He flew back to St. Petersburg the next morning. He had a fever, his eyes were burning, his ears ringing. At the motel, he swallowed three Tylenol gelcaps and tried to sleep.
A scythe! Wow!
He believed her though. There was no doubt in his mind that she was telling the truth. Oh, no. It was the old eye-of-the-beholder principle. People just see what they see. And the beheld can take any form the eye devises. Walking along Greenwood Avenue, a little boy saw a blonde in a black coat. And five minutes later, looking out the window, Peggy-Sue saw a medieval shape of Death, holding a scythe.
What would the Board of Shrinks have to say about that?
Obviously collective fantasizing. And, I might add, typical in cases of duo-hallucinatory sexual ambiguity. And, of course, it goes without saying, a repressed pas de deux-like transference of voyeuristic and guilty penisenvy – the scythe in question being the perfect allegorical phallus, with a cutting edge that when turned upside-down resembles an erection …
The phone rang.
His temperature climbed even higher as he lay there listening to it. Finally, he picked up the receiver. ‘Room service,’ he rasped.
‘Egan?’
It was only Nellie, inviting him to dinner. When he told her he was ill she came rushing across the bay with a doctor, a young woman named Alice. She gave him an injection of something and he immediately felt much better.
‘Alice is a surgeon,’ Nel explained. ‘She adores cutting up patients and extracting their innards. Especially males.’
‘Males have no innards,’ Alice said. ‘They’re all hollow façades.’
The three of them went to a seafood place in Palm Harbor. The two girls talked about Nellie’s exhibit. She’d already sold twelve paintings for over five thousand each.
‘Not bad,’ Alice said. ‘But he’ll take it away from you. He’s back, y’know.’
‘No!’
‘He got in yesterday.’
‘The little prick! We’ll nail him this time!’
Joe ate in silence. His sole meunière tasted like rubber.
‘Egan,’ Nellie took him by the hand. ‘You taught me how to play, didn’t you?’
Her touch was like balm. The sole was suddenly delicious. ‘Mmm? Play? What? The violin?’
‘We used to hide in a boathouse on the lake,’ she turned to Alice, ‘and play and neck all day long.’
‘Neck?’ Alice grimaced. ‘That sounds like something ostriches do.’
‘Excuse me, Nel, but you’ve lost me.’
‘Poker.’
‘Oh, sure. Poker. My father taught me the game. And I taught you. Right.’
‘There’s a sonofabitch who shows up in Tampa periodically and cleans us out. We think he’s cheating.’
‘That’s easy enough to spot.’
‘I happen to be an excellent poker player,’ Alice huffed, ‘and I haven’t been able to “spot” it.’
‘He’s very clever,’ Nellie said.
‘If he plays poker and has to cheat to win, then he isn’t clever. Alice, for instance, is clever.’ (Flatter the unfriendly slut.) ‘If she couldn’t win cleverly, she wouldn’t play.’
‘Poker is a simpleton’s game,’ she snapped down on a piece of lobster, like a parrot. ‘And you don’t know whether I’m clever or not, do you?’
‘You have a high forehead.’
‘Why don’t you buy one of Nellie’s paintings?’
Ah hah! She was wondering about his finances. His trousers and shirt and jacket were properly expensive, but just a bit too new. What did he do? How much was he worth?
‘I can’t afford it,’ he sighed. Fuck her. Let her pick up the tab. She’s the one who invited him to this clipjoint. ‘I’m just a penniless architect.’
‘Is that what you are?’ Nel drawled. ‘I forgot to ask. I …’
‘What have you built?’ Alice cut in.
‘Just one small house,’ he said. ‘In Atlanta.’