Monkey Around

by Jadie Jang

  I spent the remainder of the afternoon prowling the Mission in Tez’s car and leaving Tez message after message. He wasn’t home, but something told me he wasn’t at work, either. Maybe I’d run across him tending to his duties. My mind was a hot, confused swirl of Tez, stick, Chucha, gangs, shadows, dead bodies, the encampment, general assemblies, Dalisay, Wayland, the magazine, Baby, Salli … and the confusion only grew. A distant part of me realized this was my own grief, but since I didn’t think I had a right to such grief for someone I barely knew, I ignored it. I kept trying to reason, trying to separate the different items from each other, and not succeeding.

  I didn’t check in with Ayo, like I should have. She would have asked me why I was still fussing with Tez, and despite my decision today, I really didn’t have an articulateable reason, not even in my heart of hearts. “I have a crush on him” didn’t quite cover it. “I liked his sister” didn’t either. “I feel responsible” wasn’t …

  I took a break to go to the general assembly, which I found out later was an unusually contentious one, but couldn’t say what happened as I’d been so distracted. Afterwards I staked out the San Antonios’ HQ in the dark for a few hours, as well as the Starry Plough, both places where I’d seen the shadow before. I even checked out the spot on Folsom next to Kearny Street Workshop, where I’d found the first body. But no shadow.

  As I sat parked Folsom Street, watching the nighttime lighten into blue dawn, I reflected slowly on Wayland, and why he would be the shadow’s first victim, assuming that he was. Now that I had a stretch of hours to really think about it, the instructions for the stick, assuming that’s what they actually were, weren’t enough. The shadow creature felt … elemental to me, somehow. Not sophisticated or subtle. I could be wrong, but it felt to me like it was going after the stick—assuming it was going after the stick—for its power, plain and simple.

  But I had to stop making assumptions. I assumed Juice had had to get the stick from Wayland, but he definitely hadn’t. And, besides, the timing was wrong on that. Justin had had the stick for weeks before he was killed. Wayland was killed the same night that I caught Bu Bu—actually, the night before Justin was killed, wasn’t it? That was sometime after Wayland had already handed the instructions over to Ayo. I paused to put everything in order:

  First, Justin joined the San Antonios, a few months ago.

  Then Juice got ahold of the stick, weeks ago, at least, if not months ago, from someone not associated with Wayland or Chinatown.

  Then Juice recruited Chucha.

  Then Juice got the instructions from Ayo, two or three weeks ago, maybe, around the same time as Chucha came to him. I should maybe find out which came first.

  But Wayland had never had the stick, and he no longer had the instructions, so … why had he been stalked and killed again?

  No, this didn’t make any sense. Wayland’s involvement with the stick was peripheral, at best. Unless … unless the shadow creature wasn’t after the stick at all, but rather … knowledge about the stick? No, that didn’t make any sense, either. Why kill everyone who holds the stick but not take the stick? If you’re trying to bury knowledge of the stick, what better way to do that than to make off with the stick itself? No, it had to do with the power the stick itself held …

  … Unless it wasn’t about the stick at all.

  My mind did a little inversion, and a memory fired off: Ayo’s voice saying “I do, I think, see one more connection among those three, though. … we usually think of aswang as vampiric beings, but they are also, legitimately, shapeshifters.”

  Dalisay, Wayland, Justin, Bu Bu, Chucha … yes, there were potentially five victims now, and all of them were shapeshifters. This was the direction Ayo had started to think in before I told her about the stick and we’d both decided the stick was what the creature was after.

  But again, I didn’t know what had happened to Dalisay. And, despite the tenuousness of Wayland’s connection to the stick, all four of the shadow’s confirmed victims were connected to the stick. Like I said, I didn’t like coincidences, didn’t believe in them.

  Ayo. I had to ask her. … When I woke up, I decided, driving home. I’d tell her everything then.

  Instead, she woke me at 10 Thursday morning.

  “Maya, are you able to get out to Berkeley quickly?”

  “Why?”

