What's for Dinner? by James Schuyler (to read list .txt) 📕

he found a lump in one of Patrick’s pockets, but it turned out to be only a bonker on a dirty string. “Throw that away,” the tyrant commanded.

Michael might as well have saved himself his worry and fret. At a special meeting of the faculty a locker search had been proposed by the coach and voted down by his peers. He was a well hated man by his fellow teachers: “Come on you book worms, how am I going to make athletes and men out of you or do you just want to be flabby book worms?” Words such as these had filtered back and created a solid block against him. The music teacher was his especial enemy, feeling that his area was in particular under attack. Even his coeval, the girls’ gym teacher voted him down. But then, she was young and progressive and believed more in eurhythmics, with a soupclcon of Zen, than in volley ball and other creators of ugly lumpy legs.

2

“Oh Norris Norris Norris. Yes yes like that. And like that too. And like that too. Oh Norris Norris Norris. Oh do that again. To feel your big thing in me squishing and pushing around. Oh Norris Norris Norris your tool! Your tool! Keep working at it baby. Let’s try to come at the same time. Tool tool tool. Norris Norris Norris lover man. I think I’m going to shoot. Make an effort and you come too right at the same time. Oh Norris it feels so g-o-o-d!” Mag Carpenter was a chirrupy little thing, with a cunt as big as a garden hat.

3

The fire occurred in the kitchen area: some fault in the wiring of the electric coffee urn. It began to melt the vulcanite counter top. Clouds of yellowish smoke seethed into the corridor. An alert nurse sounded the alarm.

All those fire drills at school paid off. The last of the patients in the psychiatric wing (the clinic took up one floor of a wing of a large general hospital) were filing onto the lawn as the first fire truck roared up, siren sounding, bell clanging. First off was the mascot, a large spotted dog who stood to one side—well trained beast—at point toward the fire. “Like a pagan rite,” someone averred.

Only Bertha gave tongue: always quick to seize any opportunity to act out her personal drama which might be entitled, “The Sufferings of Bertha.” She was a deep sleeper and her sense of drama did not come alive until they were herded in orderly lines on the lawn. A light mist was falling on them and on the firemen in their impressive black slickers, Wellington boots and characteristic coal scuttle hats, dragging in the python of the thick and phallic canvas hose.

Bertha wound up to scream, like the beginning of a siren’s wail. Lottie grabbed her by an upper arm, digging her fingers in hard, and shook Bertha until her teeth rattled.

“You just stop that,” Lottie hissed. “You stop spreading fear and alarm. Panic! A lot of these patients are sicker than you are, and they’re acting sensible.” Shake, shake, rattle, rattle. “You stand up straight and keep your mouth shut or I’m going to slap your face until your ears ring.” There was that in Lottie’s tone that caused the usually irrepressible Bertha to straighten up and fly right.

The sight was a most impressive one: mist falling on the silent files of patients, in different degrees of negligee, the trained nurses shuttling swiftly among them, doing a kind of bed check and disclosing wonderful memories, so sure of who was in their charge, the firemen moving purposely through lanes in the crowd that cleared as at the waving of a magic wand. Out of the side door and kitchen windows still poured the acrid smoke and a hissing of steam.

“If only Mrs Brice were still here!” Lottie softly cried out. “How she would enjoy it. So quiet and reticent yet always ready for a little excitement. A deep one, yes, and deep one. Kind and good.” She addressed a young man on her not-Bertha side. He was a new patient and had not been known to speak. In fact his only notable act to date was pouring his oatmeal and milk on the floor, which he docilely cleaned up at the behest of a nurse.

Lottie and the night’s excitement stirred him to speak. “Of glog,” he seemed to say.

“Dear oh dear,” Lottie said to him, “I hope this won’t interfere with my dismissal tomorrow. The Lord knows, I’ve earned it.”

Bertha seized the diversion of Lottie’s attention to stick her tongue out at her. She stuck it out good and far.

A fireman, overcome by smoke, was carried out on a stretcher. “Won’t be going back in there right away,” a fireman remarked to a passing nurse.

“I should hope not,” the nurse replied. “Why, even out here the smell gives me vertigo. What is that burning?”

“Smouldering vulcanite,” replied the fireman, and went about his business.

Finally, the damp and shivering patients were allowed to return to their murky quarters, where a horrible smell hung in the air. At the door, the head night nurse stood with a clipboard, checking off each patient as he or she passed in. There were puddles on the hall floor and the kitchen was a sight.

“No goggling about,” the head nurse said, “get to bed and try to sleep. Or at least rest. Rest is sometimes as refreshing as sleep,” she improbably added.

“The night of the fire!” Lottie caroled. “The night of the fire! Who will ever forget?”

In the seeming safety of her room, Bertha cut loose. “I can’t breathe! I can’t breathe this killing smog! It smells like death! Oh Christ, oh shit, I’m suffocating, asphyxiation, horrible death and I’m so young and practically a virgin!” She pressed her face to the coarse mesh of the window screen and inhaled loud gulps and gasps of air.

A nurse entered on heavy military feet, carrying a wet washcloth. She