Free Dogfight by Michael Knight Page B

a
chimpanzee,
Wishbone,” I said. “There’s a difference.”
    Wishbone sat up slowly, drew in one knee, and slung his arm over it. He looked handsome, almost beautiful in the harsh sunlight, his eyes narrow, his smile easy, perspiration beaded on his dark face. He looked so mysterious, just then, I thought that if I could catch him in the right light, strike a match at an exact moment, I would see diamonds or something beneath the surface of his skin.
    He got to his feet, walked over, and squatted in front of me. He snatched the book from my hands. “The food of the spider monkey is mainly fruit and insects.” Wishbone enunciated each word carefully. He winked at Gerald, then leaned toward me until his face was close enough to mine that I could feel his breath on my cheeks. “In certain countries, their flesh is considered a delicacy.” He closed the book and passed it to Gerald without taking his eyes from me. Herooted around under his coveralls, found what he was looking for, and dangled it in front of me. “You know the routine,” he said, an empty cigarette pack between two fingers.
    I took my time on Wishbone’s errand. He hadn’t given me a countdown so I thought I’d at least make him wait a while for his nicotine. The shipyard was on skeleton crew since we lost the navy contract—four hundred people out of work at my uncle’s company alone—and the
Kaga
was one of only three ships in for repairs, leaving seven dry docks empty, rising up along the waterfront like vacant stadiums. I wandered into the next yard over, yard five, thinking about Gerald’s monkey. I wondered if Wishbone could actually get it for him or if that was just talk. I hoped he could for Gerald’s sake. Cruel to lead him on. I had this picture in my head of Gerald at home in an easy chair, the television on in front of him and this spider monkey next to him on the arm of the chair, curling its tail around his shoulders. It was a nice picture. They were sharing an orange, each of them slipping damp wedges of fruit into the other’s mouth.
    I could hear the lifting cranes churning behind me, men shouting, metal banging on metal but yard five was still and quiet. Dust puffed up beneath my steps. The infrequent wind made me shiver. Two rails set wide apart, used for launching ships, ran down to the water’s edge and I balanced myself on one and teetered down the slope to the water. A barge lumbered along the river with seagulls turning circles in the air above it.
    When I was nine years old, my parents took me to the launching of a two-hundred-foot yacht, the
Marie Paul,
built here for a California millionaire. My family had been invited for the maiden voyage, and we mingled with the beautiful strangers under a striped party tent, which sheltered a banquet of food and champagne and where a Dixieland band fizzed on an improvised stage in the corner. There were tuxedos and spangled cocktail dresses along with the canary-yellow hard hats that my uncle required. The women fromCalifornia wore short dresses, dresses my mother never would have worn, exposing tan and slender legs that seemed to grow longer when they danced.
    One of these women proclaimed me the cutest thing in my miniature tuxedo and hard hat. She hauled me away to dance, my mother shooing me politely along despite my protests. We did the stiff-legged foxtrot that Mother and I did at home, the only dance I knew. “Loosen up, baby,” the woman said, stepping away from me after only a few turns. “Dance like you mean it.” She shimmied around me, overwhelmed me, the rustle of her dress and swish of her hair, her hands slipping over my arms and shoulders, her perfume and warm champagne breath, her brown thighs gliding together, her exposed throat and collarbone. This woman did the christening, shattering a bottle of champagne on the prow. The
Marie Paul
was the most magnificent thing I’d ever seen,