Bogeywoman

barbarian sweep of the cheekbones-I wasn’t one bit surprised to see it rise like a moon behind a big gun. A squared-off, down-to-business-looking pistol with black pebbly handgrips-“Just don’t shoot em,” I whispered, “or when they catch us I’ll never get out of the bughouse.” “You must give up that mental peon think, always bughouse bughouse bughouse,” Doctor Zuk snapped. “You will drive straight to end of Wolfe Street, gentlemen. When you see water you will drive very slow, and when I say stop you will stop, all this time without you say one word. Or I shoot you, is it clear?”

She sat grimly in the straw behind the coachbox, her head poking up the tarpaulin like a tentpole. With the grainy gray evening around her, with the straw and the horse and the gun and the filthy canvas over her head she looked like a fugitive from some world war, which she was. “You can drive no faster, gentlemen?” “Cowpea already in high gear,” said Tuney, “for her.” We went on itching and bouncing and clattering over the tar-patched brick until I was sick of the ride to the roots of my teeth, so I had my fill of ayrabbing in the end, and horse and wagon into the bargain. We hobbled over a last set of trolley tracks, the street bent right and the next block ended in the harbor, or rather at a seedy marina on its edge, dock lights on poles, flat black ripples turning on their spindles, little white boats bobbing on black sheeny water-and one of them must be ours.

“So,” said Zuk, crawling out from under the tarp. “I think maybe I take you gentlemen along with us on People’s Ship Jenghiz Khan for quiet holiday.” I stuck my head out and looked at her in disbelief. She stood on the wagon, the gun at her waist awkwardly poking out her Foofer-style jacket. “Why you wanna take us with yall?” Tuney inquired, “thank yall get sumpm outa somebody? She-e-e-e, she-e-e-e, she-e-e- e, we so lowdown our own mamas pay yall to take us. If we had mamas.” “Yall be stuck with us,” Chug said gravely.

“It’s sumpm to think about,” I said.

“Good, gentlemen. Then we say farewell.” Madame Zuk was no cheapskate. The black water glittered behind her, the wind buffeted her sideburns, and there sat Chug and Tuney, each turning over, worriedly, another hundred-dollar bill. “For health insurance, is clear?” Zuk patted the bulge under her pinstripe. “We don’t know nothing bout nothing,” Chug and Tuney agreed. Then and only then Zuk crooked a finger at me, I jumped off the wagon and we hoofed it up the gangplank.

FLIGHT TO CARAMEL-CREAMISTAN

Maybe it’s what I should have expected of the navy of a Soviet Autonomous Region of gray grass and red sand, five thousand miles from the sea in any direction. The tub bobbing on ruffles of dirty foam was either a dilapidated yacht or a gussied-up oyster boat. Its scaly white paint job showed up in the dock lights as some mineral strain of psoriasis. The deck in its widest part was so low any wave at all would roll over it. The pilot or swabby was shorter than me and threw back his shoulders at silly attention at the end of the gangplank. Besides Doctor Zuk, who was only half, he was the first Caramel-Creamistani I had ever laid eyes on, so I took a good look. Despite his height he was a ferocious-looking fellow with a white shirt, military epaulettes and black sunglasses, a big round head with glittering hair, massive chest, little bow legs under white shorts, and a mustache draped like a Moghul arch. A cigarette dangled from one side of it, and now and then the harbor lights picked out his big square teeth, as white as chiclets. He seemed to be baring them. Doctor Zuk barked some words at him in Caramel-Creamistani as we passed and he threw his cigarette away. I must say she was worse than Merlin, even, for bossing around cheeky menials.

The engine thudded spongily and we shoved off. I pressed my nose to a porthole but Zuk sat in the dark cabin with her back to me and gazed gloomily into space. We sailed southeast, towards the bay and away from the harbor, and surprisingly fast the garble of factories and shipyards and choked-up strands of lights on bridges and moving traffic was slipping away behind us, and the question arose, where could we be going? Where does the old bay lead? I had a feeling right from the start that Zuk and I were going all the way south, south beyond Annapolis where you walk out a mile and are still in warm salt soup up to your shins, south beyond the Choptank, beyond Fishing Creek and the oyster dumps of Crisfield, south beyond Misty of Chincoteague and Seastar, south beyond Tangier Sound and the Rappahannock, south to the end of the bay. If I’d known how far I could get from humid longing in a single night, how far from dandelions spurting through cracked sidewalks and sickly pigeons pecking the dust in hot parks-if I’d known how far a girlgoyle could get from sticky heartsore Baltimore in one long night on the Chesapeake, I’d have struck out long ago in Merlin’s rubber dinghy. I’d have blown it up and dropped it over the crumbling concrete seawall on Light Street. That’s what I was thinking.

