Yok

by Tim Davys

  Mike drank. He was already drunk, but he could get drunker. Larry croaked on in the background.

  “Mike, darling, I heard . . .”

  Sam Gazelle came running from the kitchen. He hugged the surprised ape hard and much too long, not releasing his hold until Mike freed himself with controlled force. Sam’s eyes were shiny with tears, his eyebrows raised in empathy.

  “You must be crushed!”

  Mike mumbled in agreement.

  “Oh, honey,” said Sam, who mistook quietness for sorrow, “what a bummer. She was really pretty.”

  Mike nodded.

  “But the family, Mike? At the same time, you got rid of her mom and dad. There’s always something to be happy about. Do you want any pills?”

  Gazelle dug in his pants pockets and pulled out an impressive number of colorful pills and vials. But Mike shook his head.

  “But you have to stay here with us tonight,” said Sam. “We’re not letting you be by yourself. If you try to leave here, Tom-Tom is going to carry you back, honey. Oh, Mike, what a bummer. She was the one your heart had chosen, wasn’t she?”

  Mike mumbled something and emptied the glass. He hated being reduced to a victim. But he didn’t dare protest. Cocker Spaniel had been his betrothed, they were going to be married in only a few weeks; these were unequivocal facts. Sam Gazelle’s concerns were logical. Mike ought to feel abandoned and rejected. He had reason besides to be ashamed. It was his own infidelity that was behind all this misery.

  “I don’t intend to do anything stupid, Sam,” he said. “I’m not the type, you know?”

  “Under circumstances like these, you never know,” Gazelle replied. “Right now we’re standing here, in a well-lit bar with lots of stuffed animals around. But tonight, when you’re alone . . .”

  Mike Chimpanzee gave his genie a thought, and thought that alone would be marvelous.

  “ . . . when you’re alone,” Gazelle continued, “then perhaps everything will feel different. That’s why we want you here.”

  Mike nodded. Maybe the gazelle was right, and Mike almost wished that were the case. Because when the shock subsided after the visit to the Rozenblatts in Amberville, it was not despair that was visible behind the fog of emotion. Instead, Mike had experienced an unpleasant feeling of liberation. It was as unexpected as it was intense.

  And Mike would not dare admit that even to Sam Gazelle; he felt relieved to escape the wedding and Cocker Spaniel.

  11.

  At home there was a small, black piece of plastic on the desk. It was almost triangular, chipped on the corner with a white line that went from edge to edge.

  Mike Chimpanzee couldn’t help it, but when he returned to the antique store on Calle Gran Via the next morning—in the end he had been forced to stay with Tom-Tom and Sam—he did so at a run. Cocker Spaniel and the Rozenblatt family had intruded, distracted him, and caused him to think about other things. But when morning dawned and Mike came to life, with a bursting headache and a tongue that felt like it was dipped in acetone, it was not the wedding that was on his mind. Instead it was the second wish that the genie had granted him. And this caused his pulse to race.

  The genie flew right behind him on the indigo blue sidewalk, trying to calm him.

  “Sir, there’s no danger, I swear. I was there the whole night. Took the opportunity to change the sheets on the bed, it must have been a while, why don’t we burn the old ones? Then—and I’m sure there’s a proper reason, but let’s not go into that—I threw out all the cigarette butts in the desk drawer. I’ve had the situation under control the whole time.”

  But Mike continued running, threw open the door to the store, and hurried over to the desk.

  The piece of plastic was still there.

  He sank down into the desk chair, out of breath. Thought a moment. And could state with confidence that he didn’t regret it at all.

  When at last he had dared to wish for Nikki Lee’s guitar pick, the magical piece of plastic that would transform his life and give his pathetic songwriting the lift he couldn’t achieve on his own, he had been worried that he would regret it the next day. But . . . Mike breathed slowly and closed his eyes . . . no, nothing.

