29) "Love"

Ignoring May was difficult. It was not so at first. The embarrassment of her rejection and my tears in front of her were a sufficient barrier to contact with her. But if there is something for which to be grateful of my monkeyness, it is its relative lack of pride. I have enough pride to care and to be self-conscious, but not so much, apparently, to entirely blind me to its selfishness. I can hurt, but I can decide not to. Neil can not do that. Ignoring May was easy that first week after the embarrassment: I did not look at her, and my peripheral vision allowed me to avoid her approach without acknowledgment. Another sense altogether prevented accidental encounters in the stacks and hallways.

But many things conspired and conjoined to discontinue this exercise, only the first of which was the exhaustion of my pride. Neil was right: May would help me. The week following our talk, May attempted to engage me in small talk several times but besides never knowing what to say, I could not even look at her. At first, I grunted a reply; then I simply ignored her. My conscience hated me for that. Though I still did not know what to say to her, by the end of the week I was no longer actively avoiding her. May, however, was now actively ignoring me. Upon her approaches I would look at her directly and attempt a smile, but beams of black ice shot straight through me from her eyes, and my smile and my puny soul were frozen. Had my pride been intact I might not have been able to snatch an escaping gasp. Still, I was hurt, but hurt by the mirror May held up between us. This is what I had been doing to her. I had pride enough left to be ashamed, but not enough to prevent me from doing what I thought was right for both of us.

Neil was already plunged into his own pity when I told him at lunch. "You're doing the right thing," he said. "If it works for you, maybe--no. Even if I could set my pride aside--even if I could believe I no longer felt anything for May--I couldn't believe it for long. If she even smiled at me now...." He turned his head slowly, scanning the foreground. A bird above us loosed a rapid twitter. "Nuthatch," Neil said. "Go ahead and laugh." I do not think he was talking to me. "God, if she even looked at me without looking through me, I'd fall in love with her all over again."

"What would be wrong with that?" i asked, though I felt at the same time that it was unnecessary.

"One torture or another, I guess. Better the one without hope." He looked at me. "You are doing the right thing, but why are you doing it? What can you possibly gain?"

"Gain?"

Neil laughed harshly. "And there you have it, ladies and gentlemen! Man trumped once again by a lower intelligence and a higher consciousness!" His shoulders slumped. On the way back into work Neil moved his car to within a few spaces past May's from the building.

On the way out that evening I walked with Neil close behind May. She was stooped with a large canvas bag in each hand, a bent elbow keeping them inches from the asphalt. Her purse was canvas, too, and seemed about to slide from her left shoulder. Her hair fell evenly to either side of her neck. As we reached May's car Neil continued to his car--May glanced up at him; he didn't notice--and I stopped behind May.

"Hey, Beamer! You don't wanna miss your bus!"

I came, then, as close as I had ever come to understanding whay people curse when May, having just set down her burden, swivelled to the voice so close. I didn't turn; I knew it was Hunter. My conscience and my attention toward May let me ignore him. Neil's car pulled away. May's sight caught Hunter first, and her brow bunched in puzzlement. Then her head dipped. "Oh!" she gasped upon seeing me, and a shudder staggered her. Hunter's bark echoed off the library and over the lot. May's glare silenced him.

I was frightened, too, as she continued to silently direct him. Her head tipped sharply and back. her eyes did not move, then bulged violently following her jutting jaw, and her head tipped again, but with a jerk. Behind me an engine roared and tires squealed. May followed the car a moment and watched, warily, another car I could hear leaving.

"We are going to talk," I said, though not feeling as bold as my words.

May looked down at me, her eyes still agape. I stifled a swallow.

Her "Oh?" bit me as a challenge. Hair had fallen across her left eye. She turned her back to me and opened the rear side door of her car.

"Yes."

May knelt to gather the handles of the bags of books and clothes. She said nothing as she squeezed the bags beside one another behind the driver's seat with deliberation, prodding their bulges and tugging on their creases. As I watched, my confidence grew; she was avoiding me. I had done as I had meant to--catch her off her guard--and here she struggled for a plan, but I would have to strike again quickly to keep her on the edge of spontaneity.

"Do not ignore me anymore. It hurts."

May stood straight but did not yet turn. She closed the car door carefully, as had our supervisor after I had entered her office to be told about my blog. "I'm sorry," she said, and turned. She had put on a smile.

"I do not mean now," I said, and her smile faded. "It hurts me when you pretend not to notice me."

"What did you think you were doing to me?"

"I did not think you could care, since you could not care for me."

"But I do care for you--I like you," she seemed to correct herself.

"I know you do not love me, but please do not be afraid of me. I can not ignore you. I must look at you. Perhaps I love you. How can that matter to you if you do not love me?"

I heard my bus pass behind me and watched May watch it go.

"I know my bus is gone," I said. "You will not need to take me home. I will not cry tonight." May looked at me, eyes wide but soft. I was suddenly unsure of my forecast. She could have let my question scatter and dissipate in the bus' wake, but I knew her hesitation was only confusion.

May said, "I don't know. It's--it's nice to know how you feel about me. But Neil and Hunter, too.... Is it that easy?"--

"It is too easy--with you."

"But, you don't know me."

"Could I not still love you if I did?"

"Please--'love'." She sighed heavily.

I let May take me home. I'm sure Neil saw us drive off.

28) Oak and Shadow

There is one tree in the cemetery next door. An "oak," Neil says--a strong name. Its trunk is broad enough for us both to sit against it and face the same direction, facing the stones and the tiers of streets beyond. To our right the sun has fallen to a flat angle, low enough to reach under the canopy that had protected us from it the hour before, but its heat was now changed to a glow that offered a new protection as an apology to our former discomfort.

Neil said, "This is my favorite time of the day." We had not spoken for some time. I had become without thought, and my mind was reluctant to make words upon lips reluctant to form them.

"This light is like a wash," he said, "cleaning the dirty day away."

My mind slowly awoke. "I need that," I said.

The softened sunlight shone flat against the narrow sides of the headstones of the first two rows before us, connecting their sides with a thin, black stripe.

"It doesn't get easier," he said.

"It is hard to ignore her. I want to look at her."

Already, the stones were disconnected.

"She'll help you. And you'll become better at it than you ever really wanted to be."

