Hello, I hope you are going to like this short story. I’ve only just started to write it, which means that it’s all just as new for me as it is for you. If someone walked in right now and asked, ‘Hey, I’d love to see the short story’, then I’d only be able to show them these few lines. But even so I can feel that this is going to be an absolute cracker.
The first thing I need to do is to introduce the main character. I’m going to call him Steven, and I’m doing this for a number of reasons. The first reason is probably more of a private joke that I have with a friend of mine, Doug. You see, both Doug and I know someone called Steven, and for ages I’d say to him, ‘Hello, Steve’, or, ‘Hey, Steve, how’s it going?’, or perhaps even, ‘How’s work going then, Steve?’, or, ‘How’s the car, Steve?’, and one day he finally cracked and he said to me, ‘My name isn’t Steve, it’s Steven’.
And you’d think this would be quite a fair comment, were it not for the fact that he had always called me Rob instead of Robert.
But the other reason is that my friend Doug just cannot stand Steven. He hates him with a passion that you can only guess. You see, one day we all went for a meal, me, Doug and Steven, and Doug was chatting about American wrestling, because he’s a big fan of American wrestling, and Steven piped up that American wrestling was all fake and it was all acted, and even though Doug knew that it was fake and acted, he took umbrage at Steven for pointing this out, it was probably more the sense of derision in Steven’s voice than anything else, and every time now that I mentioned Steven to Doug, he always brings this up, even though it happened about fifteen years ago now.
I’m going to make Steven a handyman at the zoo. There’s a zoo in the town where I live, in actual fact, and like most locals, I hardly ever go there. I did go with my sister a couple of times when she came down to visit with her son, though he was only a toddler at the time and he slept in his pushchair all the way round, not once, but twice. Two years running, this happened, him sleeping all the way around the zoo. He’s a teenager now and he swears blind that he’s never actually been to the place. But he’s been twice.
Doug doesn’t like my nephew.
‘A more obnoxious kid I cannot imagine’, were his exact words, the last time I mentioned that I was seeing him.
So the thing about the zoo is, Doug’s brother-in-law works there as a handyman, and he’s always telling us these stories about life working at the zoo, which kind of makes me think that it might be quite a quirky place to set this short story and to have Steven run amok as the main character. Doug’s brother-in-law was saying that the other day he had to repair a wooden fence because two men sat on it and the thing just collapsed, whompf!, and these chaps ended up flat on their backs in the ostrich enclosure. He was also telling us that the Komodo dragon kept blocking up its drain, so he was always being called in to unblock the drain in the Komodo dragon pen, because the Komodo dragon likes picking up rocks and throwing them down the drain. Doug’s sister says that her husband comes home at nights stinking of baboon urine. You see, he kneels down in it when he’s working with the baboons, and it goes on his trousers. So anyway, it’s here that Steven works, just for the purposes of this story.
‘Take off those trousers and put them straight in the washing machine’, Doug’s sister always says. ‘You’re stinking up the house with baboon piss’.
Steven started out at the gift shop when the zoo first employed him. He’d been there long enough now for the novelty of working with exotic animals to have worn off. He used to work diligently and with the minimum of fuss in the shop, selling teddy bears and ecologically sustainable notebooks, but management saw his potential and one day they moved him to the services and maintenance department. There had been something wrong with the shutters of the shop and Steven had fixed them and that’s why they saw him as handyman material.
Doug has just said that this would never happen to the real Steven. ‘He doesn’t know one end of a hammer from the other’, were his exact words.
‘Why don’t you give the poor lad a break?’
‘Can you imagine, though’, Doug has just said, ‘If he actually did work at the zoo? And they gave him the leaf blower one day, and he’d be pointing this thing at the lion, you know, by mistake, and they’d be shouting at him, Steve, Steve, turn off that leaf blower! You’re getting leaves and chewing gum in the lion’s fur!, and then next thing you know, Steve’s in the lion’s enclosure trying to get chewing gum out of its fur, and it’s growling away and Steve’s saying, just stop flinching, you bloody stupid lion! Stop flinching’.
