'OK, Merrill,' I told him. 'Let it come.' But he just gawked at his test-tube rack as if he'd never seen it before. 'Wake up, baby,' I told him. 'Fill 'er up!' But Merrill was squinting through the test-tube rack at his own death-gray face reflected in the mirror. Over his shoulder he saw me looming behind him - pressed evilly close to him, struggling to hold him up. He stared at my reflection with great hostility; he didn't know me at all. 'Let go of my prick, you,' he told the mirror.
'Merrill, shut up and pee.'
'Is that all you ever think about?' Biggie hissed at her friends in the hall.
'Well, what are we going to tell Bill?' a harpy asked her. 'I mean, I'm not going to lie - if he asks me, I'm going to tell him.'
I opened the door, then, holding Merrill around the waist, pointing his pecker down into the pee mug. 'Why don't you tell him even if he doesn't ask you?' I said to the appalled harpies. Then I closed the door again and steered Merrill back toward the sink. Somewhere along the way, he began to pee. Biggie's sharp laugh must have touched some nervous part of him, for he twitched, loosening my thumb's grip on the stein's lid, and found himself clamped in the pee mug. Wrestling away, he peed all over my knee. I caught up with him at the foot of his bed, where he spun about, still peeing in a high arch, his face with a child's look of bewildered pain. I stiff-armed him over the footboard and he landed limp on the bed, peed a final burst straight up in the air, then threw up on his pillow. I set the pee mug down, washed off his face, turned his pillow over and covered him with a heavy puff, but he lay rigid in the bed with his eyes like fuses. I washed the pee off me and used the medicine dropper to take pee from the pee mug and plunk it into the different test tubes: red, green, blue, yellow. Then I realized that I didn't know where the color chart was. I didn't know what color the red was supposed to change to, or what color was dangerous for the blue to change to, and whether the green was supposed to stay clear or get cloudy, and what yellow was for. I'd only watched Merrill test himself, because he'd always come around in time to interpret the colors. I went over to the bed where he now seemed to be sleeping and hit him a good one in the face; he clenched his teeth together, grunted and went right on sleeping, so I tagged him a really solid blow in his stomach. But it just went thok! Merrill didn't flinch.
So I started tearing through his rucksack until I found all his syringes, needles, injector-bottles of insulin, bags of candy, his hash pipe and, at the bottom, the color chart. It said it was OK if the red got orange, if the green and blue became the same, and if the yellow got cloudy-crimson; it was not OK for the red to change 'too quickly' to cloudy-crimson, or for the green and blue to behave differently, or for the yellow to turn orange and stay clear.
But when I turned back to the test-tube rack, the colors had already changed, and I realized that I had forgotten which ones were which colors to begin with. Then I read the color chart to find out what to do if you estimated your blood sugar to be dangerously high or low. You were supposed to get in touch with a doctor, of course.
There was silence from the hall outside the door, and I grieved that Biggie had gone away while I was in here fumbling with Merrill's pecker. Then I got a little worried about him, so I sat him upright by hauling him up by his hair; then I held his head and delivered a good roundhouse slap to his gray cheek, and then another and another, until his eyes rolled open and he pulled his chin down on his chest. He spoke to the closet, or to some spot over my shoulder: a high-spirited, defiant holler in the face of pain. 'Fuck you!' Merrill shouted. 'Fuck you to death!'
Then he called me Boggle in a perfectly normal voice and said he was terribly thirsty. So I gave him water, lots of it, and poured all the crimson, blue-green, orange pee-colors down the sink and rinsed the test tubes out so that if he woke up in the night, berserk, he couldn't drink those too.
When I finished cleaning up, he was asleep, and because I was furious with him I wrung the washcloth out in his ear. But he never moved, and I dried his ear for him, turned out the light and listened in the dark to his breathing, just to be sure he was all right.
He was the great illusion of my life. That such a self-destroying fool could be so indestructible. And though I was sad to have lost that big girl, I liked Merrill Overturf a lot. 'Goodnight, Merrill,' I whispered in the dark.
