Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates

said.

“Everywhere a buffalo fell,” said Switters, “a monster sprang up in its place.”

Switters was going to list some of the monsters, but his mouth was dry, and he feared he couldn’t expectorate.

“There’s a direct link between the buffalo hunts and Vietnam,” said Switters.

Straining to comprehend, Toufic sighed with his eyes.

“When Lee surrendered at Appomattox,” said Switters, “it sealed once and for all Wall Street’s power over the American people.”

Switters said, “There’s a direct link between Appomattox and genuine imitation leather.”

“But,” Toufic lamented, “your country has so much.”

“Well,” said Switters, “it has bounce. It has snap. It has flux.”

“Americans are generous and funny, the ones I have met,” Toufic lamented, “but I am compelled to oppose them.”

“It’s only natural,” said Switters. “American foreign policy invites opposition. It invites terrorism.”

Switters said, “Terrorism is the only imaginable logical response to America’s foreign policy, just as street crime is the only imaginable logical response to America’s drug policy.”

Toufic wanted to pursue this in greater detail, but the hashish was kicking in, and Switters was rapidly losing whatever interest he had in politics. “Politics is where people pay somebody large sums of money to impose his or her will on them. Politics is sadomasochism. I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”

Switters said, between pursed lips, for he was holding in the last of the oily smoke, “Let’s talk about . . . let’s talk about . . . Little Red Riding Hood.”

Switters told Toufic the story of Little Red Riding Hood. Toufic was puzzled but enthralled. He listened attentively, as if weighing every word. Then, Switters told Toufic the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. He did the voices. Switters did the big gruff bass Daddy Bear voice, he did the medium-sized nurturing domestic Mama Bear voice, and he did the little high-pitched squealy Baby Bear voice. Toufic was absolutely spellbound.

Toufic wanted more. So, next, Switters tried to describe Finnegans Wake to him. It was not a complete success. Obviously baffled, Toufic became disinterested, even slightly irritated; but Switters persisted in his “titley hi ti ti” talk and his “where, O where is me lickle dig done” talk, just as if he were back at the C.R.A.F.T. Club in Bangkok.

But Switters wasn’t in Bangkok, he was in the Syrian desert, and the May moon, entering its last phase, appeared folded over on itself like a thin yellow omelet. It was making him hungry, and he said as much to Toufic, but the truck driver was no longer listening.

Six of them crowded into the Audi sedan long before dawn. Toufic, of course, was at the wheel, and there were Masked Beauty, Domino, Pippi, Mustang Sally—and Switters, dragged out in nun’s habit, traveling (he hoped) on ZuZu’s passport. As they lined up in the dark to pack themselves into the car, Masked Beauty turned and faced them. “We are going to Italy,” she announced solemnly, perhaps unnecessarily. “You will find that it in no way resembles Italian nights in our dining hall.”

“Italian nights? What are those?” asked Mustang Sally, referring sarcastically to the fact that the sisters had not enjoyed an Italian night since Switters had cleaned out their wine cellar back in September.

“Cock-a-doodle-doo!” crowed Switters, trusting that he’d turned the tables and awakened the rooster.

The drive was hot and hard. For fifteen or so miles around midmorning, they were shadowed by a helicopter. This particularly angered Pippi, who badly needed a pit stop. Watching her squirm to hold her water, Switters was given yet another reason to despise choppers.

They arrived at the Damascus airport at half past one, believing themselves unfashionably early for a 5 P.M. flight. Such, alas, was not the case.

Switters had purchased their tickets over the Internet, courtesy of Mr. Plastic, and they picked these up at the Alitalia counter without a hitch. (When Domino inquired how he intended to pay for them, he said that was not an issue, since he’d charged them to his grandmother’s attorney, whose credit information he’d had the foresight to hijack after the woman cheated him out of his cabin in the mountains.) Up to a point, clearing customs likewise had gone smoothly. Switters, wheelchaired and bewimpled, pushed by Pippi and fussed over by Mustang Sally (as though he were the most unfierce of invalids), was accepted as Sister Francine Boulod (ZuZu’s real name) without question. Whenever an official looked him over, Switters would commence to drool, inspiring the douanier to shift his attentions elsewhere. The trouble came when the women were advised that while they were free to leave the country, or free to stay, once they left they could not return: the Syrian government would not be renewing their visas.

