Bogeywoman (30 page)

“O my godzilla she’s gone—you threw her out …”

Foofer stared at a point just past me on the wall, and his loose cheeks sagged. “For a time, a very little time, Ursula, we place you again on Accompanied status—this means, as you know, under no circumstances you leave z’hospital, I am sure you understand z’reason, and you have an escort wiz you wherever you—”

I never meant to hurt him. It’s true the suit of farts was unappetizing to me and his Buick-sized dignity provoked my mental patience to fury, but he was a gaseous nuisance, basically gaseous, and therefore not quite there. He was just a two-hundred-pound fuddy from Europe, a big bald head I could never speak to again whenever I wanted. I had no reason to hurt him.

But as every mental peon knows, these bug mechanics never
close a door behind you without palming alarm buttons up their sleeves or in the kneeholes of their desks, so I had to be fast, whatever I did. I had to get to Doctor Zuk before they locked me up. And if Foofer said
escort wiz you wherever
, that meant Roper, Mursch or Hageboom starting right now. The three Corny Norns were probably lurking out there in the cholera-green corridor already. Well, clapping a nurse on me again was more than a private person could stand—lemme die first!—and besides I had to get to Doctor Zuk. I had to get out of the bughouse. Damn that Margaret, thanks to her I was now a Lesbo Beknownst To Everybody in this dump, and a buggy, underage, amateur lesbo into the bargain. That was why they had to save me—from myself and Doctor Zuk.

But I wasn’t about to give up the forbidden love of my life. O she was scary all right. Naked she had more of the crone about her than I could look at without sweating. She might even love me, and her love was like a house fell on me. And maybe I could never have her or be her but no mere Foofer could stop me from trying.

So I never meant to hurt him but in front of me was Foofer, then his desk, then the door. The brown worsted suit of farts sat on a leather chair; he was pyramidal in shape, and had a certain comic-book dragon effect owing to the popcorn balls of white smoke rising from his lips where a pipe dangled. I leaped off the couch and in one motion pushed him and his chair over backwards. It was a pretty big chair, with lungs of soft leather on the back that softly hissed as they settled. And that had been so easy, once it was done his still-crossed feet dangled absentmindedly in the air above his head, that I pushed his desk over too. This made a great dust-billowing whump on the old wood floor that was sure to bring the nurses running and shrieking
on the double. At the same time out of some secret drawer or bunghole in the desk a file marked
KODERER URSULA
popped and flapped onto the floor. I should have got my mitts on it and not let go, o a thousand times since then I’ve replayed this scene and made my getaway guarding it with my life, but instead I just snatched it up, wheeled and stuffed it out the window, so that hundreds of pages of me went fluttering down Broadway. Then with the superhuman strength of the mental patient I ripped open the steel door, well maybe it wasn’t locked, probably not, and there was Mursch, here came Roper and Hageboom, whipping around the two corners. I backed into Foofer’s office and holed up fast in the kneehole of the overturned desk, getting ready to spring out like a cornered rat, but the nurses just ran around me and now I saw why. Foofer hadn’t moved. He was knocked out cold, his half-closed eyes were all whites, his face why deny it was blue, his pipe was missing though there seemed to be sumpm round and dark O-ing his bloodless mouth, and his wing-tipped foot still nodded at the point of his trousers abstractly, as a butterfly pants with its wings. O my godzilla I’d probably killed the man! Now I ran and nobody stopped me, and this time when I passed Lopes at the front desk in the lobby I wasn’t even a liquid movement in the air, not quite an itch between his eyes—just a vague, exhausted feeling of having cared more once.

I ducked into her lobby around an old fuddy with a grocery cart full of clacking empties and ran up nineteen flights of steps towards Doctor Zuk. I could do that in those days without panting, on account of the superhuman strength of the mental patient, which lasted for the first twelve floors at least. On the thirteenth I slowed up, by the eighteenth I was peeking around every stairwell for guys in white coats or gumshoes of any description. On the twentieth floor, her floor, I was so near to going backwards I had to admit what it was. Cops didn’t scare me—I never had any trouble outrunning a fuddy in uniform—but Zuk was scarier. Probably she’s expecting me, I was thinking, and what if she’s naked.

But when I got there she had all her clothes back on, in fact
I had never seen her looking better in duds. Course, this was beyond even her everyday beauté, this short black dress of silky stuff with a great cut-out speech balloon across the front, and a diamond choker for a collar. “What are you doing here, Miss Bogey?” she asked me, and I started to wonder how come she always looked, not like your usual Commie bureaucrat in a blue serge suit from Searsiev and Roebuckovsky and baggy cotton hose, but like a Russian spy in the movies, in clothes by Cecil Beaton. How could she dress like Paris if she was raised in an oasis in Outer Hotzeplotz? Maybe she really was top drawer, worth millions to the Kremlin, but if she was the best-dressed spy between Washington and Philadelphia, what was her interest in me?

“What are you doing here, Miss Bogey? You look red in your face like boiled Maine lobster, and what is this in your hand? Is for Zuk?” I looked down—I was still clutching Margaret’s letter. I stuffed it in my overalls. “You don’t know?” I said. She shook her head, perplexed and amused. She didn’t know. I sank onto the sofa—there was nothing in the room but a white sofa, a white coffee table with a bowl of roses on it, and long curtains of white gauze, like mosquito net, stirring at the windows.

“Godzillas sake you look like a movie star,” I said, “what are you so dressed up for?” The boiled Maine lobster was a flagrant hint. “I am engaged to dinner,” she confessed. I barked out a doomed and cynical laugh. “I already 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: