Beware of God Read Free Page A

Esmeralda.
    Of course she would prefer Mongo over him! Why not? It was a mutually selfish relationship; he only wanted to fuck, she only wanted to breed. They were perfect for each other!
    Let them, he thought.
    Let them sniff and poke and prod, let them debase themselves and all chimpkind.
    Bobo was spending much of his time alone, curled up in the darkest corner he could find. “Aww,” said the tourists tapping loudly on the glass, “you’re an angry little monkey, aren’t you? Yes, you are!”
    He stopped painting. Management optimistically distributed Bobo’s art supplies to the rest of the chimps, albeit with little success: Mongo tore apart the canvases to make himself a bed, and Esmeralda had to be hospitalized after eating a half dozen tubes of Cadmium Yellow. Her skin tone was never the same again.
    On June 12, just two weeks after he first gained consciousness, Bobo stood up and walked calmly to the edge of Chimpanzee Bay.
    He put one foot in, then the other. The humans waved and smiled. Bobo walked further into the water, one step after another.
    He didn’t struggle or flail.
    He made no attempt to swim.
    Bobo stayed below the waves for some time. The rest of the chimps stood by and watched with anxioius curiosity.
    Esmeralda bent over.
    Mongo mounted her.
    After some time, Bobo’s body bobbed gently up to the surface. The Wavemaker 3000 nudged it slowly back to shore.
    A small chimp named Kato stood on a large, flat quarry stone that extended out into the Bay.
    God.
    Death.
    Shame.
    Guilt.
    Each one dropped like a boulder onto his tiny primitive skull. He grabbed his head in his hands and shrieked. All of a sudden, it was as if Kato had been somehow transported to the top of the tallest tree in the forest, and was looking down upon himself below. Kato saw a group of God’s first drafts sitting complacently by as one of their own took his life, not only unable to offer any assistance but unable even to relate, to understand, to get beyond bananas and shit and Esmeralda’s vagina.
    â€œLook at us,” Kato thought. “A bunch of fucking monkeys.”
    He grabbed a long, bare branch from the Monkey House floor and used it to gently pull Bobo’s body back to shore.
    Nobody else seemed to mourn. No one else seemed to feel. Shame filled Kato’s soul.
    Shame?
    That was new.

Somebody Up There Likes You
    B LOOM’S Volvo finally came to rest upside down on the right-hand shoulder of the New York State Thruway. The roof was collapsed, the front end was crushed, and the driver’s side door was torn nearly in half.
    The policeman shook his head.
    â€œYou’re very lucky.”
    Bloom nodded.
    â€œSomebody up there likes you.”
    Bloom nodded.
    Whatever dying mechanism was coughing black smoke from the underside of the car soon ignited.
    The car filled with flames, incinerating Bloom’s insurance papers, his registration, the picture of his deceased grandparents that hung from his rearview mirror and his Coach Executive briefcase, which contained the 300-page report on emerging Asian markets he’d promised to have in by Monday morning and the only copy of a screenplay he’d been secretly working on. It was a romantic comedy.
    The fireman shook his head.
    â€œYou’re very lucky.”
    Bloom nodded.
    â€œSaved by an angel.”
    Bloom nodded.
    Sirens screamed, radios crackled.
    Bloom was leaning against the guardrail, trying to catch his breath, when from some dark, dusty distant part of his mind, some cobwebbed corner of forgotten phylacteries and skullcaps, came words Bloom hadn’t said or heard or even thought in the past thirty years:
    Shema Yisroel Adonai Eloheinu Adonai Echad
    Â 
    F UCK ,” said God.
    The angels stood quietly at the back of His office, their eyes locked nervously on the place where their feet would have been. The Angel of Death—the bearer of the afternoon’s cosmically bad news—wrung