This Monkey's Gone to Heaven

Chapter 4, This Monkey's Gone to Heaven

Chapter Four





I was at the Truck Stop getting supplies for the next couple days: potato chips, hot dogs, and pop. I was on page eighty two. I had eight pages to go, two more days I figured, then I'd be done with the script. I kept my look out for Brittany. I was going to stay clear of her. I didn't want any trouble. Obviously, I wasn't going back to her apartment to get my rabbits. I thought of it, but, shit, knowing her now...the way she was, she'd have someone waiting for me. Maybe her pimp--waiting in the closet with his ivory cane. Beat me to a pulp, then shanghai me to some mining camp in South America, pimp me out to the big and burly where I'd have to screw my way out. No thanks.
I had my pile of groceries on the counter at the cashier. I kept turning around, eyeing the cough syrup on the shelf. Don't, don't do it, I kept telling myself. Be strong. Ah, fuck it. Maybe just one--No, are you crazy--SEVERAL--of course--to make myself quit. It'll be my last night for good. I'll be so sick in the morning it'll make me give it up for good. It was the great idea that came standard with my addiction. Tonight will be like a celebration. My last night abusing cough syrup--hee-haw!!

I wrote out a check for the clerk and handed it to him. I looked at all the bottles of cough syrup I had. Was that going to be enough?
I was just about to say, Hold on, I need to get a few more things when I noticed the look on the cashier's face, a pimply-faced seventeen year old boy.
He looked at me and said, "Your check, it bounced."
"What? That's impossible. I have like four hundred dollars left in that account. What the hell?! There's no way. Try it again. You must be making a mistake."
"I tried it three times. It won't go through, I'm sorry. Don't you got a visa or something?"
"No, I don't. Let me see that thing." He handed me the check and I looked it over closely. It was the check from our joint checking account. Beth Ann and I had an agreement. It was for me to use and if she needed it in an emergency she'd tell me.
I called the bank and found out that I was overdrawn. I was in the hole two hundred and thirty six dollars. Five days earlier someone had written a check for cash to the amount of six hundred dollars.
"Well, who signed the check? Was it my wife?" I asked the teller.
"No, you did. It was signed by Emmett Monk," she said.
I went through my checkbook and found that some of the end checks were missing. Someone had stolen them. Immediately, I thought, Dorothy, that fat good-for-nothing!
I hopped in my car and started driving towards town thinking, Why now? Of all times, why is this happening to me now? It seems as though I've sailed through life up to this point. I'd always had an amazing amount of good fortune that seems to have fallen into my lap at the time I needed it most. But now that I'm trying something different, you know, working on my first movie script, it's not going as planned. I mean, with some things. With money and love mostly. But then I started thinking about that and found that I had a grave misunderstanding of my own life. It simply wasn't true. I'm always going through these small problems, from one to the next. Looking back casually, it all appears nice and rosy. But it never has been. The only good luck I could remember came in the form of Beth Ann and suddenly I was missing her again.
I looked at my gas gauge. I was running on empty and I didn't have a dime to my name. I was halfway between my parent's house and the Chicken Coop. If I ran out of gas now, I'd be shit out of luck. Well, I could try and hitchhike, but I've never had much luck at that. Who wants to pick up an ugly fat fuck? (I for one don’t.) I had to find a payphone and call Beth Ann. I needed money transferred into our joint checking account. I had no choice but to call her. A thousand bucks just to put me in the clear. I'd pay her back. What's a thousand dollars when you're making several million a year on Sunset Blvd? A thou's pocket change.
Thank God there was a truck stop. I couldn't remember ever seeing it before. It was like an oasis or a mirage. I took the exit ramp and pulled in on fumes. I went to the bathroom, peed like a racehorse, then found a payphone.
"Representative Monk's office, how may I help you?" That was Patty, Beth Ann's soft-talking chief of staff. Her voice would've been perfect for some kid's show, it was so nice and sweet.
"Hey, Patty. It's me. Is she busy?"
"Is this Emmett?"
"Yeah, how are you?"
"She's...Well, hold on...Just a second."
