Mister Monkey

by Francine Prose

  The actress in the fright wig and the purple suit has been offstage since “Monkey Tango,” but now Portia is at her desk with the weak spotlight frothing around her. Looking pretty in her maid’s uniform, the actress playing Carmen knocks on the lawyer’s door. Carmen’s beauty makes Portia look older and more deeply in distress. But Carmen isn’t here to be pretty, except insofar as she needs to charm Portia, whom she tells—along with the audience—about Mister Monkey’s legal difficulties.

  Carmen’s magic works. She makes Portia pity Mister Monkey, or at least feel outraged on his behalf. These two good women can’t believe how evil Janice could try to break up a family and hurt well-intentioned people who have enough on their plate, raising two motherless kids and a feisty hormonal monkey.

  Carmen says, “What can you expect from a woman with these”—she curls her fingers, miming claws—“and a Hermès bag.” The children laugh at the claws and their parents laugh obediently at the unfunny fashion joke.

  The actresses swing into the salsa number that Mario remembers from previous Mister Monkey productions. It’s pleasant enough, a fun break from whatever weirdness has infected this production.

  Now the grizzled guy who collected the tickets appears, wearing a judge’s wig and not saying much as Portia delivers her courtroom speech pleading Mister Monkey’s innocence. She’s talking fast, triple time, making sense, more or less, but she seems unstable, volatile, veering rapidly and histrionically between tough and fragile. Mario respects her for rising to the challenge of being sincere, forceful, and persuasive in a Harpo wig and a purple suit that emphasizes her worst features.

  She says, “The quality of mercy is not strained—not even for a monkey. It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven.”

  The others stare at her, and Mario gets the sense that she’s jumped her line: delivered it too early. Meanwhile her reference to gentle rain makes it impossible not to notice that Portia’s forehead is beaded with sweat. She moves like a woman wearing heels twice as high and a skirt twice as tight as she is. Oh, dear God, that soul in hell! That poor woman never dreamed that one day she would be playing Portia in this abysmal production! Mario’s heart fills not only with sympathy but also with awe for the faith with which she is channeling her private desperation into Portia, making something complicated, moving, and grown-up from the raw material of a bizarrely costumed character in a musical about a monkey.

  The judge bangs down his gavel. Blam! Case dismissed! Mister Monkey is innocent. Massive jubilation!

  Portia says, “I told you the quality of mercy is not strained—not even for a monkey!” A lot’s going on, onstage. But Mario can’t take his eyes off Portia, cowering behind the actor playing Mr. Jimson. It’s lucky that Mister Monkey has been exonerated, because how would it look to the judge—a lawyer in such obvious terror of her client?

  From the wings Mister Monkey takes a flying leap that lands him halfway across the stage. He rushes at Portia and traps her behind Mr. Jimson. Visibly trembling, Portia presses her forehead into the back of Mister Monkey’s human dad. Is Portia acting, or is this real? Mario hasn’t a clue. Glancing down the row, he sees that the madwoman in the scarves and shawls has covered her eyes with her hands.

  Mister Monkey’s silent physical bullying of Portia continues. The kids are practically levitating out of their seats, powered by pure joy. Mister Monkey is doing exactly what they have always wanted to do to countless women like Portia, maybe not in a clown wig but nonetheless bossy, all dressed up, and important. It’s what they want to do to Mom sometimes, though it scares them to think about that. The parents sense this strange and terrible play getting even more peculiar, but it’s holding their interest, and the kids are having fun, and that hardly ever happens.

  Finally Mister Money backs away from Portia, either because he’s been told to, or because he’s bored. Leaving the stage, the monkey fake-lunges at the other actors and at one of the stagehands. And now the lady cop marches back out and arrests Janice for bringing false charges against our favorite chimpanzee.

  The curtain sways shut and, after an unsettlingly long pause, opens on Portia and Mr. Jimson with their phones pressed against their ears. Portia looks traumatized, as if she’s still peering around the edge of something to make sure it’s safe to come out.