  Ever since Nils Gull told the story about Nikki Lee, the idea had been there. Integrity had hindered him. There were no detours to finding his artistic expression. To express the contemporary version of Truth and Pain, you couldn’t use the help of ancient genies. Call it pride or madness, but at first Mike had not even given the idea any serious thought. It was more the enticement of personally finding a counterpart to Nikki Lee’s guitar pick that incited him.

  But night after night after night, he had failed in his attempts. The songs didn’t work, and he didn’t know where he should start looking for his good-luck amulet.

  Then the idea occurred to him: What if he asked the genie?

  Mike pulled out the phone jack, turned off his cell phone, made a pot of strong coffee, and sat down at the desk with the tape recorder ready, notebook open, and guitar in his lap. Solemnly, he took the guitar pick between thumb and index finger, raised it in the air, and turned it slowly in the light from the desk lamp. It was impossible to imagine that this piece of plastic had been in Nikki Lee’s throat the day she was delivered to her parents. Mike had asked the genie if there might be two identical pieces of plastic in Mollisan Town, or if Nikki Lee had lost hers, but the genie had not answered in a way that was comprehensible.

  Whatever.

  Mike Chimpanzee would finally write the songs that would outlive him.

  He set the guitar pick carefully on the top E string, let his hand fall and listened to an E minor that sang in the guitar in a way he’d never heard before. He was on his way.

  Mike worked without interruption for ten hours. Not even the genie disturbed him. Possibly Fredrik felt sufficiently satisfied to be one wish closer to his own freedom, or else he kept silent out of respect. Chimpanzee had never before radiated this sort of focused energy.

  Over and over and over again, Mike hummed to the guitar chord that filled the room with its metallic roundness. Over and over and over again. It was so simple and so clever at the same time.

  When the Evening Storm waned and darkness fell, Mike pulled on a jacket and walked quickly around the corner—he carefully avoided Scheherazade—to Reza’s ToGo, where he bought a kebab and a cola. Then he continued working until he literally fell asleep at the desk a few hours after midnight. He woke up early with a nasty pain in his back, and considered lying down on the sofa bed for a few hours’ proper rest. He saw his notes out of the corner of his eye and was again seized by the frenzied joy of creation.

  Mike Chimpanzee was experiencing the most intense surge of creativity. To say that he found himself in a blessed flow was to reduce his condition to something general and familiar. He actually felt that he was in direct contact with Nikki Lee, that an invisible line of communication had been drawn from her soul right into his guitar, and that out of her life and suffering he was granted a wisdom and intuition that he had never been close to.

  Over and over and over again.

  Something inside him also said that this was urgent, that the power he was experiencing would end and that the genie’s “theft” must soon be discovered and punished. He worked to keep up with his brain’s energy.

  When the haze settled over the city after lunch, Mike Chimpanzee was done. The silence was so sudden that the genie, who was observing a feather duster clean the thousands of decorative objects in the glass display case, lost his concentration, and the duster knocked over a porcelain dolphin.

  “Done,” said Mike.

  “Done?”

  “Sincerely, Genie, even you have to admit that this turned out to be something really special. Something sensational.”

  The genie had not been listening. He thought that all Mike’s clinking
and gaping was borderline unbearable.

  “Sensational, Mr. Ape,” he confirmed. “Sublime, but not difficult. Captivating without being ingratiating.”

  “You think so?”

  “I really think so,” answered the genie, who in his spirit vows had never promised not to lie. “Now of course I can’t tell one song from another on the radio. I get more enjoyment from . . . hearing a third wish?”

  But Mike had stopped listening. He was already on his way out to the street, with his guitar in hand and the black notebook stuck into his coat pocket. He ran north out onto Calle Gran Via in the hope of finding a taxi on ash gray Carrer de la Marquesa, the street that divided Yok into a northern and a southern half. Mike felt that he was flying along, just like the genie; never before had he moved so easily. He left Nikki Lee’s guitar pick on the desk; he didn’t need any more help to play the song, and he didn’t dare risk losing the guitar pick somewhere in the city. In his head the chorus that he had just created out of his undistilled desire was still playing:

  Over and over and over again, he sang to himself. Over and over and over again.

