I WOKE up groggy after hearing the poor little rats scuttling around in their cage all night. No doubt they were suffering insomnia while fretting about their upcoming trek through the bowels of a frigging snake, which would ruin anybody’s sleep.
While Cory was in the shower and I was getting ready to head out the door to start bonding with the damn monkeys at the zoo, I secretly snatched both rats up by their tails and snuck them out behind the apartment building where I set them free at the base of a hibiscus bush, pleading with them to make a run for it before it was too late.
Rats aren’t dumb. After tipping me a salute of thanks, they were gone before their little feet hit the ground.
“Toodles,” I said softly, watching them scurry off.
We all have to do what we have to do. If San Diego later succumbed to an outbreak of bubonic plague, I’d rethink my actions then. Otherwise, screw it. So what if the damned snake starved to death. My sympathy still lay with the rats.
Feeling rather holier-than-thou, like an animal rights activist freeing lipstick-tainted bunny rabbits from an Avon lab, I mentally patted myself on the back and headed off to work, all the while trying not to imagine Cory standing naked in the shower while the hot water ran down his fuzzy legs, oblivious to the fact that his buddy Leonard no longer had rats à la carte on the menu for breakfast.
As far as my mother’s prediction concerning my long-awaited love affair with the man of my dreams, I pushed it as far back into the recesses of my mind as I could get it. I wasn’t ready to deal with that. Maybe I never would be. And who was to say Cory Williams was that man anyway? Good grief, I had only just met him. Plus he was straight. Even I would have more sense than to fall for a straight guy.
At any rate, my love life wasn’t high on my list of things to worry about at the moment. It was all I could do to prepare myself to face a sea of gorilla poop.
I had learned during my tenure as head bird-poop scooper-upper that it is a thankless and humiliating job dealing with any sort of feces at the San Diego Zoo. The tourists always seem to find it most amusing and giggle and whisper about it even more than they do about the bloody animals. But being in show business, I was used to being giggled at and whispered about. You don’t have to be a star to fall flat on your face, you know. I had suffered some pretty humiliating moments in community theater. There is nothing more pride-shattering than stumbling your way through a scene in front of a full house after stage fright sets in, and you suddenly forget your lines and can’t even remember the name of the play you’re in, for Christ’s sake. And trust me, every actor has done that at one time or another. Yes, it’s true. The worst moments an actor spends onstage is a great learning tool for the worst moments he spends in real life. Karmic, huh?
Today I would undoubtedly learn that scooping gorilla poop was a pain in the ass as well.
My days at the zoo start far earlier than the hour the zoo offices open up, so Cory would not be accompanying me. He had arranged other job interviews on this, the first business day after his arrival in the city. I presumed he would stop by the zoo later to turn in the application form he had filled out the night before while we were sitting around the kitchen table guzzling beers. He’d listed me as a reference, I remembered, but I wasn’t sure how far that would get him. I wasn’t exactly the zoo’s employee of the month. I doubted if any of the high zoo muckety-mucks knew I even existed. And why should they? As far as employees went, I was the equivalent of that unfortunate soul in a community theater production who plays, pro bono, any minor part that needs filling and is happy as hell to get it. I was the extra. The bit player. The only difference being that at the zoo, as opposed to the theater, I at least got paid.
Big Bird had been true to his word. Upon my arrival at the zoo, I found myself locked out of the bird sanctuary and shunted off to the primate center, where I met the head monkey man. Talk about typecasting. The man was hairy from one end to the other, and presumably hairy at all points in between. He was also considerably overweight, and his arms were longer than his legs. He didn’t exactly drag his knuckles when he walked, but it was close. The effect was heightened by the fact that he was scratching his nuts and eating a banana when I met him. We were standing at the edge of the gorilla enclosure. On the other side of the glass was the resident troop, presided over by Memba, the big silverback. Memba seemed to be eyeing me suspiciously. I couldn’t say I blamed him, since I was doing the same to him.
“I’m not getting in there,” I said.
Monkey Man looked fairly astounded I would say such a thing. “Of course not. Why would you think you should? Memba would eat you alive. I can already tell he doesn’t like you.”
“Like I care. But aren’t I here to clean the enclosure?”
“No.”
“Oh.”
There was a large box at Monkey Man’s feet. I had been warily eyeing that box ever since our interview began. I assumed it held the tools I would need for cleaning up ape droppings. You know, shovel, bucket, hazmat suit like I had threatened poor Elmer with.
“So what will I be doing, then?” I asked.
Monkey Man put a long hairy arm around my shoulder and gave me a squeeze. After the squeeze, his hand slid down my back, and he patted my ass.
“I hear you consider yourself an actor, Malcolm. That’s your name isn’t it? Malcolm?”
His big monkey hand was still on my ass, so I gulped and said, “Uh-huh.”
