Shelf Monkey (16 page)

“Nothing is accidental, Thomas; we all went through the same thing.” She put the file down and leaned back in her chair, propping her feet up on the desk in a relaxed yet businesslike gesture that I found disturbingly erotic. “When Aubrey first came up with the idea, it was just a bullshitting session one night at his house. The three of us, we were, well, high, and Aubrey started going off as he does on the ineffectiveness of our lives, the poor quality of writing, the unfairness that people would rather waste their money on trash than challenge themselves. I remember this, he actually threw a book into his fireplace, it was
The Celestine Prophecy
, why we had a copy I don’t know, and the three of us, we just sat there forever, watching it burn. It was like getting a glimpse of Heaven, although that might have been the pot talking.

“Anyway, that’s where it started, the whole ‘secret society’ thing. It was Warren’s idea to dress it up like a cult, he had been rereading
Cat’s Cradle
, I think it was a Bokonism thing. We agreed on the basics, but the thing just seemed, I don’t know,
forbidden
. We needed the names to take some of the pressure off. We decided to take a name of a character, but it had to be an immediate choice. Something about the subconscious mind culling forth the character we most identify with. Again, we were high. Aubrey came up with Don Quixote, no surprises there.”

“Windmills?” I asked.

“Big-time tilting at them. Warren took Kilgore, I guess with the idea that he’s an unappreciated genius who ignores society and believes in secret cults and societies, or something. You ask me, I think he just likes the idea of behaving like a drunken reprobate.”

“And Offred?”

Danae ducked her head in embarrassment. “I know, the whole feminazi patriarchal slave-to-males thing, right? Maybe there’s something to that. I don’t feel particularly oppressed, but I do like the idea of taking control of myself. I guess the world is overwhelming, and she fought back. All I know is, Offred was the only name I could think of. Make of it what you will. The others, I’m sure they have their own explanations. I don’t see much of Hagar Shipley in Emily, and August is as far as you could get from
Valentine Michael Smith. Weirdly, Burt is Gandalf, but I couldn’t tell you why.” She levelled a finger at me. “Now, the question becomes, why Yossarian, Thomas? Do you identify with him, or was it simply the last book you had read?”

I rubbed my forehead for a minute. “You know, I have no idea,” I admitted. “Being surrounded by insanity, maybe, or being powerless.”

Danae smiled. “It’ll come to you.”

“Do you like the name?”

“I think it suits you. Again, don’t ask me why.”

“Do you think it’s sexy?”

She bit her bottom lip, shaking her head in exasperation. “Thomas, it’s —”

“— not you, it’s me,” I finished. “I think I’ll get that tattooed on my arm.”

“Ooh, tattoos are sexy.”

“Really?”

“No.”

I tried to quit Danae, look elsewhere for sexual release, but the pickings were slim at
READ
, and aside from the job and the meetings, there was nowhere else I ever went. I wandered the stacks, my eyes glazed over with lust as I imagined Danae and I performing acts that would cripple the cast of Cirque du Soleil.
READ
became my own intimate gargantuan love nest. I added literary themes to our lovemaking; whichever book I laid eyes on was used for sexual inspiration. Tom Clancy sex was mechanical, very technical, dry and republican, heavily reliant on manuals. Fucking by Dashiell Hammett, we traded quips and witticisms along with our spit. Orwellian sex was clinical yet desperate, alongside a picnic of fresh jam and coffee. Jane Austen was a letdown; I had to tempt Danae, take my time, be a gentleman, woo her with flowers and courtly conduct, and in the end, no sex was forthcoming. Those were the rules. We popped pills with William S. Burroughs, drank scotch and rum with Hemingway, and just plain fucked each other raw with Henry Miller. You can’t even imagine what we did in front of Bukowski. We named our body parts. I’d start in on the Brontë sisters while Danae fondled my Balzac, then I’d move my attentions south toward her Anaïs Nin,
and she’d reciprocate by stroking my Dickens.

And at the end of every session of congress, we would respectfully remove the visage of Munroe Purvis from its perch, and violate it in indescribable ways.

