The Monkey Tribe, Chapter H, Part 2: The Burning House

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Downstairs, the Tribe is looking chipper, watching Daffy Duck on the high-def as they munch on apple fritters, buttermilk bars and bear claws. The general style of dress is somewhere between beachwear and camping, leading one to expect a strenuous coastal hike.

            Jack and Audrey make an entrance of shame down the circular staircase, Jack realizing just how audible must have been his cries of “Cher! Cher!” He leans close to Audrey and whispers, “Do I get any clues?”

            “No,” she answers. “I want you to experience this without forethought.”

            Jack notes one Monkey who is not so chipper as the rest: Ben, who wears a straw caballero’s hat, its hook-nosed brim drawn close over his eyes.

            Ivan takes the logical stage-space in front of the whitewater and raises both arms. The chatter slows to a jog and he says, simply, “Shall we?”

            That’s all it takes. The Monkeys file out the door and into the drive. Ivan, Terra and Ben pile into the cab of Terra’s farm truck, while Constance, Willie, Suzanne and White Horse head for Constance’s van. Audrey hands Jack a set of keys.

            “You’re driving the Miata, big boy. Ben thought you’d enjoy that.”

            It’s been a few years since Jack has handled a stick, but the Miata offers a generous clutch. Soon enough, they’re done with the Santa Cruz crawl and off to the easy fourth-gear stretches of Highway One. Ten miles north they pass the town of Davenport, next to the jumbled silhouette of the cement factory. Jack reaches over to take Audrey’s hand. She smiles, her eyes hidden by big Italian sunglasses.

            “You’re a sweet boy, Jack.”

            Jack doesn’t like the sound of that. Dismissive. If last night was any indication, it could be that sweetness has been his problem all along, and he’s ready to kick the habit. He gazes ahead at the rectangle window of the truck cab. Ben is seated at the right, staring out the window at the foothills, which have gained a green depth with the autumn weather. They round a bend and find the Pigeon Point Lighthouse, a broad white tetherball pole on the crest of the rocks.

            “How far are we going?” he asks.

            “’Bout ten more miles. The turnout comes up pretty fast, so keep an eye on Terra.”

            They pull into the straightaway along Pescadero Beach, high sand dunes bleeding onto the roadside, then they climb a long hillside across the lagoon from a eucalyptus grove, topping the ridge like a cock’s-comb. The road tops out along a seacliff, tracing straight ahead in a series of gentle dips. Jack looks to the left and finds that they’re a hundred feet above the water. The Imp of the Perverse points out two or three spots where an unlucky skid would send them hurtling to the long gray waves below. Jack looks straight ahead. Terra follows a slow downhill curve to the right then drifts off the road into a narrow turnout covered in red sand.

            Constance pulls in behind them and the Monkeys are all action, strapping on identical army-surplus backpacks. Ivan hands a couple of them to Audrey and Jack.

            “Ahoy, lovebirds. Follow us, but be very careful crossing this highway. Some of these weekend warriors are insane.”

            Jack hoists his pack onto his shoulders and follows Ivan as he signals all clear and leads the migration. They climb the opposite roadbank, speckled with broken glass from long-ago parties, then trek through some dicey-looking shrubs to find a scrubby hillside descending to the ocean. A tiny brown sign signals the beginning of an official state park trail, scarred with gouges where rainfall has carved out the soil. Jack could swear he smells lighter fluid, but blames it on the same Audrey-inspired cross-wiring that’s afflicted him all morning.

            The trail winds around to the right, and then ends abruptly where a small creek has cut a ravine into the sandstone. The beach is directly below them, a twenty-foot drop, so Jack assumes there’s an alternate route. Ivan, who has obviously been designated scout leader for the day, steps to the creekside to give a little how-to.

            “Okay, Mr. and Mrs. Monkeys. I need you to be very careful along this section, and please watch my choreography. No broken bones today.”

            He aims that last phrase at Willie, which must refer to an episode from years past. Ivan takes large, precise steps, the better to illustrate. He goes to a higher, narrower section of the ravine and takes one long step over it, where the other side seems to offer a flatter walking area. Then he heads slightly uphill on a tiny path, circles around an outcropping of boulders, and comes back around to the very lip of the drop, where he’s able to hop back to our side of the ravine. A few steps to the right and he comes to another ravine, arriving from a different angle, and crosses it on a wooden plank that’s been firmly fixed to either edge.

            But that’s not all (and at this point, Jack has to assume that this is a very important beach, for all the rigmarole they’re going through). The trail continues along the side of a bluff, then drops to the beach in a series of footholds carved into the rock. Jack works his way backward, face to the wall, then, realizing he’s perched in the last two footholds, jumps onto a wide boulder and then onto the sand.

            He finds himself in a small cove, bluffs on either side, breakers rolling in to leave a residue of small rocks and shells. It’s a lovely spot, but Ivan is already leaving, rounding the corner of the far bluff for places unknown. Jack falls in with the other Monkeys, and they emerge on a long spread of white sand, lorded over by high, bare cliffs in striations of beige and putty. The Monkeys deposit their identical packs in the shade of the bluff, and Ivan commences with the orders of the day.

            “Okay. Terra, why don’t you start on the throne? Willie and I will start the house. Constance, why don’t you act as Terra’s gatherer? White Horse, do that voodoo that you do, and Suzanne, you’re our designated wild card, so it’s up to you to think up something entirely new. Audrey, let’s get you on southern wood patrol and – oh yeah, our newbie.”

            Ivan comes to Jack and puts a hand on his shoulder.

