Talk to Me

by T. C. Boyle

  ‘Did you ever have a class with him?’ This was addressed to the dog-collar girl by her companion, who was dressed in engineer boots and a rumpled T-shirt, but wore her hair long, like just about everybody else on campus.

  ‘Me? I’m an English major.’

  ‘But, I mean, freshman year – didn’t you have to take Psych 101?’

  ‘Not with him – it was Lindelof. But he looked kind of cute on TV – did you see him on TV? Night before last?’

  ‘Uh-uh, no.’

  ‘Well, he’s got this monkey thing going and he was on To Tell the Truth. See, in the article here?’ She pointed a finger at the bulletin board.

  ‘Chimpanzee,’ Aimee corrected, though she didn’t look at the girl, but down at her feet instead.

  The girl turned her face to her as if seeing her for the first time, when of course she’d been aware of her all along. She was the one who’d crowded in so they were standing there practically shoulder-to-shoulder and she must have recognised her from statistics, which at least made them fellow sufferers. ‘What did you say?’

  Aimee shot her a glance out of the corner of her eye. ‘I said it’s a chimp, not a monkey.’

  ‘Same difference.’ The girl was wearing a motorcycle jacket two sizes too small for her. Her lipstick was black, her face corpse-white. This was called punk, a style that had crept up out of LA and begun to reach campus just that fall. The girl turned to her friend. ‘The monkey can talk. With his hands. Like deaf people? It was, I don’t know, weird.’

  ‘What do you mean, “weird”?’

  The girl in the dog collar let out a laugh. ‘I mean, it kissed him. On the lips.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Which to me is kind of perverted, actually.’

  ‘Didn’t you ever kiss your dog?’

  ‘I never had a dog. My father’s allergic.’

  ‘Well, mine used to kiss me and I kissed him back. All the time.’

  ‘On the mouth?’

  ‘No, that’s not what I’m saying – I mean on the head or maybe his snout? A little peck, everybody does it. You should see my mom, not only with the dog, but with our cat, Bernie? She lifts him up right in front of her face and plants these kisses on his nose? And he loves it. Or at least pretends to. Believe me, he knows where his kibble’s coming from.’

  ‘Sorry, and I don’t mean to be harsh or anything, but that’s just disgusting.’

  That was when she stopped listening, not that she’d been paying all that much attention in the first place – she was still trying to focus on the article – but in that moment she noticed the flyer next to it as if it had just materialised there on the board. And in the moment after that she had the flyer in her hand and was moving off down the hall, her late paper and Dr Lindelof suddenly plunging to the bottom of her list of priorities. The flyer said this:

  ‘Professor Schermerhorn is currently looking for students to assist in his cross-fostering project, 10–20+ hours a week. No experience necessary. Just patience and a good strong back.’

  That was it – it was as cryptic as that. The only other information was a phone number. By the time she got to the nearest phone booth – in the basement of the psych building, next to the junk food and soda machines – she had it memorised.

  KEY LOCK OUT

  He didn’t have a word for words, or not yet anyway, but he knew words all the same. He knew KEY. He knew LOCK. He knew OUT. He was a prisoner, though he didn’t have a word for that either, and even if he did it would have been meaningless. What did a word, any word, have to do with this situation in this place, in the onrushing unstoppable cataract of now, and the fear – AFRAID – that came with it? He had diarrhoea, which existed as a pain in the gut, a stench, a hot, wet squirt of shit that needed no terminology and no afterthought. He wanted his BLANKET, a blanket, any blanket. He was cold. He was distraught. He rocked from side to side. He stared at nothing. He plucked the hairs from his arms, his chin, the crown of his head, trichotillomania, and he didn’t know that term either – how could he? And what would it matter if he did? Would that get him out of here?

  Sleep was his only release and it came to him in a blaze of shuffled images: the bathroom light so bright it was like the sun in the sky, a trickle of blood-warm water in the tub and the face of the one who meant most to him, whose name he’d invented in the gesture of pinching his right nipple the way he pinched hers when she was with him in the BED and they were both warm and his SHIRT was on the FLOOR. But then he woke. He always woke. To the screams and the reek and his own diarrhoea and the food he refused and the din of flesh pounding on metal.

