ANIMAL PLANET

PART SEVEN

ADOPT, ADAPT, IMPROVE

1. OUT THERE AND IN HERE

THEY TOOK THE Bonanza bus from Grand Central to Waterbury, where they purchased a four-door convertible sedan at a corner used-car lot. The car lot was run by a shady Yankee entrepreneur named Joe.

“You from around here? You got bank references? You got a Connecticut driver’s license?” Joe obviously didn’t like the idea of Charlie taking his top-of-the-line lemon-mobile out for a test drive. His sunglasses were slate gray and humorless, making him look like either a hired thug or a cop.

“No,” Charlie said, “but I got a fistful of Krugerrands,” and pulled them out of his jacket pocket like dingy payola. “What do you think of that, huh? Does that make me an acceptable paying customer or what?”

They drove west that night with the wind. Tumbleweeds whipped past. Pale flapping newspapers, addled and radarless bats. The road quaked against their tires with a terrible inconstant rattle, making them suspect dark forces in the night–or perhaps just their lousy suspension.

Charlie drove and Buster rode shotgun. They watched the pocked lunar landscape slip past like studio montage in an old black-and-white movie.

“It’s the one thing I can never take in,” Charlie said, snapping off the dashboard radio and lighting a Tareyton. “America, the New World, Terra Incognita, all that vast and radiant grandeur out there. When Columbus arrived, he expected to find two-headed people. Half-men and half-wolves. Creatures with faces for stomachs, multiple genitalia, gigantic winglike ears, and serpents for hair. Just look out there, Buster, look and imagine. All that space. All those places nobody’s been.”

Charlie activated the high beams with his left foot and the landscape brightened like a klieg-struck movie set. Shadows deepened and stars dimmed.

“Thousands of miles of it, Buster, in every direction at once. It’s really a trip, man, like, flying over it? You never get used to just how much isn’t out there.”

***

THEY ATE IN roadside diners and visited many fabulous, overpriced monuments. Niagara Falls, Mt. Rushmore, Little Big Horn, the Alamo. It was Buster’s first visit to America, and they were exploring it like he might never visit it again.

“I guess I’ve probably run away from just about every relationship that’s ever been important to me,” Buster confessed one night over his customary banana-bacon cheeseburger and fries. “What makes me do it, huh, Charlie? I mean, Muk Luk’s a nice girl and all. She just makes me feel so goddamn guilty all the time. Because I don’t love her. Or I don’t love her enough. Or I’m not with her enough. Or I’m not with her enough when I am with her, if you catch my drift. And when you get right down to it, Charlie, I didn’t not-love Muk Luk because of her looks. In fact, I don’t care what anybody says. In penguin terms, actually, Muk Luk doesn’t look half-bad.”

They were sitting in a faded booth behind the disconnected jukebox. The vinyl seats were cut and torn, exuding stained yellow padding.

“I’m afraid interpersonal animal relationships aren’t really my strong suit, Buster,” Charlie conceded, stirring Cremora into his oily coffee. He was trying to disregard the elderly waitress behind the counter, who was giving him mean looks about the generous tip she didn’t expect to receive. “I mean, I never quite stuck around anyplace long enough to have a relationship. Certainly not one worth running away from, anyway.”

Buster had to think about this for a minute.

“Have you never been in love, Charlie? Have you never even thought about it? I’m not saying you should think about it, because it’s pretty much the biggest hole of grief you could possibly dig for yourself. But despite all that, well, I don’t know, there’s something to it in the long run. If only I could stick around long enough to figure out what that important something was.”

BACK IN NEW York, Muk Luk wasn’t sleeping and couldn’t keep down solid foods. She suffered from headaches, nausea, dizziness, and irritable bowels. She couldn’t even watch TV anymore, or go channel surfing via remote control. All she could think about was him. Him with that evasive little glint in his eyes. Him anointed with the aroma of fresh mackerel. Him with his stream-lined shoulders and webbed, thorny feet. With Buster gone, nothing mattered anymore. Muk Luk just lay around all day waiting for maid service to lift her out of the way of the latest fresh sheets.