  Mario knows what’s coming. The distasteful cell phone duet. The song has always irritated him, and he knows it annoys Ray Ortiz—and he wrote the damn book. Once Ray ate at Enzo’s twice in a week, before and after Mario went to see an earlier production of Mister Monkey. He’d asked Mario how he’d enjoyed the play, and naturally Mario said he’d enjoyed it very much. One of Ray’s marriages was coming apart. He was drinking more than usual, and he’d asked Mario how anyone but a fucking moron could enjoy that fucking idiotic bullshit with the cell phones, which wasn’t in his book because Ray fucking hates cell phones, and he wrote the book before they existed. Then, just this week, as if God had set out to prove Ray right, he and Lauren and Mario and many other customers at Enzo’s had witnessed the cell phone disaster ignited when the guy beside Ray texted his date by mistake.

  Mario would like to forget that guy and his sad little kindergarten teacher. He’s thought about them enough. But the song has brought it all back. He too has always hated cell phones, and now he will hate them forever. And he’s meant to think that the spectacle of Mister Jimson and Portia declaring their love on phones that keep cutting out is supposed to be cute—or romantic? Is he meant to see cell phones as the buzzing-bee Cupids of love?

  It’s the absolute low point in an outrageously bad play. At least Mario hopes it’s the low point. He closes his eyes and waits for the scene to end. But this time, in the midst of the song, something unexpected occurs. He hears a loud bang and opens his eyes. Portia has dropped her phone. Portia watches it bounce slightly and skitter, but she doesn’t move. The audience falls silent, though a few of the younger kids babble anxious gibberish at their parents.

  Portia skips across the stage, then draws back her foot and kicks the phone as hard as she can. Wham! She punts it into the wings. Watching Mr. Jimson, who seems unsurprised, Mario can tell that this apparently improvisational moment has been written into the production. Maybe the first time Portia did it by accident, and it worked, and she did it again.

  After a few stunned seconds the audience cheers. And though Mario knows it’s just stage business, he too wants to applaud. He feels as if he has participated in some collective ritual of release and redemption, a sacrament more liberating than whatever transpired with the priest in the church. Everyone wants to see their devices get what they deserve, to watch the buzzing implacable demons kicked to the curb for the cunning and deceit with which they’ve made us unable to live without them and stolen our freedom and our ability to be silent and alone. The audience has seen the forces of good vanquish the fire-breathing dragon in our pockets, the microzombie that eats our brains. Their eyes have seen the glory of St. George in a rainbow wig.

  A giddiness starts at the back of Mario’s throat and stays with him through the curtain calls, even when the monkey reappears and everyone scatters. The actress in the wig gets a standing ovation. The cast leaves the stage. The audience seems thrilled to be released. Suddenly children are everywhere, hunting under their seats for the sweaters the grown-ups made them bring in case the air-conditioning was too cold, which it wasn’t. The woman beside Mario rockets out of her seat, fringes flying behind her as she clambers onto the stage and disappears into the wings.

  As he steps into the warm September afternoon, Mario considers waiting outside the theater. He imagines the woman who played Portia—Margot Leland, according to the program, which he has saved—rushing off to a romantic tryst or simply trying to avoid the thuggish little monkey. She will notice Mario and hold his eye just long enough for him to feel encouraged and go up to her and tell her how brilliant she was, how she’d brought such dignity, complexity—and humor!—to a part that was so far beneath her. How
her beauty and spirit shone through that absurd disguise. Best not to say beneath her. No creative artist likes to hear that. Best not to criticize her costume, on the chance that she chose it herself. Mario worries that he’ll say the wrong thing no matter what, that something about him will tip the scale, alter her perception of him from admiring fan to stalker. Portia—Margot!—is afraid of so much. The last thing he wants is to spook her.