"Then why would I want to continue?"

His silence was long--I am sure I saw the shadows move--before I looked up into a dark profile grinning to the distance.

"I think," he said, "I'm over May." He was not measuring his words but holding them up for inspection. "It's myself I'm not over." After a deep breath he turned to me and said, "You ask good questions. Do what feels right. What do I know?"

"What do I know?" i countered. Despite the lowering shadows, I was becoming warm again. "I know that I am a monkey in a world of humans--that I am physically one and emotionally the other--"

"Whereas I'm the other way 'round."

"I do not even know if I am either one, or both." Headlights shone from some of the cars of the thinning traffic, the sound of which reached up this gentle slope atop which we sat as a muffled, intermittent roar, as waves on a far beach. "Gail must know."

27) Advice and Experience

I remember Neil telling me I would have a lot to say, but I do not know what that would be be now. My inspiration mocks me. It has been laughing since May rejected me. Continuing to write would feel like spite if I could believe my feelings for May were not real. But I am confused. I have become quite good at avoiding her, yet when we must be in the same room, I want her to notice me. I do not, though, know how to "show off," and since I do not dare even look at her now, I can not know if she looks at me. I do this all on Neil's advice. I do not know what I would do on my own, and though I can not understand what I want this behavior to cause, I do not trust my own advice. It has no experience.

26) Gail Monday (May Saturday)

What else could I be now but human? Jealousy, ecstasy, hmiliation--How else could I have earned these feelings? Neil said to me, "Welcome to the club." There was no smile. To which club? i wondered but did not ask--there were so many that I could have joined over the weekend. Certainly, I was sullen and unable to meet anyone's eye; and angry and embarrassed, then angry all over again. Only with Gail Friday did I feel what humanness might be worth.

Monday, Gail was quiet, but of a different kind than mine--expectant but patient and attentive. I turned to her once in the car, but she had already turned to me, and what I saw I could not face. I had cried enough Saturday after work. I chose, instead, to pity myself.

"Stay with me, Gail," I said when the food was away. "For a while. Please." I swallowed. Talk to me." There was no hope now that I wouldn't cry, but I wouldn't be embarrassed.

I sat on the floor, and Gail laid on her side facing me. When she bent her legs and pulled them toward her I crawled into her lap and let her hug me while I cried, clutching her arm and pressing myself against her. She was soft and strong.

"Did May take you home?"

I rubbed my nose across my arm. Gail's heart beat in my ear. I did not want to think about Saturday. "Yes."

"That was nice of her."

"Yes. But I think I would rather have walked home."

"But you didn't."

"No. I did not. I still wanted to be with her. I should have walked. She did not talk to me."

"Maybe she was hurt."

"Hurt?" I had not considered it. I did not want to consider it now.

"You were unkind."

"She was not sincere."

"She didn't want to hurt your feelings."

"It hurt more."

Gail's stomach pressed my back and fell back again. Her breath warmed my head.

"It's hard, Book Monkey."

The grey of the blank wall I faced darkened as I watched, night accelerating.

Gail said, "Be kind to her. That's what she needs."

"Will she love me then?"

"No."

I rolled onto my back. Head pressed against her breast, I looked up at her red eyes and the wet lines trailing from them.

"You are kind to me," I told her. "I am glad that you love me." I turned to face her and wrapped an arm over her. "I will love you, too."

25) Me and May

As Neil has become more sullen and withdrawn, I have become more assertive. Neil makes no eye contact and does his job with abrupt movements and clamped lips. I know I have no secrets. Of what should I be ashamed?

"May?" I did not wait for her response. "Would you help me take this cart upstairs?" I knew where she would be at the top of the hour a few minutes away. The schedule changes daily but not weekly. "You are shelf-reading up there?"

The wait for her response was eternal, though her hesitation was noticeable only to my expectation. In that elongated moment I studied her face, though I was locked into eyes so dark as to be featureless: Her skin, almost olive, gleamed taut agaunst cheekbones across which I wanted to rub my rough thumbs as I finger-combed her lyart hair.

"Sure," she said.

The elevator's confinement little concerned me. I climbed the cart and said to May, "I have to talk to you."

"Oh?" The corners of her mouth lifted briefly. It seemed a laugh at me. I did not indulge it.

"Yes."

"Okay, but it will have to wait."

The doors parted. May moved to the back of the cart to push. I stayed where I was until I told her, "After work." At that moment I saw in her eyes and her suddenly dull, slack skin that I was not a joke.

She whispered, "Okay."

I jumped down and pulled the cart.

After work, as we all filed from the back door, Neil came to my side. "Stick close," he whispered, and slowed to my shorter stride. May was ahead of us. She had not so much as looked at me since our agreement. I followed Neil to his car but watched May to hers.

"Is she going to leave?" I said. I was having trouble believing she had not forgotten.

We both watched May, two rows away, place a laden cloth grocery bag on the back seat of her car.

"No."

May closed the back door, opened the front, and glanced over before climbing in.

"She's waiting for everyone else to leave," Neil said. It seemed an almost scientific observation, and I was shuddered by a flashing memory.

Meg's was the last other car to leave. I could tell by the way she was not looking at us that she had been and was trying hard not to again.

Neil's hand alighted upon my shoulder. I looked up at him. Much was in his eyes, some of it for me, some of it for himself. "Go," he said. "Be honest."

I almost tumbled away, my legs trembled so. This moment seemed my whole life. Neil started his car, and I was choked by a blue cloud. He drove off quickly, leaving me, the other car, and the universe.

May rolled down her window as I approached it. She smiled, but I could not. I have seen so many smiles recently with so many meanings that I could not trust even hers. Still smiling, she said, "Get in."

Into the seat beside her I sank below the window. At least it was open.

"So," she said.

"May, I am in love with you."

"So I've heard."

"Read, you meant?"

"Yes, read."

"Do you love me?"

"No."

"Then I will stop being in love with you."

"It's that easy?"

"No. I am lying. It has not been easy for Neil. It will not be easy for me, though maybe easier, because it is so much more obviously futile than for Neil. I do not even know why I am in love with you. It makes no sense. I do not even know you."

"I'm sorry, Book Monkey, but I just don't feel the same for you."

