Make Something Up (3 page)

Many years ago, in a world before
disillusionment,
Monkey walked through the forest, her mouth overflowing with pride. After much effort and sacrifice, she had finished her lengthy schooling. To Raven, Monkey bragged, “Look at me! I have an undergraduate degree in
Communications!”
To Coyote, she boasted, “I have completed many valuable internships!” In a world before she'd feasted on shame and defeat, Monkey paraded her resume into the Human Resources department of Llewellyn Food Product Marketers, Inc.

Monkey demanded a face-to-face audience with Hamster, who was the Human Resources liaison, and Monkey boldly put forward her resume and bid, “Let me prove myself. Give me a knight's errand.”

Thus came Monkey to stand behind a folding table. In grocery stores or department stores, Monkey offered cubes of sausage skewered with toothpicks. Monkey offered dollops of apple pie served in tiny paper cups, or paper napkins cradling sample bites of tofu. Monkey spritzed perfume and offered her own slender neck for lumbering Moose to sniff, and the Moose bought and bought. Blessed was Monkey with charm, and when she smiled at Stag or Panther or Eagle, they smiled in return and sought to buy whatever product Monkey was shilling. She sold cigarettes to Badger, who did not smoke. And Monkey sold beef jerky to Ram, who did not eat meat. So clever was Monkey that she sold hand lotion to Snake, who had no hands!

Back at Llewellyn Foods, Hamster said, “I have an opening in Vegas,” and Vegas became but the first in a long chain of triumphs. For now was Monkey part of a team and proved herself to be a team player, and when Hamster bid Monkey relocate—to Philly, to the Twin Cities, to San Fran—Monkey was always eager to flog a new sandwich spread or pimp a new sports drink. And seeing herself a small success, Monkey went again before Hamster at Human Resources and bid, “You have been my advocate, Hamster, and I have served Llewellyn Foods. Test me further.”

And Hamster replied, “You want a challenge?” Hamster said, “We have a cheese that's not moving.”

And so arrogant was Monkey that she bade, “Give me your problematic cheese.” Without so much as a glance at the product in question, Monkey promised to deliver a minimum 14 percent share in the highly competitive mid-level imported dairy solids market, and Monkey further promised that such success would last at least seven weeks, positioning this new cheese before the forthcoming holiday entertainment season. In exchange, Hamster granted that Llewellyn Foods would reward Monkey with the position of Northwest Regional Supervisor so that Monkey might settle in Seattle and buy a condo and find a mate and finally begin a family to balance her career. Most importantly, Monkey would never again be compelled to offer her neck to another stupid sniffing Moose. Or to smile winningly at the Jackal in Safeway who circled back, again and again, to gobble up her cookies.

In this long-ago time, before she knew the bitter taste of failure, Monkey stood behind yet another folding table, this one in a supermarket in Orlando. Monkey smiled above a vast forest of toothpicks, like a king-sized bed of wooden nails, each pointed stick stuck in a small cube of something shiny and white. Monkey smiled and smiled, and caught the eye of Grizzly Bear. At this, Monkey told herself, “Seattle, here I come!” But as Grizzly Bear crossed the supermarket, he stopped. Sniffing the air, Grizzly Bear lifted one knee, then the other, and checked the soles of his feet for spoor. He
surreptitiously
ducked his head and sniffed at his own armpits. Only then did Grizzly Bear's gaze come back to Monkey; but his smile was gone, and he would venture no closer. A look of disgust seemed to ripple his lips, and Grizzly Bear fled the scene. With the trap of her smile, Monkey tried next to snare Wolf, but Wolf would only venture so close before his nostrils flared. Widening his gray eyes in horror, Wolf dashed away. Likewise, Eagle seemed drawn by Monkey's charm, but would only swoop so low before Eagle gave a strangled squawk and his golden wings beat a retreat through the supermarket air.

Monkey hadn't noticed at first, perhaps her nose had been blunted by selling perfume and cigarettes, but the cheese smelled disgusting. It smelled like feces and burning hair, and it sweated tiny, clear drops of stinking oil. The way the cheese stank, Monkey asked herself, how could anyone tell it wasn't spoiled? The way this cheese reeked it might be loaded with salmonella. To test her theory, Monkey smiled to lure Pig, but not even Pig would partake of her smelly wares. The smile still frozen on her face, Monkey caught the eye of Gorilla. Standing at a safe distance, Gorilla wore a bright red vest, for he was the manager of the supermarket. His arms folded across his huge chest, Gorilla shook his mighty head at Monkey and said, “No one but a lunatic would put that cheese inside his mouth!”