I tried to keep such lovely fantasies to a minimum, as the sizable maypole I erected during each daydream was threatening to become a constant feature of my physical makeup. That, and Danae once questioned me as to why I was blushing as I stacked new Anaïs Nin editions on the shelves. I hurriedly squeaked out an excuse, occurrence of the flu, perhaps I was feverish, or maybe the store’s heating system was on the fritz, all the time imagining Danae straddled over my bookcart.

Good times. I wonder if we wo

From Associated Press

SAN FRANCISCO — Thomas Friesen, missing fugitive in the ongoing Munroe Purvis case, was recognized yesterday at the Golden Gate Valley library in San Francisco, California.

“I knew it was him,” Head Reference Librarian Hanley Jones told Associated Press. “He was crouched over the computer for hours. Never looked up once, which kind of looked suspicious. We unfortunately get a lot of homeless men in here looking up pornography on the Internet, and he seemed the type.

“Then, just as it was coming to me, he gathered up his stuff and left. Well, when it hit me who he was, I immediately called the police.”

Police have confirmed, through the library’s video surveillance recordings of the lobby, that Friesen was indeed in the building.

Representatives of the Munroe Purvis estate, along with donations from Fox Television and the 700 Club, have increased the offered reward for information leading to the apprehension of Friesen to one million dollars.

“I don’t even want the money,” said Mr. Jones. “I just want Munroe to get well, and for Mr. Friesen to get the punishment he deserves.”

Detective Amanda Daimler, an FBI agent who is heading up the investigation, admits confusion as to Friesen’s whereabouts.

“Until now, we had been operating under the assumption that Mr. Friesen had remained in Canada, perhaps still in his hometown of Winnipeg. It appears that he is far more resourceful than we had anticipated.”

Police are advising local citizenry to be on the lookout for a young man, Caucasian, bearded, possibly brown hair, wearing a Niner’s baseball cap.

Dear Eric,

Sorry that last e-mail cut off like that. An hour after I fled the library (oh, and how galling is that? A librarian, turning me in! You’d think if
anyone
was going to sympathize . . .) federal agents had sealed off the building. I watched from across the street, it was very impressive in its thoroughness. I’ve seen my face on every television and newspaper lately, flyers are on every lamppost, there’s a one-million-dollar bounty on my head for my capture or, failing that, death.

I’d ask for the money in cash.

The weeks passed. Books were sold. Montags were captured, tortured for information, and destroyed. The four of us began congregating at Aubrey’s every few nights after work, discussing books, music, the news, whatever. When Rex Murphy held one of his biannual radio programs on the year in books, we treated the day as some would treat the Stanley Cup playoffs, chowing down on nachos and giving rousing cheers whenever Rex would verbally gut a caller. “I apologize, caller, I must have misheard you, did you just have the utter temerity to wax eloquent on the literary treacle that is Mitch Albom?” We cheered as if Gretzky himself had come out of retirement, or, in our sphere of knowledge, J.D. Salinger.

It became routine, but there was joy in it; there was never the fear that it could become boring. Some nights we’d read silently to ourselves, content to simply be in the others’ company. Other nights, we would challenge ourselves with the kinds of games only nerds can enjoy. I would mention a title, Aubrey supplied the author, Danae and Warren would try and keep up.

“Books and authors, Thomas,” Aubrey would start. “Go.”

“The Jonah Kit.”
I challenged.

“Ian Watson.
Six Easy Pieces
.”

“Oh, uh . . . Walter Mosley.
The Unlimited Dream Company
?”

“Come on, give me a hard one. J.G. Ballard.
Shroud
.”

“Oh, that’s . . . I know this one, John Banville, ha!”

“Okay, brother, give me a hard one now.”

“A Werewolf Problem in Central Russia.”

“Victor Pelevin.”

“No way,” Warren said. “No way you knew that, Aubrey, no way!”

“He’s right,” I admitted. Aubrey bowed to the applause, and the game would continue.

Warren disappeared for days at a time, reappearing with new ailments: his legs had healed, but as a trade-off, he was now completely bald. “A bold new choice of hairstyle,” he called it. Sadly, in contrast to the sculpted symmetrical bulk of his body, his head was a lumpy mess, lending him less the air of a cool Bruce Willis/action hero–type, and more the charisma of a mental patient out on a day pass. Danae and I continued our playful banter, but I felt I was making progress. With every weekly meeting of the Shelf Monkeys, she became more and more enamoured of me, barely containing her excitement as I argued against and burned to cinders page after page of Larry Bond and Janette Oke and Elizabeth Lowell. Myself, I would have done anything for her by that time. I was starting to feel whole again, myself again, a sensation I hadn’t recognized in months, maybe years.

