Bogeywoman

set was tuned to Merlin’s World. And he was the tragic one of the trio, the one with the wife who died in the trainwreck-probably Zuk knew that too-and she was famous herself-good godzilla they were all in on it!

“Let’s just drop it about Merlin,” I fumed, “I’m not talking to Foofer and that’s it.” “Good, is okay,” Zuk said, with a sly smile, “only explain me, if you can, what is big difference between Dr. Zuk and Dr. Feuffer? Listen, my dear, I tell you big secret. Dr. Feuffer is famous doctor, not me. I come many thousand miles for work and study with Dr. Feuffer. Every psychiatrist of adolescence wants to be Dr. Feuffer. I want to be Dr. Feuffer. What is big bloody difference between me and Dr. Feuffer?” “Maybe you need glasses,” I suggested. “Ach! So that is big difference-how I look?” she gushed-because of course madame-too-beautiful-on-her-horse knew exactly that she was beautiful and more than beautiful, she was counting on that. “This is the answer? I am look different from Dr. Feuffer, and this is why you want me, not him?”

“Cheese,” I said, staring hard at the floor for this lie, “you don’t look that different from Foofer. You’re both old.” There, that shut her up. I stole a glance at her. Her crackly old lips were pursed. But then I had to come crawling back or maybe lose her altogether. “Course, you do got sumpm on Foofer. A little sumpm that everybody needs every once in a while. I mean a little of, er, uh, la beaute. Not much,” I added carefully, “but that’s what I need, some old person who’s got la beaute. Some old person to talk to who’s got la beaute like, like a piece of the lost chunkagunk, so I can stand to live to be old-cause what the hump, maybe, just maybe, I’ll turn out to be her not me.”

“The lost-excuse me, what it is?” Like I said, Doctor Zuk had a thousand cracks around her lips-she was beautiful but she looked maybe forty fifty years old-and they all cracked deeper on contact with the lost chunkagunk. “You have make up this word?” “Not exactly,” I said. “Choleria, English already has water from seventy-two valleys,” she muttered, “how I will learn if patients make up words as they go…”

“All I mean is, that’s why I need you instead of Foofer. Cause he reminds me of a fart, his walk is a fart for instance, his itchy brown suit is all puffy with hot farts and, and-” (Doctor Zuk’s face turned oddly stony and I saw she was getting disgusted with me) “-and farts are good, you need farts I know but I already got plenty of farts,” I hurried on weakly. “Enough,” she cut me off, “I am not interested to hear insults of Dr. Feuffer. These are matters to talk to Dr. Feuffer himself.” “But, see, you remind me of… of a silver weasel, which is sumpm I don’t have and never was…” “Weasel,” she said suspiciously, “please explain me what is weasel?”

This time I thought I knew my way through the woods. “It’s an animal, their spines are very elastic, you notice that right away. They look long on account of their backs though none of em are all that big-and they always seem like girlgoyles to me probably cause they’re so graceful and agile, but they’re ferocious. Give her a chance, a weasel kills lots more than she could ever eat-like the wood wizardess used to say, A weasel is a catastrophe in a henhouse!”-(this had gone all wrong; I could see I had better say sumpm to fix it)-“and-and she has a really nice coat-that turns silver in the winter.”

After a time Zuk said drily: “Is possibly true I am, what you say, catastrophe in henhouse.” “Don’t worry,” I said, sweating, “plenty of henhouses need a catastrophe.” “And who is, excuse me, wood wizardess?” “Course you wouldn’t know the wood wizardess-the greatest tracker of all time, Willis Marie Bundgus,” I cleared my throat, for somehow this name alone didn’t sound sufficient to her greatness, “of, er, Millinocket Falls, Maine.” Doctor Zuk acknowledged her fame-a slight bow with the chin-and then I saw to my amazement a faint twitch in the pond- green irises-could she be… jealous?

“So you want me for psychiatrist-and weasel.” She smiled a little coldly. “Have you never thought maybe the right one to ask for this, even if you don’t like-is Dr. Feuffer?” “I can’t believe you’re still trying to get me to talk to that old fart.” “Listen and maybe you understand, little bird with big mouth. Why I should care if you talk to Dr. Feuffer, if you don’t care? Now I make advice to you because you are grown-up woman. First you will have big problem because you are run away and cut your arms again. Big problem, but even big problem will pass. Then, if is something you want, talk to Feuffer, give him that-you want go back to school? You want neighborhood pass? city- solo? You want me for psychiatrist? This place is howyousay pushover for intelligent nut like you.”