  When he was thirsty, thirst came to him as a sensation, preverbal, non-verbal, and he picked up his cup and drained it. He didn’t think DRINK, didn’t sign DRINK, he just drank. Until the cup was empty, that is, and no one came to fill it for him. Then the word was there. And the sign, the gesture, thumb to the lower lip, descriptor and request both. And when no one listened, when the cup went unfilled and the box, the cage, the prison he measured over and over with the length and breadth of his body, spoke despair to him, spoke rage, he screamed. He screamed. He screamed.

  In the morning that was no morning at all because there were no windows in this place and the lights never dimmed or faltered, they came with food for him, food he didn’t want, food he refused, and he compacted his own shit in his hands as best he could and flung it through the bars at them. They didn’t like that. They backed away, cursing in their alien voices, and he held one hand under his chin and waggled his fingers, cursing back at them, DIRTY, DIRTY. That didn’t help. Nothing helped. He worked at the bars with his hands and his feet too, but the bars were cold steel, the bars were immovable, and every time he looked beyond them he saw more bars and barren walls and moving shadows till he shrank down inside himself. What had he done? Where was he? Where was his bedroom, where was his house and his BED and his TREE? Where was she and why had she allowed them to bring him here?

  He took it as long as he could, huddled in the back of the cell, the box, the CAGE, and then leapt to his feet, clung to the bars and screamed and screamed again, until the BIG MAN came through the door and every voice in the place fell silent. It was as if there had never been a voice except his echoing down the corridors and reverberating off the bare walls, but of course he didn’t know that word either, the acoustic signifier, only the phenomenon it represented, the physical effect that involved eardrums and cochlea and neural pathways. The BIG MAN was coming and he had the stinger in his hand, which was called a cow prod, though that formulation was beyond him too. HURT, he knew that. And he knew COW, the big, lumbering night-black creature that solidified the shadows in the scrub out back of her house, of his house, the place he used to be before this. But that didn’t do him any good because the BIG MAN with one eye, with the black eyepatch that was like a hole drilled in his head, rose and swelled and touched him with the stinger and suddenly he was writhing on the cold cement floor, beyond the reach of words now… except HURT, except AFRAID.

  THE LEAP

  She was a slim, shy girl, so shy he practically had to conduct both sides of the interview himself. He’d just got off the phone with a representative of the local CBS affiliate, who’d seen him on To Tell the Truth and wondered if he’d be interested in maybe doing a segment on his research – with the chimp, of course, if that was possible, because the chimp was just … well, they were all agog, just blown away, everybody at the station, and could he really talk or was that just, you know, something they’d worked up beforehand? – when she appeared in the doorway. He’d left the door open for office hours, though he was half-hoping no one would show up because things were beyond chaotic at home, and he needed to get back asap or somebody else was going to quit on him. He had quizzes to correct. He needed to stop at the grocery. And the gas station. And the bank.

  She didn’t knock at the door frame or say ‘Excuse Me?’ or even clear her throat, but just stood there till he lifted his eyes to her
and asked, ‘Can I help you?’

  Her face flushed. ‘I was just wondering if now’s a good time …’ and she trailed off. ‘I called?’

  He was drawing a blank.

  ‘You said three?’

  ‘Oh, of course – the job, right?’ He swivelled round in his chair and got to his feet. ‘Forgive me, I’m just so – things’ve been a bit crazy lately. But come on in, have a seat.’ He gestured to the straight-backed chair in front of his desk.

  She hesitated a moment, shooting a glance over her shoulder as if to be sure he was talking to her, then ducked into the room and settled tentatively on the edge of the chair. She was short, no more than five-one or -two, and he couldn’t help thinking of Olga Korbut, whose fluent limbs and exultant grin had transfixed him during the last two Olympics, but this girl was prettier than Korbut, much prettier. She had the sort of face people reflexively called ‘sweet’, which actually made no sense because physical features were a random expression of the genes and had nothing at all to do with personality, whether it be extroverted or neurotic, nurturing or homicidal. Still, he couldn’t take his eyes off her.