That night in her Orlando motel room, Monkey telephoned Hamster and said, “I think my cheese is poison.”

And over the phone Hamster replied, “Relax, your cheese is fine.”

“It doesn't smell fine,” Monkey insisted.

“We're counting on you,” Hamster said. “If anybody can open a market niche for this cheese, you can.” Hamster explained that Llewellyn Foods had contracted to introduce the cheese, nationwide, at a price point so low it represented a twelve-cent loss per unit. Hamster let slip that Monkey's archrival, Coyote, was launching the same cheese in Raleigh-Durham and wasn't reporting any consumer resistance. Over the telephone, Hamster gave forth with a great sigh of exasperation and said that perhaps Coyote would make a better Northwest Regional Supervisor. That maybe Coyote just wanted Seattle more.

After hanging up, Monkey told herself, “I will not lose this promotion to Coyote.” She told herself, “Hamster is lying. Coyote couldn't sell nuts to Squirrel.” Yet all night Monkey lay awake in bed, listening to Rabbit doing it with Mink in the next motel room, and fretting that, despite her advanced degree in
Communications,
she'd be stuck below a glass ceiling, getting sniffed by Moose for the rest of her career. For comfort, she wanted to telephone her mother and father, but told herself, “You are grown now, Monkey. Your problems are your own.” Instead, she sat in bed, hearing the grunting and rutting through the motel wall and pretending to read
The Wapshot Chronicle.
As the sun rose on Orlando, Monkey got dressed and put on her makeup, worried that no one would ever love her. She'd never have a real home.

The following day, behind her bristling forest of toothpicks, Monkey waited for one animal in particular. Monkey beamed her smile at Owl; calling across the supermarket to Possum and Walrus and Cougar, she said, “Come taste my cheese! It's made in Switzerland from organic free-range milk with no bovine growth hormones or artificial ingredients.” Still, Monkey's every word was a hopeful lie. She didn't know anything about the cheese. She didn't even know how it tasted. No one but a crazy person would place her lips around that nasty cheese.

That night, from her motel room, Monkey broke the chain of command. She telephoned Bison, who was the Director of National Operations, four levels above Hamster's head. Worse yet, Monkey telephoned Bison on his personal cell phone number. She introduced herself, but Bison said only, “Do you report to me?”

Monkey explained that she was part of the roving product demo team, assigned to penetrate the Florida market with a test cheese. She was pitching in the Orlando area, but she thought the cheese might be spoiled. Monkey called Bison “sir,” something she'd promised herself she'd never call
anyone—something
she'd never even called her own father.

“Spoiled?” asked Bison. It was early evening in Chicago, but Bison's words sounded slurred. Monkey could hear liquid splash and glug as if someone were guzzling gin from a bottle. She could hear pills rattle. His voice boomed and echoed as if his home were cavernous, and Monkey pictured him speaking on a gold-encrusted telephone, seated in a great hall with a marble floor and frescoes painted on the ceiling.

“Sir,” Monkey said, and winced, “even Mouse wouldn't touch it.”

Bison asked, “Have you gone through Hamster?”

Said Monkey, “Sir, somebody's kid is going to taste this cheese and be poisoned, and I'll be brought up on charges of reckless homicide.” She said, “Honestly, even
Skunk
told me it smelled awful.”

In response, Bison declared that life wasn't a swimming pool. Over the phone, he rambled on about
stamina.
In turns, he sounded angry and weepy, but always soused. Apropos of nothing, he asked her, “What? Are you afraid of getting some shit in your ass?”

So on the third day Monkey was back at her folding table, behind her stockade of toothpicks, like pikes, like a fence of sharpened spikes. From beyond this barrier the other animals, the Panther and the Porcupine, they looked at her with faces of open contempt or deep pity. An invisible cloud of cheese stink held everyone at bay, and from the center of everyone's unhappy looks Monkey pleaded and cajoled for someone brave enough to try this new, marvelous product. Monkey railed that they were cowards. She dared them. She bribed them with double-their-money-back guarantees if they sampled the cheese and didn't love it. She coaxed them, saying, “Who's going to be first in line to discover sheer joy?”

From a safe distance Raven shouted, “You'd have to be suicidal to bite down on that!” Other animals nodded and snickered. Gorilla watched, impatiently tapping the toes of one foot, weaving his fingers together and cracking his huge knuckles, ready to throw Monkey out onto the sidewalk.

“If your stuff is so great, lady,” challenged Ferret, “why don't
you
eat it?”

