“Ohio True Wilderness Experience” originally appeared in issue 102 of CutBank.
First thing was that Pop ran off to Myrtle Beach to find what he called his Own True Happiness with a woman he’d met at the car wash, then Baby Marty got 14 months in juvie for sneaking into the casino and beating up his girlfriend’s uncle. That left just me, Mom, and Candace. Things got even worse when Candace discovered she was pregnant, which was followed shortly by Rory making himself very scarce. Understandably we were all feeling pretty low, and you know how it is, people see a family like ours and they draw their own conclusions yet I still have to believe if they really knew what was in our hearts they’d feel differently.
I guess that’s what made me want to do something to demonstrate that we were not so bad, something to make sure the family did not fall apart entirely. So when after many depressed hours Candace decided that, unemployed and Roryless, she was in no position to be a mother, I took it as my responsibility to help her to obtain an abortion. And even though I could already picture myself at some future family reunion wearing a shirt that said World’s Worst Uncle on it, I knew this was the right thing for her to do.
The next morning bright and early, I posted up at the I-90 off-ramp pretending to be blind. Donnie Park, a guy I knew from back when we were kids, had done the same thing a few months previous and told me he’d made upwards of $60 a day, cash. There are not always great job opportunities around here, is the thing. I got myself a Home Depot bucket, put on the biggest sunglasses I could find, and whenever someone at the off-ramp’s red light would honk at me I’d launch into this routine of turning my head like I was doing echo-location and groping my way towards them in hopes of hearing the plunk of a few coins landing in my bucket or even the subtle flutter of a tattered dollar.
More often than not it would be a dude driving an older pickup, usually looking fairly haggard himself, reaching his hand out of a window that wasn’t rolled all the way down, guilted into digging through the cup holder for change but not willing to get too close to whatever misery in his own life the sight of me recalled. The money came in slow but steady. It really wasn’t all that terrible except for one day when a homeless guy grabbed my pecker and I had to punch him. That really pissed me off, someone thinking they can take advantage of a disabled person like that.
“But you’re not disabled,” Mom said after I recounted the story.
“Sure,” I said, “but he didn’t know that.”
The only truly bad part, though, was one day when I heard the words, “That you, Phil?” yelled at me, which even without the heightened senses associated with pretending to be blind I knew had come from my ex, Kiki. Getting caught begging for change on an off-ramp was humiliating, so I acted like I didn’t hear her. But she just kept hollering—“What are you doing, Phil?” and “You know you’re not blind, right?”
“Get out of here!” I yelled finally, which of course caused the folks at the red light to shoot me dirty looks.
“Not until you tell me what you’re doing,” she said.
The light changed and people began honking but Kiki didn’t budge. Eventually they just drove around her.
“I’m helping Candace,” I said. “That good enough for you?”
“You’re helping your sister by faking being blind?”
“It’s more than you’ve ever done for anyone,” I said, stealthily eyeballing the new line of cars that was already building up.
“What did you just say?” she snapped back. Of all the things to accuse her of, saying she didn’t help people wasn’t fair and I regretted it immediately. I was lashing out due to shame, which may also have been the reason I was in that moment unable to apologize. It was all just too much. I was still in love with her.
“Forget it,” I said, casually trying to resume my blind person posture.
“No, I will not forget it,” she yelled. “But maybe you forgot who stayed at the hospital with you all night that time you broke your ankle showing off for those kids at the skatepark.” Then she floored it out of there, spraying up a rooster tail of dust and gravel that enveloped me completely. A moment later an old lady in a wheezing Datsun honked at me, but when I walked over she only told me I should be ashamed of myself and rolled her window back up.
After about two weeks I’d amassed a decent chunk of change, so I lugged my bucket to the Food King and dumped it into the CoinStar. It was close to $400, less than what Donnie had told me I could expect but enough. I gave the money to Candace and the look of gratitude on her face more than repaid any indignity I’d suffered in earning it for her. And then, if you can believe it, the very next day through a stroke of perhaps karma and also running into Jerome Stubbs—a guy I sort of knew in high school, who’d dropped out to concentrate on his rap career—at the gas station, I got a job at Ohio True Wilderness Experience.
