Great Apes Read Online Free Page A

jew say that then?” the young man asked; but before Sarah could answer, draw him a little tighter into her ridiculous noose, the swing doors to the barroom did their bit and Tabitha, Sarah’s younger sister, sashayed in.
    With her were Tony Figes the art critic and the Braithwaite brothers, an unholy pair of non-identical twins who regarded all of their life together – which was all their life – as a living, breathing, moving artwork. Needless to say this introduced an axiom: the closer the Braithwaites were to a performing context the less interesting theybecame. Whereas in social circumstances they were spontaneous and often downright bizarre.
    â€œFuck me sideways,” said Tabitha, coming up to Sarah and planting a Twiglety kiss on her pointy cheekbone, a kiss so Twiglety that a bit of Twiglet remained glued to the cheek, “here you are all on your lonesome.” She half hugged her older sister, digging her nails in under Sarah’s breastbone.
    Sarah struggled, slapped Tabitha, said, “Fuck off.”
    â€œFuck you.” Tabitha wasn’t recoiling, she was leaning into Sarah, scrunging silk, cotton and flesh; she was hunting for a little nipple to tweak. The bag of Twiglets in her other hand waved about erratically.
    â€œFuck off!” She’d found it – she twirled away down to the end of the bar to say hello to Julius.
    Tony Figes stepped forward and presented himself saying, “Good evening.” He took Sarah’s hand in the most provisional of ways, then returned it. Tony Figes smiled, and the long, L-shaped scar that made a seam across cheek, between chin cleft and lower lip, furled up to become a second mouth. A queer, bent little man, brown all over like a sheet of parcel paper, with a browner label of hair pasted on his shiny brow, this evening he was gift-wrapped in a cream linen suit. Tufts of unfortunately grey hair struggled up from the open neck of his shirt. “Hmm.” He turned from Sarah, ran an eye over the room, its racks of suits, then turned back to her. “If I’d wanted an insurance quotation I’d have stayed in and called Freefone.” Sarah laughed and he took his twin-smiles to the bar, signed for Julius.
    The Braithwaite Brothers moved up to Sarah. They were humming under their breath. She couldn’t make outthe tune exactly, but it could have been ‘The Grapes of Wrath’. They stood either side of her, one thin, the other fattish. But both faces lean, yellow-black. They stuck their hands out in front of their chests, palms down. Like robots, Sarah thought, or humanoid fork-lift trucks. She looked from one to the other; both sets ofbrown eyes were turned in on themselves, or possibly turned in on the other’s. Then, without any signal being given, all four hands began to dart around her head, as if the brothers were playing a game of conceptual patty-cake, or signing for the partially sighted deaf. They boosted the humming, then let it fade, the four hands fell to their sides. They moved off without saying anything, heading for the toilets.
    â€œBody space,” Tony Figes said while lighting a Camel Filter; he was by way of being their exegetist. “They’re doing something on the space the body occupies.”
    â€œI see.”
    â€œThey’ve said that they intend to use their bodies from now on solely to define the space that other bodies occupy, in order to draw attention to the way modern existence destroys our faculties of extroception.” Tony held his head cocked to one side and his martini cocked away from it. Sarah didn’t think he could tell himself any more whether he was being ironic.
    â€œHow long do you think they’ll keep it up?”
    â€œThis evening?”
    â€œYeah.”
    â€œHoo, an hour maybe. They’re holding some excellent coke. Fucking excellent. A couple more lines and they’ll hopefully give the whole thing a rest.”
    Tabitha