Luke has abilities I don’t know about.’
‘Believe me,’ Lil said, ‘he doesn’t.’
‘Sssss,’ said Arlene. ‘You shouldn’t show public contempt for your husband. It will bruise his ego.’
‘Thank you, Arlene,’ I said.
‘Luke’s an in-tell-i-gent man,’ she managed to get out. ‘I’m not even a liberal arts woman, and he’s studied … he’s studied …’
‘Urine and stools,’ completed Lil, and they laughed.
Why is it that I can lead my life of quiet desperation with complete poise, dignity and grace, while most women I know insist on leading lives of quiet desperation which are noisy? I was giving the question serious thought when I noticed Lil and Arlene crawling toward me on their knees, their hands clasped in supplication.
‘Save us, O Master of the Stools, we’re bored.’
‘Give us the word!’
It was good to be back in the quiet of home and fireside after a trying day with the mentally disturbed.
‘O Master, help us, our lives are yours.’
The effect of two crawling, begging, drunken women wiggling their way toward me was that I got an erection, not professionally or maritally the most helpful response, but sincere. Somehow I felt that more was expected of a sage.
‘Rise, my children,’ I said gently and I myself now stood up before them.
‘O Master, speak!’ Arlene said, on her knees.
‘You wish to be saved? To be reborn?’
‘Oh, yes!’
‘You wish a new life?’
‘Yes, yes!’
‘Have you tried the New All with Borax?’
They collapsed forward in groans and giggles, but straightened quickly with a ‘We have, we have, but still no satori’ (from Lil), and ‘even Mr Clean’ (from Arlene).
‘You must cease caring,’ I said. ‘You must surrender everything. EVERYTHING.’
‘Oh, Master, here, in front of your wife!’ and they both giggled and fluttered like sparrows in heat.
‘EVERYthing,’ I boomed irritably. ‘Give up all hope, all illusion, all desire.’
‘We’ve tried.’
‘We’ve tried and still we desire.’
‘We still desire not to desire and hope to be without hope and have the illusion we can be without illusions.’
‘Give up, I say. Give up everything, including the desire to be saved. Become as weeds that grow and die unnoticed in the fields. Surrender to the wind.’
Lillian suddenly stood up and walked to the liquor cabinet.
‘I’ve heard it all before,’ she said, ‘and the wind turns out to be a lot of hot air.’
‘I thought you were drunk.’
‘The sight of you preaching is enough to sober anyone.’
Arlene, still on her knees, said strangely, blinking through her thick glasses, ‘But I’m still not saved. I want to be saved.’
‘You heard him, give up.’
‘That’s salvation?’
‘That’s all he offers. Can Jake do better?’
‘No, but I can get a family discount with Jake.’
And they laughed.
‘Are you two really drunk?’ I asked.
‘I am, but Lil says she wants all her faculties intact to stay one up on you. Jake’s not home so I’ve given my faculty a vacation.’
‘Luke never loses any of his faculties: they’ve all got tenure,’ Lil said. ‘That’s why they’re all senile.’ Lil smiled a first bitter and then pleased-with-herself smile and raised a fresh martini in mock toast to my senile faculties. With slow dignity I moved off to my study. There are moments even a pipe can’t dignify.
Chapter Seven
The poker that evening was a disaster. Lillian and Arlene were exaggeratedly gay at first (their bottle of gin nearly empty) and, after a series of reckless raises, exaggeratedly broke thereafter. Lil then proceeded to raise even more recklessly (with my money), while Arlene subsided into a sensually blissful indifference. Dr Mann’s luck was deadening. In his totally bored, seemingly uninterested way, he proceeded to raise dramatically, win, bluff people out, win, or fold early and miss out on only small pots. He was an intelligent player, but when the cards went his way his blandness made him seem superhuman. That this blubbery god was crumbling potato chips all over the table was a further source of personal gloom. Lil seemed happy that it was Dr Mann winning big and not I, but Dr Felloni, by the vigor with which she nodded her head after losing a pot to him, also seemed vastly irritated.
At about eleven Arlene asked to be dealt out, and, announcing drowsily that losing at poker made her feel sexy and sleepy, left for her apartment downstairs. Lil drank and battled on, won two huge pots at a seven-card-stud game with dice that she liked to play, became gay again, teased me affectionately, apologized for being irritable, teased Dr Mann for winning so much, then ran from the table to vomit in the bathtub. She returned after a few minutes uninterested in playing poker. Announcing that losing made her feel a frigid insomniac, she retired to bed.
We three doctors played on for another half-hour or so, discussing Dr Ecstein’s latest book, which I criticized brilliantly, and gradually losing interest in poker. Near midnight Dr Felloni said it was time for her to leave, but instead of getting a ride crosstown with her, Dr Mann said he’d stay a little longer and take a taxi home. After she’d left, we played four final hands of stud poker and with joy I won three of them.
When we’d finished, he lifted himself out of the straight-backed chair and deposited himself in the overstuffed one near the long bookcase. I heard the toilet flush down the hall and wondered if Lil had been sick again. Dr Mann drew out his pipe, stuffed and lighted it with all the speed of a slow-motion machine being photographed in slow motion, sucked in eternally at the pipe as he lit it and then, finally, boom, let loose a medium-megaton nuclear explosion up toward the ceiling, obscuring the books on the shelves beside him and generally astounding me with its magnitude.
‘How’s your book coming, Luke?’ he asked. He had a deep, gruff, old man’s voice.
‘Not coming at all,’ I said from my seat at the poker table.
‘Mmmmm.’
‘I don’t think I’m on to much of value …’
‘Un … Un. Huh.’
‘When I began it, I thought the transition from sadistic to masochistic might lead to something important.’ I ran my finger over the soft green velvet of the poker table. ‘It leads from sadism to masochism.’ I smiled.
Puffing lightly and looking up at the picture of Freud hung on the wall opposite him, he asked:
‘How many cases have you analyzed and written up in detail?’
‘Three.’
‘The same three?’
‘The same three. I tell you, Tim, all I’m doing is uninterpreted case histories. The libraries are retching with them.’
‘Nnnn.’
I looked at him, he continued to look at Freud, and from the street below a police siren whined upward from Madison Avenue.
‘Why don’t you