Ohio True Wilderness Experience was not only a top-notch spot in terms of having a whole bunch of lions and about a dozen very cool monkeys of various species, including the state’s first ever tamarin born in captivity, but it was also a decent place to work thanks to free danishes every morning and a complimentary cooler of after-work beers. Occasionally we’d even let the monkeys out of their cages while we were having beers since they were pretty tame. A few of them you could even bribe with leftover danishes to do backflips, which everyone got a genuine kick out of. One thing I didn’t enjoy, though, was that sometimes people got the monkeys high. This crossed some sort of line for me, but it was mainly only Tim Goggins from groundskeeping who did that and people didn’t go too hard in their disapproval of Tim since it was common knowledge that he had some sort of mental issues.
In addition to the animals, the park had some rides that only a handful of guests ever went on, usually Ohio U guys stumbling out of the Baboon Saloon by the gift shop. The rides looked like at one point they must have been really fun, but by the time I started working there they were in an advanced state of slipping into the landscape, even overrun in places with creeping vines that I think Mr. Katsopoulos encouraged to grow because they made it seem more like an authentic jungle. Word was that maintaining the rides was more expensive than the monthly $200 it cost to keep the county inspectors looking the other way.
One of the rides was a rickety wooden rollercoaster with a medium-grade corkscrew that twirled past a group of animatronic clowns dancing a jig around another clown who was soaking in a hot tub with a pained expression on his face. I later learned that the clowns had once been African tribespeople dancing around a huge kettle in which an explorer was being boiled alive, but after someone posted pictures and claimed it was racist Mr. Katsopoulos painted them like clowns and encircled the kettle with plywood that was meant to make it look like a hot tub. But I think this somehow made it even more racist.
That the rides continued to operate despite this relaxed attitude towards maintenance led to a sort of cottage industry among some of the guides who would at the conclusion of the off-road safari adventure caution the guests against going on the various coasters and flumes, offering instead to hook them up with a behind-the-scenes monkey encounter in exchange for a small fee. This always had the effect of making the incurable disease kids on day trips from the hospital practically piss themselves with joy, but even regular people went nuts for the monkey encounters—especially that adorable baby tamarin. This scheme was responsible for guides making an extra $15-$20 per shift on average, and if Mr. or Mrs. Katsopoulos knew anything about it, they never said a word.
Stubbs was the master of this. “Just between you and me,” is how he liked to do it, “you ain’t gonna get off that coaster with all the skin you came in here with. But if you don’t rat me out to the boss, we can go see the monkeys up close instead.” As soon as most people heard the words “monkeys” and “up close” in the same sentence, it was like they couldn’t reach for their wallets fast enough. Stubbs was a decent enough guy in my opinion despite his objectively terrible rapping. I’ve seen him do a freestyle once and would not recommend it to anyone.
Candace had been undeniably down since the abortion, which I felt was perfectly understandable at least for a while, but when her moping and lying on the couch basically 24 hours a day extended into a second month I began to worry. I’d rented her a lot of DVDs and brought her every possible variety of greasy food that was offered at the various kiosks in the park, which if unsold at closing was made available at a discount to employees, but nothing had any effect. So when after my first month on the job I was rewarded by Mr. Katsopoulos with two comp tickets to the park, I hoped the majesty of nature might bring her some solace. On the morning we’d planned on going, I was sitting on the couch watching an episode of The Price is Right while Candace was in her room getting ready. The phone rang. It was Pop. We hadn’t heard a single word from him since he left. I answered just as a hyperventilating librarian won herself a brand new Kia Soul.
“Hey, Phil,” he said when I picked up. “How are you?”
“What do you want, Pop?” I said after a moment.
“Well, I didn’t really know how to go about asking but Sherry said I should just come right out with it…”
“Sherry?”
“From the car wash.”
“Oh,” I said.
“Like I was saying, I guess I just have to come out with it. I need to have your mom served with some papers for the divorce.”
“You’re gonna divorce her finally?” I asked.
“I know it’s high time, Phil. I just need to know when she’s gonna be at the house because someone has to give them to her personally.”
On TV they were spinning the big wheel. The people were so excited. What must that be like to see the possibility of a new life right in front of you like that? To instantly become the kind of person who owns a jet ski or has been on a cruise. I’d thought over the months of the many different things I would say to Pop given the chance. I’d tell him how much he’d hurt us by leaving, and how maybe sometimes I wished him ill because of it. But I could never bring myself to do it and when I imagined him calling it was to apologize, not to ask for my help in divorcing Mom.