"You are not sorry, and do not be."

"Things can change. You'll be the first to know when it happens."

"You are insincere."

May turned away, and past her profile I saw my bus home pass. I had not thought of that.

"This is stupid," I said. "I am a monkey." With not half a moment of consideration, I climbed out of the window and strode toward the street.

"You missed your bus," May called.

I shrieked, "I know!" I could not stand the sound of her voice. Her compasion mocked me. I cried until I could do nothing else but sit down and cry more. I thought I would never stop, and I did not think I wanted to.

24) Gail Friday

Gail came to my apartment. I had not asked her to. It was late. I was in my hammock, not asleep, but my muscles were slipping past feeling, when a tapping so light as to be merely a brush sounded three times without pattern on my door. I wasn't at first sure I had heard it, hoping I had not; but harder tapping pulled me from my sleep and the hammock. I can not see through the peephole; I just opened the door.

Gail stood there, but not for long, stepping past me with stiff, deliberate steps as soon as the door was open far enough. I closed it and lost her in the dark until she giggled.

"Mood lighting!" she exclaimed, her voice rising and falling. "How did you know?"

"What?" I turned on the light by the switch beside the door.

Gail blinked, squinted at the ceiling. "That's an ugly light," she said. "We need to get you a floor lamp."

"I do not use the light very often."

"Book Monkey!" She seemed surprised I was there. She dropped heavily to her knees in front of me, wrapped her arms around me, and pulled me hard against her, my back bending the wrong way, my face pressed to the side of her neck. There was that scent again. "You're so small!" That scent, and another. But for a sudden feeling--and the discomfort of her tight clutch--I would have allowed her to hold me there, her hair falling over my head; and but for her clutch I woluld have pushed away from her right then. "Oh!" she giggled. "I didn't mean that!" She let go of me, and I spun my back to her, snatched my pants--she uncurled my tail through her fist--and put them on over my embarrassment--I was glad, at least, that she was not appalled. Gail fastened the button over my tail, then reached to hug me again but fell against me, pinning me to the carpet. Her laughter convulsed against my back. "You're so cute. I love you."

"I can not breathe."

She rolled off of me, one arm still underneath me, across my belly. I was slow rising off it, and she curled her fingers and tickled my ribs. A laugh of pain and surprise escaped me. Gail shrieked and laughed anew and curled the arm and rolled me to her chest. Her grip softened but I no longer felt like escaping. Her breasts pressed against my back, whence I could see her bare knees pointed up. My legs were between them, my tail wrapped around one of her thighs. Her chest heaved with a long breath as her other hand slid like a snake across my belly. The smell of her releasing breath was dry and sweet. Its wind tickled my cheek hair. I was losing my thought to her touch; her hands swept over my torso as if searching--yet barely touching, hovering, triggering sensation from each hair. By the time a hand slid into my pants I had no mind at all. Gail rubbed her face against my head, kissed it. I went somewhere, into her touch, a touch no longer searching but examining, testing--cultivating a fire that spread across my loins and regathered into an excruciating, exquisite molten ball--it shot from me and me from it, a cry with my arching back. The crease of Gail's smile brushed my temple. She murmured, "I love you, Book Monkey. Don't leave me."

I awoke this morning in my hammock, under a blanket.

23) Leaves and Rocks

At lunch, Neil and I shared the rock. He sat at the base and leaned back against it, and I sat on top. For a while, we just ate. Then Neil sighed and laid his head on the rock. He tried to look at me, but exclaimed and looked away when the sun struck his eyes.

" Well," he said, " good luck. I guess."

"I am just going to tell her how I feel."

"You think she doesn't know."

"I can not tell, but how can I? If she did would she not talk to me?"

"Yes, she would not talk to you. What could she do? She tried the censorship road on me but found a dead end. All she can do is pretend it's not true, and hope it goes away."

"Which means she does not love me." I snorted and stared at the leaf-thick ground beside Neil.

"Probably," he said quietly. "But you still have to tell her. Make her tell you how she feels about you." He ground a fistful of leaves. "You know? you're my hero. I agonized for most of a year--showing off, primping, trying to get her attention--before Hunter blew the lid off my blog."

"How did he know about it?"

Neil took a deep breath. "I told him. I needed someone to talk to. The women here just wouldn't get it, and the news would fly. Hunter and I joked, had lunch out a few times. I thought he was cool, gave him the blog address after a couple Guinesses." He shaded his eyes and looked back at me. "Beers. Strong beers." He turned back, leaned forward, tugged his shirttail in the back, leaned back. "For three months, nothing." He turned again. "Didn't you read about this?"

"Sorry, but I listen better than I read."

"Good, because I'm telling it better here, anyway."

But then he fell silent for a moment. The squat shadow of a sapling told me we still had much of our lunch break left.

"I. ... He told me he thought I was going 'over the edge'." Neil was treading slowly over his words. "I still don't know what he was talking about." His voice rose. "Why the hell didn't he come to me? Whose business was this?"

What could I say? "I do not know."

"I know you don't," he muttered. "But what followed was worse. May freaked out. She ran to all the muckamucks in the building to try to shut down my blog. Turns out I'm an obsessive, predatory creep. Who knew? But free-speech and all that--What could they do? Except read my blog and judge me for expressing my feelings."

Neil suddenly bolted to his feet and flung the leaf bits with a hoarse cry at the wind. Brown confetti fluttered carelessly to his feet. He cast wildly about, arms taut to the fingertips, seized on a hand-sized stone and wrenched it from the earth. Every muscle in his face pulled away from the other as the stone disappeared and reappeared over his head in a whipping arc. I leapt from the rock as the stone left Neil's hand. Stone met rock, and Neil's body followed. The crack of the meeting hardnesses resounded, and the stone bounded into the litter. Neil sat heavily on the rock, closed his eyes for the span of two long breaths, then stood.

"That almost helped, " he said, then strode past me, toward work. After a moment, I followed.

22) The Face

Neil sat on his rock, I sat in my tree. His shirt was off but not hanging from a sapling. He had thrown it over his drooping head, whence it hung and clung to his knees, pushed toward him by the same breeze that brushed the hair on my cheeks. There was no sound but that in my head--my conscience, I suppose--the same sound Neil must be hearing in his own head. But I can not be sure; we have not spoken since Hunter broke his nose. If not thoughts, I can be sure we share the same shame, if in different degrees and shades.

