“I don’t even know where to begin.”
“The beginning.”
“They gave me an assistant I didn’t want. Whether I even needed him was up for debate.”
“And he’s an idiot.”
“I’m not comfortable with that. Writing him off as an idiot doesn’t feel right.”
“A savant, then?”
“Oh, no. No, no. Drug use and a massive failure by the education system. He’s not bright, I’m just not sure it’s more than fifty-percent his fault.”
“An unwise fool. Tragic.”
“One day he turns to me and says, ‘My roommate and I are getting a maid. Guess who it’s going to be?’ Real suspenseful-like.”
“I can’t wait.”
“His eyes go wide: ‘A monkey!’ And I think, Well, of course. It turns out the roommate is a grip on commercial sets, and one of the shoots had a pair of monkeys.”
“He thought he would bring one home. Who would notice? They’ve got an extra.”
“And then train it to pick up after them. I think it says a lot that he believed their standard of living would increase by introducing a fucking monkey into the equation.”
“‘Step two: Replace toilet tissue with fly paper.’”
“He basically sounds like he was raised in an east coast fishing village, picked up the affectations, and was then whisked away to an Appalachian shack for his teenage years. And then hitched a ride on a turnip truck and was dropped off outside my office.”
“So they didn’t get the monkey, then?”
“One day I caught him laughing at something on his computer screen. I wheel over and he’s looking at bags of potato chips on eBay.”
“That doesn’t even make sense. And he is?”
“Twenty-four. A grown man. Of sorts.”
“Ruffles and monkeys.”
“But the malapropisms–I’m telling you, if you ever needed evidence of the majesty of a merciful God.”
“He ever have a friend commit ‘suitcase’?”
“Well, he was in a car accident–rear-ended on the highway–a few weeks ago. I ask him, Did the bastard drive away? ‘Of course not,’ he tells me, ‘but even if he did, it wouldn’t have mattered. As soon as he hit me, I looked in the rearview and mesmerized his license plate number.’”
“Incredible. And for his next trick?”
“He was looking for another job and had to fill out some forms and questionnaires on-line. He’s doing the personality test, but it’s written in English elegant enough that it makes no sense to him. I end up writing it for him.”
“He cheated on a personality test?”
“I did my best to make him seem like a decent person. Then came the aptitude portion, which, again, was written in no language with which he was familiar. I ace it for him.”
“And this presented no problem of ethics?”
“Of course it did! But I weighed my options. As far as I could reason, it was worth however many sleepless nights if it removed him entirely from my life.”
“But he didn’t get the job.”
“Well, there was still a face-to-face interview. After I helped him out, he went around the office the rest of the day telling people about the altitude test he’d just written. I don’t think he has a second gear.”
“How many years do you figure he has left? I see him as a Patient Zero type.”
“There was a close call a while back. We upgraded lights in the studio last year, so rather than hot lamps, we put in a flash strobe system. Keeps the heat down, evens the light out. The drawback, if there must be one, is the strobe; big seizure-inducing flashes all day. I don’t really notice since I’m behind the camera, but everybody else gets all dramatic about it and acts like they’re in the middle of a fucking supernova. But towards the end of the first day, there’s a lull in my shooting, and he turns to me looking exasperated and says, ‘Man, all this flashing light is going to give me leprosy.’”
“Impossible. It’s an act. Someone is doing this for your benefit.”
“I let it slide, though. Maintain decorum, you know? But a few weeks later, I’ve got a model in, and some other people from the warehouse are hanging out, and he says it again.”
“And everybody yelled, ‘Surprise!’”
“It just hung in the air for a second, and everybody exchanged glances to make sure they’d heard correctly.”
“‘All this flashing light is going to give me leprosy.’”
“Exactly. The room erupts, and he has no idea. He’s laughing along, just for the hell of it. The model, perfectly deadpan, says, ‘Yeah, it’s so bright I think my skin is going to fall off.’ More laughs. Finally, somebody tells him, ‘I think you mean epilepsy.’”
“But he doesn’t care.”
“Not a bit. Couldn’t matter less to him. He just laughs and shrugs his shoulders and goes back to work.”
“I’m in awe. Is he at least good at his job?”
“Technically. It’s not exactly brain surgery. It took him a week of classes to get the basics down, so I figure a top-tier chimpanzee would take three, four at the most.”
“If only the monkey plot had come to fruition. The thing could have assumed his entire identity.”
“And without the accent. God. I’m now officially depressed.”