My dermatologist has treated many cases of infected bee and wasp stings and encountered serious cases of maggots, when, for instance, the Wohlfahrtia vigil gravid fly lays its eggs on the skin, then the hatched larvae migrate to the folds of skin into which they burrow. An inflammatory reaction, first as a papule, then as a lesion, is produced, and maggots may be seen in this lesion, where it seems to pulsate. The female of the human botfly, or D. hominis, glues its eggs to the body of a mosquito, stablefly, or tick, and when the unwitting insect punctures the skin by its bite, the larvae emerge from the egg and enter the skin through the wound. He has seen innumerable cases of crabs, or pediculosis pubis, contracted chiefly by adults as the result of sexual intercourse, not infrequently from bedding, railway berths, and toilet seats, as well as human flea bites. Fleas exist universally among people and animals, and the three most common in America are the human flea, Pulex irritans, the cat flea, Ctenocephalides felis, and the dog flea, Ctenocephalides canis. Fleas are small, brown, wingless insects about one-sixteenth of an inch long, and are very flat from side to side, with long hind legs. They jump actively when disturbed and are known to be extraordinary jumpers, helping them travel from host to host. They extract their food from the superficial capillaries, causing hemorrhagic puncta surrounded by an erythematous and urticarial patch, characterized by intensely itchy welts. The irritation is produced by the injection into the skin of a fluid secreted by the salivary glands of the parasite, and some people have an apparent hypersensitivity to this secretion. Fleas carry disease, endemic typhus, and plague, which is transmitted to people by the rat flea, Xenopsylla cheopsis and other species. Parasitical fleas sucked the lifeblood from my cat's kittens in Amsterdam, where most summers they infest the city and suck their food from humans and animals, and about their fatal effect on young cats especially I had no knowledge and no warning, so all the tiny kittens except one died, for which I am to blame.
Table talk segues to mercury in fish, solid white meat tuna versus flaky tuna, both in cans, the fate of the poor salmon, to America's polluted rivers and streams, during which the Count adds that fish and other creatures are consuming medicines and vitamins humans beings pass through their urine into toilets that flush into streams and rivers where fish feed.
— Imagine what hormones do to fish, says Contesa, tapping the flesh of her salmon.
— Some have already become androgynous, says the Count.
— Everything mutates or dies, says the Magician.
— I'd love to learn magic tricks, I say to him.
— I can't tell you how, I can't show you tricks. Magicians can talk to other magicians about their tricks. That's it. We're a closed shop.
— Are you allowed to discuss your interest in magic?
— I belong to the International Brotherhood of Magicians, and there are rules. We have secrets, it's our trade. But let's say it sprang from my interest in mathematics and numbers. I'm what's called a close-up magician.
— What's that? Spike asks.
— I work small groups at tables or standing up in front of small audiences. I do card tricks, coins, hand/eye magic, and patter is very important.
— Patter? Henry asks.
— Everyone has patter, says Spike, intimately.
— I've got a routine, I talk my talk. Patter's very important, it's part of the art of misdirection. I can't say more, but I can say there's lots of rehearsal, a lot of work goes into my act. But I really can't say more.
The Count and Contesa pay close attention, and she even removes her dark glasses. The table is staring at the Magician, who accepts this matter-of-factly, but then he's used to small audiences and even absorbs our interest with magnanimity, while Contesa leans toward him from across the round table, her palms up, as if to show him her past and future, and her canny eyes resemble crystal balls.
— Do you contact spirits? she asks.
— I don't do seances. I've done a few, but I don't like to. I can. They're too emotional, I can't sleep afterward. I don't do stage illusions. I don't do escapism. I'm not an escape artist.
— Houdini was, she counters.
— Houdini did it for the money, the Magician carefully explains, he was a close-up magician, but he couldn't support his family. That's why I have a day job. There's big money in staged illusions. But I wouldn't do one of those for a million dollars a trick.
— I collect antique timepieces, the Count interjects.
— The spirit world isn't just illusion, Contesa goes on. Houdini and his wife made a pact, they developed some code or other. She did a seance to contact him.
— Actually, she tried to contact him ten times, the Magician says. Houdini was a skeptic, but skeptics need convincing. They're insecure.
— Sex is real, big magic, says the Turkish poet. You think it's so, Helen?
I blushed.
Like the Magician, I wouldn't be buried alive, chained and bound in a coffin, and dropped into the ocean for money or any other reason, but its appeal probably is sexual, since there's the lust to be smothered under mounds of flesh, all senses buried, the brain pressed to do its commanding submerged below layers of skin and fat. Right now I could insert a forgotten word "amaxophobia," the morbid fear of riding in a car or carriage, which is cited in the library's sex manual, but Spike jumps in, relishing his challenge, and, for the delectation of our table, though possibly not to the Magician's taste, she reveals an episode at a sex club, where she discovered her wholesome, strapping massage therapist in the middle of a large, noisy room being whipped, her nipples in steel clips, her ample flesh quivering in pain-filled excitement. Spike hoped that she hadn't been seen watching her, but she may have been, nothing was said, and now during massages, Spike's fantasies are flatter but less humiliating.
— This is no sex to me, the Turkish poet says, almost stricken. It hurts my heart to hear.
— Like bad poetry, says Arthur.
The Turkish poet claps his hands.
— Yes, yes, bad poetry hurts the heart.
— And bad sex, says Spike.
— They're episodes of stupidity, stupidity has no sense or sensation, says Contesa. Sex can be dumb.