This Monkey's Gone to Heaven

Chapter16, This Monkey's Gone to Heaven

Chapter Sixteen




It didn’t last long, Brittany imitating my father, just a few days and when the time came that Moonshine lifted a leg and urinated on our mascot bird Take One and we removed the shirt and the wings came off and we all gasped in shock, as Tori sewed the flimsy wings to the outside of the shirt so Take One, according to Brittany, could waddle around bumping into things with some pride in tact, Brittany transformed herself from a fifty five year old man to a topless deaf mute, but a woman once again who in the stall of the barn as we took breaks between scenes started performing favors for me—-this time truly for real—-paid for with checks against the escrow account for one good reason: I needed to put balance into my life. And dare I say it—-a week had passed before Nicole, love of my life, started to get on my nerves. It was just too much. She was starting to smother me. Every time I turned she was there, looking up at me, staring expectantly with those big brown eyes. I had to push her back to the place where I could respect her again. Starting things with Brittany worked, though in the end I’m wondering if it proved too affective. But it did help restore my patience with Johnny, Brittany’s new love and role model, who encouraged the topless Brittany, former wannabe whore now turned semi-professional, to stop using her own bare boobs as a napkin.
Tori on the other hand was fed up with the whole thing whatever definition you want to give it. Mostly-—and she would never admit this--it was because of Nicole who Tori considered more exotic and beautiful than herself, a “plain Jane white girl” as she once said.
I made Nicole stay at the Chicken Coop the day I took Tori into town for a dental appointment—-she said she had a toothache—-figuring I could get away from Nicole’s preying eyes and pick up Howser and Stanley as planned. (Even though Stanley had two cars at his disposal, I still had to chauffeur him around like he was some kind of prince since he experienced panic attacks whenever he entered the freeway and for that reason could never comfortably make it all the way to Cucumber.) Stanley had taken the Greyhound into town to meet Nastasia only to find a message on their recorder saying that her coming home had to be postponed due to an illness in the orchestra back in Moscow, making Stanley feel suddenly lighthearted again, warranting the following confession: his strong feelings for Tori he could no longer deny. “Wouldn’t it be funny if I married her, Emmett? We’d belong to the same two families.”
“Beth Ann and I are divorced, remember? And you’re still married.”
“She wants me to lose some weight. Maybe we should buy some weights. Me and you should start lifting weights, would do you think? God, I’m just so glad it’s out in the open.”
“What’s out in the open?”
“Our relationship, bro.”
Well, that relationship was short-lived, truncated like a short chop of the hand. After I dropped Tori off at the curb in front of the dentist’s, I decided to park the van and walk next store to the pharmacy to get some cough syrup. It had been more than a month and I was starting to miss that peculiar buzz.
As I walked out of the pharmacy, taking a swig from the bottle, I happened to notice out of the corner of my eye Tori ducking into a taxicab that was waiting out in front. What the hell, I thought.
I hopped into the van and followed the cab, which not surprisingly took us out to the airport. I kept thinking, I knew it, I just knew she’d do this to me. Good thing I hadn’t wasted any videotape on her, now that I’d have to replace her. Typical Tori. You couldn’t trust her. The girl could be such a flake.
The cab pulled alongside the curb at the main terminal and as Tori finished handing the driver the fare from the backseat, I got out of the van and opened the cab door for her and offered my hand. She started to say, “Oh, thank you…” until she noticed it was me. “Emmett….”
“Where do you think you’re going?”
She got out of the cab and tried to ignore me as she walked towards the doors of the terminal building. I grabbed her by the arm. “Tori, talk to me.”
“You’re not making me stay.”
“I didn’t say I was going to. Just tell me what’s going on. Why are you leaving? It’s not because of my brother, is it?”
“No, of course not. It’s just that…” She turned to look at me. “Fuck, if you can’t see it, you’ll never make a good director.”
“See what? What are you talking about?”
“I suck. I’m horrible. I can’t act and I know it. I’m making an ass of myself.”
“No, you’re not. I think you’re doing fine. I think you’re doing great.”
“Emmett, trust me. I know it. I can feel it. I thought I could do it, now I know. Good thing you haven’t been recording it as all I can say. I mean, what a relief that is.”
I tried to convince her otherwise, even mentioning the skillful way she had convinced me that Beth Ann’s first boyfriend the Mexican had been a dwarf.
“Oh, my God. Are you kidding me? That was easy. I like giving you grief. That’s natural. But the character you made up, I don’t know. I just can’t get a feel for her. So, I’m going. It’ll be better this way. You can use Brittany or that French girl.”
“Her name’s Nicole.”
“Whatever, but I’m out of here.”
“You going back to Alaska?”
“Fuck, no. It’s getting cold up there, you crazy? I’m going to Maui, spend the winter at my parent’s condo, find a surfer, someone in half-decent shape anyway.”
