by T. C. Boyle
He was in the kitchen, clutching the grimy yellow receiver that still bore Sam’s tooth marks, the wine buzzing in his brain like the cascabels of the snakes that routinely slithered down out of the rocks, the ones they were always so afraid would bite Sam, send him into cardiac arrest, kill him, when in fact they were killing him themselves – or at least Moncrief was. He saw Aimee’s face then – and Sam’s – and felt a vast sorrow open up inside him.
‘Look,’ he said, ‘I’m sorry, I don’t mean to lecture you. I’m glad you called – I’ve been worried about you.’
‘Really? You don’t sound like it.’
He should have said something with a little affection in it, something soft and intimate to remind her – remind them both – of the relationship they’d had, of love, or at least the lovemaking that was the propeller of it. He said, ‘I miss you. And Sam too. Where are you, anyway?’
‘In a campground.’
‘A campground? Where?’
He could feel her presence over the line, feel her thinking, as if mental processes were transferrable, as if the words didn’t need to emerge from her larynx and take shape on her palate and tongue – she wasn’t going to tell him. She was going to blow him off. After all their time together, after all they’d had, it came down to this. She said, ‘If you’re wondering about Sam, he’s fine. Happy actually. Can you believe it – he’s happy.’ She paused, the moment held in equipoise. ‘And you know why?’
‘Because he’s with you?’
‘Because he’s not in a cage any more.’
A movement beyond the window distracted him – a squirrel making its way up the trunk of the oak, its tail beating like a pulse. He said, ‘But he’s going to be, as soon as they catch up to you – in where, Dinksville, Iowa? They’ll put him in the dog pound, you know – if you’re lucky. They might just shoot him if he makes a fuss, and he will make a fuss, you know that, especially if he thinks you’re under threat, which you will be. They’re going to put you in a cage too – and don’t expect me to bail you out.’
‘I don’t expect anything from you, not any more.’
‘Oh, come on, Aimee, please. Give me a break here. You know I don’t mean that – I’m just frustrated, that’s all. And worried. Deeply, fucking, insanely worried. OK?’ He paused, shuffling across the kitchen with the phone pressed to his ear so he could pick up the half-full glass and drain it in a gulp because he suddenly had the fiercest burning thirst and a blistering headache on top of it. ‘But I need to know where you are—’
‘I told you – a campground.’
The circularity. Didn’t she know how crazy she was making him? He’d thought she was malleable, easy pickings, a girl he could ride and ride, but he was wrong. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Right. But a campground where? ’
Now it was her turn. A long pause. The squirrel flagged its tail, a branch swayed, a stray leaf sailed to the ground. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, her voice as shallow and toneless as the wind sifting through all the canyons of the world. ‘I’m really sorry.’
PART THREE
THERE WAS NO MOON
There was no moon the night she took him and there were no stars either, the clouds low and ribbed and giving up nothing. A moon would have been nice, would have made things easier, because she certainly wasn’t about to use a flashlight. She wasn’t about to take the car up the drive either, so she parked out on the main road, eased the door shut and stood there in the dark a moment, letting her eyes adjust. The night was cool enough to silence the crickets, and since there were no cars passing by at this hour, the only sound was the soft, sporadic call of the owl that had taken up residence in the disused hayloft of the barn and regurgitated the hard little pellets of rat bone and fur she sometimes found on the doorstep in the morning. The only problem was the light burning on the second floor of the house, which meant that somebody was awake still. That light almost stopped her. She pictured Dr Moncrief stalking around up there, unable to sleep, the leather patch dangling from a bedpost and his naked eye socket a sinkhole of puckered flesh, clocks ticking, floorboards creaking, and she felt herself losing momentum. She crouched in the weeds, fighting the urge to sneeze, and stared at the window as if she could will the light to go out.
