Shelf Monkey (23 page)

“We’ll need the others,” Danae said. “The other Monkeys, they’ll want to know this.”

“Good idea!” said Aubrey. “I’ll start calling everyone. Emergency meeting at my place, tonight.”

“Aw, man, this is gonna be great!” Warren said, pumping his fists in the air. “We are gonna nail the fucker!” He held up his palm to Danae, getting a high five slap from her, then showing it to me. “We’ll make him sorry he ever even learned to read! Right, Tommy-gun?”

“Right-o, bro.” I smacked his hand weakly.

“Hey, hey, hey, Thomas,” said Danae. “Why the long face? Aren’t you happy?”

“No, no, I’m great.” Was I? “I’m fine, I just . . . well, I wonder, see, I hate to be the voice of reason here, play the devil’s advocate, but what is it exactly that we’re thinking of doing? I mean really?”

“We’re living the dream, baby!” Warren cried. “Isn’t that obvious?”

“Well, yeah, this is great, the dream and all, but, I mean, we had our fun with Agnes.” I puckered my lips into a frown. “We got that out of our system, didn’t we?”

Aubrey chucked me under the chin in amusement. “Hey, brotherman here has some qualms, I think.” A great pool of annoyance welled up inside me. “Agnes was small potatoes, Thomas. This is the big time.”

“Yeah, but, well, Page will never even let us near it, will she?”

“Hey, Page
likes
me,” said Danae. “I’m not the one who caused Agnes’s breakdown. As far as Page knows, I’m gold. It’s you three who have to worry.”

“Maybe we could use that,” suggested Warren. “Page’ll never expect something from Danae, Aubrey.”

“You could lose your job,” I reminded her. “Hell, we can all lose our jobs. I don’t think Page would be quite so forgiving as last time, not in this instance.”

“You leave Page to me,” said Aubrey.

“God, man!” I sniped. Something in Aubrey’s frenzied mania began to royally piss me off. “C’mon! Look at this! You’ve been moping around for weeks, you’ve shut out the rest of us, and now you’re prancing around like Baryshnikov on crack!”

“Thomas, what?” Danae asked. She gave me a pout. “Honey, I thought you’d be happy.”

“Oh, hey, I’m happy, I just think we’re working ourselves up here for disappointment. Do you really think we’ll be able to pull a stunt here? This isn’t like Agnes, that wasn’t televised or anything. All that got us was some bad local press and a nod in
USA Today
. It didn’t even make Munroe’s show. This is for television, American television. Believe me, Munroe and his people, they are going to make sure nothing goes wrong, that’s their job.”

“Dude, you’re harshing our buzz,” said Warren, put out at my opinion.

“I’m sorry, guys, but I think we should just lie back awhile. Just let this happen.”

“Jerk-off.”

“No, Thomas is right, we’re jumping the gun a bit,” Aubrey said. “Look, brother, just come tonight, all right? We’re just having a get-together, pizza and beer among good friends. It’ll be fun.”

“What’ll be fun?” I wasn’t going to blindly play follow-the-leader. “What am I agreeing to here? Playing a prank? Sure, I’ll go along with that.”

His teeth stretched across his face. “A prank. Yes. That’s exactly what we’ll do.”

“A prank, yes!” chortled Warren. “We’ll give him the old what for, that’s what we’ll do!”

“Prank ’em,” Danae said. “Prank the hell out of them!”

“Prank, prank, prank!” Warren began to chant, slamming his hands on the tabletop. “Prank! Prank! Prank!” Danae and Aubrey joined in, pounding their feet. “prank! prank! prank!”

I sat watching them quietly, stealing glances at the door now and then, fearful that Page might walk in. Aubrey was revving himself up to mythic proportions, leading Danae and Warren in a three-way whirling merry-go-round about the table and myself.

“PRANK! PRANK! PRANK!”

Gradually, they began to wind themselves down, noticing at last that I had declined to join in. “Well, that’s that then,” I said finally, standing up, stretching my body in an exaggerated yawn and straightening my wig. “A prank. Boy, this is going to be fun, huh? Can’t wait. I guess I’ll see you guys tonight.”

“Yeah, tonight,” Aubrey said hesitantly. I smiled at them as I walked out to the floor, ignoring the disappointment on Danae’s face.

I was a pariah for the rest of the day. Warren became a chameleon, blending into the shadows whenever I approached. Danae pulled an H.G. Wells, disappearing completely from my radar. I didn’t care. I told myself this as I pulled on my boots, ignoring the complaints my feet were busy filing with upper management. I don’t care. No matter to me. Someone has to stay sane, might as well be the clinically depressed one.

