Lynne Tillman - American Genius - A Comedy

Dinner is three courses, the most elaborate of the day's meals, often poor, and its longest, but at breakfast everyone can find something to eat, unless they are late, though there is usually bread, milk, and cold cereal available, which is not the case at dinner. At dinner, there is an appetizer, tonight it's crudites, then there's the entree or main course, and a dessert. There are warm, packaged rolls, which one resident steals and hides in his backpack for the next day, as he is already anxious about the next day's meager lunch. Another regularly pilfers fruit and raw vegetables and is known to arrange carrots in rows on the top of his worktable, where he does computations, to watch them dry and curl up. Salad is served with the main course, and the few Europeans among us have it after, while the Americans have it with the entree, and then there is dessert, and, with it, coffee, decaffeinated or espresso, tea, black, herbal, or black without caffeine, cream, whole milk, skim, and soy milk, and everyone can find something to eat, special diets are accommodated, in moderation, though most residents are dissatisfied, because lunch is invariably poor and at dinner most are hungry, except the anorexics, who are starving but will not eat and who hide their disease until they are almost dead, and thirty percent of them die of this kind of contemporary wasting.

Looking at Contesa, whose dark glasses are perched on the bridge of her small, sharp nose, obliterating her gray eyes, I imagine that her play will be inhabited by her spirit, which I must count on, as I do, one day sliding into and negating the next, though irregularly in the Count's upside-down schedule, so her mind will be present onstage, which could inspire me. Nervous doubt unclasps my stomach and it quiets, and, with that, commences an appetite. The demanding man is also gazing in Contesa's direction, his large brown eyes morose as a moaning cow's, but she ignores him once again and nibbles a stalk of celery. The night the inventor exposed his rosy ass was exciting, since it was beautiful and the event out of the ordinary, this morning the psoriatic woman and the tall balding man revealed their intimacy, there was nothing indecent about it, but it held some content and provoked memory, and in the moment, again the demanding man seeks Contesa's aid for what her interest enlivens in him, and I await or have hope for an entertaining evening fomented by the Magician's novelty and Contesa's liveliness or spirit.

— Poached salmon again, laments the Count.

— But it's her most flavorful dish, says the Turkish poet, with good cheer.

— I can't bear it, Contesa says, mournfully.

— But salmon's good for brains and sex, urges the Turkish poet.

Almost in unison, Henry and Arthur intone, "it could be worse," which is an uncommon observation here, but they're relatively new residents and often ironic. The Magician watches us like rabbits. He shoves the cooked tomatoes on his plate to the side, and they fall off next to Spike's dinner plate. The Magician is allergic to tomatoes, which is sad, because tomatoes that have grown during a hot summer, without too much rain, so they don't get mealy, are magical, ripened under a brilliant sun, as they were in my mother's garden, then sliced and served on a plate, succulent beefsteaks warm from the rich soil and hot sun, but now my mother doesn't remember her tomato garden and doesn't like to eat tomatoes because of their skin which she can't chew or digest. "An old hell," she said once, cavalierly. The Magician is also allergic to bee stings, bees produce their sting by the ovipositor of the female abdomen, and when stung, a poison-apitoxin-containing formic acid and a neurotoxin is introduced into the skin. I was stung by bees twice. Once I was practicing the piano in camp, when I thought a stabbing pain in my stiff Fingers was caused by a lack of daily, rigorous practice and that my piano teacher was punishing me for my dereliction, but it was a bee. The ovipositor of the honeybee breaks off and remains in the skin after stinging. The bumblebee is able to retract its stinger, but the reaction to stings may vary from a mild, local edema and pain, to severe anaphylactic shock and even death, which occurs more frequently in the case of multiple stings unless prompt therapy is undertaken. The imbedded ovipositor containing the poison sac should be scraped away with a sharp knife, but I don't believe that was done when I was in camp. I took an antihistamine the second time I was stung, yet the area around the sting swelled and throbbed painfully, but unless the Magician carries a kit containing a syringe, epinephrine and antihistamines, when stung, he could go into shock and die.

My dermatologist has treated many cases of infected bee and wasp stings and encountered serious cases of maggots, when, for instance, the Wohlfahrtia vigil gravid fly lays its eggs on the skin, then the hatched larvae migrate to the folds of skin into which they burrow. An inflammatory reaction, first as a papule, then as a lesion, is produced, and maggots may be seen in this lesion, where it seems to pulsate. The female of the human botfly, or D. hominis, glues its eggs to the body of a mosquito, stablefly, or tick, and when the unwitting insect punctures the skin by its bite, the larvae emerge from the egg and enter the skin through the wound. He has seen innumerable cases of crabs, or pediculosis pubis, contracted chiefly by adults as the result of sexual intercourse, not infrequently from bedding, railway berths, and toilet seats, as well as human flea bites. Fleas exist universally among people and animals, and the three most common in America are the human flea, Pulex irritans, the cat flea, Ctenocephalides felis, and the dog flea, Ctenocephalides canis. Fleas are small, brown, wingless insects about one-sixteenth of an inch long, and are very flat from side to side, with long hind legs. They jump actively when disturbed and are known to be extraordinary jumpers, helping them travel from host to host. They extract their food from the superficial capillaries, causing hemorrhagic puncta surrounded by an erythematous and urticarial patch, characterized by intensely itchy welts. The irritation is produced by the injection into the skin of a fluid secreted by the salivary glands of the parasite, and some people have an apparent hypersensitivity to this secretion. Fleas carry disease, endemic typhus, and plague, which is transmitted to people by the rat flea, Xenopsylla cheopsis and other species. Parasitical fleas sucked the lifeblood from my cat's kittens in Amsterdam, where most summers they infest the city and suck their food from humans and animals, and about their fatal effect on young cats especially I had no knowledge and no warning, so all the tiny kittens except one died, for which I am to blame.

Table talk segues to mercury in fish, solid white meat tuna versus flaky tuna, both in cans, the fate of the poor salmon, to America's polluted rivers and streams, during which the Count adds that fish and other creatures are consuming medicines and vitamins humans beings pass through their urine into toilets that flush into streams and rivers where fish feed.

— Imagine what hormones do to fish, says Contesa, tapping the flesh of her salmon.

— Some have already become androgynous, says the Count.

— Everything mutates or dies, says the Magician.

— I'd love to learn magic tricks, I say to him.

— I can't tell you how, I can't show you tricks. Magicians can talk to other magicians about their tricks. That's it. We're a closed shop.

— Are you allowed to discuss your interest in magic?

— I belong to the International Brotherhood of Magicians, and there are rules. We have secrets, it's our trade. But let's say it sprang from my interest in mathematics and numbers. I'm what's called a close-up magician.