by Kit Reed
HELO BILY
Well, he spelled it all wrong, but I’m here to tell you: never condescend to a monkey. It turns out the little fuckers are clever. Plus they are easily bored and idle hands can delete an entire chapter just while you’re in the bathroom, examining your zits.
I had to come up with a distraction if I was ever going to finish this rotten book. If I could just get Spud on to something that kept him busy, he wouldn’t have to spring up on my keyboard every time I turned my back, like, when I came back to work I wouldn’t have to deal with him crouching on top of the bookcase with that reproachful look, oook-oooking every time I quit typing because I was trying to think.
It was inhibiting, all that judgmental hopping and oooking and worse, knowing that he was watching my every move with those sober eyes. I could swear he knew every time I switched screens to see if my Amazon figures had improved or went looking for signs of life on my Facebook page; if I started to blog the ook-ooking slipped into a positively spiteful screeeee.
The monkey was judging me. If I wanted to get anywhere with Koala Galaxy, I needed to get Spud the sententious rhesus monkey off my case. Monkey see, monkey do? Fine. I would create a diversion.
I dragged out the laptop Mom bought me when she first found out that I was going to be a famous writer. If it takes a hundred monkeys a thousand years to type a novel and I only had one, how wrong could it go?
I gave my old klunker to the monkey.
Oh, he bonked out a few words but he was no threat to me, for I am an artist. While he was plinking away I managed to crank out Gibbous Moon, 3,000,004 on Amazon last time I looked, and Screaming Meemies, my first horror novel which, in case you’re interested, is in its fifth year on offer, for mysterious reasons, and therefore still available.
And Spud? Oh, he banged out a few hundred words, no big deal, but pretty damn good for a monkey. At least his spelling improved. His little screeds weren’t worth squat, but seeing how lame they were compared to my work absolutely cheered me up. I would pat him on the back and praise him and I don’t think he knew for a minute that my tone was maybe a little bit condescending, for he is the monkey and I am the pro.
He got good enough that I started printing out some of his stuff and at night, after we’d both eaten and I was sick of playing World of Warcraft and fluffing up my MySpace page, I workshopped the stuff with him, or I tried to. If you want to know the truth, Spud’s always been a little too thin-skinned about criticism to be a real writer. One harsh word out of me, one little suggestion and he started ook-oook-ooooking so loud that we had complaints from the neighbors and the super gave me an or-else speech.
“Very well,” I said to the monkey finally, and I’m sorry to say that he took it very badly, “if you can’t handle a little constructive criticism, shut up or get out of the kitchen.”
How was I supposed to know he was so thin-skinned that he would sulk? When I next looked at his laptop screen the ungrateful brute had typed—never mind what he typed, it was insulting and unprintable. I shouted, “Language!” but he didn’t care.
I told him what he could do with his copy and went back to work, and if the next time I peeked Spud had written a villanelle, well—never mind. “Oookoook-oook,” I said to him after I printed it. “This is what I think of your villanelle.” He cried when I tore it to bits and threw the pieces away. At least I think that’s what he was doing. I sneaked a peek at his screen, which is how he usually communicates, but it was blank, so I never found out what he was thinking.
For the next few days he pretty much abandoned the laptop. Whether I was working or not, he sat in a corner and kept his back to me. He wouldn’t eat, at least not while I was watching, and he wouldn’t touch the keyboard—plus, every once in a while I could swear I heard him moan, but with monkeys, you never know. He was sulking for sure.
In a way, it was a relief. It was a lot easier to work without him watching. I managed to finish Dam of the Unconscionable, my first literary novel. My feeling is, I never sold many copies because I’ve always been a hybrid and the world resents a literary novelist, but I could gain respect. I thought Dam of the Unconscionable would make me famous. I wrote my heart out on that book! It was so intense that I just knew it would win a couple of prizes; this was going to be the novel that would break me out.