            “Um… Jack. I know this is all a little mysterious, but hang with us here. I’d like you to head north along these cliffs and see what you can find in the way of usable driftwood. We’d prefer pieces at least five feet long, but it’s looking a little spare today, so we’ll take whatever you can get. There’s some Gatorade in the number-three pack there, along with some beef jerky and power bars. Hop to it, and good luck.”

            Jack wanders along the cliff, finding very little for his troubles: a pair of three-foot limbs, white from exposure. He returns and lays them at Ivan’s feet with a look of apology. Audrey has apparently hit a treasure trove to the south, for Ivan and Willie have already laid out a seven-foot square of base logs and fixed them in place with stake-like pieces buried into the sand.

            Jack walks further this time, and spots an opening in the cliff. It’s a small lagoon, framed on both sides by steep hillsides, a natural depository for driftwood – logs and logs of it. He grabs two eight-footers and drags them back down the beach.

            When he arrives, the peripheral projects are beginning to take form. Terra and Constance have rolled a wide stump into place as the seat of their throne, and positioned two smaller stumps as armrests. Now they’re behind it, planting a row of narrow limbs into the sand as a kind of backing.

            Farther toward the water, White Horse and Suzanne are setting up a kind of exhibit. White Horse’s contribution, to no one’s surprise, involves the balancing of rocks. Limited to moderate specimens culled from the creek-drop, he is fashioning a congregation of elves, gathered in random groupings like spectators at a car accident. Suzanne has found a bucket, gone down to the waterline to fill it up with slushy sand, and is dripping the contents into stalagmites, bunched together like a gnarled Tolkien forest. As Jack turns to go, he sees that Ivan and Willie’s house has attained a height of three feet.

            Ten minutes later, Jack returns with two more eight-footers. Terra and Constance have finished their backing and are binding the limbs together with strands of kelp. Audrey appears from the south, dragging two long planks. She smiles when she sees Jack, and drops them to give him a kiss.

            “Check this out,” she says. “Genuine lumber. It’s like someone was getting ready to build a pier down there. How’re you doing?”

            “Pretty well. Found some good stuff, but it’s quite a hike.”

            “Sorry. Rookie treatment. Keep at it, though. I think we’ll need it.”

            “Um…” Jack looks around, feeling like something’s missing. “Where’s Ben?”

            Audrey scans the clifftop. “He usually takes a hike up there. I’m guessing you’ve figured this out, but this is… about Ben. So we do the work while he goes off and thinks. Here, have some Gatorade.”

            Jack downs half a bottle, grabs a few pieces of jerky and heads north. He’s feeling grateful for the overcast, since otherwise he’d be working up a pretty good sweat. He takes three more sojourns before Ivan gives him the okay to relax. The cabin walls have attained six feet. Willie places Audrey’s planks across the top, and begins hoisting smaller limbs across the planks, creating a Mohawk of nubs along either side of the ridgeline. White Horse, meanwhile, has found his way inside the structure with a supply of rocks and is building his figures somewhat larger. Having festooned their throne with seagull feathers, sand dollars and bits of glass, Constance and Terra have retreated to the shade of the bluff to enjoy a snack. Suzanne, on the other hand, is growing ambitious, has constructed a large mound so that her stalagmite forest might climb into the hills. Jack chuckles at this, then jolts a little when he feels a hand on the back of his neck.

            “All right!” says Ivan. “As soon as Audrey brings us two more limbs, I think we’ll be set.”

            “Should I call Ben?” asks Terra. Ivan nods. She reaches into a backpack and pulls out her bodhran, a round frame drum with Celtic knots painted on its skin and sides. Jack recalls seeing it at the first party. She unties a two-headed stick attached to the frame, stands before the cabin and delivers single blows against the skin, sending deep thuds echoing across the cliffs. After a dozen of these, she stops and returns to the shade. Willie takes the last two limbs from Audrey, stands on tip-toes and slides them into the last remaining slot in the roof. The Monkeys respond with subdued applause, and Willie takes a brief bow. Jack finds this all a little muted, Monkey-wise; Terra, always attuned to puzzlement, turns to explain.

            “This is sort of a religious ritual, Jack, so it’s not like you wouldn’t be respectful, anyway, but we do tend to take it pretty seriously. I’m sure you’ll catch the spirit.”

            Jack stands to scope the clifftops, but sees nothing, so he wanders toward the water and finds Ben descending the footholds. He crosses slowly toward them, eyes straight ahead as if he’s in a trance. He has affixed wildflowers and pieces of grass to his clothing and hair, a King Lear wandering in the wilderness. He walks steadily toward the throne and seats himself, giving the driftwood house an appraising look and then signaling his friends with a slow nod.

            Ivan and Willie go to one of the backpacks, extract two squarish containers and position themselves at opposite corners of the structure. Ivan calls “Okay?” Willie answers “Yes!” and they flip up their spouts, spraying the driftwood with a clear liquid. When he catches the odor, Jack realizes that this is the lighter fluid that he thought he smelled before. They pull out long fire-lighters, set the corner sections into flame and then proceed along the base of the structure, pouring and lighting until the ring is complete. The vision strikes at the back of Jack’s mind: it’s the burning house from Multnomah Falls! If the food, the fireworks and Audrey had not opened his nerve endings before – now he is almost levitating with epiphany.

            Terra lifts her bodhran and walks until the surf touches her feet. She raises the instrument and plays a series of slow rolls. Ben braces his hands on the armrests, staring into the fire. Willie and Ivan come to stand behind him, placing their hands on his shoulders. Constance and White Horse kneel at either foot and wrap their arms around Ben’s legs. Ben is braced against the fire like a man trying to face down a hurricane, and tears are streaming his cheeks.

