Dreams of a Robot Dancing Bee (14 page)

“Look at you,” she said to him one night, “in your little Salvation Army pin-striped suit and bow tie.” (Her emphasis on the word “little” was “a hat pin in his eye” he told Leslie and Don at the store.) “If you're going to be a capitalist, then do yourself a favor and don't be such a wimpy, pitiful one. Your little protest earrings are really a big statement. You're going to change the world with amusing buttons, I suppose?”

Arthur worked late every night now, he had to, he had no choice. The shelves of the store were crammed with films nobody cared about, How to Make Your Head Explode films, films about insect life in Asia, How to Raise a Baby Underwater, Travelogues of Cemeteries, How to Sculpt Used Tires, How I Married a Dead Junkie and Found Happiness. There was even a homemade video of a seventeen year old boy's suicide made by his older brother.

Arthur hadn't even known about this one. He read the jacket-copy on the box and smiled. He shoved the paperwork to one side of the office desk, then pushed the cassette into the VCR and leaned back. Surely he deserved a break after so many pages of figures. But it was Angie he was thinking of the whole time, how they had first gotten together. It always had been a kind of suicide pact, he realized now, and now that he was really dying, she was breaking the pact. It wasn't funny one bit. What had they been laughing at all this time. It wasn't one bit funny.

D
r. Shroeder, at the age of thirty-four, had every reason to be pleased with himself. The spacious new house with its solar heating system came complete with a little apartment in back for his mother. And his new black BMW made him feel sportier than he actually was, and he liked this, and told no one that he had to sit on a pillow to be able to see over the steering wheel. With his practice growing day by day, the six-figure income helped compensate for his premature baldness and the curse of his diminutive height. He was tall of mind, he liked to say. His mother had taught him to say that when he was teased in high school.

At the clinic he demanded complete respect from his nurses. They brought him coffee between patients and they removed the Styrofoam cups from his desk each morning before he arrived. They, Susan and Patty, often asked one another why it was not possible for the great doctor to simply dispose of the cups in his wastebasket himself. But it was a small matter, and they knew he was a stickler for detail. Everything had to be just the way he wanted it or he would have one of his little tantrums. He would not walk across the room for a tongue depressor. It had to be right by his left hand as he was examining the patient.

When a female patient required a vaginal examination, one of the nurses was always present, and Dr. Shroeder's behavior was as cool and thoroughly professional as could be, betraying nothing
but medical satisfaction that he could remedy the problem. And when the patients were young and beautiful and shapely, Patty or Susan watched the doctor's every expression in hope of detecting some interest or stimulation, but, alas, his little round stone face was a perfect blank.

One spring morning, on his way to the clinic, listening to classical music on his tape-deck, Dr. Shroeder accidentally drove over a pair of birds copulating in the middle of the road. His heart jumped and he looked quickly in the rear-view mirror. Sure enough, they were thrashing wretchedly, and he couldn't help but wish another car would come along in a moment and finish them off. While making love! Perpetuating their species! And he, a doctor! He quickly put them out of his mind and looked at his clipboard on the seat beside him. Ah, Mrs. Ramstetter.

Mrs. Ramstetter was truly statuesque, she towered above him like a Scandinavian goddess. She was seated in the waiting room reading an old issue of
Natural History
. She had called the day before and Dr. Shroeder was able to fit her in this morning.

“The doctor will see you now,” Patty told Mrs. Ramstetter.

Mrs. Ramstetter sat in the examination room for several minutes before the doctor entered. She had been coming to Dr. Shroeder for almost two years now and they had struck up some small rapport. She was a healthy, vigorous woman, occasionally plagued by small complaints. This time it was the little finger on her right hand. It had been stiff and sore and slightly swollen for more than a month and she wondered if she might not have some rheumatoid arthritis in it.

The doctor held her hand and bent the joints of her little finger
back and forth with great concentration. She felt just a little silly taking up his time for a complaint so small, but his rapt attention dissuaded her embarrassment. Indeed, she began to wonder if that stiff little finger might not bode something more serious, or why else would the doctor have then asked her to disrobe and put on one of his robes.

Dr. Shroeder left the room while she stepped out of her skirt and blouse. Mrs. Ramstetter then sat on the edge of the examination table and thought to herself how the little finger might express some larger malady. Normally, she had confidence in medical science.

When Dr. Shroeder returned, he asked Mrs. Ramstetter to open her robe so that he could examine her breasts. She complied automatically. There was something vaguely comical about his tiny hands exploring her large, full breasts. He had to reach up to them and had an underside view of them. Nonetheless, he seemed to savor the work, taking his time, doing the most thorough examination possible, if that is what it should properly be called, Mrs. Ramstetter thought to herself. Then she began to feel the sweat on his little palms, and she looked down at his bald pate and saw glistening beads of sweat there also.

Mrs. Ramstetter felt completely violated by this little runt of a man, and still she could not bring herself to speak. Dr. Shroeder told her she could get dressed now and again he left the room.

When he returned, he seemed shaken and stared down at his clipboard as he attempted to talk with her. “It appears you have the beginnings of a little rheumatoid arthritis. It's nothing serious and will most likely go into remission. It might come back in
five or ten years, but I don't believe, in your case, it will ever become serious.”

Mrs. Ramstetter considered her options: if she told him just what she thought of his little fun with her, what did she have to gain? She finally decided that she had more to lose and said nothing but “Thank you, doctor, for seeing me on such short notice.”

That night, and for the next several nights, Stanley Shroeder dreamed of those breasts, his hands stretching to encompass as much of their girth as possible, and then in circling motion he massaged them. But then, each time he woke with a start when they became those two unsuspecting birds, black and screeching in their death dance.