Monkey looked at the table spread with tiny cubes of white poison. She told herself, “Everyone thinks this terrible smell is me.” Her arrogance was gone. Monkey hadn't slept in two days, and her pride was gone. She told herself, “I'd rather be dead than stand here for another moment with everyone despising me or feeling sorry for me.” She imagined herself dying in terrible pain on the concrete floor of this Orlando supermarket. She imagined the charges of wrongful death, and her parents winning a landmark civil settlement against Llewellyn Foods. Monkey pinched a toothpick between two fingers and held it up between herself and the crowd. She held the cube of cheese high, like a torch. She imagined her own funeral and saw herself dead in a casket with these same fingers folded across her cold chest. Monkey saw her name and today's date chiseled on a tombstone. This cheese smelled the way death smelled. It smelled the way she would soon smell.

“Give me a knight's errand,” Monkey told herself, holding the cheese on-high. “Test me further.”

The crowd watched, dumbfounded. Slack jawed. Turkey wept quietly.

Monkey closed her eyes and brought the cheese to her mouth. Her lips plucked it from the toothpick, and she began to chew. Her eyes still closed, she heard Gorilla shout, his voice high-pitched with panic, “Someone call 9-1-1!”

Monkey ate the cheese yet she did not die. She ate and ate it. She never wanted to swallow, only to chew it, to grind the cheese between her teeth forever and to always savor it. She wanted to live forever so that she could eat nothing else. Worse than killing her, the cheese
tasted—incredible.
What had been the worst smell in the world, it became the best, and even after Monkey had gulped it down she sucked the wooden toothpick for the last hint of flavor. The cheese was inside her; it was part of her, and she loved it.

Smiling, Monkey opened her eyes to find everyone staring, their faces knotted in horror. Their eyes bulged as if they'd caught her eating her own scat. As repugnant as she'd seemed before, now she seemed even more repulsive to them, but Monkey didn't care. With all the animals watching she ate another cube of cheese, and another. She wanted to be filled with this glorious taste and smell until her belly ached.

That night in her motel room the telephone rang. It was Hamster calling. Hamster said, “Hold on while I get Bison on the other line.” Monkey waited, and after a few clicks a voice said, “Bison, here.”

Bison said, “On the advice of Legal, we're pulling the cheese from outlets.” He said, “We can't risk the liability.”

Monkey knew her job hung in the balance. She told herself to stay quiet and just let events run their course, but instead she said, “Wait.”

Hamster said, “Nobody's blaming you.”

Monkey said, “I was wrong.” She said, “You can fire me, but that cheese is delicious.” She said, “Please.” She said, “Sir.”

With a shrug in his voice, Bison said, “This matter is out of our hands.” Over the phone he said, “Tomorrow, you dispose of your stock samples.”

“Ask Coyote,” Monkey pleaded. “Coyote's pitching it.”

“Coyote's in Seattle,” said Bison. “We've promoted him to the Northwest Regional Supervisor slot.”

Caught in an obvious lie, Hamster said, “Take this one for the team, princess. Or you're fired.”

After all of this time pitching perfume and beef jerky and hand lotion, Monkey finally had a product she actually believed in. Until now Monkey had wanted the world to love her, and now she was willing to take a backseat to a cheese. She didn't care how much the other animals glared at her in undisguised disgust, she'd debase herself completely in the eyes of a million animals out of the slim chance that one would taste what she tasted and affirm her faith. If that were to happen, that brave animal would also love the cheese and Monkey would no longer be alone in the world. She would martyr her dignity for the glory of this cheese.

According to a text message from Iguana the entire wholesale stock had already been auctioned to a liquidator. The following day, Monkey deliberately missed her flight to Cleveland. For point-of-sale pitch sessions Monkey always wore a pink polo shirt from Brooks Brothers, always a two-button polo with only the upper button open. Pink read as gamine, sporty, preppy, and Monkey never popped the collar. However, with everything at stake today she pulled out her heavy artillery: a chemise top with floss shoulder straps and a hem so short it fluttered above a wide margin of her exposed stomach. She wedged her breasts into a padded bra. To put this cheese across, Monkey would play the temple whore and pimp herself worse than Llewellyn Foods had ever dared. Brazenly, she took her folding table and toothpicks and white cubes of mouthwatering, soul-filling nirvana and went back to the Orlando supermarket. Behind her altar of samples, Monkey was a zealot. A fanatic. She was an evangelical, railing and haranguing everyone within the crowded market. She was a lunatic in their eyes—someone who would eat this cheese was capable of anything—and this seemed to protect her for the moment. If she could only communicate her passion and be understood by one other animal, that would be enough.