Love Monkey

by Kyle Smith

  They’ve laid out a real spread for me: iridescent blue-green plastic throwaway plates, matching cups. The full bounty of the Oscar Mayer aisle, an archive of luncheon meats. The plastic forks and knives are translucent, ostentatiously heavy, as if to say, this is quality disposable flatware. And to drink: they’ve got six liters of popular carbonated beverages. Most of them are caffeine free. This is okay. My blood is surging, my nerves are frying in a pan of butter, my hormones are ringing like a gong as one message chug-a-chugs through my power grid: JuliaJuliaJulia. As addictive as java, and worse: not only do I need her when I get up every morning, I need her when I go to bed every night.

  We eat spiced ham and pimiento loaf and make small talk with the grandmother and the aunt, who just showed up. They’re both proud, wide women with grooves carved into the rubber of their faces. Julia therefore will look like this in thirty years. So it’s no big thing if I don’t wind up with her. Right? This is what I keep telling myself. It must be true.

  The mom (“Call me Charlotte!”) fusses, getting ice, grabbing bottles of soda, deplasticizing more processed meats. She is largely implied throughout the meal. Occasionally her voice ricochets in from the Formicaed kitchen. At one point she sits and eats a rolled-up piece of bologna, but then she disappears again on a mysterious errand.

  The dad sits at the head of the table chewing. He says nothing.

  After lunch we go over the family albums and make fun of Julia’s large high school hair. There’s a loud Frankenstein’s-monster thump on the door.

  Brother Gary, the college student, answers. “Hi, Duane,” I hear.

  Hi, Duane. Normally the only time I wish ill on anyone is when reading my college alumni notes.

  There’s a lot of Hi, Duaneing going around the house. He is not unknown here. In fact he acts as if he has been here hundreds of times.

  The Duane goes to kiss Julia; she gives him her cheek and an awkward little rub on the back. No making out in front of me, at least.

  Duane is tall, five inches taller than me. A storky dork, all elbow and knee. I suppose girls would say he’s dreamy to look at, but let’s break him down, shall we? He has nondescript brown hair and blue eyes and a fiercely nonhumorous face, a face the texture of meat loaf. And he has an earring; not an interesting one. It looks like the little circular paper clip they put your new key on when you get a key made. What kind of heterosexual man wears an earring in 2001? He’s wearing blue jeans and a green T-shirt, sneakers. Your basic auto-mechanic look.

  He’s getting the check-in cheek kiss from the auntie and the grammy and the mommy, another casual, “Hi, Duane,” from the dad, as if he’s a welcome presence instead of the prince of darkness. They are treating him like the son-in-law. I’m the son-out-of-law, the son out of luck.

  Duane and I size each other up.

  “Tom Farrell,” I say.

  He glares. “What kind of name is that?”

  “It’s, um, Irish.”

  Drunken potato-eating bricklayer, say his eyes.

  “What’s your last name?” I say.

  “Feinberg,” he says, aggressively.

  Uh-oh. A Jew. He’s probably pretty smart. And funny. And his dad was probably a cardiothoracic surgeon instead of an air-conditioner repairman.

  The brothers are asking Duane to go play Frisbee. As if they’ve done it a hundred times before. They’re all friends.

  “You wanna play Frithbee?” Duane asks.

  Let’s see, do I want to play Frisbee with the guy who is having sex with my woman? No, not particularly. I have not played Frisbee in years. Possibly I might toss more than my share of wobblers, and I try not to do anything I’m not good at around a girl.

  Duane does not subscribe to this philosophy; for instance, he speaks despite having nothing to say. Conversation involves a certain amount of treading water until your wit window opens. With him it’s all treading water: the traffic, the weather, what time he got up, what he had for lunch (matzoh ball thoup at his mother’s; she’s having a delayed Pathover, apparently). He is a boring guy, precision measured and custom fit for a boring suburb, a guy built to serve one purpose: to be a dodgeball target.

  “Where you from?” he says.

  “Rockville, Maryland,” I say.

  I gracefully allow him a response window. He has nothing to say, though.

  “Where you from?” I say.

  “Pithcataway,” he says.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Pithcataway. New Jerthey.”

