I've a Feeling We're Not in Kansas Anymore (Buddies) by Ethan Mordden

Author:Ethan Mordden [Mordden, Ethan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781250086426
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: 2016-04-23T16:00:00+00:00

And Eric Said He’d Come

Christopher, an opera director with a twin brother who is also an opera director, invites me to a cottage by the sea. His friend Helen has taken a place in the Grove for a week; they want scintillating company. I’ll do my best.

I met Helen once, at the Met. Inside of twenty seconds she asked what my middle name is, where I got that tie, how I met Christopher, if I knew where the Wagnerian contralto Ottilie Metzger died, and if she could try on my dark glasses.

I never turn down an invitation to Fire Island. Christopher met me at the ferry, where I feigned the necessary suave. I had dressed precisely, as if for a sacred pageant set on the sand, which, in fact, is what the Island of Fire is. In gray corduroy shorts, striped T-shirt, Mickey Mouse watch, running shoes, and punk socks, I’m so right that if there were grapefruit sections in my hair, I’d start a fad. Think hot to be hot.

Helen greets me warmly, on the deck of a trim little thing of a house on the ocean, west of the Monster. There is another guest, one Larry.

“Welcome to the D-list,” he tells me. “You realize we’re the only people in the Grove under sixty-five!”

Christopher laughs. Helen glowers. I’m bemused.

“The Grove!” he cries. As if to say: “The Black Hole of Calcutta!”

“What’s for lunch?” I ask, to cue in the next scene.

“Decay. Ugliness. Stupidity.” Larry marches off to the beach, I presume to head for the Pines. Dire on a dune, he adds, “If you can’t get into hell, they send you here.” Exit.

Silence.

“Good grief,” I explain.

“I forgot to warn you about Larry,” says Christopher.

“Whose friend is that?” I ask.

Helen and Christopher share accusing looks.

“Never mind,” I tell them.

Helen can’t let it rest. “The worst of it,” she begins—then checks herself, looks away, goes out the front door and immediately surges in through the back—“The worst of it is: he’s such a schmarotzer!”

“Helen,” Christopher begins.

“But your friend must be thirsty from his trip. Quick, a tea, some cheese wedges, a boiled egg. Schmarotzer means ‘parasite.’ The Nazis used it against the Jews, as if they were cultural parasites battening on Goethe, Schiller, Brentano, without contributing anything of their own. Battening! I would mention Heine and Mendelssohn. I lived in Germany for two years. Munich.”

“Why is Larry a schmarotzer?” I asked, feeling my way into a new word.

Helen became tragic. She looked off to a remote prospect—the colored frieze atop the facade of the Munich Staatsoper, I imagined.

“He comes and he takes, and he takes, and he takes,” Helen observes.

“He brought fruit,” Christopher puts in. “He made pasta primavera.”

“With marinara sauce!”

Helen dramatically reveals a tub of cold rigatoni, stained red amid broccoli and cauliflower. “The last supper of a schmarotzer!” she screams.

“Egad,” I say, to fill in a pause.

Now Helen is quiet, showing us what patience looks like. “Does he offer anything to the group? Tell me that, please!” She turns to me.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.