed Max.

"Dos Cervesas," said the Mayan to the bartender. "I am Carlos," he smiled, extending his hand.

Dos, and dos Cervesas later, Max had explained to Carlos why he was in Mexico. And he had explained that he'd paid for all his books and undergraduate school gambling. He was good at counting cards, and betting the odds. So he was hoping that his magic extended as far as the Yucatan, and he planned to try his luck.

"Well, I  tell you, Max," said Carlos, "I cannot go into the casinos any more. I win too much," he added, smiling broadly. "In Mexico City, I play flute for the symphony. But I don't like Mexico City. Dirty, bad. So, I come home. I want to play my flute, fish a little, gamble a little. But I win too much. They say I was cheating. So I look like a cheater? I just know the cards. I watch. I know the tables. I tell you something, Max. I need my fishing boat back. What do you think we can do about that, compadre?"

So that was how Max ended up in the casino, two nights later, with a stake of pesos and enough information to break the bank. And that's where Rex and Moira first saw him.

Rex was amused; Moira wasn't sure whether to be embarrassed or angry. But neither of them thought to ask Max why he had come to Cancun, or how he had managed to get there, or why he was in the casino in his shorts and t shirt, next to to them in their resort level evening clothes. Or even how he had known where they were, if indeed he had known.

Max won at the tables, and Rex lost. Rex bore it with the apparent humor of the very rich. He was tanned from his weeks in the sun, relaxed, rested, looking younger by a few years than his real age thanks to tennis, swimming, massage, and the spa.

And Max, to his credit, didn't gloat over his winnings.

"I'd enjoy it more if I were you," Rex said to him. "After all, winning or losing a little money doesn't mean much to me, but this is a big moment for a guy like you. You've got a few bills to rub together now.

"Uh huh," said Max, who pocketed his money, paying the waitress for their drinks as he left, leaving Moira and Rex in the casino in the Yucatan in the Mexican night.

"Good morning, my friend," said Carlos, bearing two cool Cervesas into Max's palapa, a cinder brick hut with a thatched roof that served as a kitchen, bathroom, bedroom, and sitting room. Max was rocking in his hammock. "It's late!"

"We won, Carlos, my man!" said Max, coming to, and struggling awkwardly out of the hammock. "Another night or two and your boat is out of hock and I'm here as long as I need to be and graduate school is paid for."

"Another casino night," agreed Carlos.

"But then what?" Max sighed. "So I've got some money now.  Great. So does he. He's got more money than God."

"But God has other resources than pesos, mi amigo. What does the happy couple do today:?"

"I don't know, but tomorrow they're going fishing."

"Then," said Carlos, his brown eyes alight with mischief, "tonight we must win more at the casinos.

By the next day, Carlos had bought back his fishing boat, the Ix pu Ha, which was really just a dinghy with an ancient, oily outboard, and ropes tied to the transom. Several sets of snorkling gear and spears were stacked inside, along with a couple of coolers.

Carlos and Max were at the dock in Cancun early the next day, waiting as Rex and Moira arrived, tanned and fashionably late for their charter cruise. Carlos' boat bobbed ridiculously next to the sleek, powerful charter boat, as as Max and Carlos watched, deck hands loaded crates of iced beer and wine, bread, cheeses, and fruit onto the big boat. Pole rigs and fishing chairs crowded the aft deck, already sparkling with the bright and tiny bikinis of the girls, and the slightly larger but equally bright trunks of the men.

Carlos had a small cooler full of Cervesas, no shirt, sunglasses, and a big grin.

"Where you fish today," he called up to the charter captain.

"Nowhere you'll get to in that bucket, senor," the captain laughed, the guests laughed, and Carlos laughed.

"Well, good luck," Carlos started his engine, its mix-master sound getting lost almost immediately in the full-throated roar of the charter's engines.

"How are we gonna compete with them?" moaned Max, as they made their way slowly down the coast. "We couldn't even carry a fish as big as they can if we're lucky enough to catch it!"

"You worry too much, Max," laughed Carlos.

Carlos finally piloted the cost into a small inlet of milky water, tying it up to a stake in an outcropping of black rocks.

"What's this?" asked Max.

"White water. La leche de la madre. Mother's milk. It's volcanic ash, and it moves with the current, so the water looks like milk. But we're headed up there," he said, grabbing the snorkling gear and leading Max up a path into the jungle.

They passed ruins, ancient and modern, the way a New Yorker would pass a drunk in a doorway. Ancient stones that had once been homes and temples; newer cinder block that had been someone's palapa or vacation dream. Max kept wanting to stop and be awed, but there were so many that eventually he began to take them for granted. The beachhouses of the Maya, though Max, standing empty and silent, but looking as though the architect had just fled into the jungle, moments before the last stone was fitted into place.

