Jakelowered the hardened-steel Gilette double-edge razor with an air of grim determination. He had somehow succeeded in convincing Gloria she had to smuggle it in to him, and now his Tom Selleck moustache was gone. And with it, the lingering maddening traces of simian excreta were gone as well. He took a deep breath--IN through the mouth, OUT through the nose--and sighed in relief.

He walked quietly back to his private room in the asylum, the razor resting his bathrobe pocket. HE lay under his sheets until well past midnight, listening to the sounds of the madhouse--the rubbery squeak of the night nurse's shoes, the rattle of the security guard's keys, the quiet snore of the dried out alky who managed to pretend to be the night orderly. Everything settled into the silence of deep night, and he slipped from his bed, tiptoed to the window, and slipped the handle of the razor under the lock device,

It took awhile, because he had to be quiet, but eventually the ancient steel staples moved and he was able to lever the lock out of the casing. With a soft creak, the casement swung open. Jake smelled the outside world, free of monkey shit, like a new man rediscovering reality. QUickly, he ran double bowlines into his bedsheets and joined two of them together, anchored to the leg of his sturdy hospital bed. Squeezing his shoulds to get through the narrow window, he rode the bedsheets down the wall of the imposing brick building, dropping the last ten feet, and, still in his bathrobe and bedroom slippers, he slipped quietly through the hydrangeas and into the night.