The Fable of Bing

by Tim Sandlin

  Bing steps to the table, picks up the single Wheat Thin floating above the tree, and places it dead center, within the branches.

  “It works better as a bird than a star.”

  Rosemary is shocked. Her pattern of over fifteen years is shot to hell. Bizarre as it sounds, she thinks her life will never be what it was. “I invented the mandala. How can you tell if it works or doesn’t work?”

  “You want dead people to hear your thoughts, put the piece there. The way you had it nobody knows what you’re feeling.”

  Rosemary stares down at the new pattern. It does have symmetry. She always thought of the star cracker as her father’s one-breasted soul, hovering over the sisters. Having him right down in the midst of the tree is more of a comfort. The first few years she practiced the ritual, it was a habit. Sometime in her teens she started to believe it brought stability and continuity, but she always knew she created the pattern randomly. It was like a bedtime prayer, what you say doesn’t matter so long as you say the same words every night, giving yourself permission to sleep.

  And now Bing tells her she’s been doing it wrong. The mandala isn’t random. How is she supposed to absorb that?

  “Are you sure?” she asks.

  “Yes. Then you dip them in tea from the outside in. That one first.” He points to the cracker on top.

  “I always ate from the bottom up.”

  “Try it the other way. You’ll feel nicer.

  Rosemary sips her tea.

  49

  A woman child named Krystal Lee stands before Bing, staring at his head. Or maybe his nose, Bing isn’t certain. Whatever she is staring at, she seems perplexed by the sight. Bing — in long pants and a tuck-in shirt from Target, and jellies — sits on what looks like an old-fashioned barber chair, the kind that twirls and can be cranked up and down to adjust height. Or course, Bing doesn’t know it looks like an old-fashioned barber chair. Dr. Lori’s always cut his hair with a pair of scissors designed for castrating lab rats. Because the chair spins and pumps up and down, Bing sees it as a toy.

  “Be still.” Krystal wears a green smock. She looks professional. “I can’t work with you fidgeting.”

  “Good luck on that one,” Rosemary says. Rosemary — in casual skinny jeans and a jersey — stands behind Bing, her fingers lightly resting on his shoulders as if to calm him down. She can see his face in the mirrors behind and to the sides of Krystal Lee. They are in what the TV people call the Green Room, which every TV station has even though most of them are not green. Rosemary doesn’t know why Green Rooms aren’t green, so she can’t explain it to Bing.

  “Hold the chair,” Krystal Lee says to Rosemary. “I can’t make him up if he keeps spinning.”

  Rosemary holds the chair steady. So far, Bing has behaved himself admirably, but Rosemary is so antsy her ears itch.

  She says, “There’s no call to be nervous, Bing.”

  He grins at her in the mirror. “I am not nervous.”

  Rosemary says, “Be yourself,” as Bing pulls faces at himself in the mirror. He has amazing individual control of his eyebrows. She says, “Whatever that is.”

  Krystal Lee leans in to peer at Bing’s forehead, actually his Third Eye, if you buy such things. Krystal is twenty-four, straight out of community college where she trained in theatrical make-up. She dreams of moving to Hollywood and doing Meryl Streep’s eyes.

  “What brand of moisturizer do you use?”

  Rosemary snorts a giggle and Krystal Lee gives her a look. Bing is trying to see if he can open his mouth wide enough to engulf an imaginary cantaloupe.

  “Bing isn’t into moisturizer,” Rosemary says.

  Krystal Lee sighs. “I didn’t think so.” She picks a powder puff. “We can work with this.”

  “Thank you.” Rosemary tries to make up for the inappropriate giggle. “I know he’s a challenge and I appreciate you giving him your best.”

  “No need to lay it on too thick,” Krystal Lee says. Rosemary isn’t sure exactly which way she means that. Krystal Lee moves the puff to Bing’s face. He jerks away.

  She says, “What?”

  Bing bares his incisors and growls.

  “Listen, sweetie, this is my job.”

  “Do not touch my face.”

  “You can’t go on camera without make-up. You’ll look like a drowned corpse.”

  “Stay away.”

  “It’s nothing personal.” She moves back in for the puff.