It was so quiet in the jungle Max could hear his own labored breathing. The jungle ate the sounds of the surf within yards of leaving the shore. A man in this jungle could live his whole lifetime and never know that the huge blue Atlantic was his next door neighbor.

"Cenote," said Carlos, finally, when they had walked far enough to be bathed in sweat and bothered by bugs. "What have you got?"

"What d'you mean, what have I got?"

"I mean, something of value. What you got?"

"I don't know. My watch. It's a Rolex. A gift from my grandfather."

"Ok, I guess. Anything more personal?"

"My pants, you mean?"

"Smart ass," Carlos was partly serious. "Ok, your watch. Put on your mask."

They had stopped by a small opening in a rocky hillside in the jungle.

"What is this?" Max asked.

"Cenote. A fresh water well. The ground in the Yucatan is full of them. The holes are left when the limestone washes away. That's what the scientists tell us, anyway. They're sacred to the Maya."

Again, though Max, the combination of the mock and the serious. They slid down the rock face of the inside cave wall into the water of the cenote.

Carlos swam to the periphery of the well until he located a small opening near the bottom of the pool. Breathing deeply and repeatedly, he saturated his lungs, then dove, and disappeared.

Max fanned his swim fins slowly in the silence, and turn 360 degrees, waiting and feeling more alone than he ever had in his life. But at the same time, he kept catching something out of the corner of his eye, or feeling a rush of water pass his side as he looked the other way, rippling past him.

Far off, muffled, and after what seemed forever, he heard Carlos' voice.

"Dive," he said.

By then, Max wasn't sure if  it was his friend or some golem or devil trying to trick him. And he had no idea where the hole in the well led, or even if he could make it through - Carlos had experience with this. He had a moment of imagining himself in a watery tunnel, the unimaginable weight of the earth crushing down upon the slim cushion of water as he swam through a sightless tunnel. He sucked in air, and dove. The tunnel was plenty big, and very dark, so he felt his way along with his hands, pulling himself through the tunnel with all the caution his air supply and nerves would allow.

He burst, at last, into the next cenote and and shot up to the surface like a torpedo. He spit out his snorkel and gulped air.

Carlos was sitting on a rock in a bright, sunny, almost completely enclosed cenote. The roof vaulted up about fifteen feet over their heads, with a hole in it big enough to act as a light. Sunlight danced and filtered off the walls and the water, the rocks and unknown bits of brightness at the bottom of the pool fifteen feet down.


"It's beautiful," gasped Max.


Carlos grinned, but the customary deviltry was missing.


"It's sacred," he said.


Max left his watch at the bottom of the cenote, as Carlos instructed him, alongside pieces of jade and silver and carved bone from previous sacrifices. And he left a request that he silently sent deep into the water.


After that, they had an astounding day of fishing, Carlos caught fish almost with his bare hands. Conch and langusto he did catch with his bare hands. They picked up a third for their party after they left the cenote, Felipe, who piloted the boat, heading down the coast again until at no point Max could identify by a landmark, Carlos signified to Felipe to cut the engine.


Then he and Max put on their snorkle gear and jumped into the sea.


The ropes on the back of Carlos' transom were for fishing, Max learned. You held a spear gun in one hand, and trailed along behind the slowly moving boat by hanging onto the rope with the other. And you watched, beneath you, another world pass by. You might drift, occasionally, into the wake of the boat, and let the bubbles beat and tickle you, and then, refreshed, drift back out again.


Carlos could spot the fish as if with radar. Max finally learned to see the conch trails in the sandy bottom, and follow them with his eyes for the barely discernible shell; and he learned which rocks promised nice little cave dwellings for langusto, the lobster; but the swimming fish only Carlos seemed to spot from the corner of his mask, or maybe by the feel of the fish's movement in the water. He would drop off the rope and be ten feet deep before Max even saw the fish.


By early afternoon, they had gathered and speared grouper, langusto, several conch and two crabs. A feast. Their boat looked like an ad for a seafood restaurant.


"Time to go," Carlos said, as Max dumped one more conch into the boat. "These fish will get old."


"A little further," urged Max. "One more, I can feel it."


"This is plenty of fish, man, but ok."

And almost immediately, Max, not Carlos, saw the fish. It was a snapper, looking ruddy in the water. From the surface where he floated, Max couldn't tell how big the fish was, but he knew it was the biggest they had seen all day. He dropped the line and dove. The fished sensed him and ran, as only fish can, darting a few yards in one direction, then turning and coasting, darting again, all with no visible sign of panic, yet clearly running for his life.

Max knew he had the fish. That it had been pre-determined when he left his watch in the cenote. But that didn't make catching him any easier.

The fish was indeed big, maybe three feet long, and clever as any hunted creature is. It ran for the rocks. Max followed, already feeling the lack the air. Into a gap in the rocks went the fish, Max close behind. Max took aim and fired his spear gun, but missed the fish. He reloaded, feeling the pounding in his temples as his air was used up.

