and when he was dead, there was nothing left to cut out of me.”
She lowered her fist. She opened it. She stared at the cordial
glass-and then carefully set it on the table.
“Angela, what was wrong with the monkey?” I asked.
She didn’t reply.
Images of candle flames danced in her eyes. Her solemn face was like a
stone shrine to a dead goddess.
I repeated the question: “What was wrong with the monkey?”
When at last Angela spoke, her voice was hardly louder than a whisper:
“It wasn’t a monkey.”
I knew that I had heard her correctly, yet her words made no sense.
“Not a monkey? But You said-” “It appeared to be a monkey.”
“Appeared?
“And it was a monkey, of course.”
Lost, I said nothing.
“Was and wasn’t,” she whispered. “And that’s what was wrong with
it.”
She did not seem entirely rational. I began to wonder if her fantastic
story had been more fantasy than truth-and if she knew the
difference.
Turning away from the votive candles, she met my eyes. She was not
ugly anymore, but she wasn’t pretty again, either. Hers was a face of
ashes and shadows. “Maybe I shouldn’t have called You. I was
emotional about your dad dying. I wasn’t thinking clearly.”
“You said I need to know . . – to defend myself She nodded. “You
do.
That’s right. You need to know. You’re hanging by such a thin
thread.
You need to know who hates You.”
I held out my hand to her, but she didn’t take it.
“Angela,” I pleaded, “I want to know what really happened to my
parents.”
“They’re dead. They’re gone. I loved them, Chris, loved them as
friends, but they’re gone.”
“I still need to know.”
“If You’re thinking that somebody has to pay for their deaths . . .
then You have to realize that nobody ever will. Not in your
lifetime.
Not in anyone’s. No matter how much of the truth You learn, no one
will be made to pay. No matter what You try to do.
I found that I had drawn my hand back and had curled it into a fist on
the table. After a silence, I said, “We’ll see.”
“I’ve quit my job at Mercy this evening.” Revealing this sad news, she
appeared to shrink, until she resembled a child in adult clothing, once
more the girl who had brought iced tea, medicine, and pillows to her
disabled mother. “I’m not a nurse anymore.”
“What will You do?”
She didn’t answer.
“It was all You ever wanted to be,” I reminded her.
“Doesn’t seem any point to it now. Bandaging wounds in a war is vital
work. Bandaging wounds in the middle of Armageddon is foolish.
Besides, I’m becoming. I’m becoming. Don’t You see?”
In fact, I didn’t see.
“I’m becoming. Another me. Another Angela. Someone I don’t want to
be. Something I don’t dare think about.”
I still didn’t know what to make of her apocalyptic talk. Was it a
rational response to the secrets of Wyvern or the result of the
personal despair arising from the loss of her husband?
She said, “If You insist on knowing about this, then once You know,
there’s nothing to do but sit back, drink what pleases You most, and
watch it all end.”
“I insist anyway.”
“Then I guess it’s time for show-and-tell,” Angela said with evident
mbivalence. “But . . . oh, Chris, it’s going to break your heart.”
Sadness elongated her features. “I think You need to know . . . but
it’s going to break your heart.”
When she turned from me and crossed the kitchen, I began to follow
her.
She stopped me. “I’ll have to turn some lights on to get what I
need.
You better wait here, and I’ll bring everything back.”
I watched her navigate the dark dining room. In the living room, she
switched on a single lamp, and from there she moved out of sight.
Restlessly, I circled this room to which I had been confined, my mind
spinning as I prowled. The monkey was and was not a monkey, and its
wrongness lay in this simultaneous wasness and notness. This would