“Okay, Les, quit monkeying around.”

I tried to get my tormentor’s attention. It didn’t work. The monkey in front of me was too busy digging its fingers into my armpit to give me a chance to pay attention to anything else.

“And what’s your problem?” I asked sour puss, the monkey sitting on the other side of the cage waving a banana at me. “Too many siesta’s? Did you fall off the tree and land on your head? Not that it matters much to me.”

“Murray! Get out here now, the boss wants you to check on Arthur, he hasn’t turned up for a couple of days.”

Murray? Some vague notion occurred to me that Murray used to be my name. I looked at the scowling face of a supervisor.

“Get a move on Murray, let the lovebirds have the cage to themselves.”

Leaping to my feet, with absolutely no idea where to go, I left the cage and followed the signs to the parking lot. Les had left me at the zoo.

At that parking lot my mood lightened, after years of riding a rickety old cart I finally had my chevy back.