Neil changed the gear on my bicycle. It is much easier to ride, but I have probably gotten stronger, too. My head is small. We went to the toy store but could not find a helmet to fit me, so I only ride my bicycle within the complex, and only with Neil so the stares from neighbors are deflected. Gail will not let me ride outside the complex before I get a helmet. She is probably glad I can not find one that fits. Still, I feel a freedom she seems afraid of my having.

Gail called me at home in the middle of the week. It was the first phone call I had gotten from someone I knew. I was sure I had lost my job, but it was not about anything, really. As when she picks me up from work, she asked about my day. It was not the day Hunter was hurt, and I guess she had not read about it, so I could tell her that there was nothing new. She said she was glad, but it seemed she was ready to say that before I answered her. All she did was talk about herself, and all I did was listen. There is nothing about me she does not already know, and I was not interested enough about what she was telling me to ask questions, so I was silent. The phone on my ear for so long was uncomfortable, and her voice unreal. She asked a few times if I was "still there." I still do not know why she called.

May's face followed me up the tree as it has everywhere else: The wide, wild, burning dark eyes that accused Neil and me of the injury she was attending to. She glared harder at Neil, who stared back with a vacuous fear. Her next look at me was querulous and pitying. She did not even know what happened, but her eyes told me she suspected my involvement. That she could think that shamed me as much as its truth. That face follows me from the tree; I'm sure Neil does not leave it on the rock when he gets up.

21) Wrong Book

The story continues to go around the office and grows with the embellishments of each teller, as if it had happened before a crowd. The book with which I hit Hunter even has a title--The Virgin's Lover--that I think is actually correct. But I did not make Hunter's nose bleed, and he did not provoke me. People are talking to me, if only to verify details (is anyone at work still reading the blog?), nearly all of which I must refute. I admit that it is with no little regret that I do this, but when I can I pass it off as humility. Several times, I have found May looking at me. Sometimes she smiles, sometimes she looks quickly away again. I never look away anymore. I am tired of being afraid of my feelings. I want to do something about them.

Of course, Hunter can not be avoided, but he himself has made it easier by avoiding me. Our coworkers have not rallied around the victim of my assault, and even Neil's quiet resentment of Hunter has yielded to bold taunts.

"Hey, Hunter?" he said today, approaching him at his desk with a book, inspecting its cover closely. Hunter answered with sharp corners, "Yes?"

"There's a stain on this book maybe you could help me identify."

"Why would I--"

"Oh, wait. Never mind. I know what it is." He spun the book upright and facing Hunter.

I did not know what Neil was doing, and I was curious of this stain. "What is it?"

Hunter said, "Neil," as much like a threat as a name could be.

Neil turned to display the book to me--Philippa Gregory--and cocked his head imploringly. I glanced past him at May in profile at the discharge counter.

"Wrong book," I said.

May had likely heard none of this exchange over the busy book-return machine--at least she had not turned from her work--but Neil's bark of laughter swivelled her full-face as Hunter rocketed from his chair, a missile launched at Neil. But the chair fell backwards to the floor, sticking out its legs, entangling Hunter's and dropping him hard at Neil's toes.

Even the book return seemed shocked to silence. May rose from her station. Hunter pushed himself slowly and unsteadily to his knees. A string of blood from his nose thinned and broke as he rose, leaving a pool to soak into the carpet. May ran to the sink.

20) Gail Monday

Neil walked with me to Gail's car after work. He wanted to meet Gail, I think. As we approached the passenger door its window rolled down. A light, powdery, flowery scent issued, and Gail's face appeared over the empty seat.

"Hi!" she said, much happier sounding than the last two weeks, perhaps ever, to my ears.

"Hello," I answered, but it was buried under Neil's much louder, "Hi!" I climbed through the window, and Neil leaned in.

"You must be Gail!"

Gail looked at me. "Neil?"

I said, "Yes."

She looked at Neil and smiled, and I felt squeezed. The smell was much stronger. The color on Gail's face was pale and uniform and her eyes framed with a black line. Her eyes--where were her glasses? Their faces seemed to pinch mine. I squirmed. My arm and Gail's touched, and I stiffened with a tingle, my each hair like a finger on her smooth skin. From her chest her sleeveless blouse billowed. A delicately filligreed cup cradled a breast I thought might as perfectly fit in my hand.

"I'm not pleased," Gail said, "that you got Book Monkey that bike."

Neil, his forearms crossed on the lowered window, dropped his head. "Well..." his head rose "...I thought he could use a little more freedom."

"He can already do as he pleases."

"In theory, maybe, but where's he going to go?"

"He can take a bus--as he does now."

"Not any time he wants."

"I don't want him out 'any time he wants'."

Across and back, their darting, meanly silken words wove a web across the space between them, over me, closing against my face until, flailing, I rent it.

"I like my bike," I announced, looking at neither of them but ahead, through the windshield, at the soft, rusty light of sunset on the library. "I will ride it safely." I turned to Gail, then to Neil. Each met my eyes, then each other's. "We should go." I do not know to whom I was speaking, but I was feeling a hollow hurt in my stomach that made me want Neil to go away. He did, abashed, after parting pleasantries. I rolled up my window.

Gail said, "He seems nice."

I said, "He is in love with May, too."

"I know. I've read."

"Right."

"That's so sweet."

"What?"

"You're jealous."

So I take possession of another mean human emotion while still possessed of this mean, puny, hairy body.

Gail pecked the top of my head. Her skirt showed much of her long legs.

19) Writing, Humanness, and Love

Perhaps, I am no more a writer than I am a human. I do not know what being either means. But even not all humans are writers. What does that make me? Not being human, I can not become human. I speak and write a human language, however primitively, but that can not make me more or less than what I am, whatever that is. Even my clothes are not human; my pants have a hole in them for my tail to come out of. My capacity for writing, I suppose, has grown from a necessity, a compensation, such as, I have heard, a blind man's acute hearing, which, nonetheless, makes him no less blind, as writing makes me no more human. But less monkey? How much monkey can I be but for this body? How much monkey do I want to be? To lessen this torment of what I think is love, I would be all monkey. To understand it, I would not be monkey at all. Hunter could be right, and I am not in love at all. After all, he is all human. But so is Neil, and he does not doubt my feelings. Neil writes, too. Does this mean writers do not know love?