She was dressed all in black, hooded sweatshirt, black jeans, Converse High Tops, and she planned to be quick, in and out. She’d brought along a can of Vienna sausages for the two Dobermanns to keep them quiet, but the biggest problem would be getting Sam out of there before the rest of the chimps caught wind of it and started screaming. Five minutes went by. Ten. The light in the window shone steadily, mockingly, sadistically. What to do? Wait it out? But people fell asleep with the lights on, didn’t they? And even if they didn’t, even if Dr Moncrief was lying there wide awake with his hearing attuned to the slightest irregularity, she was going to go up that hill anyway, so she might as well steel herself and do it. She took a deep breath, rose silently from the bushes and followed the pale tongue of gravel up the hill to the barn, where the glow of the interior lights leached out into the darkness to orient her. Everything was still. No dogs barked, no chimps stirred, no outraged voice bellowed from the second-storey window behind her.
The dogs were asleep, lying in the grass with their backs pressed up against the perimeter fence, but she called softly to them and pushed two of the sausages through the mesh and into their wet, eager mouths, so that they’d see it was only her and not raise the alarm when she and Sam eased out the door five minutes from now. ‘Good dogs,’ she whispered. Then she opened the door and stepped into the lighted hallway.
She expected Sam to be asleep, and he was, but the surprise – the shock – was that Alice was in the cage with him, sleeping with her head tucked into his chest and one arm thrown over his shoulder. Before she’d left work that afternoon, she’d locked Alice back in her own cage, so somebody must have thought to put them together again, whether it was Jack or Christian, the other tech, and that was good, that was right – they needed company, they needed each other – and under any other circumstances, she would have been pleased. But not tonight. Tonight it was just another complication, maybe even a fatal one. She was terrified, actually trembling as she inched silently across the floor, the whole plan on the verge of collapse, because how was she going to get Sam out of there without waking Alice? She could see it already: Alice would jolt awake. Alice would want out. Alice would start screaming and the whole place would erupt.
This was an eventuality she hadn’t planned on, and she was so thrown off she found she already had the key in the lock before she remembered the medicine cabinet, which she had to visit first if she had any hope of getting away undetected. The medicine cabinet was located in the hallway leading to the back cages, and what she wanted there were the tranquillisers they used to calm the chimps before the vet paid a call or some visiting researcher took a tour of the facilities. Sam had showed no ill effects from the sernalyn Moncrief had darted him with yesterday afternoon (it wasn’t possible to overdose on it, though no one had told her that), but it wasn’t sernalyn she was after. They kept a supply of methaqualone on hand, which was more dangerous because animals could overdose on it, but it was preferable in certain situations since it wouldn’t totally immobilise them. She planned to grind up a tablet and mix it into a can of Coke – Sam’s favourite, which he could never resist – by way of keeping him quiet, at least until they were out of the state. After that, she didn’t know. She didn’t even know where she was going to take him, but what she did know, what she swore to herself, was that she was going to get him out of there. For good.
The lights held steady, though they were dimmed at night, thankfully. The chimps in the adjoining cages never stirred – they lay sprawled on the concrete like a tribe of refugees displaced by war; some on their backs, others on their sides or curled up in the fetal position, cradling their heads in their arms. She thought she’d gotten used to the smell of the place, but now all of a sudden it felt like a fist pu
nching her in the face, worse at night because there was nobody there to sluice the crap down the drains. It was so heavy she could almost taste it, ammoniac and vile – she hated it, hated this place – but after tonight she’d never have to endure it again. Nor would Sam. She’d thought of slipping the bottle of pills into her pocket when she’d gone home at the end of the day, but Moncrief kept a tight watch over the supply – students, techs, party drugs – and she hadn’t wanted to take the chance of anything giving her away, so here she was, easing down the half-lit hallway and trying to breathe as much as possible through her mouth, on her way to steal drugs in the dead of night.
The key to the cabinet was taped to the top of one of the overhead pipes at the end of the corridor, just opposite Azazel’s cage. She hadn’t been trusted with it – Jack and Dr Moncrief were the only ones allowed access to the cabinet – but she’d seen Jack reach up and anchor something atop the pipe one afternoon when she was hosing out the cages, and once he’d left for the day, she climbed up on a stool and found it there. At that point, she didn’t have a plan beyond getting through each day without breaking down, but she filed the information away all the same, one more detail to orient her in this purgatory of a place. Now she went to the broom closet, fetched the stool and retrieved the key as noiselessly as if she were in a movie without a soundtrack.
