New World Monkeys Read Online Free PDF Page B

her temple. “Where is it?” she hears herself ask.
    “We’ll be right here.”
    “And you might bring your husband.” Persian sighs. “Save two old ladies from rolling the Welcome Wagon out to Oster Haus.”
    This is how it happens, Lily thinks with a foundering heart. With one sentence, one grainy photograph, suddenly the pig is hapless, domestic. Beloved.
    Lily comes home that afternoon with news that they have killed the town mascot. She drops the flyer on his desk, a picture of the wild boar in better days (a silk capelet draped over the shoulder haunches) and the words
Sovereign of the Deep Wood
in Franklin Gothic font.
    “Jesus,” Duncan says. “I hardly recognize it with the cape.”
    “Did you call anyone?”
    “Me?” He touches his chest. “I thought you were going to.”
    She turns away from him and heads for the door.
    Duncan stares after her for a minute before getting up and following her out. He’s thinking of the things she doesn’t do when she comes home from the library. Wifely tasks she has long since given up performing. Like tossing her book bag aside and calling out,
Honey, let’s fuck!
She doesn’t do that anymore.
    “What kind of shit luck is it to kill a mascot?” Out on the driveway he watches as Lily unlocks the car and slides behind the wheel. “What are you doing?”
    “They’re obviously looking for it, Duncan.” She stares at him for a moment as if focusing her inexplicable anger into the cubic space of his head.
    Duncan stands as his wife noses the Saab into the lean-to at the side of the house. He hears the kiss of metal and wood as she buries the ruined front grille against the plywood shell. There’s an annoyance gathering in his shoulders that feels like cheap wool against the skin as Lily makes a tight, three-point turn in a car that she never drives. Then he remembers the moment before the collision, her attempt to grab the wheel away, and he thinks, she’s just been allowing me to drive it all this time. Something in her expert handling of the vehicle says,
Let’s not kid ourselves, the Saab is really mine. Always has been.
    Lily kills the engine. Because of the tight fit, she has to crawl over the gear shift to climb out the passenger side. Duncan briefly entertains the thought of locking her in—if only it were possible—and observing her for a few days, watching as she descends through various states of anger all the way down to remorse and dependence.
    Maybe he should try. What’s the worst that could happen?
    She slams the door and comes to stand at the butt of the vehicle. “I don’t understand. You were sitting inside with the phone all day.”
    He drives his hands into the pockets of his shorts. “And you were at the library.” He notices a heavy grease stain across the front of her pants. “That
is
where you were?”
    Lily frowns. “Right, the library.” She waves a hand as if brushing away a fog of mosquitoes. “Summer school’s on. Seems everyone failed the tenth grade last year.”
    It’s probably grease from the bike chain on her pants. Duncan wonders how he’s going to get it out, tries to recall the efficacy of baking powder and lemon juice on grease. Maybe if he uses a commercial stain remover before putting it into the wash?
    “The day just slipped.” He touches his pockets for a cigarette. “Let’s leave it at that.” First a morning of toil with nothing to show, then the bad news about the Laundry Elf. After that, he just couldn’t bring himself to check the car in sunlight. Suspected there might still be gristle and bone in that front grille, the snatch of hackle that rises in anger at the back of the neck.
    “Obviously the pig slipped your mind, too.” Lily presses a fingertip to her hairline. “They’re having a
get-together
for the farmer. Telling them now is out of the question.”
    “Because they’ll think we conspired against the mascot?” He laughs. “Bad for the family name, right?”
    Lily slides her eyes