Running With Monkeys: Hell on Wheels

by Diane Munier

  The song went on, and Isbe’s arms were tight around him, and he felt a wet patch growing on his undershirt, beneath Isbe’s face. And the song—he hoped it was that—it spoke about having no other and being a prisoner of love, and damn, if it was possible for him to cry…maybe he was crying some inside. She wanted this. This was what she was asking for. She was that kind of dame…the kind that wanted it all. And his feet had barely touched American soil.

  When the song went off, Isbe’s hand went for the radio, and she turned it off. From the backseat, he heard Little Bits crying like someone ran over her dog. Bobby was laughing and comforting by turns, and Jules cringed a little for him. Blondie had her head against the window and her hankie out. Jules glanced nervously in the mirror for Audie, but he was off to the side. He tightened his hold on Isbe because she was sniffing and hadn’t lifted her head. A damn funeral had descended.

  They were near the big lighted billboard, though, the wonder of Chicago’s backroads, this big-ass sign.

  “Pull the hell over,” Audie said, like a man that had the shits.

  So Jules got close to the sign and pulled over where many cars had been before him. The sign was near one of the plants that encircled this city like an advancing army. Like most, the big plant was lighted in an eerie way like a city from outer space.

  This sign was about a dairy, a big flower with a cow’s face in the middle dominating its center.

  “I’m gonna climb that sucker,” Audie announced, opening his door.

  “The hell?” Bobby said.

  Francis’s door popped open, and she nearly spilled out. Audie took the same hand holding the hankie. “C’mon baby, let’s see the world.”

  Francis squeaked as he pulled her out, but she didn’t resist. Pretty soon she was being pulled across the lot toward Daisy.

  “What the hell?” Bobby said, then took a big breath and laughed a little, and there was lots of shifting around, and his and Dorie’s heads disappeared.

  “Dorie just turned into a green cheese lady,” Jules whispered to Isbe. She’d lifted her face, and holy hell, she’d gotten wrecked by that song.

  “Can I turn it back on?” she asked him, meaning the radio.

  “Sure, baby.” He cranked the key and music filled the car like a blanket they could move under. It was Perry Como again, singing “Surrender.” That sappy moog. Jules was afraid of it, this kind of look-a-broad-in-the-face-and-sing-about-all-the-crap-some-old-lady-in-rollers-was-feeling-while-she-danced-at-the-ironing-board-wearing-her-bathrobe.

  At Shiney’s, there were things to do when the music grabbed you: get a drink, dance like a fool, smoke a fag, tell a story, take a piss, make some disgusting comment that put the guys on the floor or got your face slapped. But now—her eyes—damn…fig leaves were off like he thought he wanted. But was he man enough…or woman enough? This was new…and shit.

  She lay back, pulling him with her. Oh, baby, he thought, all hesitation out the window.

  He got over her, half on her, half balancing on the seat, a knee on the floor, and he was too long, so it took some maneuvering. She was patient…and beautiful…determined to offer herself. Her chest rising and falling, her lips parted and…faith…the way she looked at him, wanted him. She’d said that…she wanted him. And she knew—she knew he was a patsy for it—her. She knew. And she wanted a ticket…to that ride. She was out of her mind.

  He touched her face and kissed her sweet. Like always, she raised a little to meet him. He pulled back, and they looked at one another, and Perry was already starting up again.

  His hand went to that little bird living in her throat, that little flutter there, and down the center of her chest, the creamy skin that showed modest and deadly. He touched the cleavage he’d caught a glimpse of now and then, cause he was tall, and he always, always looked down a broad’s shirt if the opportunity showed, cause he was twelve years old, but with her…yeah, he looked, and now he felt the full soft, ripe cushiony thrill, and down the center of her flat stomach, to the skirt, the skirt, and he went over the first line of defense, the waistband, over he went cause that’s what he did, but only halfway…to the objective…the warm hill of victory where he longed to plant his flag. He stopped midway and dragged his fingers back up, same line of attack, same line…in retreat.

