A penny for your thoughts from Bing Crosby’s “Pennies from Heaven” in blessed memory of my mother and father...”the Name Detective and Esther Kaminsky”
I
The night brilliantly garbed by a full yellowish moon........dipping stars that blinked, and a wild raging wind, loomed cold and aloof in contrast with the sprawling ranch style homes it enshrouded.In one of these magnificent dwellings resided the internationally famous husband and wife team.....animal psychologists Doctors Jenkyl and Jinx Fish, with their pet gorilla , Oscar..
II
On this eve every space in this combination living laboratory was lit up as thou the Fishes were engaged in a elixir of exotica and animal husbandry. A Walpurgis brouhaha.The doctors (PHDs) were fervently graphing ... the intelligence and learning ability of Oscar. Dr. Jenkyl peering into his programmed data base....the tuneup finale of so called trials, his eyes dilating with an off the charts discovery.
“My God, , is it possible, Jinx? ”
III
Doctor Jinx, garbed in her scrubs out of General Powell’s Morris Evening High in the Bronx,, lowered her expectations..... an intuitive grasp into the futuro... a mental telepathy be knowest to no one.“Jenkyl, my dear. I’m afraid it’s so.. My figurines and serendipity reach an inferential but evidentiary conclusion.” “ There’s nothing we can do in our lifetime, Statistics never lie.”
Doctor Jenkyl glanced at his wife and colleague with the admiration born of a life together thru the muck of thick and thin . Jinx’s enthusiasms never ran ahead of her logical down to earth alpha brain waves.
She was the perfecto in an imperfect cosmos. playing out the Fish grasp of qualitative risk assessment . Jenkyl eyes scanning the expansiveness of the Frankenstein like laboratory. searching for some elusiveness which if captured would portray a “ Glorious Basterd” but that very elusiveness eluded him. Unless you have a mind that is a stepping stone into our universe.
“Jinx where’s Oscar? He was on the floor thirty secs ago, juggling the ping pong balls.. Where can the beast be?”
IV
Jinx’s eyes followed Jenkyl’s hand as he pointed to one ping pong ....her H was manifestly on the cusp. The ping pong was in real time but Oscar, their pet gorilla, was AWOL.....“Jenkyl, my partner in cannibalism, do not fret so. My intuitive grasp tells me Oscar is tip toeing in his Johnny Weissmuller Tarzan of the Apes web site. ... ”
“Your female intuition has never failed us yet, Jinx,” said Jenkyl. ”I’ll go and find him without a search warrant. Interpret our data with circumspection.......
“But what can we do. Our hands are tied. Oscar is the dumbest gorilla in captivity. On land, at sea, the space station. The shuttle.”
V
“I’m with you Jenkyl, my comrade in cannibalism.,” said Jinx.. “Go and fetch him before he gets into our on line telemetry and grand slams our circuit . Our bill last month was just im pos sib lay.... We just have so many minutes.”Jenkyl half heartedly drooped toward the door. His whole life’s work in and out of the scientific community spooked......by an ape. Without a cell phone to his name.. The lights flickered out. The lab thrown into primaeval darkness. .....the La Brea tar pits...the saber tooth tiger.......Dinny the dinosaur. The 2000 year old man.
VI
“Jinx my dahling darling “The light that failed.” “Robinson Caruso and his man Friday?. Oscar having sport at our expense.” “Sport indeed. ....hasta la vista, mon amour. You claimed he’d turn them on. ..not off.” Jenkyl doubting his frau’s alpha waves, her calibration into the Weltanschauung of apes and their cannibal hosts.... An Italian standoff blasting off a gorilla’s genetic code. The genome span of biological inheritance. Right, Lorenzo? “On aggression”VII
The laboratory steel door opened and standing in the doorway...not King Kong nor Gargantua, the moon rays streaming thru the bay windows...but Oscar...... casually flipping the house keys... “So all your ex per iments......experiments.,” stuttered the ape who never signed up for that extension course in reading lips....never learning how to enunciate the English language. “Not having the intestinal fortitude..., the presence of mind to register yours truly in Continuation, for the automated beast in all of us.”.. “To prove to academia and the hen pecking stratum beyond....I’m the dumb dumbest stupid stupides studderer in our an ni animal king kingdom alive alive. Long live the King!”VIII
The husband wife partnership stared at each other, their monster ranting and raving like Boris Karloff in his “Frankenstein” lab. “I eaves eavesdropped on every mouthful of syl syllables, do you hear. My good Tarzan and Jane stand ins.. Shoot,” he screamed. “Play playing out your roles.....I’ve been here before. Momma Poppa....Ev er hear of past lives? “ . “Mak making me go thru all those stunts and fig nuttons. And for what, may I ask ” “Do not say.... what....what you’re thinking. ,” Oscar’s beady eyes dilated with rage.. “Patiently I strove for bonding. Going thru the mazes block play intelligence tests Kinsey like sex questionnaires hun hunger experiments, memorizing passwords. Whimp whimpering when I was lonely. Responding to frozen milky ways, you name it.. A f f e c t i o n Humbug!”