Yes, I did care, I’m lying. It stung me that my friendship with them was of such a tenuous nature. What, I can’t disagree without taking on the air of a Judas?

Aubrey approached me near closing time, while I was busying myself with shelf-checking Romance. “Brotherman, how goes the good fight?”

“Completely lost feelings in my lower extremities, but otherwise, fine.”

He leaned against the stacks, crumpling the paperbacks. Ah, it
was
only the Romance section after all, and I was too tired to care. “I’ve called the others, it’s all set,” he said. “Ten o’clock tonight, all right?”

“Right, sure. Ten o’clock.” I studied the Sandra Brown hedge for misfiles.

He cocked his head in sympathy. “You feeling okay, Thomas? You seem out of sorts.”

“No, I’m fine. The boots are still too tight, that’s all. And someone thought I was supposed to be Prince circa
Under the Cherry Moon
, which kind of got me down.”

He looked around, saw no one but members of the browsing public, and leaned in conspiratorially. “Boy, Danae and Warren are really excited about this, huh?”

I shrugged in feigned nonchalance. “They seem to be, yeah.”

“Yourself?”

“Oh, yeah, me too. Excited.” Another shrug. Keep this up, I was going to get repetitive strain disorder.

“Oh yeah, you’re real excited,” he said quietly. “You’re so excited, Danae broke down when you left.”

“She did?”

“No, not really, but she looked displeased. I think you have a real chance with her, brother, and I’m not just saying that. She cares for you.”

That stung, but I wouldn’t let him know that. “Well, whatyagonna do? Women, huh?” I tossed in a half-hearted snort of derision
(“Snuh!”)
to display just how little I cared for her feelings. “She’ll get over it.”

“I sense hesitation, brother.”

“I’m just not in a scheming mood right now.”

“Listen, this isn’t going to be easy. Munroe’s going to be well guarded. We, uh, we could really use your help here.”

“With what?” I said forcefully into his face, startling a nearby elderly woman into dropping her cargo of Jude Deveraux and Julie Garwood with a gasp. “Sorry, ma’am, sorry,” I apologized, gathering up the refuse for her. “If you’ll wait by the cash register, I’ll see that you get a discount coupon for your next purchase.” She left, sniffing haughtily. “Help with what,
friend?
” I persisted. “What do you plan on doing, what is the great scheme to end all schemes that will finally give our cause meaning?” Aubrey sulked. He actually pouted. His bottom lip stuck out and quivered. “Oh, come on! Don’t do that!”

“What?”

“Make that face.”

“What, this face?” His lip extended itself further. “Thith faith, you mean?” he lisped.

“Knock it off, I’m not in the mood.”

The lip retracted. “No, I guess you’re not.” We stood there for a few moments as I busied myself with straightening up the shelves. “Look, friend,” he started.

“There you are!” Page marched through the aisle. Surprisingly, she was also in costume, an obviously rented Princess Leia, cinnamon-bun hair and white robe, too perfect a costume to be homemade. Well, another childhood sexual fantasy bites the dust. I considered mentioning the tenuous connection Leia had to actual literature, but ultimately decided silence was indeed golden in this instance. She positioned herself before us, hands on hips. “I suppose you’ve both heard the news?”

“Why, whatever do you mean, Page?” Aubrey asked. “Thomas, any clue?”

“Nope. Oh, wait, unless she means —”

“— the second coming, is that what you’re referring to, Page? Thomas and I were just discussing what we should wear to the Rapture, should we make the cut. I’m for togas and sandals myself, sort of a symbolic return to traditional values. How about yourself there, Thomas?”

“I’d go the other way,” I said. “Black tie. You cannot go wrong with tux and tails.” Aggravated as I was with Aubrey, I could never bring myself to see eye to eye with Page on anything. She could be a forceful opponent against the cannibalism of orphans, and I’d find some reason why wards of the state should be consumed.

“Hmm, interesting,” Aubrey said. “Page, your thoughts? Will standard store attire suffice?”

“You assholes!” she fumed. “I can’t believe you, Aubrey, this is our chance to take the store to the next level. We could use this to franchise ourselves, go national. Are you really so blind as to not see the potential here? We’d have more money than we’d ever need. But you, you’d ruin this chance for us, wouldn’t you?”

Aubrey displayed his widest, toothiest grin. “In a second.”