As I eased myself out in the hall and latched his door behind me, he said, 'Thank you, Boggle.'
And there in the hall, all alone, was Biggie.
She had her parka zipped up; there was no heat in the upstairs of the Tauernhof. She stood a little stiffly, putting one foot on top of the other, shuffling; she looked a little bit angry and a little bit shy.
'Let me see the poem,' she said.
'It's not finished yet,' I told her, and she looked at me aggressively.
'Finish it, then,' she said. 'I'll wait ...' Meaning she'd been waiting all this time, with a look to tell me I had some good work ahead of me to salvage this.
In my room next door to Merrill's, she sat on the bed like an uncomfortable bear. Little crannies and confined places took her grace away. She felt too big for that room and that bed, and yet she was cold; she kept the parka zipped up and wrapped herself in the puff while I goofed around by the night table, pretending to be scribbling a poem on a piece of paper with the words already on it. But they were German words, left by the last guest in this room, so I crossed them out as if I were revising my own work.
Merrill thumped his head against the wall between our rooms; his muffled hoot came through to us, 'Oh, he can't ski, but he's sharp with his pole!'
On the bed, without a change of expression, the large girl awaited her poem. So I tried one.
She is all muscle and velour
crammed in a vinyl sheath;
her feet, set in plastic,
clamped to her slashing skis;
under her helmet, her hair
stays soft and hot ...
Hot? No, not hot, I thought, aware of her there on the bed, watching me. No more hot hair!
The woman racer is not quite soft.
She is as heavy and firm as fruit.
Her skin is as sleek as an apple's,
and as tough as a banana's. But
inside, she's all mush and seeds.
Ugh! Can bad poetry improve? By my bed, she'd found my tape recorder, was shuffling the reels, fondling the earphones. Put them on, I indicated, then dreaded what she might hear. Expressionless, she punched buttons and changed reels. On with the poem!
See! How she holds her poles!
No, good God ...
When she cuts the mountain, she's
packed like a suitcase, neat and hard.
Contained, her metal leather plastic
parts perform; her grace is strong.
Her legs are long? God no!
But just open her, out of the cold.
Unbuckle, -zip, -strap and unpack her!
Her contents are loose and strewn
things, stray things and warm things,
soft and round things - surprising
unknown things!
Be careful. She was playing through the reels of my life, divining it, rewinding it, stopping it, playing it back. Hearing the ditties, dirty stories, conversations, polemics and dead languages on my tapes, she was probably deciding to leave. Suddenly she turned the volume down, wincing. At least I knew which tape she was on: Merrill Overturf revving the engine of his '54 Zorn-Witwer. For God's sake, hurry with the poem before it's too late! But then she took the earphones off - had she reached the part where Merrill and I reminisce on our shared knowledge of the waitress in the Tiergarten Cafe?
'Let me see that poem,' she said.
All muscle and velour, she shared the puff and read it sitting up straight - jacketed, panted, booted, wrapped and occupying the bed like a large trunk you'd have to deal with before you could go to sleep. She read seriously, her lips shaping the words.
'All mush and seeds?' she read aloud, with a stern look of disgust for
the poet, in the cold room her breath smoked.
'It gets better,' I said, not at all sure that it did. 'At least, it doesn't get any worse.'
Her grace is strong. The puff was a difficult size to share; she became aware that it was, at best, a three-quarter bed. Removing her boots, she tucked her feet under her and begrudged more of the puff to me. She tore apart a stick of gum, gave me the bigger half; our mutual, wet smacking disturbed the quiet room. There wasn't enough heat in the room even to frost the windows; we had a third-floor view of the blue snow under the moon, and of the tiny lights strung out on the glacier - way off to the life-station huts where, I imagined, rough and big-lunged men were getting laid. Their windows were frosted.
Her contents are '... loose and strewn things?' she read. 'What's this strewn shit? My mind, you mean? Like scatter brained?'
'Oh, no ...'
'Stray things and warm things ...' she read.
'It's just part of the suitcase image,' I said. 'Sort of a forced metaphor.'
'Soft and round things ...' she read. 'Well, I suppose ...'
