Dreams of a Robot Dancing Bee (10 page)

The doctor pulled back the blankets and began to probe Emil's
abdominal area gently. He, with Alex's help, removed Emil's trousers and shirt.

“I am taking him to the hospital now. I want to give him some tests.” He would tell her nothing more.

The two of them helped Emil down the stairs and into the backseat of Otto's Mercedes Benz.

Emil the violinist, Emil the lover, Emil the
bon vivant
, had seven fingers and four toes amputated the next day, a victim of frostbite. Alex was at the hospital every minute permitted. She herself was in shock, and Otto insisted she take strong tranquillizers. Still, she chain-smoked, and stared ahead at the white walls with sickness in her heart.

Emil was permitted to return home six days later, feet and hands bandaged thickly. Alex made soups for him. He wouldn't talk so she began to read to him, first from
The Magic Mountain
, his favorite novel, but it was too depressing and she switched to
Growth of the Soil
. It was a sober, long-winded book, with no flash of comedy. And when Emil slept, she tried to imagine their life together. Everyday, as the days went on, she spent two or three hours daydreaming about what their life would be. Emil, most obviously, would never play again. But also—and this at first pained her unbearably to even think, and she hated herself for allowing such a selfish thought to even occur to her—never again would he twirl her nipples sensuously between his thumb and finger. And more. And more. Most likely, he would never again be the light-hearted, impetuous lover and gentleman she
had known during these past months. O how it hurt to allow these thoughts to surface. How selfish!

After several weeks Emil had his bandages removed, and the sight was hard to bear for both of them. Alex feigned good cheer, and to her surprise Emil began to joke about taking up the ukulele, playing on streetcorners to support them. He even wanted to make love again, but during the course of their love-making Alex's heart locked shut and she knew it was now only a matter of finding the least hurtful moment to leave, to leave Emil but also Toronto. This chapter was closed.

She was lucky to find a job teaching painting at a small women's college in New England. After six years, she was awarded tenure. Only now and then, when she is getting to know someone new and trying to convey an essence of what her life adventure has been to this point, will she make reference to those extraordinary months with Emil in Toronto. She usually concludes the anecdote by saying, “But of course I had to leave him then, I'm such a sensual person.”

R
ita and I had just driven 120 miles for no reason. We had bought some lawn ornaments from an Asian lady who had warned us that people often shot the bears because they were so realistic. And we had also purchased some very tiny lawn furniture, though we didn't own children, it was just an inspired idea.

We stopped at Dot's Restaurant and ordered some Jailhouse Chili, it had won first place for taste and presentation the year before. I'm not entirely sure what the waitress meant by presentation. It had a sprig of parsley on it or something, a maraschino cherry. Maybe the woman who served it was nude.

“And I'll have a glass of iced tea,” I added.

“No iced tea,” the waitress told me. She was cute and had a Long Island accent. We were far from Long Island.

“It's iced tea season,” I said.

“We're not serving it because the town water stinks. No one's drunk water here for five months.”

“Busted pipe?” I inquired.

“Dead bird,” she replied, walking away.

There was an enormous fat guy seated at the counter. He was about seventy years old and was missing every other tooth. His face had been carved out of mush with a meat cleaver. He said to the waitress, “How about a ham hock?”

“You wanna fork?” she asked.

“Nah, I'll use my fingers.” He popped the tenderloin part into his mouth immediately upon delivery. And then stared at the revolting fat circle for a few moments. There seemed to be a little debate going on in his fat head. Then he threw the whole thing into his mouth and swallowed.

We grinned at him. He was enjoying his life. It was about three o'clock in the afternoon and I figured that all his nutritional needs had been met for this day.

“Rita,” I said, “are we in Griswoldville or what?”

Rita bit into a chip and smiled, “Well, it ain't the end of the world but it's as close as we're likely to get.”

“You're a poorly conceived character, you know that, Rita?”

“Well, I'm not walking away, if that's what you're getting at. Everything about this place suggests my pre-existence.”

Rita had flown up from Oklahoma and was about the size of a lawn ornament, a big one. People were always taking shots at her, but she wasn't shy of shooting back. Once she stabbed a raccoon to death for just looking at her.

I was on vacation.

When we left Dot's I told the waitress we'd be back, but that was a lie. There are a lot of places that just don't merit a return. Dead bird, my ass.

We looked at the map for a good long time. “Ever been to Marlboro?” Rita finally asked me.

“No, but I have a Marlboro beach towel.”

“Then let's go.”

She threw the map out the window. “It just gets in the way,” she explained. I knew what she meant. The Asian lady who had
sold us the bear had referred to Rita as my wife. She said, “You and your wife might like that.” We were comfortable with that, even though Rita was a little lesbian. She wasn't very lesbian, and yet she was only lesbian. I barely know what I'm talking about.

It was a great day for driving fast and turning up the volume on the radio. We stopped at several junk shops and bought stuff we didn't need. It was important to touch base with the people, to see if they had any thoughts about the world's decline or new products. Most of them seemed to be surprisingly happy. I really was surprised. Even relieved, I guess you could say. Even the people in trailers waved to us. We stopped at a phone booth and Rita called some girl in Norman, Oklahoma to tell her she wanted to have her baby or something.

Marlboro wasn't much of a town, two churches, a gas station, a couple of kids on bicycles, an old guy leaning on a tree. There was one tiny shop called The Other Shop with a closed sign on the door. We parked the car and walked around for a half-an-hour looking for the other shop, but there didn't seem to be one. I guess that's what you might call an excellent example of desperate small town humor. Rita and I were holding hands and probably looked to the natives as if we were thinking of settling down here, and maybe even opening a shop. It wasn't entirely out of the question, at least as far as I was concerned.

