The Modality of the Jit Monkey

originally posted January 5, 2007

I was in the City Stadium with both Elise and Four-Copper last evening, getting a break from the drudgery of paperwork. I contracted a woman to companionship once. She was pleased, no overwhelmed with emotion, to be ordered to handle the mundane affairs of business, the drudgery of said paperwork. She was an acceptable accountant. The occasional audit of her work ensured me that the mistakes she made were at least honest ones. Understating revenues, miscalculating tax expense, thing like that. Easily corrected. I have been doing this work of late. While it is prudent to be closer to the in and outflow of revenues, it is time-consuming, tedious work.
I have been making it a point to pencil in times of relaxation. I think the blonde girl was pleased to be relieved of her duties, allowed to accompany me. Knelt on the upper concourse opposite Elise, the two of them seemed to enjoy the banter of the crowd, what they could hear of it, and the sparring combatants. They seem to genuinely like one another, despite disparate appearances and miens. I admit that I spent more time watching the two of them react to the matches than I did watching the matches themselves. Of course, if they did not like one another it would not matter. A splash from a bucket of water or the lash from a belt is generally more than enough to separate bickering animals.
In addition to the sparring, I saw a jit monkey at the Stadium. I cannot readily recall the last time I saw such an animal, but it has been some time. It might have been in the market stalls of Turia many years ago or certainly I must have encountered one during a brief stay in the Port of Schendi. They are odd, little bastards. Prone to an inappropriate outburst now and again. While it is not unheard of or, in certain areas of the world, even uncommon, I was not entirely comfortable seeing such a thing domesticated. It seemed altogether too nervous in an urban environment, scurrying back and forth across the shoulders of its wealthy owner. Should a thing not be in the canopies of the rainforest, traveling from vine to vine, tree to tree, in its element? I do not know. Perhaps I am simply anthropomorphizing a bit. Perhaps the chittering, little thing is quite content to provide its owners with an amusing distraction. I briefly considered returning to the Boarding House to place the lot of them into the modality of the jit monkey, to see if such a thing would be, indeed, an amusing distraction. The women I own, I was quickly reminded, are not unintelligent bitches. The two of them, Elise and Samantha, cleverly started to ponder aloud some of the less polite, but rather common, mannerisms and habits of the jit monkey that they would soon be emulating. While it could well have worked against them, I decided against a house full of slaves, sluts and whores in the modality of the jit monkey. Even for one evening. Even for one ahn.