I bought Sandy an exquisite cameo brooch with a profile as delicate as her own, and for David I found a white canvas, shag-lined, Swedish Army coat with dozens of huge pockets. I carried both gifts back to the hotel, and then went over to the steak joint to meet them. Sandy was already there, drinking a Manhattan.
“The streets are full of Mongolian ponies,” she said.
“I ran into them.”
“Goddamn idiots,” she said.
“I also ran into Miss Nemesis.”
“What’d she want?”
“She asked me to steal a pewter pot.”
“Did you tell her to flake off?”
“I did. She thinks we’re trying to break Foderman’s leg.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Sandy said.
“Of course it is.”
“Why would we want to break Foderman’s leg?”
“Exactly.”
“More goddamn crazy people in the world,” Sandy said. “You know what those jackasses in the street are?”
“No, what are they?”
“Conforming nonconformists.”
“Thank you, Dr. Crackers.”
“Ja,” Sandy said, “dot’s right, don’t make fun. Conforming nonconformists. You tink they are free, Peter? Ah, no. Nein, liebchen. Their behavior is rigidly prescribed.”
KR: But why a sestina?
ME: I don’t understand your question.
KR: Well, to begin with, I didn’t know poetry interested you.
ME: It doesn’t.
KR: Yet you wrote a poem.
ME: I was just fooling around with one, that’s all.
KR: And you chose the sestina form?
ME: Yes.
KR: Well, that’s my question. Why such a rigid form?
ME: I thought it would be fun. If you’re going to try writing a poem, you might as well start with a challenge. Are you familiar with sestinas?
KR: I know a little about them.
ME: There are six stanzas, you see, each composed of six lines...
KR: Yes, I know.
ME: And the end words of the lines in the first stanza are repeated in different order in the next five stanzas. No rhymes. Just those six recurring words at the end of each line in each stanza.
KR: But in different order.
ME: Yes. Different in each stanza.
KR: And the order is a fixed one.
ME: Yes, it’s predetermined. I mean, that’s the form. You have to use the end words in the order prescribed. Otherwise you don’t write a sestina. It’s one, two, three, four, five, six in the first stanza, and then six, one, five, two, four, three in the next stanza, and so on.
KR: One might say the end words are repeated throughout in a fixed pattern of cruciate retrogradation.
ME: Thanks, smart-ass.
KR: I told you I knew a little about sestinas.
ME: You seem to know a lot about them. Aren’t you going to mention the three-line envoi at the end of the poem?
KR: Why does my knowledge infuriate you?
ME: I don’t like being put on, Doctor.
KR: I merely wanted to find out what your understanding of the form was.
ME: Do I pass the test? Do I understand it?
KR: You seem to understand it. Why did you pick this particularly inflexible mode of expression?
ME: I told you. It seemed like a challenge. Also, it’s repetitive and hypnotic, and anyway, go to hell.
KR: What was the poem about?
ME: The three of us.
KR: You and Sandy and...
ME: Yes.
KR: Then perhaps you chose the form so you could superimpose order upon a chaotic relationship.
ME: The relationship is not chaotic.
KR: How did you come upon the form to begin with?
ME: What do you mean?
KR: The sestina.
ME: I was looking up “sex” in the dictionary.
KR: Are you putting me on now?
ME: No, I’m putting you down. There’s a difference, Doctor.
“Where are you, Peter?” Sandy asked.
“Huh?”
“Did you hear anything I said?”
“All of it.”
“What’s bothering you? That girl?”
“I guess.”
“Forget her. She can’t touch us.”
The girl in green arrived at Semanee Lodge shortly before dinner that night. I was coming out of the bar, and was crossing the lobby on the way to my room, when I saw her standing at the desk. There were two pieces of luggage at her feet. I felt the way I’d felt earlier, when I saw the hairy apparition through the swirling snow; I wanted to turn and run. It was too late. She had seen me.
“Hey, hi,” she said.
“Hi,” I said, and cautiously approached her. She was signing the register. She had luggage with her. She was checking into the goddamn hotel.
“You the welcoming committee?” she asked, and put the pen back on the registration card holder, and then smiled.
“Nope. Didn’t even know you were coming.”
“Neither did I,” she said. “I stayed here last year, but they were booked solid when I wrote in December.”
My heart was pounding. What are you afraid of? I asked myself. Nothing, I told myself. I was scared witless.
“I’ve been staying at the Inn,” she said. “And calling here every day to see if there were any cancellations.”
“I take it there was a cancellation.”
“Nope. Somebody checked out unexpectedly.”
“Schwartz,” I said.
“What?” she said.
“Nothing.”
“So here I am. Are you guys staying here?”
“Yes.”
“Well, good.”
“Yes, wonderful,” I said.
“That’s Room 207, Miss,” the desk clerk said.
“Would you have someone take up the bags, please?” she answered, and turned again to me. “Why don’t you buy me a drink?”
“I just had a drink.”
“Have another one.”
“I had another one, too.”
“Are you afraid of me or something?”
“Why should I be?”
“God knows. Shall I buy you a drink?”
“That might be better.”
“Why?”
“The other way sounds like blackmail.”
“Blackmail? What are you talking about?”
“I think you know exactly what I’m talking about.”
“The parka? Who cares about that? I’m trying to make your acquaintance, jerk.”
“Why?”
“I like your style,” she said, and looped her arm through mine, and grinned. “Okay?”
We studied each other. “Okay,” I said, and we walked toward the bar. I was still frightened. She made me frightened.
The bartender on duty was our old friend Robert the Rapist. “Hey, hi,” she said, apparently having made his acquaintance during her previous stay at the Lodge, and eager now to renew the doubtless fascinating relationship. Robert looked at her vaguely. “Mary Margaret Buono,” she said.
“Oh, yeah,” Robert said. “How are you, Mary Margaret?”
“Just fine, thanks.”
“You’re back, huh?”