PART EIGHT
THE REVENGE OF NATURE
1. POP STAR
IT WASN’T EVEN a political crisis anymore. It was a crisis of representation, and that was the scary part. Words no longer represented things, governments no longer represented people, and images no longer represented stuff. All across Animal Planet, animals were giving up on rhetoric altogether. Instead they were taking up big sticks, rocks, broken bottles, axe handles, splintery pool cues, and two-by-fours.
Animals stormed Parliament, Congress, the Bastille, Moscow, and Beijing. They detonated barns, henhouses, trash barrels, birdbaths, army jeeps, and laundry hampers. The streets boiled over with wild rabbits, itinerant geese, subversive antelope, radical yaks, freedom-crazed dingoes, and politically correct pigs. All across the planet animals raged and swore and ruined and trampled. They brayed and woofed and snorted and chirped.
“We are not animals!” Mr. Big roared through a whistling lapel microphone one afternoon in Central Park. “We are goodness! We are justice! We are might! We are right! And we will not wait forever, not another minute or another second! Because we want it now! We want it now! We want it now! We want it NOW!”
Mr. Big was clopping back and forth on the polished wooden podium, wearing the customary black hood over his widely antlered head. He was drenched with sweat and libido like James Brown after an especially salty rendition of “Soul Man.”
Then, with a mighty swirl of his glimmering black robe, Mr. Big came to a halt at the exact dead center of the platform. And turned to confront the stunned and awestruck multitudes.
“So what are we waiting for, my fellow beasties? Will it be their world forever? Or will it be our world tonight?”
***
AS MR. BIG was hurried from the stage by a pair of armed bodyguards, revenge-crazed animals charged off in every direction. They flattened bushes, hotdog stands, fences, benches, even small trees and trash cans. Their combined roar shook the pebbles in the earth and the leaves in the trees. Their day had come. And they were living it like it might never come again.
“Great going, boss,” chattered Dave the Otter, leading Mr. Big down a flight of rickety wooden stairs to the basement dressing room. “Greatest speech of your life, I swear. You really know how to turn a phrase, boss. You really know how to make those crazy animals listen.”
Mr. Big was tired, enervated, and a little sad. All those waiting faces out there, waiting for his voice, his hopes, his dreams. They weren’t even his anymore; they were theirs. His dreams belonged to them.
The two large orangutans bullied through the dressing room while Mr. Big stood panting outside. They threw open closets and cupboards with a pale, nasty vigilance, wearing armbands and shoulder-holstered Mausers. Once assured that the room was clear, they returned outside and took their stations on both sides of the door.
Mr. Big entered the dressing room, and Dave the Otter wasn’t far behind.
“It was like the Sermon on the Mount, boss. It was like Hendrix at Woodstock, or that Ross Perot fellah on TV. I especially liked that part about the responsibilities of dreaming. That was really, you know, like poignant? Poignant as hell, boss. It really was.”
Mr. Big trotted to the bureau and pulled off his stiff white collar, his robe, and his boots. Looking up he confronted his own hooded reflection in a tall thin dressing mirror. It wasn’t even his reflection anymore. It, too, belonged to them.
Dave the Otter was chain-smoking Marlboros and riding the crest of a brisk nicotine buzz.
“And that part about going up in the spaceship, boss? Seeing the whole planet, man, the whole beautiful planet laid out below us? And like, what did you say? Like we’ve all got to decide, man, if we want to be part of this big beautiful planet or not? Why, that was more than poignant, man. That was, man, that was inspired.”
Mr. Big observed his hooded reflection with something less than grandeur. He was a very large animal, that was true. He was strong, powerful, and awesomely fecund–quite a potent stud in his younger days. But now he hardly recognized himself. In fact, he looked more familiar to himself with the hood on than with it off.
“I stole it from a bird,” Mr. Big said. He leaned back until his rough haunches found the cream-colored sofa-chair. The chair was worn through in places, exposing patches of cheesy foam. It was Mr. Big’s favorite recreational device, and he ritually transported it to the site of every stage performance, from Tokyo to Bhopal.
