Hotel Ambrose

Chapter 6.2

I don't know why The Great Lucio and his Fantastic Ape came to Ambrose. Perhaps it was because I fixed the sign.

I already told you about the wonky sign on the front gate of Ambrose. I don't like when things aren't straight, like signs, for example. There's a word for people like me: OCD. It means Obsessive Convulsive Disorder – which doesn't make any sense, because if I was so Disorderly why would I go round straightening everything? Anyway, I learned this one from Sophie, years later. She got it from women's magazines she bought in the city. There was always stuff about Disorders in those magazines, and she read so many of them that she ended up an expert on Disorders. But like I said, this all happened later, and back then I didn't know I had a Disorder at all.

After we'd buried Elinor, I wanted to take my mind off it, so I went and found some wire and tied up the other end of the sign to make it straight. Then I cleaned it with a rag. Even Sophie was impressed. Somehow Ambrose didn't look so abandoned now that it had a straight sign.

Lucio and the Ape arrived that night. They were the first. We don't know why they came, and it's not like we could ask them. But we knew one thing: Lucio and the Ape didn't want to live in a hotel. They wanted to live in a circus.

When I first saw them I was sprawled out on the rug in the lounge room, completely fucked after a day of digging holes and dragging dead people all over the place. Sophie was feeding Fred in the kitchen. I could hear her cooing to him.

I'd never given much thought to the old TV until then. There had been so much other stuff going on that I'd forgotten all about it, to be honest. But now, as I lay on my back on the rug, I reached up and ran my fingers over the screen, and played with the controls without thinking about it.

I hadn't meant to switch it on. But suddenly I heard a man speak.

"Your break."

I jerked up and pushed myself backwards.

On the TV I could see the red room with the snooker table in it. Except it wasn't empty now.

"Sophie!" I shouted.

"What?"

"Come here! Quick!"

They were exactly as I'd imagined them. The Great Lucio wore a black top-hat and a dusty cloak with patches sewn on it. He had a face like a piece of cuttlefish and a moustache like a piece of seaweed. The Ape had bowed legs and clever ape feet, and a round face with kissing lips, and big brown ape eyes. He walked upright, but had to stretch his long hairy arms out and grab onto things to hold himself steady. Sometimes he scampered along on all fours.

Sophie raced in with Fred in her arms. I pointed at the TV and Sophie almost dropped the baby. "That's a monkey," she said.

"Ape," I corrected her.

The Great Lucio went to the scoreboard and put the markers on zero. The Ape made a blurting sound with its lips and went to the cue rack and grabbed a cue. It leaned over the table and sent the white ball whizzing into the pack of red ones at the other end of the table. Crack! The balls scattered.

Sophie put Fred down on the rug and we settled in to watch them play. Fred went straight to sleep. I could never get over how much he slept when he was a baby, and a lot of the time when he wasn't sleeping he was kind of half awake.

The Ape was good, but the Great Lucio was better. When it lost the game the Ape jumped up and down and threw the cue on the floor.

"You would be a reasonable player if you could only control your temper," Lucio said, twirling his moustache with his fingers. The ends of his moustache were already blue with chalk.