A couple more great apes

I'm trying to bulk this thing up, just as an experiment. So here's a fake new chapter for my fake new novel, the work-in-progress BRYAN THE TYGER. In this episode, we meet more primates.

[I got tired of graffiti-ing tygers onto junk ads, so, for the next few days, the obligatory images that accompany these announcements will be just lazy attempts at hand-drawing copies of ad photos with felt tip marker.]

P.S.

In other news: my Public Private Diary is fully printed; also I made a list of my latest novels that have been printed but not included in any collection.

Chapter Thirty-Five

Following our conversation with Orangutan Ron the ditch-digging cable-burier, we skulk down the sidewalk for a while. Myala the Black Panther and I Bryan the Tyger then meet an Orangutan who is painting a traffic light.

“Good morning,” I say. “I’m Bryan and this is my soul-mate Myala.”

“Good morning,” sez the Orangutan. “I’m Harry.”

After a beat, I say: “Yes, we can see that. Do you have a name?”

“Harry is my name,” sez the Orangutan.

“Oh, sorry,” I say. “I misunderstood. I thought that you were describing your appearance.”

“Ha,” sez Harry the Orangutan, “that’s funny.”

After more silence, I ask: “What are you doing?”

Harry replies: “I’m touching up the paint on the pole of this traffic light.”

I nod: “Ah, I see. That’s really thick, black paint; it reminds me of tar.” Then I add: “How far do you plan on going? All the way up?”

“What do you mean?” sez Harry.

“I mean, do you plan on putting a fresh coat of black paint over the three colored lamps up there at the top, as well,” I say, “so that we’re no longer annoyed by the glow of that green, yellow, and red?”

“No, the lights don’t get painted,” sez Harry. “Only the pole and the base.”

“Hm,” I nod; “that’s weird.” Then there is silence.

Now Myala asks a question: “Do you have any family, Harry? Or are you just one of those loners who creeps around painting in broad daylight?”

“Family? Yes, I was married a long time ago,” replies Harry the Orangutan; “but my ex and I have been divorced for many years now.”

“You don’t say,” remarks Myala. “Any children?”

“Yes, nineteen,” sez Harry.

“Nineteen! wow, that’s quite a brood,” Myala starts to grow interested in this pole-painter. “What are their names?”

Harry stops in mid brush-stroke and waits a while; then he shakes his head while answering: “I’ve forgotten all their names.”

“I’m sorry,” sez Myala; “did I hit a sore spot, by asking? It seems that you must be estranged from your kids . . .”

“No; no hard feelings — ask whatever you like,” Harry replies in earnest; “the reason I stopped and fell quiet just now is that I was concentrating hard but simply could not remember what the ex and I chose to name a single one of our offspring. The truth is that I never really cared about my children — none of them showed any interest in the techniques of touch-up painting, so I just learned to ignore them, and I let them go their own way in life. . . . I think one of them might be a dancer now.”

“Do you have a wallet,” I ask, “with pictures of your children, so we could at least get an idea of what they look like?”

Harry the Orangutan scratches his head. “I have a wallet with photos inside the little plastic slots,” he replies, “but none of the pics are of my kids — they’re just regular snapshots of stuff that I love.”

“Ooh, let’s see!” I’m now excited.

Harry retrieves a thick wallet from the back pocket of his faded blue-jeans. He flips it open to the first of many photos. It shows a red automobile.

“That’s my car,” he sez; “a 1996 Dodge Neon coupe.”

“Huh,” Myala feigns interest.

“I like it,” I say.

Harry flips to the next pic: “This is a dart board.”

I look up from the photo, “Ah, you play darts?”

“Yes,” he sez. Then Harry flips to the next image, which is a flag consisting of a blue rectangle in the upper left corner bearing fifty small, white pentagons arranged in nine offset rows, and then thirteen horizontal stripes of alternating black and orange. “This is the armorial badge of the United Fiefdoms of Orangutanland.”

Harry attempts to flip to the next picture, but I place my mighty right forepaw over the image and declare:

“We must go now, or else we shall be too late!”

So we sprint away from Harry the Orangutan.

§

Soon we come to a VHS Tape Rental Shop (VHS stands for “Video Home System”) that lends out commercialized movies on consumer-level analog cassette. We enter this establishment and are greeted by an employee who is an adolescent Orangutan.

“Hi there. Welcome.”

“Good day to you,” we say. (I note that the Orangutan’s name tag reads “Q. Tarantino”.)

Myala and I skulk around the shelves, trying to pick up various videocassettes, but they slip out of our paws and fall to the floor. About two out of every three tapes is now displaced. As we browse, we absentmindedly step on these fallen cassettes. Then, coincidentally, it turns out that we jungle beasts both need to relieve our bladders at the same time; so we each release our strong streams onto the carpet. And we continue to pace the floor as we go. After a while, Myala finishes; and then a few moments later I myself finish. Then I turn and face the shop’s lone employee again:

“Mister Tee,” I say, “could you recommend a blockbuster for us to rent?”

As he begins to pontificate, we skulk out the back exit without listening.

§

“What do you fancy doing now?” I ask my travel-mate.

“Why don’t we pay a visit to the nunnery and see how our friends are getting along — maybe give them a lick,” sez Myala.

“Good idea,” I say.

So we go to the convent and notice that they’ve replaced their old guard dog with a German Shepherd who doesn’t bark at us: he just nods as if he’s our equal. This attitude wins me over, so I quickly pay a visit to the nearby diner and ask for steak tartare in a doggy bag. They are nice enough to arrange this appetizer on a porcelain plate within the takeout container; and it is served with a raw egg on top. I tip them heavily. Then we place the dish before our new friend, the German Shepherd, and he greedily partakes of the offering. I pat his head with my mighty forepaw. (I think that this is the first time I’ve ever patted a dog’s head.)

We proceed into the common area where the best library books are shelved, and there we find our friends, the three wise nuns. Lilith looks like she hasn’t aged a day since our last visit, despite the passage of millennia and the destruction and revivification of the planet; and Maria and So­phia are only just noticeably older than they used to be; and this change becomes them. They are like fine wine, and we lap them accordingly.

[AUTHOR’S NOTE. It is at this moment that I realize I’ve neglected to describe the very special chariot trip that occurred when we brought our beloved trio of nuns from Earth to Jupiter’s Red-Spot District with all thirty of their sisters; and then again, when we brought them back home, after the Tyger-striped smoke miasma subsided. Maybe I’ll do that as a spinoff or sequel someday, to milk this idea as much as is felinely possible.]