“What do wedo? ” she said, exasperated.
“We boot ’em,” Milo said.
“That’s right. You gotta draw the line, Milo. You see what I mean?” She thrust her arm in and out of a few of the puppets hanging upside-down below the stage, practicing transitions. “Go find the guy in the suit and tell him we’re ready. Then come back here with me. Got it?”
“Yuh!” Milo ran.
Sylvie’s puppet show was a Chinese folk tale: Stone Monkey. Milo crouched low and handed her things when she clucked, scowled or elbowed him. He watched, fascinated.
First, the initial phases of the creation of the universe were enacted: 129,000 years in twelve parts (sixty seconds each) represented by cacophonously squabbling puppets of mouse, bull, tiger, hare, dragon, serpent, horse, goat, monkey, cock, dog, and pig. After another twenty-seven thousand years, Sylvie’sPan Gui smithereened the Enormous Vagueness (a gelatinous blob manipulated by rods and strings). At last, halfway through the show, Stone Monkey was born atop the Mountain of Flowers and Fruit from a rock that Sylvie reported, in the wavering voice of an Ancient Taoist Sage, to be precisely thirty-six feet five inches in height and twenty-four feet in circumference.
Rascally Stone Monkey terrorized Heaven and Earth, absconding with various elixirs, virtuous gems, and magic weapons from the Jade Emperor-and anybody else who got in his way. In the end, on a bet with Buddha, he pissed on the Five Pillars at the End of the Universe-some children applauded, some booed, some giggled nervously-but they turned out to be the Buddha’s fingers. Big Bud grabbed up poor Monkey and imprisoned him in a mountain of iron. Curtain.
The instant the curtain fell, Sylvie said, “Get the money.” In a louder voice, she announced, “Children or others coming within two feet of the puppet stage will be shot,” and she started taking everything apart.
Always, they slept and breakfasted atThe Grass and Trees. Supper at Jitsi’s. They did shows a few times a week at places all over town, indoors and out: libraries, loading docks, the beach, the park, a historical society, some rec centers and settlement houses, street fairs, block parties, and a hospital or two. “If they knew what I was,” Sylvie said, “they’d never hire me. But I look like your clean-cut American kid, now don’t I?”
“So whatare you, Sylvie?” Milo would say.
“Oh, go fish! When are you gonna show me those wings?”
“Go fish, yourself!”
Milo learned the setup routine and could strike quicker than Sylvie after a while. He started doing a few puppets, notably Lord Buddha and, in Sylvie’s “Trash Show,” a bilious Dumpster named Hector. He did chores like filling Monkey’s rubber bladder with water for the piss scene, and velcroing the Enormous Vagueness back together after Pan Guidecomposed it. He learned what to say to Sylvie’s patrons, how to accept their money or put them off when they were late setting up.
He enjoyed himself. He got a little sun tan. His ribs stopped showing. The hollows around his eyes disappeared. He got to know Jitsi, who called him “Little Man,” because that’s what he heard Sylvie call him.
Sylvie paid Milo part of her take, fivers at first, then tens and an occasional twenty. When they busked, he got half the hat. “For street work,” she said, “we’re strictly partners.” He liked that.
After the first week or so, Milo forgot about investigating the Devore-Sylvie connection. It just didn’t seem so important anymore. When Sylvie disappeared, on off days, without explanation or apology, Milo took himself to the zoo, the beach, or the museum. There was never anyone atThe Grass and Trees except Milo and Sylvie-and the Monkey King. The owner was on vacation, she said.
Milo would be settling into his fitful night’s sleep, or would wake at an unknown hour-all the hours were dark down there-and hear the Monkey King cudgeling Lord Erlang. “Take that, you shriveled pus bag!” He would creep sometimes to the foot of the stairs to hear it better.
“You can’t fool me, you imbecilic macaque!” Sylvie blusteredbasso profundo, then squealed as Monkey: “Kowtow, pig-face, or I’ll knock you silly!”
One night Sylvie surprised him by shouting, in her own voice, “Come on up here, Milo. I know you’re awake. You might as well help me with the chase sequence.”
