Bogeywoman

married mine,” I said, “what the hump I won’t be marrying anyone else.” “Grow up now, I tell you the truth, Miss Bogey,” she said, “because the gentleman is also psychiatrist at Rohring Rohring and he is coming any minute.” “Is it Foofer?” I said, “don’t worry about it, he’ll be late, very late, late or maybe never.” “Dr. Feuffer is never late,” she said stiffly. “So it is him!-cheese…” I burrowed into the sofa and she stood over me sternly with her arms crossed- she looked like a vexed pastry cook, except for the elegant billows in the cut-out front of her dress. “Greedy baby!” she scolded, “I am glad to see you. Your face is red like big baby but, yes, I am happy you are come. All same we land in big trouble if Dr. Feuffer finds you here. Then my position in clinic is also kaput, yes? and I see nothing more of you unless maybe you move to Soviet Autonomous Republic of Karamul-Karamistan.”

I felt like slapping her. Here she was forking over her address just like that! If she had told me when I first asked her, I would never have started talking to Foofer, I would never have gotten better, and I wouldn’t be in the fix I was in right now.

“You might be going back to Caramel-Creamistan or wherever the hump it is sooner than you think,” I muttered, “and you might be taking me with you.” “What are you talking about? You must hide yourself right away, Miss Bogey. You want to wait here at my place until I come back, then we can talk, but now I show you where to go when Feuffer comes.” She rose and her black skirt whirled and her diamond collar flashed: she was headed wouldn’t ya know it for the balcony.

“Sumpm terrible happened,” I blurted, “with Foofer. It was an accident. He said we couldn’t see each other anymore. He said he was putting me back on Accompanied until they got you out of the way. I think they’re getting rid of you.”

“My dear Miss Bogey, where you get these crazy ideas,” Doctor Zuk said, whirling back around, “rubbish! is rubbish!” But she didn’t look so sure. After all she had been fighting it out for weeks with the old-style strong and silent type dreambox mechanics. Now her face was still but little gold flecks were churning in her eyes, her nostrils flared and in the cut-out O of her dress her bosom rose and fell. And suddenly she stepped across the line. “All right, Miss Bogey, why you say they get rid of me? What do you know?”

I handed over Margaret’s letter. After a time she looked up with a thoughtful face. “Ha, you could be right I am leaving, leaving even the country.” “Sorry,” I said. “I should never have said sumpm to my sister, but cheese, I never thought she’d squeal.” “And what has happened with Feuffer.” “I didn’t mean to hurt him. I just pushed his chair over backwards on my way out the door. But when I ran away his eyes were rolled up in his head and he was totally blue.” She tipped up an eyebrow, stuck her bottom lip out skeptically: “Come, he is big healthy man, Dr. Feuffer, a little thing like that, how it would kill him?” “I think he swallowed his pipe.” We looked at each other and suddenly both of us were shrieking with laughter. “Possibly you are not joking,” she finally said. “Is seven-fifteen. Reinhold is never late for dinner.”

“So you’re really dating the suit of many farts,” I said, “I hope I did kill him.” “You are jealous baby and besides that you are grob, grob, Miss Bogey,” said Zuk coldly. “Is nothing wrong with digestive tract of Dr. Feuffer. Also he is expert in choosing restaurants. Besides, my dear, you should learn ancient tactic to make hospitality obligations with your enemy. I know what I am doing.”

I stared at her, stared, for once, past her self-confidence straight through the holes in her argument, since these were bigger than manholes. “I dunno,” I said, “maybe back in Caramel-Creamistan a lobster dinner is like the Treaty of Versailles but in the U.S. I never heard of nuttin like that.” “Hm,” Zuk reflected, “you can be right… is true he wants to fuck me…” “What!” And who says Camp Chunkagunk for all its corn teaches you nothing about life? “Just cause you’re his favorite dreambox mechanic doesn’t mean he won’t throw you out,” I whispered, “I betcha if he’s alive he’s throwing you out right now.” “Ach,” Zuk said passionately, “I think you are right! What do not mothers bring forth, in this world! I wish his unhappy mother had given birth to an onion.”

“I’m never going back to the bughouse,” I vowed.

She actually clapped her hands. “For you, my bent little chimney, that is good, very good decision. You are funny-looking queer little chimney but smoke comes out straight.” “Probably they’ll try to make me go back now that I did murder.” “Pooo, this is melodrama. Is not so easy to die like in movies, especially with big bunch of nurses all around. Probably they just pull that pipe out like cork, comes big how you say”-she gagged delicately-“and he is life. Big sore throat but life.” She smiled brilliantly. “I am satisfied you make that decision to quit bughouse, Miss Bogey. My time is not lost. Is not for you, such place-is not spoon of your mouth, my dear.”