  His senses were on high, bird-dogging as he moved his hand to the outer line of her body, her curvy, stacked little figure, and he looked from the path his hand took, back into her eyes…and she was offering…herself…and he wasn’t taking…not yet…he was adoring. Did she know? Could she feel it? Not just his touch…but what it was? He just might adore her.

  She’d been blowing up his brain ever since she’d turned her head in that movie, this hair, that cheek, those lips, chasing Dorie out of her seat…and on and on, everything about her…pulling.

  Audie hooted then. Jules’s alarm clock, always blaring into the moment. Sometimes it saved him. Sometimes, like now, it pissed him off. But there was a lot of shifting in the car then, as all four of them got up enough to see out the windshield, and there he was, way up, Francis beside him, both of them waving from a narrow deck right in front of Bossy.

  “That fathead,” Bobby said, and they all laughed.

  “Look at Francis,” Dorie said soft. “Look at her, Isbe.”

  “I know,” Isbe said. “I see.”

  She smiled at Jules then. And the tears were happier now.

  Chapter 8

  After Shiney’s, Part Two

  “She’s got a pool.” Audie came in the kitchen, clapping his hands loudly. “Why didn’t you say so, Bisbee? You’re a movie star.”

  He was changing Isbe’s name. Jules didn’t like that. Her name was Isbe. Once Audie got on a name like that…well, they all did it. It was damn annoying.

  “Her name’s Isbe,” Jules corrected.

  “Her name’s Isabelle,” Francis said. “With the ‘le’ at the end.”

  “Francis,” Isbe rebuked her friend.

  “Isabelle?” What was she, some French queen?

  Audie said. “Isabelly what?”

  “Blaise,” she said softly, looking at Jules first, then away with her cheeks red as roses.

  He hadn’t even thought to ask, and he was speechless now because it took forever to know all those things about a broad and he looked like a jackass not knowing his girl’s name.

  Audie whistled. “Isabella Blaise. With a pool.”

  And she wasn’t even impressed with herself. She could have said, “By the way, my name is Isabella Blaise. And I have a pool.”

  Then he realized he hadn’t really given her his formal handle either. He quickly stuck out his hand and said, “Julius Chattelon. Ah…no pool.” In his building, there was a communal tub down the hall with a big brown ring, but he left that out.

  “Wow,” she said. “How do you?”

  “Like Shat-upon, only Shat-alon,” Audie volunteered, the joke worn out before they’d crossed the ocean in forty-three.

  She took his hand and shook it gently. “Pleased to meet you, soldier.”

  “That’s ‘hero’ to you,” he said to her, trying to ignore the others, but the monkeys hooted over that.

  Then Audie said, “Arthur Finn…after my mother’s younger brother who drowned after drinking a barrel of beer and swimming in the lake. It’s a legacy I can only try to live up to.”

  Audie shook Isbe’s hand a little too heartily for Jules’s liking, so he broke Audie’s hold and said, “Go shake Francis’s hand.”

  Audie went into the living room calling for Francis.

  “Got to ask a girl her name, partner,” Bobby drawled at him, munching a cookie Dorie had given him.

  Jules didn’t favor that one with a look. “Just eat your cookies,” he muttered.

  He was looking at Isabelle, trying to see if she was hiding anything else. This girl. She was messing with his gray matter.

  She’d said she had a duplex on the south side. It belonged to her dad, and the
dad was a guilty son-of-a-bitch, not that she said it like that because she didn’t say that. Nice girls didn’t, and he and the guys needed to use it less, start to clean it up some. Before the war, they never would have used foul language in front of dames like these.

  But Isbe…she was quiet. She left stuff out. She told him she was a virgin. She told him she loved him—but forgot to mention her real name?

  What else was she neglecting to mention? “Oh, I have a Cadillac”? “I have a gold mine”? “I have Boardwalk and Park Place…a yacht on Lake Michigan”?

  “Skinny-dippin’!” Audie declared, returning to the kitchen. Francis was walking behind him carrying four unopened bottles of beer and a foil bag of potato chips.

  “Um…I’ve got neighbors,” Isbe laughed. “I grew up here.”

