I was dumbstruck. One minute, Carl was in the Jeep, and then, in an instant, he was inside the house.

“Holy macaroni,” Lula said. “He‘s fast!”

We looked in a window and saw Carl in the kitchen, bouncing off counters, jumping up and down on the small kitchen table.

I pressed my nose to the glass. “I have to get him out.”

“Like hell you do,” Lula said. “This here‘s your lucky day. I say finders keepers.”

“What if Munch never returns? Carl will starve to death.”

“I don‘t think so,” Lula said. “He just opened the refrigerator.”

“There has to be a way to get in. Maybe Munch hid a key.”

“Well, someone could accidentally break a window,” Lula said. “And then someone else could crawl in and beat the living crap out of the monkey.”

“No. We‘re not breaking or beating.”

I rapped on the window, and Carl gave me the finger.

Lula sucked in some air. “That little fucker just flipped us the bird.”

“It was probably accidental.”

Lula glared in at Carl. “Accident this!” she said to him, middle finger extended.

Carl turned and mooned Lula, although it wasn‘t much of a moon since he wasn‘t wearing clothes to begin with.

“Oh yeah?” Lula said. “You want to see a moon? I got a moon to show you.”

“No!” I said to Lula. “No more moons. Bad enough I just looked at a monkey butt. I don‘t want your butt burned into my ret i nas.”

“Hunh,” Lula said. “Lotta people paid good money to see that butt.”

Carl drank some milk out of a carton and put it back into the refrigerator. He opened the crisper drawer and pawed around in it but didn‘t find anything he wanted. He closed the refrigerator, scratched his stomach, and looked around.