Lydia Millet - Love in Infant Monkeys

Presently there was a knock on her door and a sailor entered with a plastic tray of food.

“Is it safe in here with him?” she asked, but the sailor only bowed and nodded. He did not speak English.

She put some of her rice noodles in the cage with the lizard, who looked hungry, but he did not touch them.

“OK,” she said, nodding. “I know you’re more of a meat guy. I just thought I’d offer.”

Later another sailor came in. He looked Indian to Sharon Stone, since he wore a turban. He bowed and smiled, then bustled around the cage, checking the door latches and the lizard’s water bowl. But maybe he was not Indian: Did Indonesians also wear turbans sometimes? It was too confusing. And though she felt exuberant in the knowledge of her happy escape, she was still too shy to ask him.

Before this trip she had barely heard of Indonesia, and then last night Yang had told her it was the fourth-biggest country in the world, people-wise. And India was over a billion strong. Along with China, it was about to take over the world, Yang had said, slightly apologetic. In just a few years America would be a minor country, with nothing left of its brief foray into world domination but mountains of plastic and staggering debt. Its national parks and forests would be sold off to richer countries, and what remained of its crumbling cities would be turned into theme parks for foreign tourists. Who knew? She had always thought India was a kind of quaint little place with spicy food, where everyone did yoga and the women drew red spots between their eyes, a shame because otherwise they were pretty. The men had cute accents but bad facial-hair stylings. A good makeup guy could do wonders with the entire country.

“Where is the dragon going? Is he also going to the airport?”

“We’re making a special stop for him,” said the Indian. “He’s being repatriated.”

“How long?”

“Just a few hours. Sorry for the discomfort, Mrs.”

“Well, shit,” said Sharon Stone. “This is nothing. This is great. Try the discomfort of being some crazy freak’s sex slave for the rest of your life.”

“Of course, Mrs. I get it.”

“So thank you . All of you. I mean, you guys are, like, my total saviors .”

“I saw you in The Muse ,” said the Indian, and smiled radiantly. “You were absolutely fantastic!”

“Oh. Thanks, but you know. I’m a ringer.”

“Excuse me?”

“I’m not the real Sharon Stone. I look like her, is all.”

“Ah! Sure. Sure sure sure.”

“No, really!”

“Sure sure. I get it, Mrs. You have my word. Your secret is safe with me.”

“But. .”

“I also liked you in Catwoman . Of course, it was not your best film. I will not lie to you, Mrs. Stone. But your performance was exemplary.”

“I mean, thanks, but—”

“Do you know Halle Berry? Is she a nice lady?”

Sharon Stone gave up.

“Very nice,” she said, and smiled sweetly. A little creative license. “If you can get past the bad breath, that is.”

Sharon Stone was allowed to go up on deck when they reached the island. The lizard’s cage was difficult to fit through the door of the storeroom, and it took six men to move it. She watched as they lowered the cage on a hook into a large motorboat; at the last minute she asked if she could go with them.

“We’re just going to leave this fine fellow on the beach,” said the Indian. “This is one of his home islands. Part of a national park just for him and his buddies. It won’t be a long trip.”

“Still,” said Sharon Stone. “I would like to see it. Please?”

“Certainly, Mrs.,” said the Indian.

She climbed down the ladder and sat next to him in the boat. The bay they were approaching was undeveloped — nothing but a gently curving sandy beach, deserted, and above it dull dirt-brown hills dotted with a few scrubby trees. She looked at the lizard’s hands through the cage, or were they feet? The fingers were kind of fat and wrinkled and the sharp claws gray and dirty. They reminded her of a great-aunt she’d visited in Scarsdale. Mean and crusty. But that wasn’t the lizard’s fault.

She looked at his face and felt a hole in her stomach at the thought of him being left here.

Gone. She would be alone then, she thought.

The feeling persisted as she watched from the boat: The men heaved the cage onto the sand, opened it, and stood back with forked sticks, waiting for the lizard to emerge. Eventually he did, though he seemed to be in no great hurry. She never took her eyes off the lizard as they lifted the empty cage onto the boat again, as the lizard sat solid and unmoving on the sand, facing them as the boat pulled away. She admired the lizard’s posture — even, she thought with a wild puncture of hope, loved it. Her heart beat fast. At once graceful and ugly, humble and pugnacious. She could not explain it to herself, but it was reassuring.

It was this posture, this demeanor, that she would seek out in boyfriends and finally a husband. For the rest of her life she would look for these qualities.

Back on Sumbawa, Rajaputra was told that Sharon Stone had been called away suddenly to tend her sick little son; she planned to return, of course, when the boy was well again, Yang and Suandi told him. Rajaputra nodded sagely and began looking at printouts of pictures from a Britney Spears fansite. Within a few weeks he had forgotten his putative engagement, and Sharon Stone herself was a dim memory.

When a new jacket and two pairs of cowboy boots arrived from Tokyo, made out of what looked a little like snakeskin but was in fact plain old leather, he gave them to a kitchen boy of whom he was seeking favors.

Komo, living a few miles from where he had hatched and climbed his first tree, passed much of his time swimming in the ocean.

ONE OF THE BIRDS was lame, struggling gamely along the perimeter of the fence. The bird was large, a soft color of blue, and rotund like a pheasant or a hen. Its head was adorned with a crown of hazy blue feathers, which had the curious effect of making it seem at once beautiful and stupid.

A family watched the bird. It was a small family: a mother, a father and a little girl.

The fat blue bird had white tape on one knee and lurched sideways when it stepped down on the hurt limb. The little girl sat on the end of a wooden bench to watch the bird, and the mother and father, tired of walking and glad of the chance for a rest, sat down too.

This was inside the zoo’s aviary, an oval garden with high fences and a ceiling of net. Here birds and visitors were allowed to commingle. Black-and-white stilts stood on straw-thin legs in a shallow cement pond and bleeding-heart doves strutted across the pebbly path, looking shot in the chest with their flowers of red.

The little girl watched the lame bird solemnly as it hobbled around the inside of the fence. There was something doggedly persistent in the bird’s steady and lopsided gait; it did not stop after one rotation, nor after two. The little girl continued to gaze. At first the mother and the father watched the little girl as she watched the bird, smiling tenderly; then the mother remembered a household problem and asked the father about it. The two began to converse.

The zoo was soon due to close for the day and the aviary was empty except for the family and the birds. Small birds hopped among the branches and squawked. Large birds stayed on the ground and sometimes made a quick dash in one direction, then turned suddenly and dashed back.