Love Monkey by Kyle Smith Read Free Book Online Page A

afternoon parked behind a sawhorse with the I-got-a-journalism-degree pretend reporters in a designated “media courtesy area” half a block from the cooling corpse getting tucked under the covers while stealthier journos posing as real people who just happen to live in the building glide in unnoticed and get the story.
    For years we used to go to South together for pitchers and peanuts, him and me and Hillary from the editorial page, a girl whose hotitude was so off the charts that there would have been as little point in flirting with her as there would have been in showing up at Yankee Stadium with glove and cleats, saying, “Hi, mind if I try out for first base?” I once saw her walk by a construction site on Broadway. The hard hats didn’t whistle. They didn’t shout dirty words. Instead, moving as one man, they stood and bowed their heads. Besides which, there was the matter of the hardware she lugged around on the third finger of her left hand. I got to thinking of her as one of the guys, albeit the only one I often pictured dressed only in Reddi-wip, and so we’d all drift over after work to take turns shooting pool or trying to belch “Hotel California” (she once made it all the way to “warm smell of colitas”). Rewrite would joke about our little ménage à trois, but suddenly there was only one of us and nobody was talking about my ménage à un. You know you’re pathetic when even rewrite orders a cease-fire.
    Now Eli’s in the Zone with Hillary. I confronted him about it one night. They had been making cute little call-me-later gestures at each other across the newsroom as I was stuffing my backpack with stolen office supplies, and when I left, he and his gonna-get-some-tonight smirk followed me onto the elevator.
    â€œYou in the Zone?” I said.
    â€œI may be. I may be in the Zone.”
    â€œWhen?” I said.
    â€œCould be a year, could be more.”
    â€œYou know this?”
    â€œShe’s dropping hints. Let’s just say we’ve started making trips to Bed Bath and Beyond.”
    Fucker. “Nice,” I said. He’ll never invite me to the wedding, which sucks because I want to make a big thing out of not going.
    â€œYep,” he said.
    â€œAnd the other guy?” I said.
    â€œOh, him ,” he said. “Never existed. She had to wear an engagement ring to keep lo sers from hitting on her. It was made of glass, Tom, didn’t you notice?”
    Fuck. Checkmated by my jewelry ignorance.
    I couldn’t bear to deal with him after that. It was like he graduated, went to Harvard, and left me behind in kindergarten, eating paste. Today I just give him a nod.
    â€œHey, Ignatz,” I say. For some reason neither of us can remember, I always call him Ignatz.
    â€œHey, Pappy,” Eli says, his go-to-hell tie slung completely unknotted around his neck like a flying ace’s scarf. For some reason neither of us can remember, he always calls me Pappy.
    I slither off down cubicle way, passing two side streets of gray sound-deadening uprights and the interior fishbowl offices reserved for the muckety-mucks. My house is right where I left it, at the corner of Jaded and Cranky.
    Another day in my cave, my cube: ten years in the business and I have never had an office. Sitting on my chair where I specifically ask the copykids not to place them—those unsightly black ass stains—is the usual heap of today’s papers.
    Hit the button and the computer starts humming. This is what I do: I spend my life at three keyboards. One I play pretty well. I slouch in front of it with a beverage and words come out of me, often before I have even thought them.
    One I’m still studying. It has about eighty-eight keys. You have to learn how to push this and hold that, execute complex tasks with one hand while the other is doing completely different things in an entirely different area. And through it all, you