The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore - Benjamin Hale [246]
That is how Céleste and I spent three days. These were three days of odd bliss that I spent with my little animal friend. These were my last three days of freedom in the human world.
In addition to all our joyful cartoons, we also, occasionally, watched the news. Although the time we spent in that room almost immediately blurred into the animal-minded time of liquid, dreamlike continuum (I had unplugged the alarm clock, and took but passing notice or interest in the lightening or darkening of the rising day or falling night behind the thickly drawn curtains), I believe it must have been on the second afternoon or night that, as a cartoon we were enjoying had ended and been superseded on that channel by some less diverting programming, I snatched up the remote control and began flicking through the many channels, looking for something fun to watch, and settled briefly on a local news broadcast. Céleste, who sat beside me on the bed in our nest, picking with her dirty fingers at a platter of seaweed-wrapped salmon pâté, gave me a lazy-blooded and dismissive wave of her hand to indicate that I should skip past this channel, because it was boring. However, I shushed her, because I thought I recognized a building on the screen. The establishing shot that led into the news segment was of the Erman Biology Center: I recognized that magisterial ornate gray stone architecture, the cornices and gargoyles, the ivy crawling up the stones. It was a video of a curious crowd gathered around the entrance to the building, which was cordoned off by long strips of bright yellow police tape. A lot of police officers were milling around by the building’s entrance as two paramedics wheeled what looked like a body out of the doors on a gurney. The body was covered with a sheet. I turned up the volume. The voice on the TV told us that a certain Dr. Norman Plumlee, a research scientist and tenured faculty at the University of Chicago and lab director of the Behavioral Biology Laboratory at the University of Chicago’s Institute for Mind and Biology, renowned in scientific circles for a long career of groundbreaking research on animal cognition and primate psychology, was found dead that morning in a laboratory on the third floor of the Erman Biology Center at the University of Chicago by a graduate student who worked at the lab, who had immediately notified the police. Dr. Plumlee appeared to have been brutally murdered by an unknown assailant. The police had no suspects and no leads at that time, and knew of no possible motives for the crime. Dr. Plumlee was beloved by his students, some of whom were interviewed, croaking their bafflement at the strange and horrible crime into the reporter’s camera in various states of shock and tears. Dr. Plumlee’s wife was also interviewed, expressing shock, anger, and immeasurable sorrow. The police were offering a reward for any information leading to the resolution of this terrible crime. Then the newscasters promised weather and sports updates after the break, and a commercial came on, and I continued flicking through the channels until I found a Porky Pig cartoon, which made us laugh, and I picked up the phone and ordered up another bottle of wine, and again we pleasantly forgot all the trouble in the world, the leavening effects of the wine and the Looney Tunes banishing all thoughts dark and grave from our minds as the birdsong banishes winter.
Later (was it the following