"Go ... to ... the ... couch.”
" ... which he then applied to primates, and Darwin never read Mendel. Do you know what that means? Darwin never read Mendel?”
"What the hell are you talking about, James?" She looks at him. Then she must really look at him because she says, "Holy shit. You're a mess. You look like a bum. And you smell.”
"I'm sorry I woke you up," James says. He isn't sorry. Suddenly, he feels an overwhelming (and inexplicable) affection for her. He wants to make love.
He wants to have sex. He's got to have sex.
He sits on the edge of the bed. "You're so wonderful. You're such a wonderful wife. I always want to tell you how much I love you, but you never give me a chance.”
"You're disgusting," Winnie says. "I'd ask you to move out right now, but if s too late. You can go to a hotel in the morning." She pulls the covers over her head.
"Everybody admires you so much. Tanner is crazy about you.”
"I can't have this," Winnie says. She's going to explode. She has work in the morning. (Why is it that everybody else thinks that their shit is so much more important than her shit? She'd like someone else to acknowledge the importance of her shit. For once.) James puts his arms around her. He tries to kiss her.
"James," she says.
"You're so ... pretty," James says, trying to stroke her hair.
"James, go to sleep.... James, stop it.... I'm going to have you arrested for conjugal rape....
James, get off me.”
Winnie screams. James rolls to the side. He moans. "Go to the couch!" Winnie says.
"I can't.”
Winnie throws off the covers. "We're going to have a long talk tomorrow. About your behavior. We're going to start making some big changes around here.”
"Winnie ...”
"I mean it, James. We have a child. You have responsibilities. Where the hell, and I really want to know this, where the hell do you and Clay get the idea that you can run around and act like six-year olds? Do you see Veronica and me going out and drinking and doing drugs and staying up until four in the morning? How would you like it? How would you like it if I went out and stuck my hand down guys' pants and did drugs with them in the bathroom and God knows what else? Maybe I'm going to do that some night. Because you know what, James, I don't care anymore. I've had it.”
"Winnie?”
"And this business about chimpanzees and alpha males. I'm beginning to think you've lost it. Wake up, James. If s the millennium. Men and women are equal. Get it? So why don't you think about how I feel? Do you think I like taking care of you all the time? What about me? I'd like to be taken care of. I'd like to have a husband who could at least pay ... all the rent. You're a burden, James. I'm tired of doing eighty percent of the work and reaping twenty percent of the profits. I'm tired of—”
"Winnie?”
"Shut up, James. If s my turn. I've had to listen to your bullshit all evening. I've been sitting here for the last five hours wondering where you were and what you were up to. I'm so sick of you, James. You're no better man Evie. Does she think we didn't see her hiding in the limo? Hiding! She's thirty-five! She's obviously trying to sleep with Clay. And God knows what she's trying to do with Tanner.”
“Clay?" James says.
"Yes. Clay. A married man.”
“Winnie, I…”
"What?”
"I ... I ...”
“Spit it out.”
"Winnie, I think I'm having a heart attack. I'm going to die. Winnie. I think I'm dying.”
"Oh James. You're such a loser." Winnie puts her head in her hands. "You can't even do coke right.”
IV
James wants to be nursed and coddled. (Like when he was a little boy. Like when he was sick. His mother would make a bed for him on the couch and let him watch TV all day. His father would call him on the phone. "Hey sport," he'd say. "How's the sport?") He wants Winnie to say, "Oh James, you poor sweet baby." (He wants Winnie to be like his mother. Or at least mother/y.) Instead she says, "They said you're fine.”
I'm not fine, he wants to scream. He wishes Winnie would go away. He wishes he could tell her to go away. He can't now. He can't ever. "I know," he says.
"You can leave now.”
"I know," he says. He pushes the buttons on the remote control, changing the channels on the TV above his head.
"So. Can we go?" she says. "James. I've got to get back to my office.”
"I need my clothes.”
"They're right here," Winnie says. She picks up his clothes from the chair and dumps them on the hospital bed.
James looks at his shirt, his sweatshirt (with the logo of Winnie's magazine on it), his jeans, socks, and white briefs. His clothes look tainted. "I need clean clothes," he says.
"Haven't you embarrassed yourself enough?" Winnie says in a stage whisper. (She doesn't want to be overheard by the old man in the next bed, who is practically dead. Who has a scab-covered leg sticking out from under the covers.) "I'm not going home," James says. "I'm going to a press conference." He paws through his clothes. He still doesn't feel quite ... normal. (He feels high. Probably from all the cocaine he consumed the night before, combined with the shot of Demerol they gave him in the hospital last night. Or rather, early this morning. When he thought he was having the heart attack. From cocaine. Other people have done worse. They've shot up heroin. But they aren't married to Winnie.) "Do you have a notebook I can borrow?" he says. "I want you to go home.”
"No," he says. If he gives in now, he's finished. "What do you mean, 'No'?”
"No," he says. "What do you think it means?”
"You must still be high," she says.
"Probably," he said. He looks up at the TV. He doesn't feel unpleasant. The world has an interesting intensity that is, for once in his life, non-anxiety producing.
"Where are you going?”
"To a press conference." (He has something important to do, too.) "A press conference!”
"Monkeys," he says. "Chimpanzees.”
"Which, James?" Winnie says (cleverly, he thinks. If she is back to her old tricks of trying to trick him, maybe she's not that angry).
"I need a pen, too," he says. "I can't find my watch. I can't leave without my watch.”
"Oh, for Christ's sake!" she says. She marches (and she's the only person he knows who does march) the few feet to the head of the bed and presses the buzzer with her thumb. "I am praying that none of our friends get wind of this incident. This could ruin your career.”
"Could," he says. "Do you even care''“
“No," he says.
A nurse comes into the room. "Yes?" she says. "My husband can't find his watch," Winnie says. "Can you find it for him, please?”
"If s on his wrist.”
"Well, how about that," James says. He leans back on the pillows and looks at his silver Rolex with fresh appreciation. "Ifs ten-thirty.”
"I know what time it is. I had to leave my office. Now get up and put your clothes on.”
The doctor walks in. "How are we doing this morning, Mr. Dieke?" he says.
"Richard?" Winnie says. "Winnie?”
"How are you?" Winnie says, smiling pleasantly, as if James weren't lying in a hospital bed, high, smelly, and partly naked. "I didn't know you worked at Lenox Hill.”
"Why should you?" Richard says. "We haven't seen each other since college.”
"We went to college together," Winnie says. "What a coincidence. Richard Feble, my husband, James Dieke.”