The Water-Method Man

The whore said, 'He went cold all over. I mean cold.'

But in the doorway of the stricken screwer's room, Frau Taschy said, 'He moved! I swear he did!'

The gathering in the hall was almost equally divided between those who moved away from the doorway and those who moved closer in order to see.

'He moved again!' Frau Taschy reported.

'Touch him!' said the whore who'd been involved. 'Just feel how cold he is.'

'I'm not going to touch him, you can bet your life,' the Frau said. 'But you just

look and tell me he's not moving.'

Trumper moved closer; over a warm, perfumed shoulder he saw through the doorway a shocking flash of nude white rump aquiver on the rumpled bed; then the doorway filled and cut off his vision.

'Polizei!' someone yelled, and a man carrying all his clothes in a hasty wad bolted nude from a room down the hall, looked at the crowd and then hobbled back into his room. 'Polizei!' someone repeated as three policemen came down the hall abreast, in step - the two flanking the broader one, solidly in the middle, flicking open any closed door along the way. The one in the middle stared straight ahead and brayed, 'Don't anyone try to leave.'

'Look, he's sitting up,' Frau Taschy remarked to the doorway.

'Where's the trouble?' the middle policeman asked.

Jolanta said, 'He blacked out. He went cold, right on top of me.' But when she approached the middle policeman, one of the flankers cut her off.

'Move back,' he said. 'Everyone move back.'

'What's happened here?' the middle policeman asked. The long gloves about his wrists were creased where his wrists cocked on his hips.

'Jesus, if you'll just let me,' said the whore who'd been shoved off, 'I can tell you all about it.'

The same policeman who'd cut her off said, 'Well, do it, then.'

Then Frau Taschy cried, 'He's getting up! He's not dead! He never was!' But by the ensuing crash and groan, Bogus knew that the revival had been momentary.

'Oh, dear,' the Frau muttered.

Then the voice came up from the floor of the room, a voice just beginning to thaw out, slow and faint through all those chattering teeth. 'Ich bin nicht betrunken' ('I am not drunk') the voice said. 'Ich habe Zuckerkrankheit' ('I have diabetes').

The middle policeman parted the mob at the doorway and swaggered roughly into the room, stepping on the outstretched hand of the pale creature curled on the threshold; the other hand weakly twitched at a tinny batch of tangled dog tags hung around the creature's neck.

'Was Sie sehen ist ein Insulinreaktion' ('What you're seeing is an insulin reaction'), the creature droned. It was like a recorded voice, an answering service.

'Futtern Sie mir Zucker, schnell!' ('Feed me sugar, quick!'), the voice cried.

'Oh, sure,' the policeman said. 'Oh, sugar. You bet.' And he stooped to lift Merrill Overturf, as limp as an empty bathrobe, off the floor.

'Sugar, he says,' the policeman quipped. 'He wants sugar!'

'He's a diabetic,' Trumper told a whore near him, and he reached out to touch Merrill's crumpled hand. 'Hello, old Merrill,' Bogus said, before one of the flanking policemen, apparently misinterpreting the gesture toward the draped Overturf, dropped an elbow in Trumper's solar plexus and sent him spinning into a soft, musky lady who fiercely bit this surprise attacker in the neck. Out of breath, Bogus flayed out, trying to make words with his hands, but the two policemen pinned him against the banister and bent his head back, upside down in the stairwell. Upside down, Bogus saw Merrill carried down the stairs to the lobby. Competing with the creaking of the opening lobby door, Merrill's voice sang out, brittle and frail, 'Ich bin nicht betrunken!' Then the lobby door shut on his high, thin wail.

Trumper fought for breath to explain. But he had only managed to grunt, 'He's not drunk. Let me go with him,' before one of the policemen squeezed his lips tight together kneading them like bread dough.

Bogus shut his eyes and heard a whore say, 'He's a diabetic.' While one of the policemen grumbled in Trumper's ear, 'So you want to go with him, do you? What do you want to get your hands on him for?' When Trumper tried to shake his head and explain through his mushed mouth that he'd only reached out to touch Merrill because he was a friend, the whore said again, 'He's a diabetic. He told me. Let him go.'

'A diabetic?' said one policeman. Bogus felt his pulse throb behind his eyes. 'A diabetic, eh?' the policeman repeated. Then they snapped Bogus upright and took their hands off his mouth. 'Are you a diabetic?' one of the policemen asked him; they stood warily, not touching him but ready to.

'No,' Bogus said, feeling his stinging mouth, then said 'No' again, sure that they hadn't heard him because his mouth was full of burrs. 'No, I am not a diabetic,' he said more distinctly.

So they grabbed him again. 'I didn't think he was one,' one policeman said to the other. As they bustled him through the lobby and outside into the first shock of cold, Bogus heard the faint, tired explanation of the whore behind them, calling, 'No, no ... Jesus. He's not the diabetic. Oh, Christ, I just meant he told me that the other one was ...' Then the lobby door shut her off and left Bogus in motion on the sidewalk, flanked by the two policemen hustling him away.