Sumpm about this speech so crushed my heart I threw myself into my little NEUROPATHOLOGY desk and banged my pukelele on the desktop and sulked right in front of everybody. And it’s a good thing there were no razor blades handy-I looked for the scissors, but they were in your hand. “Hey, Ursula, your haircut’s not done,” you said. “Got a dime?” “Sure.” “Call somebody that gives an oink,” I snarled. “Why you are so evil-tempered when somebody praised your song?” Doctor Zuk inquired, in her most enlightened and dreambox-mechanical voice. I glared at her. You are a leviathan, even your kiss is like a house fell on me.
Finally I tried to save face: “Look, it isn’t just me. Where our music is concerned, all us Bug Motels hate to get our hopes up.” “Bingo,” Egbert said, “don’t make us hope for fame or you’ll spoil everything. We know we could be as good as Chuck Berry and still get nowhere but Neuropathology. Or maybe we get a fifty-dollar gig playing Cousin Freddie’s bar mitzvah now and then, but we don’t care. Only love will get us outa here. Everybody’s a rock star now.”
“Wait-how many rock stars live in the bughouse? I mean dat’s a new angle, ain’t it?” Dion declared. Bla-a-a-at, spla-a-a-t, we all blew raspberries at this childish idea.
[“That is one Adonis of a retard, definitely better than anything else I see around this bughouse, he’s got a genuine Greek cevapcici fattening the pinstripes in those pegged pants and anyhow he’s not so dumb. When you think about it, the publicity angles for a rock band from the bughouse are fantastic,” you hissed in my ear, “what’s he in for anyway?” “Terminal narcissism… go ahead, laugh, he’s so in love with himself he had to go to Emergency one time for trying to oink himself in his own bunghole, in front of the mirror.” “Well, judging by the structure in those trousers it wouldn’t be out of the question…” “Ugh, Margaret, how can you even think of oinking that mooncalf.” “At least I’m just thinking about it,” you smiled.]
“O why can’t you dreambox mechanics leave us the oink alone,” O said gloomily, “we’re the Bug Motels, we don’t play to get famous, we don’t even play for ourselves. We play to forget ourselves, for O… O… O… O… blivion.” “What she means is, we’re kids, we don’t zackly like grownups,” Emily explained. “There you are. That’s why we don’t get our hopes up,” I concluded.
Doctor Zuk blew a great cloud of Turkish smoke in our faces. “Hopes? who talks anything about hopes?” she said. “Who lives on hope dances without music, but who has music lives without hope. You five Bug Hotels have music, this I know. I, I have no music, but I know how to set saddle on right donkey. This is my God-given gift.” And her face filled up with light and looked love, not on us, on me, me alone, for seven straight seconds. Well it was more than five, less than ten, but I could tell it was love-I snuck a glance over at you-you saw it too.
Trouble dented your forehead. Your idled scissors snipped air, tinka tinka tink. Doctor Zuk, having blessed me with that look, was already squinching out the door in her silver sandals. I watched her, the familiar systole diastole of her muscular buttocks, the flickering curves of her soccer player’s calves. All at once my heart opened up like a peacock’s fan, I knew all the colors of love. First red hunger drenched me, hot and disgusting, and I almost choked on my own tongue, so strongly did I want to put all that in my mouth. Then, black shame-you were watching, worried sick, with that dent printed on your forehead. Then I went white, for suddenly I knew why it made me furious, that Tonight I tell Dr. Feuffer. This wasn’t epidemic insomnia among harassed professionals, with late-night telephone calls. It was a dinner date! The scoop on Foofer (via the Regicide, hence you could run trains by it) had him outa here and into Haussner’s for a kirschwasser every afternoon by five on the button. Ergo, cocktails at the very least. They were in cahoots, no, in love, it explained everything. My heart drowned. What else did I expect? She was beautiful, she was famous, I could never get her or be her. Then that hot surf of hunger slapped me around again and ground me into the sand and when I stood up again I was dizzy and seasick, and knew what I had to do: spy on Madame Zuk.
“Hey, how about getting back in this barber chair and letting me finish. You look crazy as a bedbug with your hair half on, half off.” Snip snip. [“It’s not just your hair, Ursula, you got a mad light in your eye, the way you were eyeballing that old dame’s hindparts when she left like you were gonna track her and do bad stuff to her, say, what the hump’s going on here anyway? You’re not really buggy, are you, Ursula?” I suddenly realized I better explain. “Er, uh, you got any dough, Margaret?” “Sure.” “How about you take me down to the Chesapeake Room and feed me?” “The which?” “Glorified cafeteria, ground floor.” “My pleasure.”]
Crabcakes, coleslaw, devil’s food cake, your treat, just like old times. “So whaddaya think?” I finally asked you, wanting your take on Doctor Zuk-I was gonna tell you, I really was.
“Cheese, are you sure you don’t want out of the bughouse, Ursula?” you jumped right in instead, “I mean it may be a private joint and sorta ritzy, and setting Merlin back a yard a day which he deserves for deserting you, but it still smells like industrial solvents and dead people’s farts and it’s kinda like jail.” “That’s just all the overcooked vegetables,” I said, “breathing those farts is better’n eating, I mean there’s a lotta vitamins in em, and besides you deserted me too, Margaret.” I pointed my fork at you.
“I’m not your mother or father,” you said. “Sure you are if the real ones are missing, and anyway you took the job till you got, er, uh, boy-crazy is too weak a word, how about bug-eyed for outlaw fudd of every stripe and color?” You laughed. “I don’t know why,” you sighed, “the respectable type just doesn’t appeal to me…” “So is that con-man-in-a-ragged-silk-shirt doing any work around the farm these days?” “Not a lick.” “What good is he anyway?” I grumbled. “Ahem, you really want the venereal details?” “Some other time maybe…”
“It’s crazy fun on the racetrack, you’ll like it,” you said. “I was gonna come for you, Ursula, I had to fight down the urge… tell you the truth I’m sorta scared if you come to the track you’ll end up in even more trouble than I’m in, you’ll find some way. But are you really getting better in this place, I mean your arms look like two raw meatloafs, godzillas sake what’s that all about…”
“I’m in the hospital aren’t I? I gotta have sumpm wrong, long as I’m here. You wouldn’t want me hearing voices or picking up secret messages from “Louie Louie” or anything really buggy like that.” “You don’t want out? I mean I was sitting in the track kitchen and I got the most urgent flash, Margaret come get me get me get me outa here.” “Well I gotta own up I had one bad day, but that was before I made all these, er, musical friends and”-I whispered-“Zuk gave me her phone number.”
“What?! She’s a dreambox mechanic in this hospital and she gave you her private telephone number? What for? What kinda place is this place?” “Take it easy, don’t go flooey on me, keep your voice down”-Dr. Buzzey and Dr. Beasley were polishing off potato chips two tables to our left-“she’s, er, uh, a special foreign visitor, she lives on the grounds.”