18) Disquiet

Quiet is difficult to find anymore. Traffic never seems to stop, at home or at the library. The space between noise is almost gone. I can not get deep enough in to the woods or high enough up a tree to hear just the animals and the wind in the leaves. And there are the beating of my heart and the thoughts in my head, the loudest of all. The library, itself, is not the sanctuary I thought it would be, but a playground of computers and cellular phones for the patrons, and a hotbed of petty resentments in the back rooms. Shelving, I can get away from none of it.

"Beamer, my friend!" Hunter approached me as I climbed to the top of a fiction shelf with a book by Phillipa Gregory. Over his shoulder I could see a book cart stalled in genre fiction.

"Hunter." I turned back to my work. I may yet be naive about many human things, but I have been designated enough strangers' friend to have become sensitive to its quite different meaning.

Hunter clapped me on the back, and for the briefest but most conscious moment, I both lost and found myself--lost a new self and found an old self: My arm, with the book, threw itself backward, and by the muffled boom and the lack of vibration in my arm, I knew that the book's contact with the side of Hunter's head was all but entire. Following my arm, I turned to see him stagger back a step. His ear and cheek were already pink, but the rest of his face was darkening, as well.

"Please," I said, "do not touch me like that." At the end of the aisle a peering head retreated. I recognized the trailing hair.

17) Context

I pulled a chair from an unoccupied desk to a cart of DVD's and stood on it to sort the top shelf. All these movies I have never seen are just words and numbers on stickers on the spines of plastic cases. At least I know enough of what that means to do my job. Much of what is here in the library has no context to my life besides putting it in order. I can not tell if it has any more meaning to any of my coworkers. I see few of them read more than magazines, and they talk mostly of television shows and, in whispers, other people, whom they somehow pity without compassion. Patrons, to some of them, are just people who keep them from doing their jobs.

Neil said "Hey" to me as he passed to the printer. I said, "Hello." Meg came near to place a discharged book on a cart adjacent to mine. "Hello," I said to her and smiled. I know what my smile looks like, so I said to her reaction, "I will not bite you." Neil's explosive laugh turned every head but mine. I hoped he was not laughing at me. (He assured me otherwise later. He had thought I had made a joke at Meg's expense.) No one else laughed. I could not read Meg's wide-eyed look at Neil over my head. She covered herself with a nervous giggle and served up one of those niceties with a question mark that has an answer no one listens to, so I did not answer it. May was not back there but on the circulation desk out front.

I am mostly sure that I want May to have read the blog, because I am mostly sure that she needs to know how I feel about her. Perhaps because I have not written much about her she could have already read my words and not have understood how I feel. I hardly understand myself. I do not know her any better than I know any other woman there, yet I am drawn to her by a mysterious fascination. Is that all that love is?

Neil has not been much help. He has never been sure himself, even after all those words he has written, if he was, is, or has been in love with May. He seems to spiral ever deeper into his head looking for his heart, whereas I seem to be going the other way around.

It seems to matter less each day what others think of me. I am tired of hiding what I am even if I don't know what that is, because I have been, perhaps, hiding it from myself as well. If my smile frightens, listen to my voice. If my voice startles, listen to my words. Listen to me. Talk to me. I need friends.

16) Signs

Today I shelved mostly in the low shelves--Easies, DVD's, and magazines--because my legs were weak from trying to ride my bike. My legs are long enough but not strong enough yet, unless I am going down a slope, when I do not have to push the pedals. Neil said he will try to find a lower gear to put on it. Mostly, I like shelving the Easy books; I can carry more books and easily cross to the next aisle over the wooden cubicles and bins stacked only a few feet high. I like reading many of the books, too, except for Curious George, who is a stupid little monkey who makes a lot of trouble and still gets everyone to love him in the end. He understands human speech but acts like a baby, so he is always forgiven for not knowing better. There are not many monkeys in stories that I like. If they are not stupid, they might as well be human children. I like Caps for Sale, though. The monkeys say only "Tsz, tsz," but that was before any monkeys could speak, I am sure, and they are not bad but playful. They give the pedlar his caps back, after all.

A woman stood outside the aisles beside the cart from which I was gathering books, surveying an unfamiliar scene. Her hair was a different indeterminate color than May's, two colors that did not belong together, and though long, it appeared stiff as well, moving with the head that scanned back and forth, instead of trailing the movement. She could not see me, I was sure, though I stood only a few feet from her side. The profile of her breast sloped then bulged under her gray t-shirt.

With an armful of books, I straightened and said, "What are you needing?"

She turned, startled, but did not see me at first. When she did, I saw that look. I am not the first monkey to speak. Hunter even said there was a sign on the front door that "warned" patrons I was in here. As, like all employees there, I enter the building by the back door, I have never seen this sign, and most days it is hard to believe it is there.

"Um...."

Neil and I sat at the bottom of a grassy slope. The bike lay nearby where I was no longer able to pedal it. We passed a water bottle between us.

"Why do you not like Hunter?" I asked Neil. I thought his answer might help me understand my own feelings toward Hunter.

"Oh, it's not that I don't like him. It's that I hate him." But he laughed. "No, I don't hate anybody. I just thought that would be a cool dramatic effect. Worked for me, anyway." He looked past me up the slope, where the tires had depressed a line in the moist grass. "Maybe you weren't here then. And, obviously, you haven't read all of my blog." He held up a hand as I started to apologize. "That's okay. It's a lot of words--a lot of excruciating, self-important words." Then, like a car swooshing past, out came the words, "Hunter told May about my blog."

I asked the woman, "May I help you find a book?"

"Uh, no thank you. I don't know what I'm looking for." She turned, and I studied the shape of her moving buttocks as she walked quickly away.

Neil said there was no such sign.

15) Watching

From up here, at home, the apartment complex looks like two E's with their corners missing, one turned to face the other. A street runs between them and ends at a bank of dumpsters. Two lines of parking lots cross the street parallel to one another. There are no second floors. Each apartment shares a back wall, so that half of them face the parking lot and the others face either the woods, like mine, or, on the other three sides, the large toy store, the cemetery, or the main road, from which our complex road reaches us. In the center of the E all apartments face a parking lot. I do not know if those are more expensive than mine, but I like mine more. The missing corners are the access to the backside apartments. Mine is beside an open corner.