  How he made his way up to Tourquai and Brown Brothers he didn’t remember. During his crazy year after 40 degrees, he had been high on everything there was to be high on, but none of the kicks were even close to what he experienced today. He imagined that it was he, not the elevator, who climbed the thirty-six stories up through the building. When he stepped into Gavin Toad’s office with the marvelous view of Tourquai’s spiny skyline, he began by explaining that he refused to play until Lancelot Lemur was there.

  “You refuse to play?” Toad exclaimed in surprise, sitting behind his shiny desk puffing on a fat cigar. “As if I would want to hear you play? What the hell have you been taking today?”

  But Mike Chimpanzee strutted around inside the toad’s office, with his guitar in hand and such consummate rock-and-roll attitude that at last Toad could only shake his head, pick up the phone, and call Lemur. During the twenty minutes it took for the demon producer to get there, Chimpanzee did not sit still for more than a few seconds at a time. He threw himself onto the toad’s elegant visitor’s couch, sat in every one of the armchairs, and exercised his fingers with scales on the guitar. Toad eventually had enough and left the office to wait for Lancelot by the elevators. Mike twirled twenty turns in each direction in Toad’s office chair.

  The whole time Mike was singing the chorus to himself. Listened and smiled at the thought of the clever transition to the verse, felt the bold riff vibrate in his fingertips. He could not hold back a laugh when in his imagination he saw the toad’s and the lemur’s surprised faces.

  Over and over and over again, he sang. Over and over and over again.

  “Okay,” said Gavin Toad brusquely, plopping down on the outer edge of the couch. “I really don’t have time for these pranks. And you don’t either, Mike, because expensive studio time is ticking.”

  “I have all the time in the world,” Lemur explained, falling down on one of the deep armchairs that looked even more comfortable when Lemur was swimming in it. “All the time in the world. Because you’re the one who’s paying for it, Toad.”

  Lemur was smiling, but it was hard to say whether the smile was ironic or obsequious or if he was simply thinking about something else. He absentmindedly rattled the skulls on his armband.

  “I’m calling it ‘Over and Over Again, ’” Mike said.

  He sat in the visitor’s chair. He had placed the notebook with the lyrics on the desk because he hadn’t had time to memorize it all. He struck a chord, cleared his throat quietly, and then he was off.

  The energy from last night and this morning carried him over verses and bridges. There was a sense of triumph in his voice that made it clearer and sharper than ever before; the chorus was so great that he felt he could repeat it as many times as he wanted:

  Over and over and over again, he sang proudly. Over and over and over again.

  Not once did he observe his audience, he was so filled by his own performance, and when he was done and the silence slowly settled over the room—like a newly laundered sheet falling down over a mattress—he finally looked up.

  To his total surprise.

  Toad was looking in a folder. Lemur appeared to have fallen asleep.

  “What?” said Mike.

  “Huh?” Lemur replied, looking up.

  “Are you finished?” Toad asked.

  Mike nodded.

  “That was shit,” said Toad. “As usual. It sounds like something you shoved up your ass that you couldn’t get out. Mike, forget about that now, and record the songs you have.”

  “I wasn’t listening that carefully, Ape,” said Lancelot, “but if you want I can run it through my hit machine. Maybe something really cool will come out on the other end?”

  Things were getting dark in Chimpanzee’s eyes. It was as if the air was being sucked out of him, as if he were becoming a compact package of cotton without heart or soul, and without listening to the toad and lemur’s continued discussion he left the office, with guitar in hand and hope smashed into tiny fragments.

  The genie walked beside him along the deserted sidewalks of Tourquai.

  “You shouldn’t worry about them,” said Fredrik. “Some like one thing and others like something else, isn’t that right?”

  It was not only for his own purposes that the genie was trying to console Mike. True, a deeply depressed chimpanzee would never manage to formulate one last wish, but the genie also felt sincerely sorry for Mike’s sake. He if anyone knew how deep down the second wish had been, how much hope the chimpanzee had attached to the little piece of plastic, and the fiasco hurt even from a distance.