  And yet the idea of turning and walking away without seeing her again causes Mario such pain that he knows: this must be about something more than an actress doing an unexpected and original turn in Mister Monkey. He wants to talk to her, just talk to her. He wants to tell her about the production of Uncle Vanya that made him fall in love with the theater. He wants to find out who she is, to hear about her dreams and hopes for the future, where she has been, where she wants to go, her memories of childhood. He wants to put his arms around her and tell her that everything will be all right, that together they can live a life of simple happiness, that later they will look back on this suffering—and smile. He knows that’s how a stalker thinks, but that’s not what Mario is. He doesn’t want to alarm her. He wants to be kind to her. He has seen so many plays about love, and only now, after all this time, he thinks: maybe this is what love feels like.

  Mario is a sensible guy, steady, a creature of habit. How many men have held the same job for almost thirty years? He is an excellent waiter, which requires a cool head, a good memory, and plenty of common sense. But there is nothing reasonable or cool about conceiving a passion for a woman you don’t know, whom you’ve watched struggling not to drown with a theater full of children watching, then bobbing to the surface, her brave face shining above the waves of mediocrity, failure, and public disgrace. Some men fall in love with movie stars, some with hookers, some with their best friend’s wife. But Mario seems to have fallen for an artist, an actress playing a lawyer who successfully defends a sociopathic chimpanzee. The yearning inside him feels like a sob about to well up from deep in his chest. He will never be happy without her. And he doesn’t even know what she really looks like!

  All he needs is the courage to wait for her, to tell her how good she was. Maybe she’ll be impressed by his effort to understand what she was doing. By any effort, given the play and the theater.

  But what if she’s already seeing someone? What if she’s married? Mario feels certain that she is single and alone, that the performance he observed was not within the range of a happily married woman. Not even the most gifted actress could fake the loneliness and desperation that Mario saw—and that he feels himself, that only now he lets himself feel, now that he’s seen it in her. Mario could sell his parents’ house, they could move in together. He knows he is rushing things. He should go home and write her a letter. It would let him say exactly what he means in the most reassuring and least alarming way. If he tries to talk to her now, he will lose her forever.

  Jesus help me, have mercy, Mario prays, as he was unable to pray in church. And God recognizes the sound of a heartfelt prayer, of a soul in mortal peril. The despair of the distance from God vanishes when Mario sees Portia—Margot—leaving the theater.

  It takes him a moment to recognize her without the rainbow wig. He probably wouldn’t know who it was if he hadn’t been sitting so close, and if her image hadn’t been branded on his heart.

  The woman who played the police officer has walked her to the door, and she and Margot chat while the police girl smokes. Margot is wearing blue jeans and a white T-shirt, and, despite the heat, a black leather jacket. The woman in the uniform is coughing, possibly from the smoke and Margot is—tenderly, tenderly—patting her on the back.

  Mario can’t get over Margot’s orange-red hair, exploding like the spiky crown of a gorgeous punk Wonder Woman Medusa. Mario is deeply touched by the message that Margot’s hair seems calculated to deliver: outside I’m a prickly cactus. Inside is the cool refreshing water that will save your life if you are lost in the desert.

  Margot takes off in the direction of Eleventh Avenue. Mario’s not going to follow her. He just wants to see where she’s going. He stays half a block behind her. If the light changes too fast and he loses her, it will be a sign.

  She walks into one of those tiny Cuban-Chinese places you used to see in Chelsea. A historical relic left over from the time when those places still existed: The Cup of Asia, The Star of Heaven, the Jewel of the Antilles, The Shower of Gold, the Caribbean Breeze—they had such poetic names until they sank like Atlantis under the previous mayor.

  Mario walks up and down the block. Then he goes into La Isla des Perlas, the Island of Pearls, a family restaurant with eight tables.

  Margot sits at a table facing the far wall. Mario can’t believe he is doing this. He finds a seat that’s as far from her as possible. He looks at her back, her fragile shoulders, like bird wings. Her amazing auburn hair. He can watch her without bothering her, without letting go of the hope that somehow he will find the nerve to approach her. Meanwhile he just has to stay calm, do a little acting himself, act the part of an ordinary guy ordering an ordinary dinner.

