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By Root 2242 0

hiding. During these months, I dared not try to return to Chicago to come back to Lydia, although she was never far from my thoughts. I too much feared what would have become of me. Of course I wondered—bitterly, I wondered—if it had been Tal who had sold me out to the biomedical research lab. I shuddered to think it. I could not believe this seriously, though. I was sure that forces beyond her control—and far beyond Lydia’s—had resulted in my forced removal to New York, and my attempted enslavement. I was on my own. What could I have done? Where could someone in my situation have gone? There seemed but two options: science or entertainment. I could have gone crawling back to science, if it was certain slavery with the benefits of security and relative comfort I had wanted, and of course I did not want that. So instead I went into show business. And I liked it. I liked to regale an audience with my clacking teeth and hideous form, I enjoyed the attention, I loved to act, and I loved to scramble around in the audience riling up all the shrieking children with hat in hand and kazoo in mouth, while Leon’s skilled magician’s hands twisted and bent matter into wild manifestations of apparent magic.

I mentioned to Leon that I wanted a new nose. At first he balked.

“Why in the blighted world would you want to beautify that gloriously revolting face of yours?” he said between a gulp of beer and a belch. “Nature has obviously intended you for a life in entertainment! That face is your golden goose! Don’t butcher it!”

“I don’t care what nature intended me for. I want a human nose! I’m going to get one, and I don’t need anyone’s permission, either.”

“Claptrap, Bruno! I am your employer. I shall decide what your nose looks like, for your appearance is my business.”

“Before you met me, Leon, you were a buffoon shouting Shakespeare in the subway. Business never picked up until I came. You wouldn’t make a pittance without me!”

“Great snakes!” Leon bashed a fist on the bar counter, causing the glasses on it to wobble. “What insubordination! Audrey! Did you hear such vomitous insubordination issue from the mouth of the insolent animal who sits even now beside me? Don’t forget under whose roof you sleep, you ungrateful wretch!”

“I want a new nose! A nose, a nose! Leon, forgive me! I hate my nose! It’s a burden! It is an albatross that hangs from the neck of my face!”

“And how, you vain ape you, would you even begin to pay for cosmetic surgery? Pshaw! Surely it costs many thousands of dollars, if not millions. No, I’m afraid not, not in your income bracket. Such luxuries—such vanities!—are for the rich, and are not afforded the humble Shakespearean actor. This is not even to mention the logistics of it all. You’ve no head for logistics, Bruno. You fail utterly to grasp the delicate interworkings of reality.” A pause, and Leon went on: “And why ever would you want to attach a human nose to your ape face? Why blaspheme it so?”

“Because I’m a human now. I want to look like one.”

“You are not human!” Leon snorted. “Much as it begrudges me to pay you compliments. But call a spade a spade.”

“I am not an animal!” I cried out in frustration.

Leon reified his posture on his bar stool, and with a daintily dismissive flutter of his fingers, said: “I quote Jonson: ‘An ape’s an ape and a varlet’s a varlet, though they be clothed in silk or scarlet.’ ”

“What’s that?”

“That’s you: an ape in scarlet.”

“I meant the quotation.”

“Ben Jonson, obviously!” Leon roared. “The poor man’s Shakespeare.”

“I know a guy,” Audrey offered from behind the bar.

“What?” said Leon. “As do I. I know many ‘guys.’ But only one man.” He indicated himself by cocking his head and raising his eyebrows.

“No, I mean I know a guy who does plastic surgery. Well, I know about him.”

“Silence, shrew!” said Leon.

“Tell me more,” I pleaded. “What is his name? Have you met him?”

Audrey leaned over the counter toward me and spoke quietly, even though there was no one else in the bar besides me and Leon.

“I don’t know his name. I only know someone who knows him. You know