            Audrey leans over to whisper in Jack’s ear. “Twenty years ago, to this day, Ben returned from a business trip to find that his house had burnt down during the night. His wife and two daughters were asleep when it started. They died, all three. This is why he became a life coach. It was a choice between helping others to live or ceasing to live himself. This awful, awful thing is what brought Ben into your life.”

            Audrey takes Jack’s hand and leads him to the throne, where Ben is shaking with grief, his face gone red, the creases in his forehead deepening with anger. Audrey goes behind the throne, wraps her arms around Ben’s neck and kisses the top of his head. Constance waves Jack over to her spot and replaces her arms with his around Ben’s thick calves. Jack feels the muscles tensing and releasing, like a dog running in his sleep.  Jack faces the fire, now conquering the Mohawk roof, and hears Terra break into a high, keening wail, a soprano exhalation of her Irish blood. Another voice finds a trail just beneath – Suzanne’s – and he glances over to find Constance carving the sound into motions of pain, sharp-angled turns and leaps that remind Jack of modern dance.

            He turns back as the first of the roof-pieces drops inside. This is when he notices White Horse’s figures: one the size of an adult, two the size of children. Jack feels the tears coming freely to his eyes. It feels good. It feels powerful. The roof collapses with a loud cracking, and the figures are gone.

            The fire takes three hours to run its course. As Willie and Ivan run buckets of seawater to drown the coals, Ben takes his parting embraces and heads up the trail with Audrey and Jack. Jack is beginning to understand the arrangements: it will be his job to drive, so that Ben can feel at home in his beloved sportscar, can let the wind pound through his hair, but not be expected, in his altered state, to actually navigate a vehicle. Audrey straps him in, gives him a word of parting and then pulls Jack up the red-sand roadside for a lengthy kiss.

            “It’s been a wonderful weekend, Jack. You’re fantastic, you really are. But I need to let you know, I’m not all that dependable. So I’m sure I’ll see you again soon, but let’s not play the dating game, okay? I can’t take that shit anymore. Take Mr. Ben home and get him into the hot tub, okay?”

            The information is flying a little fast and furious, and all Jack can latch onto is this last tidbit.

            “Hot tub?”

            Audrey laughs. “Oh my God! You didn’t even know you had one, did you?” She taps a finger against his chest. “Go to the tiki god and turn right.” She gives him a kiss and is gone, across the highway and back to the trail to help the others. Jack feels immediate guilt, ogling a woman’s ass with a grieving friend waiting in the car, but he’s assuming that Ben would understand. Then he hits the rewind and considers the word that he’s using: friend.

            Ben is awake, but so lost in thought that Jack thinks it best not to speak. A curtain of navy blue draws down the sky, and as they near Davenport the first stars begin to appear. Ben looks past him to the strip of roadside stores, the little white Mexican church at the base of the hills, then speaks, his voice pock-marked by gravel.

            “You wouldn’t believe how it was the first year, and the second. I would scream, I would thrash on the ground – a couple of times I made a dash for the fire and tried to throw myself in. My friends had to hold my arms and legs to keep me from hurting myself. Now they hold me only to comfort me. And the strange thing is…” He pauses for a long time as the Miata gains the following hill; he’s fighting for this thought like a fisherman struggling with a marlin. “I’ve heard men say this of war. That of course it is the most horrible thing that a human being could live through And that they miss it terribly. Because they will never feel that intensely ever again. Our lives should all include things that would utterly rip us apart if we lost them. And that fire most certainly destroyed me. I am the Phoenix, Jack. But it’s better to live as a Phoenix than not to live at all. Have you ever contemplated suicide?”

            Jack is tempted to tell Ben about the burning house at Multnomah, but this is certainly not the time. “Yes,” he says.

            “I considered it night and day for three years. But I had friends who told me what I’m going to tell you now. Don’t you dare. Because I could not bear losing you.”

            In his thoughts, Jack is taking a plunge into the mist, his foot leaving the stone wall, the gravity taking him in like a lover, the sudden jarring flash of regret. That was his only chance, because from now on the Imp of the Perverse will have to answer to Ben’s Don’t you dare. Highway One opens to a stretch of dark farmlands, breaking off at their ocean edges like snapped-off chocolate bars. The wind thunders through Jack’s hair, sending a chill along the sunburn at the back of his neck, and causing him to do the most unexpected thing of all: to smile.

Photo by MJV

The Monkey Tribe, Chapter H, Part 1: Liza Selena Dolly

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 Jack has just gotten comfortable with the idea that life around Ben will be one long rollercoaster ride when his life coach basically abandons him. Left with no blueprint for living, he goes to the old assignments: breakfast on the roof, two games in the amusement room (this time the Skee-ball and an old-school Asteroids machine), and a lengthy search for skipping-rocks. This ruthless agenda gives him a whole new store of energy, so he extends his hike to the coffeehouse, where he makes the radical departure of trying the Guatemalan, which proves a little smoother than the Peruvian – albeit without the psychogenic aftereffects. The blonde dwarf barista is absent, her place taken by a perky college brunette named Cher. On his return home, he surfs the seemingly limitless channels on the high-def, finding the greatest satisfaction when he lands on a well-done documentary or a familiar sitcom. The prime-time dramas are too gory and self-important, the reality shows too clearly aimed at idiots. Jack knows than Ben is trying to teach him open-mindedness, but when it comes to stupidity he intends to remain a bigot.

            Against the backdrop of his recent chaotic adventures, this sudden solitude has created something new, a sense of relaxation that he hasn’t felt for years – perhaps ever. The only glitch is a trip to the computer, where a scan of the job sites reminds him of all the number-loaded jobs he will not be getting, and returns him to the desperado mood of two weeks before. He tries to console himself with a trip to Mr. Toots, but the echo of Suzanne’s voice – now playing along the walls of a laundromat café in San Francisco – is not strong enough.

