New World Monkeys

by Nancy Mauro

  Let me tell you what I did, the woman says. She has lost count of her bones and begins to arrange them in small piles instead. I waited for harvest, for the fall. The man and the boy had left me by then. One morning I walked out into the field of barley. I walked out right into the path of a swather, then I crouched low and waited.

  She turns the fifth rib over, inspects it from each angle. It’s not pleasant to take inventory of yourself this way, she says. At times it’s best to remember that the whole is always greater than the parts.

  CHAPTER 31

  The Internal Oblique Muscle

  “I’m positive this is against the Declaration of Human Rights,” Lee-tower says.

  “Fuck the declaration.” Duncan pulls the art director’s head out of the desk cabinet. Earlier this morning he’d come into the office to find that someone had jimmied the lock on his drawer. They’d left the velvet sacks of the One Show Pencils, but filled the rest of the space with HB number 2 pencils, their wooden skins chewed to hell. How frustrating, Duncan thinks, that at this stage of evolutionary development a man—considered perceptive, immune to flattery even—could lose the intuitive ability to recognize a quisling from his handshake or the degree to which he is able to meet the eye. How unfortunate that it’s only by taking the quisling by the shirt collar—first with the threat of a good garroting and then by shoving his head into a desk—that he may be made to reveal his true character.

  He lets Leetower sit upright. Then holds a pencil to the boy’s mouth. “Open up.” Betrayal might be expected of women, but cunning in a male—an underling—it’s vile and sly. It’s the death of heroes, the exit ramp from manhood.

  Duncan himself never dreamt he was betraying Hawke when, a few weeks before the man’s departure, Upstairs took him to lunch at the Mercer Hotel and, through circuitous discourse, asked him what exactly was Hawke’s ongoing input on the Tide account since their glory days of five years past? The fact that Hawke rarely came in before noon, that Fridays and Mondays were out-of-office days where he’d take his phone calls in Westchester, these things were common knowledge available to anyone with a watch and calendar who cared to stand in the office lobby and wait. So had Duncan fudged his boss out? Hardly, What he was doing there, third bourbon sour in hand (just keeping up), was trying to assert his own role on Tide. Yes, yes, we know you created the Laundry Elves. But we can’t rest on our laurels, can we? In any case, you might benefit from a break from packaged goods. We’ll see if we can’t get you to help on some other business. We need to create another showpiece account here, yes? But more on that later. Let’s get back to Hawke. …

  “If you’re innocent, Leetower, you have nothing to fear.” Duncan can hear Skinner’s soggy baritone tower from his lungs but he doesn’t let go of his shirt collar.

  “Duncan, man. This is a two-hundred-dollar Varvatos shirt you’re stretching the hell out of.”

  “You want to do this the hard way?” He waves the pencil in front of Leetower’s face.

  “What about principle?”

  “Are you kidding? This is advertising.”

  “I just want you to know, I swear I had nothing to do with this.” Leetower closes his eyes and lets Duncan fit the pencil, lengthwise, between his teeth. He’s never noticed it, but Leetower’s incisors flare slightly from the arcade of teeth. He runs the pencil lengthwise through his mouth, searching for a point of contact. But the bite is all off. Leetower opens his eyes. Looks up at Duncan, but not in an I told you so manner. Not with triumph, but rather as if to double-check his liberty.

  “It wasn’t me.”

  He lets go of Leetower’s collar. “Well, someone wants me out.”

  “It’s probably a joke, Duncan. You know how this place twists people.”

  “Is Kooch saying Vietnam was his idea?”

  “No,” Leetower says, looking unsure. “I mean, I don’t think so. First I heard was the other day in your office. When Anne told us about Tide.”

  Duncan grips the back of his chair. “I’m sorry, LT. I had to make sure.” He’s waiting to be overcome by a fear of his own actions, a remorse or disgust. He waits, but the feelings just don’t come. In fact, there’s something horribly pleasing about the way the boy stands up near the desk and waits, rubbing his neck.

  Duncan moves around the chair and puts his hand on Leetower’s shoulder. “Sit down, sit down.” He points to the spot on the sofa next to the brown smirch they’d discovered a month ago. “Sit, sit, sit.”

