Matt Ruff - Bad Monkeys

What did you do?

Said “Oh, shit!” a few dozen times. Then, for variety, I tried calling myself a stupid bitch. I had some other choice phrases lined up, but before I could get to them, someone came out the front door of Arlo’s building. In the fog, all I could make out was a figure, but this person, whoever he or she was, was carrying some kind of case.

I tried calling it in to the surveillance team, but all I got for an answer was static. The figure with the case went into an alley beside the model-railroad store. I gave the headset one more try, then grabbed my gun and ran downstairs.

By the time I got to the alley, the figure was nowhere to be seen. The headset went on hissing static. I was going to look for a pay phone, but then something else caught my eye, something that seemed out of place in the dinginess of the alley: a china doll with a bright yellow bonnet. It was jammed into a dumpster, with its arm jutting out over the lip like it wanted to shake hands.

Without thinking, I started to reach for it, only realizing at the last second how stupid that was. I backed up, grabbed a rock, wound up to throw it, realized that that was pretty dumb too, and then just stood there indecisively.

“What are you doing?”

True had come up behind me, silent in the fog. I nearly brained him.

“What are you doing?” he repeated.

I looked at the rock in my hand like, How did that get there? and tossed it aside as casually as I could. “I thought I saw Arlo come this way. I tried to call it in, but the headset’s broken or something.”

“It’s not broken. The surveillance team got tired of your snoring and turned off the receiver.”

Oops. “Why didn’t they just wake me up?”

“They tried. The volume only goes up so high.”

“Oh…Well look, I’m sorry about that, but Arlo—”

“Dexter is still in bed.”

“How do you know?”

“How do you think?”

“You bugged his apartment?”

“Of course.”

“Well if you’ve got him covered, what do you need me watching him for?”

“Are you sure this is a line of questioning you want to pursue?”

“When you put it that way, no.”

“Good. Now get back upstairs, and try not to fall asleep until you’re told to.”

He started to turn away.

“True.”

I thought I heard him sigh. “Yes?”

“Annie,” I said. “What’s her deal?”

“You’ve already worked out most of it, I’m sure. She had a young son, and a house on the bay. One day, she let her attention wander.”

“The kid drowned.”

“Yes.”

“And now she’s insane.”

“Not clinically,” True said. “She was a grammar school teacher, but she’d studied to be a psychologist. In the aftermath of her son’s death, she used her knowledge of mental illness to construct a refuge for herself.”

“She pretends to be crazy to keep from going crazy?”

“It’s slightly more complicated than that, but essentially, yes. Spend enough time with her, and you’ll notice she only acts out when it’s safe or advantageous to do so. Where sanity is required, she’s sane. She’s very dependable.”

“Yeah, I got that memo. ‘God keeps me focused’?”

“You don’t believe in God.”

“No. Sorry.”

“No need to apologize to me. But I’ll tell you a secret about God: if you’re careful not to ask too much of Him, it doesn’t really matter whether He exists. Annie doesn’t ask much.”

“Just three squares a day and a cardboard roof over her head, right?”

“She wants to be useful. It would be very easy for someone in Annie’s position to spend the rest of her life paralyzed by guilt, but she wants her remaining time to count for something. The organization gives her a purpose; God holds her to it.”

“And you’re not worried about the Almighty countermanding your orders during a mission?”

“If I feel a need to worry about disobedient operatives,” True said, “Annie won’t be the first one who comes to mind.”

“Yeah, yeah, OK…Point taken.”

“I hope so.”

“Seriously, True, I get it.” I reached up and tapped my headset. “So can I order breakfast on this thing?”

It was actually a couple more hours before I got to eat. After I went back and woke Annie, she took forever in the bathroom—I guess when you live in a box, you can’t get enough of indoor plumbing—and nearly as long choosing an ensemble from the collection of rags in her backpack. I was good, though: I only got a little impatient. Finally we made it out the door and went to Silverman’s Deli, where I pigged out on bagels and lox.

From there, we fell into a routine: we went for a post-breakfast walk; Annie muttered; I listened. Then, back to the hotel, where I had dream class while Annie—the waking Annie—took another shower. Then, all-night sentry duty. Then, more Silverman’s. Rinse and repeat, for seven days straight. By the time we were done, I knew everything a Bad Monkeys operative is supposed to know.

On the morning of the eighth day, Annie told me I’d completed the initial phase of my training. “Go home and relax,” she said. “We meet back here in seventy-two hours.”

“What about Arlo?”

“If we’re very lucky, he’ll have been taken care of by then. If not…you’ll want to be sharp.”

I went home, crashed, and slept for a day. I woke up starving, but the thought of more smoked salmon made me queasy, so I gave the deli a rest and went to this pub I knew instead. I was working on my second plate of cheese fries when Phil showed up.

“Those must be really good,” he said. “You look happy.”

“It’s not the fries. I got a new job.”

“Is it the one you’ve been looking for?”

“Yeah,” I said, “I think it might be. If I don’t fuck it up.”

Did you tell him what the job was?

No. I could have, I mean, Phil’s probably the only person I know who’d have believed me, but…no. I just called it a “public service” job, stayed vague on the details, and Phil, he knew enough not to push. He smiled like he was proud of me, though—like he would have been proud of me, if I’d told him everything.

I did tell him about Annie. I called her my supervisor and had her living in a homeless shelter instead of a cemetery, but other than that I stuck pretty close to the truth. “She’s growing on me. At first I didn’t want to be around her, but now that I know the crazy thing is mostly an act—well, not an act, exactly, more like a coping strategy—I’m starting to like her…The God thing still bugs me, though.”

“Why?”

“Besides the fact that it’s just stupid? I can’t see giving the time of day to a God who let your kid drown.”

“Well,” said Phil, “it wasn’t God’s responsibility to watch the kid. It was hers.”

“What, and God’s too busy to pick up the slack the one time she takes her eyes off him?”

“Was it just the one time?”

“Shut up. Annie’s not like that. She wasn’t a bad mother.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I know her, OK? She’s a little weird, but she’s not a bad person. This organization we work for, they’ve got standards. They wouldn’t keep her on if she was bad.”

“Maybe she’s not a bad person now. But before…?”

“Oh yeah, I’m sure she used to be a real terror. Hey, here’s a theory, maybe God killed her kid as a character-building exercise: ‘Go on, Billy, jump in the bay, it’ll help Mommy get her priorities straight…’ How’s that sound?”

“I don’t know. Could be.”

“Could be? Are you fucking serious?”

“Or maybe it’s the job. You say you’re doing important work. But would this woman even be a part of that, if her son hadn’t—”