"SO NEXT COMES THE TERRIBLE CRISIS.
"Are you listening?
"Because time's up and now you have to gather yourself together and pack your luggage and face the facts that you threw away your one big chance and say so long to paradise. But could the girl even begin to tear herself away from the first real friend she ever in all her born days ever had? This thing, could the child just say to it this is it and this is it, now good-bye and good luck?
"Don't hold your breath.
"Weeks later, when she could first open up her mouth to even first begin to speak again, the child actually said to me, ‘Mother, I am telling you I would have eaten poison before I could have left it behind. Do you here me? Poison!'
"Poison, some joke.
"Believe me, when you hear what's coming, you will say to yourself the same as me, ha ha, poison, this is a good one, this is some good joke, poison.
"So don't ask me why, but this is how determined the girl is, because even with all of the reasons nobody in a million years could get away with it, the answer is she did. All the way back to New York, right past all of the big shots with all of their badges and everything, and then right out of the airport past the customs and the rest of it, and then right back here into this same building right here where, God love him, I know, I know, your child has got his own problems too, your own lifelong heartache has got his problems too, what with all of his gorgeous costumes and with his window dressing and who also rents a nice dwelling in the building — from Acapulco to New York, here comes my Deedee, my Deedee, with her beloved!
"But as soon as it gets here, would it eat? Could she get it to do anything but drink water? Maybe the airplane ride gave it an upset stomach, who knows? — meanwhile all it wants is water and to lay around and vomit, and it wouldn't even touch a single morsel or have the strength to play with her or even let her kiss it. So by now the girl is thoroughly beside herself with panic — she is so frantic the child cannot even see straight — so what does she do but pick the thing up and wrap it up in a towel because it is cold out and God forbid her adorable darling should catch a chill and get any worse off than it already is — and like a maniac she runs out into the street with it — like a crazy woman she runs to go find the dog-and-cat doctor which is up the block from here after you pass the big Shopwell in the middle of the block.
"God bless him, the man can see with his own two eyes the girl is positively hysterical — so he quick puts everything to one side and takes her right in, says to her, ‘Sit, wait,' he'll be right back with his diagnosis, first he's got to get out his instruments, first he's got to examine, the child meanwhile shrieking, ‘Don't hurt him, please don't hurt him!'"
The woman looks at me and she says to me, "So did you hear me with both ears — instruments, examine — don't hurt him, please don't hurt him, please?"
She gives her chest a grab like there is gas inside of it, and she says to me, "Go check your machine — there's time yet — because with problems like ours, who are we kidding, where do we think we are running?"
YOU THINK I DON'T KNOW a storyteller like this one? I promise you, I myself in this department was not exactly born yesterday, these people with their teasings, with their winks, with their punch lines. But by the same token, who wanted to offend such a person? Because, for one thing, you never know when you might require the company, and meanwhile let us not forget who else of my acquaintanceship also makes his residence in the very building and could always use a friendly neighbor's mother with an open-minded opinion. So this I can give you every assurance of, I myself did not intend to go burn up any bridges behind me.
This is why I got up and felt inside of the dryer — even though I did not even have to actually touch anything to see that they all had for them a little way still to go yet. And then, like a perfect gentleman, I come back and I sit down and I signify to the woman I am all ears and at her beck and call whenever she is ready to please continue. But strictly between you and me, so far as punch lines go, in all of history they still never invented a second one.
She says, "Two seconds."
She says, "The man is inside of there all of two seconds with his instruments and his examining."
She says, "The man comes out with his white coat and with his rubber gloves and he says to the child, he says, ‘Darling, I am afraid I must inform you your pet has a mild case of rabies — you didn't get near any of its saliva, did you?'
"‘Oh, God, God!' my daughter screams, and then it dawns on my Deedee, rabies, and she shrieks, ‘No, I'm fine, I'm fine — just give me back my dog, I want to get a second opinion, I want to see another doctor!'
"So what does this one say to that?
"Mister, are you listening to me when I ask you what this one says to that? Because here is the answer the whole wide world has been waiting for. Which is that this man, this doctor, this specialist, he gives the girl a look and he says to her very calmly to her, he says, ‘Dog? That animal in there is no dog, lady. That animal which you brought in here is a rat!"
YOU KNOW SOMETHING?
Because I am telling you the truth when this is what I sit here and tell you.
For some crazy reason, after I hear what I hear, I do not know what the next thing for me to do is. I mean, my son's clothes — I do not know if I can bear to touch them anymore — not even when I know that if I go to get them, they would be as clean and as dry as — that's right! — a bone.
AGONY
IN THAT INSTANCE, THERE WERE two men and a woman. The photographer may also have been a woman, for there to be someone to go with one of the men. But I never looked to see. I only looked to notice the others — which is to say, the three persons who were readying themselves for the photograph and who, accordingly, kept their backs turned to me.
Perhaps their span hid the fourth party — which is to say, the party with the camera.
Which is to say, why did I not notice the photographer, since the persons getting themselves ready for the photograph faced away from me and, therefore, I must have faced the fourth party?
I cannot say what the three of them looked like, since I only saw them from the back — except that the men were husky by my standard, wide-waisted, one man considerably the taller of the two. And there was this: the woman had no appeal that I could see.
My attention was mainly elsewhere. It was captured by the placement of the arms of these people as they prepared themselves for the photograph, the woman between the men, the men reaching back behind the woman to rest a hand on each other's shoulder, the woman with both arms reached out behind the men, to hold each man from behind, her fingers taking the man tight by the waist — wide waists, as I remember it, in each case, the men's waists.
They all hugged like this when they were ready.
Then they dropped their arms, and you knew, without your needing to be notified, that the photograph had been completed, or don't we say taken?