Bad Monkey

The monkey spat the meerschaum and flew at him, snapping and scratching at his kneecaps and bare shins. From the superior height of his bicycle Yancy kicked back in a fevered defense until the heavy toe of his wading boot caught the beast flush on his crusty chin, launching him tail over head through a charred window frame, into the squall.

With blood-streaked legs Yancy pedaled out of the carport and down the road. His visibility was so foreshortened by the deluge that there was no opportunity to dodge the endless potholes, and by the time he reached the motel he’d bitten through his bottom lip. After a hasty dismount Yancy also realized that he had left behind his fly rod, a long-ago birthday present from Celia. Disconsolately he trudged across the soggy lawn toward his room, pulling up short when he spied the door ajar.

For a time Yancy waited in the raw wet dusk, rows of fat droplets pouring off the bill of his fishing cap. Was it Grunion himself who had come, or had he given the job to Egg? Yancy thought. Hell, does it really matter?

He uprooted a cane tiki torch, unlit, and rushed through the doorway swinging like Barry Bonds. Two matching lamps and a tray of decorative sand dollars were demolished before the torch broke to pieces. Dr. Rosa Campesino stepped from the bathroom wearing lace panties and a look of consternation.

“What on earth, Andrew?”

“Oh shit. I thought you were somebody else.”

“It was supposed to be a surprise. I even brought some slutty red lipstick.”

“Babe, you look fantastic.”

“I caught the last plane in.”

“Let’s light some candles.”

“The last plane before the hurricane.”

“What?” Yancy said.

“Take off your clothes, dummy. You’re dripping all over the rug.”

Eighteen

“Are you in hedge funds?” Ford Lipscomb asked without glancing up.

Evan Shook said no. He was watching with equal measures of rapture and incredulity while Lipscomb wrote out a check.

“You say fifty grand’ll hold it? Call it good faith—we’ve still got some wrinkles to iron out.”

“Fifty’s just fine.” More than fine. Exquisite.

“Tell me the name of your lawyer again. On the escrow account?”

Evan Shook repeated it for Lipscomb. “He’s up in South Miami. Does all my real estate work.”

“Stay away from hedge funds, friend. Those giddy days are over,” Lipscomb went on. “I tasted the best of it, then I bailed in the nick of time. Where the heck is Jayne?”

“Upstairs enjoying the view,” Evan Shook said.

“Gold is the way to go. You ever listen to Glenn Beck? Maybe he’s got a few shingles loose, but that weird little crybaby is right about gold.”

Evan Shook wanted to pinch himself. After only two walkthroughs, the Lipscombs were actually buying his spec house! Ford and Jayne Lipscomb from Leesburg, Virginia, on their first-ever trip to the Florida Keys, arriving in a wine-colored Bentley convertible, its rear seat backs of hand-tooled leather splattered with fresh pelican shit—a rude souvenir from their Overseas Highway crossing.

Yet these remarkable Lipscombs, these brisk and purposeful Lipscombs, acknowledged with only the mildest of frowns the pungent bird goo on their expensive import. Handsome they were as a couple, married forever, their kids surely all grown up, well-schooled, well-bred and prospering. Evan Shook suppressed a pang of envy as Ford and Jayne approached the house hand in hand, smiling the way they might have smiled on their very first date, forty-some years ago. They were eager to tour all seven thousand square feet, and they absorbed Evan Shook’s sales pitch with a genial attentiveness that unnerved him at first.

Such anxiety was understandable given his run of black luck with the property—the bloating raccoon corpse, the deranged bees, the gory witchcraft altar and then that nut job Yancy, sprawled naked as a jaybird to greet the Turbles. Next came the squatters, a depressingly mismatched twosome who had cleared out only minutes before the Lipscombs’ first visit.

So now, on pivotal day two, Evan Shook couldn’t be faulted for anticipating another sale-killing calamity—perhaps the ghostly pack of rabid mongrels that Yancy kept nattering about. In Evan Shook’s mind flashed a gothic vision of the Lipscombs being taken down by the heels—first Jayne and then Ford—while sprinting for the Bentley. He considered himself a rational person, but part of him had begun to worry that the spec house truly was jinxed, a word used by both his wife and his girlfriend in separate conversations.