  Leetower obeys. He folds his legs at the ankle the way Duncan’s advised him to (the feminine thigh crossing had people in the department rolling dice and speculating). Duncan sets himself on the edge of the desk closest to the sofa. He runs a hand through his hair, rolls up one sleeve, and leans on his arm. “Listen, LT. I just want you to know, no matter what shit goes down here, I’ve got your back, buddy.”

  “Okay.” The boy nods. “I’m with you.”

  “Are you here to kill the hired help, Duncan? Because I have a major presentation next week that could really use my attention.” Anne picks the chewed yellow pencil off her desk and throws it back at him. It bounces off his chest and rolls under a chair.

  “You hear Kooch has been telling people Stand and Be Counted was his idea?”

  “Then why come to me?”

  “So you have heard?” Duncan tugs the hair at the back of his head. “You let him slander me and you did nothing?”

  “Why would I want to drive you out of here?” Anne slides a pair of reading glasses over her nose. “Without you there is no Stand and Be Counted. Without Stand and Be Counted there’s no Christmas bonus, no free weekends at the Fire Island house. No coke parties. You’re such a selfish asshole, Duncan.” She turns back to her computer screen.

  He shrugs down onto her sofa. “Well, somebody’s filled my desk drawer with pencils.”

  “So take up sketching.” Anne adjusts her glasses and looks at him over the frames. “And Jesus Christ, get some sleep. You look like one of those fucked-up heroin addicts from the old Calvin Klein ads.”

  “Yes, consciousness,” he mumbles, eyelids slack. “That annoying time between naps.”

  “Listen.” She glances into the corridor. “For the record, if you’re going to point fingers, choose somebody known for his bite.”

  The trick to the CoffeePot Café is to overlook the homogenous exterior. Nestled alongside a UPS Store in Osterhagen’s sole strip of franchised sellouts, the CoffeePot suffers unnecessarily from the uniform salmon plaster facade and the neon cast-off glare of the 7-Eleven next door.

  Inside, someone has fought back with fervor. The pioneer spirit surfaces in the cleaved log paneling, the hewn pine tables, two rows of faux leather booths separated by a split rail fence. From her window seat Lily can hear the counter girls’ uninterrupted chatter, their voices rising bravely over the horse-powered growl of the espresso machine. One tells the other her plans for skipping town come fall and starting a new life with an aunt in Staten Island. Attending a college for hospitality service. But earlier when she served Lily coffee, her pour sloshed out of the cup and flooded the saucer.

  Lily’s been at the window booth the past hour faced with a sliced but uneaten grilled cheese sandwich. Panofsky’s cracked and tattered Gothic Architecture is with her as well, its pages loose and tucked back against the spine unsequentially. Nothing out of the ordinary, nothing to forecast the unease that falls over her when she spots Skinner’s truck pulling into the parking lot. It rumbles on loose bolts, its tires trailing wet shit and hay. Lily sucks back her breath, watches the old junker narrowly skim her bicycle out in front of the café.

  The old man slides out of the cab. She hasn’t seen him since the night she caught his poodle, but his walk across to the CoffeePot is the same lurching swagger. Unpromising. One glance at his cambered approach and even the counter girls stop their dreaming, pour him straight black in a paper cup. Lily slides down in her seat, hoping for transparency. She wishes Duncan were here. W
ants to tell him that she’s learned a thing or two about isolative analysis. That it’s never really been about that night on the dirt road itself—but about all the subsequent moments they have chosen to leave unrectified.

  “Your husband’s a good shot,” Skinner says.

  Lily straightens her shoulders. Draws her cold saucer of coffee toward her. “I hear they had to close the sawmill. For a major cleanup.”

  Skinner picks up the sugar bowl from her table. “Maybe we did the town a favor. You hear there’s a body buried around here?”

  Lily shakes her head, opens her eyes wide. “Is there a cemetery nearby?”

  “I’m talking a killing’s taken place. My own dog came around with the bone.” Skinner bends and unleashes a turbulent cough over the table. “Where’s your husband, anyhow?”