  “Toad isn’t exactly the most sophisticated judge of taste, is he?” said the genie.

  But Mike wasn’t listening.

  It took him a few hours to walk home to the antique store from Brown Brothers’ skyscraper in Tourquai. He could not recall ever walking so far before. If he’d had the idea that physical exhaustion would dampen the spiritual flattening, that came to naught. He was completely used up, but still just as depressed.

  The month of free marijuana was over, but he found a few cold beers in the fridge. He sat down heavily on a Renaissance armchair and let his fingers caress the embroidered peacocks on the armrest. The genie continued trying to cheer him up, but Mike was not receptive. Toward twilight the ape fell asleep, and woke up a few hours later with drool running down his chin. He felt stiff and cold, and on his way over to the sofa bed and the soft, warm down comforter, he plugged the phone jack in again. It was more a reflex than a conscious action; he wasn’t expecting any calls.

  It rang just as he lay his head on the pillow.

  He listened to five long rings without reacting, but when the phone kept ringing he forced himself up to answer. He expected his mom’s angry voice. A lifetime was far from enough for her to forgive him for the cancelled wedding.

  It was Gavin.

  “Hey, you poor bastard,” said Toad. “Lancelot and I talked about it when you left. You looked like you intended to burn yourself up. Damn, Mike, if this is such a big deal . . . Lancelot said he’ll include the song about freedom on the album. This latest thing was unbearable, but the freedom song had something. We’ll take it.”

  Pause.

  “Mike? Did you hear? We’ll include your freedom song.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah, what the hell, Lancelot promises to make something good out of it.”

  “I don’t know what I should say,” said Mike.

  “Write something nice about me in your memoirs,” said Gavin Toad, hanging up.

  Mike stood with the telephone receiver against his ear, staring vacantly ahead. Word for word he went through the telephone conversation as he slowly hung up the phone. The genie was in front of him, quivering with
curiosity.

  “What just happened?” asked the genie, and a damp cloud of expectation emerged from his mouth. “What just happened? What did he say?”

  “He’s putting ‘Freedom’ on the album,” said Mike.

  “That’s amazing, isn’t it? Mike? Why do you look so glum?”

  “He said he thought ‘Over and Over Again’ was unbearable.”

  “Yes . . . but . . . you’ll get a song on the album? Isn’t that what you wanted? A song on the album?”

  “Unbearable,” Mike repeated. “The song that I wrote with Nikki Lee’s guitar pick. He’s out of his mind, that bastard.”

  “But, Mike . . .” the genie began, but the chimpanzee had already picked up the guitar pick and fetched the guitar.

  “I’ll show him,” said Mike. “It’s the verse that doesn’t add up. I’ll rewrite the verse, maybe fiddle with the riff a little . . . it’s a good song, I know it.”

  “But, Mike, didn’t he say that—”

  “He said he didn’t like Nikki Lee’s song,” Mike repeated. “He’s out of his mind.”

  12.

  Sometimes on weekends, when Mike Chimpanzee was a little cub, his dad would take him to Plaza de Bueno, the rain forest park. That was while his dad was still transforming into the pale shadow who, as Mike was growing up, would live a few steps behind Ilja Crocodile, at the periphery of the family’s life, before finally disappearing without a trace.

  The park was one of Yok’s neglected treasures; most stuffed animals hated getting wet and avoided the artificially humid atmosphere. Mike and his dad would walk on the path between the mangrove trees up to the pond where the water lilies blossomed, sit down on a bench, take out the finely chopped leek and liver sausage sandwiches they brought with them, and eat in silence.

  That was where Mike Chimpanzee made his way after Gavin finally yielded and accepted “Freedom” on the album. To escape the genie’s nagging, Mike asked Tom-Tom Crow if he wanted to come along, and now they were sitting on a bench in the shadow of a massive magnolia, looking out over the quiet, still pond. The sun was high in the sky, the faint Breeze made the rain forest breathe carefully.