“You’ll find someone else,” Rick consoled her, extracting the depleted mug of Stolichnaya from her hairy fist. “One morning, bingo, you’ll wake up and it’ll happen–you’ll fall in love all over again. I mean, things could be a lot worse, right? We could be back sleeping with the popsicles, babe. We could be scraping frost off our eyeballs and icicles off our toes.”

Muk Luk was sitting up in her wide brass bed and staring at the overhead chandelier. A million points of refracted light. And in none of them would she see Buster ever again.

“Muk Luk wouldn’t mind,” she said dully, like aluminum hangers chiming in an empty closet. “New York City too fast for Muk Luk. Muk Luk want to stop hurting so much.”

All night she lay awake and wondered, and all day she lay awake and dreamed. Room service, fed by direct access to Charlie’s fat royalty accounts, provided her every commodifiable indulgence: caviar, french toast, closed-circuit pornography, and Courvoisier. Yet Muk Luk’s senses were never satisfied, her expectations never fulfilled. Everywhere she looked the world was packed with absence and indeterminacy. How? Why? When? Who cares? And by repeatedly asking herself these same blunt, dull questions, Muk Luk learned two frightening things right away.

The answers were everywhere.

And they didn’t mean anything to her anymore.

2. PRIVATE LIFE IN PUBLIC PLACES

HIGH IN THE humming, air-conditioned offices of Worldco, head honchos from all over the corporate Internet were gathering to discuss the precipitately perilous world situation.

“Charlie the Crow’s sales potential has peaked and then some, boy!” expostulated Ray from Marketing. “Sales are down. Merchandising orders are down. Spirits are down. Retail endorsement, product placement opportunities, crossover potential–all down down down. I’ve got a warehouse full of Charlie the Crow pot warmers and oven mitts and I can’t give them away, Jesus. And the returns. Not in your blackest nightmares, man. They’re coming back in droves. Big fat convoys of buses and eighteen-wheelers. Bulky gray sacks from the post office, certified-return and C.O.D. It’s like a total bummer, man. It’s like I can’t believe what I’m doing here, you know? I used to have ideals, man. I was at Kent State. I was at Woodstock. I used to groove to Melanie, dig? And like now my wife and I? We hardly even do it anymore. I’m thinking of giving up entirely and going back to school. Maybe get another degree or something, who knows. Maybe even study English Literature. I used to really love English Literature–William Blake, and Wordsworth, and all those guys? But these days I get home about nine or ten and I’m so tired I can’t even piss straight. So I just watch Letterman, or Studs, or something like that, and take a sleeping pill. What’s happening to our world, man? What’s happening to the world we used to know and love?”

Someone called Security and, before anybody knew it, Ray from Marketing was being heavily sedated and carried out on his shield. And nobody batted an eye in the big, massy Blue Room of Worldco International.

Corporate directors, marketing and sales administrators, legal henchmen, and token henchwomen sat around the long flat mahogany table with a sort of inauspicious bluster, as if waiting for a chauffeur to take them somewhere else really important.

“So much for today’s Marketing report,” said the CEO with a dry, almost contrite punctuality. The CEO projected the attitude that he was either incredibly important or totally innocuous–even he wasn’t sure which. “Now let’s turn to Bart from Product Development, and find out what’s happening in the more creative regions of our organization. Bart?”

The wide cool boardroom was thick with dead, machinery-manufactured air. A few individuals cleared their throats. The silence was so immense that many of them couldn’t help hearing all that nonsilence verging outside.

Us, cried something out there in the streets. Us. Us. Us. Us.

“Well,” Bart interjected, “so far as the creative end, I guess we just, you know, ahem, move on, right? New ideas. New products. New sales forces. New notions of how retail outlets should be owned and operated. And as far as, you know, the creative end, well, let me introduce you all to our new Creative Management Counseling Administrator, whom we’ve just brought in from one of our, er, sister companies. Bunny? Would you like to say a few words?”