“You motherfu—” she spat, stopping before what looked to be a torrent of obscenities spewed forth. Her lips tightened themselves into a perfect horizontal white stripe of wrath. “You’re on notice,
both of you. That idiot giant, too. You even come close to the building when Munroe’s here, and I will take you down. I don’t care about the store, not for this. All I care about is seeing you destroyed. I will bring you to court, I will fucking kill you!”

“Anyone tell you you’re ugly when you’re angry?” Aubrey asked.

It was like someone edited ten seconds out of a film, Page’s slap was so quick, jump-cutting from Aubrey’s retort to Aubrey lying on the floor, the
crack!
of her palm off his face a sonic explosion that echoed through the store. Page pointed a finger at him, then at me. I flinched in anticipation of another attack, fearfully squeezing a drop of urine into my shorts. “You do anything, Aubrey,
anything
, and you can kiss everything you love goodbye,” she hissed. “You too, lawyer-boy. I’ll fucking kill both of you.” She tidied up her robes and hair, smoothing herself back into control. “Goddamn you, Aubrey. We could have done wonderful things together.” She sauntered away casually, already dismissing us. I helped Aubrey to his feet.

“Oh, that does it,” he said, massaging his cheek. “That’s it. It’s on.” His eyes goggled at me. “Did you see that? She hit me.”

“I saw,” I said.

“You’re a witness, she actually struck me, Thomas.”

“She’s quite the heavyweight, that’s going to bruise for sure.”

“Oh, I am going to get her.” He kicked the shelves petulantly. “That bitch! After all I’ve done! She’d still be a receptionist if I hadn’t come along, you know that? She was so timid, so afraid to take a chance.” I nodded slowly. The idea of Page as somehow ever being the shy and retiring type struck me as slight exaggeration, but I let it slide. Aubrey was in no mood for a discussion anyhow, this was a rant a long time in the brewing. “I gave her the idea, I convinced her to go in on this with me! And this is what I get out of it? This?” He was spinning now, looking around confusedly. “I gave her
this!
All this!” he yelled, waving his arms to the roof. “You believe that? How stupid was I, huh?”

“Yeah, it’s a bitch, she’s a bitch, no question,” I said. I put my hands on his arms, forcing him to stand still. His head swivelled madly. “Aubrey, look at me. C’mon, boy, focus!” His eyes boggled themselves about the room. I snapped my fingers in his face. “Aubrey!” The pupils finally settled themselves on me. His hair,
however, kept going, quivering with impending violence. “Aubrey, she has a point,” I ventured. He began to shake again in refusal. I squeezed his arms tighter to hold him in place. “Just think for a minute, okay? If this goes well, you could get enough to leave the place. Franchise it, sell it, whatever. You could leave! Do what you want! Travel, write a book, anything!”

Aubrey shook himself free of my grasp. “Leave it?” he asked, astonished. “You fuck, this place is
mine
. When I leave,
if
I leave, it’ll be on my terms, not hers. Not yours. Not Munroe’s. Mine. You got that?”

I held my hands up in compliance. “Sure, brother, I got it. No problems.”

“Tonight. Ten o’clock. You and me, Thomas, taking up arms against Great Cthulu and the Elder Gods. Are you coming?” It came out as a dare. Did I have the ’nads?

“Fine, ten,” I said. “I’ll be there.”

“Good. See that you are, brother. This is going to be historic. You won’t want to miss it.” Aubrey turned and left. I stood there alone for a while, feeling a large object weave itself through my innards. It rolled up my colon, through the large intestine, finally making a home for itself in my stomach. It lolled about there for hours, coating itself in gastric juices. I felt ill the rest of the night.

“Boo him!”

“Pie him!”

“Rig the stage to collapse!”

“Let the air out of his tires!”

The couch and chairs of Aubrey’s living room were full to capacity, and several Monkeys lay about on the rug, pushing aside the heaps of books to make elbowroom for themselves. Warren, thinking ahead, had fashioned himself a comfy ottoman from remaindered romance paperbacks Aubrey had liberated from the
READ
garbage bins, their covers ripped off and mailed away, proof for the publisher that they were given every chance to prove themselves at the cash register, but, well, things just hadn’t worked out, you know? The crinkled pages bore Warren’s weight with ease, but the sight of those poor lonely Harlequins and Silhouettes, dreadful though they all were, consigned to the fate of cushioning
Warren’s now-bony ass, filled me with melancholy.

“Pie him!” William repeated. “Right on national television. Right in his smug face, a huge coconut cream!”

The Monkeys nodded general assent. “Yeah, Ralph Klein him!” said Muriel, three beers in and clearly enjoying herself. “Smoosh his nose in, yeah!”