She put me on hold.
Patty came back and said, "Emmett, can she call you back?"
"Well, not really. I'm at a payphone."
"Let me tell her."
She put me on hold again.
"Emmett," she said. "She says call her at home tonight."
"It's kind of an emergency, Patty."
She put me on hold.
"Emmett," it was Beth Ann, sounding slightly annoyed. "What's wrong?"
"Listen, I'm sorry for bugging you, but you need to get me some money. I've been...what's the word, you know when someone's...Forged, that's it. Beth Ann, someone stole a check and forged my name. They've cleared our joint checking account. I need you to put some money into it for me. Could you do that, please? I'll pay you back, it'll be a loan, I promise."
"You're joking, right?"
"Someone stole it, Beth Ann. It's not my fault."
"Emmett, come on. I'm paying for all the daycare, I'm not asking you to help out in any way financially, and now you're asking for money? What's wrong with you?"
There was a certain distance in her tone that I didn't much care for, like this was strictly business.
"What's going on, Beth Ann?"
"What? What are you talking about?"
"Your tone. You're treating me differently."
"Well, I'm slightly annoyed. You're asking for money. Can't I be annoyed?"
"Oh, stop. I know you. Tell me what's going on? You've met someone, haven't you? I can tell, you can't lie to me, Beth Ann."
There was silence.
"You haven't been to your parent's lately?" she asked.
"No, why?"
She grew quiet again.
"Beth Ann..." I was getting very nervous.
"Emmett, I didn't want to do this over the phone. It's all in the letter."
"What letter?"
"It should be at your parents. I sent it a few days ago."
"Well, what's in it? What does it say?"
"Can't you just drive home and read it. It'll be better that way. It's all in the letter. I'll put some money into our joint account, just go home and read it, OK?"
"Why can't you just tell me over the phone?"
"Do you want the money or not?"
Beth Ann transferred eight hundred dollars into our account and I filled up the car and drove to my parent's house all full of angst. When I got there, no one was home. I found the key they kept hidden in the garage above the door and let myself in. I found the stack of mail on the kitchen counter and in it was the letter from Beth Ann. I started opening the letter only to find that someone had already tampered with it. It had been opened, then taped shut. It figured. My nosey mom, smelling trouble. She couldn't wait for me to tell her, she had to find out herself.
I started reading the letter. Immediately, I had to sit down. I've kept the letter and here's what it said.
Dear Emmett,
First off, know that I will always love you, there's no question. But lately I've been lying to you. Two weeks ago you called me and I told you that I'd just come home from a party at Blue's. That was a lie. Actually, I had just gotten home from a trip to Mexico. The kids stayed with Tori. My parents thought I needed a vacation, so they paid my way. I went to Acapulco. Emmett, I know you'll understand what I'm about to tell you. You're a talented writer and as a writer I know you'll see the good fortune, however hidden, in what has happened to me. I don't know when I fell out of love with you, but I know it's happened, otherwise I wouldn't have been able to so easily fall in love with the man I met in Mexico. His name is Marco. He was the captain of a tour boat and that's where we met. Yes, he's young--ten years my junior--but he's such a sweet man, very tender and gentle and only after living with us for one week the kids simply adore him. Emmett, I'm planning to marry Marco. The wedding will be this October in Mexico. You might think this is awful fast, but I know he's the right man for me. Also, I want you to know that this will be my last term as Representative. We're planning on selling everything and moving down to Mexico. It'll be good for the kids. They can learn Spanish and family life is so much nicer down there. We're going to open a bar and restaurant for tourists. My parents are going to be major investors, as they see real potential there.
There’s more, a lot more, but that's as far as I got that day. I was sitting on the couch and suddenly I felt my body sliding forward and I fell to my knees with the letter in my hand. I just kept staring, not thinking, in a state of shock I guess, watching the shadows move across the floor. I must have been there for hours, because when I heard the snap of a beer can and a beer was thrust into my view it was nighttime. My mom was crying.
"Your dad, he wants a divorce," she blubbered.