Bunny Fairchild was leaning one elbow against the table while she perused the long line of mostly male honchos. Bunny was thinking, I used to make coffee for these guys. I used to fend off their muggy advances and endure their stupid posturing. And just look–now it’s their turn to wait for moi.

The silence was sweet. But it didn’t last long.

(“Us. Us. Us. Us…”)

Bunny passed out the uniform manila folders. Then she turned to Bobby, her personal administrative assistant, and whispered a few sharp words.

Causing Bobby to excuse himself, walk around the long table, and exit crisply through the tall gleaming doors.

“If you’ll open your folders, gentlemen, we can take a look at some ideas I’ve been developing recently.”

There was the bright rasp of papers while a sigh of contentment reached through the entire building. The board members loved Bunny because she was the perfect commercial product representative. She never asked them what they wanted, but only told them what to buy.

The tall doors opened again and Bobby reentered, accompanied by a chorus line of grizzly, deodorant-scented animals dressed in formal evening attire.

The animals shuffled nervously in awkward shoes, conferring among themselves while trying to toe the almost imperceptible chalk line. Bobby helped them find their places.

“As you all know,” Bunny continued, “our Charlie the Crow merchandising campaign has reached saturation levels, so it’s time to move on to greener pastures. In other words–we’re looking for animals. Cute fuzzy animals. Animals with personality. Animals who don’t play by the rules, but animals who won’t cause us any trouble, either. I’m talking a Bruce Willis kind of animal, but without the sexual dynamics. I’m talking Madonna, but without the lawyers. Now, if you’ll take a look at the animals I’ve assembled here today, I think you’ll find yourselves confronted by a wealth of genuine, forward-looking nonhumanoid talent. So let me see …”

Bunny consulted her manila folder.

“Animal number seven? Would you step forward, please?”

The animals shuffled and murmured among themselves, trying to read the numbered tag cards each wore around his or her neck. Eventually, way down at the end of the line, Animal #7 took a brief, exploratory step forward.

Bunny turned to the top fact sheet in her folder. Then she began to read out loud.

“Gorilla, Wanda Phillipa. Born: August 30, 1963. Birthplace: Darkest Africa. Birth Sign: Leo. Eyes black, hair black. Personality profile: sensitive, bawdy, fun to be around, eager to please. Wanda’s wearing a floor-length sequined ball gown by Givenchy. Her hair has been permed by Sassoon, her nails sculpted by Bloomie’s. I don’t know if this is exactly the style of presentation we want to take with Wanda, but I thought we could kick it around for a while and see who scores the first goal. Primarily I’m thinking of fun libido. Sexy, but with a sense of humor about herself. Kind of like Zsa Zsa used to be… So, Wanda? Is there anything you’d like to say to the nice gentlemen assembled here today?”

“Well, I don’t know, I guess.”

Deep beneath her matted fur, Wanda blushed. Thickly draped in Givenchy she felt weirdly naked, as if the laws of social decorum had been inverted by the dizzying parameters of this large, underdecorated boardroom.

“I guess I love New York, I guess.”

All around the massive table, the board members smiled. They were thinking about their homes in the country, automatic lawn sprinklers, and young German au pairs with dusky red lips.

“And I like nice clothes, I guess. And romance, probably. And being taken out to really nice restaurants. Though usually my boyfriend, Stan, he likes to eat in.”

The board members continued to smile.

“And I like to have a good time, and work hard. And I guess I think of myself as a positive-minded individual, you know, in that I’m not overly critical about things? You know, like all those noisy demonstrators outside, who don’t have any positive things to say about our country, but can only criticize everything and tear it down? Maybe that doesn’t make me very political or something, but I don’t know, I still think of myself as political. I mean, I always try to be good to my friends, and do the right thing and so on. In the end, though, I guess I just want to be happy, and meet new people, and find a decent apartment and, you know, maybe even fall in love someday. That’s not asking too much, is it?”

“Thank you, Wanda.”

