rings of light quivered like the smoldering eyes of an apparition:
images of the trio of ruby-red glasses on the table.
Encouraging her to continue, I said, “It wouldn’t go outside.”
Instead of responding, she rose from her chair, stepped to the back
door, and tested the dead bolt to be sure it was still engaged.
“Angela?
Hushing me, she pulled aside the curtain to peer at the patio and the
moonlit yard, pulled it aside with trembling caution and only an inch,
as if she expected to discover a hideous face pressed to the far side
of the pane, gazing in at her.
MY cordial glass was empty. I picked up the bottle, hesitated, and
then put it down without pouring more.
When Angela turned away from the door, she said, “It wasn’t just a
laugh, Chris. It was this frightening sound I could never adequately
describe to You. It was an evil . . . an evil little cackle, a
vicious edge to it. Oh, yes, I know what You’re thinking-this was just
an animal, just a monkey, so it couldn’t be either good or evil.
Maybe mean but not vicious, because animals can be bad-tempered, sure,
but not consciously malevolent. That’s what You’re thinking.
Well, I’m telling You, this one was more than just mean. This laugh
was the coldest sound I’ve ever heard, the coldest and the ugliestand
evil.”
“I’m still with You,” I assured her.
Instead of returning to her chair from the door, she moved to the
kitchen sink. Every square inch of glass in the windows above the sink
was covered by the curtains, but she plucked at those panels of yellow
fabric to make doubly sure we were fully screened from spying eyes.
Turning to stare at the table as though the monkey sat there even now,
Angela said, “I got the broom, figuring I’d shoo the thing onto the
floor and then toward the door. I mean, I didn’t take a whack at it or
anything, just brushed at it. You know?”
“Sure.”
“But it wasn’t intimidated,” she said. “It exploded with rage.
Threw down the half-eaten tangerine and grabbed the broom and tried to
pull it away from me. When I wouldn’t let go, it started to climb the
broom straight toward my hands.”
Jesus.
“Nimble as anything. Sofast. Teeth bared and screeching, spitting,
coming straight at me, so I let go of the broom, and the monkey fell to
the floor with it, and I backed up until I bumped into the
refrigerator.”
She bumped into the refrigerator again. The muffled clink of bottles
came from the shelves within.
“It was on the floor, right in front of me. It knocked the broom
aside.
Chris, it was so furious. Fury out of proportion to anything that had
happened. I hadn’t hurt it, hadn’t even touched it with the broom, but
it wasn’t going to take any crap from me.”
“You said rhesuses are basically peaceable.”
“Not this one. Lips skinned back from its teeth, screeching, running
at me and then back and then at me again, hopping up and down, tearing
at the air, glaring at me so hatefully, pounding the floor with its
fists .
. .”
Both of her sweater sleeves had partly unrolled, and she drew her hands
into them, out of sight. This memory monkey was so vivid that
apparently she half expected it to fling itself at her right here,
right now, and bite off the tips of her fingers.
“It was like a troll,” she said, “a gremlin, some wicked thing out of a
storybook. Those dark-yellow eyes.”
I could almost see them myself Smoldering.
“And then suddenly, it leaps up the cabinets, onto the counter near me,
all a wink. It’s right there”-she pointed-“beside the refrigerator,
inches from me, at eye level when I turn my head. It hisses at me, a
mean hiss, and its breath smells like tangerines. That’s how close we
are. I knew-” She herself to listen to the house again. She turned
her head to the left to look toward the open door to the unlighted
dining room.
Her paranoia was contagious. And because of what had happened to me