Love and Will Read online

  “Hundreds of times.”

  “Where’s his license?”

  He looked at his nails, buffed them on his thigh. “I don’t like this color,” he said to the transvestite next to him. “You?”

  “How do I know he hasn’t rabies then?” I said.

  “How do I know you haven’t rabies?” Jersey said.

  “Don’t you think it’s important I know? Be reasonable. If he has rabies, all I have to do is get treated for it.”

  “Now listen you. Either give us some more gam or make tracks. You’re becoming a nuisance.”

  “He has nice legs though,” the transvestite next to him said.

  “Too fat,” the third one said.

  “Those are muscles, not fat.”

  The other two men were laughing behind a newspaper. Jersey was opening a bottle of nail polish. I said “You’re all nuts and I’m calling a cop,” and crossed the avenue.

  “Bye, toots,” a couple of them said. I turned around. The two other transvestites were standing and waving handkerchiefs at me. Jersey was polishing his nails.

  A block away I saw two policemen talking to a man. The man was gesturing with his hands in a way I’d never seen before and when I came over, speaking a language I’d never heard.

  “Excuse me, officers, but I have to report something.”

  “Just a second,” one of them said. “This guy’s trying to tell us something that’s obviously pretty important to him but we can’t make out a word he says. That’s not some Caribbean form of Spanish or South America, is it?”

  “Habla Espanol or Portuguese?” I said to the man.

  “Caper hyper yoicher,” he said.

  “Die Deutsch. Sprechen sie Deutsch or Français?”

  “Yoicher caper hyper.”

  “We are trying to find out what language you are speaking or you can understand,” the policeman said very slowly to him.

  “Hyper yoicher caper,” he seemed to say, “caper yoicher hyper.”

  Then he shook his head and rolled up his trouser leg and pulled down his sock and pointed to a set of teeth marks on his ankle and dried blood around it and made barking sounds and imitated an animal or human being baring his teeth and biting down hard with them.

  “You’ve been bitten?” the policeman said.

  “That’s what happened to me just now,” I said. “By a dog.”

  “It did?—Dog? Chien? Cane?” he said to the man. “Mange cane?”

  “Yoicher hyper caper yoicher,” the man said. “Yoicher. Yoicher.”

  I showed the man my own bite marks and pointed to his ankle and he nodded and smiled and said “Ya ya ya ya.”

  “Where?” I pointed to our bites and then to the island a block away and made barking sounds and said “There?”

  “Ya ya ya ya. Caper caper hyper yoicher.”

  “You’ve both been bitten by dogs then,” the policeman said. “You think the same one?”

  “I think we ought to go and find out,” I said.

  “What do you say, Kip?” he said to his partner.

  “Let’s go over and see,” Kip said.

  We all went over to the island. The five men were still sitting there. “Officer,” Jersey said, standing up as we approached them, “I want to make a complaint against this man,” looking at me.

  “Just a second,” the policeman said. “These two men have a complaint against you. This your dog?”

  “That’s exactly what my complaint’s about. The foreigner I’ve never seen till before. All I know is I’m sitting here when suddenly he’s yelling and babbling at us and then left. But this one,” pointing to me, “tried to accost me last night along the park side of Central Park West. When I refused to go into the park with him or do what he wanted me to right there against the park wall for the whole city to see, he said he’d come back to get his revenge on me. Well he didn’t last night. But ten minutes ago he tried to attack me on this bench. That’s why my dog bit him. Out of protection for me.”

  “That true?” Kip said to me.

  “It’s so ridiculous I won’t even answer it,” I said.

  “See?” Jersey said. “Now if you don’t mind, I’m exhausted and going home.” He started to walk away with his dog. Kip stopped him and told him to sit.

  “Why? This man only proved who’s right.”