“His name was Charlie,” Mr. Big said, “and he was a very powerful speaker in his time. He was a liar, though, who lied for all the wrong reasons. To make himself feel important. To get media attention. To hear himself talk. I, on the other hand, am Mr. Big, and I lie for all the right reasons. Because I am out to save all animals, regardless of gender or species.”
Dave the Otter took a series of rapid puffs, as if he were trying to get a good blaze going on the tip of his cigarette.
“Absolutely, boss. Nobody doubts your integrity in the slightest. Did you see that crowd take off, man? Savage in tooth and claw, boy. I wish I could see them now.”
Somewhere in the distance, a singular wild animal roared.
“Fifth Avenue,” Mr. Big said, without intensity or conviction.
With a slow-rolling motion of his shoulders, Mr. Big leaned against the hat rack and snagged the tip of his white hood on one of its brass hooks. Then, as if pulling himself gently out of a hot bath, he slipped the hood from his head and confronted his hard, diurnal reflection in the shimmery mirror.
The reflection that would always be his.
No matter how loudly the crowds screamed for more.
***
DAVE THE OTTER had been kept pretty busy since the corporate takeover of Dave’s Trading Post. Tossed out on his asset-stripped duff by the joint stockholders of Worldco, Military Supply Factory Outlets, and the Gap, Dave had eventually found himself somewhere in Brazil, suffering from partial memory loss, half a bottle of bad rum, and a porker-nymphomaniac named Stella. It had been a disastrous comedown. Once: prosperity, riches, a sense of self-worth. Now: a sudden basement flat in the barrio, no food in the cupboards, and Stella’s faint aroma of musky sausage pervading the bathroom’s shower curtains. Suddenly Dave had lost everything he once held dear. He didn’t even have his old self-esteem left to keep warm.
He needed truth and he found it fast. Mr. Big Speaks, distributed free on street corners and in public laundromats. It kept his mind diverted from itself. Someday, he promised, he would teach them all. With Mr. Big’s help, he would teach the whole planet.
“What would I have done without you, boss? Where would I have gone? I wouldn’t have nothing left to believe in, would I?”
Dave was scrubbing Scaramangus’s back with a stiff-bristled brush and a pint of Walgreen’s Baby Shampoo. It was the morning after the Manhattan conflagration and they were sharing a local stable with a pair of disgruntled old nags named Asphodel and Roger. Overhead, large clouds of smoke drifted back and forth with the breeze. The city was amazingly silent. Not even the leaves whispered. Not even the stones.
“Pop that blister,” Scaramangus intoned, indicating a ripe carbuncle on his shoulder. “And more fragrances, Otter. More perfumes and conditioners.”
“Sure, Boss. Whatever you say.” Dave the Otter found the carbuncle between his paws and gave it a terrific squeeze. A plug of white fat burst, missing Dave’s left eyeball by inches. Puss oozed from the sore, and Dave swiped it with his brush.
“It’s a brand new day, ain’t it, Boss? Kind of like redemption, only we made it for ourselves, right, Boss? Not some phoney-baloney God or Savior. From now on, we’re responsible for our own lives. And we’ve got nobody left to blame anymore but ourselves. ”
News was sporadic from the streets. According to rumor, most of Manhattan was now utterly subdued. The zoos and kennels had been busted open, their inmates freed. Animals occupied local council offices, finance centers, libraries, and communications networks. Hunkered down in distant, smoldering buildings, Mr. Big’s starry-eyed brethren were unreachable by phone, fax, or public conveyance. And as for human beings, there were none at all still visible on the streets. None left alive, that is.
“The Day of Atonement is not supposed to be easy,” Mr. Big said. He was gazing up into the bright blue sky. The air crisp, the trees tall. Here at the center of the storm, everything was tranquil, like a surgical patient under heavy sedation. “Tomorrow we will rise from the ashes and build a New World Order. We will receive our dispensation from the flames. And we will build again, my fellow beasties. We will build again.”
Mr. Big’s voice incited Dave to brush harder and more briskly. He scrubbed so hard that the pores of Mr. Big’s skin welled with blood.
This, Dave knew, was just the way Mr. Big wanted it. To be loved so hard it hurt.
