T. Boyle - T. C. Boyle Stories

“… then the tribal elders or visiting dignitaries are seated around the table,” the Doctor was saying. “The chef has previously of course located the macaque beneath the table, the exposed part of the creature’s brain protruding from the hole in its center. After the feast, the lower ranks of the village population divide up the remnants. It’s really quite efficient.”

“How fascinating!” said Jane. “Shall we try some?”

“By all means … but tell me, how has Konrad been coming with that Yerkish epic he’s been working up?”

Jane turned to answer, bamboo stick poised: “Oh I’m so glad you asked — I’d almost forgotten. He’s finished his tenth book and tells me he’ll be doing two more — out of deference to the Miltonic tradition. Isn’t that a groove?”

“Yes,” said the Doctor, gesturing toward the rosy lump in the center of the table. “Yes it is. He’s certainly — and I hope you won’t mind the pun — a brainy fellow. Ho-ho.”

“Oh Doctor,” Jane laughed, and plunged her stick into the pink. Beneath the table, in the dark, a tiny fist clutched at my pantleg.

I missed work again the following day. This time it took five Doriden to put me under. I had lain in bed sweating and tossing, listening to Jane’s quiet breathing, inhaling her fumes. At dawn I dozed off, dreamed briefly of elementary school cafeterias swarming with knickered chimps and weltered with trays of cherry vanilla yogurt, and woke stale-mouthed. Then I took the pills. It was three-thirty when I woke again. There was a note from Jane: Bringing Konrad home for dinner. Vacuum rug and clean toilet.

Konrad was impeccably dressed — long pants, platform wedgies, cufflinks. He smelled of eau de cologne, Jane of used litter. They arrived during the seven o’clock news. I opened the door for them. “Hello, Jane,” I said. We stood at the door, awkward, silent. “Well?” she said. “Aren’t you going to greet our guest?” “Hello, Konrad,” I said. And then: “I believe we met in the boys’ room at the Center the other day?” He bowed deeply, straight-faced, his upper lip like a halved cantaloupe. Then he broke into a snicker, turned to Jane and juggled out an impossible series of gestures. Jane laughed. Something caught in my throat. “Is he trying to say something?” I asked. “Oh potpie,” she said, “it was nothing — just a little quote from Yeats.”

“Yeats?”

“Yes, you know: ‘An aged man is but a paltry thing.’”

Jane served watercress sandwiches and animal crackers as hors d’oeuvres. She brought them into the living room on a cut-glass serving tray and set them down before Konrad and me, where we sat on the sofa, watching the news. Then she returned to the kitchen. Konrad plucked up a tiny sandwich and swallowed it like a communion wafer, sucking the tips of his fingers. Then he lifted the tray and offered it to me. I declined. “No thank you,” I said. Konrad shrugged, set the plate down in his lap and carefully stacked all the sandwiches in its center. I pretended to be absorbed with the news: actually I studied him, half-face. He was filling the gaps in his sandwich-construction with animal crackers. His lower lip protruded, his ears were rubbery, he was balding. With both hands he crushed the heap of crackers and sandwiches together and began kneading it until it took on the consistency of raw dough. Then he lifted the whole thing to his mouth and swallowed it without chewing. There were no whites to his eyes.

Konrad’s only reaction to the newscast was a burst of excitement over a war story — the reporter stood against a wasteland of treadless tanks and recoilless guns in Thailand or Syria or Chile; huts were burning, old women weeping. “Wow-wow! Eeeeeeee! Er-er-er-er,” Konrad said. Jane appeared in the kitchen doorway, hands dripping. “What is it, Konrad?” she said. He made a series of violent gestures. “Well?” I asked. She translated: “Konrad says that ‘the pig oppressors’ genocidal tactics will lead to their mutual extermination and usher in a new golden age …’”—here she hesitated, looked up at him to continue (he was springing up and down on the couch, flailing his fists as though they held whips and scourges)—“’… of freedom and equality for all, regardless of race, creed, color — or genus.’ I wouldn’t worry,” she added, “it’s just his daily slice of revolutionary rhetoric. He’ll calm down in a minute — he likes to play Che, but he’s basically nonviolent.”

Ten minutes later Jane served dinner. Konrad, with remarkable speed and coordination, consumed four cans of fruit cocktail, thirty-two spareribs, half a dozen each of oranges, apples and pomegranates, two cheeseburgers and three quarts of chocolate malted. In the kitchen, clearing up, I commented to Jane about our guest’s prodigious appetite. He was sitting in the other room, listening to Don Giovanni , sipping brandy. Jane said that he was a big, active male and that she could attest to his need for so many calories. “How much does he weigh?” I asked. “Stripped,” she said, “one eighty-one. When he stands up straight he’s four-eight and three quarters.” I mulled over this information while I scraped away at the dishes, filed them in the dishwasher, neat ranks of blue china. A few moments later I stepped into the living room to observe Jane stroking Konrad’s ears, his head in her lap. I stand five-seven, one forty-three.

When I returned from work the following day, Jane was gone. Her dresser drawers were bare, the closet empty. There were white rectangles on the wall where her Rousseau reproductions had hung. The top plank of the bookcase was ribbed with the dust-prints of her Edgar Rice Burroughs collection. Her girls’ softball trophy, her natural foods cookbook, her oaken cudgel, her moog, her wok: all gone. There were no notes. A pain jabbed at my sternum, tears started in my eyes. I was alone, deserted, friendless. I began to long even for the stink of her. On the pillow in the bedroom I found a fermenting chunk of pineapple. And sobbed.

By the time I thought of the Primate Center the sun was already on the wane. It was dark when I got there. Loose gravel grated beneath my shoes in the parking lot; the flag snapped at the top of its pole; the lights grinned lickerishly from the Center’s windows. Inside the lighting was subdued, the building hushed. I began searching through the rooms, opening and slamming doors. The linoleum glowed all the way up the long corridor. At the far end I heard someone whistling “My Old Kentucky Home.” It was the janitor. “Howdedo,” he said. “Wut kin ah do fo yo at such a inauspicious hour ob de night?”

I was candid with him. “I’m looking for Miss Good.”

“Ohhh, she leave bout fo-turdy evy day — sartinly yo should be well apprised ob dat fack.”

“I thought she might be working late tonight.”

“Noooo, no chance ob dat.” He was staring at the floor.

“Mind if I look for myself?”

“Mah good man, ah trusts yo is not intimatin dat ah would dis-kise de troof … far be it fum me to pre-varicate jus to proteck a young lady wut run off fum a man dat doan unnerstan her needs nor ‘low her to spress de natchrul inclination ob her soul.”

At that moment a girlish giggle sounded from down the hall. Jane’s girlish giggle. The janitor’s right hand spread itself across my chest. “Ah wooden in-sinooate mahsef in de middle ob a highly sinificant speriment if ah was yo, Jackson,” he said, hissing through the gap in his teeth. I pushed by him and started down the corridor. Jane’s laugh leaped out again. From the last door on my left. I hurried. Suddenly the Doctor and his wife stepped from the shadows to block the doorway. “Mr. Horne,” said the Doctor, arms folded against his chest, “take hold of yourself. We are conducting a series of experiments here that I simply cannot allow you to—”