“Where’d you say we were going?” I asked Zuk, though she hadn’t said. And still didn’t say, just sat there in the dark cabin smoking a Gypsygirl and staring at a black porthole. Probably sorry she ever met me. “Er, Madame Zuk-” I said to her back. “You will be so kind to swallow that madame or choke on it,” she growled. “I’m sorry if I lost you your job,” I said, “I’m sorry if I got you deported…” “Why you are saying this? Because I don’t laugh? Because I am sad? Is never wrong to be little bit sad. Every day is wedding day of somebody, funeral of somebody.” She didn’t look round. She was miles away, wearing her distance like a poisonous atmosphere, a lethal perfume. She kept her back to me, as if to turn her eyes on me would kill us both.

I could understand. I’d always known her beauty was the space between us. Now that the space had closed I was stuck with looking at myself. I had nothing but her sandals on, and didn’t like my feet in them any more than she did. I stared with savory disgust at my cheese-white legs, my flaky knees which looked sandpapered, the convict stubble growing in where my pubic hair used to be. “I still don’t get it why naked is the best disguise,” I said. “Why naked is best disguise,” Zuk echoed, “hmmm, is good question. Why did I think this? Naked is best disguise for you not me, but why? So I can’t stop? Yes that is it: So I don’t go back. How I can ever explain to somebody why runaway girl, former mental patient, has no clothes? Is hopeless. Therefore now we go on together to end, no matter what.”

So that explained it. I was her doom. They went south. We were going on, to some end or other. Our engine growled like a bulldog, dragging us down the wrinkled bay, towards the Bay Bridge, under it, beyond. What was down there? I was her doom, how humiliating. “Wait a minute, a famous dreambox mechanic like you, you can get a job anytime, can’t you?-you are famous, aren’tcha?” I needed her to be up there with Margaret Meat, Karen Honey and Ruth Beandip, so I could be sure I couldn’t hurt her in any way. For how could she save me if I had ruined her? And then too, staring into the sun of her glamour I wouldn’t see that black spiderweb strung from thigh to thigh…

“I’m sorry if I ruined your life,” I whispered. “Stop boasting, my dear, and anyhow, my life is not so easy ruined. Ach, choleria, I am a little bored of this Foodian experiment anyway,” she sighed. “In my country is not so bad, you know, since I am Foodian Mental Science Unity Institute of whole Karamul-Karamistan. If I have nose full one day of Eatipus complex I say all right is enough, what it matters? Self-explanatorizing that everybody wants to eat somebody. Tell us something we don’t know, tell us something we don’t see with own eyes, or better yet, gentlemen, don’t tell us nothing! Shut up! Shut your muzzles!” She crushed out one Gitane and briskly lit another.

“Cheese, if you’re so famous and got the top job in Mental Science in Caramel-Creamistan, why’d you ever leave?”

“Don’t be silly girl, everybody wants to leave Karamul-Karamistan. This is why you murder for top job like that, so maybe you can find way out. My uncle Nadir Suleymenov, finance secretary of Mrs. Khazarolova, arrange whole Unity Institute of Foodian Mental Science for me, so I can live. Family of my mother, Suleymenov-Suleymenians, they are not modern people. All same they know better than to give me to husband. They know me from child, they know what I live through with my father the Beetle. They don’t marry me to Karamistani man. They don’t want catastrophe in henhouse.” She smiled. “So they find way for me to live. And also when it comes to new Institute of Mental Science, I think, better Gulaim Zuk than Karamistani psychoanalyst next in line, my cousin Dr. Usman Saidbaevich Suleymenov, supposed orthodox Foodian who made his praktikum on Giant Wheel in Prater with pretty yellow-haired barmaid from Carinthia. Of course so soon as I am Commissar of Mental Science and have little money and diplomatic passport, I want to leave Karamul-Karamistan like everybody else. So I go to Paris and write my little book…”

“Are you gonna write about me now?” I asked. “I have already write about you,” she said, annoyed, “you are monster, no?” “You mean I’m just another teenager…” This was worse, even, than being a Unbeknownst To Everybody. “Lemme die first,” I said. “You want own book like Food’s Dora?” Zuk said wearily. “You must leave this