There were two 500-count bottles in the cabinet, one half-empty, the other still sealed. She took the unopened one and stuffed it in her pocket, returned the stool to the closet (no sense in alerting them to the fact that the drugs were missing too), and then went back to the cage. Neither Sam nor Alice had moved, both of them locked in a trance-like sleep, Alice’s face still buried in Sam’s chest, her arm still flung over his shoulder. For one wild moment, she thought of taking them both, but she fought down the impulse – this was hard enough as it was. Slowly, her movements studied and deliberate, she pulled the can of sausages from her pocket and extracted two links, then broke the seal on the bottle of pills – Sopors, as the local stoners called them – and worked a pill into each of them. She hadn’t foreseen it this way, because she was going to need Sam to be able to walk on his own, hence the Coke, which she’d planned to give him once they were in the car and safely away, but then the presence of Alice changed everything. If she didn’t put him out now, he’d want to play, which meant he’d make noise and noise would give them away.
The small sounds – animals shifting in their sleep, a fan switching on, the muffled hoot of the owl – and then she was in the cage and petting Sam awake, so filled with love for him she could have seized up and died right there. He always slept deeply, like any child, and she kept running her hands through his hair over and over, afraid to speak, even in a whisper. When they were together at the ranch, in the same bed, he’d always been slow to wake, content to lie there and let consciousness seep back into him filament by filament till he knew where he was and that the sun was shining and she was there beside him. She began prodding him now because he wasn’t responding – they had to get out of there, each second teetering on the cusp of disaster – and she was about to take the risk and whisper, ‘Sam, time to wake up,’ when suddenly his eyes flashed open and he came up fast with a hard, angry grunt and a show of teeth that startled her as if this wasn’t Sam at all but some wild chimp she’d never laid eyes on before. It was just an instant, but it shook her, and then he was back in the world. His eyes went soft and he stretched out his arms to her even as Alice woke and propped herself on her elbows, looking puzzled and disoriented. Sam signed, WHAT?, which covered a whole range of questions – What are you doing here? Is it morning? Time for breakfast, for a walk, for the boat and the island and treats? – and she pressed a finger to her lips and gave them both a fierce, warning look.
DON’T MAKE A SOUND, she signed. I BROUGHT TREATS JUST FOR YOU – DON’T LET THE OTHERS KNOW. SHHHHH!
And then she handed each of them a sausage.
The worst part of it was sitting there in that cage with her heart pounding for a full thirty minutes before Alice’s eyelids began to flicker and she slumped back against the wall. Sam was showing the effects too, his eyes grown distant and a thin silvery strand of drool clinging to his lower lip, but Sam was going to have to walk because he was almost as heavy as she was now, and there was no way she could carry him or even drag him if that was what it came to. Which meant she couldn’t delay a minute longer – she’d have to risk Alice spreading the alarm because Alice wasn’t fully out yet and as soon as the key turned in the lock, there was no telling what she’d do. She told herself to be calm. Gathering her legs beneath her, she rose slowly to her knees, Alice’s eyes following her every movement. Then she was on her feet and reaching down to take Sam by the hand, and Alice was trying to push herself up and at the same time reach for her other hand – if one chimp was going to GO OUT, it was only fair that they both go – but the drug wouldn’t let her. Aimee was at the door, pushing it open now, and Sam, struggling for balance, was right there at her side. Slumped against the wall, her hands moving in slow motion, Alice signed, ME GO TOO, but that wasn’t an option; it never had been and never would be, and Aimee signed, SORRY, which was sincere, and then, TOMORROW, which was a lie.