“Well, son, we’re going to find out if you can act your way into separating a few of these cheapass tourists from some of their money. By the way, aside from acting, Bruce in the aviary says you have other talents I might be interested in.”
I couldn’t imagine what those might be. Well, yes, I could.
To my relief, Monkey Man laughed and patted me on the ass again. “Maybe one of these days we’ll arrange for a little canoodling after work. Get to know each other a little better, hey?”
Fat chance, I thought, chewing my lip.
“As for now, Malcolm, let’s have you strip down and try this on for size.”
I had a sudden irrational fear that he was going to whip out his dick and ask me to spread ’em. Gulping was becoming a way of life around this guy. What a sleazoid. I decided I should let Monkey Man know I could be butch if I wanted to, so I horked up a great glob of phlegm and spat it into the bushes. “I’m sorry. Did you say strip down?”
He didn’t seem particularly impressed by my expectorating talents. “’Fraid so, kid.”
Reaching into the box at his feet, he pulled out a gorilla suit. Yes, that’s what I said. A big, hairy gorilla suit. He thrust it into my arms, then pulled from the box a pair of big gorilla hands, two big gorilla feet, and a big gorilla head. All told, the outfit weighed about fifty pounds.
“You’re kidding. You want me to strip down and put on a gorilla suit right here in front of God and everybody?” I gazed up and down the zoo trail where we were standing. Just as I feared, there was no one else around. The zoo wasn’t open yet.
“Sure, kid,” Monkey Man said with a leer. “I’ll locker your clothes for you.” He checked his watch. “The zoo opens in thirty minutes. Chop-chop. Let’s get those clothes off.”
“So I’m going to be wearing a gorilla suit, then. I mean… like an actual gorilla suit.”
“Not too quick, are you? Did you think you’d be doing something else?” He gave me a leer and a wink and an eyebrow waggle. God, this guy was disgusting.
“Well, yeah,” I said, ignoring his ugly face as best I could.
He narrowed his eyes and studied me like a new breed of South American bullfrog. “Just what did you think you would be doing, if I may be so bold as to ask?”
It seemed Monkey Man had a sarcastic streak.
“Scooping gorilla shit,” I said.
He snorted. Rather derisively, I might add. “Sorry, son, but only trained personnel with zoological degrees get to scoop gorilla shit. Do you have a zoological degree?”
“Uh, no.”
“I didn’t think so. No, Malcolm, what you’ll be doing is wearing a gorilla suit and selling these to the masses.”
From another box, Monkey Man hauled out a little stuffed ape. The little stuffed ape was cute. Then he dumped the box out onto the pathway and about two dozen little stuffed apes tumbled out. Suddenly they weren’t so cute.
I was still standing there with the bigass gorilla suit in my arms, and now I was also up to my knees in baby stuffed gorillas. Everything was so hairy, I was starting to itch. Memba was staring at me through the glass like I was a gorilla serial killer, strewn with primate body parts and getting ready to come after his females and all his little hairy young ’uns. I stuck my tongue out at him, and he pulled his rubbery lips back and smacked his chest and growled.
“Stop teasing the primates and take off your clothes,” Monkey Man said. “You’ll die of a heatstroke if you wear your clothes under this monkey suit.” He checked his watch again. “Do it now, kid. I have other stuff to attend to before the gates open for the day.”
I thought about it just long enough to come to the conclusion that even dying of a heatstroke while wearing a gorilla suit and lugging around a truckload of stuffed animals under the broiling California sun was better than scooping gorilla shit. Plus there was the added benefit of knowing I would be incognito. No one could see who I was under that stupid gorilla mask. That would lower the humiliation factor considerably.
So I did what he asked.
I dropped everything at my feet, yanked my shirt over my head, and stepped out of my pants. By the time I was standing there in Jockey shorts and socks, Monkey Man was appraising me up and down and scratching his crotch again.
“You have a nice little body there, son,” he said, licking his thick lips.
That was all the impetus I needed. I leaped into that gorilla suit so fast it left even Monkey Man astounded.
Burying his disappointment that I was no longer half-naked in front of him, he stepped back and eyed me up and down appraisingly. Apparently satisfied, he snatched up a long pole that was lying at the edge of the path. The pole had little hooks all over it, and the next thing I knew he had thrust the pole into my big hairy gorilla hands and attached a stuffed monkey to each one of the hooks. By the time he finished, the pole weighed as much as the suit.
He gave me another perusal as I stood there in my stupid gorilla suit, already sweating bullets, practically blind because the eyeholes were too small, and holding my stupid pole aloft with the damn stuffed animals hanging all over it.
When I spoke I sounded like I had fallen down a well. “It’s hot in here.”
Monkey Man was in the process of peeling himself another banana. “You’ll get used to it.”
“This pole is heavy.”