            Just as his overanalytic tendencies begin to crowd back in, Saturday arrives, and he knows he’ll have lots of other things to worry about. The very idea goes against a dozen tenets of the house-sitter’s code, but then, when it comes to Thompson, perhaps he’s allowed an exception. He’s just emerging from the shower, fully spruced, when he hears a snatch of jazz trumpet (he is later informed that it’s Miles Davis) and recalls that this is the doorbell. He wanders downstairs and opens the door to a red flame holding a pet-carrier.

            “Jack! You look all slicked-up. Gimme a kiss, wouldja?”

            In consideration of the sash just barely holding his bathrobe together, Jack leans over rather stiffly and gives Audrey a kiss on the cheek. Audrey responds with a disapproving look.

            “Jesus, Jack. Are you that afraid of cooties? Now stand still, and close your eyes.”

            He does so, and receives a kiss the texture and warmth of hot cocoa, topped off by a playful tongue-flick.

            “Ah, there,” says Audrey. “Now let’s go to the roof so I can release my captives.”

            Jack follows her all 47 stairsteps, marveling at the tasteful brevity of her white shorts, the way the fibers in her legs tighten and relax as she climbs. On the roof, she extracts a small blue-bar and hands it to Jack, then reaches back in for Mamet. Jack turns the new bird upside-down and strokes its chest.

            “Marvelous!” Audrey exclaims. “A man who retains his lessons. That one’s called Martini, by the way. Now turn her back around, and we’ll go for the release.”

            They count off the same gentle toss, and the birds react as they did in Salinas, taking a double-circle survey before heading out for Watsonville.

            “I think they follow the shore,” says Audrey. She watches until the two birds are nothing but an umlaut against the clouds. “I suppose if I wanted to know for sure, I could get a teenie-weenie video camera…”

            “Or learn to speak pigeon English,” says Jack, completely unaware that he’s making a pun. Audrey attacks him with another kiss.

            “There,” she says. “That’ll keep your trap shut. Now put on some beach clothes, honey. You and I are going on an expedition.”

            “Oh, um…” Jack taps two fingers against his temple. “Isn’t everybody showing up soon? Don’t I need to be here?”

            Audrey bites her lip, a gesture that Jack finds excruciatingly appealing. “I’m under direct orders from Star Command. Ben is concerned that you’ll be too nervous to watch us re-make your household. So he figured I could distract you while the Monkeys go about their Monkey business.

            Jack smiles. “I’m thinking you probably can.”

            “Damn, Jack. I think I finally got a rise out of you. I was beginning to think I was losing my feminine wiles."

            This is clearly an opening for another saucy retort, but Jack has used up his daily quota.

            “Okay,” says Audrey. “Don’t hurt yourself. Go, put on something beachy. I’ll be downstairs by the amazing whitewater machine.”

            A half hour later, Jack and Audrey are walking the long lot that usually plays host to trailers, RVs and senior citizens. Now it’s loaded up with kiddie rides and carnival games. Audrey stops before an inflatable slide. A little girl in a pink jumper comes soaring down, lands in a pile against the cushioned wall, then jumps right up and scales the ridged steps back to the top.

            “Such energy!” says Audrey. “Did I ever have that much energy?”

            “I get the feeling you did.”

            “Yeah. I guess so.”

            Jack picks at his blue admissions wristband. “So what’s this all about, anyway?”

            “They put this on every year to raise money for local schools,” she says. “Just a kiddie carnival, really, but they have some bands at nightfall, and then of course the big fireworks show. It’s actually better than most of the 4^th of July shows. I think the pyrotechnics guys use it to try out new stuff for next summer.”

            They stop at a booth where kids are using hand-held electric fans to propel tiny sailboats along troughs of water. A little Japanese boy blows his craft to the far end and raises both fists.

            “Ha!” says Audrey. “That’s so cute. Never had kids myself. Three marriages, no kids. I guess that’s why I’m into pigeons.”

            Jack is always surprised that people (normal people, he thinks of them, in contradistinction with himself) are capable of divulging huge pieces of their personal histories in single sentences. He’s further distracted when Audrey takes his hand and pulls him to the next attraction, kids in safety harnesses scaling a rock wall.

            “So how did you come by this mansion? You said something about an extortion racket?”

            Oh God, thinks Jack. Must have been the pot. But he feels the enormity of the past year welling inside of him like hot water in a teakettle.

            “Thompson was always saying, ‘Well, that’s the way they did it at my old company.’ Only, his old company was Enron. He just barely managed to stay out of prison. But it’s like he went through that whole mess and didn’t pick up a thing. What a moron. He was very fond of what we call ‘soft closings’ – which is when you send in the monthly reports without vendor confirmations. After all the accounting scandals – WorldCom, Tyco – those kind of procedures were strictly reined in by the SEC. I remember we were all walking around using the phrase ‘willy-nilly.’ ‘Well you just can’t send in those figures willy-nilly.’ And that became our nickname for Thompson: Willy Nilly. He said we were being worrywarts, wet rags. And… he had this way about him. He was the cool kid, the one where, if you just got to hang out with him a little, you felt like royalty. Plus, you know, among the number-farmers there was this unexpressed feeling about those scandals: for a little while, they made accounting sexy. People saw just how powerful we could be; if we really did things wrong, we could wreak some major kick-ass havoc. We were action heroes. I remember an old cartoon of three geeks in thick glasses and leather jackets that said ‘Hell’s Accountants.’ And the smallest guy says, ‘Hey, you wanna go gang-audit somebody?’

