Love in Infant Monkeys, Lydia Millet [best motivational novels txt] 📗

she remembered there was some kind of bird that would sit on another bird’s eggs, hatch them and feed them like they were its own. The Mia Farrow of nature. Maybe one of those little mama-birds would come rescue the eggs of the dying one. She hoped so. Other day she’d seen that pigeon she told Vogue was the reincarnation of Cecil Beaton . . . The best fags were all English fags. Englishmen were the Ur-faggots, pretty much. All other fags in the world were pale imitations of real English fags. This was the land of homos; even the straight men were fags here. One reason she liked it so much. In the U.S. guys were basically rapists; here they seemed uptight and formal, with their great accents and not showing any emotion, but all the time they were basically daydreaming about nancy boys in sailor suits. Not all of them, of course—I mean, what would a sex goddess like her do without at least a few of the poor “sods” (pat to self!) being genuine heteros but, you know, the default position. (“Benders, bum bandits, ginger beer.” Use in moderation.)

Guy was not gay, of course. But he had an edge of anger to him. The ones that weren’t gay were often angry about it.

It was a trade-off, more or less.

OK. The bird was finally chilling out. Lying there. Effin’ dead.

“Oi. Bag one, then?”

She jumped. He’d snuck up right behind her. It was the red-faced “bloke” from “down the pub,” Guy’s new pet “lager lout.” (Self! Excellent!) Pig, as far as she knew. Gave her the creeps. What Guy saw in these losers from the King John with their saggy beer tits . . . Come to think of it, she liked this one even less when he was carrying a gun. A gun was like a cigarette that way: If you already looked good, it made you look better; if you looked crap to begin with, it made you look even worse. This particular “lager boy” had a chip on his shoulder about women with power. It hung on him like a stink. Made him actually dangerous.

Best not to challenge him. Alone here in the middle of the woods.

“I guess, you know—actually, I feel pretty bad. You know? I mean, it was really suffering.”

“Brain the size of a peanut, yeah? How much suffering could there be?”

He was openly contemptuous. Thing about these lager boys of Guy’s was, they gave her a reality check. Like, what would it be like to be a regular person again? They had zero respect for her, for her megastar stature. At this point in her career, most people she met either had to resist an urge to genuflect or got completely tongue-tied. Often their mouths hung open like Down syndrome kids’. (Which was sad. The real retards, that is. Come to think of it, retards were among the few who still acted normal.) Once she had cheek-kissed a journalist—one, two, in the English manner—and he’d fainted and soiled himself all over the place. And that was a guy who was used to famous people; they were his total job. You learned to spot in a second which ones were going to freak out. Point was, the lager louts would have been refreshing if they weren’t such assholes. She was sorry for their wives and girlfriends.

He leaned down to pick it up.

“No! No,” she said, and put out her hand. “Just—thanks, but you can leave it. I want to just leave it there.”

“Defeats the purpose, dunnit.”

“I just want to leave it in peace. I don’t want to desecrate the corpse.”

He snorted.

“You seen the others? Guy? Was he with you?”

“Nah. Went off on me own.” He was turning away.

“Wait! Can you tell me something?”

“Mmm?”

“Is it a hen? Or—”

“Rooster! Blimey.”

What a relief. No eggs.

He stumped back down the hill, head shaking. Good riddance. She knelt down beside the small body, modest hump of brown and red feathers. It was still beautiful. She put her hand on the feathers. You could feel the slight warm frame beneath them. It was light, almost nothing in there. Birds were like air.

It had been more beautiful when it wasn’t dead, though. Before it was shot. Which wasn’t true of everyone. Take JFK, even John Lennon. Assassination had matured them like a fine pinot. If you died of old age, besides not leaving a good-looking corpse, all you died for in the end was living. But if you got shot, you were an instant symbol. You must have died for something.

She was always completely new; that was her secret, albeit an open one. Sure, it was obvious, but no one did it like she did. None of them could touch her when it came to transformation. That was the secret to her longevity. She wasn’t one megastar; she was a new one constantly. Novelty was what people lived for. Skin-deep, maybe, but so what? Skin was the biggest organ.

She should envy the bird, actually. Guy said in the wild they died of starvation. Shooting them was a mercy killing. I mean come on—fly, eat worms, fly, lay eggs, fly, starve to death. “Bob’s your uncle.” (You go girl.) Life was not equal for everyone. That was another reason she liked it better in England. They didn’t stand for that Thomas Paine bullshit here, all men were created equal, etc. What a crock. One drive through Alabama was all you needed to take the bloom off that rose. One ride on the subway. (Self: “Tube.” Easy.) Back home, the second you stepped out of a major city you were surrounded by the remnants of Early Man. Here there were some of those, too, but you had to go down the pub to find them. And at least they didn’t run the country.

All history was the history of class struggle, right? Lenin said that, and he had style. He had a very sharp look. Good tailoring. When the statues came