Meanwhile Spud was languishing. He wouldn’t type, didn’t write, wouldn’t celebrate with me when a small press gave me a contract for my novel. He wouldn’t touch the laptop even though I gave him inspiring speeches about perseverance. Frankly, it was depressing, seeing him dragging around with his shoulders hunched, and I would do anything to buck him up. I even told him he showed promise and slid the open laptop in front of him, hoping to lure him back to his escritoire. The ungrateful bastard just sat on the windowsill, looking into his paws. I hate the sober little jerk but that expression made me feel bad for him and a tad bit guilty too, for letting him type away on that laptop with nary an honest or even a hypocritical kind word.
“You’re good,” I told him, and I tried my best not to sound condescending this time. “You’re really good.” But he just looked at me the way he did and I knew that he knew.
Then Dam of the Unconscionable tanked. The small press wouldn’t even give my money back. I brought home the only copy they printed and I shook it in Spud’s face. I’m afraid I shouted: “Well, are you happy now?” I could tell he was still sulking. He wouldn’t even oook for me.
So for months Spud sat around and brooded; he was shedding, like every clump of fur was a little reproach. Have you ever tried to sit down and get serious about your novel in the presence of a living reproach? It’s like typing on the deck of the Ark the day it starts raining in earnest. Everything shorts out.
If I was ever going to finish Screed of the Outrageous and get famous, Spud was a problem that had to be solved.
I couldn’t get rid of the guy, too much has gone down between us, so I had to make him happy. Whatever it took.
Then inspiration struck. I was surfing—OK, I was mousing along thinking, the way you do when things aren’t going well inside your head, and I came upon this amazing product. I clicked on this page and it said in big letters all the way across the top, NOVEL WRITING WAS NEVER EASIER. I thought, oh boy, lead me to it, for if I haven’t mentioned it, a writer’s life is consummate hell. The ad read:
Create and track your characters.
Invent situations that work.
Consummate climaxes.
Triumph over conclusions.
Pay for our software out of your first royalty check.
Everything you need to be a successful novelist for five hundred dollars.
Naturally I clicked through to find out more about this miracle and on the next opening in Ta-DAAA print I got its name:
Success guaranteed with …
STORYGRINDER
Lead me to it, I thought. Of course electronic miracles are not for me, for I am an artist, but given that Mom had just sent me one of her inspiration bonus checks I thought it might be just the thing for Spud. Plus, if I downloaded it for him I could look over the monkey’s shoulder and see if Storygrinder knew any tricks, like: five hundred dollars, is there anything in that black bag for me?
So I read the fumpf out loud, thinking to get Spud’s attention. “Success guaranteed,” I read. “Spud, get a load of this. They can show you how to write Bright Lights, Big City,” I told him, which, unfortunately, didn’t get a rise out of him, not so much as an ooook.
Then I said, “Or if you wanted, maybe even The Bible.”
Nothing. “Or … Or …” Then I was inspired. “A book like Animal Farm.”
Bingo. Spud’s head came up.
I thought, if a hundred monkeys typing take a thousand years to write a novel, this software ought to be enough to keep this one off my back for thirty years, which is about as long as these labor-intensive rhesus guys are supposed to last.
I bought Storygrinder for the monkey. One look and
it was clear the software was not for me. It was, frankly, simplistic. One click and I could write The Last of the Mohicans, which, hel-LO, has already been done.
“Here you go, dude,” I told him, and on the premise that monkey see, monkey do, I walked him through the first stages.
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,” I wrote, like Charles Dickens, although the application gave me options that would let me write like one of the Brontes. A flag popped up:
DID YOU MEAN TO REPEAT YOURSELF? FIX.
So I wrote, “Call me Ishmael.” Naturally it questioned my spelling, but what the hey, Spud sidled over to watch.
Then I started writing a book that began, “It was love at first sight. The first time Yossarian saw the chaplain he fell madly in love with him,” and the monkey’s interest in life came back with a jerk.
