Talk to Me

by T. C. Boyle

  She was trying to keep herself together, Guy could see that. Her eyes were red-rimmed, her shoulders bunched in defeat and resignation. ‘His clothes,’ she said. ‘His toys. Treats for the trip.’

  A long moment elapsed, the sun breaking through to illuminate the scene in a single burst, like a flashbulb, even as one of the ranch’s proprietorial jays flashed its wings and shot by with a screech of fear or warning or simple equanimity, screeching because it could. The air smelled of rain. Sam stared at nothing. Aimee looked as if she were drowning, three feet under and all the oxygen gone from her lungs, and he wanted to intervene, wanted to say something, but he didn’t. Finally, Moncrief shifted all the way around in the seat till he was facing her. He lifted the backpack in one hand, as if weighing it, then handed it back to her. ‘He won’t be needing this,’ he said. ‘Not any more.’

  PART TWO

  HE CURLED UP

  He curled up. He whimpered. Whimpering, he fell away into the core of himself. He rocked on his heels. Pulled out his hair. Refused their food all over again. The BUG, the greedy, misshapen, stinking BUG, ate his portion, champing its teeth and grunting with pleasure, then shitting on the floor till the two came with the hose and shot it down the drain. There was all that and he endured it, terrified, distraught, unable to sleep or think or stop the racing of his heart, but the BUG didn’t make a move to attack him again, as if the terms had been settled once and for all. And yet now he wanted it to attack him, to punish him so that the physical HURT would rake through his veins and override everything else. There it was, right there, watching him, but he wouldn’t look at it because looking at it, whether it was eating or sleeping or just squatting over its haunches, gazing stupidly out on the hall without knowing or caring that the DOOR was there – KEY LOCK OUT – was hurtful in a way he couldn’t have expressed whether he had the vocabulary or not.

  What he had was the information delivered to him by his senses. He smelled the thing, heard it, and when it was asleep, he even crept up and tentatively touched its shoulder with a single trembling finger, but most of all, what it was came to him through his vision – he saw its every detail, from its feet that were just like his to its eyes that had no whites to them to the big pale whorls of its ears. But what good was seeing? Seeing delivered the world to you but didn’t show you your place in it, not unless you had a mirror, and you didn’t have a mirror unless you were at HOME with her.

  On the third day, he ate when they brought him his food in the morning, the BUG watching his every bite while the BUGS in the other cages hooted over their own portions and the fans blew heat and nobody opened the door to the cold dead world outside. If he could get outside again, out of this CAGE, out of that DOOR, he would do it without hesitation, whether the DOGS came for him again or the COLD ate at him till the whole world stopped like the broken clock on the inside of her car, the one that didn’t move no matter how many times – or how hard – your finger tapped it. But he couldn’t get out, though when they came with the food and shoved it through the slot at the bottom of the steel door, he looked for any advantage he could gain even if it meant grabbing one of them by the wrist or ankle and holding on till something changed. That didn’t happen. Restless, he pushed himself up and climbed the bars over and over again, his fingers and toes abraded by the diamonds of steel mesh welded across the face of them, and then he got the idea of bracing himself in the upper corner for minutes at a time, a feat of strength and will. He looked down at the BUG, which hooted at him, and he scratched at the ceiling in the hope of uncovering another pipe, more water, more cold and wet and OUT. In the intervals, he dropped down to crouch in the corner across from the BUG, watching it while it watched him. At some point, he fell asleep, and when he woke it was right there beside him, tranquil, silent, its fingers probing his hair and finding things it fed into its mouth and ground between its teeth. He didn’t move. Didn’t resist. Very gradually, so gradually he was barely moving, he turned round and worked his own fingers through its hair – her hair – and felt his heart slow for the first time since they’d brought him here.

  The immemorial odour, the throb of the blood – she was a she. He withdrew his hands and her eyes flashed open. I AM SAM, he signed.

  Nothing. She just stared.

  I AM SAM, he repeated. WHO ARE YOU?

  The touch of her hands – it was like her touch when she groomed him. She dropped her eyes. Her hands worked, smoothing, massaging, picking.

  I AM SAM, he signed, though she wasn’t looking. PLEASED TO MEET YOU.

