TLO, Chapter 16

 Chapter 16

Christmas and New Year passed and Lars and I achieved the miracle of “not arguing over everything” even if he stayed in the London house most of the time.  

Incredible but true. 

I should have got a medal from his employees as the boss didn’t pass by the office more than once per week in a period of over three weeks. He had his work brought to the house and worked on it every day for a few hours. 

I wasn’t as lucky as he. It’s absolutely true that monkeys take most all of your time. Writing with a macaque hanging from your chest? Not even Hemingway could have done it. One thing is to run away from bulls (fifteen minutes max.) and a very different one is to endure a monkey clinging to your neck, writhing in response to every little thing you do. It’s a Greek tragedy if you want to go to the toilette and the apocalypse if you put the monkey back in its cage and try to work on your own things. You become an appendix of the monkey. 

According to Lars, this mambo is my fault for not keeping another primate at hand who would kidnap the baby (as done in the wild) and give the mother a rest. Those she-monkeys have no hurry to retrieve their offsprings no matter how much they cry and I can understand them. The only thing I wrote during that period was; “101 Ways to Cook a Monkey” and no matter what my character did, the wretched thing was always coming back from the grave to howl plaintively under the hero’s window to be let back inside… and he did. How could he resist those soulful, full of sorrow, watery, green eyes? 

The character finally kills himself only to find that Hell brims with baby monkeys.  

TLO, Chapter 15

 Chapter 15

Announcing that you’re expected to move your ass to another continent for whichever reason with less than a 24 hours’ notice is Lars’ idea of “discussing something else with you”. The next morning, at an ungodly hour, the wonderful and reassuring cuddling he had started the previous night was cut short with a monster growling “get dressed”. 

I, who had never been to any Muslim country -not even to Morocco for holidays- was going to fly to one of their richest lands! Lars didn’t help me at all because the only thing he told me when we were having breakfast at his plane was: “no public displays of affections while we are there. We fuck indoors.” The stewardess paled when she heard him and I wanted to dig a hole in the fuselage. 

Of course, Sabrina, the witch was coming along. She was best buddies with Lars, shaking her imaginary tail to him and ending every sentence with a “yes, Mr. Berggren”. Needless to say, we got stuck together and she was supposed to show me the tourist hotspots. I bet she’d have preferred a hundred times to be in the first line to protect her beloved “Mr. Berggren” from the wild Beduins than walking me through air conditioned malls but she was screwed up (by her boss, no less) and watching her stoic suffering gave me a wicked pleasure thrill.