The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore - Benjamin Hale [78]
Everyone, that is, except for Lydia. She seemed to understand. To forgive me, even. It’s to be expected in this line of work. Chimps bite. Get out of the primatology business if you can’t take the primates, is what I say. I really don’t blame myself for it at all—I’m not that cruel.
As a result of this unfortunate incident, I once again had to sleep in that fucking laboratory for a time afterward. I do not know if this was intended as punishment, or what. I do not remember if it was days or weeks. It was mostly because, at least for a while, not even Lydia trusted me to behave properly in a domestic human environment.
The upshot of this temporary arrangement was that I got to see Haywood Finch again. I had not seen my friend in many months, and that first evening that I was back in the lab at night, I remember the sudden surge of joy I felt in my chest when I heard the familiar sound of his walk, stomping and jangling down the hallway, the kLOMPa-whap-SHLINK kLOMPa-whap-SHLINK of his boots, his chain, his hoop of many keys, when I saw his familiar blurry lumpy shadow looming in that familiar doorway, behind the panel of smoked glass in the door to room 308: BEHAVIORAL BIOLOGY LABORATORY. He opened the door, and snapped on the buzzing fluorescent lights, which slowly fluttered on, nzt-nzt-nzt-nzzzzzzzzzz.
“Haywood!” I shrieked.
“Bruno!” he screamed.
That night, even Haywood forgot his routine. He was so glad to see me again. That night, we sat up in the laboratory, separated by a wall of glass, and howled gibberish at each other almost until the beginning of dawn.
I have never, by the way, eaten a raisin since. Raisins make me want to vomit. I hate raisins.
XVII
I shall never forget the day that Lydia, on one of our outings, took me to the Museum of the Art Institute of Chicago. On that day, all the dormant potential for sweetness and light buried deep in some volcanic cranny of Bruno’s soul erupted forth to the surface, igniting fires, fires!
This day is important, Gwen, because I became an artist on that day. It had been a few months since the biting incident. It was summer again. It’s a snarling irony that there was actually a bit of a row that took place on the museum steps that morning between Lydia and a rent-a-cop, some dough-faced lout in a cryptofascist uniform with shiny buttons all over it claiming to be a museum employee, concerning the question of whether or not a chimpanzee should be admitted entrance into this temple of Eleusinian Mysteries—an art museum. Bigotry! Just when I thought Lydia and this Gestaposeur might actually come to blows, some higher-up from the museum’s bureaucracy intercepted the argument as third-party arbiter, and it was finally determined that my admittance was permissible depending on the caveats that I was to be at all times: (one) secured on my leash, and (two) either holding Lydia’s hand or being physically carried by her, which was fine with me because there was no other place in the world I’d rather have been than dangling from the neck of my Lydia.
The first paintings to really excite me were the many female nudes: reclining, standing, bathing, sleeping, descending staircases, splishing about in streams or wringing riverwater from their hair, standing on clams, brandishing swords and scales in allegorical triptychs while their diaphanous garments teasingly slip from their shoulders, unabashedly loafing