The Last Manly Man (28 page)

As soon as everyone was aboard our boat, the crew threw off the moorings and pulled up the plank and we pulled away, shifting into high gear so quickly that I and a few others lost our balance and landed on our asses in a pile of chimps.

“Go like God, guys,” Blue shouted at the crew.

“You called Reb Ryan?” I said to him.

“Yeah, when the animal liberation crew didn't show up.”

“I thought maybe you'd been captured too, Blue.”

“I'm a former undercover sanitation cop. I'm hard to catch,” Blue said, and smiled.

We were away from the island now. Jason and number twenty were, with the assistance of some of the others, trying to keep the chimps in order while Hufnagel sedated them.

“Now what do we do?” I asked Blue.

“There's a school bus waiting for you on the North Shore,” Blue said. “It'll take you into the city.”

“What day is it?”

“Saturday.”

“Last day of the women's conference. Oh shit. That's when Morton and Mandervan were going to test the Adam bomb on the feminists at the conference! My boss is giving a speech there this afternoon,” I said. “On national television.”

“Here,” Blue said, handing me a cell phone. “Go ahead and make some calls.”

Jack wasn't anywhere to be found, nor was Dr. Karen Keyes. I left messages everywhere and called the conference center. It was noisy at the conference center. Jack wasn't there yet, so I asked to speak to the head security guy, explaining that we were on our way to the hotel with a bunch of chimps and that a mood-altering bomb was going to go off there sometime today.

“You're nuts,” said the security guy, and hung up on me.

“Fuck,” I said. “We'll have to go straight to the hotel. Keyes will be there, we can give her the chimps, warn everyone about the bomb. I hope we get there in time.”

The sun was coming up. It looked like clear sailing now. One of the animal rights nuts plugged in Johnny Nash, “I Can See Clearly Now.” We all had a good nose blower of a cry. I collapsed to the deck with my bonobo in my lap. It chose that moment to take a leak all over me.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

When we got to the mainland, we were met by a male bus driver and a woman, who smiled at the large chimp urine stain on my clothes and said, “We have diapers for the chimps.”

Too tired to talk beyond agreeing that we had to go to the convention center immediately to find Keyes, we just sat, trying to keep the chimps under control as we headed toward Queens, relieved that the worst was over.

Or so we thought, until we were driving through Queens, around Jackson Heights, and the bus sputtered, slowed down, and broke down. Murphy's fucking Law.

“What should we do?” Jason asked.

“Fuck. Well, we can try a car service to get another van …” I said.

“What time is the conference finale?” Hufnagel asked.

“The last round of speeches begins around noon,” I said.

“Might take too long for a car service, if they take us at all.”

“Our other choices are the subway or taxis,” I said.

“We can't take a dozen bonobo chimps on the subway. We'll have to try taxis. We're going to need more diapers though,” Hufnagel said. “Jason, there's a drugstore up here, you buy a bunch of Pampers, and Robin and I will try to get cabs. The rest of you, watch the chimps, okay?”

Even as we were walking down the avenue, looking for cabs, I was thinking that this was like a Letterman bit, i.e., can a handful of disheveled humans and a dozen chimps get a cab in New York City?

The answer? Yes. I got a cab before Hufnagel. Had the guy roll down his window.

“Hi, what's your name?” I said.

“Pardap.”

“Look, Pardap, this is going to sound nuts, but my friends and I just liberated a bunch of apes, and we need to get them to Manhattan. Can you radio for about five cars to take us into Manhattan? If you do, my boss, Jack Jackson, will pay you a thousand bucks each. I swear to God!”

“Hey, I've seen you on TV,” he said.

“That's right. But I'm not who you think I am.…”

“You're Robin from ANN,” he said. “We thought you were in the hospital, in bandages!”

“What? No, I'm okay. You recognize me?”

“The video club in my village in India watches ANN all the time, by satellite. They know all about you in Balandapur, and how unlucky you've been in your life. Didn't you get their letters about your last haircut?”

“Haven't had time to read through my mail lately.…”

“We know all the ANN people in our village in India, and I watch all the time here, too, when I'm not working or studying. Dr. Solange Stevenson is a goddess in my village in India.”

