I notice the Count speaking to one of the new residents, the professional magician and obituary writer, and now he is steering him over. I shift in my chair and arrange the pillow under me, but comfort is not forthcoming, as they are wooden chairs with hard, wooden slats at the hacks and woven cane seats that squeak, designed, built, and carved by JD, and I don't dare complain about them, ever. The Turkish poet has arrived, Henry and Arthur, who enter with him, Spike, and Contesa, too, and suddenly the table is complete. The anorectic disconsolate woman and the tall balding man seat themselves far from her friend and the stout Wineman, when actors j and JJ, and their sidekick, the guilt-ridden, silent lyricist and the demanding man slide into chairs near them. All the others are settling in at various tables, the young married man next to the new resident, Rita, or the saint of lost causes, and beside them the dour man and fretful woman, whose addition surprises me since they generally keep to themselves. My second heart grinds with nameless worry, and ungracious doubt rumbles in my intestines, so I fear gas. JD chooses his seat, his boots muddy, his overalls sticky, he smells of pungent raw honey, I sense when he's around, and he sits next to some nondescript characters, who will stay for a week or maybe two, whose first names I don't know, and who often don't come to breakfast but eat instant oatmeal or peanut butter and jelly sandwiches in their rooms.
The head cook has created an order and routine to her dinner menus, which, after many, many years, she has honed into a three-week pattern, so that a resident or guest who has been here for a while, as I have, and the Count and Contesa, will have several times eaten her array of dishes and know her preparations, the ingredients of, and dressings for, salads, the sauces for meat, usually leg of lamb or pork chops, fowl, chicken, roast or fried, and roast turkey or turkey loaf, and fish, mostly cod with capers and broiled or poached salmon, the side dishes, rice and beans, broiled mushrooms, always available for vegetarians and vegans, creamed broccoli, fresh, steamed asparagus with a lemon sauce, potatoes gratin, boiled red potatoes served with chives, wild rice, and her range of desserts, chocolate or vanilla ice cream, bread pudding, tapioca and chocolate pudding, cherry, peach, and apple pies, and chocolate, banana, and vanilla cream cakes, there is always a serving of fruit, so dinner is rarely a surprise, except for the night she presented us with bowtie pasta swimming in melted caraway cheese, which caused us all consternation except the young married man, who, though regularly grumpy, likes every meal. The wretched dish reeked of the head cook's despair. Sunday night, when both the head and assistant cooks have the day off, and a substitute cook arrives, it is vegetable risotto and pizza, and all diets are attended to with meatless, cheeseless pizzas, vegetable pizzas with and without cheese, pizza with cheese and pepperoni, pizza with cheese and tomato, pizza with no cheese and no tomatoes, and so on, they are labeled, and there is a generous bowl of green salad, without tomatoes and peppers, but with several dressings, on the side, a term much used here. Sometimes a resident's first name is written on a card that is set on a table, and then you must take that chair, the chairs are serviceable, poorly designed and lacking in any quality, such as charm, and the card's placement indicates you have specific dietary requirements, which have to be accommodated by a special meal, and then you feel singled out, not necessarily in a good way, but a few like any attention, though it's not auspicious to demonstrate certain types of need. It augurs well that the Magician is beside me now, since as soon as I heard him tell Saint Rita that he performs magic for a living, a striking conceit, I hoped to learn about his ancient, perplexing profession.
Dinner is three courses, the most elaborate of the day's meals, often poor, and its longest, but at breakfast everyone can find something to eat, unless they are late, though there is usually bread, milk, and cold cereal available, which is not the case at dinner. At dinner, there is an appetizer, tonight it's crudites, then there's the entree or main course, and a dessert. There are warm, packaged rolls, which one resident steals and hides in his backpack for the next day, as he is already anxious about the next day's meager lunch. Another regularly pilfers fruit and raw vegetables and is known to arrange carrots in rows on the top of his worktable, where he does computations, to watch them dry and curl up. Salad is served with the main course, and the few Europeans among us have it after, while the Americans have it with the entree, and then there is dessert, and, with it, coffee, decaffeinated or espresso, tea, black, herbal, or black without caffeine, cream, whole milk, skim, and soy milk, and everyone can find something to eat, special diets are accommodated, in moderation, though most residents are dissatisfied, because lunch is invariably poor and at dinner most are hungry, except the anorexics, who are starving but will not eat and who hide their disease until they are almost dead, and thirty percent of them die of this kind of contemporary wasting.
Looking at Contesa, whose dark glasses are perched on the bridge of her small, sharp nose, obliterating her gray eyes, I imagine that her play will be inhabited by her spirit, which I must count on, as I do, one day sliding into and negating the next, though irregularly in the Count's upside-down schedule, so her mind will be present onstage, which could inspire me. Nervous doubt unclasps my stomach and it quiets, and, with that, commences an appetite. The demanding man is also gazing in Contesa's direction, his large brown eyes morose as a moaning cow's, but she ignores him once again and nibbles a stalk of celery. The night the inventor exposed his rosy ass was exciting, since it was beautiful and the event out of the ordinary, this morning the psoriatic woman and the tall balding man revealed their intimacy, there was nothing indecent about it, but it held some content and provoked memory, and in the moment, again the demanding man seeks Contesa's aid for what her interest enlivens in him, and I await or have hope for an entertaining evening fomented by the Magician's novelty and Contesa's liveliness or spirit.
— Poached salmon again, laments the Count.
— But it's her most flavorful dish, says the Turkish poet, with good cheer.
— I can't bear it, Contesa says, mournfully.
— But salmon's good for brains and sex, urges the Turkish poet.
Almost in unison, Henry and Arthur intone, "it could be worse," which is an uncommon observation here, but they're relatively new residents and often ironic. The Magician watches us like rabbits. He shoves the cooked tomatoes on his plate to the side, and they fall off next to Spike's dinner plate. The Magician is allergic to tomatoes, which is sad, because tomatoes that have grown during a hot summer, without too much rain, so they don't get mealy, are magical, ripened under a brilliant sun, as they were in my mother's garden, then sliced and served on a plate, succulent beefsteaks warm from the rich soil and hot sun, but now my mother doesn't remember her tomato garden and doesn't like to eat tomatoes because of their skin which she can't chew or digest. "An old hell," she said once, cavalierly. The Magician is also allergic to bee stings, bees produce their sting by the ovipositor of the female abdomen, and when stung, a poison-apitoxin-containing formic acid and a neurotoxin is introduced into the skin. I was stung by bees twice. Once I was practicing the piano in camp, when I thought a stabbing pain in my stiff Fingers was caused by a lack of daily, rigorous practice and that my piano teacher was punishing me for my dereliction, but it was a bee. The ovipositor of the honeybee breaks off and remains in the skin after stinging. The bumblebee is able to retract its stinger, but the reaction to stings may vary from a mild, local edema and pain, to severe anaphylactic shock and even death, which occurs more frequently in the case of multiple stings unless prompt therapy is undertaken. The imbedded ovipositor containing the poison sac should be scraped away with a sharp knife, but I don't believe that was done when I was in camp. I took an antihistamine the second time I was stung, yet the area around the sting swelled and throbbed painfully, but unless the Magician carries a kit containing a syringe, epinephrine and antihistamines, when stung, he could go into shock and die.