Lengthy protests and convoluted discussions followed. When the Frenchwomen objected that they could not possibly depart Syria under those circumstances, the customs agent-in-charge shrugged and said, in essence, “Fine. Don’t go.” Switters wasn’t liking the implications of this at all, but he dared not open his lightly rouged, drool- bedewed mouth.

Having eventually exhausted her arguments with officials at the airport, none of whom could supply her with a reason for the visa restrictions, Masked Beauty began making frantic phone calls. Nobody appeared to be in that day at the Syrian Foreign Office. Every living soul at the French embassy seemed to be in a meeting. The abbess made call after call, to no avail. And now, Flight 023 was boarding.

At the last minute, just before the gate was closed, it was decided that Masked Beauty would remain in Damascus to attempt to resolve the visa problem. The rest of the party would proceed to Rome, where with any luck, the abbess would catch up with them in time for their papal audience on Thursday. They left her stewing, rubbing her nose as if it were a lamp whose genie had gone on coffee break. They barely made the flight.

The three former nuns and one quasi-nun (here’s a way to avoid the “earrings”) had reserved rooms, on Switters’s recommendation, at the Hotel Senato. A smallish albergo, the Senato sat, modest cheek to pagan jowl, next door to the Pantheon in the Piazza della Rotonda, the loudest, most colorful, most, for that matter, Italian corner of Rome, and a favorite of Switters’s, although he sometimes complained that the area bordered on being too damn vivid.

At the check-in desk, the clerk handed Domino a message. It was from Scanlani. He welcomed the Pachomians to Rome. He informed them that their audience with the Holy Father had been moved up to 14:30 hours on Wednesday, the following day. And he advised them that in Italy it was illegal to impersonate a nun, so all of them, most especially their “chief of security,” ought to change into civilian clothes.

It was a rather stunned flock of penguins that lugged its bags (there were no bellmen at the Hotel Senato) into the dwarfish lift. Only two persons could fit at a time, and Domino and Switters elevated last. “I know you don’t like the sound of this,” she said, fluttering Scanlani’s note, “but it’s going to be okay. I only hope my aunt gets here in time. The prophecy is hers. I don’t feel right about surrendering it without her.”

After dropping off her bag in the room that she would share with Mustang Sally and Pippi, Domino came to Switters’s room to help him off with his habit. “Hold still, ZuZu,” she said playfully. “Only forty-six more buttons to go.”

Beneath the heavy habit, he wore his undershorts. The boxer shorts with little snowmen on them and maple trees with buckets attached for collecting maple sap. With a sudden flourish that astonished them both, she yanked them down around his ankles.

She fondled him until he was as stiff as a tire iron. Then, cupping his testes in the palm of her hand, like a farmgirl weighing guinea eggs, she knelt before his Invacare 9000 and gave him a single lick; a long, slow, wet, pedestal to pinnacle lick. He laid his hands on her head, hoping to guide her into more of the same, but she stood and backed away from the chair. She was shaking.

“I want you so bad I could scream,” she said. “I want you so bad I could yell and spit and scratch the flowers off this wallpaper. I want you so bad I could kick the furniture and pray to God and piss in my panties and weep.”

“But?” he asked, as she took another step backward. It was only one word, but his mouth was so dry he could barely utter it. As a matter of fact, it came out in Baby Bear’s voice. He was stiffer than before, if that was physiologically possible, and a fever had descended upon him like a satyric malaria.

“But I’ve made a vow to Mary and to myself and to that part of myself that is Mary and vice versa. Not until I am married.”

“We cou-cou-could marry tomorrow,” he stammered. “Hell, the pope could marry