  THE ROAD

  The road cut a hard, unwavering line across the desert, nothing but wilted scrub as far as she could see, creosote, yucca, salt bush, ocotillo, all of it bleached of colour and narrowly suspended between life and death. The radio faded in and out and when it did come in strong, Jesus would be right there in your face – and not the Jesus she knew, not the Jesus of Bach and Handel and the scented candles on the altar, but some dirt-scrabble country version boring right into you, until you hit the button and the cowboy music came blaring up out of nowhere. She had a thirty-ounce McDonald’s Diet Coke clamped between her thighs, though it was mostly dregs now, and on the seat beside her was the crumpled grease-stained bag that had contained her two Filet-O-Fish sandwiches, which she’d eaten while easing past long undulating lines of big rigs, wiping the grease on the balled-up napkin in her lap, careful to keep one hand on the wheel and her eyes on the road. She’d left the ranch minutes after they took Sam away and she hadn’t said a word to Guy about her intentions, not that she’d had a chance – they’d all just got in the car and left her there, as if she meant nothing. She didn’t leave a note either.

  She’d packed up her things at the ranch and went directly home, to Calabasas, dug her winter clothes out of the closet in her room – boots, sweaters, gloves, fleece-lined coat – raided the refrigerator and lifted the Fidelity folder with her name on it out of the filing cabinet in her mother’s home office. Her mother wouldn’t be happy about that when she discovered it – the account, which had been set up with the settlement after her father’s death, was earmarked for her education and then, when the time came and she settled down and got married, for a down payment on a house. She didn’t leave a note at home either. No need. A note would only complicate things. And when her mother got back from work, distracted and exhausted and thinking only of her first vodka and soda, she might not even notice that Aimee had been in the house at all – and the Fidelity folder? It could be weeks, months, before she realised it was missing. And so what? So what if she did? It wasn’t her money.

  She could have stopped in Las Vegas (cheap motels, cheap buffets at the casinos, free drinks if you were gambling or at least pretending to), but she didn’t. It wasn’t even five hours from Calabasas and she had to make time because all she could think about was Sam locked up in a cage without his toys or his blanket or anybody who cared about him in the slightest degree. He would be terrified. Disoriented. In despair. She couldn’t imagine what he was going through – it would be like being abducted as a child from your parents’ house and waking up in a jail cell in some foreign country where they didn’t speak your language, and all you could do was cry till you gagged and then cry all over again. Somewhere along the way there was a McDonald’s drive-through window and somewhere beyond that a rest stop where she could ease the pressure on her bladder and fill up an empty gallon milk jug with tap water and keep on going. She passed Ute, Moapa, Bunkerville and Mesquite and crossed into Utah, running on adrenalin – and anger, that too. Guy had just rolled over and let them do what they wanted – and with what, a day’s notice? He was spineless, that was what he was, a shit, a coward. He could have stood up to them, could have done something – and the look on his face when he got behind the wheel, slammed the door and put the car in gear as if he was just going down to the post office or the supermarket. Jesus! He was cold, that was what he was, cold and remote and self-important. He didn’t love her. Or Sam either.r />
  It was dark now, the headlights pulling her along like two ghostly arms, trucks heaving and rattling beside her, the sleek humped forms of cars sluicing out of the night, tail lights flowering and receding, the radio barking and chirping and fading into static: she was exhausted. Last night had been the worst night of her life and if she’d slept at all, it was in snatches only. Oblivious, Sam had conked right out and slept as if he’d already been darted, not turning over once or even twitching or kicking his legs in his sleep the way he usually did, and she’d lain there beside him, stroking him over and over till the light appeared in the windows. Then it was a two-hour drive south to Calabasas and after that the numbing rush of all the mileposts and signage and the vast draining desert emptiness that finally closed down under the lid of the night. She wanted to make it to Green River, which was something like ten and a half hours from Calabasas, but didn’t know if she could. She’d begun to nod and snap awake again – and what good would it do Sam if she died in a fiery crash like her father before her? She kept looking for a turnout, anyplace where she could just stop and get out of the car, if only for a minute…