“But you can't get a drink in this metropolis,” Rita noticed.

“You're a genius,” I said. “What was I thinking? You also can't get a meal, you can't get laid, you can't buy a book or a record or a pair of socks. This is the end of the world, a little
patch of nothingness for people who don't care enough to bother. Would you care to interview anyone before we motivate on out of here back into the zone of engagement?”

The gas station attendant had been staring at us for a while. Rita lifted her shirt and flashed her tits at him. He waved back.

I love to vacation with Rita. She's so affirmative. So zesty.

Five days later we stopped in a place called Buckland and ordered chocolate malts. We both had the hots for our waitress. Her name was Nadine and she was about six foot three. She looked like she could find herself around an aisle full of cleaning products real handily.

“You'd disappear in her,” I told Rita rather cruelly. “She's more my type.”

“I bet she threw the javelin in high school,” Rita said.

“That suits me just fine,” I said. “Useful.”

“What?”

“I mean, if I get laid off. At work. She could throw the javelin.”

“Frieda pole-vaulted to glory,” Rita said.

“Who the hell is Frieda?” I asked. Nadine really was about the size of a totem pole, but she had a much better figure. She looked like Jayne Mansfield on stilts, except she wasn't a bleached blond.

Actually she doesn't look like Jayne Mansfield at all. That was a hasty and inaccurate cheap little simile entirely inappropriate. She looks like Connie Chung on stilts, except that she isn't Asian, even marginally. She was born and bred in Buckland. What does that mean, bred? Did they actually breed her? I know I would like to be her stud. Rita has always called me “Spud.” She knows
I don't much like it, and that I would rather be a Stud, Nadine's own personal Stud, as it turns out, for now, at least, while we founder awhile here in Buckland.

“Frieda is my girlfriend in Norman, Spudman, and she is still swimming in glory as the state champ of female pole-vaulting, 1968.”

“You could bring her along some time. I'd like to measure her glory.”

“She is, uh, disabled.”

“Landed on her head one too many times?”

“That's pretty much Frieda's story.”

“But I bet her mind is as sharp as a pin, right?”

“Not exactly,” Rita said, watching Nadine bend over to pick up a spoon.

“Why don't you throw your napkin on the floor and see if she'll pick it up. We could get a glimpse of her tits, maybe. I'm on vacation, you know. I deserve something.”

“It's my vacation, too, Spuddy. I'm a human being.”

“No, you're not. You're more like a lima bean. Now Nadine is more like a human being. Or more, she's ten human beings and three or four angels and a cheetah all wrapped up in one delicious body. She's a celestial zoo and a vast box of animal crackers.”

A couple of days later we were in Conway. Rita had to call Frieda about something. Frieda was supposed to feed Rita's cats. But Frieda never remembered. I eavesdropped this time. I was interested in how you talked to someone swimming in glory and out of their mind.

“Just let them out,” Rita insisted. “They've got little dining-out cards around their necks and can receive free meals at a variety of local pet restaurants. I'll be back in a couple of days. You hang in there, sweetheart. I'll bring you lots of presents. Yes, Rome was crowded and noisy and Venice was completely washed away, but we had fun anyway. We fished for ancient busts and got lucky. You'll see. No, we didn't watch
Dynasty
, too fuzzy. I love you, too.”

When she finished I decided to keep my thoughts to myself. I could have said something, but, then, it wasn't my business.

“This Conway is one big turkey farm,” I said. “I counted four truckloads of turkeys drive by in the last two minutes. Have you noticed the feathers just floating around?”

Rita was staring at the stars on her shoes, maybe she was counting them. She looked sad.

“How was Frieda?” I asked.

“I don't think Frieda's going to make it another year, and here I am driving around with you flirting with waitresses all over. I'm a scumbag, Spud. I should be back there making sure she takes her medicine and everything.”

“Gee, Rita, I'm sorry. You never even mentioned Frieda to me before.”

“Well, we haven't really been an item all that long. And besides, it's a secret in Norman. Dykes are lower than armadillo in Oklahoma, and that's saying something because there are no armadillos in Oklahoma.”

We were still just standing there without a clue, but that's how
we travel, Rita and I. We try to take a trip like this once a year, just drive every which way and then stop for refreshments and junk. She buys a lot of old hats and costume jewelry, and I buy anything that strikes my fancy. I've known her since she was a pup.

“We're not really lovers, it just feels like it,” Rita said.

“I didn't ask, and I didn't presume.”

Another convoy of turkey transports chugged by. All these white feathers came floating down on us. I picked a couple out of Rita's hair, then she picked some out of my face.

“This is a sorry little place. Can you imagine spending your life blowing turkey feathers out of your mouth,” Rita said, blowing a feather out of her mouth.

“I could use a rum and Coke about now. I know a place over in Shelburne Falls, you can sit by the window, or better yet, out on the deck and look down at the river.”

We got back in the car and I kissed Rita lightly on the lips. I'm sorry for what I said about Rita being not much bigger than a lawn ornament.

“Gimme another ham hock,” she said.

“Dead bird,” I said.

M
itzi was having trouble getting George's attention lately. George was obsessed with the foundation of their house. He would get home from work, change clothes, and go outside immediately. She'd watch him from the kitchen window staring into the hole he had dug over the weekend. He'd stand like that until dark, scratching his head. He didn't talk about it with her, but it seemed as if that hole was the only thing in the world he really cared about.