“Oook!” Spud said and he hurtled in and shoved me out of the way with the force of his entire body. “Oook-ooook!”
“Good boy.” Although it would have been fun to play with the software at least a little bit I backed off, relieved and delighted to see him distracted and busy for a change. “Go to it, little dude. Onward,” I said, “and upward with the arts.”
His eyes lit up.
I said helpfully, “I’d click on the button that says, start my book.”
For the first time since I brought him home to my apartment, Spud sounded positively joyful. “Oook!”
It did my heart good to see him pounding away with both fists, and better yet, given the nature of the buttons and whistles attached to this new application, which not only tracks your spelling and punctuation but also tells you when you’re depending too heavily on certain verbs or using an adjective like “magnificent” more than once in your whole entire novel, the little bugger is a genius with the mouse.
A month with Storygrinder and Spud bounded past the pound-and-click method and into proper keyboarding before I noticed what was up. For the first time since I gave him the laptop he started using his tiny fingers. To my surprise the animal has a stretch that any concert pianist would envy and, man, you ought to see his attack! After a month he was up to speed and the next thing I knew he had outrun me, typing so fast that there was no telling where it would end. Next time I checked, his output almost matched mine, and as I was in the final third of my next attempt after Screed of the Outrageous and, frankly, my best shot at going for the gold, what I had thought of as a gimmick to keep Spud out of my hair ended up with us in a footrace for fame.
He was hard at it and instead of being relieved by my first weeks of freedom from his constant sulking—to say nothing of the fierce, judgmental attention I got back in the days when I was working well and he was bored—I was proud, but I was also a little bit afraid.
The worst part was that where we used to print out every night and talk about what he’d done, now at night when Spud was done for the day he would slam the laptop shut with this don’t-even-think-about-it glare. And do you know, he had the thing password-protected? I ask you, who taught him that? Either he was jealous of Storygrinder and afraid I’d siphon off a copy and get the jump on him, or he didn’t want me finding out what his novel looked like.
What it looked like, it looked like it was a thousand pages long and I had to start wondering whether it was War and Peace he was writing, only with rhesus monkeys instead of Russians, or this century’s answer to Gone with the Wind. Monkeys, you never know, and he wasn’t tipping his hand. Naturally I’d started out with this thinking I would keep close tabs on him, of course he’d want me to print out so we could workshop what he was writing the way we did in the good old days, but I’d do it better this time around. Like, more praise for what he was doing, but definitely constructive criticism over cookies and cocoa like we used to do, late at night.
How sharper than a serpent’s tooth is the ungrateful protege. The one time I tried to hook up his laptop to the printer cable, Spud latched on to me like that thing out of Alien and plastered his smelly body to my face. I went lunging around blindly with his legs in a stranglehold so tight that I couldn’t breathe and his fists clamped on my ears. I had to stagger into the kitchen and duck my head in the dirty dishwater to make him let go. After that I had to make certain promises, like you do when you have to get somebody off your case because they’re all up in your face.
I retreated to my corner and he stayed in his forever typing, typing, typing, and when I tried to make things better with a tactful smile or an inoffensive remark—even when I came at him with bananas and candy he would get all defensive and slam the laptop shut with that look. He was what you’d have to call vindictive, so after a while I backed off and tried my best to get back to Deranged All Over Town which will rival Bright Lights, Big City if I can ever get it back on track which, given what happened with the monkey’s novel, gets harder and harder to do.
The little bastard sent it off to an agent without even telling me it was done.