  Finally, after drifting off and jerking herself back to consciousness twice in as many minutes, she saw the distant glow of a truck stop like a flying saucer set down in the night, spread wide and hazy with light, and willed herself to reach it. The radio scratched at her, the tyres hummed along with it, and then she was there, pulling into the lot, feeling as drained and exhausted as she’d ever been in her life. She thought she might stretch out across the back seat for a few minutes – or maybe an hour, only an hour – but the parking lot was alive all around her, men in caps and wide-brimmed straw hats swinging down from big rigs, lone drivers pulling up on either side of her, headlights going on and off, and she didn’t feel safe. Plus, it was cold and she didn’t even have a blanket, let alone a sleeping bag. She sat there a long moment, holding her face in her hands, then crossed the lot to the coffee shop and ordered a large coffee, black, to go – and everybody was looking at her, every man, they were all men, staring – picked up a bag of Doritos and two Slim Jims for nourishment, gassed up and hit the road again. GREEN RIVER, a sign read, 150 miles. She could make that. Couldn’t she?

  The next two hours were a blank, the road, the headlights, the trucks, the cars. Somewhere in the mix was the exit for Green River, and she took it. There wasn’t much to the place – it was more a crossroads, really – but there was a Motel 6 just off I-70, which was going to have to fit her budget, at least till she got to Iowa and could open up a bank account and find someplace to live and get down on her knees and beg Moncrief to let her work on his chimp farm, and she’d do it without pay, do anything, clean cages, haul garbage, mop the floors, as long as she could be near Sam. That was the extent of her plan and to summon it now, to say ‘Sam,’ even silently, even to herself, made her stomach clench. It was just past eleven when she pulled into the motel lot, but when she got there and saw the brightly lit office and the woman – the night clerk – framed there in the window, she hesitated. She’d never checked into a motel in her life, not alone. What would the woman think – that she was a prostitute or a drug addict or something? And what would she say to her – I want a room? A single? Just for tonight? Yes, of course, I want a room, simplest thing in the world. But then why was she still sitting in her car, still clutching the wheel, though she was so wiped she could barely hold her head up?

  She battled herself and she might have sat in the car all night if the woman hadn’t stepped outside for a smoke and seen her there. The woman was old – or older – and wore her hair like her mother did, feathered in the Farrah Fawcett style, and that made her seem a whole lot less threatening because all at once she was thinking of the beauty parlour, the sedative snip of scissors and the drowsy hiss of hairspray, and so when the woman said, ‘Can I help you, honey?’ she said, ‘Yes.’

  Too tired to shower or even turn on the TV, she just threw herself down on the bed and slept straight through till the window beside the door turned grey. Then she gassed up at the Conoco, got a styrofoam cup of coffee and a package of powdered donuts at the convenience store attached to it (no hassles, no penetrating looks, just Thank you and here’s your change) and was back on the road by eight-thirty. She found a decent radio station out of Colorado Springs, the weather was clear, and the mountains rising up before her, and she was sailing right along, too numb to think about anything but Sam and the urgency that was driving her to get to him and worry about the details later, when all at once the car started acting up. The engine revved all on its own with a high ratcheting whine, then dropped down again whether she had her foot on the gas or not, and that scared her, terrified her, because if something was wrong with the car she was defeated before she’d even begun, and what was she going to do, hitchhike to Iowa?

  She was trembling by the time she got to the next exit – Glenwood Springs, a town she’d never heard of, but then why would she? – and managed to coast into the first gas station she saw, the gears slipping so badly it felt as if she had no power at all. The mechanic was a guy with long blond hair and a Pink Floyd T-shirt who wasn’t much older than she was. She could see that she made an impression on him, that he wanted to please her, to hit on her, and that shamed her the way it always did with strangers but she smiled back at him and did her best to play along, utterly at a loss. He drove the car into the bay, revved it, shifted the lever from low to drive a couple of times, then got out, lifted the hood and checked the transmission fluid. Dipstick, that was the word. The dipstick was wet with a viscous pinkish fluid that was like the blood of the car, and that was a good sign, wasn’t it? He didn’t say. Just shoved the stick back in place, then reached in the driver’s window and killed the engine. ‘I see you got California plates,’ he said.

