Fear Nothing

Ferryman is calling. Then Rod reaches for the phone with his left hand, the pistol still in his right. He tells the guy, I just found the rhesus here at my house, in my kitchen. He listens, keeping his eyes on the monkey, and then he says, Hell if I know, but it's here, all right, and I need help to bag it.
         “ And the monkey's just watching all this?”
        “When Rod hangs up the phone, the monkey raises its ugly little eyes from the gun, looks straight at him, a challenging and angry look, and then coughs out that damn sound, that awful little laugh that makes your skin crawl. Then it seems to lose interest in Rod and me, in the gun. It eats the last segment of the tangerine and starts to peel another one.”
        As I lifted the apricot brandy that I had poured but not yet touched, Angela returned to the table and picked up her half-empty glass. She surprised me by clinking her glass against mine.
        “What're we toasting?” I asked.
        “The end of the world.”
        “By fire or ice?”
        “Nothing that easy,” she said.
        She was as serious as stone.
        Her eyes seemed to be the color of the brushed stainless-steel drawer fronts in the cold-holding room at Mercy Hospital, and her stare was too direct until, mercifully, she shifted it from me to the cordial glass in her hand.
        “When Rod hangs up the phone, he wants me to tell him what happened, so I do. He has a hundred questions, and he keeps asking about my bleeding lip, about whether the monkey touched me, bit me, as if he can't quite believe the business with the apple. But he won't answer any of my questions. He just says, Angie, you don't want to know . Of course I want to know, but I understand what he's telling me.”
        “Privileged information, military secrets.”
        “My husband had been involved in sensitive projects before, national-security matters, but I thought that was behind him. He said he couldn't talk about this. Not to me. Not to anyone outside the office. Not a word.”
        Angela continued to stare at her brandy, but I sipped mine. It didn't taste as pleasing as it had before. In fact, this time I detected an underlying bitterness, which reminded me that apricot pits were a source of cyanide.
        Toasting the end of the world tends to focus the mind on the dark potential in all things, even in a humble fruit.
        Asserting my incorrigible optimism, I took another long sip and concentrated on tasting only the flavor that had pleased me previously.
        Angela said, “Not fifteen minutes pass before three guys respond to Rod's phone call. They must’ve driven in from Wyvern using an ambulance or something for cover, though there wasn't any siren. None of them are wearing uniforms, either. Two of them come around to the back, open the door, and step into the kitchen without knocking. The third guy must have picked the lock on the front door and come in that way, quiet as a ghost, because he steps into the dining-room doorway the same time as the other two come in the back. Rod's still got the pistol trained on the monkey - his arms shaking with fatigue - and all three of the others have tranquilizer-dart guns.”
        I thought of the quiet lamplit street out front, the charming architecture of this house, the pair of matched magnolia trees, the arbor hung with star jasmine. No one passing the place that night would have guessed at the strange drama playing out within these ordinary stucco walls.
        “The monkey seems like he's expecting them,” Angela said, “isn't concerned, doesn't try to get away. One of them shoots him with a dart. He bares his teeth and hisses but doesn't even try to pluck the needle out. He drops what's left of the second tangerine, struggles hard to swallow the bite he has in his mouth, then just curls up on the table, sighs, goes to sleep. They leave with the monkey, and Rod goes with them, and I never see the monkey again. Rod doesn't come back until three o'clock in the morning, until Christmas Eve is over, and we never do exchange gifts until late Christmas Day, and by then we're in Hell and nothing's ever going to be the same. No way out, and I know it.”
        Finally she tossed back her remaining brandy and put the glass down on the table so hard that it sounded like a gunshot.
        Until this moment she had exhibited only fear and melancholy, both as deep as cancer in the bone. Now came anger from a still