“You’ll get used to that too. Besides, it’ll be an incentive for you to sell the stuffed animals to the passing tourists. The more you sell, the lighter the pole will get and the easier your job will be.”
“Where do I keep the money?”
He snapped his fingers. “Almost forgot.” From the bottom of the first box, he hauled out a money belt and coin changer, which weighed an additional five pounds. He strapped it around my waist, once again rummaging around my ass while he was at it.
He finally stopped groping me and stood back with his hands on his hips, eyeing me up and down. “Perfect,” he said, chomping on his banana. “Now just walk around. Someone will relieve you in six hours.” And with that, he gathered up the empty boxes and walked off, chuckling.
It was then that I knew I didn’t much care for Monkey Man.
I had no sooner set out strolling through the zoo grounds in my damn gorilla suit with the damn pole filled with stuffed animals swaying over my head and breaking my back because it weighed a ton and I kept snagging it on tree limbs and shit, when a group of kids came running down the path toward me. The zoo must have opened for business. The kids squealed in delight at the man in the gorilla suit, and since I figured I was still better off than I would have been scooping gorilla poop, I hammed it up for the little bastards. Growling. Dancing. Pounding my chest. Swinging my arms. Grunting. Hoo-hooing.
By the time I’d finished, I had sold three overpriced stuffed animals to unhappy parents, and I was pretty sure I had also suffered a heatstroke. Out of breath, blinded by sweat, and suddenly needing to pee, I plopped my ass down on a bench and pondered my life.
I was a good guy. I paid my bills on time. I helped old ladies across the street. I wore condoms.
How the hell had it come to this?
ARRIVING HOME that evening, wobbly from sweating vital nutrients all day while sweltering inside that goddamn gorilla suit, I found Beth crawling around the apartment peeking under the furniture with a hammer in her hand.
I stood in the doorway staring at her.
“What are you doing?”
Beth blew a strand of hair out of her face and shot me a look of pure exasperation. The words “conniption fit” sprang to my mind immediately. It must have been my imagination, but I could have sworn I saw smoke wafting out of her ears. She was clearly furious. Not the humdrum furious you see during road-rage incidents either. This was more like the biblical wrath of God kind of furious, where continents shift and mountains crumble.
“Cory’s rats have escaped,” she snarled.
“That’s terrible!” I cried, molding my face into a semblance of sheer outrage. God, I’m such an actor. “They escaped, you say. How awful! However did that happen?”
Yep. That was definitely smoke coming out of her ears. She was also eyeing me with considerable suspicion. “Wouldn’t I love to know.”
“Where’s Cory?” I asked, hoping to direct her attention to someone other myself. I’m not just an actor. I’m also a coward. “Why isn’t he helping you search? And what’s with the hammer?”
Beth groaned her way to her feet while gazing down at the hammer in her hand. “The hammer’s for incentive. The rats’ incentive, not mine.”
“That should do it.”
“And as for Cory, the zoo told him they wouldn’t have an opening for several weeks, so he took a job as a bagger at the grocery store up the street. He said he tried to find you at the zoo to tell you, but you weren’t there.”
I plucked a strand of fake gorilla fur from between my teeth. “Oh, I was there, all right, but I was dressed in a gorilla suit. He probably didn’t recognize me.”
She almost smiled. “No, I don’t suppose he would.”
Beth had lived with me for a year. Nothing surprised her. If I told someone I had been dressed in a gorilla costume all day, a normal person would ask for an explanation. Not Beth. Anything of an inquisitive nature concerning my goings-on had been leached from her system long ago. Unless it concerned my sex life. She always had time to snoop through that.
She threw herself on the couch, plopped her feet on the coffee table in front of her, and patted the cushion beside her. “Sit with me,” she said.
She didn’t look mad anymore, and the hammer was out of sight, so I did as she asked.
“You look pale,” she said. “Your hair’s all sweaty.”
“Gorilla suit,” I groused.
“Oh.” She patted my hand. “So how’s my little Malcolm doing? How are you and Cory getting along?”
So that’s what she was up to. Making sure all was copacetic on the home front.
I dragged her hand to my face and kissed her thumb, which took her by surprise. Her face softened. “You like him,” she whispered.
I nodded. “I do. He’s a very nice guy.”
She squinted into a smile. “Cute, too, don’t you think? Handsome.”
There was no denying it. “Yes, Beth. He’s very handsome.”
“And nice?”
“Yes,” I said. “Extremely nice.”
Beth looked considerably relieved. She settled back into the sofa. Her eyes darted about the room, still idly searching for the AWOL rats. Good luck with that, I thought. They’re probably in Tijuana by now, sipping margaritas.
“I’m glad you two are getting along, Malcolm. Cory’s going to need a friend, I think. I get the impression something is bothering him. I’m afraid his heart’s been broken.”
