Dreams of a Robot Dancing Bee Read Free Page B

appreciate my effort.
    â€œRecently they have begun to wear masks in the mangroves of the Sunderbans. Tigers apparently are mostly angered by the faces of men.”
    I sat there pondering this fascinating new thought and sipping my new drink.
    â€œOne man took off his mask to enjoy his lunch and was immediately attacked. So there you go.”
    â€œYes,” I replied, rather meekly. I desperately needed to get her off this jag of dismemberment, this meditation on violent loss.
    I should add here that Valerie is more attractive than a smoke tree, she has the beauty of the revenant, a sepulchral poise, and, at least to me, a deracinating effect that I, by the last vestiges of the most radiant gist, to borrow a phrase, of my most inner soul, to pass on a cliché, could not resist. And, of course, her eyes did resemble those of the sexier, large feline mammals so rare these days in Boston. And her hair was like a storm one had waited for all of one’s life. Please, disappear me.
    â€œPeople shouldn’t be something they’re not,” she said, and stared into the mirror behind the bar. “I still don’t know who I am. I was brought up to be a lady.”
    She was two halves of a lady, and a great lady at that. “You are a great lady,” I reassured her, “It’s just that you have paid dearly. It is an irony to me that Life seems so much more grueling since the discovery of penicillin.”
    â€œWhen I lived in Nubia, I had a pet cricket named Owen. He was such a comfort to me, and I miss him to this day. He was still living when I was forced to flee. He always slept on a petal of a cowslip. We had a fresh one flown in weekly. I only hope he died peacefully. I simply couldn’t bear it if some ghastly sergeant stomped on him out of boredom or irritation from an imagined insult from some starving servant.”
    I didn’t want to look into the mirror directly—I don’t approveof narcissism, the sexual desire for one’s own body; loathsome people, narcissists, in general—but from a more pathetic realm, I had a frail bit of curiosity to peek and see how we were holding up. I hadn’t seen Valerie in ages. We were old chums, once lovers. From great distances I gleaned what I could from the tittle-tattle. I won’t repeat it here, the marriages, divorces, fortunes won, fortunes lost, snakebite, air crash, ice cream factory in the jungles of hell. She’s simply the dearest person I know, and I would readily behead anyone who spoke ill of her for one minute. But, now, I’m afraid I have stolen my sidelong glance into the mirror, and we both look terribly old and even strangely disheveled. But then, a moment later, I glanced again, and Valerie’s bottom half had gotten up, on its own, it seemed, and attached itself seamlessly, and she looked like a young debutante of, say, eighteen years, much as when she first ravished me in the Gulf of Suez lo those many decades ago when I was recuperating from my bout with malaria.
    â€œTo the lady’s room for me,” she said, and walked off as if nothing had happened, as if nothing had ever happened.
    â€œ435 deaths in 21 years,” she had said, “and that is only the official record and does not include unreported deaths.”
    I ordered another round of Mimosas and tried to imagine a few of the unreported deaths. No, I tried to imagine, to call into being, a swimming tiger, right there in the bar at the Ritz. And Owen on his cowslip petal.
    When Valerie returned she kissed me on the cheek.
    I could see that her bottom half was not really hers but someone else’s. Or if not someone else’s, then it was just a thing,something pieced together from odd bits of bamboo and straw and rubber plants, I don’t know. Perhaps we had had too much to drink. I suppose these new thoughts ruled out the possibility of renting a room and making love with good, old Val.
    â€œSo how is it for you,