The Story Until Now: A Great Big Book of Stories (72 page)

Never mind. I did what you do in the wake of failure, which pretty much happens every time I try. I sat down at the computer and started another novel, but when nobody likes you it’s hard, thinking up new words to push around the screen.

You get distracted, and the monkey was no help. Spud got bored or jealous or some damn thing whenever I sat down to write. Worse, every time I walked away to get coffee or look out the window for inspiration, which was often, he hopped up on the table and started bopping away at my keyboard with his little fists, bonka-bonka-bonka, and one day when I came back from gazing into the bathroom mirror, I found words.

HELO BILY

Well, he spelled it all wrong, but I’m here to tell you: never condescend to a monkey. It turns out the little fuckers are clever. Plus they are easily bored and idle hands can delete an entire chapter just while you’re in the bathroom, examining your zits.

I had to come up with a distraction if I was ever going to finish this rotten book. If I could just get Spud on to something that kept him busy, he wouldn’t have to spring up on my keyboard every time I turned my back, like, when I came back to work I wouldn’t have to deal with him crouching on top of the bookcase with that reproachful look, oook-oooking every time I quit typing because I was trying to think.

It was inhibiting, all that judgmental hopping and oooking and worse, knowing that he was watching my every move with those sober eyes. I could swear he knew every time I switched screens to see if my Amazon figures had improved or went looking for signs of life on my Facebook page; if I started to blog the ook-ooking slipped into a positively spiteful screeeee.

The monkey was judging me. If I wanted to get anywhere with
Koala Galaxy
, I needed to get Spud the sententious rhesus monkey off my case. Monkey see, monkey do? Fine. I would create a diversion.

I dragged out the laptop Mom bought me when she first found out that I was going to be a famous writer. If it takes a hundred monkeys a thousand years to type a novel and I only had one, how wrong could it go?

I gave my old klunker to the monkey.

Oh, he bonked out a few words but he was no threat to me, for I am an artist. While he was plinking away I managed to crank out
Gibbous Moon
, 3,000,004 on Amazon last time I looked, and
Screaming Meemies
, my first horror novel which, in case you’re interested, is in its fifth year on offer, for mysterious reasons, and therefore still available.

And Spud? Oh, he banged out a few hundred words, no big deal, but pretty damn good for a monkey. At least his spelling improved. His little screeds weren’t worth squat, but seeing how lame they were compared to my work absolutely cheered me up. I would pat him on the back and praise him and I don’t think he knew for a minute that my tone was maybe a little bit condescending, for he is the monkey and I am the pro.

He got good enough that I started printing out some of his stuff and at night, after we’d both eaten and I was sick of playing World of Warcraft and fluffing up my MySpace page, I workshopped the stuff with him, or I tried to. If you want to know the truth, Spud’s always been a little too thin-skinned about criticism to be a real writer. One harsh word out of me, one little suggestion and he started ook-oook-ooooking so loud that we had complaints from the neighbors and the super gave me an or-else speech.

“Very well,” I said to the monkey finally, and I’m sorry to say that he took it very badly, “if you can’t handle a little constructive criticism, shut up or get out of the kitchen.”

How was I supposed to know he was so thin-skinned that he would sulk? When I next looked at his laptop screen the ungrateful brute had typed—never mind what he typed, it was insulting and unprintable. I shouted, “Language!” but he didn’t care.

I told him what he could do with his copy and went back to work, and if the next time I peeked Spud had written a villanelle, well—never mind. “Oookoook-oook,” I said to him after I printed it. “This is what I think of your villanelle.” He cried when I tore it to bits and threw the pieces away. At least I think that’s what he was doing. I sneaked a peek at his screen, which is how he usually communicates, but it was blank, so I never found out what he was thinking.

For the next few days he pretty much abandoned the laptop. Whether I was working or not, he sat in a corner and kept his back to me. He wouldn’t eat, at least not while I was watching, and he wouldn’t touch the keyboard—plus, every once in a while I could swear I heard him moan, but with monkeys, you never know. He was sulking for sure.

In a way, it was a relief. It was a lot easier to work without him watching. I managed to finish
Dam of the Unconscionable
, my first literary novel. My feeling is, I never sold many copies because I’ve always been a hybrid and the world resents a literary novelist, but I could gain respect. I thought
Dam of the Unconscionable
would make me famous. I wrote my heart out on that book! It was so intense that I just knew it would win a couple of prizes; this was going to be the novel that would break me out.

Meanwhile Spud was languishing. He wouldn’t type, didn’t write, wouldn’t celebrate with me when a small press gave me a contract for my novel. He wouldn’t touch the laptop even though I gave him inspiring speeches about perseverance. Frankly, it was depressing, seeing him dragging around with his shoulders hunched, and I would do anything to buck him up. I even told him he showed promise and slid the open laptop in front of him, hoping to lure him back to his escritoire. The ungrateful bastard just sat on the windowsill, looking into his paws. I hate the sober little jerk but that expression made me feel bad for him and a tad bit guilty too, for letting him type away on that laptop with nary an honest or even a hypocritical kind word.

“You’re good,” I told him, and I tried my best not to sound condescending this time. “You’re really good.” But he just looked at me the way he did and I knew that he knew.

Then
Dam of the Unconscionable
tanked. The small press wouldn’t even give my money back. I brought home the only copy they printed and I shook it in Spud’s face. I’m afraid I shouted: “Well, are you happy now?” I could tell he was still sulking. He wouldn’t even oook for me.

So for months Spud sat around and brooded; he was shedding, like every clump of fur was a little reproach. Have you ever tried to sit down and get serious about your novel in the presence of a living reproach? It’s like typing on the deck of the Ark the day it starts raining in earnest. Everything shorts out.

