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sign,” Neneh bit at her fingernails so intently that all she heard was the sound of her clicking teeth. When Pearl began to murmur of funeral arrangements, Neneh went in search of fluffier pillows. Neneh made every effort to be of use, to pave the way toward Pearl’s decline with petals and prayers, as if death were a graceful thing, not the gradual gouging of life from Pearl’s eyes until what was left was only a decimating, and yet ordinary, stillness.
    And now, here she was, at the Willow Park Zoo, a place she had longed for ever since she left it.
    “How is your grandmother?” Joseph asked.
    “She’s fine, just too old to travel.”
    Neneh hadn’t planned on lying, but the truth would have led Joseph to treat her as everyone did, with equal portions of care and discomfort. Neneh knew how she was often perceived: a girl who had revolved around Pearl for decades and now, having no one else, was a planet spinning out into the unknown.
    But as strong as her pull toward Pearl had been, Neneh had always felt an equal pull in Henry’s direction. She had done her college thesis on “Cooperative Behavior Among CaptiveChimpanzees”; she had kept the newspaper clipping about Henry and the blondes; she had brought along the contract with the Willow Park Zoo. She could not have admitted it to herself when Pearl was alive, but as the end approached, Neneh had felt a small and terrible part of her waiting to be released.
    • • •
    Nervous about seeing Henry, Neneh wandered the grounds on her first day at the zoo. Many animals were new to her, like the antlered blesbok behind rusted grids of wire and the Chilean flamingos with their knotted knees. She meandered through the Bird Hut, filled with the soft hiss and squeak of the Balinese mynah, the toucan, and the fruit dove, mingled with the noise of stroller wheels and shouting children, disappointedly searching the cages.
    Eventually, Neneh made her way through the Primate Forest, past the red-nosed mandrills and the goateed colobus monkeys, finally arriving at the chimp enclosure. A zoo worker named Britta was sitting on the bench in front of the enclosure, a pretty face if not for the poorly dyed orange blond of her hair. She seemed to know a great deal about the different chimpanzees, their alliances, their diets, their “mouth-mouth contact.” Neneh searched the enclosure, unsuccessfully, for a face she recognized.
    Britta pointed out Henry, who was crouched before a termite mound, a stick in his fist, which he dipped into the mound to fish for termites. He looked darker and rangier than Neneh had expected, especially compared to Max, whom Britta called “the new alpha male.” Max’s thick, bristly hair was being groomed by one of the females while Henry sat alone. Neneh searched Henry’s face, but she was too far away to tell whether his eyes were still the hue of maple syrup. Shewaited for him to look up and notice the red headband she was wearing, which she had bought from a department store back in Canton, thinking that this might jog his memory to the first time they’d met in Bo. But he did not look up from his termite mound.
    Britta explained last month’s upheaval, how Max had overthrown Henry through a mounting assault of bluff displays, which often ended in blows. Over the years, Max had grown to be Henry’s physical equal, and by nature Max was confrontational, often violent. Once, during a more brutal fight, Max tore a gash across the sole of Henry’s foot so that Henry limped for days. Presuming that this was a game, two of the newer children, Crouch and Walt, followed Henry in a single-file line, mimicking his limp.
    As Britta chattered on, Neneh felt a thickening knot in her throat. “But no one stepped in to help Henry?” she demanded.
    “Well, we can’t butt in whenever we want,” Britta said tautly. Neneh looked out at the man-made boulders, the man-made trickle of water between them. “We can’t just impose our world on theirs.