“You want me to, like, call and tip you off when she’s home?” I asked. “So you can send some guy over?”
“You don’t have to say it like that,” he said. “Like it’s all negative. Me and your mom been married for coming on ten years. You remember how we finally took the plunge when Marty was just a little tyke.”
“You didn’t even come to Baby Marty’s trial,” I said. “Or Candace’s…”
“What happened to Candace?” he asked.
“None of your business.”
“Look, all I’m saying is that it’s time your mom and I both had our freedom. Legally speaking.”
He went quiet for a while but I could hear him breathing, which had always been sort of wet sounding, as if the air were passing through some fluid reservoir deep inside of him. I recalled a camping trip we’d gone on to Lake Erie before Baby Marty was born, Mom and Pop drinking wine and laughing around the campfire while Candace and I went to the shore where the sound of the water mixed with the wind blowing through the nearby reeds and trees, which made us giggle with fear and excitement at being so close to all the wildness we imagined was out there.
“Please just do this for me, Phil,” he said finally. “For me and your mom. Then we can move on. I’m gonna go now, all right? I hope you’ll call.”
He hung up and I was surprised to feel as calm as I did. I suppose he had a point, though. It was time for them both to move on. Or, he already had I guess. Time now for Mom to do the same. To stop pining, which she still sometimes did. To finally be done with him, at least legally. Maybe him calling was a good thing. It wasn’t an apology, but maybe it would change something. The phone rang again. It was Kiki.
“Hey,” she said, sounding light and easy despite our last encounter. “I’m sorry I gave you a hard time on that off-ramp.”
“That’s all right,” I said. “I shouldn’t have said that you never helped anybody.”
“Cool. Let’s forget it then,” she said. “You doing anything today?”
“Why, what’s up?”
“Tommy’s in jail again,” she said. Tommy is her brother. He’s also a huge piece of shit according to pretty much everyone. “I gotta go out to his cabin and grab this bag of pills to sell for his bail.”
“And?”
“I got a DUI the other day. Thought maybe you could drive me,” she said.
“I’m supposed to take Candace to the Wilderness Experience,” I told her.
“If you take me, we can have sex,” she said.
Ever since we’d broken up I’d tried to tell her in a million different ways that I wanted to get back together, all equally unsuccessful, but Kiki casually suggesting sex was not anything I would’ve imagined.
“Okay,” I said.
“Come by in an hour,” she said. “But you have to wear a condom.”
I told Mom something had come up and asked her to take Candace to the park instead. I even texted Stubbs to keep an eye out and if possible do a monkey encounter for them. Candace would still have a good time without me and it might even be nice for Mom to get in touch with nature a bit, given the impending divorce. Kiki was smoking on the porch with her stepdad Lyle when I pulled up. He scowled at me, which was about as friendly of a greeting as I’d ever got out of him. She stubbed out her cigarette and got in the car.
“Can we stop for snacks?” she asked.
“Isn’t it only like 20 miles?”
“I have to go to the bathroom too."
“Why didn’t you go at the house?”
She shrugged and lit a new cigarette. “You got an extra?” I asked.
“Sorry,” she said. “Last one.”
At the gas station, Kiki ran off to the bathroom and I grabbed some Parliaments, two tallboys of Coors, a bag of Flamin’ Hots, and a three-pack of Trojans. It was all the money I had until my next paycheck. I’d need to hustle a few behind-the-scenes monkey encounters the next couple days.
When she got back in the car, Kiki helped herself to the bag of Flamin’ Hots and nodded at the Trojans sitting in the cup holder. “When I said we could fuck,” she said, “I meant once.”
“They don’t sell single condoms,” I said.
“Whatever,” she said.
We got to the cabin in the time it took us to finish the beers. Although it was less of a cabin than a shack, but even calling it a shack felt supremely generous. The only things inside were a mildewed cooler, a greasy futon, and a safe that held a one quart Ziploc full of pills.
“Can I have one?” I asked.
“Nope. For bail, remember?” she said, plopping onto the futon and undoing the buttons of her jeans, revealing the horns of the hot stuff devil tattoo on her abdomen.
