sidearm at the office. This is peacetime. He’s not in a war zone, for
God’s sake. He’s stationed right outside Moonlight Bay, at a desk job,
pushing papers and claiming he’s bored, just putting on weight and
waiting for retirement, but suddenly he’s got this pistol on him that I
don’t even know he’s been carrying until I see it now.”
Colonel Roderick Ferryman, an officer in the United States Army, had
been stationed at Fort Wyvern, which had long been one of the big
economic engines that powered the entire county.
The base had been closed eighteen months ago and now stood abandoned,
one of the many military facilities that, deemed superfluous, had been
decommissioned following the end of the Cold War.
Although I had known Angela-and to a far lesser extent, her
husband-since childhood, I had never known what, exactly, Colonel
Ferryman did in the Army.
Maybe Angela hadn’t really known, either. Until he came home that
Christmas Eve.
“Rod-he’s holding the gun in his right hand, arm out straight and
stiff, the muzzle trained square on the monkey, and he looks more
scared than I am. He looks grim. Lips tight. All the color is gone
from his face, just gone, he looks like bone. He glances at me, sees
my lip starting to swell and blood all over my chin, and he doesn’t
even ask about that, looks right back at the monkey, afraid to take his
eyes off it. The monkey’s holding the last piece of tangerine but not
eating now. It’s staring very hard at the gun. Rod says, Angie, go to
the phone. I’m going to give You a number to call.”
“Do You remember the number?” I asked.
“Doesn’t matter. It’s not in service these days. I recognized the
exchange, ’cause it was the same first three digits as his office
number on the base.”
“He had You call Fort Wyvern.”
“Yes. But the guy who answers-he doesn’t identify himself or say which
office he’s in. He just says hello, and I tell him Colonel Ferryman is
calling. Then Rod reaches for the phone with his left hand, the pistol
still in his right. He tells the guy, Ijustfound the rhesus here at my
house, in my kitchen. He listens, keeping his eyes on the monkey, and
then he says, Hell if I know, but it’s here, all right, and I need help
to bag it.
“And the monkey’s just watching all this?”
“When Rod hangs up the phone, the monkey raises its ugly little eyes
from the gun, looks straight at him, a challenging and angry look, and
then coughs out that damn sound, that awful little laugh that makes
your skin crawl. Then it seems to lose interest in Rod and me, in the
gun.
It eats the last segment of the tangerine and starts to peel another
one.”
As I lifted the apricot brandy that I had poured but not yet touched,
Angela returned to the table and picked up her half-empty glass. She
surprised me by clinking her glass against mine.
“What’re we toasting?” I asked.
“The end of the world.”
“By fire or ice?”
“Nothing that easy,” she said.
She was as serious as stone.
Her eyes seemed to be the color of the brushed stainless-steel drawer
fronts in the cold-holding room at Mercy Hospital, and her stare was
too direct until, mercifully, she shifted it from me to the cordial
glass in her hand.
“When Rod hangs up the phone, he wants me to tell him what happened, so
I do. He has a hundred questions, and he keeps asking about my
bleeding lip, about whether the monkey touched me, bit me, as if he
can’t quite believe the business with the apple. But he won’t answer
any of my questions. He just says, Angie, You don’t want to know. Of
course I want to know, but I understand what he’s telling me.”
“Privileged information, military secrets.”
“My husband had been involved in sensitive projects before,
national-security matters, but I thought that was behind him. He said
he couldn’t talk about this. Not to me. Not to anyone outside the
office. Not a word.”
Angela continued to stare at her brandy, but I sipped mine. It didn’t