Bunny turned Wanda’s fact sheet face down on the mahogany desk and Wanda abruptly ceased to be or mean, as if some sort of existential switch had been thrown.

A long moment occurred that passed for silence.

(“Us. Us. Us. Us.”)

“Animal number fourteen?” Bunny silently directed the other board members to turn to the next fact sheet. At least one board member muttered out loud, “I really dig that crazy Wanda-chick.”

Undeterred, Bunny continued.

“Alaskan Husky, Rick. Born: March 6, 1989. Birthplace: Nome, Alaska, but transferred with his family to Antarctica while still a pup. Birth sign: Pisces. Personality profile: Loyal to a fault. Loves to chase sticks and balls. Exceptionally handsome and rugged, with first-glance appeal to both young girls and boys. Today Rick’s wearing a studded leather collar from Frederick’s of Hollywood. I thought with Rick we’d shoot for good old-fashioned mute American heroism–never goes out of fashion. A really good dog who saves human beings from every conceivable disaster. Fires, floods, famines, etcetera. Of course, we’ll need to start breeding a race of stunt dogs and body doubles for the action shots, but I don’t think old Rick’ll mind. What do you say, Rick? Are you willing to be loaned out to stud, big boy?”

“Sounds cool,” Rick panted happily. Rick liked being in a roomful of mostly male human beings, since he figured the odds were pretty solid that at least one of them had a really good stick to throw.

“Rick?” Bunny inquired formally. “Is there anything you’d like to tell us about yourself?”

Rick began to drool.

“Yeah,” he said. “I guess I could go for a really big bowl of water about now.”

With a flick of her eyes and a miniature beep from her digital watch, Bunny turned the next page. And Rick joined Wanda in the realm of the postexistent.

“Eskimo, Muk Luk,” Bunny read out loud. “Born: April 27, 1955. Birthplace: Somewhere in Alaska. Now, as most of you guys have already noticed, Muk Luk isn’t exactly an animal, but then she isn’t much of a human being, either. I thought we could go for a sort of primitive mystery with Muk Luk. Muk Luk’s tough, but that doesn’t mean she isn’t loving, too. With Muk Luk, by the way, we’re presented with a terrific opportunity for what I call associational glow. This means Muk Luk’s former connection with Charlie will lend us commercial momentum from the previous campaign, but without us having to take any responsibility for it. In other words, the public doesn’t know Muk Luk yet, but they think that they should. In fact, on this point alone I’m pretty high on the Eskimo idea. Except for one small thing.”

But it was already perfectly obvious to everybody.

“The face,” Bunny said.

A few tears dribbled from underneath Muk Luk’s freckled eyelids and unfurled into her furry cheeks.

“Animal number nineteen…” Bunny said after a while. “Animal number thirty-four… Animal number twelve… Animal number forty-five…”

The long afternoon waned. Outside, the voices were growing louder. And the louder they got, the more intensely the corporate honchos pretended not to hear.

While the animals counted off, the CEO browsed listlessly through the latest issue of USA Today, his favorite newspaper of all time. He especially liked the color-coded graphs and statistical charts, the thick margins and user-friendly op-ed page. Best of all, though, he liked the way it presented itself on every street corner like a TV program. Screw the Germans and the Japs, the CEO often reflected. They may have manufacturing, but we’ve got packaging.

“Animal number twenty-seven,” Bunny said. “Animal number three… Animal number twenty-one… Animal number nine…”

At the bottom of page two’s gossip column sat a photograph of Mr. Big wearing a black hood over his face. Two eyeholes were clipped out, and two additional passages for his knobby horns. Mr. Big had spoken in Harlem last weekend, and was scheduled to speak in Central Park later that afternoon. In this standard publicity photo, he stood flanked by a pair of burly Dobermans wearing armbands and bandanas.

Now that’s the sort of animal we need on our side, the CEO thought. Someone with a little moxie. Someone like Mr. Big.

“Animal number forty,” Bunny said. She could feel the corporate attention starting to wander. Which was why she always saved the best for last.