            “We got caught. It wasn’t huge, but Corporate needed to can somebody, and all the reports were processed by me. Thompson could have taken the bullet – he was my supervisor – but he had that way of smiling and saying nothing and just breezing along. I was plagued by guilt and my own stupidity, so I just took it. They called it a ‘layoff,’ which sounds a lot nicer, and they gave me a severance. So now, from what I can figure, I’ve been blackballed. Fifteen years in the business, and I don’t even rate an interview.

            “A few months later, I went on a road trip and ran into Thompson. He was cheating on his wife, in a very public way. I was too surprised, too typically chickenshit to say anything, but Thompson thought I was upholding some sort of male code. Moron. I don’t even know if it’s possible that he felt guilty over the SEC thing – I don’t think he’s capable of it. But he was grateful that I didn’t rat him out about the mistress, and I’m assuming that’s why he’s letting me stay at his house. I wasn’t about to turn it down, cause Lord knows I needed something.”

            When Jack stops, he feels winded, as if he’s just given a five-minute compressed performance of Hamlet. He finds Audrey looking at him, her green cat’s eyes going all moist with sympathy. He knows he shouldn’t be enjoying this – there’s something shameful about relishing pity – but a beautiful woman actually seems to care about his sad, pathetic life, and there’s something in this gaze that absolutely paralyzes him.

            “I’m so sorry, Jack. God, that is all so fucking wrong.” She wraps her arms around his torso and kisses him on the cheek. “We are going to have such a party tonight. We’re going to piss off all of that rat-bastard’s neighbors.”

            Jack has a thought of telling her that he would prefer they didn’t, but he realizes that this is not entirely true. He smiles, and feels a sudden lightness, like helium coursing through his veins. (Although he’s pretty sure that actual helium in actual veins would not be an advisable combination.)

            “Yes,” he says. “I think I would like that.”

            Audrey pulls him forward. “Come on. I know a booth with kettle corn and lemon ice.”

            Jack follows, feeling the pull of a good karma that he feared would never arrive.

            They return to the house just before sunset, and Chateau Flores is a hive of activity. The driveway is stacked up with cars, a few of them spilling out onto neighboring curbsides. Let the pissing off begin, thinks Jack.

            The entryway is surprisingly spare. A trio of silver balloons stands guard at the whitewater, and some enterprising soul has tied an inflatable monkey to the rocks so that he appears to be body-surfing. The high-def is showing a scene from High Society. He catches a glimpse of Terra slipping a tray into the dumbwaiter, and hears the chirpy laughter of Constance, but Audrey pulls him up the stairs before he can see more.

            “As the lord of the manor, you are required only to show up and look spiffy. Now. Do you have a suit?”

            “A… what?”

            “Oh! I can tell this is going to be a project. Tell you what. Point me in the direction of your wardrobe, and meanwhile take yourself a shower.”

            “Right,” says Jack.

            Audrey bats her eyes. “Unless milord requires some assistance with his shower?”

            “I um… I um…”

            “Yes, I’ve met ‘I um’ before.” She places a hand on Jack’s back and pushes him toward the bathroom. “Closet?” she shouts.

            To the right of the fountain.”

            “Jesus, man. Someday you’ve got to actually live in the house!”

            Jack soaps himself before the nudist shower with more of an audience than usual – clots of family and friends taking the beach route to the festival. He gives himself a thorough scrubbing, and then does his best to sharpen the edges, going so far as to try out some of Thompson’s hair product. He’s not quite sure of the recipe. Leave it slicked down? Wipe it off? Comb it out? He goes for slick, and gets a good response from Audrey, who’s laying out men’s clothing in one of the bedrooms.

            “Well! Ain’t you all Antonio Banderas/James Bond? Now here, put on these lovely silver and blue boxers. With your sordid personal history of streaking, I am color-coordinating down to the skin. After that, slap on these black pants – and don’t be shy. I’ve seen your junk, mister.”

            He manages to slip on the boxers while shielding his privates with his bathrobe. Audrey gives him a scornful look. The black pants are his own, but the rest of the ensemble…

            “Thompson’s?”

            “Well yes, Thompson’s. I like you, honey, but nothing else in that closet is getting into this party. Thompson, on the other hand, has exquisite taste. Are you sure he’s not gay? Here. Put this on and… this.”

            She hands him a black button-down shirt and a silver paisley tie. The sleeves are a little long, but the overall effect is pretty sharp, and it matches surprisingly well with the pants. After three attempts, he gets the right length on the tie, and fixes it with a diamond tack that bears the logo of C-Valve, Inc. Audrey holds up a black Italian double-breasted jacket with subtle gray pinstripes, and Jack slips his arms into the sleeves. When he turns to look into the mirror, he can hardly believe the reflection. Something of Thompson’s Latino wiseguy slickness has rubbed off on him. Audrey strokes a hand down either lapel.

            “Mee-ow! If I saw you in these clothes, I’d want to tear them right off you. Except then you wouldn’t be wearing these clothes.” She laughs, amused at her own wit. “Now you need to wait here while I get myself cleaned up.”

            Jack grows bored as he waits, but he’s under orders from a beautiful woman and powerless not to follow. He finds a copy of Maxim magazine on Thompson’s dresser, and is astonished at the lack of clothing on the models, some of whom are well-known actresses. When did this new slut society begin, and where was he when everything changed? His interest causes him to lose track of time, and soon Audrey is back, dashing in, spinning around, requesting a zip.

            Jack is unable to move. She’s wearing a skin-tight, floor-length silver dress, spangled all over with beadwork of cobalt blue. The dress comes to a high collar, which conceals a lot of quality territory, but serves to accentuate her bare arms, angelically white and toned. With the zipper down, his vista includes most of her back, tiny freckles scattered across her shoulder blades like grains of black pepper and paprika. He’s feeling quite averse to sealing this from view, like a security guard locking up the Louvre at closing time.