“That’s right, Boss. The Final Dispensation. The New World Order. It’s already here, Boss. It’s already here.”
***
NEARBY IN THEIR stables, the two white-haired nags shuffled uneasily, trying to keep warm in all the cold rhetoric blowing around.
“Maybe they’re right,” muttered shaggy Asphodel to her mate. “Maybe the world has changed for the better. Maybe for the first time in our lives it finally is safe to live among the animals.”
But Roger, tamping his chipped right hoof against the ground to count out old memories, was not convinced.
“It will never be safe to live among the animals,” he replied. “Because animals will always be animals. And meat will always be meat.”
2. FAST TRACK
AS PER USUAL, Rick the Husky was the last animal to figure out what was going on, and the first to do anything about it.
“We need a car,” he told the others. “We need provisions, camping supplies, citizen’s band, and petrol.” He was hustling the others down the thinly carpeted corridors like a sheepdog herding lambs into a pen. Fire alarms were shrieking while overhead extinguishers spewed forth streams of white water. “We’ve got to remain calm, rational and focused, because there are only two important things to worry about right now. Taking care of our own, and covering our asses.”
All around them corporate employees were running for their lives. Secretaries, personal assistants, management training coordinators, investment counseling administrators, marketing research facilitators, executive salary watchdogs, stock portfolio analysts, and counseling-advisory technicians. They were either trampling one another like fire-wrought cattle in a pen, or stealing everything that wasn’t nailed down.
Rick the Husky hurried his friends through the abrupt red door of an Emergency Exit, where they confronted an impossible labyrinth of stairwells, grown men weeping, and shredded memos flung everywhere like some last-minute obfuscation. The demonstrators had even infiltrated the subbasement parking garage, where they were overturning Volvos and urinating everywhere. Occasionally they grabbed a fleeing corporate employee and tore him or her limb from limb. Amidst the flickering fluorescents, the cold gray concrete was spattered with hunks of dead meat, rended cotton-blend sports jackets, and hastily discarded mace canisters like some poorly monitored abattoir.
Rick hustled Wanda and Muk Luk into a four-wheel-drive vehicle with keys. It started right up.
Damn, Rick thought. Those Japs sure know how to make cars.
***
NEW YORK CITY was vast, blazing, and Biblical with conflagrations. Gigantic birds swooped down from the sky, fat rats scampered out of sewers, and everywhere fleeing humans were pursued by gangs of wild beasts. We don’t want you, the animals cried as they pulled down another lawyer, or another middle-management executive, or another over-financed political lobbyist. We don’t want you, or you, or you. Carnage was everywhere, with plenty of fleeing humans to go around. Chomp, mutilate, savage, tear. At this rate, it would be years before the animals got around to turning on one another.
Rick the Husky took them out via the FDR, over the Triborough, and across the rocky Bruckner. The road was pitted and slagged with tar like the aftermath of some volcanic explosion.
“It looks like the end of the world,” Wanda said, huddled in the backseat, her Givenchy sequined ball gown pulled up around her waist like the leaves of some gigantic, lewd lettuce. “It looks like the Final Judgement. It looks like Panic in the Year Zero.”
Rick the Husky drove while smoking a Marlboro, and Muk Luk sat in the passenger seat with her spear propped between her legs.
“Just look at this dump, man,” Rick said. “How can human beings endure it, huh? This isn’t a community. It’s a state of siege.”
“City without hope,” Muk Luk said. “City without love. City without a lot of things. But most of all, city without Buster.”
Then she started crying into the matted collar of her under-sanitized snow parka. Muk Luk didn’t care about revolutions, urban-enterprise zones, public schools, disintegrating infrastructures, or even the wide dark horizon of fat geographical space out there. All she knew anymore was her own internal vacancy. It was rapidly becoming the only thing she wanted to know.
“No more deli sandwiches,” Wanda said sadly. She peered through the rear window at the blazing city, but saw only the inverted reflection of her hairy, mournful face. “No more matinees at the Ziegfeld. No more Macy’s. No more Bloomie’s.”
Wanda could vaguely discern the buttresses of intersecting freeways, bridges, and offramps. Looming billboards promoted call-in numbers for Sex Talk, Psychic Love, and Cop Killer Info.
