Dancing with Lizards - The Coconut Chronicles: Two Guys, One Caribbean Dream House - page 244

But we made a concerted effort to arrive fifteen minutes late this particular evening. By
handicapping ourselves we hoped to give Jonah the advantage.
But being even fifteen minutes late was tough for us. Michael swept the balcony. I emp-
tied the dishwasher. We sipped our cocktails and watched the sunset. We were even con-
sidering breaking out the old Scrabble board when Michael finally cracked.
“Let's go,” he said. “We can drive around.”
But it was all for naught.
When we arrived at seven-fifty (a full twenty minutes late) our waiter told us Jonah had
called to say he was running behind schedule, “due to an emergency.”
Michael rolled his eyes
“I hope someone died,” he said.
I gave him a dirty look.
“Okay,” he conceded. “I hope someone came down with a debilitating illness.”
At eight-fifteen Jonah called again. Our waiter, a friendly young fellow from (of all
places) Lithuania, appeared to be totally in Jonah's thrall already.
“Your friend is so nice ,” he enthused when he came back from the phone.
“What's the problem now?” Michael asked abruptly.
“There's an iguana in his bedroom.”
We barely batted an eye. It was Jonah, after all.
Instead, I invited our waiter, whose name was Alex, to join us for a drink. By the time
Jonah arrived an hour later, we were feeling no pain.
Jonah pulled out his iPhone and showed us a photo of the iguana. It was actually pretty
big.
“How did you get it outside?” Alex asked.
“Well,” Jonah began in his vague, fluttery way, “I tried everything I could think of. I
shook a pillowcase at it, I turned on the house alarm, I shone a flashlight in its beady little
eyes, but nothing seemed to have the slightest effect. Then I turned on the stereo and played
a Justin Bieber CD one of my guests had left behind. And by God, that lizard shot right out
the door.”