‘His name’s not Steve, it’s Steven. ‘Why don’t you put that in your story?’
‘I might’.
Anyway, so that’s the conversation we’ve just had.
Steven quite likes working at the zoo. Yet he’s also the sort of person who doesn’t see how amazing it is that he works with all these animals, he just comes in every morning, parks his little Fiat, wanders through the staff entrance and then starts on whatever job they’ve got for him. And one day, you see, he arrives and says his usual hellos when his boss informs him that he has to fix the latch on the ape pen. The night keeper had said he’d had trouble closing it, the ape pen. It needed someone to have a look at it.
‘What is it with you and Steve, anyway?’, Doug has just asked.
‘Steven’.
‘It doesn't matter. You stick up for him all the time. You let him get away with absolutely everything. I think there’s something going on’.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, you do seem to mention him an awful lot. You’ve even made him the lead character of that story you’re working on’.
‘He’s just an interesting person, that’s all. And anyway, I can change the character’s name at any point.’
‘I think you fancy him’.
So Steve grabs his tool box and off he goes to the ape pen, but it’s one of those crisp frosty mornings.
‘I do not!’
‘Someone sounds a bit defensive’, Doug has just said.
To be honest, I don’t think Doug quite feels comfortable with the idea of me writing short stories. It’s not consistent with the way he sees me. I’m meant to be one of the lads, and that’s how he himself likes to come across, so by extension, I’d say that’s how he would like me to come across too, but not everyone’s the same. And sure, he’s always had this thing about Steven ever since the American wrestling incident, and now he’s just reminded me too that we, the three of us, went to the pub about ten years ago and Steven accidentally knocked Doug’s pint over. It was a pure accident and Doug was nice about it at the time but afterwards he just didn’t stop bloody moaning.
‘Are you embarrassed that I’m a writer?’, I’ve just asked him.
‘Well let me put it this way. Nobody cares’.
‘Sorry?’
‘Nobody reads anyway. So therefore, nobody cares. You can put the bus timetable in one of your stories, and nobody would even notice’.
‘What’s brought this on?’
‘Nothing’.
‘Are you . . . Are you jealous because I’ve called the lead character Steven?’
So anyway, Steven’s at the gate to the ape pen and he reaches out, and he feels the cold metal of the latch. It's a crisp frosty morning. He laughs, and remembers something that happened to his uncle one frosty morning, when the lock on his car door froze so he bent down to blow hot air into it, and his lips got stuck on the metal of the lock. Steven obviously didn’t want this to happen to him, particularly at the gate of the ape pen.
2214 Bus departs Brixham Town Square
2215 Brixham New Road
‘But that happened to my Uncle!’, Doug has just shouted.
‘Serves you right for reading over my shoulder’.
‘It didn’t happen to Steve’s uncle! It happened to my Uncle’.
‘This isn’t Steve in the story. Remember that. This is just someone who happens to be called Steve. I mean, Steven’.
2217 Brixham Monksbridge Road
Steven takes a step back and looks at the latch. There’s definitely something faulty with it. He can hear the apes hooting and snorting the other side of the bars but he knows that he won't be able to do anything until the zookeepers have come along to herd the apes into their hut and lock the door, just for safety’s sake. He then heard footsteps, and there she was.
Sandi.
‘Morning, Steven’, she said.
She gave him one of those smiles. Oh, how he had dreamed of her smile.
2220 Brixham Laywell Lane
‘That wouldn’t happen for a start’, Doug has just said.
‘Why not?’
‘No-one ever smiles when they see Steve. They just kind of grimace. I know that I do. The only person who smiles when they see Steve’, Doug said, ‘Is you’.
‘He’s just pleasant to be around’.
‘He’s a big arse’.
Steven had always had a soft spot for Sandi.