“It’s not going to be the same without you, Tori.”
“Oh, Emmett. You’ll do fine. Just try to keep my brother on a short leash. He thinks he can do a better job than you can.”
“He told you that?”
“Yeah. Just make life hard for him. That’s what Beth Ann and I always tried to do. My parent’s spoiled him rotten. Keep him nervous. You’ll have fun.”
I asked her to do me a favor, if she talked to Beth Ann, could she say that I was looking good and that my girlfriend Nicole was beautiful.
“Oh, Emmett. You’re such a nut job.”
“Come on, Tori.”
She laughed. “Oh, I will. I suppose you don’t want me to mention anything about your mom’s old friend though, huh? You and the senior citizen making whoopee?”
“You knew?”
“Don’t pretend. Of course I knew. You know I did.”
“Huh.”
She squinted her eyes to study me. “It must be interesting being you.”
I made her promise not to tell Beth Ann about Dorothy.
She smiled and started walking away. Then she turned and said, “You know, it was fun while it lasted. I actually had a good time, Emmett. It was fun being part of your bizarre-o world. And you are looking good. You’ve lost some weight. Beth Ann will be amazed. Just keep it up.” And then she turned on her heels and walked through the doors unburdened by any luggage or guilt of any kind.
I got into the van, then hopped back out, feeling an urge to pee, and went to the bathroom inside the terminal. Washing my hands afterwards, I happened to look at myself in the mirror. I stepped back and checked all angles. Damn, maybe I was looking good. I pulled at my loose pants and examined the free space. Well, would you look at that? I thought.
When I picked up Stanley he was acting yippy as a lap dog, actually for my benefit trying to perform a cartwheel in his front yard with a goofy expression on his face, which just looked ridiculous, so to calm his ass down I told him that Tori left as he got in.
“You’re kidding me, right?”
“No, I just saw her at the airport.”
“What, you drove her there?”
“No, I followed her there. She took a cab.”
“I thought she had a dentist’s appointment.”
“I thought so, too.” I started driving away. “I guess she lied.”
“Fuck, I can’t believe it.” He shook his head. “Stop the van.”
“What?”
“I said stop the fucking van and let me out.” He pulled the handle and started opening the door.
“OK, OK, just hold on. Let me stop.”
I stopped and he got out, slammed the door shut, and started walking back to his house.
I just sat there, shaking my head. “Shit, that was stupid of me.”
Suddenly, in the rearview mirror I noticed his wife Nastasia’s car go tearing out of his driveway.
“God damnit,” I muttered.
I turned the van around and tried to catch up to him but he was fast disappearing, so I decided once out of the neighborhood to take the shortcut, through a fallow field, once planted with sorghum. In the center of the field there was a depression, flourishing with cattails and red wing blackbirds, which I tried to avoid by gunning it, only to flood the engine which stalled, leaving me stranded on the rim of the depression still a half mile away from the airport. I got out of the van and started running and much to my surprise discovered, as I all but leapt through the remnant husks of sorghum, that I felt much lighter, that is to say, minus the load of a calving glacier. It felt wonderful. I was half-tempted to shed my shirt and show the world the new me.
I was sweating and out of breath by the time I stumbled into the terminal. I saw Tori sitting by herself at the gate, paging through some fashion magazine. Stanley was nowhere in sight. I walked back outside and kept a look-out, but after twenty minutes, realized he wasn’t coming, so I walked back to the van, got it started, and slowly drove out of the field.
The reason Stanley never made it to the airport, I found out driving through town, was that he had seen my mom ducking into The Happy Keg tavern and decided to join her for a round, parking Nastasia’s car out at the curb in front. I peered through the window of the smoke-filled tavern and saw them sitting at the bar together, my mom in such obvious delight in his company, that I left them alone while I went to Howser’s.
Five minutes later I was standing in Howser’s living room, and I found myself lying through my teeth, which came upon me so suddenly, the following words spilling forth so strange and so bewildering it was as though my greatest enemy had taken over.
“Boy, do I have a surprise for you,” I said to Howser.
“What?”
“You won’t believe your eyes.”
“Well, what?”
“Boy, oh boy…”
“Oh, shut up…”
“No, I’m serious.”
“Well, then tell me.”
I paused and stood there smiling.
“Nicole is waiting for you at the Chicken Coop.”
The fact that she didn’t know this would prove to be a problem at first. I was supposed to tell Howser the truth. That’s what she wanted. “’e’ll understand the way you did when I left you for ‘im.”
“You think he’ll understand that you went back to me?”
“Yeah, I do,” she said like she was completely sane.
After saying what I had to say to Howser and convincing him that I was totally serious, that Nicole had gotten off the plane, leaving Dirk to go back to him, I excused myself and went into his bathroom and shut the door behind me. I dropped to my knees and rested my head on the toilet seat. I folded my hands and said a quick prayer. “Please, please…Let someone else take over. I beg you.”
I heard Howser excitedly shout, “Let’s get the show on the road.”