“You realize who I mean? ” I asked.
“Yes.” She knew that Lilly Wing once Lilly Travis had been the first woman
I had loved and the first to break my heart.
Sasha is the second woman I have loved in the most profound sense of the
word, and she swears that she will never break my heart. I believe her.
She never lies.
Sasha has also assured me that if I ever cheat on her, she’ll use her
Black & Decker power drill to put a half-inch bit through my heart.
I have seen the drill. The bitsan extensive set that go with it are kept
in a plastic case. On the steel shank of the half-inch auger bit, using
red nail polish, she has painted my name, Chris. I’m pretty sure this is
a joke.
She doesn’t have to worry. If I ever broke her heart, I would drill my
own chest and save her the trouble of having to wash her hands
afterward.
Call me Mr. Romance.
“What’s the hand-holding about? ” Sasha asked.
“You’ll find out when you get there.”
“Any message? ” she asked.
“Hope. That’s the message. There’s still hope.” I wasn’t as confident as
I sounded. There might be no truth in the message I’d just sent to
Lilly. I’m not proud of the fact that, unlike Sasha, I sometimes lie.
“Where are you? ” Sasha asked.
“Dead Town.”
“Damn.”
“Well, you asked.”
“Always in trouble.”
“My motto.” I didn’t dare tell her about Orson, not even indirectly,
using poetry code. My voice might crack, revealing the intensity of my
anguish, which I was striving mightily to contain. If she thought he was
in serious jeopardy, she would insist on coming to Wyvern to search for
him.
She would have been a big help. I’d recently been surprised to discover
Sasha possessed self-defense skills and weapons expertise that weren’t
taught in any disc jockey school. Though she didn’t look like an Amazon,
she could do battle like one. She was, however, an even better friend
than fighter, and Lilly Wing needed Sasha’s sympathy and compassion more
than I needed backup.
“Chris, you know what your problem is? ”
“Too good-looking? ”
“Yeah, right, ” she said sarcastically.
“Too smart? ”
“Your problem is reckless caring.”
“Then I better ask my doctor for some who-gives-a-damn pills.”
“I love you for it, Snowman, but it’s going to get you killed.”
“This is for a friend, ” I reminded her, meaning Lilly Wing.
“Anyway, I’ll be all right. Bobby’s coming.”
“Ah. Then I’ll start working on your eulogy.”
“I’ll tell him you said that.”
“The Two Stooges.”
“Let me guess we’re Curly and Larry.”
“Right. Neither of you is smart enough to be Moe.”
“Love you, Good all.”
“Love you, Snowman.” I switched off the phone and was about to turn away
from the window, when I saw movement in the street again. This time it
wasn’t merely the shadow of a cloud gliding across a corner of the moon.
This time I saw monkeys.
I clipped the phone to my belt, freeing both hands.
The monkeys were not in a barrel and not in a pack. The correct word for
monkeys traveling in a group is not pack or herd, not pride or flock but
troop.
Recently, I have learned a great deal about monkeys, not only the term
troop. For the same reason, if I were living in the Florida Everglades,
I would become an expert on alligators.
Here, now, deep in Dead Town, a troop of monkeys passed the bungalow,
moving in the direction I’d been headed. In the moonlight, their coats
looked silvery rather than brown.
In spite of this luster, which made them more visible than they would
have been otherwise, I had difficulty taking an accurate count.
Five, six, eight … Some traveled on all fours, some were half erect, a
few stood up almost as straight as a human. Ten, eleven, twelve …
They were not moving fast, and they repeatedly raised their heads,
scanning the night ahead and on both sides, sometimes peering
suspiciously back the way they had come. Although their pace and alert
demeanor might signify caution or even fear, I suspected that they were