We kissed a little as I fumbled with the condom and I wondered if we would get back together. It was her who broke things off, which I guess was at least partially responsible for some unfortunate recent public outbursts on my part. Maybe she was regretting things. I tried not to think about the stains on the futon. It didn’t take long for me to notice that the sex was not like it had been before. She moved in a new way. I didn’t hate it, it was just different. Like a dance she knew really well but that I’d never heard of. I tried to match her movements but whenever I started getting the hang of it, she changed things up. Underneath the hot stuff devil I saw a newer tattoo that said Mikey. I decided not to ask. We went on for a bit, moving around, switching positions, until she asked if I was close. I wasn’t but I told her I was. I didn’t think I could even finish. I was too sad. I missed her but was also depressed by how it now felt like there might not be anything between us at all anymore.
“Turn over,” I said, and she did. I moved faster. “Oh god, yeah,” I said. “You feel so good.” Then I pulled out, quietly peeled off the condom, and drooled some spit onto her back.
Afterwards we sat on the futon smoking. It occurred to me just then that I’d forgotten to warn Candace and Mom about going on the rides. I grabbed my phone to call them, but didn’t have any service all the way out there at Tommy’s decrepit shack. For a second I panicked but then figured that Stubbs was sure to tell them when he saw them. They were probably having a great time that very minute. I could picture Candace smiling, hugging one of the little monkeys, and it made me smile too.
“Thanks for doing this,” Kiki said.
“No problem,” I said. “Was Mikey busy?”
“Fuck you,” she said.
“Sorry. None of my business.”
“God damn right it’s not,” she said. A beam of sunlight was shining through the dusty window and the smoke from her cigarette curled through it like an escaping ghost.
“You wanna tell me about begging on that off-ramp?”
“It was to help Candace.”
“You said that. She okay?”
“She’s depressed,” I said.
“What’s she depressed for?” Kiki asked.
“She had an abortion.”
“That’ll do it,” she said, leaning close to light a new smoke from the tip of mine.
“Guess so.”
“No,” she said. “That’ll definitely do it.”
“What do you mean, definitely?”
“Forget it.”
“What do you mean, forget it?”
“Just drop it,” she said. “See how mad you’re getting?”
“Why shouldn’t I be mad?” I said. “My sister’s depressed and it was me who paid for it, and you’re being all vague and shit.”
“Can you just take me home please?” she said and began picking up her clothes.
In the car, she put the bag of pills in the cup holder. Without asking, I opened it and dry swallowed a couple. “Asshole,” she said but then took one herself too.
We drove in silence, the distance between us feeling even bigger and more permanent than before. Around us were miles and miles of Ohio, all speeding past the car in a blur. Huge chunks of Ohio. But no, that wasn’t true. In reality it was all just tiny atoms separated by tons of empty space. So much distance. The pills came on without me even noticing the exact moment of going from not high to high. They didn’t feel like percs, but whatever they were they produced a fuzzy warmth in my head. It wasn’t good exactly but it wasn’t bad either, and that felt like a small consolation for how badly things had gone with Kiki. Maybe when we want to get back together with someone, we think we’ll only get the good parts back without any of the bad. Of them and of ourselves. The parts that didn’t go well together and maybe never would. People had to be capable of changing, but they were also for sure capable of staying exactly the same.
At home I grabbed the mail out of the box. I flipped through it and saw a letter for Pop. It was from the social security, likely sent by accident if he hadn’t changed his address yet with the government. I opened it up. It was an informational brochure that someone had highlighted a section of that said how if you’d been married to someone for at least ten years you would get their benefits when they died even if you were divorced.
Mom and Candace were in the living room watching TV. One leg of Candace’s shorts was rolled up and there was a giant gauze bandage covering her entire thigh with pinpricks of blood seeping through. I asked what happened and she burst into tears and bolt to her bedroom.
“There was this rollercoaster …” Mom said and showed me the two comp tickets Mr. Katsopoulos had given them for not suing.
Probably due to what had happened with Kiki and Candace’s sobbing coming through the wall and the pills I’d taken, I slept badly that night. I didn’t even have any real dreams, just brief frightening images—falling off a building that kept getting taller the longer I fell, taking a bite of cake and getting a mouthful of broken glass but also enjoying the taste of it—something less than dreams. Like that was all I deserved.