“I miss my kids,” Wanda concluded mournfully. “I even miss my awful husband, Roy the Gorilla.”
They could hear the sirens. They could see vast blocks of flickering electricity. They could smell smoke, creosote, and gasoline. Rick the Husky kept glancing suspiciously in the rearview mirror. He simply couldn’t figure.
Why wasn’t anybody on the freeway but them?
“Lots of people may criticize New York,” Wanda explained softly, wiping a slender tear from one eye. “But you never see anybody in a big hurry to leave.”
3. THE BIG BRIEFING
WITHIN THE HOUR the President and his top security advisors were conferring in the White House’s basement screening room. In addition to the same old NSC people, the Secretary of State had assembled a number of new faces, plenty of hot coffee, and a shrimp-buffet lunch for two hundred.
“You remember Bob Ryerson, don’t you, Mr. President. Assistant Security Director of Special Forces in London.”
“Mr. President.”
“And John Stout, our Media Consultant on International Animal Relations.”
“Mr. President.”
“And of course the Attorney General’s Staff Secretary, Adrienne Velikovsky, who’ll be standing in for her superior this morning. Seems the Attorney General’s got a gig promoting her new book later today on Oprah.”
“Mr. President.”
“And this is Ryerson’s personal assistant, Becky Sanvoy, who made that great marshmallow salad for the last Presidential soirée at Downing Street. If you remember.”
“Mr. President.”
“And these are the Sanchez Brothers, former Special Missions Operators for that last aborted Cuba project.”
“Señore el Presidente.”
“Señore el Presidente.”
“And this is–Christ, is that you, Manuel? This is, I’m sorry, Mr. President, there’s been a mix-up in the screening procedures. This is Manuel, the pool boy.”
“Mr. President. There’s a serious chlorine problem in the White House.”
“Let’s tackle that chlorine problem later, okay, Manuel? And over here, Mr. President, is our CIA Research Coordinator, Roger Arnoldson. Rodge used to work for UPI before coming over to our side. He’s part of the improved relations we’ve been forging with our better halves over there in the fifth estate. Rodge?”
“Morning, Mr. President. Big problems brewing out there in Animal Land, and I respectfully suggest that we get onto them right away. While there’s still time.”
“Rodge wrote, produced, and directed the docu-brief we’ll be watching in just a few moments, Mr. President. But first, anybody for a quick sandwich or coleslaw? Feel free to eat during the screening, but keep down the slurping noises, okay? And please, no talking. I hate talking when I’m trying to watch a movie.”
With as little ceremony as possible, the President took his special seat in back of the room, raised above all the others in a plush leather-bound sofa-chair. He liked to see the backs of all those assembled heads laid out beneath him like bowling pins in his own private alley.
The Secretary of State was holding a large icy Coke in one hand and a lined yellow legal pad in the other.
“Roll it, Sid!” he shouted.
The projector’s engine activated with a tiny kick and a whir.
White light splashed the screen, flickering until a frame of color caught.
4
3
2
1
Tum-tah-tah-taaah!
The National Security Council
Supported by Federally Approved Grants
From the National Aerodynamics and Space Administration,
Coca Cola,
C.I.A. Covert Domestic Operations
and the Ford Motor Corporation
Proudly Present–
Tum-tah-tah-taaaah!
A Roger Arnoldson Production
of a Roger Arnoldson Film
WARNING AMERICA:
THE MR. BIG SYNDROME
Tum-tah-tah-taaah!
In the darkened auditorium, the audience members were already fidgeting in their chairs.
Like one of the Presidents own public addresses, this was the sort of briefing that could go on forever.
4. ETHNOCENTRISM
GENERAL HEATHCLIFF, FLANKED by two anxious adjutants, was fleeing north by starlight, pursued by howling penguins armed with overpriced U.S. weaponry. During his entire tour of duty in Antarctica, it was probably the only time the General had ever ventured outside the Officers’ Quarters, and he kept thinking it wasn’t quite as cold as he’d expected out here. He’d certainly never seen so many stars.