I watch Neil and Hunter now nearly as much as I do May. They rarely have anything to say to each other, and Neil does not look at Hunter except to stare at the back of his retreating head. Hunter is somewhat solicitous of May, and I know the look on Neil's face for my own when Hunter is around her, for Neil and I will often turn to each other with our glued lips and pursed brows. I like none of these new feelings. Are there any good ones to have? Do I have to earn the better part of humanity, or is this as human as I am allowed to be? What did The Center really want me to be, putting me in a human dwelling and having me work at a human job? Halfway up the tree tonight, I realized I still wore my pants.

I can see Neil's car before he turns into the complex, shortly before I hear it. He parks in the space I have been given, in front of the apartment behind mine. I can no longer see him, but I hear a door creak open and bang closed. Then another. Presently, he emerges at the corner of my apartment, bent almost double over the bicycle he pushes along the concrete walk. He leans it carefully against the wall before my door and knocks. I decide to remain silent, but a smile opens my lips as Neil lays his head on my door, his mouth open slightly. Only Neil makes me smile. I stir, uncomfortable with the tension of contained mirth. Neil's eyes shift and see me. I laugh. He grins. I come down.

14) Suspicion, Friends and Blogs

I am finally grasping that nothing I have written here has been private. I want to tell about Girl, but I know she is reading, and maybe Gail is reading, too. Now that this is not on the blog roll at work I doubt anyone there is reading it. I can not write it to myself, though, and I must say what I must.

I am suspicious. I have never been that before, and I do not like it. Girl calls me a "chump" for not thinking my supervisor has bad intentions toward my blog, but what bad intentions could there be? I did not know why Hunter would tell me I am not in love, but now I am afraid of him. And how can Gail be in love with me? What have I done? Who is good? Who are my friends?

Neil likes my blog. He even says I am a good writer. He has a blog, too. He described it as a "tortuous odyssey into the abyss of hope." After he said that he laughed and snatched his wallet from his pocket, flipped it open, yanked a pen from the fold and scribbled on a pad inside. "Wow," he said. "That's pretty good." I have read some of his blog. It is long, and I think the writing must be very good, because I can not understand much of it. Ideas I do not read well, but actions I can follow. Neil said, "This should be a cautionary tale to you." He lifted my tail between us. "Don't get this caught under a rocker."

Neil is a friend, I am sure, but I wonder why he is not afraid of me being in love with May. Probably because he knows as well as I do the impossibility of my hopes, and not because I am a monkey, but because he has failed and can not imagine anyone's success. "You are going to get hurt," he said. "You have already been hurt, just by falling in love. And when you realize how foolishly you spent your emotional capital, that's when you will feel it." He looked off, staring at the thought he set free. The left of his mouth curled and he snorted softly. "It would be nice if I were lying."

13) Gail Monday

This Monday Gail was not as quiet as the one before. She did not cry, at first. She asked about my day, and I told her what I shelved and that someone had stepped on my tail in juvenile fiction, but that was a child and did not really hurt. Gail smiled. Of course I did not mention May, how I stared at her through the cart I sorted in the workroom as she sat at the drive-up window. I thought I was relieved that May did not appear to have read my blog, but I am not. I do not know what I feel, instead. I do not even know what I see when I stare at her. I could look at her in pieces--the smooth, glossy skin and the hair of a color I can not determine and have never seen on someone else; the tapering fingers that seem too long for her small hands--but though they are all beautiful they are not the beautiful that she is. I want her to notice me.

Gail helped me bring in the groceries and place them in the refrigerator, then I asked her, "Why did you cry last week?" I had to know if I had done something wrong. I wasn't sure she heard me, because she was silent and did not look at me. Even when she finally spoke she did not look at me, but glanced around my spare room.

"I was hurt."

"Did I hurt you?"

"Yes. No. I hurt myself. I expected too much." Her voice teetered. Still she did not look at me. As I craned up at her standing there so rigid, I saw a tear fall and followed it to the carpet.

"I did hurt you."

"Stop it!" Her hands flew to her face and she sobbed into them.

"What did you expect? What was too much?"

She sniffed hard. "It's my fault!" She let her hands fall and hesitated before wiping them on her pants legs. She took off her glasses and knuckled each eye. Dropping suddenly to her knees, she finally met my eye, and I couldn't help but see deeply into her left one, olive green bursting rusty brown from the center. "Dammit, Book Monkey! I'm in love with you!" But then she smiled, not to my face but to herself, or to my arm, which she stroked lightly, once. I felt something deeper than her touch.

12) Climbing and Neil

Lately, the tree at work has been more difficult to climb. I do not lose my grip, but I am not as confident of it as before. Or am I ? I do not know, because I have never had to think about it. I can get winded now, finding a branch, and it seems cars are always in my ears. There is little peace. I have been coming down sooner, when Neil has not been below.

On warm, sunny days I have seen Neil in the woods. There is a large rock in a small clearing that I can usually see from the tree in which I choose to sit that day. He just sits there, eating his lunch. One day he took off his shirt. I saw his smooth back broaden and shrink several times slowly. His head rolled on his neck then he leaned on his knees and dropped his head. He stayed like that a long time. I could not stay in the tree; for the first time there in the woods, I was uncomfortable. I tried to be quiet, but Neil raised his head and leaned backward over the rock to peer up at me.

"Hello," he said, smiling.

"Hello. I am sorry to disturb you." I climbed the rest of the way down and stood beside the rock so he wouldn't have to lean backward anymore.

"Oh, that's okay. You aren't a naked lady, but at least you'd talk to me. Wouldn't you?"

"Yes, I would. But I do not have much to say."

"Oh, but you do. You've said a lot already, and you will say a lot more." When I just looked at him, wondering, he grinned then looked away and then down. "Believe me," he said toward the ground, "you won't know how to stop."

Looking at the shadows, I said, "I must get back."

"To write."

"Yes."

"About May."

"Yes. I guess everyone knows."