Pulling up to work the next morning, I found the gate locked and a sign saying the park was closed for maintenance. On the sign was a smiling cartoon lion wearing overalls and holding a hammer. Mr. Katsopoulos stepped out of some nearby bushes looking 100% freaked out. I rolled down my window.
“Phil!” he said with a start, like I’d snuck up on him. “There’s been an incident.”
“An incident?”
“Pedro,” he said, glancing around nervously. “He escaped.” Pedro was one of the lions. I asked what he was going to do and he walked quickly around to the passenger side and got in. He fiddled with the huge keyring he always wore clipped to his belt and clicked a little remote that opened the gate. “The others are already out searching. Let’s go to the office and get you a tranquilizer gun and some bite sleeves.”
Mrs. Katsopoulos was on the phone when we arrived. “You have my sincerest apologies,” she said. “But I guarantee we’ll be open first thing tomorrow and will of course honor all of today’s tickets. Plus 10% off in the gift shop!” She hung up and looked from me to Mr. Katsopoulos. “Anything?”
He shook his head. “Let’s get Phil here set up.”
While Mrs. Katsopoulos tugged the padded rawhide sleeves onto my arms, Mr. Katsopoulos clipped a holster to my belt and explained the tranquilizer gun. “Not particularly accurate beyond 10 yards or so, hence the sleeves. There’s six darts in the magazine, but one ought to do it. Hit him in the neck and he’ll be out in 30 seconds.”
“What if I don’t get him in the neck?” I asked.
“Hazard pay is an extra hundred for the day,” he said. “Another hundred on top of that if it’s you who bags him.”
I got sent to the far northeast corner of the park, which worried me a little because this was not a developed area—lots of trees and underbrush. Mr. Katsopoulos said I should keep my head on a swivel but added there was always a chance Pedro had already been caught. “Call if anything comes up,” he said.
I humped it out past the rides and ducked around a fence into a gully that was off-limits to guests. It felt like legit jungle out there. I could hear the other lions in the distance in their cages, not roaring exactly, just making sounds, possibly celebrating Pedro’s escape. Not that Ohio True Wilderness Experience was some sort of terrible animal prison, but I suppose once you’re taken from your home, deprived of your freedom and put somewhere for the purpose of people gawking at you, it might start to seem terrible no matter how many goat carcasses you got fed each week.
I walked carefully, my head on a swivel, trying not to snap any twigs, but there was no sign of Pedro. I’d love to say the bite sleeves gave me some confidence, but in reality they made it so I could barely move my arms to aim the gun and I hoped I wouldn’t be the one to find him. My phone rang. Maybe it was Mr. Katsopoulos calling to say they’d caught Pedro. I struggled to angle my arms so I could get the phone out of my pocket. It was Kiki. I didn’t know if I should answer, considering my current situation, but I was confused over what had happened between us and needed clarity.
“I can’t really talk right now,” I said.
“Why?”
“Just a thing at work. A lion.”
“What?”
“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “I have tranquilizers.”
“I’ll call you back,” I said and stuffed the phone into my pocket as best I could. Of course I wanted to talk to her. I wouldn’t mention Mikey or abortions again. I’d be funny. We’d laugh. It would be like it used to. We’d drink wine coolers at the dollar movie theater. From somewhere behind me came a loud roar. It didn’t seem to be nearby, but still I felt a hot sickness in my guts. $200 was a lot of motivation though, so I gripped the tranquilizer gun tighter and walked towards the roar.
Before I could see what had happened, I could tell by the laughter and hollering that it was already over. Up ahead at the Pizza in a Cup kiosk, Brad Harloe and Tim Goggins were standing over Pedro’s prone body. His ribcage was rising and falling slowly and evenly. There were three tranquilizer darts sticking out of his side. Brad was pumping his fist, going, “Yes! Fucking yes!” while Tim stared in silent awe. Despite missing out on the extra hundred I was glad it was over. Glad for everybody getting their hazard pay. But certainly not glad for Pedro, whose brief freedom had been taken away before he could even do anything with it. Close up he was scrawny and old looking, hardly a proud and wild predator. I felt bad for him. The indignity of it all. I worked the bite sleeves down my arms and let them fall to the ground, then walked off to call Kiki. She asked if I could come by her house. I told her I’d be there as soon as I could and went to the parking lot without clocking out.