  “Stoney isn’t coming in for another couple of hours so I’m alone here. I don’t want to have to close up.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “A friend called me about a dead body. She said it might be a supernat. Can you check it out for me and just have her call the cops if it’s human?” It was one of those moments I knew Ayo and I were thinking the same thing: what if it was Dalisay? I ignored the fact that the body was in Berkeley, across the Bay from where she’d last been seen. I almost forgot to say “yes,” in my hurry to hang up and rush over.

  Half an hour later, I found myself slowing down along the stretch of Shattuck I had run down the other night after the shadow, the same stretch I had surveilled last night, up near the Starry Plough and La Peña. My hackles went up as my smart phone GPS instructed me to turn down the first street past the yard the shadow had disappeared into that night—the yard where I’d lost track of the creature and given up.

  I drove three blocks in, and stopped near a very small park whose entrance was a gate between two private yards. I leapt over the gate and hurried in through the strip of park to a more open grassy area shaded by trees. A woman leaning casually against a tree straightened when she saw me. I didn’t see anything near her, but as I approached, I was suddenly assaulted, through the green smell of foliage, by the powerful stench of dead body.

  “Did Ayo send you?” she asked. She was about Ayo’s age, taller than me, curvy, and dressed like a suburban mom. Her hair was straightened but undyed, and had silver running through it. I got no flare when looking at her, and no hint of any deception, not that that meant no magic. She could be like Ayo, a human who used ambient magic.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Where’s the body?”

  She turned around and pointed towards a small, but thick growth of bushes against the park’s fence. “He’s under there,” she said. “I didn’t move him, except to look closer. I had to roll him over, actually. If we have to call the cops, I’ll take the blame for that and you can take off.”

  I took note of the “him.” Not Dalisay. The smell was growing stronger even as I stood there. He had to have been dead a few days at least. Well, he wasn’t going to get any fresher. I drew in a deep breath, paused to regret it, then went to the bushes and parted them.

  His body was angled in towards the fence so that his face was the first thing I saw. Even upside down, even past the bloating that was distorting his flesh and the whitish discoloration of his once-beautiful brown skin, I recognized him. Aahil. Aahil, the cute monkey shifter, whom I’d last seen Saturday night at Starry Plough, a few blocks from here. Aahil, whom I’d last seen right before I saw the shadow creature floating away. Aahil. Oh my god.

  “Call Ayo,” I told the woman, and she did.

  It took Ayo only 20 minutes to shoo out customers, close up, and drive here. She must’ve been on high alert. I made good use of the time by sitting on the curb near the park’s entrance, as far away from the body as I could get, and staring blankly at a hair I’d plucked and was rolling between my forefinger and thumb.

  “Maya!” Ayo cried, in a voice that indicated that she’d called to me before, and I hadn’t heard. She was standing before me, in the street, looking her usual exasperated self.

  “It’s Aahil. The vanara kid,” I said. Then a thought occurred to me. “We’re gonna have to call the police.” Aahil was heavily embedded in the human world. There were definitely legal threads that would have to be pulled. I felt very detached thinking about it.

  Ayo sighed heavily. “I was afraid of that.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked startled. I hadn’t talked about seei
ng Aahil Saturday night with her.

  “His father called me Tuesday night. He told me that Aahil was missing and they’d just put in a missing persons report with the police. He wanted to know if I knew anything.”

  “Missing since when?” I asked, but I knew.

  “He went out to a show Saturday night and his roommate said he never came home.”

  “You should go look at him,” I said, flatly.

  She frowned. “You think this is another—”

  “Go look at him,” I said, and looked back down at the hair in my hands.

  I’d only just managed to shape it into a guitar pick by the time Ayo came back. She stood before me again. I didn’t look up.

  “His essence is completely gone. Just like the others,” she said after a pause. I didn’t speak, just twiddled the pick. My mind was mostly blank, although I could vaguely hear Monkey screeching something as if through a fog of sound.

  “What do you know?” she asked quietly, after a moment.