“Don’t worry about that,” I said. “He told me he wasn’t brokenhearted at all, not because of Susan anyway. That was her name, you know. Susan.”
“So you guys talked about it.”
“Yeah. I got nosy and asked.”
Beth grinned. “I thought you might.” Her grin faded, and she took on her brother’s pensive look. Maybe it ran in the family. Sort of a Williams family trademark. “So I wonder what’s bothering him, then. I know it’s something. He just won’t say what.”
I tried to waylay her fears. “He’s starting a new life. Worrying about finding a job. Starting all over again. He’s bound to be nervous. I’ll do what I can to try to help him through it.”
Beth patted my hand. “I know you will. He likes you, you know. He told me so.”
I studied her face, searching for sarcasm but not seeing any. “Did he really?”
She nodded.
“We went running yesterday,” I said. “He met my mother.”
Beth laughed. “Did she make a pass at him?”
I laughed back. “Almost. She was working her way up to it.”
A happy silence settled over us while we both considered that. When we had soaked up every ounce of entertainment value from it we could get, she turned to me once again with a serious glint in her eye.
“And he never said what is bothering him?”
“Beth, I’m not sure why you think something is bothering him. As far as I can tell, he’s just a nice, quiet guy who doesn’t get too excited about anything.”
She grunted disapproval. “That’s not the brother I remember. The brother I remember would be playing pranks and singing songs and making jokes all the time. He’s changed, I think. Something has changed him. He isn’t happy, Malcolm. I don’t like it.”
“Give him time,” I said. “He’ll settle in. Maybe he’s still a little uncomfortable having an honest-to-god homo as a roommate.”
“Malcolm, I already told you. He likes you. He told me he’s glad you’re being a friend to him.”
“He said that? You’re sure he really said that?”
“Yes. And don’t be getting any ideas.”
“Like what sort of ideas?”
She narrowed her eyes and jokingly glared at me. “You know what sort of ideas. The sexy kind.”
I sat up straighter and did the “cross my heart and hope to die” routine. “Trust me,” I said. “I have no desire whatsoever to try to lead your brother astray. I’ll be his friend if he wants. I’m happy to do it. But I know my limitations. And I know his. I’m gay, he’s straight. And never the twain shall meet.”
“Good, then,” she said. Another comfortable silence settled over us, but it only lasted about ten seconds. Then she snapped her fingers and dug around in her pocket for a scrap of paper, which she then proceeded to cram in my face.
“What’s this?” I asked, going cross-eyed because she was holding the paper directly in front of my nose.
“A tip for an audition. They’re shooting a commercial for a local restaurant. They need people to play customers. My dance instructor told me if we went in together, we’d be a shoo-in. He’s directing it, and you know how much he loves me. We have an audition in two weeks.”
“What, you mean both of us?”
“Yeah.”
I snatched the paper out of her hand and read the note. “Cool! You and I haven’t worked together since that production of Sweet Charity at the North Park Theatre last August.”
Beth’s face lit up. “I know! Remember ‘The Rhythm of Life’ number when your wig flew off and landed in the front row, and some horny old man handed it back to you over the footlights with a note stuffed inside asking you for a date?”
I cringed, remembering. “I thought I’d die!” Then I studied Beth’s note again. “Wait a minute. This says one woman and two men. Who’s going to play the other man?”
Beth casually checked the condition of her fingernails. “I told him my brother was in town fresh off a tour of Cats.”
I stared at her. “You mean Cory? He’s probably never even seen Cats. Broadway shows aren’t real big in Podunk, Missouri. The only cats they have in Missouri are those big yellow bulldozers they use to bury homosexuals in mass graves after they declare hunting season on the poor little buggerers.”
She slapped my leg. “You exaggerate. And shut up. It’s not like Cory’ll have to dance or sing. It’s just a commercial. All he has to do is stand around and look handsome.”
“Yeah, and while he’s standing around looking handsome, I’ll be standing next to him looking like an ugly six-year-old.”
She considered that. “We’ll put inserts in your shoes and give you a false mustache.”
I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, like that’ll help.”
She slapped me again. “Stop worrying. This is what I promised Cory we’d do. Drag him along on an audition. Even if he doesn’t get the part, we’ll have taken his mind off whatever it is that’s bothering him. Are you with me on this or not?”
I clutched my heart like I’d just been wounded to the core. “Well, of course I’m in on it with you. I’d do anything for Cory, you know that.” Oops, I thought. Where did that come from?
Beth cocked her head and considered me more closely, as if she was pretty much wondering where that had come from too. “Actually, cupcake, I didn’t know that at all.”
“Well, now you do,” I said, surprising myself even more than Beth.
Beth and I exchanged astonished stares until, desperate for a distraction, I pointed to the bookcase in the corner and barked, “Look! A rat!”
Beth grabbed her hammer and took off running. Poor thing. She’s so gullible.