The next animal stepped forward, wearing something silky and revealing over the bottom half of her body, and something shiny and chic over the top half. Her outfit resembled a cross between French lingerie and a skindiver’s wet suit.

A brief ahem ignited the assembled gentlemen.

The interview was already well under way.

“And what do you do, Sandy? In Antarctica, I mean?”

“Well, I used to be a housewife, but then after the invasion… I mean, the liberation, I got an office job with the General, and, well, one thing led to another, you know.”

“No, Sandy, I don’t know. Why don’t you explain?”

“Well, I was eventually assigned as General Heathcliff’s personal assistant. This means I handled his social calendar, and helped him entertain foreign dignitaries, and kept the quarters tidy, and so on. Sometimes I acted as the General’s personal envoy, sort of, well, escorting VIPs to and from their Antarctic destinations. In fact, that’s why I was at JFK when some of your scouts ‘discovered’ me for this audition. I was acting as liaison for these two officers here, and we’d just flown in together on Air Tundra.”

Bunny felt a slight jar of discontinuity invade the room, as if someone had let in too much fresh air. She looked all the way down to the front of the long animal line, where Wanda sat splay legged on the floor, picking her feet. Then her eyes roamed back up the line and past Sandy again until they landed on the two strangest animal creatures in the entire building.

“Excuse me, fellas.” Bunny’s voice could have frosted windows. “Can I help you?”

One of the men was bruised, tall, muscular, and wore green military fatigues. Next to him stood a humanoid figure wrapped from head to foot in white puffy bandages. Both wore Kalashnikov rifles over their shoulders, and had trouble standing at attention because of their various splints and plaster casts.

“Lieutenant Colonel Jack Hollister, at your service, ma’am.”

The Lieutenant Colonel performed a mock half-salute, which was about as far as his right arm extended anymore. “And this is my partner, Sergeant Yuri Rudityev from Foreign Exchange.” He turned to the bandaged humanoid. “Say something to the lady, Yuri.”

“Glig duh bluffy diggy-buds,” Yuri shouted, his volume and articulacy muffled by multilayered cotton and gauze. “Glig duh bluffy diggy-buds!”

Bunny passed her disbelief up and down the boardroom table, but nobody examined it too closely. The collective board members were trying to gauge the true, heartfelt opinions of their bulky CEO, who was snoring faintly into a pillow of brightly colored newspapers.

“The General suggested we might Work together, Ma’am,” Hollister said. “We read about the bounty you offered through Manhunt Monthly and got here as soon as we could.”

Hollister unscrolled the magazine from his back pocket to display a slick page-length advertisement. The advertisement read:

WANTED: DEAD OR ALIVE

CHARLIE THE CROW

FOR BETRAYING THE TRUST OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE

(GIVE US HIS HEAD ON A STICK AND WELL GIVE YOU $100, 000)

[This offer not valid in Puerto Rico, Canada, or the Philippines.]

Everyone in the room exchanged a rapid semaphore of meaningless glances with everybody else. Outside, the terrible silence continued to speak: “Us. Us. Us. Us.”

Then, as if aggravated by inattention, the severely bandaged humanoid beside Hollister began squirming with barely restrainable forces.

“Glig duh bluffy diggy-buds!” His shouting threatened to burst forth from his bandages like a terrible butterfly. “Glig duh bluffy diggy-buds!”

Suddenly, Bunny felt strangely calm. The professional tension ebbed from her body in an uncustomary catharsis.

The world, she thought, is actually crazier than I am.

“What’s with your friend?” she asked Hollister, as if he was the only other person in the entire building. “What’s he trying to say?”

Hollister smiled at her and thought, Too skinny. Not enough meat.

“He’s saying ‘Kill the bloody dickie-birds. Kill the bloody dickie-birds. Kill the bloody dickie-birds–’”

“I get the picture,” Bunny said.

But nice boobs, Hollister added to himself.

It was his turn to speak.

“I hope so, lady,” he said. “Because this time we’re not on military orders or anything. This time it’s fucking personal.”