The bedroom had somehow become affixed to the turntable of an extremely large record player. I stood in the exact center of the room, where the spindle poked up through the hole in the record, and I watched everything going by at thirty-three-and-a-third while I listened to a tune that sounded curiously like the Stones doing Shostakovich. The bed went by, the door went by, the dresser went by, the bathroom went by, the windows went by. It certainly was snowing out there. I decided I would have to find the Manual/Reject switch or else throw up again. (When your father thinks he’s Ray Milland, you learn an awful lot about mice sticking their heads out of plaster cracks and being attacked by flying bats.) I had never before seen such an ugly bat with such gorgeous hands. Had I really exposed my feet to a passing subway train, thereby risking charges of indecent exposure, or had I only dreamt it? The windows went past again. It looked like one hell of a blizzard out there. The bed went past, and somebody knocked on it. “Who is it?” I asked, and watched the bathroom going by. “It’s me,” a voice said from the toilet bowl. “Who’s me?” I asked the snowstorm, and the dresser answered, “David. Open up.” I found the door on the third try, and discovered that by holding tightly to the knob I was able to go around with the room instead of having it go around me. “What the hell’s going on in there?” David asked, and I said, “Just a minute, please,” and debated whether I should let go of the knob with my right hand in order to grab the bolt in order to unlock the door, or whether I should continue hanging onto the knob and try unlocking the door with my left hand, a feat of ambidexterity that seemed light years beyond my capabilities of the moment. “Peter?” David said. “Yes, yes,” I said, and made a stab at the bolt with my left hand, missing, and decided to let go of the knob. The room began to revolve again. I grabbed the bolt with my right hand, seized the day as Chairman Mao and President Nixon had earlier both advised, unlocked the door, threw it open, and fell into David’s arms.
“Oh, man,” he said.
Considering my condition of not an hour before it was amazing that I could now sit in polite company around the acorn fireplace in the intimate lounge and discuss the possibility that by tomorrow we might be snowbound. I had taken a hot needlepoint shower at David’s insistence and then had dressed reluctantly for dinner, which I barely touched. Now we sat talking (or rather they sat talking) about the fury of the storm outside, they consisting of David, Sandy, and Foderman. Foderman was upset. Foderman was a pain in the ass, and he always was upset. He had still not heard from his medical sidekick and erstwhile vaudeville partner, and was afraid now that the storm might impair telephone service. Sandy suggested that he could always send a carrier pigeon, which Foderman did not find too terribly amusing. There is only so much you can say about snowstorms and delinquent telephone calls. I was about to suggest that if Foderman was really so concerned about Schwartz, he should pick up a phone and simply call his old buddy, but just then Mary Margaret wandered into the lounge and over to our exciting little conversational group. I introduced her to the others, and then sat back with my arms folded across my chest, listening and watching, grateful (in my present state) for the opportunity to serve as spectator and recorder, rather than participant.
“Buono,” Sandy said. “Is that Italian?”
“My father’s Italian,” Mary Margaret said. “My mother’s Irish. That’s where I get the red hair and the freckles.”
“I thought the word was ‘buoni,’” David said. “Ronzoni sono buoni.”
“That’s the plural.”
“What does it mean?”
“Good.”
“And are you good?” Sandy asked.
“When I’m good,” Mary Margaret said, “I’m very very good,” and smiled at Sandy. Sandy did not smile back. Mary Margaret looked suddenly bewildered.
“I once knew a neurosurgeon named Cativo,” Foderman said. “Dr. Benjamin Cativo. That means ‘bad’ in Italian.”
“No, that means ‘evil,’” Mary Margaret said.
“Same difference,” Foderman said, and shrugged.
“I once knew a doctor named Frankenstein,” David said.
“Irving Frankenstein?” Sandy asked.
“Michael Frankenstein.”
“On Seventy-ninth and Park?”
“No, in Transylvania.”
“That was Dracula, wasn’t it?” Mary Margaret asked.
“Oh, was it?” Sandy said. “Really?”
“What was Dracula?” Foderman asked.
“A vampire,” David said.
“You lost me,” Foderman said, and shrugged again.
“We were discussing mad doctors as opposed to vampires,” Sandy said.
“I sometimes think all doctors are mad,” Foderman said, and chuckled. “Me included.”
“Are you a doctor?” Mary Margaret asked.
“He’s a gynecologist,” Sandy said.
“If you’re ever in the neighborhood, look him up,” David said.
“Or vice versa,” Sandy said, and Foderman burst out laughing.
“Why do people always make gynecologist jokes?” he asked. “Has anyone ever heard a pediatrician joke, for example?”
“I’ve never heard a gynecologist joke, either,” Mary Margaret said.
“There are millions of them.”
“Tell one,” Mary Margaret said. “Please.”
“Spare us,” David said.
“Can you tell one, David?”
“I couldn’t tell one from a hole in the ground.”
“They all look the same to me, too,” Sandy said.
“They got a lot of rhythm, though,” David said.
“Especially in labor.”
“You’re laboring it, sweetie.”
“Hasn’t that been your experience?” Sandy asked.
“Hasn’t what been my experience?” Foderman said.
“Contractions,” Sandy said.
“It’s,” David answered. “Don’t. Aren’t. Isn’t.”
“Seriously,” Mary Margaret said. “Do any of you know a gynecologist joke?”
“Nope,” Sandy said, “But if you hum a few bars, I’ll fake it.”
“I’ve been to a few bars in my lifetime,” David said, “and I hated them all.”
“Bar none?”
“Bar one. Can’t miss it. Big ranch over near the mesa.”
“Mesa, mesa, come quick,” Sandy said, “they’s soldiers ober by de slabe quarters.”
“I still don’t know what you’re talking about,” Foderman said.
But Mary Margaret knew. Mary Margaret suddenly caught the pattern. The intelligence sparked in her level gaze, flashed out of her eyes as fiercely hot as the beam of the Green Lantern’s ring. She leaned forward expectantly. She knew, and now she was ready to pounce, awaiting only the right opportunity. Sandy sensed her sudden knowledge, and her own electric-blue, twin-orbed radiation met Mary Margaret’s virid beam of light; the challenge had been hurled, and now it would be met. With something close to interest, I observed.
“It doesn’t look like we’ll get any skiing in tomorrow,” Foderman said, getting back to what he considered safe ground, a Ladies’ Luncheon monologue entitled Snowstorms I Have Known. “I remember one time at Sugarbush, it snowed for three days and three nights. We couldn’t budge from the hotel.”