"I don't know about that. Some people are just out of the loop. I'm out of most loops, but this loop is right up my shoelace." He looked at me but seemed amused with himself. "I write every day about May and how impossible she is to understand. But it's just sour grapes. She doesn't care a fig for me."

"She does not give you fruit?" When Neil laughed I knew I had said something naive.

"No--and wouldn't give me the time of day if I had a clock on my forehead." He waved a hand before his face. "That's not true, mainly because I would never ask. I asked once, and nice guys don't ask twice." Hooking two fingers from each hand in the air, he repeated, "Nice guys."

"Are you in love with her, too?"

He huffed. "I don't know. I don't even know what love is."

"Neither do I, but I am sure I am in love."

His slate-gray eyes softened. "I believe you. And, I'm sorry, but that saddens me."

11) Mine

Then this blog is mine now. What do I do with it? I wonder if I should stop, but I come home eager to write and come down from my tree at lunch eager to type it in and "post" it. Somebody I do not think I know wrote a comment praising my writing but also asking difficult questions. I feel good that at least this person is reading (if there are others I do not) and seems to care. It helps me write, feeling that someone cares. I want it to be May that cares, but I as yet do not even know if she has read it. I do not know how likely it is that she should have, and I can not tell by her actions around me that she has. How would she react, anyway? Sometimes I think indifference is the best I can hope for, in which case I may already be receiving it and should be satisfied. But, of course, that is not what I want.

How must I look to someone who has only known humans? My attraction to a human does not mean a human can be attracted to a monkey, does it? Or does it just mean that humans are more attractive than monkeys? Or am I more human than monkey? That is what I wonder often, when I am not in a tree.

10) Knowing

So, everyone knows. My supervisor came to me. She has always been clearly uncomfortable with me, even before I ever spoke to her. She does not look at me directly when she can help it, but she will glance away from the person (with only her eyes) with whom she is speaking to see me, as if concerned with what I am doing.

She said, "We need to talk about your blog." She does not speak my name, but few do. Sometimes, I would as soon no one did. It may be what I am, but it is not who I am.

"Okay." I stopped sorting the picture books on the cart.

"In my office."

"Yes." I followed her, and eyes followed us. My hair bristled. She stopped at her door, and I continued in and climbed into a chair across from her desk as she closed the door slowly, hesitating before allowing the latch to click.

She sat. She looked at me. What does she see that frightens her?

"Your blog...is...very personal."

"Yes."

"Did you know everyone would read it?"

"No, I did not. I would not have written it if I had known anyone else would read it."

"You knew I would read it."

"Yes. I trusted you."

"Honestly, I didn't read it before I put it on the blog roll."

"Blog roll?"

"The list of blogs we've made."

"Oh. I did not know about that."

She looked at me a moment. I never thought that she would allow herself to stare at me like that. "Anyway," she said, turning blankly to her computer monitor, "I've been asked to have you make a new one, instead."

I wanted to know who asked, but I dreaded the answer. "Okay. I will. I am sorry."

"So am I," she said immediately and to my face.

9) Above and Below

I sit in the trees at home, too. I have a small room, but with only a hammock and a television it is much larger--larger, anyway, than an elevator. My room is on the ground and faces tall trees, thin, dark trees with thick, cracked bark on trunks naked to nearly the tops. I used to tire reaching the branches.

Something has changed at work. Hunter is one of the people there that talks to me. He talks to everyone. He talked to me today, in fiction in the morning. That is how I know something has changed.

"Hey, Beamer! Dude!" His mouth went up on one side, and I felt my heart beat a bit faster.

"Hello, Hunter." I never know what else to say, and Hunter just stared down at me with the grin. I watched his mouth for more words. "Do you have more to say?"

He looked at me a moment longer, then barked a "Ha!" laugh and looked briefly away. Then he bent and placed his hands on his knees, a posture I dislike, but by his face I knew that he was not about to talk to me in loud, simple, musical words. "Seriously!" he said. "Your blog?"

There is far to see from my tree, so high and so few other trees in the way, but not a lot to see, especially at night, when I am up there most often, when no one can see me and I am free to not wear pants--lights and streets, and on the sunrise side a glow from the city.

"What do you mean?"

Hunter glanced back and forth along the towering shelves and peeked through both sides. "Bold move!" he said to me, his eyes widening.

"What do you mean?" He was taking too long to make sense.

"What do I mean, what do I mean, what do I mean! Do you seriously have a crush on May?"

"I am in love with May. How do you know?"

"Beamer. Your blog. Everybody knows!" He leaned in very close. "And you are not in love!"

8) Love and Writing

If May is beautiful, I do not know in what way. It is not why I am in love with her, I am sure. That is all I am sure of with May. Why I am in love with her, or what that even means, I do not know. I did not decide it. It told me and I believed it, though I did not want to and struggled against it. But I could not so much as raise a hand against it. (A briefly shimmering memory shows me something much like that, with intimately known trees and a bottomless fall.) Now, I would not dare fight it, though I am sure I do not like it. Perhaps it will go away if I continue to not understand it. I am just not sure I can live this way. I am not human enough.

I wonder why my supervisor wanted Gail to know about the blog. I hope I did nothing wrong. There are so many things one can not do that I am sure I am confused and have done one of them. So much does not make sense. So many words and so much one can not say to someone else. Words seem to be the weapons of the most civilized people. I think Gail cried because I did something wrong. She still has not told me. But I still have my job, and no one has told me to stop.

Writing is something I must do now. It is an urgency. It is a need like eating and sleeping and intrudes on both. Like love, it was not asked for, but it is much more welcome. Because of love, I need to write. I understand this need as little as I understand love, but I know it is just as necessary. I hope that it is more rewarding.

7) Here and There

I had been in a tree, I do not know what kind. I eat there, not always in that tree, just where I am sure I can not be seen. I eat what I can carry up there. It does not take me long, but I stay there for the whole time I am given for my break. I do nothing after I eat but sit. When the cars are not moving in the parking lot I hear the rustling of the smallest things. My ears turn my head to them, the brown bird throwing leaves about, the beetle on the bark. There is life not human, not mechanical, there. Sometimes, there, I find I am barely breathing and have been there forever but only an instant. Then I breath deeply and sigh. But I came down today after the sun had moved only twenty minutes. I had to write.

