Year's Best Science Fiction 01 # 1984

by Gardner Dozois (ed)

  “No,” Kenny said at last, “no, I have changed my mind.” Boney Moroney or no, he didn’t think he cared to try this monkey treatment if it was administered by such as this. In the first place, it clearly could not be very effective, or else the man would not be so monstrously obese. Besides, it was probably dangerous, some quack potion of monkey hormones or something like that. “NO!” Kenny repeated more forcefully, trying to wrest his arm free from the grasp of the grotesquerie who held it.

  But it was useless. The man was distinctly larger and infinitely stronger than Kenny, and he propelled him across the room with ease, oblivious to Kenny’s protests, grinning like a maniac all the while. “Fat man,” he burbled, as if to prove his point he reached out and seized one of Kenny’s bulges and twisted painfully. “Fat, fat, fat, no good. Monkey treatment make you thin.”

  “Yes, but …”

  “Monkey treatment,” the man repeated, and somehow he had gotten behind Kenny. He put his weight against Kenny’s back and pushed, and Kenny staggered through a curtained doorway into the back room. The smell of urine was much stronger in there, strong enough to make him want to retch. It was pitch black, and from all sides Kenny heard rustlings and scurryings in the darkness. Rats, he thought wildly. Kenny was deathly afraid of rats. He fumbled about and propelled himself toward the square dim light that marked the curtain he had come through.

  Before he was quite there, a high-pitched chittering sounded suddenly from behind him, sharp and rapid as fire from a machine gun. Then another voice took it up, then a third, and suddenly the dark was alive with the terrible hammering noise. Kenny put his hands over his ears and staggered through the curtain, but just as he emerged he felt something brush the back of his neck, something warm and hairy. “Aieeee!” he screamed, dancing out into the front room where the tremendous bare-chested madman was waiting patiently. Kenny hopped from one foot to the other, screeching, “Aieeee, a rat, a rat on my back. Get it off, get it off! He was trying to grab for it with both hands, but the thing was very quick, and shifted around so cleverly that he couldn’t get ahold of it. But he felt it there, alive, moving.”Help me, help me!” he called out. “A rat!”

  The proprietor grinned at him and shook his head, so all his many chins went bobbing merrily. “No, no,” he said. “No rat, fat man. Monkey. You get the monkey treatment.” Then he stepped forward and seized Kenny by the elbow again, and drew him over to a full-length mirror mounted on the wall. It was so dim in the room that Kenny could scarcely make out anything in the mirror, except that it wasn’t wide enough and chopped off both his arms. The man stepped back and yanked a pull-cord dangling from the ceiling, and a single bare lightbulb clicked on overhead. The bulb swung back and forth, back and forth, so the light shifted crazily. Kenny Dorchester trembled and stared at the mirror.

  “Oh,” he said.

  There was a monkey on his back.

  Actually it was on his shoulders, its legs wrapped around his thick neck and twined together beneath his triple chin. He could feel its monkey hair scratching the back of his neck, could feel its warm little monkey paws lightly grasping his ears. It was a very tiny monkey. As Kenny looked into the mirror, he saw it peek out from behind his head, grinning hugely. It had quick darting eyes, coarse brown hair, and altogether too many shiny white teeth for Kenny’s liking. Its long prehensile tail swayed about restlessly, like some hairy snake that had grown out of the back of Kenny’s skull.

  Kenny’s heart was pounding away like some great air hammer lodged in his chest, and he was altogether distressed by this place, this man, and this monkey, but he gathered all his reserves and forced himself to be calm. It wasn’t a rat, after all. The little monkey couldn’t harm him. It had to be a trained monkey, the way it had perched on his shoulders. Its owner must let it ride around like this, and when Kenny had come unwillingly through that curtain, it had probably mistaken him. All fat men look alike in the dark.

  Kenny grabbed behind him and tried to pull the monkey loose, but somehow he couldn’t seem to get a grip on it. The mirror, reversing everything, just made it worse. He jumped up and down ponderously, shaking the entire room and making the furniture leap around every time he landed, but the monkey held on tight to his ears and could not be dislodged.

  Finally, with what Kenny thought was incredible aplomb under the circumstances, he turned to the gross proprietor and said, “Your monkey, sir. Kindly help me remove it.”