  She rotates her cup. As much as she doesn’t want to imagine Tinker’s leg clenched in that filthy mutt’s mouth, she knows she must engage in order to avoid disclosing Duncan’s location. “What sort of bone did you find?”

  “A human one.” The old man looks at her with impatience. “We just cracked open something bigger concerning those Arabs. The same mighty son of a bitch killed my boar also killed a man.”

  Lily toys with her teaspoon. “How do you come to that?”

  “I’m no genius, but that’s how these psychos work, start small then work their way up.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “I got the bone. I’m more certain than most.”

  Lily can’t help it, her laughter at his unforensic indictment is quick and bitter. “Why, was the bone in the same ditch as the boar?”

  Skinner tips the sugar bowl into his cup. “This whole town’s gone to hell.” He picks up her sandwich knife to stir his coffee. “They got lids for these cups, or what?”

  It’s only minutes later, when Skinner pulls back out of the parking lot, bald tires rotating along their original track, that she realizes her mistake.

  CHAPTER 32

  Organs of Special Sense:

  The Tympanum

  Duncan sits in front of his jimmied drawer watching Leetower stack the layouts and scripts for tomorrow’s presentation in a portfolio case. Earlier, he made the boy empty out the gnawed pencils from his desk. Now all that remains are the velvet satchels containing his One Show Pencils. He places each of them in his bag.

  “You think getting pulled off Tide will hurt my career?” Leetower asks, tugging the zipper on the nylon case full of mounted storyboards.

  It’s Kooch who answers, his beefcake frame appearing at the door. “It can’t hurt you, Leetits, because you’re nobody to begin with.”

  LT looks up. “Spoken by the poster boy for social services.”

  “Today you’re a dispensable piece of shit. Tomorrow, Stand and Be Counted will rebirth you to a better life.”

  “Christ.” Leetower picks up the case. “Like Cats, the Musical.”

  “Put that stuff in my car,” Duncan tells him.

  “You might want to hold off, little buddy.” Kooch walks into the room, holding up his yellow notepad. “I think I got gold right here.”

  The art director looks between his boss and his partner. He fidgets with the portfolio handle.

  “In the trunk, LT.” Duncan tries to keep his voice steady, his eyes trained on the kid until he picks up the portfolio case and moves out into the hallway. Kooch is standing in the middle of the office, legs set apart like some hard-riding ranch hand.

  “Listen to this,” he says to Duncan, flipping through his notes. “We got a chopper lifting off the roof of the Presidential Palace during the fall of Saigon, right? But suspended from its skid is a human chain of Grunt Girls.”

  “I know it was you,” Duncan says.

  “Each girl’s got on a different cut of Stand and Be Counted jeans. It can be print or we use it as a store banner, on the Web site, whatever.”

  “I know it was you with the pencils.”

  Kooch stops, earmarks his notes. “I heard. I wish I could take credit for that little prank, Duncs.” He drops down on the sofa.

  “You’re off Stand and Be Counted.”

  “The hell I am.” Kooch props his feet on the upholstered armrest. “You can’t take me off my own idea.”

  “Jesus, that’s getting old.” Duncan stands up, walks around the room. Then, worried that he’s betraying his anxiety, sits back down on the edge of his desk.

  “I gotta tell you, Duncan, man-to-man. It’s feeling like we’re here to work out your personal problems.” He leans back, folding his hands behind his head. “We’re supposed to be selling jeans, remember?”

  “Are you trying to jeopardize your writer slash on Stand and Be Counted?”

  “Slash?” Kooch looks at him with surprise. “You better be shitting me.”

  Duncan holds up his palms as if to indicate he’s fresh out of accolades. “I’ll be going up to the podium, if that’s what you mean. But I will mention you.”

  “I’m going to need more.”

  “There isn’t any more.”

  “Creative director.”

  Duncan laughs. “I’m creative director.”

  “That’s debatable,” Kooch says quietly. He starts patting around the sofa under his ass.

  Duncan feels a hum of unnatural scale in his left ear. He presses a palm against it, creates suction, and counts to three. Still, the bright, whistling strain continues.

