“You’re so full of crap,” Alice said, “it’s not even funny.”
I started moving sideways, following the bars. They felt warm in my hands. They were at least an inch thick. The gaps between them seemed to be about four inches across.
“What’re you doing?” Erin asked. “Rupert?”
“I’ll get between your cages so we won’t have to talk so loud.”
“Have you been here long?” she asked.
I blushed, but nobody could see it. “No,” I lied. “Just got here.”
“Everyone thinks you’re dead.”
“The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated,” I explained—Mark Twain had said it first.
“Boy, this is great,” Erin said. “You being alive.”
“And not in a cage,” added Alice.
I found the corner of Erin’s cage, and crawled around it. To make sure I was between the cages, I stretched out my arms. I touched bars to my right and left. So I sat down and crossed my legs. “Okay,” I said.
From both sides came quiet sounds—rustling, sliding, breathing, a couple of small moans—as the girls moved in closer. The moans had come from my right, from Erin. After the beating she’d taken in the room, it probably hurt her a lot to move.
“Are you there?” she asked.
As quietly as I could, I slid myself toward Erin’s cage. I stopped when my upper arm touched a bar.
“Can you get us out of here?” Alice asked.
“I sure hope so. One way or another. Is there any way to open these things without a key?”
“Nope,” Erin said. Her voice was much closer to me than Alice’s. I thought I could feel her breath on my arm. Though I couldn’t see even a hint of her, I pictured her sitting cross-legged, leaning forward, elbows on her thighs, the tips of her breasts almost touching her forearms, her face only inches from the bars.
I wished I could see her.
I thought about the lighter in my pocket.
I didn’t go for it, though. Better for us all to stay invisible, at least for the time being.
“You can’t get in or out,” Erin said, “unless you’ve got keys. These’re really strong cages.”
“They were made to hold gorillas,” Alice explained.
Monkey Business
“Gorillas?” I asked.
“This used to be a gorilla zoo,” Erin said.
“Before we moved here,” her sister added.
“Yeah, a long time before we moved here. We’ve only been on the island a couple of years.”
“It’ll be two years in June,” Alice said.
“The gorillas were all dead before we ever got here. Long dead. Like before we were even born. This guy massacred them all. How do you like that? The same guy that brought them here.”
“To save them,” Alice added.
“Yeah,” Erin said. “There was some sort of revolution going on some place in Africa. Like back in the sixties? And this guy was afraid all the gorillas might get killed off.”
“He was a naturalist,” Alice explained.
“You know, like that Gorillas in the Mist woman. Sigourney Weaver?”
“Dian Fossey,” Alice said.
“Yeah,” Erin said, “like that.”
“He lived right here in the big house when he wasn’t running around places like Africa.”
“So anyway,” Erin said, “he captured like a dozen of these gorillas and shipped them over here to this island. He had the cages built especially for them. Made himself a nice little private zoo.”
“It wasn’t really a zoo,” Alice pointed out.
“Not if you wanta get technical,” Erin said. “It wasn’t like a public zoo. He kept the apes for himself, like pets. Then one day he slaughtered them all.”
“Killed them?” I asked. “Why’d he do that?”
“Maybe he got tired of them,” Alice suggested.
“Or they done him wrong,” Erin said. Again, I pictured her smiling.
“Nobody knows why,” Alice said.
Then Erin went on. “He must’ve gone nuts, or something. He chopped them all up in their cages with a machete, and then he shot himself in the head. Anyway, that’s how come the cages are here.”
“We weren’t permitted to play in them,” Alice said.
“Now we gotta live in them,” Erin said.
“Who else is here?” I asked.
“In the cages, you mean?”
“Yeah.”
“Connie and her mother, and Kimberly.”
All of them!
I started to cry. I tried to be quiet about it, but couldn’t help letting out a few little noises. Erin and Alice didn’t say anything. It was like they were both sitting in their cages, listening to me.
Then something rubbed the top of my head.
I flinched.
“It’s just me,” Erin whispered.
Her hand gently stroked my hair, then eased down along my cheek. Petting me.
I’d started crying out of relief at the news my women were here and alive. With Erin caressing my face, though, I started crying for her, for what had been done to her.
And for myself because I’d allowed it to happen.
I’d enjoyed watching.
“It’s okay,” she said softly. “They’re fine.”
“Are not,” Alice said.
“They’re as fine as we are.”
“You call that ‘fine’?”
In a softer voice, Erin said to me, “They’re really gonna be shocked. They thought you were dead, for sure. You fell off a cliff or something?”
I nodded. I tried to stop crying.
“That was after Thelma got him in the head,” Alice reminded her.
“Yeah,” Erin said. “Anyway, they were awfully upset about you getting killed. They thought you were the greatest.”
“Me?”
“Yeah. They’re gonna go nuts when they see you.”
“They’re in… some of the… other cages?” Even though I was getting better, I could only talk between sobs.
“Connie’s in the one next to mine,” Alice said. “Then’s Kimberly. Billie’s cage is on the other side of Kimberly’s. And then the rest of ’em are empty.”
I said, “Maybe I’d better… go over now, and…”
“No.” Erin’s hand dropped to my shoulder and squeezed it. “Don’t go yet. Please? They’re probably all asleep, anyway. Can’t you just stay here and talk to us for a little while more? Please?”
I didn’t much want to go over and see my women, anyway, until I’d completely finished the crying. Besides, I wanted to find out a lot more about what had been going on. I said, “Okay. I won’t go yet.”
“Thanks,” Erin said.
“How long… when did they get here?”
“Connie and the others? About a week ago.”
“This is their seventh night,” Alice said.
“What about you two?” I asked.
“It’s night twenty-four,” Alice said.
I gasped, “What!”
“Yeah,” Erin said. “Twenty-four.”
“My God!”
“Wesley put us in the day he got here.”
“The first time he came,” Alice pointed out.
“He knew about the cages,” Erin said.
“He’d read about them.”
“Yeah. An article in some old National Geographic magazine, or something, and he wondered if they were still here, and could he see them.”
“He said maybe he’d buy them if they were in good enough shape.”
Erin’s hand glided down my arm. She found my hand, and took hold of it. Then she continued with the story. “Anyhow, Alice and I were off swimming, so we weren’t around when he came along. Mom and Dad had to fill us in. I guess they were showing him the cages, and all of a sudden he grabbed Mom and put a razor to her throat. So then Dad was afraid to do anything, ’cause he didn’t want Mom to get her throat slashed. Wesley made them both get in cages, and locked them in. Then Alice and I got back home and he put us in cages, too.”