to mask any scent of me that they might otherwise detect, I didn’t think I’d have much chance of escaping the troop’s notice during a search of the kitchen, even if they conducted it strictly by touch. Nevertheless, I had to give it a try.
If I climbed onto the countertop, I would be restricted by the narrow space between the Formica and the upper cabinets. I’d have to lie on my left side, facing out toward the room. After drawing my knees toward my chest, curling compactly into the fetal position, so as to occupy as small a space as possible and to make myself more difficult to locate, I wouldn’t be in an ideal posture to fight back if I was found by one of those walking condominiums for lice.
By body contact alone, I followed the cabinetry to the corner, where the kitchen in every one of these bungalows features a broom closet with a tall lower compartment and a single shelf at the top. If I was able to squeeze into that narrow space and close the door after me, at least I would be off the treacherous linoleum and beyond easy reach if the troop probed-poked-groped-tapped its way around the room.
At the end of the cabinet row, I discovered the broom closet where I’d expected it to be — but the door was missing. With dismay, I felt one bent and broken hinge, then the other, and patted air where the door should have been, as though just the right series of magical gestures would charm the door into existence again.
Unless the horde of monkeys that had followed Curious George onto the front porch was still huddled there, devising strategy or discussing the price of coconuts, I was nearly out of time.
My hidey-hole was suddenly more hole than hidey.
Unfortunately, no alternative presented itself.
I fished the spare magazine of ammunition from its pocket in my holster and clutched it in my left hand.
Holding the Glock ready in front of me, I eased backward into the broom closet — and wondered if the reek of death that saturated the kitchen might have its maggoty source in this cramped space. My stomach slithered like a ball of copulating eels, but nothing squished under my shoes.
The closet was just wide enough to admit me. To fit, I had to scrunch my shoulders only slightly. Although I am nearly six feet tall, I didn’t have to hunch down; however, the underside of the storage shelf pressed hard enough against my
To avoid second thoughts and an attack of claustrophobia, I decided not to pass the time by listing the ways in which my hiding place was like a coffin.
As it turned out, I didn’t have any time to pass. No sooner had I stashed myself in the broom closet than monkeys entered the kitchen from the dining room.
I heard them just beyond the threshold, revealed only by a barely audible conspiratorial hissing and muttering. They hesitated, apparently scoping the situation, then entered at a rush, lantern eyes aglow as they fanned out to both sides of the door, like SWAT-team cops in a TV drama.
The crackling linoleum startled them. One squeaked in surprise, and they all froze.
As far as I could determine, this first squad consisted of three members. I couldn’t see anything but their shining eyes, which were revealed only during the moments when they were facing in my direction. Because they were standing still, swiveling just their heads as they surveyed the black room, I could be sure that I wasn’t seeing the same pair of eyes as a single individual progressed from place to place.
I was breathing shallowly through my mouth, not solely because this method was comparatively quiet. Using my nose would result in a more sickening exposure to the vile stink. Already, a sludge of nausea oozed back and forth in my belly. Now I was beginning to be able to
After a pause to analyze the situation, the bravest of the three monkeys moved — and then went rigid when the linoleum protested noisily again.
One of its pals took a step with the same result, and it, too, halted warily.
A nerve began to twitch in my left calf. I hoped to God it wouldn’t develop into a painful cramp.
Following a lengthy silence, the most timid member of the squad issued a thin whine. It sounded fearful.
Call me insensitive, call me cruel, call me a mutant-monkey hater, but under the circumstances, I was pleased by the anxiety in its voice.
Their apprehension was so palpable that if I said “Boo,” they would leap, screaming, straight to the ceiling and hang there by their fingernails. Monkey stalactites.
Of course, totally pissed by that little trick, they would eventually come down again and, with the rest of the troop, tear my guts out. Which would spoil the joke.
If they were as spooked as I believed they were, they might conduct only a token search and retreat from the house, where after Curious George would be the troop’s equivalent of the boy who cried wolf.
The increased intelligence conferred on these rhesuses is as much a curse as a blessing to them. With higher intelligence comes an awareness of the complexity of the world, and from this awareness arises a sense of mystery, wonder. Superstition is the dark side of wonder. Creatures with simple animal intelligence fear only real things, such as their natural predators. But those of us who have higher cognitive abilities are able to torture ourselves with an infinite menagerie of imaginary threats: ghosts and goblins and vampires and brain-eating extraterrestrials. Worse, we find it difficult
I was counting on these creatures being, right now, nearly paralyzed by a daunting list of what-ifs.
One of the squad snorted as though trying to clear the stench out of its nostrils, then spat with distaste.
The wimpy one whined again.
It was answered by one of its brethren, not with another whine, but with a fierce growl that dispelled my cozy notion that all the monkeys were too spooked to linger here. The growler, at least, was not intimidated, and it sounded tough enough to ensure the discipline of the other two.
The three proceeded deeper into the kitchen, past the broom closet, and out of my line of sight. They seemed to be full of trepidation, but they were no longer inhibited by the noisy flooring.
A second squad, also composed of three members and also revealed only by their eyeshine, entered the room. They paused to survey the unpierceable darkness, and one by one they looked in my direction without any indication that they detected me.
From elsewhere in the kitchen arose the continuous crackle of the brittle linoleum. I heard a scrabbling and a thump, noises no doubt made by one of the first three monkeys as it climbed onto a counter.
The button on my cap was pressed so firmly between the crown of my head and the shelf above me that I felt as though God’s thumb was thrust against my scalp in a not so subtle announcement that my number was up, my ticket punched, my dime dropped, my license to live revoked. If I could have hunched down an inch or two, the pressure would have been relieved, but I was afraid that even with the monkeys making a racket, I would still be heard as my back and shoulders slid along the walls of the narrow closet. Besides, the twitching nerve in my leg had quickly evolved into a mild cramp, as I had feared that it would; even a minor change in my position might contract the calf muscle and cause the pain to flare into intolerable agony.
A member of the second squad began to move slowly toward me, its bright eyes sliding nervously from side to side while it felt its way through the cloying murk. As the clever little beast approached, I could hear it rhythmically slapping its right hand against the wall to keep itself oriented.
In another corner of the room, rusted hinges squeaked. One of the shiplap doors banged shut, its loose joints rattling.
Evidently, they were opening the cabinets and fumbling blindly inside.
I had hoped that they would not be intelligent enough to conduct a thorough search or, conversely, that they would be too intelligent to endanger themselves by poking blindly into places where an armed man might be waiting to blast them to monkey hell. They were smart enough to be thorough, all right, but too reckless to be as cautious as the situation required. From past encounters, I had already known all this about them; but having jammed myself into the broom coffin, having regretted doing so almost as soon as I was encased, I’d been in denial.
The wall slapper was still coming toward me, no more than three feet away. Its eyes continued to blaze at the gloom on all sides of it, not just at me.
More hinges squeaked. A warped cabinet door stuttered open with some resistance, and another door