  “There’s nothing but trees behind this house. They’re far away on the sides, and baby, we got stealth,” Audie said. He’d apparently been scouting out the lay of the place.

  “No wonder we won the war,” Francis laughed, shaking her head and setting the bottles on the counter. “This one doesn’t even need to sleep.” She thumbed over her shoulder at Audie, then used the opener to pop the caps on the beers.

  “C’mon, babies. We’ll go real quiet. C’mon, Francis,” Audie said, a little kid, hurrying back outside in the dark. It wasn’t raining anymore, and it was cooler. Maybe the girls didn’t want to swim. They could speak for themselves.

  “You want to?” Jules asked Isbe. Frankly, the thought of a midnight swim with her…he was signing up for that detail and willing her to agree. She may keep things to herself, but he wasn’t holding a grudge, especially if she put on her bathing suit.

  She looked to the girls, and Dorie was putting on a pot of coffee, and Bobby leaned in beside her. He’d just grabbed another cookie from the loaded plate Dorie had filled. He drank down his snack with the bottle of beer Francis handed him.

  “I don’t want to get my hair wet,” Francis was saying. “I already know Audie’s a dunker.”

  Jules confirmed it. Audie was a dunker, a splasher, an underwater pincher, an underwater pants-er, and a dive-on-top-of-you-and-keep-you-under-er. But Jules kept all that to himself.

  Francis went to the door and argued with Audie, trying to get a promise that he wouldn’t splash.

  “I can’t do that, baby, can’t promise. I can’t control all those little droplets wanting to fly and land on your pretty skin. I’m a man of my word, mama. I can’t promise.”

  “You are such a crazy man. You better keep those skivvies on,” she said through the screen.

  “I’d rather go in my skin, but I’m too much of a gentleman, mama,” he answered.

  “What’s that?” Francis asked, surprised.

  “That’s King Kong, baby—oh wait, you mean my other gorilla?”

  Jules rolled his eyes. That goof had no manners.

  Apparently, Francis had spied the tattoo on Audie’s back—the gorilla in the peaked cap. Francis squealed a little. “You guys,” she said, turning back to Jules.

  “Yeah, we’ve all got ’em,” Bobby said quietly to Dorie.

  “Got what?” Dorie asked, pouring coffee.

  Jules reached over his shoulder and quickly gathered his shirt and pulled it over his head. He turned his shoulder so Isbe could see the chimp. Her eyes went to the chimp, and he looked, and her eyes were going all over him too. She didn’t seem disappointed. At all.

  Smirking, he turned to give Dorie a view.

  Bobby said, “You’ll see mine later. It’s better than his.”

  Isbe had her hand over her mouth, and she touched Jules’s shoulder. Her hand was warm, and she dragged it down his bare back. “I don’t see how it could be better,” she said.

  He caught a groan and cleared his throat.

  “There he goes,” Francis said, and Jules went to the door and looked over Francis’s shoulder. Audie ran to the pool in his underwear and jumped in, and a splash rose up like Moby Dick had arrived.

  “I’ll go if you will,” Francis said to Isbe.

  “Don’t you want to swim with the monkeys?” Bobby asked Isbe.

  “You guys going?”

  “Not us,” Dorie said, smiling sappily at Bobby. “We’re sitting out front on the porch swing.”

  “Okay,” Isbe sighed. “I guess I’ll take a dip.”

  Jules gave a silent hallelujah. Bobby could have that swing. He was going to see his girl in her suit.

  Francis went next door to change. Isbe said she would be right back, and he heard her feet on the stairs hurrying to the bedroom she’d already told him was up there.

  He went to the small corkboard she had on the wall over a little table with an attached chair. The phone sat on the table, and he looked closer at the dial and made note of the number. She was upstairs right over his head stripping off.

  He needed to stop molesting her in his mind. He was in her nice little kitchen, for God’s sake, with the doilies and nice shit like the salt and pepper collection on the shelves there. He was such a punk.