  “I love New Jersey town names,” I say. “Ho-Ho-Kus? Weehawken?”

  She laughs.

  “When you look at the map, they’re all absurd. Were their founding fathers a bunch of DKEs hunched over pitchers of Schlitz? There’s probably a town called Dicksmawken or Tu-Tu-Tuchus.”

  Julia throws her head back and laughs. Duane gives her a sharp look. That’s right, buddy. Deal yourself right out of this game.

  “Actually,” Duane says, “they’re Native American named. Not a joke to them.”

  The look on his face is blank, earnest, serious. How many unfunny Jews have you ever met? Not counting the pros, the ones who go moping down the street in their all-black look-at-me-I’m-Jewish costumes.

  We all look at the mom’s fiftieth birthday party pictures. Julia’s hot in a deep V-neck sleeveless top, giving a shy toast or mugging with her brothers. In every picture Duane lurks buffoonishly in the background, always with the same expression on his face: I am Stable, I am Sober, I have a two by four up my Sphincter.

  There’s a picture of Julia, her tongue leaking epileptically out of the corner of her mouth, awkwardly trying to applaud-catch a Frisbee between two flat hands.

  “She always tries to catch it like that,” Al says, shaking his head.

  “The grace. The poise,” I say. “Are you by any chance a dancer?”

  “Shut up!” A right cross to the shoulder.

  “You could really do something with this picture, though,” I say. “Could be on a poster for the Special Olympics.”

  “Isn’t that where you go to hit on girls?” she says.

  “Tried to. The competition was too fierce, though. I got beaten up by a paraplegic.”

  “And how did your pick-up lines go over with the deaf girls?”

  “The ones who couldn’t talk didn’t really like being referred to as ‘dumb.’ ”

  “See, now, I would’ve thought you’re an expert on dumb.”

  Speaking of: Duane isn’t saying a word. His eyes dart wildly between us. Mother turns to the next picture in the stack: it’s the money shot. Topless Julia, scampering madly on the beach, age approximately four.

  “Oh God!” she says. “Moth er!”

  “I found this the other day,” Charlotte says brightly. “I just threw that in there while you were eating.”

  “It’s so nice to see there’s a couple things about you that haven’t changed much over the years,” I say.

  Charlotte laughs. “She was always so flat chested,” she says. “She didn’t get them from me!” Then, for emphasis, she places hands on herself. Plumps herself up for inspection. Yep. Can’t miss ’em.

  “Okay,” Julia says. “Barf bag, please.”

  “You were so adorable,” Charlotte says.

  “Were?” Julia says.

  “Of course you made me a copy of this?” I ask Charlotte.

  Duane is silent. The plan has been to show her, one on one, that I’m better in every way: okay, he might be a smidge better looking than me. But aren’t girls supposed to care less about that kind of thing? And though he’s a lot taller than me, I’m a lot taller than Julia. On conversation, I’ve got the guy beat. Surely she is noticing. I’ve made her laugh half a dozen times. Duane is ringing up a big bagel.

  We drive over to the recital together, papa bear, son bear, son-in-law bear, and me: Barely Tolerated Bear. The performance is in a junior high school auditorium. On the way over, Duane pushes banalities at me like a mother offering a bo
wl of candy. He attempts to begin every sentence with “So,” which is an unwise strategy for him.

  “Though, what do you do at the paper?” he says.

  “Though, how long have you been in journalithm?” he says.

  “Though, what’th the latht movie you thaw?” he says.

  I feel like setting things on fire.

  At no point does he say, “Though, have you ever had thex with my girlfriend?” Despite knowing the following:

  I bought her an expensive bouquet, with a glass vase;

  I rode a train for an hour to see a bunch of amateur dancers crash into the scenery and each other;

  I hardly ever make eye contact with her when we’re all in a group together.

  Yet he asks nothing. What kind of reporter is this guy? A small-town reporter, a guy who retypes the press release without picking up the phone, a reporter who doesn’t ask what he doesn’t want to know.

  At the auditorium, I look at the smudgy xeroxed program. A crude drawing of skyscrapers twinkling in the night. Fat childish lettering heralds A SALUTE TO NEW YORK CITY.