Kiki was alone on the porch when I got there, no scowling Lyle to be seen. “Can we go for a drink or something?” she asked. I didn’t have money to go to a bar. Mr. Katsopoulos would probably just include the hazard pay in my next check. Then I remembered the cooler of after-work beers at the park. Maybe Kiki would enjoy a behind-the-scenes monkey encounter.
“We can go to the park,” I said.
“I thought we could go somewhere and talk.”
“We can talk there,” I said. “There’s monkeys. You’ll like ‘em.”
My AC was busted so we drove with the windows rolled down. This made it difficult to talk once we got on the highway but I didn’t mind because of how nervous I was. I didn’t care anymore about good parts and bad parts, I just wanted her in my life again. Then it occurred to me that maybe she didn’t want to get back together, or even have sex again. Maybe she wanted to tell me that the night before had been a mistake, that this Mikey guy was something serious, but I held out hope that the monkeys could work in my favor. How many people had access to wild animals that did backflips in exchange for danishes?
It was getting dark by the time we got to the park and there were occasional roars in the distance as we walked through the parking lot. I was less scared now that there was no danger of Pedro leaping out from the underbrush, but with Kiki there the park still managed to feel wild and exciting. I wondered if the other lions knew Pedro had been captured. It occurred to me that despite how Pedro had looked, these lions had to be at least a little special. They’d known their wilderness home but they also knew us, their enemy. Maybe they’d even become tougher by being brought here, the confinement sharpening something in them. I tried to explain this to Kiki but the words didn’t come out right so I just pointed out the rollercoaster with the formerly racist clowns.
“How can a rollercoaster be racist?” she asked.
“It’s not anymore,” I said. “But it used to be.”
They kept the beer cooler in this little closed-off grotto area at the back of the park by monkeys’ night cages. There were a couple large rocks and tree stumps that people used for chairs and there was usually a barrel fire going as well. As we walked up, we could see a few people hanging out by the fire already. Kiki was surprised to see one of the monkeys there too. “The monkeys are super chill,” I promised her. “This guy Tim gets them high sometimes.”
“That’s messed up,” she said.
“Tim can’t help it,” I explained. “He has issues.”
I introduced Kiki to Brad Harloe and his girlfriend Stacey, who were standing with a juvenile howler monkey between them, holding its hands like parents walking with a toddler. Brad was holding a large bottle of whiskey in his other hand. Tim Goggins was sitting on a rock concentrating on rolling a joint. Brad took a big gulp from the bottle and held it out to us. “Have a drink,” he said, red-faced and joyful. “Courtesy of Mr. Katsopoulos!”
“My brave safari stud!” Stacey said and kissed him on the cheek.
I took the bottle from him and had a drink. Kiki leaned in close and I felt her breath on my neck. I was always looking for signs and omens of the future even if most of the time they didn’t turn out like I imagined. I thought how great it would be if the two of us were holding a little monkey too. “You think anyone would want to buy some pills?” she whispered.
“Couldn’t hurt to ask,” I said. “Or we could go for a walk.”
“Okay,” she said. “Sure.”
I reached into the cooler for some beers and the cold sent an almost electric sting up my arm. I stood up wanting to tell Kiki about this feeling just as Stubbs walked over holding a little spider monkey on his hip. An array of emotions sprung up at the sight of him that I don’t think at the time I was able to fully understand. Maybe I was angry at myself for forgetting to warn Candace about the rides, maybe I was angry at myself for lots of other things too, for being powerless when I wanted to be anything but. I wanted to be a good brother to Candace and a real boyfriend to Kiki, and by offloading some of my failings onto Stubbs I could be, at least in that moment, even if it wasn’t entirely the truth. But the angrier I let myself be at Stubbs, the more true it began to feel.
“Yo, Phil,” he said. “Crazy ass day, huh?”
“What the hell?” I said to him, letting the beers fall back into the cooler to sink to its icy bottom. “Thought you were gonna take care of my mom and sister yesterday.”
