by Bill Olver
But now things would be different. He’d nailed a plum assignment for People magazine, a day with the literary lion in his East Hampton mansion. In addition to scoring a national byline, Chad would get to sit at the knee of a master storyteller and soak up his style and M.O., share some food and some laughs and who knows, maybe Gross’s agent or publisher if Chad were lucky.
As he packed a small valise with his tape-recorder, sweater, allergy pills, tissues, notebooks and pens, Chad felt like pinching himself to see if he was dreaming.
“O-o-w!” he cried, rubbing his skinny bicep. That overly enthusiastic pinch was going to leave a mark but it confirmed his fabulous, amazing, life-changing luck. Time to hop in his old jalopy and head for the Hamptons!
◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊
The first surprise Chad had at Norman Gross’s waterfront mansion was the greasy, rumpled affect of the man who answered the door and motioned him in. He was more than a hundred pounds overweight, his hair was frightful and he smelled of garlic, tobacco, and sweat. The second surprise was that this was no hygiene-challenged domestic; the man was, in fact, Gross.
“I know,” he grumbled as he led the young journalist into a sparsely-furnished room overlooking the ocean, “I’ve let myself go. And never quite got around to changing that photo on the dust jacket of my books. That was me a quarter century ago.”
“Well, Mr. Gross, you certainly don’t look, um…” said Chad, digging himself into a deep hole. “Hey, look at this view!” Cheeks aflame, Chad rushed over to the picture window and beheld the majestic sun-splashed Atlantic.
“Yes, I love the water, always have,” said his malodorous host, appearing at Chad’s elbow. “Instead of bathing, I swim in the cold briny deep, at least once a week.”
“That often?” said Chad, immediately regretting his tactless remark. No wonder he couldn’t get ahead.
“How ‘bout a glass of Scotch?” said Mr. Gross, blithely ignoring the fact that it was not yet ten in the morning. “And please, call me Norm.”
“Er, no thanks, um…Norm, alcohol gives me the runs. Do you have any sparkling water?”
“Nah, I never buy that crap, I drink my water straight from the tap,” said Norm, walking over to the bar and filling a glass with amber liquid. “They say Hemingway loved his Glenfiddich neat. And if it’s good enough for Papa, well, it’s good enough for me!”
“Ha, ha! Perhaps I should call you Ernest, then,” said Chad, his laughter dying as the other man’s expression remained unchanged.
“And what’s your name again, young fellow?” said Norm, taking a healthy belt of his drink.
“Um, Chad. Chad Fairchild.”
“Seriously?”
“Uh, yeah, that’s my name.”
“Amazing,” said the great man, absent-mindedly stroking his beard. “I’ve written more novels and short stories than any man alive, and not once have I named a character ‘Chad’. Not once!”
He drained his glass, picked up the half-empty bottle and poured himself another. “Are you sure I can’t interest you in a drink, son?”
“No, Norm, uh, really, I’m fine,” said Chad, nervously adjusting his glasses.
“Then what can I do for you?” said the literary icon, looking out the window with a thousand-yard stare. His hairy gut peeked out from under his sweat-stained undershirt.
“Um, I’m here to interview you for People magazine.”
“People magazine, eh? And what does that tawdry purveyor of pablum want to know, my favorite sex position or the title of my latest release? That’s easy, they’re both ‘The Missionary’.”
“Ha, ha! ‘The Missionary’, I get it,” said Chad, reaching for his notebook and pen. “A heart-pounding exploration into the darkest recesses of—”
A murderous glare from his subject cut Chad short. He took a deep breath and determined he was not having an asthma attack, just a severe case of hoof-in-mouth.
“Seriously, Mr. Gross, er…Norm,” he said, “the world knows your work but next to nothing about you. The magazine sent me here to learn who you are and how you do it. Frankly, I’m most curious to know your views on writing, what the process of writing means to you, how you find your muse.”
Norm walked over to a wooden box on the bookshelf, took out a half-smoked stogie and lit it up. “It’s all been done, my boy,” he said, pulling on the cigar and blowing a big cloud of smoke into Chad’s face. “There’s nothing new to write, it’s all just a rehashing of the same old stories.”