‘I don’t know much about short stories and all that crap, but don’t they say that you should show and not tell?’, Doug has just said, and to be honest, he’s got a point.
‘I’m finding it very hard to concentrate with you lurking there at my shoulder the whole bloody time’.
‘That’s fine, just use me as an excuse. Go ahead’.
‘Stop being so sarcastic!’
‘Just because you fancy Steve’.
‘I don’t fancy Steven. I like him. He’s good company and, you know what? He never moans.’
‘Go on, then. Carry on with your crappy story. See if I care’.
2222 Churston Village
‘I suppose you want some help with the apes’, Sandi said.
She brushed a stray strand of hair away from her eyes and smiled again.
‘Oh, plLLEASE!’, Doug has just said.
‘What?’
‘That’s got to be one of the worst chat up lines in the history of literature! I suppose you want some help with the apes! People would think you were a laughing stock if this ever got published, which by the way, it won’t’.
I’ll be honest with you, I’m starting to have one or two doubts about this story, now. I had such high hopes when I sat down to start it but now, and I think I’ll have to blame Doug entirely for this, my enthusiasm has definitely waned.
Because apart from anything else, I know next to nothing about working in a zoo, and I only thought I’d set the story there because of the tales that Doug’s brother-in-law tells of life working with the animals and the visitors and the staff most of which, I now realise, aren’t that interesting after all, it’s just that Doug’s brother in law tells these stories with such a carefully nuanced manner, like a comedian, that you’re just there on tenterhooks wondering where the story goes. Which is what is not happening with this one.
‘What’s going to happen to Steve in this story, then?’, Doug has just asked.
‘Oh I see. Now you’re interested, all of a sudden?’
‘The snooker’s on in a minute’.
‘Sandi is going to save Steven from an ape attack and they’ll have a date and they’ll get chatting and even though they’ve got this shared adventure and a reason to be in each other’s company, they just won't click as a couple, if you know what I mean, but this won’t be explained there and then, it will just become apparent, you know, all subtlety and nuance, and there’ll be this beautiful couple of passages where they’re sitting in a bar somewhere in a sunbeam which slants across the table, and they’ll be happy in each others company but they won't have that vital spark which underpins all relationships, you know what I mean? Because it’s sad, isn’t it? The way that these paths are laid out but only seen in retrospect, but anyway, then they’ll go back to their jobs the next morning as if nothing has happened, only a little wiser, and still good friends.’
‘I see’.
‘It’s not going to be a comedy’.
‘No’.
‘And then he goes back to work the next morning and they give him the leaf blower and he gets chewing gum in the lion’s mane’.
‘No leaf blower’.
‘You’ll be relieved, though’.
‘What do you mean?’
‘That Steve doesn’t get the girl of his dreams. Because you like him so much.’
2224 Galmpton Village
‘That’s not . . . That’s . . . I mean, I’m going to change his name in the story, but even so, Steven, he’s just a friend’.
‘You want him to be more’.
‘He’s just a character in a story! Or at least, he will be, when I get around to writing it’.
The more astute readers among you will have glanced down and seen that this story finishes in a short while. If you haven’t, then I’ll leave a little hash symbol here so you can look down and easily find your place again. #
‘And what’s the title going to be?’
‘I’m just going to go to my CD collection and choose a title at random. I don’t know what that title will be just yet. I might look at the Roland Kirk CDs, just choose whichever my fingers come across first, and name the short story after the third track on that album’.
‘Whatever’.
‘A cup of tea wouldn’t go amiss’.
‘I’ll put the kettle on’.
Thank goodness for that, Doug has just walked away. Like he said, he’s got his snooker.
I remember once back in the old days, we used to go to the snooker halls, Doug and I, and I tell you, those tables are much bigger than they look on the TV, and one day I managed to pot three balls in a row and a man who was playing on the opposite table said something like, well done, because he could tell that snooker wasn’t my thing, and do you know what? I’ve not played a game since.
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