"Why do you cry?" I asked Gail, but her shoulders only heaved. Her lips stretched over her teeth like a smile, only her face was pink, her eyes were smeared, and drops fell off of her jaw. She was beautiful then, I think. I did not ask her again because she did not seem to need to tell me or did not think I needed to know.

6) In-between

Now I have too many thoughts, or feelings--I am not sure which they are. Life was simple, though how it is not so any longer I am not sure. My job has not changed, and my life outside of it is not different, I think. Thoughts and feelings have changed. People have changed. I shelve the books, but with less of myself. I finish, then wonder what I have done. I eat and wonder what I have eaten. What was in-between?

5) Gail Monday

Gail picks me up after work on Mondays. It is a part of her job to take me to the store to buy my food for the week. It is just fruit and leaves, and the store is not far from my home, but I could not carry it all back by myself. I think I could ride a small bicycle, but Gail said she does not like the idea. She thinks it would not be safe. Things can be too safe. I would still like to try. It has been almost a year.

Gail always asks me about my day, but one day is like another, just different books to shelve. Only my feelings make a difference, and I do not know if I can talk about them, even if I knew how. But Gail is quiet tonight. Though this change is welcome, I feel it is not good. We are at a red traffic light when she says, "I read your blog."

"Oh," is all I can say back.

"Your supervisor thought I should see it."

"Oh."

"You could have told me." Her lips did not quite meet when she spoke the last word.

"But I did not want you to know."

At this, a sound broke from her that startled me. A horn honked, because the light was now green, and she stepped hard on the floor and the car jumped across the street. She was crying.

4) Time and Friends

Days go by as days go by. They are not fast or slow. Time does not mean much to me. I am up before the day and know where the sun will be when I need to meet the bus to work. I think this is not normal, because I see clocks everywhere. When I started at the library I would look at the clock several times a day, curious more than bored. Every time I looked it read twenty minutes before the next hour. I do not look anymore, but when I get the urge to, I know how much of the hour is gone. The day is over when the lights flicker. Someone use to come for me after that, but I did not like that, so I now start back to the workroom as soon as I get that signal.

I do not really know what friends are, but I guess I might have some here. Some people speak to me before I even see them, when they could just pretend I am not there. They ask me how I am or how it is going, and I never know what to say, because I do not know the answers. At The Center I was told these are "niceties," things people say to show they are nice. I will not understand that. Can not people just be nice? When I do answer, I hope to not see amusement in their eyes. No doubt my voice is strange to them. It is strange to me yet. May has rarely heard my voice above a mumble. I never speak to her first. Friends must be more than just nice, I think, but I do not know what that means.

3) Small Room

It seems I have done this right. I have not heard any talk about me. What I understood was that no one would actually read these blogs, anyway, that the committee would only check that you made one. I should be safe. That is good, because now this is necessary to me.

May pushed a cart out for me today. I would not have asked her to, but she was the only person in the workroom that could leave their station, except for supervisors, and I have the impression that they do not do that. Shelving non-fiction means a ride in the elevator. I do not like elevators. I do not like small rooms--or having them move. So I concentrated with deep breaths and did not talk. Neither did May. We stood on opposite sides of the cart, and because of my height I could not see her. I wanted to, but my heart was beating fast enough already.

I opened the door to the public area for May to bring the cart out. She thanked me and I said, "You are welcome." "Where would you like it?" she said. I said, "As close to the middle as you can without getting in anybody's way." I pulled and steered from the front as she shoved. When the cart was where I needed it I looked up at her and thanked her and looked away again before she answered politely. I gave her time to turn around before I looked again, but I waited too long. She had turned the corner.

I took my time. I had to; daydreaming slowed me sometimes to a halt with a book in mid-air. But as shelving is all I do, it does not matter how long it takes me to empty a cart, and I always empty the cart.

2) Respect

Some days are better than others. The busier the better. Hiding away in the stacks with a full cart of books, away from Her. She knows I exist--it would be pathetic to say otherwise--but only as a coworker, which is still better than being just a monkey, as I am to most everyone else there. I suppose she respects me. At least she seems to feel she should, and does her best.

I am not often bothered as I work. Patrons don't know I can talk, and I wouldn't dare speak first; I have seen that look enough. Children--most of them, the ones not made afraid by their parents--like me, or are just fascinated by me. Some pet me like a dog. I don't like it, but at least it is attention. The worst ones I have come to recognize and can scale the shelves out of their sight and reach, making sure to reel in my tail. I will not be yanked to the floor again.

Her name is May, and we probably have nothing in common. She keeps to herself mostly, so I do not overhear much that she says. I hear a lot, because my coworkers seem to forget I can understand them or forget I am there at all, but May does not seem to join in the water cooler talk. But what could we have in common? What could we ever share? What sense is there in having feelings for her? Is that what makes it love?

I think I do a good job. When Gail brought me to the library from The Center she told them I scored exceptionally on certain tests that must have been relevant to the job. I think I already had the job, that it was not really the library's choice, and Gail was guiltily trying to justify my hiring. But I understand my job and did not take long to learn it. No one corrects me, but I wonder if that has anything to do with my work.

1) A Start

It is true: I am a book monkey. It is even my name now: Book Monkey. It might always have been. Since childhood (whenever that was) I have been trained to shelve books. Do not ask me why. There must be more useful things for a genius-level simian to do. But a smart monkey is still not human. There is much I am not allowed to do, as society still deems me unsanitary and uncouth. Society must also think I am without feeling, but I feel the resentment when I ask for a cart to be pushed out to the stacks for me. After all, how many of my coworkers have able-bodied friends that could perform all of the duties of this job? But they would have to be paid more than I am willing to accept, and times are tight for employers as well.

Though I'm required, as are all my coworkers, to create this blog for training, I welcome it perhaps more than they, for I have something to say, and I have no other confidant. I feel more than just resentment. I feel love, for someone that works here. But she can never know, because we can never be. If I have done this right she will still not know, and I will feel better for having written it out loud. A genius monkey is still not all that smart a human, though, and instructions sometimes confuse me, and it was easy, but I feel I can only ask for so much accommodation, and this is where my pride has drawn the line. I hope my pride is not my down fall.