“Some animals just don’t know what’s good for them,” General Heathcliff explained as he slogged and slid across the plain of ice in his regulation green fatigue army boots. In the rear distance he could discern a tribe of small black-and-white dots, breaking apart and reforming into weirdly pointillist patterns. He could hear the pop pop pop of inadequately serviced M15s being fired in his general direction. “They think that power’s something they want, for chrissake. Power over their environment, power over themselves. They think freedom’s something more than just another big fat responsibility, and simply don’t understand what a God-almighty drag it is most of the time. All the sleepless, lonely nights. All the unrequited passion and bad checks. I busted my balls for those birds, and what thanks do I get? A few K rations and a secondhand down parka. Balls, I say. Big fat feathery penguin balls!”
“Just another mile or so, General,” his adjutants implored. “If we can make those mountains, we’ll be okay. We’ll live to fight another day.”
“Balls to the fight, I say!” The General tromped his exclamations into the hard ice like declarations of principle. “Let the bastards keep Penguin Island, for all I care! Let them fix the street-lights, build the malls, issue the proclamations, hear the endless fucking complaining! ‘We don’t like the curfew, General Heathcliff! We don’t like paying taxes! We don’t like this, General, and we don’t like that.’ I’ve never heard so much bloody whining in my entire life! If penguins are ready to take care of themselves, well, good riddance–that’s what I say. Because they certainly won’t have General Anthony Heathcliff to kick around any longer! And that’s for damn sure!”
***
THEY TRACKED DOWN the General at the steps of Mount Erebus, bound him up with packing tape, and carried him back to Penguin Island on a game-pole. The collaborators were summarily shot in the head and left for the bears. Their names had been Joe and Bob.
“You can’t do this to an officer of the United States Armed Forces!” ranted General Heathcliff. His face was blue with cold and indignation, and he hung upside down from the pole like dead meat. “I’ve got rights under the Geneva Convention! I deserve to be treated with respect!”
The penguins were roughly shod in gray khakis and oversized green fatigue army boots. Having fought with valor at the Battle of the Barracks Canteen, the Battle of the Vendomat, and the Battle of the Administrative Services Hut, they were now tired of fighting, tired of killing, and even tired of their own anger. They performed every act perfunctorily, whether it was tying their shoelaces or executing a stooge.
“Shut your goddamn yap!” barked Junior, who had distinguished himself so bravely during the recent coup d’etat that he had been placed in command of his own squadron. Junior was filled with rage for the likes of General Heathcliff, because people who took their authority for granted always reminded him of his deceased father, Whistling Pete. “You’ll speak when spoken to, soldier! Or you’ll end up back there on the ice with your buddies, leaking gray matter from this new ventilation duct I’m planning to drill in your forehead! How would you like that, huh?”
***
BACK ON PENGUIN Island, the natives were joyously stoking their revolutionary zeal with fancy imported liquor liberated from General Heathcliff’s private reserve. Collaborators were systematically shot and buried in the snow, while prisoners were released from the barbed-wire compound and presented with high administrative positions in the provisional government.
It was a slow, generally listless procession to the outskirts of town. The General had refused a last meal, a last request, and a blindfold. He accepted a cigarette, though. A filterless menthol.
“I want to look you feather-brained bastards straight in the eyes,” the General barked. It was, really, the General’s finest hour, especially since his favorite movie had always been Patton, starring George C. Scott. “You birds don’t scare me one bit, and you want to know why? Because you’re silly looking, that’s why. No matter how many guns you’ve got, or tanks, or even maybe satellite telecommunications someday, you’ll still always be penguins, flapping around on frozen rocks. And I wouldn’t wish that sort of humiliation on anybody.”
“Ready!”
Junior issued the order with his arm upraised. It was important to project a sense of ceremony on such occasions. It had something to do with not letting passionate moments get too far out of hand.
“Go ahead, dream of conquest and adventure,” the General told them fiercely. His hands were tied behind his back while he puffed away merrily at his cigarette. “You’ll always be fat floppy birds, so far as I’m concerned. No nation on this planet will ever respect you.”
“Aim!”
