"What's wrong?" Stash says.
"For a second there, I felt a little dizzy," I say. "Fine now. Let's go." I stand up. On the street I only manage about a block before the smell gets to me. There's an awful lot of garbage on the street; some bags have broken open, and chicken bones clutter the sidewalk. Around the edges of my vision things are starting to go dusty and curl up. "I'm not too good," I say. "Let's just lean against the car over there."
"How much champagne did you drink?"
"One glass," I say. I'm in a cold sweat. "I just can't continue," I tell him, ripping off my raincoat.
"Well, if you don't feel good, let's at least go home," he says.
"I can't move," I say, and sit down on the sidewalk. "If I stand up, I'm going to faint." I know Stash must be getting miffed: I stand up and stumble a few feet farther down the block. "I believe I'll just sit on these steps for a few minutes," I say. To my surprise I lie down across the bottom step. There are times when the body just takes control. Certainly its actions have nothing to do with me.
"What are you doing?" Stash says. "You can't stay there."
"I can't move," I say. "I can't walk. You're going to have to get a taxi."
Stash flags one down. He has to help me up and into the cab. "We'd like to go two blocks away," he tells the driver.
I lie straight across the back seat, utterly blitzed; the symptoms are faintness, weakness, perspiration, and general malaise. I once knew a girl who married three times and fainted at every single wedding. But I can tell my problem isn't psychologicaclass="underline" although my body has intrigued against me, my mind is as clear as Waterford crystal.
Stash pays the driver and half carries me into the building. I have to lie on the floor while we wait for the elevator. "You better go see my doctor," Stash says. "If I hadn't been there with you, and you were alone, lying across the sidewalk, you could have been in big trouble. Are you going to go to my doctor tomorrow?"
I stretch out on the bed. It's as if I've been hypnotized, or fallen into a trance. "Uh," I say. "Something's wrong with me. I don't think I'm the same person anymore."
"Why don't you listen to me? That does it. We're going to go to the emergency room right now."
"No, no," I say. "I'll go to a doctor tomorrow. I will. I promise. I'm feeling much better now. But will you please walk the dog tonight? I don't think I can make it."
"How many pieces of cake did you eat anyway?" "Three or four. But I'm telling you, they weren't big pieces." Although I feel fine the next morning, I make an appointment at the clinic I belong to. Stash is displeased when I tell him I won't be able to see a doctor until next Tuesday. It's a real effort for him to keep his mouth shut, but I'm proud of him. The minor strains of living with another person are almost unbearable. That much I understand.
It's fun standing on line for the special screening of the zombie movie, up near Forty-second Street: I recognize lots of people from nightclubs. Daria and Simon are already waiting. Daria seems so perfect, in her Nehru jacket, unwrinkled, a dab of gold gloss on her lips, her large Op Art earrings dangling from clean ears. By comparison—though it's true I'm much skinnier—I feel sooty, a Dickensian waif with hunched shoulders and a greasy sweatshirt. Maybe I'm exaggerating. Of course, probably if we could have switched brains for a minute, I probably would find that she feels like a big galoot next to delicate me. Well, once again I am silently rambling on. I have to reel myself back in like a fish.
"You look very handsome," I tell Simon. He's wearing a tremendous suit jacket—it must be ten or fifteen sizes too large for him—made of some shiny blue material like wallpaper, with a raised velvet paisley design.
"Thanks," he says. "I'm in shock. I was arrested for littering this afternoon."
"Really?" I say. "What happened?"
"I was walking on Wall Street and I dropped my apple core in a flower bed. I swear, I don't know what's going on in this city—it's like some kind of voodoo. The next thing I knew, a person dressed like a meter maid was giving me a ticket. I tried to explain that an apple core was biodegradable, and would provide fertilizer for the flowers, but she wouldn't have any part of it."
As we go into the theater there's a mass scramble for seats, but we finally find four in a row. While we wait for the movie to begin, I nudge Stash. "Don't you think I'm different now?" I say.
Stash rolls his eyes.
"What?" Simon says, leaning forward in his seat next to Stash.
"Have you noticed my personality has changed?" I say. "I think I'm more outgoing."
"Yes, yes, I have noticed," Simon says. "I thought you seemed more outgoing and I really felt glad, because I like to talk to you, but there usually seems to be a wall separating you from ..." His voice trails off.
"A wall separating me," I say, pleased with this image. I realize, however, that Simon is simply supplying me with what he thinks I want to hear: certainly I've never found it terribly difficult to talk to him.
I remember how once Simon came up to me on the street, at a traffic light, and said, "Hello, you old rattlesnake." I jumped about a foot in the air. Then he said, "What's wrong? Why do you look that way?"
I told him I wasn't used to being called an old rattlesnake. "I thought for a second you were the East Village rapist." He was terribly embarrassed: I guess I had made him feel stupid.
During the credits, while the audience is cheering, I have a real craving for mocha-chip ice cream, and whisper to Stash, "Could we go out for ice cream afterward? To Big Top's?"
"Maybe," Stash says.
But during the movie, while the zombies are devouring living human flesh, I start to feel guilty about our dietary habits. Since Stash only wanted cake for dinner, I just heated an old slice of mushroom pizza for myself. This type of meal probably should not be rewarded with dessert, but after the movie Stash suggests to Simon and Daria that we all go somewhere for ice cream. I would have liked some acknowledgment for coming up with the idea; I don't say anything, though.
"Big Top's is really one of my favorite places," I tell everyone when we are seated in a booth. There's something so reassuring about being in here. The boxes of stale chocolate-covered caramels arranged at the cash register behind us, the Muzak—nothing bad, aside from poor service and lousy food, could ever happen here.
Stash can't figure out what to order. "I don't know whether to get dinner or dessert," he says. "I took a nap before we went out, and when I woke up I had angel food cake."
"Mmm," Daria says. "I haven't had angel food cake in years. Who made it?"
"I did," I say.
"You make angel food cake?" Simon says. "Boy, that's really something. She's really something, Stash."
I keep my mouth shut and merely look modest: I don't admit that I made the cake from a mix. Honestly, it tastes better than the same thing made from scratch. A girlfriend of mine works in a restaurant where spectacular angel cake is served. I begged her to steal the recipe, and she confided that the cake came from a packaged mix. The one time I tried to make the cake from scratch, I used up twelve eggs and ended up with a new plastic product. Stash thought it was delicious: he likes rubbery foods in a big way.
"How can you not be able to figure out what to order when the selection here is so marvelous?" I say. "For example, the Wizard's Fried Clams have always been a favorite of mine."
"Really?" Stash says. "That's funny. That's what I was thinking of getting. But do you think it's safe?"
"What you're getting is something frozen and reconstituted," I say.