  Milos, the foreigner, started to shake his fist at Jersey. Jersey told him to stick it up. He shook both fists at Jersey. Jersey said “Maricon!” and turned around and shook his behind in Milos’s direction. Milos jumped at him and had to be pulled away by the policemen. He shouted at Jersey “Hyper hyper yoicher caper. Caper!”

  “What language he speaking?” Jersey said.

  “We’re trying to find out,” Kip said. “Any of your friends maybe?”

  “Foreign language,” one of the transvestites said, sewing a button to his shirt. “I hate them. They should all be sent back on the boats tonight.”

  “Has your dog a license?” the policeman said to Jersey.

  “What’s your name, officer?” Jersey said.

  “John.”

  “My dog has a license, John, but it must have fallen off in the scuffle with this man,” meaning me.

  “There was no scuffle,” I said to John.

  “You’ve already proven yourself a liar,” Jersey said. “Now you should shut up.”

  Just then a derelict walked over and asked me what was wrong. “Dispute,” I said.

  “Got a quarter?” he said.

  “Will you please leave me alone?”

  “Just give me a quarter.”

  “Get out of here,” Kip said, giving him a dime and shoving him off.

  “I’m really at a loss what to do for you guys,” John said to me. “Kip?”

  “You could press charges and we could take him in if you want,” Kip said to me.

  “That won’t do any good,” I said. “His dog should be picked up by the ASPCA and tested for rabies. That way we won’t have to take the shots ourselves.”

  “You’re not taking my dog there,” Jersey said. “He can’t even stand being cooped up in my apartment.”

  “I’ll call in,” John said. He tried his two-way radio. It didn’t work.

  “Don’t look at me, buddy,” Kip said. “Mine’s in the repair shop.”

  “I’ll call from the pay phone.” I went with John to the drugstore across the street. While he phoned I bought a bottle of iodine, applied it to my wounds and then, back on the island, to Milos’s ankle.

  A squad car came with its siren going and emergency lights twirling. “You buzzed?” the sergeant said from the car.

  “We want to know what to do about the dog,” John said.

  “You should have asked the desk for that.” He contacted the station house on the car radio. The station house said “Normal procedure, with or without a dog license, is for ASPCA to take the mutt and quarantine it for seven days. I’ll get them over.”

  We waited. The station house called back a few minutes later and said the ASPCA drivers were on strike. “You fellows will have to bring the dog to the pound yourselves.”

  “He’s not getting in my car without a cage,” the sergeant told the station house.

  “Hold on.” Later: “No cages. All borrowed at one time or another, since no real need for them till now. We can get one by tonight. Take the dog owner’s name and address and tell him we’ll pick up the dog at nine sharp tomorrow when we have a cage.”

  “He won’t give the right address,” I said to the sergeant.

  “Also get the names and addresses of an immediate family member and his present employer,” the sergeant said to Kip.

  “They’re all be phonies,” I said.

  Jersey said to Kip “I don’t work now but I’ll give you three genuine addresses which I have the papers to prove them: my own, my mother’s and my best friend’s where I usually stay.”

  “Which one will you be at tomorrow at nine when we come to pick your dog up
?”

  “My mother.”

  “You be there now, you hear?” the sergeant said from the car.

  “I promise. My mother’s a good woman. Not like me. I swear by everything holy and her name that I’ll be there at nine with my dog.”

  “Bull,” I said.

  “Faggot,” he said to me. “You’ll never get anything from anyone around here from now on. I’ll tell them. ‘Pull in your asses when you see him,’ I’ll say. ‘That faggot’s dangerous and mean.’—Can I go now?” he asked Kip.

  “Let him loose,” the sergeant said.

  Jersey walked away with his dog. His friends remained on the bench, talking about movies now: which ones they liked or disliked. The sergeant had said he’d drive Milos and me to a hospital, but suddenly his twirling lights and siren were on and he drove off.

  “They were supposed to take us to emergency,” I said to John.

  “I could get another squad car for you, but it might take a while. You’ll be better off by bus.”