“Stanley,” his mother called through the wall that separated them, “Are you all right, darling?”

O
nce a year Nikki and I pile in the car for the cross-country journey to visit our families. We usually go in the summer, hot as blazes, and, once there, there are a series of picnics held by lakes. The nephews and nieces shoot up six inches a year until they land in jail or go away to college. In our families, they never go far. Nikki and I are the only ones to have settled out of state; and we are therefore treated differently. Our presence seems to excite most of the family, as though our stories were of another civilization. We try not to disappoint them, and we are delighted with their accents. Ours come back to us almost immediately. But no one in either family has visited us where we live. We accepted this without much thought, until we got the call from Nikki's aunt and uncle, Lloyd and Joan. They wanted to come for a week in June. We had no choice in the matter, and instantly started to panic.

They wouldn't know what to make of any of our friends, and we probably didn't have any interests in common, once you stripped away the family thing.

“Let's not worry about it until they get here,” Nikki advised. “I've known them all my life. And they love us both, you know that, Charles. They'd do anything for you.”

“But it's different. When we're there, we're different people.

We both try to blend in. Here, I don't know, it makes me nervous. What will we do to kill time? Lloyd doesn't have any interests, I mean, ones that travel well.”

“We'll take long drives.”

I had forgotten just how loud Lloyd could be until he stepped out of his car in our driveway. “Not bad, Charlie, old boy! Not bad at all! Glad to see somebody in the clan is making it.”

It was good to see them, but already I was aware of our neighbors staring our way, probably amused, possibly annoyed at Lloyd's decibel crashing of the property-line.

“By George, so this is where you've hidden our little Nikki all these years.”

We spirited them inside as quickly as we could. Joan glanced around at the paintings on the walls. Nikki and I looked at one another and realized our mistake. Most of the paintings should have been stored for the duration of this visit. The big nude study by our friend Noel Clemmins identified us as Communist subversives right away. Joan tried not to look at it, but it kept sneaking its way back into her peripheral vision. Obviously I have turned her little niece Nikki into a swinger and pervert of the worst sort.

Joan was very nearly speechless at the sight of our furniture, as well. We were touted by Nikki's mother as grand successes of some kind. Nikki's mother had this competition with her sisters, and we were obviously displayed in our absence as the ones who traveled regularly in Europe, who mixed with a few famous
politicians. There wasn't a great deal of truth to the picture she painted, but we gave her ammunition over the phone occasionally that could be used to intimidate her sisters. Now Joan was quietly gloating at the disheveled appearance of our home, the paintings in poor taste, the tear in the fake oriental carpet. She could hardly wait to report back the seamy truth.

“Lloyd, can I get you a beer?” I asked to break the tension. I knew Joan didn't drink, but I thought, away from the rest of the family, I might get Lloyd to loosen up.

He glanced at Joan sheepishly. “A brew sounds good.”

“Just one.” Joan informed him. “Well, Nikki, you look like you've lost weight since we saw you last summer. You haven't been sick or anything have you?”

“Please, sit down, have a chair,” Nikki said. “No, I've been well. I always lose a couple of pounds in the summer. We've been swimming everyday. And we eat a lot lighter in the summers.”

“Tofutti,” Lloyd said.

“What was that, Uncle Lloyd?”

“Tofutti. Do you eat that new stuff, tofutti?”

“No,” Nikki laughed, “we're not into fads. What's this tofutti, I've never heard of it.”

“You see, you don't know everything. Tofutti, some kind of health food, an ice cream substitute, and you've never heard of it. You see, Joan, they don't know everything.”

I gave Lloyd his beer and Joan gave me one of her looks. She hated Noel's painting. It was against everything she had ever stood for her whole life. Nudes in the living room, really.

We took them out to dinner that first night to an old, elegant country inn. It went well enough, except for the wine. They both thought we were affected and unnatural for not drinking coffee with our meal. But we had decided that we should be ourselves and stop apologizing for who we were. We asked them a lot of questions about their three kids, all grown now, and we talked about Nikki's parents and my parents. In fact, we talked about everything but ourselves. And they never asked us a single question about our lives. They had driven a long way to see us and, as far as they were concerned, they had seen enough. The trouble was that they had said they were staying a week.

Lloyd looked around the Inn and summed it up: “This looks like the kind of place you could make one of those horror films.” We didn't respond so he amplified his meaning. “You know, an axe murderer, blood flowing down the staircases, I can just see it.”

“It's very historic,” Nikki replied. “A lot of famous men have slept here.”

“Yeah, I bet. Like Jack the Ripper.” He roared at his own joke, and the maitre d' looked our way with displeasure.

“Lloyd,” Joan said, “you're embarrassing Charles and Nikki. You forget you're not at home. People act differently here.”

“Are you asking me to change at my age? 'Cause if you are, darlin', I got some real bad news for you.”

“Uncle Lloyd,” Nikki said, “Princess Grace of Monaco had lunch here a few years ago.”

“And look where it got
her
,” he said, choking at his own wit. “Like I said, a good horror picture could be made right here.

Don't get me wrong, I like some of them pictures, too. Hell, I'd go see it.”

“Watch your language, Lloyd.” Joan said.

We were relieved to get back to the house. Lloyd and Joan were in bed by 9:30. Neither Nikki nor I could fall asleep that early. We talked in hushed voices for several hours, desperate for a plan.

When we got up the following morning at seven it was obvious that our guests had been awake for some time. They'd drunk one pot of coffee and Lloyd was complaining in his familiar jokey way about what a man had to do to get breakfast around this place.