  Kooch’s hand comes out from between the cushions. He holds up a chewed pencil, crafts a look of surprise that’s worthy of community theater. “That is definitely the mouthwork of a maniac,” he says, examining its crenellated patterns.

  Duncan reaches over and slaps the pencil out of his fingers. It flies across the room like an arrow, then strikes the wall with the clatter of tossed furniture. “Get out of my office.”

  “Why is it so difficult for you to give credit where it’s due?” Kooch leans back on the armrest, smiling dreamily. “Is it because you haven’t done anything worthwhile in five years?”

  The sound in his ear has evolved. From reedy whistle to jet stream to monkey howl. The echo of cannon fire replicated through the vacuum of space. And the last thing Duncan remembers before he attacks Kooch is, if this were the jungle, there’d be only the tremble of bamboo before his unexpected incarnation of Death from Above. As it is, Duncan descends onto the sofa from his desk—roughly table-top height—but he instantly gains purchase on the younger man’s arms and legs and shag of wolf hair. Kooch is bewildered, his reflexes are slumberous in response to the overhead assault, and for a few blurred and glorious moments Duncan’s got him pinned at the neck and knees.

  They begin to grapple in earnest. For the first minute or so, Duncan employs superior clutch, demonstrates an understanding of choke, uses the structure of the other man’s bone and fiber as leverage to get him off the sofa and to the ground. A folding chair tips over. Otherwise there’s no sound, no articulated noise beyond the snorts and brays that score the struggle.

  As Duncan tries to wrestle Kooch toward the trash can full of pencils, he begins to understand the sort of animals that their bodies comprise. The spring-loaded muscle packaged tight under sheets of skin. The sheets of skin dim and freckled under sparse fur. Claws studding both hands. Duncan wants to fit an HB number 2 between the beast’s rack of teeth and close the book on this Cinderella story. But Kooch, at some primordial level, is conditioned for surprise raids and gains enough traction on the carpet to allow him to flip Duncan. He also lands the impressive first swing on the left side of his face.

  The reed pipe blasts at his ear again, this time stuck on a single note, E. The sound is critical and shrill and helps raise Duncan to his feet. And though he’s not fast enough to parry a right cross, he has time to get in two quick jabs that make Kooch’s head snap like a tethered ball.

  Duncan is suddenly aware of Leetower in the room, circling the peripheries like a man waiting his go in a dorm room gangbang. For a moment the boy�
�s actions are unclear. Is he waiting to break the fray or to join in? But his hand is moving toward Kooch’s arm, and as he locks down, he takes the drive out of his partner’s punch. He’s gonna break things up, Duncan thinks. He straightens his footwork, then notices that Leetower has both of Kooch’s arms behind his back. This confuses him; he’s opening his partner up to attack. Handing him over like a punching bag, in fact. The moment won’t last. He knows it. Already Kooch is bending forward, trying to throw Leetower to the ground. Duncan rushes in, his right arm finally free of striated muscle command, and he feeds Kooch an uppercut that is, if not textbook, at least powerful enough to cause an explosion of tiny bones.

  Duncan’s broken thumb is set at St. Vincent’s, the same hospital where Kooch has been admitted, a stream of morphine pumped straight into his veins and his jaw to be wired shut. Although he hasn’t asked for any intelligence on the matter, Duncan is told that after the triage is complete, Kooch will be taken upstairs to the surgical ward.

  “One week,” the nurse says and gives Duncan a small envelope of Vicodin. “When your swelling goes down we have to replace this with a plaster cast.” She has a concerned voice that he finds surprising in a city full of exasperation. He looks at the lump of gauze at the end of his arm; the metal bracket holding his thumb in place is partly visible through the wrapping.

  “Is there someone to drive you home?”

  “Yes,” he says. Although he seems to remember Leetower dumping him and Kooch and the car at the emergency entrance and fleeing.

  “Your friend’s going to be here for a while. They’ll probably encourage him to file a mugging report when he’s conscious. You should do that too.” The nurse moves the bed tray away from the examination table, giving Duncan room to put his shirt on while she prepares his sling. “Just be careful what you do when you’re on those pills,” she says.