  “We have to go to the hospital and be treated now,” I said to Milos.

  “Yoicher hyper caper.”

  I jabbed at myself while I nodded, made a cross in the air and pointed downtown. He looked confused. I hailed a cab and urged Milos to get in with me. During the ride I asked the driver if he’d ever heard this language before and I said to Milos “Say something. Speak. Hospital. L’hopital, Milos,” and I pointed downtown and to my wounds and his bad ankle and nodded and he said “Yoicher caper hyper hyper” and the driver said

  “No, I never have.”

  Milos and I went to the admitting window of the emergency room of the hospital and I told the man there “We were both bitten by the same mangy dog and would like to be treated for possible rabies right away.”

  He gave us forms to fill out and bring back to him when we were finished.

  We sat in the crowded waiting room. One man waiting to be treated must have been in a razor or knife fight. His cheek and neck were slashed, blood was all over his head and clothes. Seeing me looking at him, the man beside him said “Window fell on his head. No joke. Second-story window, smash, frame and all down on us both, but it got him like in a horseshoe game and only grazed my arm.” Another woman must have run into a nest of bees. I don’t know where in this city. Maybe she kept her own hives. And a baby with a swelled-up belly and a young girl with towels wrapped around both hands. I filled out my form, took my wallet out and removed some identification papers and pointed to Milos’s pocket and he did the same. All his papers were written in letters I didn’t recognize. Then I saw a business card of a Hungarian restaurant on the East Side. “You Hungarian?” I said.

  “Hungarian.”

  I said to the waiting room “Anyone here speak Hungarian?”

  A woman stood up. “I don’t,” she said.

  Several people laughed.

  “But I’m Finnish,” she said.

  This time even a few of the sick and injured people laughed.

  “But the two languages are somewhat alike. They’re both branches of the Finno-Ugric.”

  “The Finno-whatwik?” a man said and just about everyone laughed.

  “Then I need you here, ma’am,” I said when the noise had died down. She came over and talked to Milos and they seemed to understand many of the words the other one spoke and she helped him fill out his form.

  Two men came in holding up a third. They sat him down. One of the men went to the admitting window and said “My friend there’s been shot.”

  “Have you seen a policeman?” the admitting man said.

  “It happened right in front of the hospital just now. Didn’t you hear the blast?”

  “No. You should have summoned a policeman before you came in.”

  “Hey Jack,” he yelled, “they want us to get a policeman first.”

  Jack, sitting beside the wounded man, said “They’re crazy. First treatment, then a policeman.”

  “First treatment, then a policeman, my friend says.”

  “Can the person who’s shot fill out the admitting form?”

  “He’s bleeding to death, probably dying. He got it in the stomach. We thought we were lucky that it happened in front of your place.”

  “You can fill it out then, but you’ll be responsible for the twenty-dollar admitting fee.”

  “I don’t write but Jack does, and between us we don’t have twenty cents.”

  “Fee temporarily waived then,” and he stamped something on the form. “But your friend Jack must put his address and signature here so we can mail him the bill.”

  A woman came in with a burnt arm and back. Her hair was singed. A path was cleared for her when she walked to the window and a few people held their noses as she passed. The admitting man said “Yes?” She tried to speak. She fell to the floor. He called for two aides over the public address system. They came out of the swinging doors in back and put her on a stretcher and carried her inside.

  “What about our rabies?” I said, giving the admitting man our completed forms. “For all we know we can be getting it now, and once you do you’ve had it I understand.”

  “Excuse me.” He took the form from Jack and told him to take the man who was shot into the examining room. Jack and his friend helped the man in and then left.

  “Now,” the admitting man said to me, “were either of you bitten on the head or face?”

  “No.”

  “Splenius, sternocleidomstoid, anywhere near the larynx or voice box?”

  “I was bitten twice on the calf and the Hungarian man once on the ankle. And the skin broke in all three bites and the dog’s saliva got in.”

