The Water-Method Man

Ralph came and beat on the bathroom door again, and Trumper wondered what was on his mind. He looked at the book in his hands, somehow expecting it to be Akthelt and Gunnel, and was disappointed when he saw it was only Helmbart's Vital Telegrams. When he opened the door, Ralph followed the phone cord to the sink. He didn't seem surprised to find the phone there; he dialed it in the sink, listened to the busy signal in the sink and hung up in the sink.

Jesus, I should keep a diary, Trumper thought.

That night he tried. After he had made love to Tulpen, questions were raised. Analogies leaped to his mind. He thought of Akthelt stumbling in on the dark Fluvia, who was expecting her thick Sprog. Fluvia had been frightened at first because she thought it was Sprog. Fluvia and Sprog had an agreement never to make love when Sprog was drunk, because Fluvia was afraid he might break her spine. There was also an untranslatable word that had to do with how Sprog smelled when he drank a lot.

But Fluvia quickly guessed who was making love to her, perhaps because her spine wasn't breaking, or by his royal odor. 'Oh, my Lord Akthelt,' she whispered.

Again Trumper thought of poor, deceived Sprog barreling down to the royal quarters, lusting after Gunnel. Then he thought of babies and contraceptive devices and making love to Biggie as compared to making love to Tulpen. His diary was blank.

He remembered how Biggie always forgot to take her pill. Bogus would hang the little plastic dispenser from the light cord in the bathroom so that she would think of contraception every time she pulled the light on and off, but she hadn't liked the idea of the pills hanging out in public. Whenever Ralph was in the house, she got especially angry about it. 'Take your pill today, Biggie?' Ralph would ask her, coming out of the bathroom.

Tulpen, on the other hand, had an intrauterine device. Biggie, of course, had had an ill-fated IUD in Europe, but she left it there. Trumper had to admit that there was an added something about the IUD. You could feel it in there, like an extra part, a spare hand or tiny finger. Every so often it poked. He liked it. It moved around, too. With Tulpen, he never knew where he was going to come in contact with the string that felt like a finger. In fact, on this particular night he hadn't come in contact with it at all. It worried him, and remembering that Biggie lost or dissolved hers, he had asked Tulpen about it.

'Your device,' he whispered.

'Which device?'

'The one with the string.'

'Oh, how was my string tonight?'

'I never felt it.'

'Subtle, huh?'

'No, really, are you sure it's OK?' He worried about it often.

Tulpen was quiet under him for a while; then she said, 'Everything's fine, Trumper.'

'But I couldn't feel the string,' he insisted. 'I nearly always feel it there.' Which wasn't very true.

'Everything's fine,' she repeated, curling up against him.

He waited for her to fall asleep before getting up to try his hand at beginning a diary. But he didn't even know what day it was; he couldn't have guessed the date within a week. And his head seemed so cluttered with things. There were a million images from the film on his mind, both real and imagined. Then Helmbart's puzzling passage about Eddy's feet returned to haunt him. And there was Akthelt and Gunnel to consider; he couldn't seem to get beyond the image of Sprog barreling through the castle, his hopes erect.

He did manage a sentence. It didn't seem to be a diary sort of sentence; in fact, it was a real cliff-hanger of an opening line. But he wrote it in spite of himself:

'Her gynecologist recommended him to me.'

What a way to begin a diary! The question struck him: How is a

nything related to anything else? But he had to begin somewhere.

Take for example ... Sprog.

He watched Tulpen curl into a tighter ball on the bed; she tugged his pillow to her, scissored it between her legs and then slept quietly again.

One thing at a time. What happened to Sprog?

28

What Happened to the Hashish?

IN EAST GUNNERY, Biggie, your mother put us in separate rooms, even though that forced your mother to sleep with Aunt Blackstone and put your father on the hall sofa. And we forgot about poor Couth waiting for word in the lower field. He spent the night in his airy Volkswagen and woke up in the morning as stiff as a spring-back chair.

But there wasn't that much unpleasantness around the dinner table after the announcement - excepting, of course, the difficulty in making deaf Aunt Blackstone understand the conditions. 'Pregnant,' you said. 'Aunt Blackstone, I'm pregnant.'

'Rent?' said Aunt Blackstone. 'Rent what? Who's renting? What's to rent?'