  “I can bite the hand off your arm.”

  Krystal Lee recoils. She bumps into the mirrors.

  “What?”

  Rosemary says, “He can.”

  Bing hums a little song.

  50

  Jazmine DuMont is slinky. Not precisely the quintessential daytime TV talk show host in a major market, but close. She’s got the hair, the teeth, the blouse starched and pressed. Poised, confident, a hint flirtatious. The only thing off is her ears. They hang too low, as if she started wearing heavy danglers at an early age. Her ears are distracting. She also has the scratchy voice of a former high school cheerleader. Jazmine is proud of her voice in the way celebrities are proud of the facet that makes them less than perfect.

  Bing slumps in a brown leather chair with his shoulders up at cheekbone level. In the lights, on camera, his skin looks just the way Krystal Lee said it would — drowned corpse. Or soggy cardboard. There are various ways to describe Bing’s TV complexion and none are flattering.

  The commercial of a local day spa ends and the audience claps for no reason that Bing can see. From her own leather chair that sits a tad higher than Bing’s Jazmine flashes lips and teeth at the proper camera.

  “I’m here today with Bing.” She turns slightly toward Bing. “Do you have a last name, Bing?”

  “Bing is the last name I have.”

  “What’s your first name then?”

  “Bing.”

  “Oh.” She smiles back at the camera, as if giving her viewers a nudge with her eyes. “Like Madonna. Or Cher.”

  “I do not fathom those words.”

  “They’re examples of women with only one name. So famous they don’t need two.”

  Bing rocks slightly. He wishes he could see Rosemary. She must be able to see him, but bright lights are in his eyes. He is aware of people without being able to make them out properly. It is unpleasant.

  Jazmine goes into her spiel. “Mr. Bing. Raised in the San Diego Zoo Safari Park. Able to perform miraculous feats of healing gunshot wounds. Hailed on spiritual radio as the new Messiah. I could hardly get in the door when I came to work this morning for all your followers outside.” She looks to Bing for comment, but doesn’t get one. He’s waiting for a question.

  “Is there anything you can’t do, Mr. Bing?”

  Bing considers. He starts to speak, then stops. Then he starts again. “I cannot fly like a bird or swim like an eel.”

  The studio audience goes wild in response to an APPLAUSE sign that Bing can’t see and couldn’t read if he could see it. He has no idea why the people out beyond the lights are so thrilled with his answer.

  Jazmine continues. “Before we get into your miracle and the whole Messiah legend, I’d like to hear about the zoo. I understand you were raised by bonobos, often called the missing link between chimpanzees and humans.”

  Bing pushes himself up with his hands until he is hovering two inches over the chair. “Chimpanzees are cruel and vicious. Like people. We cannot link two species if they are alike and we are not.”

  The audience claps. Bing nods.

  Jazmine says, “So you are saying humans are cruel and vicious.”

  “Compared to my family, they are. Bonobos do not take money from each other. I have watched humans take money. I have seen humans throw electrical batteries at the cheetahs. Bonobos do not throw batteries at cheetahs.”

  Jazmine’s legs are crossed and her right foot rocks up and down. Her toe is stuffed in her shoe, but her heel swings loose while the shoe heel hangs
below her foot. Her shoes are red as a Coke can with three-inch heels. She keeps her feet off camera.

  “Tell the truth, Bing. Do you think you are you an actual bonobo?”

  Bing blinks. He views the question as stupid. Does he look like a bonobo? Does he smell like a bonobo? “My family is bonobo. My mother and brother. I am human, but they do not know that.”

  “Are you a virgin?”

  Bing’s face is a marble slab. A sheet of unused yellow legal pad. Rosemary told him not to answer questions he doesn’t fathom, that silence makes the TV host nervous, so silence is power over personality.

  The audience snickers, on cue.

  Jazmine fills in the noise void. “Our research shows that bonobos are the most sexually active and diverse members of the animal kingdom. Homosexual, incest, oral, positions only found in the Kama Sutra — if you were raised by bonobos you must have been exposed to a wide variety of experience.”

  “Dr. Lori told me the wise boy does not touch genitals, nor is he touched in the genitals. I avoid that.”