  Put on by a group of people who live sixty minutes from it. Yet they’re right. In this place, the city seems as exotic as Bangkok.

  Curtain up. A guy standing in front of the stage actually puts a record on a turntable. The record hisses over the Korean War–surplus speakers.

  The scenery is a series of cardboard decorations affixed to the rear curtain: a slightly lumpy five-foot-tall red apple covered in glitter. Ten white stars arranged to the side in a wedge formation. The big apple I get. The stars mystify me. Two for each borough?

  The first dance is “New York, New York” from On the Town. The dancers—these are the intermediates, the fourteen-year-olds—lipsynch along to the crackling lyrics. They point up to the Bronx. They point down to the Battery.

  More time-warp numbers. “Give My Regards to Broadway.” “I’ll Take Manhattan.” Every number runs embarrassingly long, with a reprise. Tubby dancers stepping all over each other and little girls and housewives inexplicably commingled with the few girls who can dance. No two dancers are exactly in rhythm as they cavort across the stage. One number involves hats: they take them off, they spin them on their hands. They lie on their backs and point their chubby legs up and spin the derbys on their feet. Gradually dancers lose their hats. Soon the stage is littered with them. Those who have dropped their hats continue to do the number with make-believe hats, which is easier for all involved. Possibly they could have extended this idea a bit further: what if the girls and the audience simply agreed to pretend there was a performance, and we all went for a beer instead?

  I look at the program: Julia doesn’t appear until Act II.

  There are seventeen numbers in Act I.

  I turn to Silent Al.

  “Can I get a drink here?”

  “There’s a water fountain,” he offers.

  “How about a bourbon fountain?”

  He shrugs. Al isn’t picking up what I’m laying down. Julia once told me, “I love Al. Al is me.” Gotta work on this guy.

  At halftime we all wander outside into the warm spring air. The sun is just setting. The air has that fresh suburban smell. Like stuff actually grows here.

  “Though,” says Duane, “ever been to a rethital before?”

  I’m sitting next to him on a low concrete wall. The dad starts chatting with Julia’s dance partner, Carla, who just got engaged. I follow the playbook and compliment her rock.

  “One point oh two,” she brags.

  A large ant has appeared between Duane and me. I crush it with my shoe.

  “Nah, nooo,” Duane says with dismay.

  Julia comes out in a hideous red-and-black-plastic cocktail dress, a dress that shouts “rented costume.”

  “I know,” she says, before anyone speaks. “Aren’t these costumes the worst?”

  “Give us a twirl,” I say.

  She does. The dress is backless. “Tra la,” she says, and shrugs.

  She’s in the next number but she just learned it. She has some butterflies. Also, what she’s wearing is a fire hazard. She sits down on the low wall across from the one Duane and I are sitting on, equidistant from each of us, adopting a neutral pose.

  Duane is a possessory toucher. He springs up—boing!—and posts himself behind her. He is constantly stroking her arm, putting his hand on the small of her back, tugging her closer. Sometimes she resists. Sometimes she doesn’t. I try to chat with the dad, use my peripheral vision to clock it all. Julia notices another ant next to her on the wall and stands up skittishly. Duane ever so gently brushes the ant away with a leaf. Rehabilitates it. Releases it on parole. I scan the ground hoping to get a chance to accidentally step on it next time I get up.

  Below the backless part of her outfit there are some sexy crisscross straps. Which is where Duane’s hand is now. I’m not looking, but I’m looking.

  I’m talking about the Microsoft case with Julia’s dad. I’m not looking. (Touching, rubbing, holding.) We talk about the recession, about his job in the computer software sales business. We talk sports, and I’m not looking. (Grabbing, stroking, mauling.)

  Back in my seat for the second half. Have you ever seen your girl, the girl you most like to look at, dance? About fifteen girls are out there for a “There’s No Business Like Show Business” that’s twenty-four-carat zircon. Julia is one of them. She’s in vinyl. I’m in heaven. She’s a little out of step. Her arms swing a quarter of a beat off. At one point she turns right when she’s supposed to turn left, briefly hip-checks Carla, and giggles. I’m loving every second of it. The things she can do with her legs, the way she arches her back. What a waste. This body, reserved nightly for an ant-loving lisper.