  “The incubation period for your types of bites is rarely less than fifteen days and I guarantee you’ll be in the examining room by then.”

  I asked the Finnish woman to tell Milos what the man had just said. She again left her father in the care of a stranger sitting beside him and spoke to Milos. He shook his head and began repeating something to her.

  “He’s apparently saying the incubation period might be for fifteen days. But you have to take virus injections in the stomach for fourteen days starting from the day you were bitten, which leaves you both with only one day left, he says, and conceivably he about ten minutes fewer than you.”

  I told the admitting man what Milos had said.

  “So you have one day left. You still won’t be waiting here that long. Even the chances of a dog getting rabies in this city are practically nonexistent, so please sit down.”

  We waited another hour. The child with the swollen belly and the man with the cut face and the father of the Finnish lady were taken before us. Then the beebite lady and Milos and I were called. We sat in one of the examining rooms with four other patients, all on stools in a circle, my knees touching the knees of the Finnish man whose daughter, standing behind him and holding his hand, said he’d come in to get a splinter removed that she had dug and dug at but couldn’t even reach. A woman was telling a man with a bad cough of the beautiful mad golden retriever that had bitten her this morning.

  “That’s a coincidence,” I said, “for I was bitten too.”

  “Same here,” the beebite lady said.

  “Both of you by golden retrievers?” the woman said.

  “No, a pack of bees.”

  “Mine was a mutt. But yours couldn’t have been on Broadway in the eighties, was it?”

  “Connecticut.”

  “I wish I only got bit by a dog in Connecticut,” the beebite lady said, “or at least only by one bee. But hundreds. Right on West Fifty-first in the heart of the restaurant district when I’m out dumping my garbage bag.”

  The woman said she was driving in on the thruway when she saw a car ride off the road right in front of her and turn over a couple of times before it came up on its wheels. “I parked. A few cars got there before me and someone said the driver looked dead but that there was a dog on the seat who wouldn’t let them open the door to help the man. All
the windows were shattered. I tried coaxing the dog out. I’ve a way with them and especially retrievers—I’ve two myself. When it wouldn’t come with words I held a strip of beef jerky through the window to get him to sniff it and eventually follow it out of the car with me, but he bit my hand.”

  A nurse asked each of us our medical problems and assigned the beebite lady and the cut man to special rooms. The man with the cough was given a throat swab and a prescription and told to come back tomorrow for the results. A doctor came in, gave the rest of us tetanus shots, washed our wounds and while the nurse prepared the Finnish man for minor surgery, bandaged us up and asked about the dogs that bit us.

  Mina, the woman, said she’d phoned Connecticut just before and was told the retriever was licensed, had had all his shots and was now quarantined, and the doctor said the vets there will know if the dog shows any clinical signs of rabies within seven days. “What about your dogs?” he asked Milos and me.

  “It has no license and probably never had any shots or will ever be found,” I said and he told me if the dog isn’t confined in two days we should return to this hospital and begin taking our fixed virus shots.

  “I hear they can be very painful,” I said.

  “And possible severe reactions to the treatment can happen, so in actual fact we don’t recommend them.”

  “But if we get rabies we can go into convulsions and die.”

  “There hasn’t been a reported case of rabies bite in the city for over thirty years.”

  “Maybe this is the one. Or the man and his dog were from out of town and only visiting here for the day.”

  “There weren’t a hundred reported cases in the entire country last year and most of those attacking rabid animals weren’t dogs.”

  “What would you do?” I asked him.

  “I’d take the injections,” Mina said.

  “I wouldn’t,” he said. “Though in the end that comes down to a personal and not a professional decision, so I know how tough it must be for both of you.”

  “I’ll make up my mind in two days.” I got Milos’s phone number and said to the Finnish woman “Tell him I’ll call in two days to report if the dog’s been found. If it hasn’t, say he’ll then have to speak to his own people and make up his own mind on whether he wants to go through with the virus shots.”