The fish swam for open water, and Max wondered if he was wrong. If the fish chose to run now, he could never keep up, and he'd have to surface for air very soon. But the fish, incredibly, slowed down, and hung suspended for just a moment. And with a simplicity that hurt Max when he relived it in his mind, Max speared the fish.

A few hours later, Max and Carlos were lounging at the dock back in Cancun, their fish on ice and proudly displayed in their boat when the charter boat and its sunburned occupants docked.

"Good day, amigo?" Carlos called to the captain.

"Not too. Hooked a couple, but didn't bring them in. What you got?"

"Dinner," said Carlos. And before they left, the whole charter party, Rex and Moira included, had been invited to Carlos' beach house to eat seviche and snapper. And Carlos had fishing charters planned with all the rich gringos.

"So how did you know we'd outfish them?" Max wanted to know, as they headed back down the coast.

"The fish are inshore right now. That's the first rule of fishing, man. You fish where the fish are."

The party was at Carlos' beach house, a big, open room with a thatched roof and a loft, with surprisingly modern and first-class amenities. Carlos and Max had cleaned and cooked the snapper, and made a hot and tangy seviche out of the conch. The surf was gentle, a nice background to the music and talk that was being conducted in several languages. With tanned and scantily clad women completing the scene, the whole thing looked as though Carlos had hired Hugh Hefner to be his stylist. And Carlos seemed to be just as much at home here as he had on the sea with the fish.

In a way, Carlos had accomplished what Max had come to Mexico to do. It was Carlos, after all, who knew the tables at the casinos. And it was Carlos who knew where the fish were. And most of all, it was Carlos who invited Susan to the party.

Susan wasn't so much beautiful as she was intriguing. Nobody was quite sure why she was in Mexico. She was about thirty, American, and she spent a lot of time writing. She also had a seemingly inexhaustible supply of money. Rumor had it that she wrote the advice column for Penthouse, and was working on a book of erotica. When people talked about her, which they did as often and as avidly as possible, she was referred to as Susan the Porn Queen. And she was slim, extremely well-dressed, quiet, and rather bored.

So it was unexpected by no one save perhaps Moira that when Rex, the Duke of Destruction, met Susan, the Porn Queen, that Moira would become the News of Yesterday.

Rex stood, drink in hand, eyes darting around the room.

"Hard to tell just how big it was," he was saying. "Swordfish. It was quite a fight, too. But those rigs weren't the best; I've landed bigger fish more easily before. You got some nice little fish," he added, nodding to Max.

"Have some," Max said, filleting a piece of the steamed snapper Carlos had stuffed with potatoes, onions, tomatoes, peppers and chilies. "It's good."

"How long are you here?"

"I don't know. Til it's time to go back to school. I like it here. How about you?"

"I'm not sure, either. Business to run and I've just about exhausted the possibilities here."

"Rex thinks my next story should be in Europe," said Moira, who was idling at the edge of the conversation.

"Well, I said maybe. I'm not sure the series is going to work. It's been done, I'm not sure there's a new angle. But we'll see." And Rex drifted off toward Susan, who was leaning against the center pole of the house.

The only problem with Rex's interest in Susan, of course, was Eduardo. Not big or menacing, Eduardo had expressionless eyes, and he was mean. And he owned Susan. In the fashion of Spanish men, he offered no outward sign of affection or possessiveness, but he stood, slim, elegant, silent, and solemn, off to the side of the gathering, his eyes never straying from the Porn Queen.

The rest of the story is rather anti-climactic. Rex had had enough of Moira to suit him. Fruit course finished, he was ready for some of the odd, exotic fish that was Susan.

What happened with Max and Moira that night, Max never really went into when he told me the story. I seem to recall him saying that she drank too much when she realized that Rex had moved on, and tearfully asked Max to take her home, which of course he did. And Susan never really was a very important part of the story; Rex was just hoping for another brief, memorable fling. But it's my understanding that in Latin countries a man is not held accountable for wreaking vengeance on another man who tries to steal his woman. And Rex was, at his age, hardly a match for the quick, ruthless Eduardo. I will say that Rex did look a bit worse for the wear when he got home.

Should I mention that Rex is my husband? I'm not sure that it is germane to the story. I had considered, even, changing the names of the characters to protect the innocent, except that nobody in this story is really innocent. Or if they were when it started, they surely weren't at it's end.

But it all worked out for the best. Max got Moira back if he still wanted her. Moira got a valuable lesson, and if she was lucky, Max. Carlos got his boat, and a few charter jobs, and a story to tell his friends and his children. Rex, I'm afraid, got what he had coming to him for a long time.

And I? I got Rex back, at least for a time. There may come a day when I am too tired, or perhaps no longer interested in getting him back. But for now, I do whatever is necessary, and he returns home and is quiet and tractable for a time. And that is the law of the jungle.