  ‘So you are?’ he asked.

  ‘Aimee?’ she said in a soft, interrogative breath of a voice, as if she were stating and questioning it at the same time. ‘Aimee Villard?’

  ‘And you’re a registered student, right? Undergrad?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Psych major?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘Biology?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘Education? Early childhood?’

  There was a hammering from down the hall where they were renovating the office of Vic Singer, an old-school Behaviourist who’d passed on a month ago – died at his desk, actually, of a heart attack. Vic should have gotten out more, that’s what he was thinking, and he had a momentary stab of regret, not just for his fallen colleague but for everybody in the building, on the campus, in the profession – and himself, himself most of all. You spend a lifetime scrambling to get grants and accumulate knowledge and maybe you publish and maybe you don’t, and then one day you put your head down on your desk and never lift it back up again. Science advances. You don’t. They both paused a moment, listening to the erratic rhythm of the hammer, which started and stopped and started again, like an irregular heartbeat.

  ‘Ever work with primates before?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘Animals, at all? Pets?’

  ‘A dog,’ she said. ‘A cat.’

  ‘What about babysitting? You ever do any babysitting? Because that’s what this is going to be like, I’m afraid, and I’m not offering much by way of participation or advancement, if that’s what you’re expecting.’ He laughed. ‘That’s what we’ve got grad students for.’

  She didn’t have anything to say to this. She just stared down at her hands, which were folded rigidly in her lap. It came to him that here was the kind of personality he could make use of: dutiful, reticent, no questions, no arguments. Unlike Melanie, who’d been gone three weeks now and was never coming back. Here was a girl – a sweet-faced girl – he could ride like a bicycle. Or a Vespa, full throttle, rem, rem, rem.

  ‘You know how to cook? Clean?’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  ‘What about diapers – you ever change diapers?’

  She shrugged. ‘I guess.’

  ‘You guess? OK, tell me one thing, Aimee – it is Aimee, right? Tell me – why do want the job?’

  ‘Because I saw you on TV.’

  ‘And that’s it? Just because you saw me on TV?’

  ‘I want to talk to him. I really, really want to talk to him.’

  One other applicant showed up just as he was getting ready to leave, a heavyset girl who couldn’t seem to catch her breath after climbing the three flights of stairs to his office. Her shoulders were pinched between the straps of an overstuffed backpack which was the same colour as her dress, olive drab, and why anybody would wear olive drab he couldn’t imagine, unless she was in ROTC, which would be a non-starter because he needed somebody with a flexible schedule who could put in the hours. As it turned out, she was a psych major, which was a plus, and she claimed to have taken a course from him, though he couldn’t place her (and he couldn’t place her because he was overworked and overstressed and they still had him teaching survey courses on top of everything else). She must have seen in his face that he didn’t really want to do this now, but he fought down his irritation, pulled the door back open and had her sit in the chair Aimee had vacated fifteen minutes earlier.

  ‘So,’ he said, easing back into his own chair, ‘tell me why you want the job.’

  ‘I don’t know. It sounded interesting, that’s all.’

  ‘And you saw me on TV, right?’

  Her name was Barbara. She wore her hair in pigtails that bushed out on either side of her head so it looked as if she were wearing earmuffs. She had fat wrists and small, delicate hands. ‘Yes,’ she said, breaking into a smile. ‘It was great. You were great.’

  Everyone had seen him on TV. TV was a portal into another dimension. The students, who’d largely ignored him to that point unless they were reflexively kissing up, stopped to call out to him as he walked across campus, and his colleagues dropped by his office on one pretext or another to see if he’d sprouted wings yet.

  ‘And what about Sam?’

  ‘Oh, yeah, he was great too.’ Her smile widened. ‘So cute.’

