Chapter 11
Queen Kong narrates her time in Manhattan, staying in two quiet Village hotels and developing a taste for pastrami on rye. She then describes traveling to an isolated island where a particular toad lays its eggs. There she discovers a lone man (a documentary filmmaker) in a clearing, lifts him into her palm, and instantly feels “love at first sight.” She watches him work on a prize‑winning film, caring for him nightly by climbing into his tent, removing his shirt, and tasting his flesh. When the film is finished, the man packs his case and departs on a “big metal bird” (airplane), despite Kong’s threat to swat his plane like a gnat. She mourns, binge‑eats, drinks river water, bleeds under a red moon, and resolves to retrieve him.
Kong sails up the Hudson one June night, prowls the dark streets of New York, and inspects countless windows until she locates his apartment. At 3 a.m. on a Sunday, she finds him sleeping alone, a blown‑up photograph of herself above his head. She pads away through Central Park, later purchasing clothes for him and treats for herself at Bloomingdale’s. She “picks him like a chocolate” from his room, dangles him between finger and thumb, and they sit together on the tip of the Empire State Building, bidding farewell to the Brooklyn Bridge, yellow cabs, helicopters, and dragonflies. They spend twelve happy years together: he sleeps in her fur, she massages his eyes, he enjoys her gentle blows and nail scratches along his back, and they play wooden pipes he made in their first year. He sits cross‑legged near her ear, playing plaintive tunes that make her cry.
When he dies, Kong holds his corpse all night, shaking him like a doll, licking his face, breast, soles, and his “little rod.” She then fashions his body into a necklace, preserving him with tiny emeralds for eyes, and declares that no man has ever been loved more. She imagines that, in his silent death, he hears her roar against her massive breathing lungs.