After a brief fit of coughing, Chad wrote in his notebook, It’s all been done and Next time, don’t forget your rescue inhaler. He cleared his throat and asked, “But how do you do it? That’s what everyone wants to know. How does the legendary Norman Gross keep turning out classics, what’s the secret of your amazing fecundity?”
Gross cracked up, cigar smoke spurting out his nose. “Fecundity? I’m not sure I know the meaning of that word but I like it, it sounds dirty.” He took a sip of his Scotch and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
“I like you, kid, so I’m gonna show you how I do it. But this is strictly off the record, are we clear on that?”
Staring into the man’s bloodshot eyes, Chad felt a pang of fear, or perhaps it was just indigestion. “Crystal,” he said.
“Good, now follow me.” The man walked over to a wood-paneled wall, pressed a button and a door miraculously appeared, the door to an elevator. “Now listen, bubbeleh,” said Norm as they got on the elevator, “keep your hands in your pockets. The bastards bite.”
Norm punched a button and the elevator dropped like a stone, finally stopping at a floor far below the Earth’s surface. The elevator door opened and Chad and his mentor stepped out into a scene of complete and utter chaos: a room full of monkeys. As the Macarena blasted from hidden speakers, an orangutan ran circles around the room, a howler monkey swung from the chandelier, and two chimpanzees played ping-pong with a paddle in each hand. The room stank of urine, scat, and spoiled fruit, some of which adorned the carpet, walls, and ceiling, and a huge, lowland gorilla was somehow managing to nap in the corner.
“This is the rec room,” yelled Norm, ducking as half an apple flew past his head. “But what you want to see is in here.” He led Chad though a door and down a long, blissfully silent corridor.
“Everything’s sound-proofed,” the legendary author explained, “or else you’d lose your friggin’ mind. Here we are.”
A pair of double-doors slid open and Chad entered a large room that looked like nothing as much as a busy newsroom at a major metropolitan newspaper. Industrial-strength fluorescent lights shone down on a honeycomb of at least a hundred desks and swivel chairs, and the only sound was the loud staccato tapping of keys. But instead of intrepid cub reporters and hard-boiled journalists, these seats were occupied by monkeys, whaling away on old-fashioned typewriters.
“Gotta use typewriters,” said Norm, “they type too damn hard for computer keyboards.”
Chad stood there, mouth agape, until he saw a bearded tamarin pluck a flea from his neighbor’s head and swallow it. He closed his mouth and through clenched teeth said, “Norm, what on Earth are they doing?”
“Why, they’re working, me fine bucko,” said Gross, grinning widely through a cloud of cigar smoke. “Slowly adding to the collected works of Norman Gross. This is one of fifty production rooms in the facility, ten-thousand monkeys typing in twelve-hour shifts.”
“Typing?” wheezed Chad, suffering significant asthma symptoms thanks to the wealth of monkey dander. “Typing what?”
“Oh, pretty much anything. Poetry, love stories, textbooks, whodunits, and of course, a huge amount of garbled nonsense. You name it, they do it.” Norm took a moment to pick his nose, then stared at the dried, crusty treasure before wiping it on his pants leg.
“I gather the monkeys’ work at the end of the week and edit it. They’re good for five-to-six books a month. I publish the good stuff under my name and the genre work under pseudonyms. W
e give the textbooks to schools and send the completely unintelligible crap to the literary journals.”
Chad was speechless, not to mention slightly short of breath.
“So, go ahead, young Master Fairchild, have a look around,” said his portly host, flashing crowded, tobacco-stained incisors.
Young Master Fairchild walked away in a daze before turning down a side aisle and looking over the monkeys’ shoulders as they worked.
A pygmy marmoset typed: Blln sune92 m skk!*7 Ij&43
A spider monkey wrote: His heart pounded frantically as he slipped his hand down the back of her white lace panties. The cheeky furball winked at Chad as he walked away.
A black and white Colobus stared at blank paper, undoubtedly blocked.