            “Ahem! Zipper, Jack?”

            “I um… Right.” He braces a hand against her shoulder and pulls the zipper tight, then hooks a clasp at the top. Audrey circles back around and smiles. Her hair is tied up, dangling here and there in artfully random tendrils. She wears a blue eye shadow with just enough green to set off her eyes, but her lipstick is unapologetic crimson.

            “So! How do I look?”

            “I…” Jack’s hands manage to settle on the swells of Audrey’s waist. “I’m… speechless.”

            Audrey jabs a finger at his tie. “I would be much more impressed if that were not your permanent state. Hold on a second.”

            She locates a small shelf built into the top of the dresser and pulls out a spray bottle.

            “This is about the only thing I ever liked about my second husband.” She sprays it on her fingers and dabs a sweet, sharp cologne at either side of Jack’s neck. The alcohol evaporates quickly, creating the sensation of ice crystals on his skin.

            “Now,” she says. “Let’s go make that entrance.”

            Audrey’s tight dress and high pewter pumps should prevent her from scaling the two sets of stairs, but she apparently possesses the powers of a Sherpa witch, and soon they’re standing before the rooftop doors, which have been painted silver for the occasion. (Jack prays it’s temporary paint.) He goes for the doorknob, but Audrey stops him, and pulls a cell phone from God knows where. “Tonight, we’ve got a little system.”

She sends off a blank text message. Jack hears a Mozart-sounding ringtone from the other side of the door. Two seconds later, both doors swing open, revealing a tableau awash in the tangerine light of evening.

            “Presenting Sir Jack Teagarden, Lord of the Manor, and his escort, the divine Lady Audrey of LaBrea!”

            The declaration is operatic and baritone; Jack is unsurprised to find it coming from Willie. What does surprise him is Willie’s outfit, a gray English suit with an ascot tie, top hat and silver walking stick. Holding the other door is Ivan in a classic James Bond tux, single-breasted black with white pleats, a black-and-silver bowtie and an eyepatch. He smiles like a gregarious maitre’d in a Fitzgerald novel.

            “And how is my lord?”

            “Geez, Ivan. What’d you do to your eye?”

            Ivan lifts the fabric to reveal that all is well. “A pirate in a tux is still a pirate. It does, however, create an issue of depth perception.”

            “Remind me to keep you away from the steak knives.”

            Ivan goes from smile to grin. “The master is jovial this evening.”

            Audrey takes Jack by the elbow and leads him to the tiki bar, done up in silver streamers and hosting two crystal pitchers.

            “Gin or vodka?” asks Audrey.

            “Martinis?” asks Jack.

            “By the pitcher, in the old-school style.”

            “Gin? I guess?”

            “Gin it is!” She fills an oversize martini glass halfway up, inserts two olives on a toothpick, and hands it over. Constance walks by in a gown of salmon taffeta, with pink gloves that go all the way past her elbows.

            “Hi Jack!” she says. “I love what we’ve done with the place. Oh! That’s the lobster bisque. Pardon me.”

            She hurries to the dumbwaiter and extracts a large silver bowl of soup that matches her outfit. Jack watches her walk toward the main patio, feeling like he has stumbled into Buckingham Castle. He finds Suzanne walking toward them in a red retro ‘50s dress with white polka dots, poofy sleeves and a high starched collar.

            “Hi,” she says. “Thanks for inviting me. Even though you didn’t know you were doing it.”

            “I… well, I’m sure I would have…”

            “Yes.”

            They’re joined by a lean, athletic-looking man with a face burnished by sun. He’s wearing a beige Western suit with chocolate suede shoulder patches, a silver bolo tie and a black felt cowboy hat over shoulder-length, gray-blond hair.

            “Hi,” he says to Jack. “I’m White Horse. You’ve probably…”

            “The rocks!” says Jack. “Wow. I feel like I’m meeting a celebrity. I really like your… work.”

            “Thanks. I could teach you sometime. It’s not that hard, really. It just takes balance, and a lot of patience. And… a lot of rocks. Dude! Here’s our hostess.”

            Jack turns to find Terra, looking like a Celtic goddess headed for the senior prom. She wears a blossoming satin gown with alternating swaths of spring green and copper, capped by a snow-white wrap, her blonde ringlets falling to either side. She smiles, pleased that her entrance has been noted. She comes to Jack and kisses him on the lips.

            “Thank you, Jack. You don’t know what a thrill it is, seeing my Monkeys all dressed up. But enough of this. Let’s eat!”

            The word “eat” echoes across the rooftop, and the Monkeys make way for a long table at the beachside railing, covered in a blue-gray tablecloth. An arrangement of fine china and silver carries the most elaborate spread of foodstuffs that Jack has ever seen. Terra ticks off the comestibles as they pass.

            “Duck l’orange, whipped garlic potatoes with rosemary, braised vegetables, escargot (which Constance somehow figured out how to prepare), mushroom caps stuffed with crab and parmesan cheese, fresh-baked rye bread from Willie’s oven. Rack of lamb with caramelized onions (that’s White Horse), Suzanne’s family-secret jambalaya, and later, courtesy of yours truly, a dessert of crème brulee. And that large white dish at the end is either Colonel Sanders or Ben.”

            Ben rises from his chair. He’s dressed in top hat and tails, brilliant white down to the bowtie and cane, as if he’s just stepped away from a Busby Berkley musical.

            “Got a friend in the costume shop at Cabrillo College,” he says. “If I spill something on this, I’m a dead man. But I think it’s worth it. Monkeys! Take your places!”