'It's a pretty bad poem,' I admitted.
'It's not that bad,' she said. 'I don't mind it.' She took off her parka, and I hunched a little closer to her, my hip to hers. 'I'm just taking off my parka,' she said.
'I was just getting more of the puff,' I said, and she smiled at me.
'It always gets so weighty,' she said.
'Puffs?'
'No, sex,' she said. 'Why does it have to be so serious? You have to start pretending I'm so special to you, and you don't really know if I am.'
'I think you are,' I said.
'Don't lie,' she said. 'Don't get serious. It isn't serious. I mean, you're not special to me at all. I'm just curious about you. But I don't want to have to pretend that I'm impressed or anything.'
'I want to sleep with you,' I said.
'Well, I know that,' she said. 'Of course you do, but I like you better when you're funny.'
'I'll be hilarious,' I said, standing up with the puff like a cape around me and walking unsteadily on the bed. 'I promise,' I said, 'to perform comic stunts and make you laugh all night!'
'You're trying too hard,' she said, grinning. So I sat down at the foot of the bed and covered myself completely in the puff.
'Tell me when you're cold,' I said, my voice muffled under the puff, hearing her gum snap and her short laugh. 'I'm not looking,' I said. 'Don't you think this is the perfect opportunity for you to undress?'
'You first,' she said, so I began, secretly under the puff, handing items out to her, one by one. She was silent out there, and I imagined her readying herself to bash me with a chair.
I passed out my turtleneck, my fishnet shirt, a wad of knee socks and my lederhosen knickers.
'My God, what heavy pants,' she said.
'Keeps me in shape,' I said, peeking out at her.
She sat fully clothed by the headboard, looking at my things. When she saw me, she said, 'You're not undressed yet.'
I went back under the puff and struggled with my long underwear. Then I got it off, held it in my lap a while, then delicately handed it out: a rare gift. I felt her moving on the bed then, and waited in my tent as tense as a tree.
'Don't look,' she said. 'If you look, it's all over.'
Unbuckle, -zip, -strap, and unpack her! Or better, let her do it herself. But why is she doing this?
'Who's Bill?' I asked.
'Search me,' she said, then peeked into the puff. 'Who are you?' she said, sitting knee to knee with me, Indian style. She snatched half the puff around herself, shading her tawny body from the light. She still had her socks on.
'My feet get cold,' she said, willing my eyes to stay on her eyes and look nowhere else. But I took her socks off for her. Big broad feet and strong peasant ankles. I tucked her feet in the hollows of my knees, pinched them with my calves and held her ankles with my hands.
'You have a name?' she asked.
'Bogus.'
'No, really ...'
'Really, it's Bogus.'
'That what your parents called you?'
'No, they said Fred.'
'Oh, Fred.' The way she said it, you could see it was a word for her like turd.
'That's why it's Bogus,' I said.
'A nickname?'
'A truth,' I admitted.
'Like Biggie,' she said, and smiled self-consciously; she looked down to her golden lap. 'Boy, I'm big, all right,' she said.
'Yes, you are,' I said, with an appreciative run of my hand up her long thigh; a muscle tightened there.
'I always was big,' she said. 'People were always fixing me up with giants. Basketball and football players, great big awkward sorts of boys. Like it was necessary we be matched or something. "Got to find someone large enough for Biggie." Like they were finding a meal for me. People always fed me too much, too; they just assumed I was hungry all the time. Actually, I have a really small appetite. People just seem to think it means something if you're big - like being rich, you know? They think if you're rich, you only like things that cost a lot of money. And if you're big, you're supposed to have some special attraction to big things.'
I let her talk. I touched her breast, thinking of other big things, and she ran on, not meeting my eyes now, watching my hand with a sort of nervous curiosity. What will it touch next?
'Even in cars,' she said. 'You're in the back seat with two or three other people, and they don't ask the smaller person if she has enough room; they always ask if you have enough room. I mean, if three or four people get stuffed into a car seat, nobody has enough room, right? But they seem to think you're some sort of expert at not having enough room.'