  Man, she’d lose her mind if she saw all the dishes they broke overseas…all the beautiful things that turn into broken shit real fast, and you see it for what it is then—temporary shit. Nothing to it at all. When people are dying, what’s it matter, the shit people spend their lives fussing over? It went away so quick. Quick as life. Break a pot, see a buddy drop beside you—just so quick.

  Nah, nah, not these thoughts right now—here. Just no.

  To distract himself from the debris in his mind, he straightened and looked over the many notes pinned on the board by the phone. Swing dance, Red Cross, call Timmy to mow lawn, the cut and curl…

  For all the things that were pinned there, he saw one name in bold writing, Jerry Blake, and a number written beneath. He didn’t like it. There was no reason not to; it wasn’t his business, and for all he knew, this guy was her priest. He just wondered. She was so vague, leaving shit out. She said there was no one. She seemed to want him.

  He had no right to be in her business. She wasn’t a frivolous person, not at all.

  And this was a home. She knew how to make one, apparently. He went into the living room and sat on the broken-in brown sofa. He hadn’t been in a real home, where he was welcomed—not invading, robbing, and shooting up—in years. He pictured sitting here and watching the television with her sometime. He could do that. Couldn’t he? Did Jerry Blake do that? No. Jules had to let that go. But a normal guy would do that. Was Blake normal, and all those sons, those mama’s boys…were they better for her?

  He saw a framed picture on the end table across the narrow room, and he got up and went there. A little girl sat on a pony wearing a cowgirl hat, and a flowered dress, her chubby legs too short for the stirrups, and beside her stood a smiling woman who looked vaguely similar to Isbe now. Best guess was the dead mother.

  This kid was Isbe, with the pigtails and no front teeth. “Sweet,” he whispered. She was a doll. If there was any chance of hurting her, he needed to be a man and leave her alone. He carefully set the frame in its place.

  He went outside then and sat, untied his wing tips, toed them off, followed by his socks. He stood and emptied his pockets on the table she had out there.

  Then he undid his belt and stepped out of his pants. He folded them over a metal chair, and she was coming out then. Francis was coming out from the other side. She carried a couple of towels, and she looked swell, and Audie’s eyes would bug right out of his head…but this girl…his girl…for tonight…she had on a one-piece suit that tied behind her neck. He tried not to gawk since she’d called him on that before, but she smiled and went on past, also holding towels.

  “Look at you, all grown up,” he whispered, following those twitching hips. He resisted scooping her up. He took her arm instead, her bare, smooth, shapely arm, and he kissed her on her soft shoulder. She reached the pool, and giggled, and produced a swim cap and pulled it over her head and tucked her long hair into it.
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br />   Meanwhile, he dove into the deeper end. It was freezing, and if there was any hint of drunkenness left in him, the water shocked him sober.

  Francis had pinned her hair on her head, and Audie had her cornered on the shallow end, and he was telling her she could be in the movies cause he’d never seen a girl in any of the movies prettier than her.

  Isbe stood on the side of the pool still tucking her hair, and Jules swam near her and looked up. She did not have a weak view, not from any angle. She was perfect.

  “Get in here,” he said impatiently.

  Isbe smiled, then walked to the deepest edge and neatly dove in. Beautiful.

  She swam half the distance of the pool underwater, then emerged.

  Jules went right to her. He quickly had his arms around her. He asked her what else she’d forgot to tell him.

  She said, “My whole boring life story. You want a plate or just a sandwich?”

  He had to think a minute. Normally a sandwich was more than he wanted from any dame he knew. But with Isbe, he’d like to hang around the table and sample the gravy at least. “A sandwich,” he said.

  “We call this tub of water a kidney,” she said, “for reasons that are clear…especially if you see it from the window in my room.”

  “If that’s an invite…the aerial view, the answer is yes.” Her room had not even been in the brief tour she’d given them upon entering her house. He wanted to see it.

  “I was answering your question about the pool,” she reminded him.

  “Yeah, carry on.” He had an elbow up on the side now, the other arm around her, his fingers against the naked skin on her back. Hi-de-hi-hi-de-ho.

  “Mom was in a car accident. She injured her lower back, her legs, her kidneys. She got a settlement and insisted on this pool. She thought it would make her well.”