I’d just as soon spare myself the details of what happened next, but since the monkey can’t open bank accounts or deposit checks, not to mention endorsing them convincingly, I’ve benefited a bit. Prada and Gucci everything, as Spud could care less about outfits and frankly, he’s careless about his looks. A specially fitted car seat for trips to public appearances and book signings, where he has generously allowed me to stand in for him. In fact, as far as the world knows it is I, Billy Masterton (that’s the renowned W. B. Masterton, Pulitzer Prize winning author) who did the deed. The monkey has nothing to complain about. He has his very own room in our Brooklyn town house and I bought him three computers loaded with Storygrinder in his own special work area that I’ve fitted out so he can write his miserable, best-selling potboilers three at a time for all I care. Between us, the monkey and I put James Patterson so far behind in the popularity sweepstakes that the man can put his entire staff to work 24/7 and still never catch up on any bestseller list. And if I get the money and the credit?
What Spud doesn’t know, he doesn’t have to know.
The trouble is, this whole mad success up to and including bestsellerdom has me working day and night on the little bastard’s behalf, which means that since it all hit the fan and sprayed money on us, my cherished Deranged All Over Town is advancing at the rate of one line a day, and I’m sad to say, the line I finally manage is one I’m so pressured that I don’t get time or space in my head to think it through, which means first thing next morning, I have to delete.
Plus, Spud has me answering every single piece of his fan mail, sending thank-yous for those endless and insultingly expensive gifts and maintaining his pages on MySpace, where he has ten thousand friends, and on Facebook, where he has a mere eight thousand, although my carpals are seriously tunneled just from scrolling through the stuff, never mind the hours I spend virtually sitting in front of W. B. Masterton’s virtual bookstore on Second Life.
And the monkey? I think he just finished this century’s answer to The Brothers Karamazov, but with more sex and a lot more guilt. Where does he get off, thinking he knows anything about guilt? He, who smothered my brilliant career like an infant in its crib.
But what’s killing me, if you want to know what kills me, is the blog. I don’t get to see what the monkey writes until he posts it. I sneak looks at his printed works while I’m waiting for his platoons of fans to flood the auditorium where I am speaking, or for booksellers to unbar the doors to let the next wave of frantic admirers in, but that isn’t enough. His work is pretty good, which, frankly, is depressing, but not half as depressing as discovering from one of these gooshy-eyed teenagers or inspired surfer dudes that the son of a bitch has been dissing me on his blog.
If you want to read what Spud says about me, go ahead and read it, you’ll find more than you want to know about our relationship plastered in the pages at: http://www.wbmastertonauthor.net.
I only looked the once. After everything I’ve done for Spud, the software and the encouragement and the plush cover for his
rotten car seat in the Beemer and the patent leather evening slippers because after he saw mine he wouldn’t stop oook-oooking until I had some especially made for him; in spite of me buying him his very own organ grinder the ungrateful little bastard had the nerve to write this very day:
Those of you who think I know the way to happiness might as well know that success isn’t everything. You may think I am happy because of the American Book Award and all, but as long as I am the prisoner of a shitty writer, happiness is forever and eternally out of reach and if any of you care about me ever, you have to come to my house and GET ME OUT.
That to his eight million hits a day, forwarded to all their friends and acquaintances all over the English-speaking world!
OK, if that’s how it is, that’s how it’s going to be.
Well, if that’s what he thinks of me …
I’ll show him.
The ape’s got four more novels banked in those computers, and even if I can’t crack his passwords, he’s already raking in so much that it’s no skin off my butt if he crashes and bursts into flames, so, cool. I’m fixed for life. I don’t want to hurt the monkey, really, and I won’t hit him with a bill of particulars. I won’t even do the gratifying thing and smash his head in with an ax.
Given the pillow, which I’ve soaked in chloroform, the little fucker won’t feel a thing.
—Asimov’s SF, 2010
The Outside Event
I’m supposed to come down and sit in your, like, confession box and spill my … what? Wait! I have to do makeup. So, is this judged more on looks, or is it a performance thing?
All right, all right, this is not a contest, but. Really. Gazillion writing samples, audition demos, personal interviews and you only picked twenty of us, how is this not competitive? I am very close to someone who didn’t make it, and believe me, there are feelings … Davy, I love you, think of me as doing it for you!