            The tribe produces a high-pitched chittering, but somehow less chimpy than usual, more South Hamptons. The Monkeys stand at their seats as Audrey leads Jack to the far end of the table. Ben lifts his martini glass.

            “I hate to break it to Jack, but this party is yet another excuse for me to expound upon life. And tonight’s lesson is this: that a truly open-minded, worldly person should not only pursue the loony extremes of life, but should also learn to appreciate the finer points of so-called ‘normal’ society. In other words, the monkeys do clean up well.”

            The monkeys cry out “Hear, hear!”

            “That said,” Ben continues, “it is equally true that every worthy person deserves to be the focus of one whole entire toast, and one whole entire occasion, at least once in his or her lifetime. And so I raise this glass of gin and say, Hey-ho! All hail Jack Teagarden!”

            The Monkeys shout the phrase back and drink. A silence arrives soon after, a space normally filled by the honoree’s response, but Jack is not about to magically produce a speech.

            “Let’s eat!” he says, a suggestion that is not about to be refuted. The space above Big Brown fills with the chatter of utensils, like a flock of silverware seagulls.

            After a serious bout of eating, the poor fat Monkeys take a while to recover. Willie is the first to find his feet, opening his guitar case and playing every soft-rock ballad he can think of: Eagles, Clapton, Orbison, Ronstadt. Terra finds her voice and begins tracing the overtones with harmonies. Then Ivan comes in, low and rumbling. Audrey gives Jack a certain look, leaving him no choice in the matter. She leads him to a spot on the rooftop underlain by a square of burnished rock, and he tries to remember what he can of slow-dancing: one hand on Audrey’s back, the other held against the cobalt beads at her waist, taut flesh swimming beneath his palm. He’s afraid to look at Audrey’s face, for fear that he will be overcome, but when he does she gives him a beatific smile, well worth the risk.

            At this point, Willie flashes his jester’s grin and begins to walk away. The dancing couples give each other querulous looks and then link arm-in-arm to follow. Ben and Constance achieve the traverse with a tango. They round a wicker dividing wall and come upon a hidden enclave tiled in a black-and-white checkerboard and lorded over by a six-foot tiki god, grotesque features etched in black igneous jags, his enormous jaw-drop mouth hosting the coals of a fire that must have been burning all during dinner. At the far side is Suzanne, looking at home behind her keyboard, teasing the patterns of a song but not yet revealing her intentions. The eventual winner is an old torch song, “What’ll I Do?” The stuffed monkeys are quick on the uptake, and return to their dancing.

            Jack feels that he is beginning to understand this: clockwise the direction of choice, the hint of Audrey’s magnolia perfume taunting him at a subterranean level. Suzanne is playing out the tail of the song when an explosion causes her to mangle a chord. The dancers look to the Concrete Boat, where an emerald flowerburst is attempting to embrace the sky, lighting up the crowd on the beach below. Then a silver aster; then a golden hydrangea. The monkeys dash to the railing, but Audrey holds Jack in place, turning her eyes to his like an astronomer grazing the Milky Way.

            “There are certain moments, Jack, that can never be re-created.”

            The way that she pauses on his name sends a string of cherry bombs down his spine. She closes her eyes; he descends.

            After the fireworks, the streams of humanity make their way up the roads and hillsides under a fog of sulfur smoke. A few rivulets course beneath the high walls of Monkey Mansion. The Monkeys themselves are beginning to disintegrate: ties untied, high heels abandoned, long hair unloosed. The tiki god now overlooks a smoking lounge equipped with two bongs, a pipe shaped like a penis, two joints, Ben’s grand hookah and a single Dominican maduro cigar, firmly clamped in Willie’s tycoonish grin. Jack is seated on a long teak bench, Audrey’s gorgeous head upon his lap, framed in a blanket of lush red Rita Hayworth tresses.

            “I think you got my story,” says Jack. “So what’s yours?”

            Audrey gives a coquettish smile. “PBS could do a nine-part documentary on me, babe. But you have to promise you will hold not a trice of it against me.”

            Jack looks away at the string of taillights running a conga line along the cliffs over New Brighton Beach. But he’s doing this mostly to pretend he’s thinking. He hasn’t felt this lucky in years, and why in the world would he hold anything against this mistress of pigeons who has delivered it all to his doorstep?

            “Of course not,” he says.

            “Okay.” She runs a finger along her lips, running her databases through a quick merge.

            “I believe I already confessed to the three marriages and divorces.”

            “Yes.”

            “All by the age of thirty.”

            “Shit!”

            “Hey! You cursed. Do this: say ‘fuck.’”

            Jack has had at least two visitations with a joint, so he sees no problem with this.

            “Fuck.”

            “Ooh! That makes me all… well. We’ll get to that later. Let’s see. During my last divorce, I was a cocktail waitress in Vegas. When the papers came through, I celebrated by gambling – which generally, when you’re a townie, is not a good idea. Put it this way: we secretly refer to the gamblers as ‘donors.’ This time, however, I won a hundred thousand dollars on a progressive slot machine. I immediately moved to Big Sur with my best girlfriend and opened a percussion shop. It took seven years for me to run it into the ground, but I was generously bought out by a wealthy restaurateur. I moved to Monterey, got a realtor’s license right before the boom, and now I own a lovely little house up the hill from Cannery Row, where the neighborhood car-owners have no appreciation for the artistic expressions of my pigeons.”

            Jack takes all of this in, and finds that the whole of his response is a chuckle.

            “What?” says Audrey.

            “You’ve had a rich goddamn life, Audrey.”

            “And you’ve been talking in complete sentences almost all day now. I like that.”

            Jack loses his vision once more to distant objects: Terra and Ivan on the main patio, slow-dancing to an unplayed tune; Suzanne laughing open-mouthed at something that White Horse has told her; Ben in the corner with his hookah, smoking half-asleep.