But then she gazed away and out the window like a spy or dreambox commissar in big trouble, about to be exposed and disgraced or maybe even deported. I had a seasick flash of a rickety jet plane crossing the Urals, with just her on it. She was staring into space across the bare balcony and all at once I realized I had seen her naked at that very window. “Um, er, uh, just one little question about the, er, you know,” I said. “Binoculars? How long has it been going on?” She blinked at me. “Of course I know nothing of what you are talking about,” she said after a time, examining her ugly fingernails. “And don’t want to know,” she added. “Hey, it’s okay for me to do sumpm buggy like that, I’m a mental peon,” I said, “but you’re sposed to be a lofty dreambox mechanic.” She smiled. “Ah! shoemaker goes barefoot, na? and carpenter ties his door shut with shoelace. You think is perfect balance of mind that draws people to this profession? You must grow up, my dear. Anyhow you are not mental patient-no more than I am.” She pointed a craggy finger at me: “And remember this too, little girl. Who has luck and small hole to see what is going on behind garden wall of beloved, be glad and be silent. As they say where I come from, Eat of this behind closed doors.”

Did this mean I was her beloved? Or she was mine? Maybe from Zuk it meant nothing at all. She left the room, tuneless harp of refrigerator shelf, jiggle of bottles, and was back again carrying two small glasses of pee-colored stuff. “Stolat-may you live a hundred years.” She tossed one down. “Ugh, what is it?” “Is very good vwodka-the best-just drink. Or don’t drink, I don’t care. Come, greedy baby, sit next to me.” And she sat.

I sat at the far end of the white sofa and the lure of her presence came swirling around me like a surf. Then it was all undertow dragging me to her. A hum rose in my ears, my blood rushed by, trying to get to her, and my flesh went hot from resisting her current. Her large face was still, that was a kind of trick with her, she smiled the least smile and it surrounded me, a broth, a sea, a weather. I was a potato in the soup of her, no, a piece of soup flesh with bone. I was essential to her, and at the same time I was dissolving in her. “What you are doing?” she said. I was taking my clothes off piece by piece. There weren’t many pieces. “My god, stop this,” she said, clutching her spiky hair and laughing, “they can come at every minute.” Then I was sitting there naked and evening was all around us, breathing on the mosquito net and purpling the open windows. She gazed at me with as much delight as alarm. Finally she said:

“You are not mental patient and now is good, very good, I never was your psychiatrist. Shall I tell you? All my life I have dreamed of a girl like you, fierce, strong, beautiful and sly. Hungry like young blackbird who eats forty times a day. Nerve like one who hangs from rope and washes windows of skyscrapers. Muscle like girl who flies on trapeze in circus. Awake like bandit. A singer, a player of dombro, she comes, she comes like the fourteenth day of the moon. And then reads secret tracks of wild animals in wood. And all the better, Miss Bogey, that you have no mother or father to lick and pet you and bring you soft things to eat. As they say where I come from: Better to be a fox in the mountains than mother’s darling, I speak now of effect on character. A long time I wish to know a child like you. It is feast to look on you. But self-explanatorizing, my dear, I do not touch you.” “You mean never?” I said. It was true she had never touched me, but we two were outcasts now. “Because I am-because-you are young person,” she said, “very young.”

She had been about to say Because I am psychiatrist, but of course that wouldn’t matter unless I was a mental patient, and she had just said-hadn’t she just said?-I was no more mental patient than she was. “I’m not a mental peon anymore,” I said, “maybe I never really was one. I’m almost eighteen years old and I’m not even buggy, you said it yourself, and you never were my dreambox mechanic even if I needed a dreambox mechanic, and I’m not going back to the bughouse, Merlin won’t make me go back to the bughouse if I have any other place to go, so I figure I’m going to Caramel-Creamistan-with you. What the hump did I get better for if I can never have you or be you?” I think I was almost convincing her. Her hand, which kinda reminded me of an old gray root, floated above my knee, but then, bargaining, it turned over: “Of course,” she explained, “if you first touch me…”

This isn’t a comic book, but the blat of the doorbell came right then. “My god, where to hide you,” she whispered. With me stark naked it was too late for the balcony, and never mind that about not touching me-she yanked me by the elbow to my feet and stuffed me into a closet. In the dark I breathed her perfumed coats. By feel I must be in the chilly, shiny folds of a mink and again doubt overtook me: either she was the top Soviet spy of all