  “No, no,” the man said. “Make you skinny. Monkey treatment. You no want to be skinny?”

  “Of course I do,” Kenny said unhappily, “but this is absurd.” He was confused. This monkey on his back seemed to be part of the monkey treatment, but that certainly didn’t make very much sense.

  “Go,” the man said. He reached up and snapped off the light with a sharp tug that sent the bulb careening wildly again. Then he started toward Kenny, who backpedaled nervously. “Go,” the man repeated, as he grabbed Kenny’s arm again. “Out, out. You get monkey treatment, you go now.”

  “See here!” Kenny said furiously. “Let go of me! Get this monkey off me, do you hear? I don’t want your monkey! Do you hear me? Quit pushing, sir! I tell you, I have friends with the police department, you aren’t going to get away with this. Here now …”

  But all his protestations were useless. The man was a veritable tidal wave of sweating, smelling pale flesh, and he put his weight against Kenny and propelled him helplessly toward the door. The bell rang again as he pulled it open and shoved Kenny out into the garish bright sunlight.

  “I’m not going to pay for this!” Kenny said stoutly, staggering. “Not a cent, do you hear?”

  “No charge for monkey treatment,” the man said, grinning.

  “At least let me call a cab,” Kenny began, but it was too late, the man had closed the door. Kenny stepped forward angrily and tried to yank it back open, but it did not budge. Locked. “Open up in there!” Kenny demanded at the top of his lungs. There was no reply. He shouted again, and grew suddenly and uncomfortably aware that he was being stared at. Kenny turned around. Across the street three old winos were sitting on the stoop of a boarded-up store, passing a bottle in a brown paper bag and regarding him through wary eyes.

  That was when Kenny Dorchester recalled that he was standing there in the street in broad daylight with a monkey on his back.

  A flush crept up his neck and spread across his cheeks. He felt very silly. “A pet!” he shouted to the winos, forcing a smile. “Just my little pet!” They went on staring. Kenny gave a last angry look at the locked door, and set off down the street, his legs pumping furiously. He had to get to someplace private.

  Rounding the corner, he came upon a dark, narrow alley behind two gray old tenement buildings, and ducked inside, wheezing for breath. He sat down heavily on a trash can, pulled out his handkerchief, and mopped his brow. The monkey shifted just a bit, and Kenny felt it move. “Off me!” he shouted, reaching up and back again to try to wrench it off by the scruff of its neck, only to have it elude him once more. He tucked away his handkerchief and groped behind his head with both hands, but he just couldn’t get ahold of it. Finally, exhausted, he stopped, and tried to think.

  The legs! he thought. The legs under his chins! That’s the ticket! Very calmly and deliberately, he reached up, felt for the monkey’s legs, and wrapped one big fleshy hand around each of them. He took a deep breath and then savagely tried to yank them apart, as if they were two ends of a giant wishbone.

  The monkey attacked him.

  One hand twisted his right ear painfully, until it felt like it was being pulled clean off his head. The other started hammering against his temple, beating a furious tattoo. Kenny Dorchester yelped in distress and let go of the monkey’s tegs—which he hadn’t budged for all his efforts. The monkey quit beating on him and released his ear. Kenny sobbed, half with relief and half with frustration. He felt wretched.

  He sat there in that filthy alley for ages, defeated in his efforts to remove the m
onkey and afraid to go back to the street where people would point at him and laugh, or make rude, insulting comments under their breath. It was difficult enough going through life as a fat man, Kenny thought. How much worse, then, to face the cruel world as a fat man with a monkey on his back. Kenny did not want to know. He resolved to sit there on that trash can in the dark alley until he died or the monkey died, rather than face shame and ridicule on the streets.

  His resolve endured about an hour. Then Kenny Dorchester began to get hungry. Maybe people would laugh at him, but they had always laughed at him, so what what did it matter? Kenny rose and dusted himself off, while the monkey settled itself more comfortably on his neck. He ignored it, and decided to go in search of a pepperoni pizza.