            “What would you like, Jack? What would you like most of all? Don’t think – blurt it out.”

            Jack tries to wire a shortcut to his impulse drive, but of course when someone tells you not to think you’re bound to think a little.

            “I want to get out of my… of Thompson’s suit. I’m tired of being elegant. And… I would love to take a shower.”

            Audrey curls to a sitting position, pivots counterclockwise, stands up and reaches for Jack’s hands.

            “Let’s go do that,” she says.

            Willie is just picking up a spare to launch his score past 100 – Constance at the barre, stripped down to her stockings to try out some old ballet moves – when Jack and Audrey descend the stairs like a royal couple, completely oblivious to the athletic pursuits of their subjects. Just before they reach the next stairwell, Audrey asks, “So what’s the deal with that shower? Can people see you from outside?”

            Willie smiles at Constance. Constance smiles back. They both burst out laughing.

            In a way that he’s never experienced, Jack feels that he is close to waking – but he doesn’t want to. He’s running film loops of last night, unable to understand this thing between himself and Audrey. It’s what other people have always described as “chemistry,” a third person who shows up at the bedroom doors and goes around knocking down the concentric walls that people build around themselves. The entranceway was the shower, and he never realized, no matter how stupidly obvious it might sound, how intimate a mutual shower could be. Once the clothes are shed, the water engaged, the gels and soaps introduced, absolutely nothing is out of bounds. Each body belongs to the fingers of the other, and almost nothing is considered rude or intrusive. He studied Audrey’s flesh with the care of a sculptor, taking note of each small flaw or asymmetry. She did the same with his, and somehow the tickle reflex that would ordinarily come in to interrupt had been shut off.

            Afterwards, they lathered each other into white gelatinous beings and washed it all off, allowing limbs, digits, genitals and breasts to fall where they may. The tactile overload tattooed one spinal knob and the next, creating seismic shivers that shook up his respiration. His breathing fueled hers, echoing off the walls, multiplying. Finally it built to a point of desperation, and he pinned her against the see-through wall, consuming her mouth with his. As he pressed harder, her legs opened, he slipped inside of her and pushed her against the wall with such force that she was able to wrap her legs around his back, airborne. He had never felt so hard in his life, had never gone that far inside a woman’s body. He stayed there for a long minute, his eyes locked on Audrey’s green stare.

            “Hmm. I’m thinking I can guess what you’re thinking.”

            Jack gives up on the dream and finds Audrey kneeling at his crotch. His cock is crazily stiff again (something about her having turned him into a god, a robot, a barber’s pole, a porn star), and she appears to be sliding a glazed doughnut down its length like a very weird game of ring toss. She nibbles on the doughnut and then licks the head of his penis.

            “Mmm… sugar, lard and cock – there’s your well-rounded breakfast.”

            Jack is grinning so broadly he’s afraid his skin will crack. “Where the hell did you get a doughnut?”

            “Ivan went into town, blessed boy. Here, have a chocolate old-fashioned.”

            He takes a chunk from the outer wing. It’s indescribably delicious, but then all his nerve endings have been reconstructed and the intelligence reports are questionable at best. Audrey continues nibbling her doughnut down to his dick, eyeing it with a concerned expression.

            “This must be made use of, but we’re heading off in half an hour.”

            “We are?”

            “Focus, Jack, focus. We simply cannot afford a marathon session like last night… last night… Well. No need for lubrication now. What’s the nastiest position – the one that really gets your nuts churning?”

            “I…” Jack can’t possibly just ask for what he wants, can he? Can he?

            Audrey gives his thigh a hard smack.

            “Ow!”

            “Now, Jack. Tell me what you want. I’m fucking horny!”

            “I… your rear end. I want to see it.”

            “You want to see it bounce, don’t you? You want your own private porno. You dog.”

            She runs a finger down his nose, runs her tongue along his ear and then pivots into the backwards cowgirl, straddling his cock, facing away. It’s now that Jack realizes they’re in Thompson’s bedroom, which makes it nastier, and then Audrey begins to churn those milk-white hips, which makes it nastier, and he knows that one more nastier will make him blow up.

            “Think of someone else,” says Audrey, between gasps.

            “What?”

            “Someone cute and bouncy and young. Someone you shouldn’t be fucking at all. I want you to picture her bouncing on your dick. What’s her name, Jack? Tell me her name.”

            His mind flies of its own accord to the perky brunette at the coffeehouse, her blue baby doll eyes and generous bubble ass. Oh, and the odd celebrity name. Madonna? He sees them in the manager’s office, after hours. She kneels to suck his cock, then takes off her jeans and turns around, her shoulder-length hair flapping as she rides. Oprah? Uma? Yoko?

            “She’s fucking you, Jack! She’s about to come, Jack! She wants you to scream her name so she can come!”

            “Cher! Cher! Cher!” He empties himself into her, in the manager’s office, and she, Liza Selena Dolly, begins to shake. “Cher! Cher! Oh, fuck me, Cher!”

            A lost minute later, back in Thompson’s room, the perky brunette runs a hand through her red hair and throws a wicked smile over her shoulder.

            “Jesus, pal. You catch on quick. But… Cher? I thought I ordered up sweet and innocent.”

            Jack’s too stunned and blissed out to explain. “You’re a witch,” he says. “You should not know these things.”

            Audrey disengages from his cock with an “ooh!” and says, “The truth about men is not so hard to learn, honey. It’s just hard for most women to accept the truth. I, on the other hand, have learned to harness the truth for my own evil purposes. Now go get cleaned up. Cher-fucker.”

            Jack takes a deep breath, and heads for the shower.