The Higher the Monkey Climbs Read online

  What had I expected to see when the door opened? Well, a beard for one. Something untrimmed, creeping like soggy moss high on the cheeks, maintained despite asymmetrical bald patches on either side. I probably assumed black eyes, darting, constantly scanning for the next source of danger. I definitely figured longish hair, maybe a flimsy pony tail, the unruly front kept in check by a beret decorated with a star or a number of some meaningful date in FFLC history. Leathery hands, the skin calloused, the bones gnarled from blows of a torturer’s hammer. And thickly accented speech, peppered with words like ‘dialectical’ and ‘liberty’ and ‘viva’. I guess I expected some amalgam of Pancho Villa, Pol Pot, and Keith Richards and did not dismiss the possibility that our dinner guest would also be toting an AK-47, the weapon purchased, I theorized, through the sale of cocaine to a band of ­perverts, the drug then exchanged with troops of nine-year-old Brownies for photos of their hairless vaginas.

  But when Inés opened the door and stepped aside to allow her ex-boyfriend to enter, I saw a cleanly shaved man wearing fashionable plastic frame glasses. Manolo Palacios was short and skinny and had a narrow jaw that seemed poised to peck, bird-like, at scattered seeds. Though the evening was mild, he was well-wrapped: a parka with a fur-lined hood, a wool scarf, mitts the size of boxing gloves, boots laced midway up the calf.

  “Did you think you were moving to Siberia?” Inés asked. Good one, I thought.

  “It’s possible that I was misinformed about the climate in April,” Manolo said. His English accent, broadcast ready, reminded me of George Plimpton.

  With a lurch, I stepped forward, standing in the inner doorway, my legs slightly spread, my shoulders back.

  “I’m Richard,” I said. “Inés’ husband.”

  Manolo looked at me, then looked at Inés, then extended his hand to shake mine. If he was judging me, he didn’t show it, either so well-trained and martially adept at keeping his thoughts secret or simply indifferent to who or what I was. I was also wrong about his hands. The one I shook was small, the skin soft, the bones, as far as I could tell, ungnarled. Manolo’s diminished appearance, his passivity, his apparently unmonstrous qualities, put me at ease for the moment. Inés invited him in and, courtesy first, I offered a drink.

  “Manolo doesn’t drink,” Inés said.

  “He might. It’s been a while, hasn’t it? People change.”

  “No. I’m afraid that’s one change I haven’t made. Nothing for me.”

  “How about an apple juice or a soda then. I think there’s some Coke in the fridge.”

  Inés and Manolo traded a glance. “Las aguas negras del imperialismo!” they said, rising to a finishing crescendo, as synchronized as migrating geese.

  Inés explained: “When we were growing up, you couldn’t be a radical and drink Coca-Cola. Because it was big and American. We used to call it ‘the sewer waters of imperialism’.”

  “But that was so many years ago,” Manolo said. “Now, as you probably know, the Coca-Cola Corporation is doing some truly inspiring things all over Latin America. Sponsoring initiatives to help at-risk youth, providing jobs in less developed areas, supporting cultural imperatives.”

  “I didn’t know that,” I said. “Good PR.”

  “To those at-risk youth, to those unemployed, the single mothers, the motives aren’t really important,” Manolo said. “I wish all companies were like Coca-Cola. Hello, Cuxinimpaba.”

  Sagipa had joined us and now perched on the last step, his hands shoved to the depths of the pockets of his blue jeans. Abandoning the hazmat suit for the evening, he wore a white t-shirt, free of words, logos, or labels, the sleeves like loose windsocks on his arms. His hair glistened from recent showering. He was tight, lips clamped shut, feet straight and touching at the ankles, forcing himself to hold together. With a half-hard push, I thought, he might easily topple and shatter into a thousand pieces. I watched as Manolo and Sagipa made eye contact, the father smiling, the son receptive, if reserved.

  “Coke then,” I said. “How about you, Sagipa?”

  He hesitated at my calling him Sagipa, but then said, “I’m fine.”