  He did not find one easily. The abysmal slum in which he had been stranded had a surfeit of winos, dangerous-looking teenagers, and burned-out or boarded-up buildings, but it had precious few pizza parlors. Nor did it have any taxis. Kenny walked down the main thoroughfare with brisk dignity, looking neither left nor right, heading for safer neighborhoods as fast as his plump little legs could carry him. Twice he came upon phone booths, and eagerly fetched out a coin to summon transportation, but both times the phones proved to be out of order. Vandals, thought Kenny Dorchester, were as bad as rats.

  Finally, after what seemed like hours of walking, he stumbled upon a sleazy café. The lettering on the window said JOHN’S GRILL, and there was a neon sign above the door that said, simply, EAT. Kenny was very familiar with those three lovely letters, and he recognized the sign two blocks off. It called to him like a beacon. Even before he entered, he knew it was rather unlikely that such a place would include pepperoni pizza on its menu, but by that time Kenny had ceased to care.

  As he pushed the door aside, Kenny experienced a brief moment of apprehension, partially because he felt very out of place in the café, where the rest of the diners all appeared to be muggers, and partially because he was afraid they would refuse to serve him because of the monkey on his back. Acutely uncomfortable in the doorway, he moved quickly to a small table in an obscure corner, where he hoped to escape the curious stares. A gaunt gray-haired waitress in a faded pink uniform moved purposefully toward him, and Kenny sat with his eyes downcast, playing nervously with the salt, pepper, ketchup, dreading the moment when she arrived and said, “Hey, you can’t bring that thing in here!”

  But when the waitress reached his table, she simply pulled a pad out of her apron pocket and stood poised, pencil in hand. “Well?” she demanded. “What’ll it be?”

  Kenny stared up in shock, and smiled. He stammered a bit, then recovered himself and ordered a cheese omelet with a double side of bacon, coffee and a large glass of milk, and cinnamon toast. “Do hash browns come with?” he asked hopefully, but the waitress shook her head and parted.

  What a marvelous, kind woman, Kenny thought as he waited for his meal and shredded a paper napkin thoughtfully. What a wonderful place! Why, they hadn’t even mentioned his monkey! How very polite of them.

  The food arrived shortly. “Ahhhh,” Kenny said as the waitress laid it out in front of him on the Formica tabletop. He was ravenous. He selected a slice of cinnamon toast, and brought it to his mouth.

  And a little monkey darted out from behind his head and snatched it clean away.

  Kenny Dorchester sat in numb surprise for an instant, his suddenly empty hand poised before his open mouth. He heard the monkey eating his toast, chomping noisily. Then, before Kenny had quite comprehended what was happening, the monkey’s great long tail snaked in under his armpit, curled around his glass of milk, and spirited it up and away in the blink of an eye.

  “Hey!” Kenny said, but he was much too slow. Behind his back he heard slurping, sucking sounds, and all of a sudden the glass came vaulting over his left shoulder. He caught it before it fell and smashed, and set it down unsteadily. The monkey’s tail came stealthily around and headed for his bacon. Kenny grabbed up a fork and stabbed at it, but the monkey was faster than he was. The bacon vanished, and the tines of the fork bent against the hard Formica uselessly.

  By then Kenny knew he was in a race. Dropping the bent fork, he used his spoon to cut off a chunk of the omelet, dripping cheese, and he bent forward as he lifted it, quick as he could. The monkey was quicker. A little hand flashed in from somewhere, and the spoon had only a tantalizing gob of half-melted cheese remaining on it when it reached Kenny’s mouth. He lunged back toward his plate, and loaded up again, but it didn’t matter how fast he tried to be. The monkey had two paws and a tail, and once it even used a little monkey foot to snatch something away from him. In hardly any time at all, Kenny Dorchester’s meal was gone. He sat there staring down at the empty, greasy plate, and he felt tears gathering in his eyes.

  The waitress reappeared without Kenny noticing. “My, you sure are a hungry one,” she said to him, ripping off his check from her pad and putting it in front of him. “Polished that off quicker than anyone I ever saw.”

  Kenny looked up at her. “But I didn’t,” he protested. “The monkey ate it all!”

  The waitress looked at him very oddly. “The monkey?” she said, uncertainly.

  “The monkey,” Kenny said. He did not care for the way she was staring at him, like he was crazy or something.

  “What monkey?” she asked. “You didn’t sneak no animals in here, did you? The board of health don’t allow no animals in here, mister.”