  Is there some way to pass her and pause and start a conversation? Mario’s not bad-looking, despite his somewhat longish head. Years ago, when he started at Enzo’s, the line chefs called him Frankie, for Frankenstein, but the fun of that soon wore off. He doesn’t look like a crazy person. He looks like a working man: a waiter in a fancy place. What if he explained that he got the tickets from Ray Ortiz? The author of Mister Monkey. It might reassure her and make her pay attention. Famous names work on everyone, no matter how above it you think you are.

  He’ll apologize for interrupting her meal. He just wants to say how much he liked her performance. Men pick up women every day in places much sketchier than the Island of Pearls.

  The glossy laminated menu, half the size of his chest, is perfect to hide behind. How could anyone cook so many delicious-looking dishes? Piercing one page is a small, charred hole, as if someone put a cigarette out in a steak. Mario pauses on a column of golden, breaded cutlets, each arranged with a lemon wedge, a lettuce leaf, a slice of tomato.

  He watches the waitress bring Margot a platter of shiny brown tubes and glistening greens. When the waitress comes over to Mario, he orders a Corona, okay, a Tecate, and gestures at Margot’s food. I’ll have what the senora’s having.

  The waitress shrugs. No problem. It’s easier for the kitchen, doing the same thing twice.

  Excuse me for interrupting, Mario repeats in his mind, until it becomes a prayer that does the opposite of what prayer is supposed to do. Each time Mario says it, a sizzle of terror pins him to his seat. He is a middle-aged man, but he might as well be in junior high.

  Soon his food will arrive. He should go over now. Excuse me, but aren’t you the star of Mister Monkey? Aren’t you the actress who played the best Portia I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen the play many times. Margot will be staring at him. He’ll have just seconds to explain that he gets tickets from the guy who wrote the book. All he has to do is stand up and take one step and then the next. The rest of his life can begin now: the reward for one moment of courage. And if he fails? A woman will tell him to get lost. It happens to men every day. He makes himself stand. He walks a few steps toward Margot. He’s tiptoeing, but so what?

  In the aisle he passes the waitress bringing his food. He can hardly tell her to leave it on his table while he bothers a stranger. There would be a shit storm if some creep tried that at Enzo’s. Mario can’t even bring himself to pretend he’s going to the men’s room. The waitress will see him stop at Margot’s table. She’ll watch him be rejected.

  It’s too late. He’s waited too long. His heart can stop pounding. Maybe some protein will help. Languid with relief, he returns to his table. He and the waitress arrive at the same moment.

  Mario’s food, Margot’s food, turns out to be squid and bitter greens in some rich, delicious, mildly spicy brown sauce. Beneath is a mound of fluffy white rice with
sweet plantains on the side. This is nothing like Enzo’s. Why bother to compare? He is here with Margot. Something could yet happen. The beer, then maybe another beer, might give him the nerve. He feels braver than his normal self, more generous and open. Is Enzo’s better than this? More expensive, certainly, more exclusive—but better? The waitress must have her moment like the one he loves best, just before the restaurant opens when all the tables are set, and the lights are coming up. The play is about to begin. Though this place, unlike Enzo’s, is probably open all day.

  The squid is fresh and tender, perfectly cooked. The greens are silky and just salty enough, with bits of something crusty, ham or bacon. He’s fallen into the habit of eating with the staff at Enzo’s, but now he sees, or remembers, that there is a world of food all over the city. He could do this on weekends, before or after the theater. He could find simple delicious restaurants and have dinner or lunch. He could do it with Margot, who must like it too. She has come here by herself. All he has to do is go over and start talking.

  He has only to cross a small restaurant and say a few words. It would be easier to walk a tightrope between skyscrapers. He will never begin the life that waits on the other side of that conversation. He has lost the habit of conversation unless it’s about someone’s dinner or why he isn’t married or (if he’s talking to a priest) his petty resentments and jealousies of the customers at Enzo’s.

  He swallows. Get ready. Now. He takes another bite. His chest hurts. It’s hard to swallow, and yet he needs to keep eating. If he stops he has to leave. What if he’s having a heart attack? That will get Margot’s attention. And the joke will be on him because he will be dead.