  I turned to walk back to the kitchen, snatching the bottle of Teacher’s from the sewing machine and then opened the can of cola, pouring from a height, spilling just a few drops and creating enough foam to give me the time needed to pour a finger and a half of scotch, which I downed in three quick gulps before the fizz in the cola subsided and then, not wanting Manolo to drink alone (even if Manolo didn’t drink) I poured another taste for myself, finishing the bottle. In the living room, Inés and Manolo bantered in Spanish.

  “Manolo was just telling us about a new project he’s working on,” Inés said.

  I sat beside Inés on the sofa, my leg pinching a loose edge of her pants. She shifted to release it.

  “What’s the project?” I asked.

  “It’s a book,” Manolo said. “It’s based on Guerrilla Warfare, by Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara. But it’s not about war. It’s about business. The full title is: Guerrilla Warfare for Small Business. It takes the battlefield strategies of el Che and his struggle with Fidel in the Cuban Revolution and applies them to the problems faced by small businesses as they compete against larger incumbents.”

  “I don’t see the connection,” I said.

  “It’s quite evident. You simply need to read the text. For example: How does a fledgling firm compete and capture markets from companies that are larger and stronger and have access to more resources?”

  “You’ve got me.” I said. “How?”

  “By taking advantage of the competition’s greatest weakness. And what is their greatest weakness?”

  I wondered if Manolo always waited for answers to rhetorical questions. Finally, I said, “I’m stumped.”

  “But it’s so simple. Their greatest weakness is their size, their scope, their seeming unlimited resources. It’s the same when fighting a larger army. You just need to read the Guevara text to see it.”

  “Isn’t that fascinating?” I said.

  But Manolo, his hands wide and gesturing as though trying to find the grip on a greased watermelon, had more. “El Che tells us that it is not necessary to wait until all the conditions for making revolution exist; the insurrection can create them. What better describes the start-up phase of a new business? If the entrepreneur waits until all the conditions exist, no new enterprises would ever be launched.”

  “I guess I never thought of it that way.”

  “He’s already convinced a publisher to buy it and the first chapter is scheduled to be published in Forbes,” Inés said. “Use a coaster there, please.”

  I shifted my drink to the cover of The New Internationalist. A drop of whisky lingered in my mouth and I swallowed.

  “Well I wish you luck. But from what I understand—I have friends who work on the media side of law—in this country no one makes any money publishing books.”

  “The publisher is actually in New York,” Manolo said.

  “New York City?”

  “That’s right. But you may have a point about the money. It explains why my agent was so pleased with the deal we got for the film rights.”

  “Isn’t that fantastic,” I said. “I wonder what the Chinese’ll think of the book, eh, Sagipa?”

  Sagipa, seated close to the armrest on the sofa, his feet crossed at the ankles, murmured and nodded, his mind not focused on China. I sipped from my scotch, watching my stepson over the rim of the glass. The three adults remained silent for an awkward moment, waiting to hear if Sagipa would follow up on his initial vague response. When he didn’t, I changed the subject, grasping at the obvious.

  “I smelled something nice cooking in there, Inés.”

  “It’s nothing,” she said. “You probably won’t like it.”

  “I doubt that,” I said, “But I was wondering how long it wi
ll be?”

  “Not long.”

  “But I have time to step out for a minute?”

  “Richard, we have a guest,” Inés said.

  “I know, I know. But I won’t be a minute, I promise.”

  I was already in the vestibule, my arms in the sleeves of my coat and out the door. The cool air passing over the sweat on the back of my neck signalled refreshing change. At the corner, I waited for a taxi to pass before crossing. I knew if there was anything I shouldn’t do, it was leave my wife alone with her ex-lover in my home. (I had settled on ‘ex-lover’, a term that seemed wrapped in leopard skin.) I imagined Manolo settling into the arm chair, engraving a comfortable position with his shifting guerrilla buttocks, looking around the room to mentally rearrange the furniture, maybe thinking about new flooring that would properly hide a weapons cache.

  Now. Now.