IX
The battle weary ex civilized gorilla lunged for the computer print outs the mass of spreadsheet contradictions....software exploring his maintenance into the chic of Doctors Jenkyl and Jinx Fish. “That’s what I think of you asshole workaholics,” shredding the sheets into spit balls. “Statistics and investigations,”he hurled them like poison arrows out the Bay windows, every dart symbolizing a chunk of time spent in captivity... “Finding my voice without hiccupping is my noms de plume....an aggressiveness in tune with my nature. Not inhibited by sacrosanct mores...in other words, back to my animal grrrrrrrr... “ Intimidating authority figures. . I have more intelligence than any damn chimp chimpanzee ever had...Right, Cheetah?”..X
“I’ll do whatever you ask Oscar,: said Jenkyl, cowering behind a computer workstation, his cell phone beyond reach.. “We’ll make it up to you,”said Jinx, her feminine mystique like mascara dripping onto a flat screen monitor...... ‘With these hands... I fed you lo cal shredded wheat. I bathed you. I rocked you to sleep.. I ...why I even named you Oscar.....you’re on Twitter Face Book. A celebrity, indeed.” The gorilla stared her down.......”You’re to blame. your friggen frame of mind, Why I ought to. put put you on bread and water...” Oscar picked up the ping pong ball. With all his ferociousness hurled it as thou the William Tell overture was playing..... the apple atop Jinx’s scalp. She ducked, her profound intuition saving her, the ball whizzing by her glazed coiffeur.XI
“I always wanted a self respecting name like Hughie. A name which distinguishes me from the .....pardon sil vous plais monsieur et madame Fish.....the beast. Shows what I got....the power of thought.,.....something neither of you lamb chops have in time memorial.” \ “My family tree always had intelli.....intelligent names......orig originating during Teutonic times. Like Hu Hugi Hugue Hugo perp perpetuating thought thru the ages.. .. “Scan Scandin Scandinavian....Sax Saxon......old French and Germ German.”XII
Crouching behind the ape’s work station, Jenkyl joined Jinx....a united front in face of Oscar’s genealogical line.. “Tell me m’love, what does your famous infamous intuition augur... Our fates play playing out Creat creating a monster Ouch!.” “Hmmmmn,”said Jinx. “Our tongue tied ape has got you do doing it ,” Oscar darting like a NFL quarterback behind a flat screen monitor ...... programming Elgar’s “the wand of youth?” “Name naming me Oscar,” he snarled.. “To the guillotine...., dissing your ape. Where was your alpha....not aware of Hugues...Hue, Huon Hugon. An arrested development, fer’ shure.”.Oscar shifted his lumbering lumber like a multi faceted self generating icon... grasping a table’s legs with his giant steam shovels.. .painted green with white lines, made on Apian Way... Where else, dear reader.
XIII
The psychologists Fish were dismayed at the reversal of roles.......”What did Oscar want with a ping pong table?” Didn’t the two PHD’s earlier hand him a sand papered paddle, ...a sense of audition, if you will.,,,,But the game was denounced by the gorilla. He didn’t know how to put Federer spin on the serve. Pounding his chest like a muscle bound Gorgeous George of a wrestler. hearing the sound of his own hoot....”Oscar”! .” Au contraire....Couldn’t you identify with Tarzan of the Apes, and his alto ego.?” Walking to the bay windows. “It’s a jungle out there, Jane (Maureen O Sullivan) How could you be so self serving? I would thin think you have an intell intelligence to do some rudimentary res research... . Sat scores above the national average? Trusting your fallible intuit intuition, you bungling blis blister.”. Trembling, Jinx was hit by a double helix of a whammy. First, her partner once upon a time Jenkyl, had joined in his denouement of her extra sensory perception. Her beloved gorilla had recycled her intuitive touch to be: reborn to his vast arsenal of survival.... berries caves tree houses swinging vines.... Cheetah! a second wind. “Can’t see why with such an array of names for thought, you didn’t didn’t think it thru... Fitz-Hugh son of Hugh...Pugh, the Welsh Ap-Hugh...Mackay,..Hoey...and Huson, going the avenue of mediocrity, the least line of resistance. . Picking Oscar....” Staring at Jenkyl, his jungle instincts to the fray, after years of domesticity. “Two lamp chops.. I should tear you apart and throw your carcasses to the cannibals” . “Piloting yes men like psycho logists....mercenaries hiding behind PHD’s...y’sure you didn’t merchandise the parchment from the Cologne Institute?...the going price, 5000 Euros. The Professors warehousing their credibility on the Rhine. Quid pro quo for lectured spiels.. “Hughson is a fitting name for an ape of my stat stature....Hewetson..Hutchinson...Hugginson..XIV
Retrieving the ping pong, the ape in a frenzy of thirty lashes with a wet noodle, tore apart a wall unit. Stoking out two rubber paddles, he tossed them to his erstwhile patrons,,,,,,,you’re lucky, I’m born with empathy. A cool ape of a gorilla........”awesome” as they say on the street.. The Welsh champ, Hu Gadarn..... the Welsh patriot, Hugh of Wales... if they had their way, naming me Oscar......with your mad intellect ......” owning up to a domesticated gorilla , eating you out of house&household. Rhino grub in Capistrano, remember ” .XV
Oscar’s rig like gig...snatching up the green table...adjusting the net at the rods....placing the rubberized paddles and ping pong...... strode to the door. “Having pronounced human failings, your Oscar morphing as Hughie Hughes will set the tempo......” throwing back the steel door ........ waving his keys. “I’m locking you in for the duration.....a marital endurance, sweating out your skinny” “Testing your Jenkyl and Jinx chopped liver......... “ Right, Doctors? Right! The door slammed shut. The “lights out” syndrome played on. . Jinx stepped up to her side of the ping pong table. “It se seems Jenkyl m m my lo love, we we’re land locked for the du duration of our marital vows”.” “Hughie Hughes has our chopped liver mesmerized ..,, . Serve serve serve em up., dahling.”
Squinting thru the keyhole, Hughie Hughes smirked a laugh of good will as only a gorilla finding himself can... in tempestuous heat and humidity , the Big Apple, August 26, 2009 .