And from a tufted capuchin, this: It was a new dawn for vampires and werewolves. They would have to unite against the blood-sucking lawyers or face extinction!
Chad could not believe his eyes as he toured the room. From a thousand furry fingers came nonsense and iambic pentameter, total garbage and rocket science, wasted paper and porn, some of it quite good. There was an elderly lemur wearing a green eyeshade whose work would have been perfect for Reader’s Digest.
So this was how the greatest author of our time did it, and Chad had agreed not to tell a soul. Gross stood by the entrance, smoking his cigar and absent-mindedly scratching his ass as Chad came upon a wizened baboon in the corner. He watched as the old baboon wrote: It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness…
“Why, that’s truly fantastic,” said Chad regaining his voice. “You’re a genius!”
Thanks wrote the baboon.
“Um…you understand English?”
Duh! typed the monkey, rolling his eyes.
“By any chance, do you know how to text?”
Double-duh!
Chad took a quick peek at Gross—he was busy drinking from a pocket flask—and slipped the baboon his cell. “This is my work phone, my personal number’s on there under ‘Fairchild, Chadwick’.”
Chadwick? Are you serious?
“Don’t you start,” rasped Chad, and then softening his voice, he said, “And what’s your name, old fella?”
Tap-tap-tappety-tap-tap: Aristotle.
“Really!” said Chad.
No, just messing with you. The name’s Barry.
“Well, Barry, it was very nice meeting you. And I look forward to texting you,” he said, resting his hand on the beast’s hairy shoulder.
Like that, Barry snapped and Chad jumped back, cursing and howling and waving his bloodied hand.
Norm came waddling over, gave the baboon a dirty look and escorted the bleeding, wheezing interviewer out of the room and into a different elevator than the one they took down. “I told you they bite,” he grumbled as the doors whisked close.
Later, Chad sat on a couch in the study, having been inoculated for tuberculosis, a bag of frozen peas on his heavily-bandaged hand. Although it was only a little past noon, his host was totally plotzed, already well into his second fifth of Glenfiddich. It was clearly time to go.
Chad thanked him, although there was practically nothing he could use for his magazine piece, and said, “There’s just one thing I don’t understand, Norm. The monkeys were going wild in the rec room, pounding their chests and throwing shit at me. How do you get them to behave so well when they’re working?”
“Simple, my boy,” said Gross, grinning crookedly. “Their collars contain tiny two-volt batteries.” He removed what looked like a pager from his belt. “They sit still and type—twelve hours a day, seven days a week—or zaap, they get a nice little shock for their trouble. I got the idea from a Peter Gabriel song.”
Chad was aghast. His idol was a drunken lout, a phony, and worst of all, a user and abuser of monkeys. Chad handed the man his frozen vegetables and left without a word.
Later that night as he lay in bed, unable to sleep, Chad received a text message from Barry, the silver-haired baboon: Sorry bout the bite. Its act U ly a sign of affection.
Chad replied: H8 to C U pissed off!
Barry: LOL! Seriously…You must help me escape, I h8 it here. I’d B good 4 U, I’d B surprisingly good 4 U.
Chad: Is that frm W. Side Story?
Barry: No, Evita. I jst luv Madonna.
Chad: LOL!! Barry, I think thish is the beginning of a B U tiful friendship.
Barry: Here’s looking at u kid! 2moro midnight, on the beach.
◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊
Chad pulled into the driveway a little too fast and skidded to a halt perilously close to the garage door. The Lamborghini Diablo was clearly going to take a little getting used to. He hurried inside, up the spiral staircase, past the glass-enclosed living room, finally arriving at the combination kitchen/patio on the roof.
“Sorry I’m late,” he said, setting his packages down on the stainless steel counter, “but these nitwits at the grocery store kept pestering me for my autograph.”
“No worries, mate,” said an electronic voice with a passable Aussie accent. Barry’s hand was a blur as he typed on a small laptop. “What’s for din-dins?” said the tinny voice.
“Well, I’m having a nice steak with a tossed salad and baked potato. And for you, I got some fresh boysenberries, two dozen crickets, and a freshly-killed rabbit I found by the side of the highway.”