  It was not a good time for me to leave the house, but the empty bottle of Teacher’s had been haunting me and even with a bottle of Malbec breathing on the kitchen counter, I wanted additional fortification and made straight for The Barrington.

  The drink, gulped on neutral turf, did little to quiet my nerves. There was so much confusion. Inés’ not-so-welcoming but still welcoming attitude, for one. Her apparent amnesia to the way Manolo had once treated her. It’s true that our off-setting hours had hampered communication and it’s also true that we’d never been overly communicative but still, I felt that I’d missed something. Some indication that her memories of the man had been dulled down to a harmless edge.

  Lena replaced my empty glass with a full one and asked how things were going. Fine, I said and nodded to a regular I recognized. Really fine.

  I thought of Sagipa and his understandable discomfort, trying to draw a parallel between finding your father at thirteen and losing your father around the same age. I wondered if one was ­better than the other. At least with the dead one, I thought, you knew what you had. You don’t know what you’re going to get. You don’t know if you’ll like it. All of those unknowns, swarming. It seemed unfair to draw Sagipa into this thorny situation, even as it seemed certain that Sagipa would have to play as much a part of it as any of us.

  I thanked Lena, saluted the regular and headed back to the townhouse, struggling the whole way with the zipper to my jacket, yanking and swearing and finally pulling the thing over my head before walking through the front door.

  Sagipa and Manolo were already seated at the table, one on my left, the other on my right. Inés entered from the kitchen with a steaming soup tureen.

  “Ajiaco,” she said. “Enjoy.”

  I was drunk now, the scotch from the brief detour to The Barrington thunderously augmenting what was already a critical amount of booze. As drunk as I’d been in a long time. While the effects rolled through my head, I sat at the dinner table, concentrating to stay steady, a trick I used to use with my mother to hide after school celebrations. I was drunk, yes, but this was different. I was feeling outside myself, like another version of me had taken my customary seat at the table while the true version watched from a safe distance. Or perhaps hid in a closet. I drank water, the wine glass sitting menacingly full beside it, and leaned forward, balancing the weight on my forearms and fixed my eyes on a fleck of parsley floating among the shiny fat globules in the soup.

  “While you were out, Manolo asked Cuxi to help him research the book,” Inés said.

  Well, shit, I thought, and drank from the wine glass. “What a terrific opportunity.” I enunciated with particular care, each syllable of ‘opportunity’ made distinct.

  “A toast!” I said, raising my glass. “To the success of Guerrilla Warfare for Small Business. May the spirit of Che Guevara bless you from his shrunken casket. We saw the casket, remember that, Inés? In Cuba, right in the museum in the capital there. Havana, right? A tiny, unimpressive sort of thing, remember? Just a little guy. You’d have thought there was a dead schnauzer in there, not a whole human being! But there it was. Straight from the Bolivian dirt. That’s where they shot him dead. Him and the girl. Trudy, I think her name was. Tammy? Doesn’t matter. Still. Fuck. Hard to believe that such a man could be so reduced. A big shot like him. Cheers!

  “Well, I hope it works out for you,” I said. “I really do. Lord knows it’s a hard road, what with the global economic recession and all. We’re getting along alright. Inés works. But she doesn’t have to.”

  “Richard, please.”

  “Of course, I still have my job, so we’ll be fine. We’ll be okay. In fact, I just found out today about some very complicated cases involving some very important technicians from Mexico. Very complicated stuff. My father was a lawyer, too. You don’t see too many lawyers in the unemployment office, that’s one thing. That’s one good thing. So yeah, we’re fine here.”

  “Well, then. Perhaps if she doesn’t need to work, Inés can go back to her original calling,” Manolo said.

  “Only the Belle’s Peel closed years ago,” I said. “Busted for bawdiness. Shut down. Not that you couldn’t still attract a crowd, eh, sweetie? Cha-cha-cha.”

  “I’m talking about her poetry,” Manolo said. “Did you know your mother was once considered the most promising poet in Colombia?”