  “And Dr. Lori is?”

  “My second mother. She tells me the difference between what is right and what isn’t.”

  With an edge of smirk, “And sex isn’t?”

  “Sex is correct at the proper time with the proper species.”

  Jazmine ignores the camera to look Bing full in the face. He sees that her long earlobes are changing colors, growing a deeper pink. The vein on her forehead pulses ever so slightly. “Then you are a virgin. How intriguing is that?”

  Bing has never heard of a question that is not a question. He answers as honestly as he can. “I do not know how intriguing that is.”

  “The girls must be all over you.”

  Bing views this as another stupid question, if it is even a question at all. He falls back on a smile. Better silent than sorry.

  Jazmine moves on to a new subject. “How does it feel to have people calling you the new Messiah?”

  Bing wants to help. Instead, he says, “That depends on what happened to the old Messiah.”

  The audience laughs and applauds. Bing nods his head, wisely. Jazmine winks at him.

  51

  Back in the Green Room, Bing has turned his eyelids inside out and he is looking at himself in the mirror. He’s familiar with mirrors, of course, but he’s never sat on a bar stool in front of one with nothing to do and nothing to eat. He flips his lips from string to overinflated inner tubes and back. He tries to pull his lower lip over his nose, but fails. He can’t do everything.

  Between faces, Bing coos happily.

  Krystal Lee sits on her own four-legged stool and stares at him. Nothing at San Diego Mesa Community College prepared her for Bing. Nothing in her background of MTV and reality cable prepared her for Bing.

  “Can I bring you some water?” she asks.

  Bing says, “Am I dirty?”

  “To drink. I thought you might like a drink.”

  Bing drops his head into a 45-degree angle so Krystal Lee appears to be standing on the wall. “Water would be nice.”

  But before Krystal Lee gets his paper cup, the door flies open and Jazmine blows in. Her hair is down and her color is up. Her nostrils flare. She says, “Leave us alone, Krystal Lee.”

  Krystal Lee says, “Bing asked for water.”

  “He’s not thirsty. Go.”

  Krystal Lee sends Bing a look that might convey pity. Then, she leaves. As the door clicks shut, Jazmine advances on Bing.

  “You have fun on the show, Bing boy?”

  Bing doesn’t stand, but he does flick his eyelids back down. “It was an experience I never had at the wildlife park.”

  “No doubt it was.”

  “I enjoy new experiences. They stimulate inside my head.”

  Jazmine standing puts her chest at Bing’s eye level. “You want something stimulating in your head, look at these,” and she commences to pull off her starched and pressed blouse. Her bra is red frills.

  “Do you like my breasts? I think they are nice. I had a breast reduction a few years ago and I’ve never regretted it.”

  She snaps off the red bra. Bing’s eyes go circular.

  “I was an ass double in Hollywood and I wanted more of myself on camera. You’d be amazed at the stars whose asses you’ve lusted for in the movies that are actually mine.”

  “I’ve never seen a movie.”

  “That’s interesting.” Jazmine plows on without breaking stride. “Even you would know the women whose dimples I’ve replaced. Some of the most desirable stars in the world I could name have cellulite like a Baggie full of wet sand. They had me sign a non-disclosure contract, or I could tell you stories would curl your pubes. Do you want to touch them?”

  Bing says, “Me?”

  “Who else am I talking to here?”

  Shyly, Bing reaches out and touches the tip of his index finger to the tip of her nipple. Jazmine emits a tiny moan.

  Bing says, “I thought it would be soft.”

  “Would you like to suckle my breasts, virgin child? I’ll just bet they’re nicer than the tits on that ape you call Mom.”

  “Betty’s droop to the left.”

  “If you suckle me, I might suckle you. You’d love that. All my adult life I’ve wanted to break in a virgin. You know how hard it is to find a legal age virgin in California? Like searching for unicorns.”

  Bing has heard of unicorns. Dr. Lori told him they are mythical, impossible beasts. He wonders if virgins are mythical beasts and, if so, how it is that he became one.

  “How often do you figure Tarzan and Jane did it?” Jazmine doesn’t wait for an answer. “They never show squat in the movies, but come on. Apes raised him, for God’s sake. How could he not be stiff as a tree under that leather thong thing?”