  I pointed behind me. “We were both at the Starry Plough Saturday night. It was that uke band whose CD I play at Sanc-Ahhh sometimes, Todd Wakahisa’s band. We saw each other and waved, but by the time I went to speak with him, he’d disappeared. That’s when I saw the shadow creature sneaking out of the bar so I followed it. I didn’t see Aahil after he disappeared, but I followed the shadow thing across Shattuck and into a yard on the corner of Shattuck and 65th. I lost it there. I didn’t connect the two things. Why would I?”

  We both let it sink in. If I had only made the connection. If I had only looked—

  “Aahil didn’t have anything to do with the stick,” I said. It wasn’t a question, but she answered it anyway.

  “I can’t imagine how he’d even know about it. There’s literally no scuttlebutt about the Huexotl around, even with all the deaths linked to it. And Aahil was a coder, not a gangster. His dad told me he’d just gotten VC money for a new app.”

  We let that sink in.

  “Well,” Ayo said briskly, her voice catching a little, “we’re going to have to rethink. Maybe this has nothing to do with that stick after all. Which is good news for Chucha. How is that going, by the way? Did she and Tez finally meet?”

  I felt my numb blankness being drawn downwards, like water down a drain, flowing into and weighting my already leaden heart.

  “Chucha is dead. The shadow thing killed her last— … on Tuesday night, and another gang stole the stick while it was happening.”

  “… Tuesday night? Why didn’t you tell me?”

  I felt a flash of anger and looked up, accusingly, only to realize that I wasn’t angry at Ayo. Something broke and crumbled inside my head and I was numb again.

  “Just like you said,” I mumbled. “All shapeshifters.”

  Ayo crouched down and put a hand on my shoulder. If I’d been less numb I would’ve started. She wasn’t very demonstrative, usually.

  “Go on to the sanctuary,” she said, gently. “You can open again now and then leave early for the general assembly. I’ll be back in a few hours.”

  I stood up mechanically.

  “Maya,” Ayo said.

  I stopped.

  “It’s not your fault—”

  I practically ran back to the car.

  I ignored the stretch of road where I’d chased the shadow as I turned back on to Shattuck, and drove on autopilot back into Oakland.

  It was somewhere in the middle of putting my apron on that Monkey shook free of the fog and shrieked with rage. The rage suffused my entire body, starting with my belly and setting fire to my heart and my brain and my thighs and my hands. I was gonna kill somebody … something. I was gonna kill that thing until it was not just dead, but in fifty million shadowy pieces.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Thursday, October 20, 2011

  Ogawa/Grant Plaza, Oakland

  Although my rage settled down to a simmer, my overall mood only got worse throughout the day, as I called Tez four more times, and left four more messages, but didn’t hear back. I was really tired of being shut out of … things … and if I had to push my way back into some sort of justice in my world, so be it.

  This was definitely not the best mood in which to meet Baby when we rendezvoused at the plaza for our monthly Inscrutable editorial check-in. These one-on-one meetings were professionally sacred, but had also become personally sacred as well. They could be short, as long as we got all our business done, but they were also sort of our BFF date night, so we usually went out for drinks afterwards. I’d been the one to suggest we meet at the encampment, since Baby hadn’t had time to come down and see it so far, even during our last staff meeting.

  Baby seemed preoccupied while I steered her to a set of benches away from the tents, and I had to make an effort not to be cutting about … everything. It took her a long time to wake up to my mood, and we were through our extremely short and to-the-point meeting before she finally took me to task.

  “Dude, what is up with you? You’re like, strictly prickly today.”

  I remembered in that instant that she didn’t know about Chucha, and was knocked breathless. How could she not know? It seemed like the whole world was wearing mourning colors. Even the sky was … I looked up, but the sky was clear and we were headed for our usual pink/golden sunset.

  “Maya?” Baby asked, annoyed, but a little concerned.

  “Chucha’s dead, Baby. She died on Tuesday.” I couldn’t quite look at her and fiddled with my laptop.