Munroe rapidly elevated himself in our ranks to the top of our hit list. By assent, the meetings now began in Aubrey’s house, where a pre-taped copy of the latest Munroe Book Club was screened to whip us into a righteous froth of vengeance. We’d launch spitballs and bottlecaps at the screen as Munroe read portions of whatever offal he was pimping that week, his baritone wavering tremulously as he choked back his tears. Heartily incensed, we’d run out into the night, burning the books, igniting Munroe himself in symbolic effigy, again, and again, and again.

I phoned Danae one evening. “Hey, do you think we’re snobs?”

“What’s that, sexy?” she asked. She had lately taken to calling me by a series of pet names, a turn of events I chose to take as heartening rather than condescending. It was our thing. She never made the names sound like she was demeaning me, never went, “Ooh, whatsamatta, schweetie? You depressed? Who’s a good boy?
Whoshagoodboy?” Not that I wouldn’t have rolled over for a tummy scratch now and then.

“Are we snobs? Burning books, making fun of others?” It had been bothering me lately. Two meetings previous, the Monkeys had unanimously agreed to begin a Master List of the Condemned; authors whose total output was so hopelessly inept and useless that discussing the quality of their books in singular fashion was deemed a meaningless exercise and a waste of a good bonfire. Frank Peretti. Nicholas Sparks. Eric Van Lustbader. Books spun off from television shows and video games. Any series based on a trading card game. Anything from Bethany House Publications. They were all just too easy. At the time, I voted yes wholeheartedly, gratified that my earlier promise to William/Valentine Michael Smith to peruse a Beverly Lewis was now moot. Now, I wasn’t so sure.

On the other end of the line, Danae sipped from her coffee cup, transmitting the smutty noise of liquid slurping across shivering electric wiring directly into my brain. Wow. I
was
whipped. “I don’t get you, Thomas, what’s up?”

“We get together, all of us, and all we do is cut down authors we hate. At work, we laugh at people who spend their money on evangelical fiction and vanity biographies. I mean, we’re not hurting anyone or anything like that. We just think we’re so much smarter than everyone else.”

“I’m not seeing the problem here, hon,” she said, boredom threatening at the edges of her voice. “What, this bothers you?”

“Look, just because someone wants to willingly read a Pat Robertson or a Jerry Jenkins, it doesn’t necessarily make them a bad person.”

“Doesn’t help.”

“I mean, in the end, all the authors are doing is trying to make a buck, same as us. Doesn’t matter if it’s awful. If someone wants to read it, if it fills a need, who are we to criticize? Aren’t we just mad because these people make more money than us? That they wrote a book, while we still make minimum wage?”

“What, you want to write a book?” she asked, suddenly excited. “That’s a great idea, you should do that! I’ve often told Aubrey to —”

“No, you’re not getting it, I don’t want to —”

“What would it be about?”

“What?”

“Your book. What’s the plot? Could I be in it? I always fancied myself a literary heroine. Someone sexy, strong, yet feminine and graceful. Could you give me bigger boobs?”

“Oh. Uh.” I was losing my momentum. “Look, don’t change the subject, I’m trying to be serious. I don’t want to write a book, I’m saying that maybe we’re no better than the people we hate. Or not much better. Why do I have an animosity toward Richard Paul Evans? Sure, he blows chunks, but he donates some of his profits to charities. Or he says he does, I don’t know. I mean, do I despise him because he’s a horrible writer, or because he makes me feel inadequate?”

“Oh, probably a bit of both,” Danae said. “How about a mystery?”

“What?”

“Your book. Or a coming-of-age story? You’d be good at that, all those life lessons you’ve learned.”

“I’m not writing a book. I don’t like writing cheques, for Christ’s sake. What makes you think I could write a book?”

“Hey, if Fiona Sigler can do it . . .” She made a gagging sound.

“Who?”

“Oh, Munroe’s latest. Comes out next month, we got an advance copy. Page made me read it. Called
Freedom Fries and War Widows
.”