“Sorry, dude,” he said. “It got so busy I couldn’t give them the behind-the-scenes. We were slammed. I didn’t even see them.”
“I don’t care about the monkey tour, man.”
“So why are you acting all pissed-off?”
“She went on the clown coaster,” I said. “You should have warned her!”
“That sucks,” he said. “Why didn’t you tell her ahead of time?”
“They should probably fix that thing,” Brad chimed in. The howler looked up at him and began picking its nose.
“Yeah, obviously they should,” I said. “But done’s done, and Stubbs usually warns people.”
“That’s for tips!” he said. “And I didn’t even see your sister!”
“She okay?” Stacey asked.
“She had an abortion,” Kiki said and then, turning to Tim, added, “I really hope you’re not planning on getting any of these monkeys high, man.”
“Take is easy on Tim,” Brad said. “He’s got a thing.”
“She had an abortion on the rollercoaster?” Stubbs asked.
“No, idiot,” I said. “She was on the rollercoaster because of the abortion.”
“That doesn’t even make any sense,” Stacey said.
“She never would have been there in the first place if Stubbs had warned her,” I said.
“I’m sorry about your sister or whatever,” Stubbs said, his voice straining a bit higher, “but I don’t need this shit.”
“You think I need a depressed sister with a bloody leg?”
Suddenly another figure stepped out of the dark and of all people, as if conjured by talk of Candace, it was that shitheel Rory. He waved at Stubbs but then stopped cold when he saw me.
“You got some balls showing your face anywhere around this town,” I said to him as menacingly as I could. “Didn’t you see my Instagram post?”
He looked like he knew things could easily get unpleasant for him. “All right, Phil,” he said, raising his hands. “I’m leaving.”
But as he turned to go Stubbs said, “Hold up, man. You don’t have to go anywhere just ‘cause of Phil.”
“It’s cool,” Rory said. “We’ll get beers some other time.”
“No,” Stubbs said. “Have a beer now. If Phil don’t like it, he can leave.”
Our weird standoff held for a moment—Rory not quite willing to leave or to stay, me not sure how I’d react in either case, and Stubbs lowering the spider monkey to the ground as if to be ready for whatever happened—but then everyone’s attention was drawn to the little tamarin, which had managed to get out of its cage and was dawdling over to Tim Goggins. It looked like a baby wearing a giant fake mustache. It was just so goddamn cute. Tim took a big hit of his joint and blew a cloud of weed smoke in the tamarin’s face, which made it cough these adorable little coughs. Without warning Kiki blitzed over and punched Tim in the nose. This set off all the monkeys howling and screeching like crazy.
“What did I tell you?” she shouted at him.
Tim looked confused at first, as though the punch hadn’t quite registered, but after a moment he began to howl too, joining the monkey’s mournful chorus.
“What the hell, bitch?” Stubbs said.
Hearing Stubbs talk to her like that, I forgot about Rory. My arms were shaking. It was only then that I realized the tranquilizer gun was still clipped to my belt. I pulled it out of the holster and shot Stubbs in the leg.
“You asshole,” he squeaked before hitting the ground. The entire park plunged into a deep quiet as though even the wild animals knew how badly I’d fucked up. Even Tim stopped his bawling. In the periphery of my vision I noticed movement—Rory tear-assing away. I turned and aimed but he was already too far gone for me to get off a good shot.
Kiki scooped up the tamarin. It let itself be held without a fuss, a look of astonishment on its face. “Let’s go,” she said and I followed her out of the grotto and into the darkness. I knew I was as good as fired. I’d probably be back standing on the off-ramp in the near future. Maybe I’d get arrested. I knew I could not always help myself when I was in need and maybe being arrested was what I deserved, but I wished for more. More of what I didn’t know, just more. Something to bridge all that awful distance between us. And the worst thing was that all I’d been capable of doing in the face of that distance was shooting someone with a tranquilizer dart.
Out on the highway the little tamarin stared through the open window at all that foreignness, its long mustache streaming in the wind. I asked Kiki where she wanted to go.
“Your house,” she said.
I struggled to tear my eyes away from where the monkey’s tiny fingers were indented in the skin of her upper arm. Without disturbing its grip, Kiki took out her phone and dialed. “Candace,” she said after a moment. “Get ready to make a friend.”