He walked upstairs and saw Sylvie’s puppet theater set up in one of the bay windows, facing in. It was lit eerily from inside-bloodred. The puppet theater had been transformed into a weird temple with rows of fluted columns (papiermache) and stained glass windows (cellophane). The God Erlang, frightening in the red light, appeared in full battle array, carrying a huge lance, huge, that is, in proportion to his own size of ten inches or so.
Suddenly, the opening of the puppet stage closed in on itself. The carpet Erlang stood on lapped at him like a tongue, the columns gnashed like teeth, the proscenium was like a lip smacking against the apron.
Erlang barely managed to wedge the theater space open with his lance.
“It’s Monkey’s mouth, Milo,” Sylvie said. She left Erlang there, his head drooping lifelessly on his chain mail. “He’s equideco’ed into a temple, get it? “First, Monkey turns into a sparrow and Erlang turns into a kite. Then Monkey is a fish, and Erlang is a fish-hawk. When Monkey changes to a water-snake, Erlang turns into a red-crested gray crane. What can Monkey do? He turns into a bustard. Look.” She showed him a thin-billed, long-legged plop of a bird-puppet, with an enlarged face retaining a few essentials of Stone Monkey. “That’s the lowest. A bustard’ll let anything hump it-even crows. Promise me you won’t ever be a bustard, flying boy.”
“Huh?”
“Anyway, Erlang shoots him then. So he takes off and turns himself into this temple. See? This flagpole is Monkey’s tail, only I haven’t Sobo-glued the hair on yet. This whole thinghere is Monkey’s mouth. The windows are his eyes. But Erlang is onto him. He threatens to break the window panes. That would blind old Monkey.”
“It’s great, Sylvie! How did you do that?”
“Adhesives,” she said. “Everything is adhesives, Milo, in the show business anyways: duct tape, hot glue, velcro, rivets-this is like my catechism, see?-stuff inside other stuff all over the place. I wanna start doing this story in a week. Sound okay?”
“Teach me.”
“That’s all I wanted to hear.” She led him behind the puppet stage, into the heart of the red glow, and started to fill his hands with odd things.
“Sylvie…” he said.
“Yeah?”
“How can Monkey do all that? I mean, what is he supposed to be that he can change into stuff that way?”
She stopped what she was doing and looked at Milo. There was nothing in the entire world outside this small ball of red light, Monkey’s mouth, the jumble of props and puppets, the window glass behind them-“…”-Milo’s eyes, Sylvie’s eyes, each other’s eyes in each other’s eyes. “He’s ashape-shifter , Milo. Ashape-shifter.”
Inside himself, Milo squeezed: not a tightening, but a pushing together, the way he might squeeze the string together on both sides of a knot, to let more slack in for the undoing. There was no thought before him, but a sort of dejavu. “Dede…” he said.
“…Sylvie, you mean.”
“Sylvie, I feel like I want to tell you something.”
“I don’t think so,” she said. “We’ve got a lot of lines to learn here, a lot of cues to get down. Hold this.”
She handed him Monkey’s Gold-Banded As-You-Will Cudgel, Weight 13,500 Pounds. She got up and switched on the overhead light. It was a cheap chandelier. The crystals dangled and made little rainbows on Lord Erlang, the puppet heads, masks and posters on the walls, “SAUT DANS LA VIDE,” and all.
They went to work.
There were never any customers, no coffee, no conversation; day after day, the chairs never came off the tables except for Sylvie and Milo. Once, an exterminator showed up with a gas mask, a heavy cylinder, and a spray gun that looked like a sci-fi blaster; Sylvie nearly beat him unconscious, shoving him back out the door, while he waved his Service Orders in pink and blue and protected his private parts.
“Over my dead body,” she said.
“Vegetarian!” Milo shook his head.
“They might be Stone Monkey, flying boy. They might be Franz frigging Kafka. How the hell do you know who the cockroaches are? Go kill, if you want to.” She stalked out and didn’t come back until the dark of the next morning, when she woke him to borrow some cash. It took Milo two days to feel that he had made it up to her.
