there, heavy bosom, weight, heft, I thought of the round provolones always dripping in their pale cloths in Karoline von Etzen’s basement but it was useless to scare up anything merely edible to save me, these were real and naked, I could even see the freckles on them and the big purple nuzzies hung low on their fluid roundness like old dried beach roses. It was scary all right, she was old, beautiful but old as the hills and crags, and slightly sickening like you ate too much Coquilles St. Jacques even if it was your favorite food. All at once I fixed on another black tuft- densely crosshatched armpit, course godzilla knows they don’t shave in Outer Hotzeplotz but it was the ripeness, the more than ripeness of everything that made me woozy like being in an orchard left to rot. And looking at that black thatch and the round arms and the white elbows I realized the breasts were draped in that offering way that breasts fall when arms are raised, saw the spiky hair all around and secretive smile but why couldn’t I see-what was she holding in front of her face-my godzilla it’s a pair of binoculars! She knows perfectly well I am looking, she’s looking too, she laughs, she even waves. The czarina of spyglasses leaps out of my fingers, floats on air, and slowly, slowly, rolls to the-cheese I can’t look-deep squeak and punch of metal, someone screams-
“Psst, hey, Ursie-” “Egbert, what the hump are you doing in my room?” I shriek. “I can’t believe I’m seeing you naked,” he says. “Me neither.” I yanked a sheet up in front of me-behind him I saw gray surf, dirty lace of bathwater inching across the linoleum. “Bertie, go turn off my bathtub”-he did it. “Now what the hump are you doing here,” I snarled ungratefully, for all I saw was my beautiful spyglass rolling over and over, Merlin’s face when he got the bill, the dense grizzled slightly sickening beauty of Madame Zuk, looking at me looking at her and shaking with laughter, I imagined her Red Army binoculars that probably wouldn’t break even if she dropped them thirty stories, I wondered if I’d killed somebody with my own fabulous spyglass and suddenly I saw my hand deep in my crack, o my godzilla how many afternoons and her laughter
“Ursie, I was thinking about maybe we should get married.” “What!” “We can’t stay in this joint forever, we don’t want to be hopeless cases. We could get our own place and still be Bug Motels. Pinky and Egbert would be so glad to get me outa here but not have me with em, they’d give us the money. I could take care of you since you’re sorta an orphan.” “I am not an orphan.” “Half an orphan.” “I’m not that pitiful.” “Well, nobody else wants you.” I thought of Margaret and certain other people and didn’t lower myself to answer him, the fuddy, at least not now.
“Ursie, I know you don’t like fuddies, much…” “You got a nerve to say I don’t like fuddies, what do you know about it, maybe I don’t like anybody”-(I was seeing that wild garden of pubic hair)-“probably I don’t like fuddies or girlgoyles or anything.” “Well I mean you never got a boyfriend, but I don’t exactly consider myself a fuddy,” he said, “… more like a lesbo.” I burst out laughing. “You got a frog dangle don’t you?” He nodded guiltily. “Well then I’m sorry you can’t be a lesbo.” “I didn’t say I liked having it.” “That’s got nuttin to do with it,” I said. “Say, you’re not the grand librarian of the lesbos of the world,” Egbert protested, “you can’t just decide sumpm like that.” I wasn’t going to argue with him. “The way I figure,” he said, “you’re a lesbo if you like girls cause you think you’re more like a girl yourself. What makes you queer is liking the same thing you are.” “Then I guess I’m not queer,” I said, “cause I really am queer, I mean I’m a monster, I don’t know any fuddies who are like me, including you, Egbert, or any girlgoyles either, or any grownups or lesbos or anything.” I was saying the first thing out of my mouth, but I decided I better shut up fast, cause this sounded like it might be true.