“That's lovely. We're in a hurry. Can you do this for me? I can actually introduce you to Dr. Solange Stevenson if you do.”

In well under ten minutes, five other cabs, all driven by men from the same village in south India, were there. The apes were freshly diapered, and we all piled in and drove off like maniacs to Manhattan.

By the time we made it to the Queensboro Bridge, the sedation was wearing off, the chimps were really starting to act up, and we were drawing more than a few looks. On the edge of the city, our procession of chimp-stuffed cabs excited a double-decker bus full of tourists, but nobody else seemed to notice. New Yorkers are still, all in all, the most self-absorbed people on the planet.

When we pulled up to the Jackson Hotel and Convention Center, I didn't even wait for the taxi to come to a complete stop.

“Stay here,” I said to the driver, and I flew out the door and into the hotel, tearing through the lobby, while Jason, Hufnagel, and Blue followed with the bonobo chimps, herding them as if they were sheep through the lobby.

“Stop!” yelled a hotel security guy.

I kept running, up the stairs to the main ballroom, where Jack would soon be delivering a speech. Quickly, I scanned the room and saw Liz, with her Seeing Eye dog, and the camera crew.

“Liz, where's Jack?” I asked.

“Robin? Is that you? You're out of the hospital?” she said.

“Do you know where Jack Jackson is? He's speaking today.”

“In a room down the hall. But …”

“It's out that way, to the left … why?” said Jim the cameraman.

“No time to explain. We have a bunch of bonobo chimps. This is very important. Find Karen Keyes and let her know they're outside the door,” I said, heading back out and down the hallway to the green room. It was locked, no doubt for security purposes.

“Jack, Jack, it's Robin. Let me in!” I screamed, banging on the door. I could hear the chimps squawking and the pounding of people's feet coming up the stairs.

The door opened a crack and Larry, Jack's ethicist, peered out. Couldn't wait for him—I practically kicked the door open. Jack was sitting with his lawyer, a couple of bodyguards, and Solange Stevenson.

“You're out of the hospital.…”

“No time for that now. Jack, we've just liberated a dozen bonobo chimps,” I spit out rapid-fire. “We had to take cabs to get them here. We promised the cabbies a lot of money … and that they could meet Solange and have their pictures taken with her.”

“Reb was on that story,” Solange said. “Why didn't he call me? Where is he?”

“He stiffed you,” I said.

“Slow down,” Jack said. “The bonobo whats?”

I repeated as much of the story as I could.

Then I inhaled again.

“How many cabs?” Jack asked.

“Five. I think. Promised them a grand each.”

Jack turned to his lawyer. “Where's my petty cash?”

The lawyer patted a briefcase.

“Go down, give them two grand each, and take Solange down with you.”

“Come on, Jack, we have to go into the ballroom …” And rather than finish explaining, I took him by the hand.

Security had formed a cordon at the top and bottom of the mezzanine stairs to hold the chimps in. Keyes had come out of the ballroom and she and everyone else were all screaming at once. A couple of the chimps had slipped through and I scooped them up handily, as if I did it every day of my life.

“Let them in!” Jack bellowed, just as the human wall broke and the chimps flooded through. This motley group ran into the ballroom, interrupting a heated debate between Alana DeWitt and Belle Hondo.

Just then, I caught sight of the whistling white man and several other goons up on the mezzanine. “Uh-oh,” I said.

“What is it?” Jack asked.

“No time,” I said. “Call the cops or someone.…”

The goons were making a run for it. Blue and I ran up opposite staircases to the mezzanine, trying to corner the bad guys. Blue stopped one on his end, but me, I'm a mere slip of a girl. The whistling white man handily shoved me aside, and I crumpled onto the steps as he and another goon tried to run past me. I was knocked on my ass, but I wasn't out of the fight yet. Quickly, I stretched a leg across the steps, and the goons went tumbling over each other, coming to a stop a dozen steps below me. Security guards grabbed them.

But it was too late. Air was blowing into the room along with, I guessed, the Adam I.