My heart was thudding cause now I saw she wanted me for a patient. “I don’t know,” I said, “they might throw me outa the Bug Motels…” “That is rubbish and you know is rubbish.” “Anyhow I already talked to Foofer,” I hastened to add, “I’ve said around, lemme see, two hundred words to Foofer by now-depends if you count hello good bye as two words or three. Once he said: Ursie, I don’t think you like yourself much. I thought that was pretty smart. Hey, he’s not such a farty old fart after all, that was my first idea, but then I realized godzillas sake you could say that to anybody in the whole rotten bughouse or even the whole world and it would be true. If that’s all there is to being a dreambox mechanic, sign me up.”

“You are saying you would like to be a psychiatrist?” I stared at her. I had never thought of this possibility before, somehow I figured once you landed in the bughouse that disqualified you from ever running the dump, but suddenly I saw it in a different light, like rising to royalty the democratic way, from the bughouse up: “Cheese, why not? I guess so. Sure,” I said.

“Why you would like to be psychiatrist?” “It isn’t exactly that,” I said. “It’s more like-I’d like to be a particular dreambox mechanic. You. I’d like to be you.” “Ah.” I saw the light shift in her eyes, another backswimmer’s twitch in the green pond scum, and then-nothing-the pond froze over, just like that. “We see about that,” she said, “when I am your psychiatrist and sit many hours in front of you and say you what I think, soon I will not be cute weasel anymore, this I promise you.” I looked down at my feet, for certainly this much was true: already she was not as beautiful on her horse as she once had been, she had come down a great way already, or she would not be sitting here throwing her time away on the likes of me.

Had I lost her? She was staring over my head into the night sky as if she were bored, and suddenly she got up, looked at her watch and went to her desk. Had the end already come? Had she become my dreambox mechanic and quit the job again before I ever knew she was mine? In truth I couldn’t even be sure she was a dreambox mechanic. Maybe she was a reporter, or a novelist, or a commissar on mission from some foreign country that was just whipping up bughouses of its own. In which case she was probably that backward land’s most eminent dreambox mechanic, a sort of gypsy queen of the mind-that sounded right, yes, I was sure I’d hit it. “Just tell me one thing, Doctor Zuk, are you a bigwheel dreambox mechanic in Outer Hotzeplotz or what?” I blurted.

With every word she was further away from me. She picked up a pair of tortoiseshell glasses from her desk and balanced them halfway down her nose. “Why it matters for you to know this?” she said coldly. “Already you have foolishly asked me to be your psychiatrist. Now is too late to ask for resume.” “You mean you’re gonna be my dreambox mechanic?” “Come now, Miss Bogeywoman. You know is quite impossible. You have psychiatrist. You have heard of patient changing one psychiatrist for other like used hospital pajama?” “But I’ll see you, won’t I?” She peered at me over the tops of her glasses as if I were very small print. I wanted to swallow myself for asking another bald-headed question, since I knew she never answered one. She stared at me until a cold beam of fear settled in my gizzard-I could tell she was sick to death of me-but in my rotten hand I found one more ace to play.

“I’ll talk to Foofer,” I said. “Is capital idea,” she said, with a tiny grimace of satisfaction. “And pretend he’s you,” I added. Doctor Zuk very slightly colored. At the time I was too green-too inex-spare-inced, as Chug had correctly put it-to know how often mismatched lovers employ that plan, but I sensed that I had struck a nerve. I was frightened to say anything more, and at first Doctor Zuk too was silent. She did not smile but finally she raised a finger whose fingernail, like mine, was bitten to the quick. “Why not?” she sighed. “As people like to say in old country where I come from, when water cannot be found, washing with dirt is permitted. I wish you luck of it.” And she gave me a little nod, then picked up a paper on her desk.

Uneasily I discerned that the interview was at an end, that she was finished with me, wished me out of her sight, in fact, but she didn’t dismiss me. Why not? I thought of backing out the door, remembered that telltale gnash of hardware. I wasn’t going to make a fool of myself by rattling a locked door. But maybe I could hurl myself right through it-that would wake her up. I glanced at it-never mind-ugly arms were one thing, I wasn’t gonna bust my dreambox by bouncing it off a steel plate. My eye fell on the bronze mukluks and all at once I knew, don’t ask me how I knew, she had worn them herself.

There came a knock. I heard a key scrape round the barrel, the door opened a little and Miss Roper and Miss Hageboom put their long faces in the crack. At once I snapped to the whole operation. “Dr. Feuffer is ready for her now,” Miss Roper rat-nibbled. “You were just keeping me busy!” I shouted at Zuk, “I hate your guts!” Doctor Zuk