Monkey Business

He lived in the small apartment with his pet monkey and painted portraits of people who might have been. They sat for him in his cold rooms, glad for the attention, while he struggled to get everything right: the lighting, the skin texture, the philosophies, existential and otherwise, which guided their nonexistent days. The monkey had a friend, a monkey that never was. It had been abandoned in the apartment by one of the artist’s early subjects, and the two monkeys often got into mischief, sometimes pooping on the floor, often leaving banana peels to rot in corners or under a table. Neither the artist, obsessed with his work, nor the people who never were, could have possibly cared less. Most of them suffered from frustration, as you can imagine. Any small slight became tragic. Any favor an epic blessing. So, the men who never were called him a good fellow and patted his back. The women sometimes gave him the comfort of their potential bodies and sometimes only smiled mysterious smiles. He continued with his work, as always. In time, someone visited the studio, an actual person seeking an apartment. The visitor, a miser who lacked both compassion and imagination, found the artist, one monkey, and portraits on canvas stacked haphazardly around the place. It turned out the artist had not paid rent in quite some time, and so the new man had the monkey and he thrown into the street. This will make a fine home, he thought. It was cozy and comfortable enough, though a smell hung about the place. It was tropical and musky, perhaps a combination of shit and fruit. No matter. A good cleaning would do wonders. You never could tell what was hiding, close enough to touch, just beneath the veneer of the day. The artist found a new place to squat and kept to his task. The monkey that never was, now alone and unnoticed, was devastated. In the night, it often stood over the newcomer as he slept, ominous, waiting, with murder in its heart and silent as the Buddha. Sometimes it pissed in the man’s mouth, but he, upon waking, was not bothered in the least. He brushed his teeth, sometimes gargled, thought about nothing of importance, and went about his day.