found her husband’s body in the garage.
Candlelight flickered across her eyelids.
In time, she opened her eyes, but for a while they remained fixed on a
faraway sight. She sipped her brandy.
“I was happy,” she said. “The cookie smells. The Christmas music.
And the florist had delivered a huge poinsettia from my sister,
Bonnie.
It was there on the end of the counter, so red and cheerful. I felt
wonderful, really wonderful. It was the last time I ever felt
wonderful-and the last time I ever will. So . . . I was spooning
cookie batter onto a baking sheet when I heard this sound behind me, an
odd little chirrup, and then something like a sigh, and when I turned,
there was a monkey sitting right on this table.”
“Good heavens.”
“A rhesus monkey with these awful dark-yellow eyes. Not like their
normal eyes. Strange.”
“Rhesus? You recognized the species?”
“I paid for nursing school by working as a lab assistant for a
scientist at UCLA. The rhesus is one of the most commonly used animals
in experiments. I saw a lot of them.”
“And suddenly one of them is sitting right here.”
“There was a bowl of fruit on the table-apples and tangerines.
The monkey was peeling and eating one of the tangerines. Neat as You
please, this big monkey placing the peelings in a tidy pile.”
“Big?” I asked.
“You’re probably thinking of an organ grinder’s monkey, one of those
tiny cute little things. Rhesuses aren’t like that.”
“How big?”
“Probably two feet tall. Maybe twenty-five pounds.”
Such a monkey would seem enormous when encountered, unexpected, in the
middle of a kitchen table.
I said, “You must have been pretty surprised.”
“More than surprised. I was a little scared. I know how strong those
buggers are for their size. Mostly they’re peaceable, but once in a
while You get one with a mean streak, and he’s a real handful.”
“Not the kind of monkey anyone would keep as a pet.”
“God, no. Not anyone normal-at least not in my book. Well, I’ll admit
that rhesuses can be cute sometimes, with their pale little faces and
that ruff of fur. But this one wasn’t cute.” Clearly, she could see
it in her mind’s eye. “No, not this one.”
“So where did it come from?”
Instead of answering, Angela stiffened in her chair and cocked her
head, listening intently to the house.
I couldn’t hear anything out of the ordinary.
Apparently, neither did she. Yet when she spoke again, she did not
relax. Her thin hands were locked clawlike on the cordial glass.
“I couldn’t figure how the thing got inside, into the house. December
wasn’t overly warm that year. No windows or doors were open.”
“You didn’t hear it enter the room?”
“No. I was making noise with the cookie sheets, the mixing bowls.
Music on the radio. But the damn thing must’ve been sitting on the
table a minute or two, anyway, because by the time I realized it was
there, it had eaten half the tangerine.”
Her gaze swept the kitchen, as though from the corner of her eye she
had seen purposeffil movement in the shadows at the periphery.
After steadying her nerves with brandy once more, she said, “Disgusting
a monkey right on the kitchen table, of all places.”
Grimacing, she brushed one trembling hand across the polished pine, as
though a few of the creature’s hairs might still be clinging to the
table four years after the incident.
“What did You do?” I pressed.
“I edged around the kitchen to the back door, opened it, hoping the
monkey would run out.”
“But it was enjoying the tangerine, feeling pretty comfortable where it
was,” I guessed.
“Yeah. It looked at the open door, then at me-and it actually seemed
to laugh. This little tittering noise.”
“I swear I’ve seen dogs laugh now and then. Monkeys probably do,
too.”
Angela shook her head. “Can’t remember any of them laughing in the
lab.
Of course, considering what their lives were like . . .
they didn’t have much reason to be in high spirits.”
She looked up uneasily at the ceiling, on which three small overlapping