  She was standing just inside the door. There was a tyre rack, another car up on the lift next to hers, a work table, tool chests, hoses. Everything smelled of cold grease. The phrase ‘lube job’ came in and out of her head for no reason she could fathom other than the circumstances – she didn’t even know what a lube job was, but maybe that was it, maybe the car needed a lube job. She did her best to work up a smile. ‘Uh-huh,’ she said, nodding.

  He gave her a quick look, up and down, the look they all gave her. ‘Because I hope you’re not planning on getting back there anytime soon—’

  She took a deep breath. She wanted to cry. Or maybe shatter, just shatter into brittle little fragments somebody could sweep up and toss in the trash.

  ‘The transmission’s shot, that’s my call. I can order you a new one, or, if you want to save on the expense, we can get a rebuilt one out of Denver, which’ll be just as good, really, but either way it’s going to take a few days.’

  ‘A few days? But…’ And she trailed off. She didn’t have a few days – she didn’t even have a few hours. She saw Sam then, huddled in a cage, terrified, depressed, refusing to eat. Chimps suffered from depression, no different from people. Some had even died from it.

  ‘I’m guessing you don’t have anybody you know around here?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘OK,’ he said, ‘maybe we get lucky, and maybe – and I haven’t looked at it yet, really – you can get by with a flush, but I’m sorry to say from the sounds of it, you’re going to be here for a while.’

  And then another thought occurred to her. ‘How much?’ she asked, aware that she was at his mercy – all single women were at the mercy of mechanics everywhere, no matter what, that was an axiom, that was life, but this was in a class all by itself, and she was sure he could see the desperation in her eyes.

  He gave her half a smile, a lifting of the lip on one side to show off a gold crown there. ‘There’s labour involved – these things can be a bitch – and we have to see if we can find you a transmission, which shouldn’t be a problem, really, but as I say, maybe we get lucky.’ He paused. ‘Anyway, you come back after lunch and I’ll have an estimate for you. In t
he meantime, if it turns out the way I think it’s going to, I can recommend the Starlite Motel?’ He turned and pointed up the street. ‘Three blocks straight on and then a half block up on your left. And right next to it? You’ve got the best Chinese food in the world.’ He paused and his grin widened. ‘Unless you want to go up to Denver, that is.’

  She wasn’t hungry. And even if she was, she was too wrought up to eat. The mechanic – his name was Jules Wanner and he worked with his father, who owned the shop, Wanner’s Auto Repair – had given her the bad news when she came back two hours later after poking aimlessly around town and nursing a coffee she didn’t really want at Dunkin’ Donuts, just to get out of the cold. She needed a new transmission. He’d located one in Denver and he could go up there, get it and install it for her by Thursday maybe, five hundred bucks out the door, delivering the news as if he were giving her a box of bonbons. It was Monday. She had maybe a hundred dollars on her, but what she could do was open an account at the local Bank of America with the Fidelity funds and then transfer the account to the local branch in Iowa when she got there. ‘I guess,’ she said.

  ‘You guess?’

  She couldn’t look him in the eye. She hated this, the whole transaction, the feeling that she was agreeing to some kind of pact of which auto repair constituted the smallest part. ‘All right,’ she said, because what choice did she have? ‘Yes.’

  ‘OK, great. I’ll send Luis up there first thing in the morning – he’s my main man? And if you need a place to stay, there’s the Starlite I mentioned, but also, if you want, I mean, I’ve got a fold-out couch at my place, and it wouldn’t be any trouble at all – I’d even buy you some Chinese. You like Chinese?’

  He wasn’t bad-looking and he might have been a nice guy for all she knew, just trying to be friendly, just trying to be helpful, but the situation was right out of a slasher movie and she just shook her head no and ducked out the door. She went in the direction of the motel he’d told her about, just in case he was watching – and he was, she knew he was – but once she was out of sight, she turned up a side street and doubled back in the direction of Dunkin’ Donuts and the motel she’d noticed earlier just across the street from it. And here came another ordeal, checking in while the man behind the desk, who she wouldn’t even look at, tried to make small talk and she just nodded and murmured and paid cash and locked herself in her room. She flipped through the channels on the TV for an hour or so before she thought of the bank, which would be closing soon, wouldn’t it? On a Monday?