'And as for the suicidal motive for the Ban?' asked Gilheeny.
'Easy,' said Cohen, 'BAN TAKES THE WORRY OUT OF BEING CLOSE.'
'It would not be a bad thing,' said Quick, 'for the entire police force to come to you, Dr. Cohere, for a large group therapy.'
'We've heard all about the police,' said Cohen, winking at me, 'buncha queers.'
'Oh, Dr. Cohen!' said Quick. 'You can't generalize like that.'
'The thing is,' said Gilheeny, 'is that we live in constant fear of our lives. It makes the blood pressure elevate like an Arabian geyser, and the tension headaches we get would knock the balls off a bull with the twist in the maxillary sinuses themselves.'
'I have to confess,' said Quick, 'that I have developed a strange passion for bendy, kinky plastic straws. And when my wife yelled at me the other night, I told her to 'bite a fart.' What is wrong with me?'
'See?' said Cohere, turning to me again, eyes twinkling. 'Just like I told you: homosexuals, the lot.'
Eat My Dust Eddie arrived to relieve me. I'd had such a great time, I didn't want to go. In the waiting, room I was met by Abe, who ventured out of his corner, in which was to be found, in addition to his shopping bag, the young man with the pink silk women's panties on his head, who was scanning me suspicion.
'Are you glad I came back?' asked Abe.
'Yes, I am.'
'So far you did good. I made a friend, over in the corner. You know sometimes it can get lonely in this room on the slow nights but I don't like it t crowded neither. That guy's strange but he's a friend. Won't talk to anyone but me so he's my friend. My friend. Be careful driving it's slippery with snow good night.'
I was filled with hope. The sixteen hours had been the way it was supposed to, in the novels, in the texts. It had been a textbook. In itself.
Glitter and glide. Under the colored lights, the spangled couple swirled and sparkled in patterns stored and practiced, and now effortlessly performed. Her costume was minuscule, the straps holding sequined breast cups and crotchpiece hidden by the darkness of the ice rink. Gliding on big strong legs around and around, in intricate figures to enhance the sexual ballet. And then, for the finale, he lifted her high up and carried her in a final glide around the ice?white, the spotlights slicing off her skate blades, man and woman motionless, a climax as smooth and as violent as the ice. As often happened, I was caught in a detail: his thumb, dimpling her gluteal fold, stretching sensitive nerve endings in the labia, the clit?
'Ooohh! Isn't it fantastic, Roy?'
Reflexively, before I knew which woman it was, I said, 'Yup.'
'It's so?you know?exciting and neat and clean.'
It was Molly where were we the Ice Follies.
'You know,' she said, slipping her hand under my sweater, briefly rubbing upward toward my chest and then unhesitatingly diving down, deep deep down to where I was lumpily grumpily half?chubbing along, 'this really turns me on. Like Angel says to the Runt: 'It makes me hot to trot.' I got you a Christmas present. It's at my apartment. Let's go.'
It was definitely Molly and the Follies. The skating couple finished their particular ice folly with a spin and a sudden stop, slashing the ice, the woman ending up spread?eagled, her glittering sequined genitalia winking at me. As we left, I thought of the gynecology room of the E.W., of all those women's legs wish-boned apart, of the gray? drab perineum of the gomeres. Molly led me out through the slush-storm that coated the city from November through March, and back to her house, where she couldn't undo my pants fast enough, and when some snow dropped from her hat onto my inflating glares and I yelped and shivered all over, she laughed and said, Oh, Oscar needs to be warmed up, doesn't he? and did just that-with her mouth?where did these nurses get these gymnastic hungry mouths? I began to get more wild, and with my thoughts crumbling around me I asked about my penis having just been christened Oscar and she said, It's cute?I named my breasts, from when I first got them. Look. Taking off her sweater and unhooking her bra, she marched them out and pointed out that the one on the right, slightly larger, was named Toni, and the one on the left, slightly pinker, was named Sue. Well, that did it. I twirled Toni and I sucked Sue and the visions of the gray gomere twats and the diseased white and black and native American and under?and overprivileged twats were replaced by fuzzy blond Danish twats and a neat little clit writhing in those spangled gluteal folds. Hot, we did trot.
The Follies had been a matinee, and I had to go directly from Molly to the E.W. for an eight?to?eight night shift. I tickled Toni and slobbered Sue until Molly awoke, and as she saw me leaving she said, 'Oh Roy, wait, I forgot to give you your Christmas present,' and she leaped up, hanging Toni lower than Sue, and bounced over to her dresser, and as I marveled at the genius of creation to make such a warm, pink-tittied, and soft?twatted thing as woman, she handed me a little box wrapped up in little?kid wrapping. I opened it, and there, to my astonishment, was a ties pin, in silver, which said:
***
***MVI***
***
'I got the letters and soldered them myself,' said Molly. 'You really are the ***MVI***, to me. You know, I think you're the smartest person I ever met; a genius. You must think I'm awfully dumb. I don't care, though, I just appreciate the time we're together.'
The perfect gift. Strong feelings clashed in my head, from my grandfather asking me about another woman, to how much I did care about Molly, and I asked her, 'Don't you think I'm a real bastard for having Berry and seeing you?'
'Nope. I really don't, Roy.'
'It's incredible,' I said. 'you're so beautiful and so sexy and so much . . . fun and so free it's just hard to believe. I didn't know someone like you could really exist. I care about you a whole lot.'
'Well, I kinda love you, Roy, even if you do see me as some dumb nurse and that's all.'
'You're not some dumb nurse.'
'Nope, I'm not. I'm just a fed?up Catholic who's had it up the kazootie with the nuns, and I'm making up for lost time. And now I'm gonna play.'
'I'm not a bastard to you?'
'Oh, Roy boy, stop it. You and I are just going to have fun, OK?'
Well, sure it was OK, I guessed, and I gathered her up into my arms and kissed her and Toni and Sue and that hot moist and hairy thing whose name I hadn't caught who could squeeze Oscar as only twenty percent of vaginal vaults can, and she kissed me and we kissed everybody, and with warmth and kisses and the tiepin and everything getting aroused all over again and saying good?bye, it was a miracle that I and big Oscar could walk at all, much less walk out, into the slushstorm and down to the House of good old God.
And wasn't it on just such a night that my great-great?uncle Thaler, denied the chance to be a sculptor, had snuck into the barn, stolen the best horse, and ridden away, never to be seen or heard from again?
13
But that was it. That night shift was the fulcrum of my stay in the E.W. The fun was over. The abuse had begun.
It started when I walked through the waiting rooms and saw Abe rocking in his corner, alone, a pair of silk women's panties on his head. He was abusing those waiting, and they were beginning to abuse him back: When he saw me he stopped, looked at me as if he didn't know me, and demanded:
'Are you a Jew?'
'Yes, I am.'
'You know the problem with you Jews is you're circumcised.'
The nurses were upset at Abe's regression, and we were trying to convince Cohen to do something to prevent the inevitable, Abe's rehospitalization at the State F cility. Cohen seemed on edge. The policemen weren't expected until midnight. Flash had taken his vacation hitchhiking out to some godforsaken hole in the belly of the country to be ravaged by his retardate agrarian kin.