  “George of the Jungle was raised by apes,” Bing says. “Turk told me. He says there are more of us.”

  Jazmine’s tits hover an inch from Bing’s eyes — or to be precise, her left breast is an inch from his right eye. Her right breast is a bit off the edge from his left eye, in the peripheral vision. Still, her nipple and his eye — basically equal in diameter — front each other.

  Jazmine reaches over to tousle his hair.

  Bing says, “Don’t touch my head.”

  “How about down there then. You think Dr. Lori would mind if I zipped your zipper? You think she’d approve of me as a species?”

  She fumbles with his new pants. Since Bing is still seated on the stool, it’s tricky. The mechanics take her attention off Bing and onto the zipper.

  She says, “Some cooperation here.”

  That’s the point where Rosemary enters. Neither Bing nor Jazmine hear the door, but they both hear her.

  “There you are, Bing. I’ve been searching all over. How’d the TV gig go?”

  Bing blinks in the face of the nipple. “It was a new experience.”

  Rosemary brushes past Jazmine’s boobs as if they’re cobwebs. She grabs Bing by the upper arm. “Show’s over, Bing. Let’s hit the road.”

  Jazmine pouts. She doesn’t like being pushed to the side. “What are you, his zookeeper?”

  Rosemary looks Jazmine in the eyes, as opposed to the other pair of orbs facing forward. “That’s right. I protect Bing from predators.”

  As she leads Bing away, he looks back at topless Jazmine. Her arms are crossed, covering her nipples. Her eyes flash fire.

  He says, “It was nice to meet you, Jazmine.”

  52

  Various TV station employees who come off more as support staff than on air personalities loitering in the hallway part for Rosemary and Bing, almost but not quite pressing themselves against the walls. Imagine a pack of teenagers at the mall moving aside for a mumbling schizophrenic. No direct looks. No friendly nods or unfriendly obstacles. Just get out of the way and it will pass.

  Rosemary notices the attitude. Bing doesn’t. He walks on his toes, his jelly heels brushing the carpet. If a smile really can be an umbrella
, Bing stays dry.

  Rosemary says, “Are you okay, Bing? Did she frighten you?”

  “The television woman exhibited outward signals of aggressive behavior.”

  Rosemary glances at Bing, whose head bobs with each step. She is never certain whether he knows more or less than he says. “The slut tried to jump your bones. God only knows what would have happened if I hadn’t saved you.”

  “There’s that word again. Everyone says it but no one tells me what it means.”

  “God?”

  Bing stops to kick off the jellies. “Jazmine and I might have consummated sexually.” He walks on down the hall, barefoot. “I’ve never consummated sexually. I have seen others often. Some days bonobos consummate all afternoon. They appear to enjoy themselves, and I think I too might enjoy myself, but Dr. Lori said I would writhe in pain if a being touched between my legs. She said I would grow hives if I even touched myself between the legs except to make water. I did once without telling her.”

  “And did you grow hives?”

  “A pimple, maybe. I never was sure.”

  Rosemary goes back for the jellies. Bing waits, patiently. Rosemary says, “Do you still believe Dr. Lori?”

  “She said I would die if I left the zoo and yet I still live.”

  “And yet.”

  Bing cocks his head to the side. He likes the way this makes him look at things from a new angle. “I feel Dr. Lori was mistaken. When I first left the zoo I looked forward to behaving like an Outie, which meant constant consummation. Do you think I might have died, had we let the female jump my bones?”

  Rosemary hands Bing his shoes. Their fingertips touch for a moment, spontaneous as a dream. “Not likely.”

  Bing doesn’t put them on. “So what fate did you save me from?”

  As they cut through the waiting room Rosemary pulls a banana from her bag. She peels it and hands it to Bing, who inserts the banana whole into his mouth. The receptionist drops her cell phone, the back pops off, and the battery slides under her desk.

  Bing speaks through a mouth full of mush. “I might have had a treat.”

  Rosemary says, “Jazmine felt no emotional attachment for you. She wanted to use you for her amusement, like you are a freak in a circus. You don’t want to evolve into a circus act.”