Welcome to the Monkey House: The Special Edition Read Online Free PDF

either.The minute he didn’t have a part to play, he’d disappear into some hiding place where he could hear people call him, but where he couldn’t be seen. At tryouts in the library he generally hid in the reference room, passing the time looking at flags of different countries in the front of the dictionary.
    Helene came back upstairs, and we were very sorry and surprised to see that she’d been crying.
    “Oh, dear,” said Doris. “Oh, my—now what on earth’s the trouble, dear?”
    “I was terrible, wasn’t I?” said Helene, hanging her head.
    Doris said the only thing anybody can say in an amateur theatrical society when somebody cries. She said, “Why, no dear—you were marvelous.”
    “No, I wasn’t,” said Helene. “I’m a walking icebox, and I know it.”
    “Nobody could look at you and say that,” said Doris.
    “When they get to know me, they can say it,” said Helene. “When people get to know me, that’s what they
do
say.” Her tears got worse. “I don’t want to be the way I am,” she said. “I just can’t help it, living the way I’ve lived all my life. The only experiences I’ve had have been in crazy dreams of movie stars. When I meet somebody nice in real life, I feel as though I were in some kind of big bottle, as though I couldn’t touch that person, no matter how hard I tried.” And Helene pushed on air as though it were a big bottle all around her.
    “You ask me if I’ve ever been in love,” she said to Doris. “No—but I want to be. I know what this play’s about. I know what Stella’s supposed to feel and why she feels it. I—I—I—” she said, and her tears wouldn’t let her go on.
    “You what, dear?” said Doris gently.
    “I——” said Helene, and she pushed on the imaginary bottle again. “I just don’t know how to begin,” she said.
    There was heavy clumping on the library stairs. It sounded like a deep-sea diver coming upstairs in his lead shoes. It was Harry Nash, turning himself into Marlon Brando. In he came, practically dragging his knuckles on the floor. And hewas so much in character that the sight of a weeping woman made him sneer.
    “Harry,” I said, “I’d like you to meet Helene Shaw. Helene—this is Harry Nash. If you get the part of Stella, he’ll be your husband in the play.” Harry didn’t offer to shake hands. He put his hands in his pockets, and he hunched over, and he looked her up and down, gave her looks that left her naked. Her tears stopped right then and there.
    “I wonder if you two would play the fight scene,” I said, “and then the reunion scene right after it.”
    “Sure,” said Harry, his eyes still on her. Those eyes burned up clothes faster than she could put them on. “Sure,” he said, “if Stell’s game.”
    “What?” said Helene. She’d turned the color of cranberry juice.
    “Stell—Stella,” said Harry. “That’s you. Stell’s my wife.”
    I handed the two of them playbooks. Harry snatched his from me without a word of thanks. Helene’s hands weren’t working very well, and I had to kind of mold them around the book.
    “I’ll want something I can throw,” said Harry.
    “What?” I said.
    “There’s one place where I throw a radio out a window,” said Harry. “What can I throw?”
    So I said an iron paperweight was the radio, and I opened the window wide. Helene Shaw looked scared to death.
    “Where you want us to start?” said Harry, and he rolled his shoulders like a prizefighter warming up.
    “Start a few lines back from where you throw the radio out the window,” I said.
    “O.K., O.K.,” said Harry, warming up, warming up. He scanned the stage directions. “Let’s see,” he said, “after I throw the radio, she runs off stage, and I chase her, and I sock her one.”
    “Right,” I said.
    “O.K., baby,” Harry said to Helene, his eyelids drooping.What was about to happen was wilder than the chariot race in
Ben Hur
. “On your mark,” said Harry. “Get ready,