  ‘You’re not in ROTC, are you?’

  ‘Me? No. Why?’ She looked surprised, maybe even offended.

  ‘It’s just the hours – it’s pretty much an around-the-clock thing looking after a chimp. What I’m saying is, it’s a real commitment. Are you sure you’re up for it?’

  ‘Oh, yeah,’ she said, nodding vigorously, ‘I am. A hundred per cent.’

  He gave her directions to the house, which was six miles outside of town, isolated on a ranch one of the alumni had bequeathed to the university, and told her the same thing he’d told Aimee – ‘Come by at five and we’ll introduce you to Sam, because ultimately, he’s going to be the final judge here.’

  He drove too fast on the way home, pedal-to-the-metal, rushing through his errands – bank, gas station, supermarket – and when he hit the last straightaway to the ranch, a cop swung out behind him. He let out an involuntary curse and shifted down, afraid to tap the brakes because that would telegraph his awareness of his own culpability, whereas if he gradually slowed to whatever the speed limit was here (50? 55?) he could at least present a simulacrum of innocence. And talk his way out of a ticket, if the cop was even going to pull him over, which wasn’t necessarily the case… but then it was. On went the flashing lights and here came the thin complaint of the siren.

  The cop was his age, more or less, and his face showed nothing. He was wearing Ray-Bans, the twin lenses giving Guy back his own image in duplicate. He leaned in the window of the car and said, ‘You seem to be in a hurry today.’

  ‘No,’ Guy said, ‘not really. Just going home, that’s all. After work.’

  ‘Licence and registration,’ the cop said.

  The mountains were right there, a dun eruption of blistered rock that rose up over the road and erased the horizon. Everything was quiet. Insects irradiated by the slanting sun hung like ornaments on the air and the odour of heat-scorched chaparral came to him in a sudden ascending wave. It took him a moment to dig the documents out of the glove box and hand them over to the cop, fuming all the while. The kicker here – the pain in the ass – was that he was less than a mile from home, the ranch cradled at the base of the mountains in a bright green clutch of live oak he could see from here. He said, in a softer voice now, ‘I’m just going home.’

  ‘You live up at Harlow Ranch?’

  ‘Yeah, right up there.’ He pointed.

  The cop didn’t respond. He studied the documents a moment, then looked up. ‘I know you, don’t I?’

  Guy shrugged.

  ‘You’re that
professor, right? With the monkey?’

  Guy didn’t bother to correct him.

  ‘And he lives up there with you, right there on the ranch? Is that the deal?’

  ‘That’s right.’ He gestured to the groceries on the seat beside him. ‘In fact, I’m on my way home to fix him his dinner…’

  ‘No kidding?’ the cop said, and he was grinning now. ‘What you going to make for him’ – he let out a laugh – ‘a cheeseburger?’

  It was nearly five by the time he got home. The cop – Ted Simmons, eight years on the force, married, three kids, big fan of To Tell the Truth – had kept him there on the side of the road for what must have been twenty minutes. He’d spared him the ticket and moderated the lecture about speeding and how people were taking their lives in their hands just to pull out of their driveways on a stretch like this – but he wanted to know all about Sam and what he liked to eat and did he know how to use the toilet and were they planning on mating him, and then he shared a long pointless story that began with, ‘I had this friend that had a monkey once?’

  As soon as he inserted the key in the first of the three deadbolts on the front door, Guy could hear Sam on the other side, making his good-food sounds, which meant that nobody had fed him yet. He suppressed a flare of anger. No need to get excited, he told himself, though he’d warned both Josh and Elise he might be running late. The pantry was just about bare, granted, but one or the other of them could have gone to the store, couldn’t they? Was that too much to ask? Not that it mattered now – he’d bought fruit and yogurt to take the edge off Sam’s appetite and depending on how things worked out, he could either whip up a quick pasta or send out for pizza. Or let Josh do it. Or Elise. And just pour himself a drink and sit in the armchair for ten minutes, if that wasn’t asking too much.