  “Oh my god. I can’t believe it! That poor girl! Poor Tez!” This was classic Baby. She had never met Chucha, nor Tez, beyond seeing him perform now and then, but her heart immediately filled their images with humanity, and she always led with her empathy. “How’s he handling it?”

  “Not well. I got him safe passage to talk to the San Antonios and then he freaked out, ran off and disappeared somewhere in Fruitvale. I still have his car. He won’t return my calls.” I paused to think. “We drove by the 70s before that to see what was up with them and he acted like he was gonna start a beef with them. I think he might be in trouble.”

  “What?” Baby cried. “You said he wasn’t involved in gangs!”

  “He isn’t. But he grew up in his neighborhood and some of his neighbors are involved in them. And the Fruitvale gangs associate him with 23rd St. So … I think he’s in trouble. I really need to talk to him.”

  We sat in silence for a moment.

  “Why do you have to talk to him?” she asked in an ominously quiet voice.

  My irritation had no idea what to do with this. “What the hell are you trying to say, Baby?” I knew exactly what she was trying to say, and it was all the more annoying because I’d just said it to myself this morning.

  She sighed. “Maya, I know you’re not in the mood for this, but you’re never in the mood to hear negative things that you need to hear. So can you please refrain from biting my head off after I say this?”

  I pressed my lips together.

  She sighed again. “Look, I know, better than anyone, how long you’ve had a thing for Tez. And I’m thrilled that you’ve finally gotten a little one-on-one with him. But this isn’t the fun, flirty, getting-to-blow-you-type situation that I wanted for you. This is serious. And it’s serious in a way that you can’t afford to get involved in. I didn’t know that Tez had a … violent side—” I started to protest, but she held up her hand. “Regardless of how understandable he is in his grief, it’s not good for you to be in the middle of a potential gang war.”

  “I can handle a ‘gang war’,” I said rolling my eyes.

  “Can you? You’re like an addict when it comes to violence. Your words not mine! But I’ve seen it, Mai, you know I have. Your eyes get all bright and weird and you start to get itchy to join in. You get scary when there’s violence in the air. You don’t need it.”

  I didn’t say anything. This was unfair … and yet, I couldn’t entirely dispute it. I hated fighting people weaker than me—but when so
meone could give me a good fight? Or a group of assholes? Yeah, I loved it. But that’s not the same thing as …

  “And, honestly, Mai, this whole situation is none of your business. The job you were hired for is done. Really, what’s in all this for you? Tez? Do you think getting involved in this will lead to romance?”

  My teeth were fully gritted. I was counting to ten. I wasn’t going to bite her head off. Two. Three. We’d agreed on that. Six. Seven. I wasn’t going to bite her head off. Nine. Ten.

  “Just because it scares you doesn’t mean it’s wrong.”

  That hadn’t been what I was going to say.

  I could see Baby counting to ten as well (she was the one who taught me that,) but she went on as if I hadn’t spoken. “‘Cause, as I said, I see two answers, Mai. One: Tez. You want to be where Tez is, no matter how bad, or inappropriate. And two: you love this shit. A chance to mix it up? A chance to beat on people? Mayhem? Chaos? Tell me I’m wrong.”

  And then, on her last sentence, there was a tone in her voice, something like despair, or resignation, combined with genuine fear. For me. I’d heard that tone before, just … never from Baby. An electric current shot through me.

  “You forgot number three: I feel responsible.”

  She started to speak and I interrupted her. “No, Baby, you’re right, as usual. But just because this freaks you out doesn’t mean I’m going to … doesn’t mean I can stop being involved. I’m involved now.”

  “Doesn’t he have some sort of older relative or authority figure who can talk to him?”

  I thought about this. “I don’t really know. Maybe, but I don’t know them. I guess I’ll ask Ayo.”

  “Yeah. ‘Cause maybe … maybe … Maybe if you can find somebody who’s really responsible for him, maybe you can leave it to them, huh?”

  I managed not to yell at her, although I didn’t respond. What I’d said was true, that it felt like my responsibility, but that wasn’t all it was. I still couldn’t articulate it and I didn’t want to—not to Baby.