I closed the store on a last pound of tomatoes. Spirits were at their lowest. This sort of thing can really bring you down-turn your heart to stone. You have to know how to say whoa. I did a quick about-face, grabbing three bananas and eating them one after the other. After that I went upstairs for a beer. I felt neither here nor there. Having a little time on my hands, I wiped the milk off the floor and washed the teddy bear, hanging it by the ears to dry over the bathtub. It had a kind of surrealistic grin on its face, perfectly in keeping with the mood of the day. I sat with it for a while, the time to finish my beer. I split before my ears started hurting.
When I got home, I found Betty lying on the couch, with a yard-high elephant at her feet. It was red with white ears, wrapped in clear plastic. She lifted herself up on her elbows.
“I thought it might cheer him up if we went to visit him-look what I bought him…”
After what I’d just been through, I found the house quite calm. I would have loved to just slide right into it, but there was no way, with a red elephant standing in the middle of the living room, its eyes following me everywhere.
“Okay, let’s go,” I said.
I got a wink as consolation prize.
“You want to eat something before we go… a quick bite?”
“No, I’m not hungry.”
I let Betty drive. I held the animal in my lap. I had a bad taste in my mouth. I told myself that when one lifts the goblet of hopelessness to his lips, one oughtn’t be surprised if one winds up with a hangover. The streetlights were unspeakably cruel. We parked in the hospital lot and walked to the main entrance.
It happened just as we went through the door. I don’t know why. It wasn’t the first time I’d been in a hospital. I knew about the odor, the people ambling around in pajamas. I even knew about the strange presence of death. I knew it well, and it had never gotten to me before-never, No one was more surprised than I was when my ears started ringing. I felt my legs get stiff and wobbly, all at once. I started to perspire. The elephant tumbled to the floor.
I saw Betty gesticulating in front of me, leaning toward me with her mouth moving, but I could hear nothing except the ringing of blood in my veins. I leaned against a wall. I felt horrible. An icy shot went through my skull. I couldn’t keep my balance. My heels slid out from under me.
A few seconds later, the sound started to return a little. Eventually everything came back. Betty was wiping my face with a handkerchief. I was breathing deeply. People kept coming and going, without paying any attention to us.
“Jesus, I can’t believe this-what happened to you? You scared me to-”
“It must have been something I ate… must have been the bananas…”
While Betty cheeked at the information desk, I went and got myself a Coke out of a machine. I had no idea what was going on-I didn’t know if it was the bananas or a sign from the Beyond.
We went up to the room. There wasn’t much light. Archie was sleeping, Bob and Annie sitting on each side of his bed. The baby was asleep too. I put the elephant down in the corner. Bob stood up to tell me that Archie had just dozed off-the poor kid had really been through the mill.
“It could have been worse, though,” he added.
We stood there quietly for a moment, watching Archie move around softly in his sleep, his hair stuck to his temples. I felt sorry for him. I also felt something that had nothing to do with him. As hard as I tried, I couldn’t rid myself of the sensation that I had been sent a message I could not decipher. It made me nervous. It’s always unpleasant when you feel uneasy and don’t know why. I bit the inside of my month. When I saw that things weren’t getting better, I motioned to Betty. I asked Bob if there was anything we could do for them, told him not to worry about a thing. But no, no thanks, so I backed out the door as if there were snakes falling from the ceiling. I took off down the hall. Betty had trouble keeping up with me.
“Hey, what kind of bee’s in your bonnet? Not so fast!”
But I continued straight down the hall. I nearly tipped over an old man folded up in a wheelchair, who tried to enter my lane, jackknifing his vehicle. I didn’t catch what he called me-I was out the door in two seconds flat.
The fresh air relaxed me, made me feel better immediately. I felt like I’d just come out of a haunted house. Betty put her hands on her hips and gave me a sideways, worried smile.
“What’s wrong? What did that stupid hospital do to you?”
“Must be that I haven’t eaten-feel a little weakish.”
“A little while ago you said it was the bananas.”
“I don’t know. I think I better eat something…”
I turned around at the bottom of the steps to look back. Betty didn’t wait for me. I examined the building carefully, but couldn’t see anything abnormal-nothing particularly terrifying. It was rather pretty, in fact-well lit, with palm trees all around and nicely trimmed hedges. I really couldn’t fathom what had gotten into me. Maybe they’d been poison bananas after all-enchanted bananas, mysteriously breeding fear in one’s stomach. Add to that a small burned child, rocking his head in a dark room, and you have your answer-no more complicated than that.
I would be lying if I said that a slight feeling of uneasiness didn’t linger. It was barely perceptible, though-nothing to drive myself crazy over.
I knew this joint uptown where the steak and fries were edible and there was lots of light. The owner knew us-we’d sold him a piano for his wife. We sat down at the counter, and he got out three glasses.
“So… things working out all right?” I asked.
“Yeah, great. The scales are driving me out of my gourd…” he said.
There were quite a few people in the place-a few single men, a few couples, and a bunch of brush-cut twenty-year-olds without a wrinkle on their brows. Betty was in a good mood. The steaks were good enough to make a vegetarian wobble. My fries simply swam in their catsup. It put the hospital incident completely out of my mind. I was lighthearted. The whole world was swell. Betty smiled. I fired off jokes at the drop of a hat. We ordered up the Super Giant Strombolis-one full pound of whipped cream.
I downed two big glasses of water, then, naturally, had to hightail it to the men’s room. The urinals were Indian pink. I chose the one in the middle. Every time I find myself in front of one of those jobs it reminds me of the time I startled a six-foot blonde in the men’s room, straddling the urinal, who told me, Don’t fret, baby, I’ll give you your thingamajig back in just a minute. I’ll never forget that girl. It was back in the days when there was a lot of talk about women’s liberation-they bombarded you with it. It was that girl, though, who drove the concept home-I had to admit that something had changed.
I was thinking about her, undoing the buttons of my fly with one hand, when one of the brush-cut dudes came in. He sidled up next to me and stared at the big silver button that makes the water flush.
Nothing was coming on my side. His either. The silence he tween us was deadly. Every few seconds he’d look over at me to see how I was doing, and clear his throat. He was wearing baggy pants and a colored shirt. Me: tight jeans and a white T·-shirt. He was about eighteen. Me: thirty-five. I gritted my teeth and contracted my abdominal muscles. I felt him do the same. I tried to concentrate.
The silence was interrupted by the characteristic tinkle that squirmed out in front of me. I smiled.
“Hha,” I said.
“I didn’t have to go, anyway,” he muttered.
When I was his age, Kerouac told me, Be in love with your life. It was only normal that I pissed quicker. Still, I didn’t want to rest on my laurels.