“No. It’s gone for good. I left the door unlocked when I went to the beach that night. I don’t leave it unlocked anymore.”
“You’re telling me the monkeys took it?”
He said, “The next day I bought a disposable camera. Put it on the counter by the oven again. That night I left the lights on, locked up, and took my stick down to the beach.”
“Good surf?”
“Slow. But I wanted to give them a chance. And they took it. While I was gone, they broke a pane, unlocked the window, and stole the disposable camera. Nothing else. Just the camera.”
Now I knew why the shotgun was kept in a locked broom closet.
This cottage on the horn, without neighbors, had always appealed to me as a fine retreat. At night, when the surfers left, the sky and the sea formed a sphere in which the house stood like a diorama in one of those glass paperweights that fills with whirling snow when you shake it, though instead of a blizzard there were deep peace and a glorious solitude. Now, however, the nurturing solitude had become an unnerving isolation. Rather than offering a sense of peace, the night was thick and still with expectation.
“And they left me a warning,” Bobby said.
I pictured a threatening note laboriously printed in crude block letters — WATCH YOUR ASS. Signed, THE MONKEYS.
They were too clever to leave a paper trail, however, and even more direct. Bobby said, “One of them crapped on my bed.”
“Oh, nice.”
“They’re secretive, like I said. I’ve decided not even to try to photograph them. If I managed to get a flash shot of them some night…I think they’d be way pissed.”
“You’re afraid of them. I didn’t know you got disturbed, and I didn’t know you were ever afraid. I’m learning a lot about you tonight, bro.”
He didn’t admit to feeling fear.
“You bought the shotgun,” I pressed.
“Because I think it’s good to challenge them from time to time, good to show the little bastards that I’m territorial, and that this is, by God, my territory. But I’m not afraid, really. They’re just monkeys.”
“And then again — they’re not.”
Bobby said, “Some days I wonder if I’ve picked up some New Age virus over the telephone line from Pia, all the way from Waimea — and now while she’s obsessed with being Kaha Huna, I’m obsessed with the monkeys of the new millennium. I suspect that’s what the tabloids would call them, don’t you?”
“The millennium monkeys. Has a ring to it.”
“That’s why I haven’t reported them. I’m not going to make myself a target of the press or anyone. I’m not going to be the geek who saw Bigfoot or extraterrestrials in a spaceship shaped like a four-slice toaster. Life wouldn’t ever be the same for me after that, would it?”
“You’d be a freak like me.”
“Exactly.”
My awareness of being watched became more intense. I almost borrowed a trick from Orson, almost growled low in my throat.
The dog, still standing between Bobby and me, remained alert and quiet, his head raised and one ear pricked. He was no longer shaking, but he was clearly respectful of whatever was observing us from the surrounding night.
“Now that I’ve told you about Angela, you know the monkeys have something to do with what was going on out at Fort Wyvern,” I said. “This isn’t just a tabloid fantasy anymore. This is real, this is totally
“Still going on,” he said.
“What?”
“From what Angela told you, Wyvern’s not entirely shut down.”
“But it was abandoned eighteen months ago. If there were still personnel staffing any operations at all out there, we’d know about it. Even if they lived on base, they’d come into town to shop, to go to a movie.”
“You said Angela called this Armageddon. It’s the end of the world, she said.”
“Yeah. So?”
“So maybe if you’re busily working on a project to destroy the world, you don’t have time to come into town for a movie. Anyway, like I said, this is a tsunami, Chris. This is the government. There’s no way to surf these waters and survive.”
I gripped the handlebars of my bike and stood it upright again. “In spite of these monkeys and what you’ve seen, you’re going to just lay back?”
He nodded. “If I stay cool, it’s possible they’ll eventually go away. They’re not here every night, anyway. Once or twice a week. If I wait them out…I might get my life back like it was.”
“Yeah, but maybe Angela wasn’t just smoking something. Maybe there’s no chance, ever again, that anything will be like it was.”
“Then why put on your tights and cape if it’s a lost cause?”
“To XP-Man,” I said with mock solemnity, “there are no lost causes.”
“Kamikaze.”
“Duck.”
“Geek.”
“Decoy,” I said affectionately and walked the bicycle away from the house, through the soft sand.
Orson let out a thin whine of protest as we left the comparative safety of the cottage behind us, but he didn’t try to hold back. He stayed close to me, sniffing the night air as we headed inland.
We’d gone about thirty feet when Bobby, kicking up small clouds of sand, sprinted in front of us and blocked the way. “You know what your problem is?”
I said, “My choice of friends?”
“Your problem is you want to make a mark on the world. You want to leave something behind that says,
“I don’t care about that.”
“Bullshit.”
“Watch your language. There’s a dog present.”
“That’s why you write the articles, the books,” he said. “To leave a mark.”
“I write because I enjoy writing.”
“You’re always bitching about it.”
“Because it’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done, but it’s also rewarding.”
“You know why it’s so hard? Because it’s unnatural.”
“Maybe to people who can’t read and write.”
“We’re not here to leave a mark, bro. Monuments, legacies, marks — that’s where we always go wrong. We’re here to revel in the world, to soak in the awesomeness of it, to enjoy the ride.”
“Orson, look, it’s Philosopher Bob again.”
“The world’s maximum perfect as it is, beauty from horizon to horizon. Any mark any of us tries to leave — hell, it’s only graffiti. Nothing can improve on the world we’ve been given. Any mark anyone leaves is no better than vandalism.”
I said, “The music of Mozart.”
“Vandalism,” Bobby said.
“The art of Michelangelo.”
“Graffiti.”
“Renoir,” I said.
“Graffiti.”
“Bach, the Beatles.”
“Aural graffiti,” he said fiercely.
As he followed our conversation, Orson was getting whiplash.
