Free A Lizard In My Luggage by Anna Nicholas Page A

are you thinking about?'
    Â Â 'Nothing. Nothing at all.' After years of exhaustive and failed attempts, I have finally managed to hammer a spoke into the hamster wheel of unrelenting thought. I have learned how to eliminate thought itself.
    Â Â He nods meditatively and then squats at my feet, rustling his small plastic bag of specimens. 'Guess what I've just found?'
    Â Â 'A pot of gold?'
    Â Â 'Of a kind. Artemisia arborescens .'
    Â Â I'm used to these horticultural riddles. 'Which is?'
    Â Â 'Shrubby wormwood,' he says. 'The local nursery charges four euros a plant and here we've got it for free.'
    Â Â I hold the gold and white flower in my hand. It's good to know that a saving of a few euros is sufficient to warm the cockles of a Scotsman's heart.

    I slip downstairs, bare-footed to the entrada , our lofty hallway. The flat, cream, marble slabs feel sleek and cool underfoot. I open the front door. It isn't locked. It's unheard of to lock up your house at night around here. Alan and Ollie are asleep upstairs, unperturbed by the intense heat. I step outside on to the porch. The frogs appear to be partying, quacking and rasping at the tops of their voices like an amphibian boy band. Carefully I pick my way through the builders' rubble and rocks and up the steps to the pond. The singing stops, followed by a series of small plops. I'm the original party pooper. Water gurgles quietly from a small bubbling fountain, its spout obscured by a fine green stubble of moss. Come on boys! Don't ice me out. I draw my bare legs up in front of me and sit on the wide stone ledge. Still no sign of life. Then suddenly there's a sound like a small cough. I peer into the water and then on to the terracotta tile on the pool's edge. In the dull light of the moon I see the silhouette of a fat bullfrog. He's filling out his chest and fixing his bulging eyes on me. For a minute I'm carried back to Miami, where on a three day business trip I ended up with a group of Cubans at a crazy American diner where outside a gigantic electronic frog, or maybe it was a toad, wise-cracked clients as they entered the restaurant. I never discovered whether there was a real person hidden inside but the frog left a lasting impression on me. Insanely I fantasise that he's with me now.
    Â Â 'What are you looking at?'
    Â Â I start back. 'Who spoke?'
    Â Â 'Who'd you think? Are you blind?'
    Â Â 'I'm sorry, I never knew frogs could speak.'
    Â Â He eyes me coolly. 'They can't, to the best of my knowledge. Anyway, I'm a toad.'
    Â Â I'm slightly abashed. 'Do all toads speak?' Can I really be asking this question?
    Â Â 'Not many,' he drawls. 'So, how d'you like it here?'
    Â Â 'It'll take time to adjust. You can't just up sticks from one place to another without feeling a bit disconnected.'
    Â Â He quacks loudly, a sort of hollow laugh. 'Pah! I do it all the time. I've lived in more ponds than you can shake a lily pad at. The trouble with your kind is that you carry too much baggage. Jeez, all those trucks you had up here full of I don't know what. You don't exactly travel light.'
    Â Â 'It's stuff we can't live without.'
    Â Â He shrugs sceptically. 'If you say so, but what's with the clothes and shoes? When are you gonna wear all that gear up here? People round here will think you're nuts.'
    Â Â 'Well I evidently am, since I'm talking to you.'
    Â Â 'What's wrong with talking to a toad? We always get a bad press. Look in a dictionary and it's all the same discriminatory frogspawn. Toads are ugly. Toads are slimy. Go on touch me, do I feel slimy?'
    Â Â I touch his skin. It's bone dry and tough as leather.
    Â Â He rants on. 'All that human fairytale bunkum about the princess kissing a frog and ending up with a handsome prince. Makes me want to throw up. He'd be gay, or even some kinda psycho, mark my words. Fairytales don't exist, honey. You gotta take the rough with the smooth, warts and