natives were the worst of the lot: they'd sacrifice virgins to me one minute and
chuck spears at me the next. How long do you think I could have survived in that
environment?"
I take a deep breath and continue. "I needed a change, and quick -- but the
problem was getting off the island. I couldn't swim. [Still can't.) Anyway, I
hear through the grapevine that this guy Merian Cooper is vacationing on the
island and he's putting together this film in the States and it just so happens
he needs an ape, so I go looking for him. Once he calms down he gives me this
mock screen test and he likes what he sees. The rest is history."
"How did you get so small? I mean, you were huge-- forty, fifty feet tall at
least."
I shrug, go to the fridge, crack open another Bud. "That one's a mystery to me,"
I admit. "But I have a theory. I think the universe has to be in a kind of
balance. Over the years, as the myth grew bigger, I got smaller. It's as if
there's not enough room for both of us in this world: it can accommodate either
me or the myth -- and the myth is a hell of a lot stronger than I am."
Granwell looks like he's mulling it over, then apparently decides to let it go.
"I'd like to read you something," he says. "It's an open letter from--"
"Let me guess," I interrupt, because while I have never read his writing, I can
read Granwell himself like a book. "It's from the one true love of my life."
"It's from the introduction to her autobiography," he answers, missing my finely
wrought sarcasm. "It reads something like this: 'I wonder whether you know how
strong a force you have been to me. For more than half a century, you have been
the most dominant figure in my public life. To speak of me is to think of you. .
. . You have accumulated so much affection over all the years that no one wants
to kill you. What the whole world wants is to save yOU.'"
I pick up the remote, click on the television set, and flip to ESPN. Speed Week.
Damn. I was hoping for a college football game.
"Don't her words mean anything to you?" asks Granwell. "Don't you ever think of
her? Don't you have anything you want to say to her?"
So at last Parker Granwell comes clean. I mute the TV and shoot him my most
fetal expression, curling my lips and showing my fangs, but to be perfectly
honest, there isn't much in me to be afraid of anymore.
I set down my beer. "Do you think you're the only bright-eyed reporter who has
ever bothered to track me down, Granwell?" I say. "Hell, it's been sixty years
since I made that flick. You all come looking for the same thing. You want to
find this gigantic, forlorn ape, pining after the woman of his dreams, the woman
whose heart he could never capture because he's nothing but a savage beast. And
none of you can bear the fact that it just isn't so." I pause long enough to
stifle a growl deep in my chest. "The truth is I'm not a savage beast and never
