Had I been tempted to explain, that query would have been the window to jump through. Instead, I pretended to look in the mirror, check the condition of my gums, and worry over the steady retreat of my hairline. No question I was getting older, and perhaps Sita was right to insist that I come to some conclusions and make some decisions about my life. On the other hand, I had all the time I hadn’t used yet. What’s the hurry?
“Makes me mad,” Adele said. “To think what might have been, and how in the end, we never even had one night together. What’s the use of virtue if all it buys you is regret? You men had it so much easier …” She stopped suddenly and pursed her lips, scrunched her brow, seething with frustration, and her face turned flame red. Something fell from the sky and struck the roof, startling me, but like the first drops pancaking on a sidewalk, the percussion quickened and intensified to a constant rippling roar. I looked through the tiny window. Outside it was hailing baseballs. Bouncing at crazy angles of destruction, the balls smacked against the roof and within minutes a single layer covered the ground.
Over the din, the old man waved and gestured for Adele’s attention. “You did not miss much.”
She looked right through me, as though I was gauze, as though I was nothing, and thus appeased, she stopped the storm. The last of the baseballs fell from the sky and melted into the stack. “It’s like a giant ice cream sundae,” Marie said, and all of the women gathered around her at the window to see the mounds of white drizzled with strawberry sauce. The old man took the opportunity of their distraction to spring to my side and offer his advice.
“Some act of contrition might be nice. An outward display of penance. Sackcloth and ashes.” He could readily see the depths of my misapprehension. “If I performed a trepanning and had a peek at your gray matter, do you think I might detect the far-off glimmer of cognition flickering in your hippocampus?”
“I have no idea what you are talking about.”
“Right, so.” He shook his head slowly. “I suppose you would not. Relate to me, then, your memory of the she-fish and how they escaped by swimming through the keyhole.”
“Hah, that’s a laugh. Boy, you’ve got a vivid imagination.”
He appeared bemused by my remark.
“They walked out,” I said, “just like they walked in.”
“On their fishy tails?”
“Have you lost your mind? Of course not on their tails, but on their legs. I was peeping through the keyhole when someone inside turned on the shower, hot, hot water till the whole room steamed up and I couldn’t make out anything through the fog.”
“I’m surprised you didn’t just bust in anyhow. Can’t think of a more prurient fantasy than the girls’ locker room after the showers.”
“It wasn’t like that at all,” I lied. It was a little bit like that, not entirely, but somewhat prurient; that is to say, I was interested enough to strain my sight at the keyhole, but when the room became too steamy, there was no longer the same potential. “I waited for them in the hallway like a perfect gentleman.”
The kid said something that sounded like “my arse,” but it could just as easily have been nonsense sounds. Or “Meyers,” whoever that might be.
“How long did you wait?” the old man wondered.
“A long time. Interminable.”
“Did you happen to check your watch and note the time?”
“My watch was broken when I fell,” I said. He scratched his head as if pondering some conundrum. I decided to press on. “At last, the doorknob rotated and out they came in billowing vapors, as if in a dream or some cheesy horror movie with dry-ice mist on the moors. They had changed clothes, or rather lost their tails altogether, and now donned Coco Chanel dresses and cloche hats. They were Jazz Age flappers, voh-doh-dee-oh-doh and bobbed hair and long strands of pearls or floor-length scarves. Ready to do the Charleston.”
“Did they provide you with a change of costume? Long tails and a Charlie Chaplin bowler hat?”
“No, just my robe. No bowler.”
“That’s too bad,” the old man said. “I’ve long thought that the bowler hat is due for a comeback. We should be wearing them at least, like a pair of tramps eternally waiting in the comedy of time.”
“Sorry, no bowler,” I said. “I suppose this means you are not Beckett after all?”
“If I were Beckett,” he said, “there would be bowlers.”
“Laurel and Hardy wore them.”
“They are called derbies in America. Al Smith wore one during the 1928 presidential election, and it may have cost him the job. And Mercier and Camier, and those two tramps in Godot.”
“What were their names?”
“I can never remember,” the old man said. And then after an interlude, he spoke again. “They were great comedic teams.”
“Do you think we would be better off with bowlers?” I asked.
He looked at me with what can only be described as love. “I think we are a great team even without the bowlers.”