The Water-Method Man

So the incriminating news needed shouting, and when Aunt Blackstone finally got it, she couldn't see what all the fuss was about. 'Oh, pregnant,' she said. 'How nice. Isn't that something?' She fixed her gaze on you, Biggie, marveling at your metabolic wonder, glad to know the young were still fertile; at least there was one thing about the young that hadn't changed.

We were all quite understanding of your mother, tolerating her taking it for granted that we sleep in separate rooms; only your father was bold enough to imply that we must have slept together at least once before, so what was being saved? But he let it drop, seeing, with the rest of us, that your mother needed to be sustained by some formality. Perhaps she felt that though her daughter had been violated and stained beyond childhood, there was no reason why her daughter's room couldn't remain pure. Why tarnish the teddy bears on the headboard of the bed, or all the little trolls on skis, lined up so innocently along the dresser top? Something needed to be left intact. We could all see that,

And in the morning, we met in the bathroom. I knocked Aunt Blackstone's teeth into the sink; they chattered noisily around and around the bowl, a mouth on the roam. This made you laugh while you clipped your toe-nails over the tub - my first taste of domesticity.

Outside the bathroom door, your mother was nervous. 'There's another bathroom upstairs,' she called twice, as if she feared you could get pregnant again, have twins or worse.

And you whispered to me, Biggie, as I sloshed water into my armpits, 'Do you remember, Bogus, when you tried to wash in the bidet in Kaprun?' And my member shrunk from that icy memory.

In the morning, Trumper spoke into his dream, and into the soft hair, nesting on his pillow. 'Do you remember ... ?' he began, but he failed to recognize the perfume and drew back from the figure on the bed beside him.

'Remem ...' the whore said sleepily. She didn't understand English.

After she'd gone, all he could remember of the whore was her rings, and how she'd used them. It was a game she fancied: reflecting little facets of light, caught in the many-faced stones, all over her body and his. 'Kiss this one here,' she'd say, indicating a flickering spot of light. When she moved her hands, the little mirrored edges of light moved with them, tracing bright squares and triangles over her deep-cut navel and down her taut thigh.

She had long, lovely hands and the sharpest, quickest wrists he'd ever seen. She played a fencing game with her rings too. 'You try to stop me,' she said, squatting opposite him on the teetering Taschy bed while she feinted, parried and thrust her flickering wrists at him, scratching him here and there with a ring's sharp edge, but never hard enough to break the skin.

When he was on top of her, she raced her rings over his back. Once he caught a glimpse of her eyes; she was watching her rings' prism patterns chase across the ceiling as she moved under him with slight and careless shrugs.

In the Josefsplatz he stopped walking around the fountain and wondered how he'd gotten there. He tried to remember how much he'd paid the whore, or even when he had. He couldn't remember the transaction at all and checked his empty wallet for some clue.

In his suitcase, the fine smell of mentholated chocolate laced with catnip made him swoon, and he remembered the hashish brick. He imagined paying for his lunch with a sliver of it - picking up a table knife, slicing off a wafer-thin strip and asking the waiter if that would do.

In the American Express office he found himself asking for Merrill Overturf at the information counter, behind which a man tilted his puzzled head, consulted a map in front of him, then a larger map behind him.

'Overturv?' the man asked. 'Where is it? Do you know the nearest town to it?'

After this was straightened out, Trumper was directed to the mail desk. There a girl firmly shook her head; American Express had no permanent mailbox in Merrill's name.

Bogus wanted to leave a note anyway. 'Well, we can hold it at the desk for him,' the girl told him. 'But just for a week or so. Then it's a dead letter.'

A dead letter? Apparently even one's words could die.

On a bulletin board in the front lobby there were little notices about all sorts of matters:

ANNA. FOR GOD'S SAKE COME HOME!

SPECIAL TELETAPE REPLAY NFL GAME OF THE WEEK/ REG. SHOWING EV. SUN @ P.M. 2 & 4/ATOMIC ENERGY COMM., KARNTNER RING 23, WIEN I/U.S. PASSPORT REQUIRED.

KARL, I'M BACK AT THE OLD PLACE.

PETCHA, CALL KLAGENFURT 09-03-79 BEFORE WEDS., ELSE RIDE WITH GERIG TO GRAZ, MEET HOFSTEINER AFTER 11 THURS. EVE/ERNST

To these, Trumper added:

MERRILL, LEAVE SOME WORD FOR ME/BOGGLE

He was standing on the Karntner Ring sidewalk, feeling the warm, springlike weather and wondering why December felt like this, when the man with apple cheeks and a bow tie first spoke to him. The man's mouth was so plump and round that his natty mustache was almost circular. Trumper wasn't a bit surprised to hear him speak English; he looked like a gas-station attendant Trumper had known in Iowa.

'Say, are you American too?' the man asked Bogus. He reached to shake Trumper's hand. 'My name's Arnold Mulcahy,' he said, shaking hands with a firm grip, a rapid pump. Bogus was trying to think of something polite to say when Arnold Mulcahy jerked him right off his feet with a perfectly executed falling arm-drag. For a cherub, he moved very fast; he was behind Bogus before Bogus could get off his hands and knees and had already torn the suitcase right out of Bogus's grasp. Then he slapped a double chicken-wing on Trumper and flattened him right down to the sidewalk.

Trumper was a little dizzy as a result of encountering the sidewalk with his forehead, but he wondered if perhaps Arnold Mulcahy was an old wrestling coach he'd known. He was trying to place the name when he saw the car pull up to the curb and two men get out quickly. Someone stuck his head into Trumper's suitcase and took a deep sniff. 'It's in here, all right,' he said.

The car doors were all open. I'm having this dream again, Trumper thought, but his shoulders really did feel as if they were popping out of their sockets and the two men helping Arnold Mulcahy throw Bogus in the back of their car felt very real.

In the back seat, they frisked him so fast and thoroughly that they could have told him the number of teeth on his pocket comb. Arnold Mulcahy sat up front reading Trumper's passport. Then he unwrapped the hashish brick, sniffed it, touched its sticky resin and licked it with his toady tongue. 'It's pure stuff, Arnie,' said one of the men in the back seat with Bogus. His English was pure Alabama.

'Yup,' said Arnold Mulcahy, who wrapped the hashish back up, returned it to Trumper's suitcase, and then leaned over the front seat and smiled at Bogus. Arnold Mulcahy was about forty, twinkling and plump; among other things, Trumper was thinking that Mulcahy had just executed the best falling arm-drag and double chicken-wing that he had ever had the misfortune to experience in his entire wrestling career. He was also thinking that all the men in the car were about forty, and probably American. They were not all twinkling and plump, however.