Free Madonna of the Apes by Nicholas Kilmer Page B

of pants both off his body and onto the floor, next to the shirt and shoes.
    “Okay,” Fred said. “So far so good. When do you tell me about the snake?”
    She was looking him over with frank interest. If she heard his question, she didn’t let on. “Look what I get,” she said. “God, you’ve been through some rough country, haven’t you?” She stepped out of her jeans and was left in a narrow pair of pink underpants decorated with strawberries. “A gift,” she said. “Another signal that it’s laundry time. I didn’t know you were coming. No,” she discouraged his reaching arms; stepped out of the underpants and left them in the heap of clothing Fred had thought of as his. “Let’s make the bed, remember?”
    She rooted in her basket until she found the white sheets she and Fred had folded not half an hour ago and, one on either side of the bed, they started to unfold the bottom one.
    “See, the part I love most, Fred,” she said, “and don’t get me wrong, because the whole thing’s a blast—you’ve got some protection, yes? For when it’s time—the best part is the anticipation. Like buying stock.”
    “Buying stock,” Fred repeated. It was a fitted sheet, the reason it had been hard to fold earlier. He got the elastic of the top corner on his side in place.
    “Yes, like my uncle said, the best time to sell stock is right before the big event everyone is waiting for. People buy hope. They love anticipation.”
    “Like my guy and his box,” Fred agreed. He moved to the bottom of the bed and tucked in his share of that end. Their heads came close. She smelled of instant coffee, or he did, or both of them did.
    “I’m not following,” she said.
    “I was doing security for a guy,” Fred told her.
    “I’ll turn off the phone,” she said, brushing past him to get to the night table on what must be her side of the bed. “For him or for the box? The security,” she asked.
    “For him, I guess. But he has this box to look forward to.”
    “And I have you,” she said. “Hold this pillow while I get the case around it.”
    ***
    They lay together on her bed after a while, Fred tracing the serpent’s coil around her arm, beginning at the wrist, and finishing at the flat head behind her shoulder. She was obliged to shift position somewhat, in order to accommodate his exploration. “It might be a good name for the snake,” Fred said. “Amnesia.”
    “I’m liking the name,” she said. “I’m enjoying how close we are, and me not having to be anybody.”
    “I’m not forgetting on purpose,” Fred said. “It’s like a hole I fall into, maybe, well, when, if I care about someone. It’s not…”
    “I said, don’t worry about it. Things come to pass. Like me. Waiting for my big break. You know? If you push it nothing happens, nothing comes.”
    “Your big break.”
    “I’m not teaching math in Quincy Community College forever.”
    “If we stretched it out, uncurled it, how long would it be? Is it male or female?” Fred asked.
    “Like I loved making love with you. But next thing you know, it’s done. There has to be the next thing to keep us going. Anticipation, like my uncle says.”
    “Like dinner at Charlie’s?” Fred said.
    “I guess you could anticipate that,” she said. “Though maybe not as much if you’ve ever been there before. More like that man’s box.” She sat up and swung her legs over the side of the bed.
    “Box?”
    “You said some man was looking forward to a box. We were talking about anticipation. Tell me about the man’s box.”
    “Oh, I don’t know,” Fred said. “I was watching out for the man. I never saw it.”
    “See, and that makes it stick in your head. Anticipation. Like stock. People buy what they hope is going to happen. It’s human nature. It’s
la condition humaine.
You remember the box because you never saw it, whereas if you saw it—well, who’d remember a box?
    “Let’s go eat. Bring your stuff with you, because I’m