Ape Infinitum

When the surge came, it marked the fifteenth hour of the baby’s ceaseless crying. Jean-Pierre pulled it close to his chest, shielding its eyes and squinting his own against the bright wash of light, whispering nonsense and “shhh” into its fresh, new ear. At its peak, the surge, the electricity could be felt on the skin, but it faded quickly, leaving post-coital hollowness in everything that could feel. The surge was what passed for celestial time in the place they called Treppenwitz, and fifteen hours, whether night or day, was a long, long time.

“Shut it up, then,” said Luc, done with cleaning his pistol for the fifteenth time in as many sleepless hours. “Shut it up or I will.”

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“Seems sorta specific,” I say, my hand stretched over my eye to better hide those parts of you that offend.

“So are swans,” you say.

It’s a point worthy of concession, but never that. Instead, I say, “I saw some glass in the yard, broken, reflecting potential. I saw some glass,” I say, “and only part of the bloody futures were you. None of them were me.”

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We only heard it, at first, a sort of whistle, broken and thin. Then Ally pointed it out, added, “Make a wish,” even. When it kept falling, we kind of figured it wasn’t a shooting star, though, mostly on account of how they burn up after a minute. This one just got brighter and brighter, and then it hit. It hit so close that it knocked all four of us over, the shockwave or whatever, and it was all hot and dark for a while, ringing. It was me, Ally, and Bug that got up, after. Cassie was bleeding where she fell, her head nice and busted on the rock, there.

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If it was her shirt, she stole it. It wasn’t hard to picture some other guy volunteering it for a morning, supposing he’d see her again. Maybe he would. Maybe stole was too harsh.

“Take it off,” I said, and she did.

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The winds had died down by the time Olfstead arrived. Still, he made a show of the trials of his travel. An hour earlier and we might’ve cared. If he’d swung wide the great-wood door, soggy with the storm behind him and launched into his story of spooked horses and no-good assistants, of the roofs of houses spiraling skyward, their subsequent groundward falls, and of walls of impenetrable cold we would’ve sat at seats’ edges in anticipation of the next detail. Instead, it was the door swung wide, Olfstead dry and warm, and a sunlit backdrop that belied the week of wind and rain we’d come to loathe and fear during his absence. And he blathered through the details. And we tapped feet, checked watches, and imagined finer moments as we awaited the point to which it was all preamble.

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She hadn’t read them all, not hardly. She’d touched them, though; moved them; stacked them. She’d read the spines. She’d felt the paper. Each had a smell of its own, something suggesting the content of the unread words within. She sometimes considered sitting in the high-backed, green chair at the corner of the room, a room as set aside as any library in a television house might be, and opening one of them under the yellow light of the floor lamp. She’d consider it, but only long enough for the same thoughts to come. In the chair, she was small. Among the words, the deeds they described and their complexity, she was smaller, still. So she built things with them, instead. The books—whole in themselves, their stories aside—made fine bricks and planks and tiles for a world of things scaled to her needs and fancies. They’d formed the substance of fort walls, tables, and grandfather clocks, and, today, they’d compose the shell of her finest work, yet: a seaworthy boat of bind and page and wax.

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“I’d never steal your wallet.” That’s how they said it. “I’d never steal your wallet if I needed money.” Otherwise, it was fair game. Wallets, wives, heirlooms, and money—all of them were worthy of theft or destruction as long as the theft or destruction was in no way necessary. It was a matter of romance, of honor.

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If there was food, it was gone before she said it. There were other things in the course of the conversation, though, the word “dewlap,” maybe. If there were plates, they’d been cleared. She liked to compare things to dinner plates, size and shape. The table was a coincidence, probably. A breeze probably blew when she said it, fluttered the umbrellas above the patio’s tables. If they stood or if they sat, he didn’t know. There was only the timing of the breeze.

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He tested its weight in his hand, the feel of it across his palm. “How does it connect?”

“Well,” said Hep, “I suppose it connects like a hammer. You know, ‘cause it’s a hammer.”

It felt better than most. “No,” said Slesh. “To the show, I mean.”

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He knows the hand will come through the window. White-gloved and sure, he knows it will come. It will raise the pane. He will run. He’s had this dream before. He doesn’t need to turn to see how far the rows of empty, crisply-made beds stretch into the distance behind him. He should run before the hand comes. He should close the window, bar all entry. He doesn’t move. He knows he should, but he can’t. Through the window, the night pushes down on the trees with its thick weight. He hears shapes beyond the glass that are too poorly lit to see. The wind blows, whistling through the thin opening. The hand comes through, its traffic-director’s glove, its tight, black cuff.

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