  “I didn’t realize that,” Sagipa said. “I’ve read the collection, though.”

  Many times, he had read it, kept a copy by his bedside. It was a sort of personal Book of Genesis for him, the document that led to his parents meeting. He read it to try to understand his mother’s cynicism and to possibly harvest some clues about the kind of person Manolo would have to be to fall for the author of these verses. Once again, thinking of Sagipa, even as drunk as I was, I felt petty and childish. Sagipa sat sullen, doubtlessly as confused by the sudden spray of details as I was.

  I also knew that Sagipa was too smart to have any real interest in Guerrilla Warfare for Small Business, a novelty book meant for legions of desperate managers who would buy it on the company account, place it prominently on the bookshelf in their office and not touch it again until they were downsized and given ten minutes to pack up and get out. I thought I could write the forward to the thing: Dear Sucker, I would start.

  But Sagipa would help Manolo. He’d check facts and proofread early drafts for both style and grammar and in the process have the rare opportunity to see his father at work, something I had only been afforded at a distance. Gord’s work was too complicated or too secretive and besides, taking my father’s presence for granted, I didn’t much care how Gord made his daily nut. And then I thought of Tony, who surely grew up with all of Sagipa’s curiosity; the long nights awake wondering, the search for clues about his dad in the depths of his mother’s dresser drawers or in the sound of his own voice or in the shape of his nose.

  All modesty aside, at least Sagipa had me. I felt I had done okay. I congratulated myself every time I saw an ad for Big Brothers/Big Sisters or the Toronto Sun ran a headline about some stepfather being knifed by his wife’s kid following a big blow-up over a dent in the Aerostar.

  By dessert, some kind of rubbery pudding with a teeth-curling sweet sauce, I was calmer, lulled by the booze and a stomach full of chicken, potatoes and broth. And besides, with dinner nearly over, the candles burned down to their stubs, Manolo would soon be leaving.

  “It was nice to meet you,” I said in the front hall. “Come by anytime.”

  Inés kissed both his cheeks and remained for a moment in the doorframe, watching as he walked down the street to the ­corner. When he was gone from sight, she closed the door, set the deadbolt, and then turned to me in the living room.

  “Prick,” she said, and turned to climb the stairs.

  Stung, repentant, I took a step to follow her. But then, overcome by old attractions, I peeked at my watch and reached for my coat. There were still two hours before last call at The Barrington.

  11

  The ne
xt morning I woke in the spare bedroom, sweat-drenched, my brains feeling like broken asphalt. In the ­bathroom I scooped water from tap to mouth, swishing, spitting, swallowing. I splashed my face, rubbed at my puffy eyes to remove the clingy bits at the edges and I drank again, my breath short. Even with the curative powers of water, I knew that this hangover would endure. It was during mornings like these, when each moment seemed to bring me closer to death, that I most acutely felt my own mortality. I had nothing to look forward to: twenty-four hours of bed-ridden, near-incapacitation followed by another day of feeling shitty, and a third of periodic shakiness. In the meantime, fighting a racing heart, my reactions would be slow, my coordination compromised. Vomiting was a near certainty, though not likely until later that afternoon, which almost made it worse. Thinking about what lay ahead, I groaned and felt in my throat the spoors of who-knows-how-many whiskeys downed the previous night.

  I managed to telephone Lydia, asking her to cancel any appointments. I claimed the flu. “And better cancel tomorrow’s too,” I said. “Just in case.”

  Inés, still seething, declaring her embarrassment and humiliation, visited only once to make sure I knew that my suffering would not redeem my performance the previous night. She exited the room quickly, repelled by the lingering stench of countless sour belches and farts.

  In the late afternoon, Sagipa brought me a bowl of linguine with butter. He placed it on the night stand and the sleeves of his hazmat suit slipped up to reveal his skinny wrists.

  “I don’t have to tell you who gave pasta to Italy, do I?” he said.

  “No you don’t,” I said. “Though it’s not the kind of trivia you usually bring to me about China. I’ve known about the Chinese and pasta and Marco Polo for several years.”