  The choreography on the number is so ha-cha-cha ridiculous that I’m not prepared for the one that comes next. There are forty dances listed in the program, but this one is the only one she choreographed. It’s set to cool weird instrumental music and has cool weird costumes—sexy tight tops, loose Turkish harem pants. Half of the girls are wearing red and half blue. And as Julia moves and writhes and runs and spins and stands on one leg with the other pointing toward the gods, I get some sense of what I came for, some sense of why Julia is Julia: the mystery. In five minutes it’ll be all over and the stage will give way to a bunch of four-year-olds lisping along with “Happiness,” from You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown.

  But for now, Julia is beyond beautiful. She is the thing itself. She holds the copyright. It’s like finding a Matisse at a garage sale. When she’s done, everyone else in the family gets up to go outside again. I just sit there alone for a minute.

  When I wander outside, the family is there. Julia is there too. She’s relaxed and damp with sweat and Duane’s clutch is coming at her from all directions.

  We go back inside to see the big finale, “One,” from A Chorus Line, and Julia joins the kick line and we applaud dutifully and then we wait in the corridor. Duane and I stand side by side.

  “So,” I say. “Shall we settle this like men?”

  Except I don’t. I don’t say anything. I just wait.

  “Though, what kinds of books do you like?”

  Time for a little detective work. I find out his work schedule (he’s on nights, which is why Julia always seems to be available for the evening), discover that he’s taking her to Mexico in September (not if I can help it, buddy), learn that when she went to Portugal last year (“The only time I was ever on an airplane,” she explained sheepishly, the night I met her), he was the one who took her. I go back and mentally rewrite all of the stories she has told me. For “I,” kindly read, “We.” “I” live on 121st? No, that, according to Duane, is where “We” live.

  I inquire as to his future.

  For the time being, he’s trying to claw his way into a job in the city. He wants out of Connecticut. His ambition is to become a generic general assignment reporter, a guy who chases fires and waits in the shrubbery, for one of the metro rags
. In other words, the kind of job I had years ago and graduated from years ago. And he expects to support her in the style to which she’s become accustomed (from me)?

  Sure, he gets to sleep with her and all, but there are a couple of facts I am aware of, things that have come out with the gin and the wine Julia and I have shared.

  He wants to marry her.

  She “isn’t sure” she wants to marry him.

  “Are you,” I say all friendly like, “going to propose soon?”

  “Hi.” Julia’s back. I gape. This time it’s a spangled red top, snug as a suntan, with a denim skirt. She still isn’t wearing a bra, and she still looks amazing.

  What must we look like to her, standing so close to each other and chatting so amiably? There we are. Two guys she’s known rather well. Does she look at us and think: that one tastes great, that one’s less filling?

  Duane goes up to her. Whispers something in her ear. She smiles. And then he presents her with a cover-all-bases greeting card (“Congratulations on your special achievement”) and a clump of dirt out of which poke a few dejected weeds and one fresh daisy. He must have picked it out of the ground behind the school. Being broke, he could have played up the po’ boy thing with a thoughtfully constructed collage or a poem. He couldn’t be bothered, or it just didn’t occur to him.

  She laughs, tries to look noncontemptuous, passes the card around. I look at his signature. His name, it turns out, is spelled D-W-A-Y-N-E. A Jew named Dwayne. Unbelievable.

  There’s some sort of plan for a bunch of dancers and our bizarre love triangle to get together later for a celebratory quaff.

  “When is the last train to the city?” I say.

  “I think it’s about one,” Julia says.

  Back at the house. Mother has laid on another spread. Cold teriyaki chicken. The train schedule clings magnetically to the fridge: the last one is at 11:07. I look at my watch: 11:00.

  “How long a drive is it to the train station?” I say, nervously.

  “About fifteen minutes,” Julia says.

  Uh-oh. Everyone graciously starts arranging for me to be comfortable tonight: I can have Al’s bed; being in his look-at-me-I’m-weird stage, he always sleeps on the couch anyway. But the gloom is settling in. I have had to watch Dwayne paw her. I have had to watch him kiss her. Am I going to have to listen to them doing it in the next room? Spare me the squeak, I think.