Egbert stood there for a while looking at me, feeling those few little blondie whiskerettes on his nice square chin. He was skinny, and his long silky hair lay on his skinny shoulders like a cape, but he was nothing like a girl. “You know, you’re right, you really truly are queer, and that’s what made me love you, Ursie,” he said, and at first he looked surprised and then his face got long as the bus ride home, “so there goes my whole theory out the window.” “It ain’t a bad theory, it just goes upside down,” I said. “I still want to oink you,” he said. Hmmmm, I was thinking about it, thinking about it, I mean all I had to do was drop the sheet, already I had this green and spongy feeling around my liver from my spyglass and Doctor Zuk, I mean, it’s sumpm when the love of your life makes you kinda seasick, like eating six Tastykakes all by yourself, and for a minute I wondered if oinking Bertie might cure me, but I didn’t think so.
“Yall two wouldn’t be about to engage in some of that four-legged bughouse athletics?” asked Reggie Blanchard from the doorway.
“Some five minutes,” I said, “it’s a good thing I wasn’t offing myself.”
“Well if that’s what you had going, I was gonna let you off with a warning,” Reggie said. “But this four-legged bughouse athletics stuff, mercy me, wouldn’t that be a nice change for the Bogeywoman-you know sometimes I thought you was one of those she-he’s.”
“I’m the lesbo here, not her,” Bertie said gravely.
The Regicide looked him over. “That’s what I like about this bughouse gig,” he finally said, “some new divergiation on the human spectacular you never heard of before, every single day. Now what is this?” He had just stepped into two inches of water. “I guess you taken that bath on the floor,” he said to me. “You dusty as a peanut too. I knew you was inexperienced at personal hygiene, but I ain’t expected this-good thing I get off at four- somebody be up here with a mop afta while,” he sighed. “As for that four-legged bughouse athletics, yall have to save it. The Bogeywoman here is already late for her Thursday date with her dreambox mechanic, and which I know cause Dr. Foofer sent me to cay her up there…”
“O my godzilla-”
AND HE BLABS BACK
“I know you can’t name her exact country, Doc, top secret and all that”-
I mushed on with the program, but sumpm was different. To get myself in the right mood for dreambox repair, I had tuned up the scary couple on my crystal ball. Sekt, Madame? To the Koderer adolescent, yes? Stubborn as fungus, but now
But no, his date with the love of my life seemed to have some way tightened the boilerplate on the world- famous diagnostician. Foofer sat before me more sealed than ever in his sphinx suit full of farts, his notebook closed, his ballpoint nowhere in sight, his baggy cheeks motionless, not even his thumbnail zissing.
“But howsabout we do it this way, Doc: If it’s no, say no, if it’s yes or maybe, say nuttin. Then nuttin’s for sure, but like you put it so succinctly” (I wasn’t above ladling on the shmaltz when he got that trapped look behind his bifocals) “at least then the truth shrinks down to my size, instead of staying as big as seven worlds like it is right now.”
“Ursula,” Foofer creaked, “nuh-zing you can propose, no game, no trick, will make me utter one word more or less than I zink good and right. Is it quite clear?” “It’s quite clear,” I echoed,
“Okay, Doc, we’re talking Soviet Central Asia here, that narrows it down to six million square miles. I’m on the right track, aren’t I, at Camp Chunkagunk I was always the champ at this kinda thing… We’re talking Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, or Kyrgyzstan-cheese, there can’t be two Foodian dreambox mechanics in the whole six million miles, just try getting your conk fixed in Betpak-Dala!-you can forget it! So once Doctor Zuk let it slip that she grew up in Forty Maidens Feasting-that was the name of this real old fort where they hid her when the bad guys took away her old man. I swear the name’s got fourteen
(I eyeballed him. Maybe August had put the dew on his wooly eyebrows, but what could explain the wild look under them, the restless irises stranded in bloodshot aspic-and he sat perfectly still-not even his thumbnail zissing-)
“Make it easy for me, Doc! I can tell I’m getting warm. Now the big question is who the hump was her old man and why did they take him. Are we talking Nazis here or Commies-”
“Nuh-zing means nuh-zing,” Foofer suddenly exploded, but quietly, like a dropped grapefruit, with a thud and a
