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"How can she be so smart and talented," Bobby demanded, "and then…this?"
"Maybe you are Kahuna," I said
"This isn’t funny," he said, which was a striking state was funny to Bobby
In the rass drooped, no blade so ht The soft rhyth fro of a distant, prayerful crowd
This Pia business was fascinating, but understandably, I was more interested in the monkeys
"These last few years," Bobby said, "with this New Age stuff from Pia…well, so days in radical churly-churly"
Churly-churly is badly churned-up surf heavy with sand and pea gravel, which smacks you in the face when you walk into it This is not a pleasant surf condition
"Soet off the phone with her, I’ to be with her…I could almost convince myself she is Kaha Huna She’s so sincere And she doesn’t rave on about it, you know It’s this quiet thing with her, which ot disturbed"
"I didn’t know it, either" Sighing, scuffing at the sand with one bare foot, he began to make the connection between Pia and the monkeys: "When I saw the h I figured it was soot loose…but the second time I saw more than one And it was as weird as all this Kaha Huna shit, because they weren’t behaving at all like oofing around These guys…they weren’t playful Purposeful, sole the house, not out of curiosity but with soed "They were so strange…"
Words seemed to fail him, so I borrowed one from H P Lovecraft, for whose stories we’d had such enthusiasm ere thirteen: "Eldritch"
"Yeah They were eldritch to theto believe rabbed a caet a picture You knohy?"
"Thuraphed First sight of the calanced at ain "They knehat the camera was"
I couldn’t resist: "Hey, you’re not anthropo hu ht, I didn’t put the camera away in the closet I kept it on a kitchen counter, close at hand If they showed up again, I figured IOne night about six weeks ago, it was puood offshore, barrel after barrel, so even though it ay nipple out there, I put on my wet suit and spent a couple of hours totally tucked away I didn’t take the camera down to the beach with me"
"Why not?"
"I hadn’t seen the daain Anyhen I came back to the house, I stripped out of the neoprene, went into the kitchen, and got a beer When I turned away fro on the fra in at one"
"You ood I left the door unlocked when I went to the beach that night I don’t leave it unlocked any ht a disposable caht I left the lights on, locked up, and took my stick down to the beach"
"Good surf?"
"Slow But I wanted to give theone, they broke a pane, unlocked the , and stole the disposable ca else Just the caun was kept in a locked broohbors, had always appealed to ht, when the surfers left, the sky and the sea formed a sphere in which the house stood like a diora snohen you shake it, though instead of a blizzard there were deep peace and a glorious solitude Noever, the nurturing solitude had beco a sense of peace, the night was thick and still with expectation
"And they leftnote laboriously printed in crude block letters--WATCH YOUR ASS Signed, THE MONKEYS
They were too clever to leave a paper trail, however, and even more direct Bobby said, "One of them crapped on my bed"
"Oh, nice"
"They’re secretive, like I said I’ve decided not even to try to photograph theht…I think they’d be way pissed"
"You’re afraid of theot disturbed, and I didn’t know you were ever afraid I’ht, bro"
He didn’t adun," I pressed
"Because I think it’s good to challenge theood to show the little bastards that I’m territorial, and that this is, by God, my territory But I’ain--they’re not"
Bobby said, "Soe virus over the telephone line from Pia, all the way fro Kaha Huna, I’m obsessed with the monkeys of the new millennium I suspect that’s what the tabloids would call the to it"
"That’s why I haven’t reported theet of the press or anyone I’foot or extraterrestrials in a spaceship shaped like a four-slice toaster Life wouldn’t ever be the same for me after that, would it?"
"You’d be a freak likewatched became rowled low inbetween Bobby and me, remained alert and quiet, his head raised and one ear pricked He was no longer shaking, but he was clearly respectful of whatever was observing us froela, you know theon out at Fort Wyvern," I said "This isn’t just a tabloid fantasy anymore This is real, this is totally live, and we can do so on," he said
"What?"
"Froela told you, Wyvern’s not entirely shut down"
"But it was abandoned eighteenany operations at all out there, we’d know about it Even if they lived on base, they’d coela called this Areddon It’s the end of the world, she said"
"Yeah So?"
"Soon a project to destroy the world, you don’t have time to come into town for a movie Anyway, like I said, this is a tsunaovernripped the handlebars of ain "In spite of theseto just lay back?"
He nodded "If I stay cool, it’s possible they’ll eventually go away They’re not here every night, anyway Once or twice a week If I wait theet ela wasn’t just sain, that anything will be like it was"
"Then why put on your tights and cape if it’s a lost cause?"
"To XP-Man," I said with mock solemnity, "there are no lost causes"
"Kamikaze"
"Duck"
"Geek"
"Decoy," I said affectionately and walked the bicycle away froh the soft sand
Orson let out a thin whine of protest as we left the coe behind us, but he didn’t try to hold back He stayed close to one about thirty feet when Bobby, kicking up small clouds of sand, sprinted in front of us and blocked the way "You knohat your problem is?"
I said, "My choice of friends?"