  “What do you mean, sneak?” Kenny said in annoyance. “Why, the monkey is right on my—” He never got a chance to finish. Just then the monkey hit him, a tremendous hard blow on the left side of his face. The force of it twisted his head half-around, and Kenny yelped in pain and shock.

  The waitress seemed concerned. “You OK, mister?” she asked. “You ain’t gonna have a fit, are you, twitching like that?”

  “I didn’t twitch!” Kenny all but shouted. “The goddamned monkey hit me! Can’t you see?”

  “Oh,” said the waitress, taking a step backward. “Oh, of course. Your monkey hit you. Pesky little things, ain’t they?”

  Kenny pounded his fists on the table in frustration. “Never mind,” he said, “just never mind.” He snatched up the check—the monkey did not take that away from him, he noted—and rose. “Here,” he said, pulling out his wallet. “And you have a phone in this place, don’t you? Call me a cab, all right? You can do that, can’t you?”

  “Sure,” the waitress said, moving to the register to ring up his meal. Everyone in the café was staring at him. “Sure, mister,” she muttered. “A cab. We’ll get you a cab right away.”

  Kenny waited, fuming. The cab driver made no comment on his monkey. Instead of going home, he took the cab to his favorite pizza place, three blocks from his apartment. Then he stormed right in and ordered a large pepperoni. The monkey ate it all, even when Kenny tried to confuse it by picking up one slice in each hand and moving them simultaneously toward his mouth. Unfortunately, the monkey had two hands as well, both of them faster than Kenny’s.

  When the pizza was completely gone, Kenny thought for a moment, summoned over the waitress, and ordered a second. This time he got a large anchovy. He thought that was very clever. Kenny Dorchester had never met anyone else beside himself who liked anchovy pizza. Those little salty fishes would be his salvation, he thought. To increase the odds, when the pizza arrived Kenny picked up the hot pepper shaker and covered it with enough hot peppers to ignite a major conflagration. Then, feeling confident, he tried to eat a slice.

  The monkey liked anchovy pizza with lots of hot peppers. Kenny Dorchester almost wept.

  He went from the pizza place to the Slab, from the Slab to a fine Greek restaurant to a local McDonald’s, from McDonald’s to a bakery that made the most marvelous chocolate eclairs. Sooner or later, Kenny Dorchester thought, the monkey would be full. It was only a very little monkey, after all. How much food could it eat? He would just keep on ordering food, he resolved, and the monkey would either reach its li
mits or rupture and die.

  That day Kenny spent more than two hundred dollars on meals.

  He got absolutely nothing to eat.

  The monkey seemed to be a bottomless pit. If it had a capacity, that capacity was surely greater than the capacity of Kenny’s wallet. Finally he was forced to admit defeat. The monkey could not be stuffed into submission.

  Kenny cast about for another tactic, and finally hit on it. Monkeys were stupid, after all, even invisible monkeys with prodigious appetites. Smiling slyly, Kenny went to a neighborhood supermarket, and picked up a box of banana pudding (it seemed appropriate) and a box of rat poison. Humming a spry little tune, he walked on home, and set to work making the pudding, stirring in liberal amounts of the rat poison as it cooked. The poison was nicely odorless. The pudding smelled wonderful. Kenny poured it into some dessert cups to cool, and watched television for an hour or so. Finally he rose nonchalantly, went to the refrigerator, and got out a pudding and a nice big spoon. He sat back down in front of the set, spooned up a generous glob of pudding, and brought it to his open mouth. Where he paused. And paused. And waited.

  The monkey did nothing.

  Maybe it was full at last, Kenny thought. He put aside the poisoned pudding and rushed back to his kitchen, where he found a box of vanilla wafers hiding on a shelf, and a few forlorn Fig Newtons as well.

  The monkey ate all of them.

  A tear trickled down Kenny’s cheek. The monkey would let him have all the poisoned pudding he wanted, it seemed, but nothing else. He reached back halfheartedly and tried to grab the monkey once again, thinking maybe all that eating would have slowed it down some, but it was a vain hope. The monkey evaded him, and when Kenny persisted the monkey hit his finger. Kenny yowled and snatched his hand back. His finger was bleeding. He sucked on it. That much, at least, the monkey permitted him.