Just as they got to the outside door, there was a violent thump, flesh on metal, and she shot a glance down the length of the hall to see Azazel clinging to the bars of his cage, staring back at her. When he was sure she was watching, he thumped the bars again, then rattled them with a quick jerk and thrust of his arms, but he didn’t hoot or scream or vocalise at all. Sam didn’t seem to notice. His eyelids fluttered, his limbs went slack, and he clutched her hand as if he was falling out of a tree. She felt the panic rising in her. All it would take was a single scream and she’d be caught – and if she was caught, she’d be fired and if she was fired, she’d never see Sam again. Azazel held her eyes, then bent down and thrust his hand through the food slot at the bottom of the cage door, clutching and releasing his fingers in the GIMME gesture that didn’t have to be imparted or acquired. Put a creature in a cage, any creature, and you’ve got a de facto beggar, but then it dawned on her that this wasn’t begging – it was extortion.
‘OK,’ she whispered, ‘OK,’ and she dropped Sam’s hand and made her way down the line of cages, holding the can of sausages out before her in offering. The sound of her own breathing roared in her ears. Her eyes teared. Her heart pounded. Even in her extremity, even though she could think of nothing but getting Sam down the hill and into the car, she knew better than to get too close, and so she stood back three feet from the cage and slid the can through the slot in the door. Azazel ignored it. He kept his hand in place, clutching and releasing his fingers in rapid succession: GIMME GIMME GIMME.
It wasn’t until he rose to his feet and fingered the lock in the door that she understood: he wanted the key. He wanted OUT. But he’d never been out, not for years – if he got out, he wouldn’t just raid refrigerators and trash kitchens: he’d rend, crush, kill. The key was in her pocket, the can of sausages was on the floor. Sam was woozy. The night was slipping away. She pointed down at the can to distract him – he was an animal, wasn’t he? – but he never even glanced at it. He tapped the lock, then gripped the bars and rattled them again. There was no way she was going to give him that key, no matter how much she hated this place and feared and despised Moncrief, and he must have seen that in her eyes because even before she turned and started running, he was screaming.
She didn’t lock the door behind her or even pull it closed. In a panic, with all forty chimps instantly on their feet and shrieking, she snatched Sam’s hand and tugged him out into the night, even as a second light went on in the house and the dogs she’d bribed flung themselves at the chain link and barked for all they were worth. Sam was unsteady on his feet and they hadn’t gone ten steps before he had to get down on all fours, which meant she had to bend double and guide him with a fierce, urgent hand under one arm, pulling, jerking, twisting, anything to g
et him moving. ‘Hurry, Sam, come on,’ she kept repeating in a harsh whisper, the house looming ahead of her and the gravel drive like a treadmill in one of the cartoons Sam loved to watch – they were moving as fast as they could and yet they were all but standing still.
‘The car, Sam,’ she breathed, furious, panicky, and why couldn’t he move? The drug was a mistake, she saw that now, and should she leave him for just a second and go fetch the car no matter what was going on inside that house? Is that what it was going to take? But no, she couldn’t leave him and she was never going to leave him, never again. She tugged his arm and urged him on, ‘Hurry, Sam, hurry! A ride, Sam, we’re going for a ride!’
The chimps shrieked. The dogs barked. Something beat past her in the dark – the owl? – and then suddenly the outdoor light flicked on, and the figure of Dr Moncrief appeared on the porch, his face a distorted sheet of flesh bleached by the harshness of the light, and in the next instant, he was shouting, ‘Shut the fuck up, you little shits! Shut up! You hear me?’
She froze. Sam froze beside her. They were just beyond the arc of light, shadows among shadows, and could he see them? With one eye? At night? She brought an arm up to minimise the sheen of her face, cursing herself – why hadn’t she worn a ski mask? Or blackface? Or –
‘Don’t make me come up there!’ Moncrief boomed and let out an arpeggio of curses, his voice climbing higher and higher atop the screams till the noise planed off, then died down to a sniff and whimper, and the last desolate tailing bark of one of the dogs. For a long moment, he stood there glaring out into the darkness and then, satisfied, he turned and went back in the house. An instant later the porch light died and the night rushed back in, but still she didn’t move. She held Sam close, petting him, shushing him, until finally – it must have been ten minutes or more – both the upstairs lights flicked off, and she took Sam under the arm and led him down the drive and out to the road where she guided him into the passenger seat and wrapped him in the blanket she’d brought all the way from California and kept neatly folded on the shelf above her bed against this very moment.