“Ah, nothing like a little bruised hare on the barby, eh?”
“And that’s not all,” said Chad, hastening over to the table and lounge chairs where Barry sat, all decked out in flowered Jams and gold Ray-Bans, watching the sun set over the placid Pacific.
Chad reached into a paper bag and pulled out a bottle of Dom Peringnon, ’07.
“To celebrate our latest bestseller, ‘Bond Time for Bonzo’, the heart-warming story of a poor circus chimp who makes it big on Wall Street!”
He popped the cork, filled a couple of flutes to overflowing, and handed one to the baboon.
“To Bonzo!” toasted Chad.
“And to us, mate!” chirped the laptop, as man and beast clinked glasses and took a sip of the bubbly.
“Oy, that’s a wee bit of wonderful,” said Barry, typing furiously. “But I thought alcohol gave you the shits.”
Chad plopped himself down in the lounge chair next to Barry’s and patted his burgeoning gut. “Actually, I’m developing a taste for it,” he said.
¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤
Pete McArdle (If an Infinite Number of Monkeys…) is an occasionally sentient carbon-based life form who’s getting perilously close to his expiration date. He likes to think this adds a certain urgency to his writing. Before he croaks, he’d like to purchase a big black Charger with the vanity plate “A NUN’S TALE.” One never knows, do one?
(back to table of contents)
¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤
GORILLA
by Christine Hamm
He says, Gorilla, huh! as if it were something with a mind of its own. The gorilla is not real; the gorilla is made out of rubber, synthetic hair and dark. The gorilla has real action eyes! They blink up and down when you snap your head back and forth. The gorilla tastes like Old Spice and hair cream on the inside, with a faint odor of Amstel and burning leather.
When the gorilla feels something bite the skin under his shoulder blade where he can’t reach, his fur ripples. It’s actually a series of muscles contracting and releasing along his spine, but it looks like a breeze snaking up a grassy hill.
Most mornings, you find the gorilla quivering in the corner of your bedroom like a wild animal, his breath rasping and faltering. You pull the covers up over your arms and neck; you pretend not to notice.
¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤
MY DARLING, THE GORILLA
by Christine Hamm
He rips the door off the hinges at 4am—it’s not even locked. He
stumbles and hits his
head on the chair. He lies still, his mouth slightly open. I can smell
> the piss on his pants—
there’s a yellow trail of translucent vomit down one arm. His eyes
are so swollen they
look like leaking red fruits, as pulpy as plums. He makes himself a
bowl of blackberry ice
cream and falls asleep. He tips over, wakes up; he steps on the cat’s
tail, he steps on the
cat. He leaves the refrigerator door open, knocks milk all over the
red-tiled floor. He
turns on the gas stove. He tries to light a cigarette and sets his
beard on fire. Milk
footprints follow him into the bathroom. He tries to make a knot
of the shower curtain
and hang himself, he tries to take off his shoes and pants at the
same time. He ends up
face down in the tub, scrabbling and slipping. He pauses: his breath
is wet and heavy.
After a moment, he asks for a beer.
¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤
GORILLA GIRL
by Christine Hamm
for Frances Murphy
I’m not going to end with the punchline, “and the gorilla girl is a man” because it’s more complicated than that. Like many girls, she was born into a body she didn’t recognize. One that grew hair across her mouth, one that grew large, pale and mottled, pushed out full flaps that could pass for breasts, that were breasts. She liked to wear a dress: who doesn’t? She favored pink and peach, gauzy sleeves, pearl necklaces, and a saucy small hat, perched at an angle. She decided to make the best of the beard that surprised her each morning—pincurls, styling gel, a contract with the circus, with the traveling freak show. It’s not easy being a gorilla or a girl: eventually, after climbing all those skyscrapers, swatting all those biplanes, they’re going to catch you. They’re going to catch you on the subway steps, or outside a restaurant smoking after ten. Eventually, the cops and doctors will part your legs in a courtroom, and on a metal table, will unbraid the mystery buried in all that fur.