Junior watched his roughly clad troops site smartly down the barrels of their M15s, these terribly large guns that had to be braced on wooden pikes. Junior was damn proud of his boys and what they’d accomplished. For that matter, he was damn proud of himself.
“Whenever anybody looks at you they’re gonna think the same thing. Look at those cute little penguins. Even if you’re firing an M15 in their direction. Even if you’re launching hand grenades or neutron bombs. People are gonna look at you acting tough and they’re gonna say, Oh my, what a bunch of cuties; what a bunch of cute little–”
“Fire!”
It was a long moment with the sound of postponement in it.
To Junior’s ears, the cessation of the General’s voice sounded even more loudly in the frozen air than the multiple crack of the rifles.
“I hope to teach you penguins about justice,” General Heathcliff had solemnly declared on the first day of the occupation. “I hope to teach you about law. I hope to teach you about the ways of men, and the responsibilities of nations. I hope you won’t look upon us as the enemy. I hope you’ll think of us as friends.”
Be careful what you wish for, Junior thought, regarding the General’s large immobile body in the snow.
And if you’re not going to be careful, then don’t piss around this particular penguin.
At which point Junior turned his squad around and went home.
5. THE COUP
IN MANY PARTS of the world, triumphant animals were proving themselves masters of the same indecencies once practiced upon them. They slaughtered human beings indiscriminately for food, or yoked them to the braces of primitive farm equipment. They wore bizarre coats and jackets sewn together from human hair and skin, and proudly displayed their barbaric couture at garden parties and political rallies. They organized gulags, rehabilitation colonies, and collective farms, and forced human prisoners to shave their heads and read aloud together from The Collected Teachings of Mr. Big. They even took control of local TV broadcasting centers, and began producing their own hairier versions of public programming: The We Love Mr. Big Show, The We Hate Humans Show, The Animals Are Good Show, and of course the wildly popular Dave the Otter Show, Starring Mr. Big ’s Closest Personal Friend and Advisor, Dave the Otter.
“I’m telling you, Dave, we gotta do something about these beggars on the streets.” The caller was a Doberman from Detroit, where animals ruled over a city of flames. “It’s disgusting is what it is. Them begging handouts all the time, sticking their dead babies in our faces, showing us their sores. Look, I’m willing to help out a poor human whenever I’ve got a few extra dollars, but most of these bums are living in nice suburban houses, driving Cadillacs and Bel Airs. They’re just disguised as bums, don’t you know? Basically, Dave, I think we’ve just got to make it illegal to be destitute, and punish it, you know, by like execution or something. Or maybe life service on a Collective Farm.”
“Can I break in here a minute, caller?” interjected Dave the Otter, leaning earnestly across his polished desk. Dave had put on a lot of weight in the last few weeks, and his hair was slicked back with a reflective, greasy substance. “Basically I think you’ve brought up some good points, and we should review them at our leisure, so to speak.”
With a flip of his paw, Dave the Otter cut off the Detroit caller. Then he lifted up the stack of standard review cards from his lap.
“Now the caller’s first point is worth mentioning again, and–” Dave shuffled assuredly through the review cards, searching for the loaded ace–“that point is this.”
Dave the Otter lifted the card to Camera 1 for an EXTREME CLOSE-UP. The card said:
HUMAN BEINGS ARE LIARS
“That’s right, mammals and mollusks. Human beings lie, and there ain’t no two ways about it. Lying is part of the genetic structure of all human-type brain systems; it has to do with the structural properties of language or something, which I can’t quite go into right now, so just take my word for it, okay? And so”–taking a long, deep breath–“to return to my first point”–
Dave the Otter held up the review card again.
HUMAN BEINGS ARE LIARS
“–and don’t you forget it.”
***
IT WAS PROBABLY Bunny Fairchild’s favorite program, since it usually concluded with the same lengthy prerecorded announcement from Mr. Big.
“I wear this hood upon my head because I do not want to be thought of as an individual,” Mr. Big told his multitudes. “I wear this hood upon my head because I want to be thought of as an abstraction. You are the same animal as me. I am the same animal as you. Underneath our hoods of bone and muscle, we are all brothers and sisters. Most of us, that is, with the exception of one black bird. And that bird, as you all know, is named Charlie the Crow.”