She stopped and caught my hand where it moved across her belly, holding it there. 'You should say something, don't you think?' she said. 'I mean, I think you should say something to me. I'm not a whore, you know. I don't do this every day.'
'I never thought you did.'
'Well, you don't know me at all,' she said.
'I want to know you, seriously,' I told her. 'But you didn't want me to be serious. You wanted me to be funny.' She smiled, and then she let my hand move up to her breast and rest under it.
'Well, it's OK to be a little more serious than you're being now,' she said. 'You have to at least talk to me a little. I mean, you must wonder why I'm doing this.'
'I do, I do,' I said, and she laughed at that.
'Well, I don't know, really,' she said.
'I know,' I said. 'You don't like big people.' She blushed, but now she let me hold both her breasts; her hands, light on my wrists, took my pulse.
'You're not that small,' she said.
'But I'm shorter than you are.'
'Well, yes, but that's not so small.'
'I don't mind being smaller.'
'God, I don't either,' she said, and ran one hand along my leg, where I had her feet trapped. 'You've certainly got a lot of hair,' she said. 'I'd never have guessed it.'
'I'm sorry.'
'Oh, it's all right.'
'Am I your first nonskier?' I asked.
'I haven't been to bed a lot, you know.'
'I know.'
'No, you don't,' she said. 'Don't say you know when you don't. I mean, I once knew someone who wasn't a skier.'
'A hockey player?'
'No,' she laughed. 'A football player.'
'He was still big, though.'
'You're right,' she said. 'I don't like big people.'
'I'm awfully glad I'm small.'
'You play things, don't you?' she asked. It was a serious question. 'Those tapes. There's really nothing on them, is there? You don't do any one thing, you said.'
'I'm your first nobody,' I said, and fearing she might take me too seriously, I leaned forward and kissed her - her mouth dry, her teeth shut, her tongue lost. When I kissed her breasts, her fingers found my hair; they hurt me a little - she seemed to be pulling me away.
'What's wrong?'
'My gum.'
'Your what?'
'My gum,' she said. 'It's stuck in your hair.' Nestling eye to eye with her nipple, I realized that I must have swallowed mine.
'I swallowed mine,' I said.
'Swallowed it?'
'Well, I swallowed something,' I said. 'Maybe your nipple.'
She laughed, lifting her breasts up to cup my face. 'No, it's still there,' she said. 'Both of them.'
'You have two?'
Then she stretched out on her stomach, across the bed, reaching for the ashtray on the night table, where she deposited the gum and a wad of my hair. I bore the puff over my shoulders like a cloak and stretched out over her. Pumpkin Rump! It was impossible to lie flat on her.
She turned so that we could tangle sideways, and when I kissed her, her teeth were parted. In the blue light that glowed off the snow, we pressed down under the canopied puff and told each other stories of our vague education and more vague experience with books, friends, sports, plans, politics, preferences, religion and orgasm.
And under the hot puff (one, two, three times) the drone of a low, coming airplane seemed to carry us loudly beyond that frosted room, wung us out over those blue miles of glacier, where we exploded, and our burnt, melted pieces were flung apart, snuffed out like match-heads in the snow. We lay separate and barely touching, the puff kicked back, until the bed seemed to cool and harden like a slab of the glacier itself. Then we bundled against the perishing dark and lay scheming under the puff as the first shot of sun glanced off the glacier. Gradually its bright, metallic glint cut slow rivulets through the frost on the windowpane.
Also there, in the harsh sunlight, looming beside our bed in a puff of his own, Merrill Overturf stood shaking and swaying, his face the color of city snow, his hand holding aloft a frail phallus - his hypodermic syringe, with 3 cc's of cloudy insulin to clear his bad chemistry.
'Boggle ...' he began, and in an ice-thin voice gave a fearsome account of his ill sleep; in a hot dream he had thrown aside his puff and lay naked and uncovered through the cold night, wetting his bed and waking to find his hip fastened to the bedsheet with frozen pee. And when he filled his morning hypo with insulin his hands were shaking too much to give himself the shot.