The voices in the room got quieter and slower, like records winding down on an old hand-wound Victrola. There was a tremendous calm. All was silent. On the dais, Alana DeWitt and Belle Hondo were standing, confused. They turned to each other. DeWitt started crying. They hugged.

Unfortunately, this human-aimed gas had no effect, or at least a different effect, on the bonobos, who were now out of control, some of them tearing around the room, pulling off their diapers, some of them loudly copulating. I saw Liz's dog trying to maintain his composure as bonobos romped around him, beginning to strain against the leash, and abruptly breaking free and following instinct, barking loudly. Liz went flying and landed in a knot of now docile, weepy feminists, who fell into Suzy Hibben's booth, bringing it and several of her Mrs. Degree girls down.

Jack, meanwhile, was feeling his oats.

“Open some damned windows,” he shouted angrily, followed by the rest of the men. “Round up the damned chimps. Let's get control of things here.”

Twenty minutes later, the chimps were subdued, the men were calm, and the women were starting to come to their senses. Karen Keyes got to the dais and explained for the cameras what had gone down, who the bonobos were, and why we needed to save them, as maintenance staff scooped up diapers and overturned chairs. Keyes ran her short film. When the credits started to roll, loud applause erupted and weepy women were whipping out their checkbooks.

After that, Solange gave a speech introducing Jack, although it may have been the aftereffects of the Adam I that made her so sweet. Jeez, I wish I could get some of that stuff. It could come in handy.

“My boss, my hero, my mentor, Jack Jackson,” Solange said, wrapping it up.

Jack took the podium and winked, though he resisted slapping Solange's ass as she handed the stage over to him.

“Well, we've had some excitement here today,” he began. “It all kind of confirms my theory. People are surprising. But women are the most surprising.

“Not long ago I watched 2001:
A Space Odyssey
, and it was so farsighted. Predicted a lot. But it, and every other accurate sci-fi thing I could think of, missed one big thing. Almost all the women in these movies and books are in subordinate, traditional roles. Few of these visionaries envisioned feminism.”

E.g., Wallace Mandervan, I thought.

“It has been a big surprise for a lot of people. Men, generally speaking, kind of got caught with their pants down on this one. Since the women's lib stuff really hit, the surprises have just piled up. Someone says, ‘A woman can't do this or that,' and right away, some woman will come along and do it. You know that saying, The only thing a man can do that a woman can't is pee standing up? It turns out that isn't even true. As one of my female employees tells it, all a woman needs is a proper-sized funnel to accomplish that. A little technology. And hey, we got a lot of technology these days, so who knows what else we can do? So where does it go from here? Probably, women will continue to surprise, and men will too.”

There was some stuff about male conditioning, and female conditioning, and how men and women helped keep each other and themselves in their consigned roles in the past.

“Things have changed, from the days of the modern Stone Age family,” Jack said. “Another one of my female employees called it the Flintstone Paradigm, based on an episode of the
Flintstones
(which incidentally, Jackson Broadcasting owns). In this episode, Wilma and Fred decide the other has it better, so Wilma goes to the quarry and Fred stays home to look after the house. Long story short, they discover that each has a difficult job, and they are happy return to their traditional roles. Well, we aren't cavepeople and there is no going back. But it is true that men have now taken a greater role, not big enough, mind you, but a bigger role in housekeeping and child-rearin', and women have joined the workforce in greater than ever numbers and shoulder more of the economic burden. And I think the result of this is that we all understand each other a little better, having walked in each other's shoes, and we can use this to get along a little better in the future.

“Men need your support as you need theirs. It seems like women want us to be strong and protective, but not too strong, not too protective, and we don't know what the hell you want sometimes. Guys who aren't tough enough might be called weak by women, as well as by other men. If we hold the door we're patronizing, if we don't we're unchivalrous. It's still harder for a man to quit his job and stay home with the kids. He faces a greater social backlash than women who left the hearth do. It takes guts to buck the prevailing thinking. Men are supposed to be so gutsy. In some ways, we are. But in some ways, men are much bigger chickens than women. No offense intended to the chicken.