If I was ever going to finish
Screed of the Outrageous
and get famous, Spud was a problem that had to be solved.

I couldn’t get rid of the guy, too much has gone down between us, so I had to make him happy. Whatever it took.

Then inspiration struck. I was surfing—
OK
, I was mousing along thinking, the way you do when things aren’t going well inside your head, and I came
upon this amazing product. I clicked on this page and it said in big letters all the way across the top
,
NOVEL WRITING WAS NEVER EASIER
. I thought, oh boy, lead me to it, for if I haven’t mentioned it, a writer’s life is consummate hell. The ad read:

Create and track your characters.

Invent situations that work.

Consummate climaxes.

Triumph over conclusions.

Pay for our software out of your first royalty check.

Everything you need to be a successful novelist for five hundred dollars.

Naturally I clicked through to find out more about this miracle and on the next opening in Ta-DAAA print I got its name:

Success guaranteed with …

STORYGRINDER

Lead me to it, I thought. Of course electronic miracles are not for me, for I am an artist, but given that Mom had just sent me one of her inspiration bonus checks I thought it might be just the thing for Spud. Plus, if I downloaded it for him I could look over the monkey’s shoulder and see if
Storygrinder
knew any tricks, like: five hundred dollars, is there anything in that black bag for me?

So I read the fumpf out loud, thinking to get Spud’s attention. “Success guaranteed,” I read. “Spud, get a load of this. They can show you how to write
Bright Lights, Big City
,” I told him, which, unfortunately, didn’t get a rise out of him, not so much as an ooook.

Then I said, “Or if you wanted, maybe even
The Bible
.”

Nothing. “Or … Or …” Then I was inspired. “A book like
Animal Farm
.”

Bingo. Spud’s head came up.

I thought, if a hundred monkeys typing take a thousand years to write a novel, this software ought to be enough to keep this one off my back for thirty years, which is about as long as these labor-intensive rhesus guys are supposed to last.

I bought
Storygrinder
for the monkey. One look and it was clear the software was not for me. It was, frankly, simplistic. One click and I could write
The Last of the Mohicans
, which, hel-
LO
, has already been done.

“Here you go, dude,” I told him, and on the premise that monkey see, monkey do, I walked him through the first stages.

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,” I wrote, like Charles Dickens, although the application gave me options that would let me write like one of the Brontes. A flag popped up:

DID YOU MEAN TO REPEAT YOURSELF? FIX
.

So I wrote, “Call me Ishmael.” Naturally it questioned my spelling, but what the hey, Spud sidled over to watch.

Then I started writing a book that began, “It was love at first sight. The first time Yossarian saw the chaplain he fell madly in love with him,” and the monkey’s interest in life came back with a jerk.

“Oook!” Spud said and he hurtled in and shoved me out of the way with the force of his entire body. “Oook-ooook!”

“Good boy.” Although it would have been fun to play with the software at least a little bit I backed off, relieved and delighted to see him distracted and busy for a change. “Go to it, little dude. Onward,” I said, “and upward with the arts.”

His eyes lit up.

I said helpfully, “I’d click on the button that says,
start my book
.”

For the first time since I brought him home to my apartment, Spud sounded positively joyful. “Oook!”

It did my heart good to see him pounding away with both fists, and better yet, given the nature of the buttons and whistles attached to this new application, which not only tracks your spelling and punctuation but also tells you when you’re depending too heavily on certain verbs or using an adjective like “magnificent” more than once in your whole entire novel, the little bugger is a genius with the mouse.

A month with
Storygrinder
and Spud bounded past the pound-and-click method and into proper keyboarding before I noticed what was up. For the first time since I gave him the laptop he started using his tiny fingers. To my surprise the animal has a stretch that any concert pianist would envy and, man, you ought to see his attack! After a month he was up to speed and the next thing I knew he had outrun me, typing so fast that there was no telling where it would end. Next time I checked, his output almost matched mine, and as I was in the final third of my next attempt after
Screed of the Outrageous
and, frankly, my best shot at going for the gold, what I had thought of as a gimmick to keep Spud out of my hair ended up with us in a footrace for fame.

He was hard at it and instead of being relieved by my first weeks of freedom from his constant sulking—to say nothing of the fierce, judgmental attention I got back in the days when I was working well and he was bored—I was proud, but I was also a little bit afraid.

The worst part was that where we used to print out every night and talk about what he’d done, now at night when Spud was done for the day he would slam the laptop shut with this don’t-even-think-about-it glare. And do you know, he had the thing password-protected? I ask you, who taught him that?
Either he was jealous of
Storygrinder
and afraid I’d siphon off a copy and get the jump on him, or he didn’t want me finding out what his novel looked like.

What it looked like, it looked like it was a thousand pages long and I had to start wondering whether it was
War and Peace
he was writing, only with rhesus monkeys instead of Russians, or this century’s answer to
Gone with the Wind
. Monkeys, you never know, and he wasn’t tipping his hand. Naturally I’d started out with this thinking I would keep close tabs on him, of course he’d want me to print out so we could workshop what he was writing the way we did in the good old days, but I’d do it better this time around. Like, more praise for what he was doing, but definitely constructive criticism over cookies and cocoa like we used to do, late at night.

How sharper than a serpent’s tooth is the ungrateful protege. The one time I tried to hook up his laptop to the printer cable, Spud latched on to me like that thing out of
Alien
and plastered his smelly body to my face. I went lunging around blindly with his legs in a stranglehold so tight that I couldn’t breathe and his fists clamped on my ears. I had to stagger into the kitchen and duck my head in the dirty dishwater to make him let go. After that I had to make certain promises, like you do when you have to get somebody off your case because they’re all up in your face.