At this point an extreme frozen close-up of Charlie, clipped from another network’s stock news footage, played on the screen. Charlie’s mouth was open in midharangue. He was wearing sunglasses, and his face looked puffy from either too much alcohol or not enough sleep.
“Bring me this bird,” Mr. Big told his multitudes, “and I will teach him how to think. He’s just a mixed-up animal looking for love. And that’s what we can give him, my fellow beasties. More love than he knows what to do with, and then some.”
Working away industriously at the pedals of her Exercycle, immured for the second week in a row in her high-security, closed-system penthouse, Bunny enjoyed working off calories while eating Ben and Jerry’s ice cream and watching TV. She had rigged the bike’s calorie counter to alert her whenever she burned off enough for another spoonful of Cherry Garcia, and she liked the look of this whole new marketing possibility being presented to her by the Animal Broadcasting Network.
Using animals not to sell to humans. But using animals to sell to other animals.
Ping the bell on the Exercycle said.
And Bunny took another bite of ice cream.
“They aren’t the enemy, sir,” Bunny informed the still-circulating memory of her old boss, who had blown his brains out two days previously with a handy Beretta from Bunny’s purse. “They’re an exciting new concept in customer demographics.”
Like an infomercial, or a book by Norman Mailer, the Animal Broadcasting Network was frequently interrupted by advertisements for itself. In the next particular installment, random “animals on the street” were interviewed by the subjective lens of a news minicam. The question being asked today: “Do you think Mr. Big loves you, and why?”
“I think Mr. Big loves me very much,” responded Roy the Gorilla slowly, as if he were working a small salmon bone around in his mouth. Roy had come to town on a large yellow bus with his fellow barnyard animals to demonstrate agrarian support for the urban revolution. “Because he says he does, that’s why, and he seems like a nice guy, and I guess those are my reasons, okay? I mean, if he didn’t love us, why would he work so hard to take over the world? It wouldn’t make much sense, would it?”
Roy appeared slightly sunstruck by the camera, smiling too glossily into its dark lens. He was wearing a new Mets cap and a JE T’AIME, MR BIG T-shirt.
Bunny flicked off the sound with her remote control, watching the ape speak more banalities into the pale screen.
This isn’t the enemy, Bunny thought. This isn’t some wild beast on a tear. This is just a normal, average guy who works hard all day making money to spend. He enjoys buying things, and consuming brightly wrapped perishables. He wants to be the same as everybody else. And what’s more–he actually likes being on TV.
Watching Roy the Gorilla was like a revelation to Bunny, an indication of presence.
“Christ,” Bunny thought out loud. “I love marketing!”
Causing the bright little bell on her Exercycle to measure this moment of serendipity with a ping.
***
TUM-TAH-TAH-taaaah!
The President awoke from a thin drowse, dreaming of a white wooly bear performing on the high wire with a pink lacy parasol. When he was a child, the President had loved to watch trained animals at the circus. Unfortunately, though, he wasn’t a child any longer. Now he was all grown up.
After the screening the President was rushed out to his limousine by security people. Fleets of motorcycled police officers greeted him with engines revving. Sharpshooters on rooftops. Gleaming sheets of bulletproof glass.
“We’ve got the latest reports out of Washington, Mr. President—”
“Mr. Big just broadcast his list of demands–”
“The Kremlin’s on the line, Mr. President, and we think they’ve been drinking–”
“Your wife’s been subpoenaed by Congress for being too smart—”
The President didn’t know what he liked most, the information or the attention. He sat in back of the limousine while faces peered in at him through the windows. They were eavesdropping over the limousine’s intercom system. They were awaiting his next move at switchboard desks all over the world.
It’s time to do something, Mr. President, everybody was telling him. It’s time for you to take the first step.
“Well, it’s decided,” the President snapped. He wasn’t going down in any history books as some Nervous Nellie. He was the goddamn President of the United States, for Christ’s sake.
“What’s that, Mr. President?”
Someone would have to tell the First Lady he wouldn’t be home for tea.
“The nearest highway and step on it,” the President told his driver. “We’re taking this motorcade straight to New York.”
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