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  AFFECTIONAIRES

  by Jeffra Hays

  Copyright 2012 Jeffra Hays

  This ebook is the copyrighted property of the author, and may not be reproduced, copied or distributed for commercial or non-commercial purposes. Thanks.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  To my Annie, at her window

  … return to my kindred by reason of affection…

  Coomaraswamy, ‘Buddha and the Gospel of Buddhism’

  Table of Contents

  CHAPTER I……………..Dilly Calput

  CHAPTER II………………Irwin Ekes

  CHAPTER III…….Dilly, Ernest, Pearl

  CHAPTER IV……..……Sunday R&R

  CHAPTER V…..….…Dilly & Friends

  CHAPTER VI…..…Dilly & Cornelius

  CHAPTER VII….…..….Matrimonials

  CHAPTER VIII…...Transmogrification

  CHAPTER IX………….………..Swick

  CHAPTER X…….…………….Wounds

  AFFECTIONAIRES

  PART 1: PREQUEL

  In medias rescue

  Morning exercise was vital to her, to her emotional stability,

  and by influence and extension her weight, poise and complexion.

  CHAPTER I

  Dilly Calput, at the shore, hooks one more: true love twenty-four.

  No, she was not pretty; her eyes were fierce. Ernest Ewing, who rescued her from prickly circumstances, was too dazed to ascertain their ferocity; he dared not think when he should have.

  The late September sun, even at that early hour of the morning, was also fierce. Ewing was too embroiled in her plight to follow first instincts, and flee. An ever decent if tad naïve bird addict, he could not desert her, wounded and helpless. He had divorced his wife only eight months before, and was searching that morning for clamshells, rounded pebbles, gull feathers and women. He found them all, on the beach at Coney Island.

  Ewing was an early riser and a cardio-vascular fitness aficionado, his morning sand run complete, his quota of four beach miles met. He was selecting specimen for his garden when Calput -- no veteran of running at water’s edge -- ventured to break her daily aerobic routine on the boardwalk and splash in the cool ocean, barefoot.

  She had never been friendly with shoes. Her toes were crooked; her predilection for open shoes, sandals, and soft flexible slippers was justified; and she was foolishly barefoot in the none too clean water. Somewhere, on the other side of the Atlantic perhaps, a fisherman lamented the loss of his hook (had it traveled thousands of nautical miles to cause this very encounter?); somewhere in the Atlantic, a blue marlin or happy cod celebrated a serendipitous escape. Only eleven minutes into her run she was caught in his errant hook, even without his line.

  An assertive herring gull breakfasted on fresh bivalve invertebrate; Ewing crouched in the shallow waves to observe the bird and await the pearly clamshell it was certain to abandon; then Calput, instantaneously alert to a sharp sting on her next leap, screamed, staggered, and fell on Ewing, who landed face down in the wet sand, his nylon net bag of shells under his stomach while she lay panting on her stomach, sprawled on his back across his manly shoulders. Her long red hair floated with the rhythm of foaming surf.

  “Help! Help!” – third on her list of permissible four-letter imperatives -- she cried. Ewing, whose bare belly was scratched and pierced by the latest additions to his collection, responded within bounds of her paradigm,

  “Shit lady!” and pushed up to his knees. She rolled down his back and into the water, sat up and cried “Ahhh!” when she saw blood oozing from her right big toe, the toe aligned with the bigger bunion. Ewing examined his cuts. A wave washed over her; she crawled out of the water on two hands and a knee. The flow of blood, although impressive, was not prodigious; but it was hers and she continued to wail until a crowd of two men, for it was still very early, gathered to stare and smirk.

  Calput saw his bag of shells. “Idiot. Throwing shells where people run.”

  “Just wash it off,” said Ewing, and bathed his scratches. “It’s only a cut.”

  “Only! I’m type A negative.”

  Another wave caressed her toe, and Ewing announced, “Hey, it’s a fish hook.”

  “That’s bad,” said a newcomer, a senior sun goddess. “Typhenus. Makes you drool.”

  “Oh god! Plebes!” exclaimed Calput, readily categorical when stressed.

  Essentially a gentleman of habitual good manners, Ewing gathered Calput under her sinewy, well-defined triceps and hauled her out of the water. “Can you get up? Try,” he coaxed her, and hoisted her onto her uncaught unhooked foot, but she was too shaken to stand. And so, despite the burning twinge of discomfort to his serrated stomach he scooped her up, soaked and sandy, bloody foot bobbing, and carried her, chic flamingo-pink peacock-feather-print stretch coordinates for the frenetically fit as yet unnoticed, toward the boardwalk’s first aid station as he scolded his audience, “Can’t you do more than gawk?”

  Calput in his arms, he headed across the warm sand. His trio of chided onlookers chose to join the parade and followed, carrying Ernest’s discrete bags of shells, pebbles, and feathers, and Calput’s dripping, sputtering headset. The station was closed: accidents occur only from 9 AM to 4 PM, 8 to 6 on weekends. When she thought about it afterward, she remembered how romantic fish hooks can be; and he knew, from the first moment, how tangled her toes, how firm her flanks.

  The segmented bloodworm trailed them to the boardwalk. A grimy native denizen, in the midst of discharging an ordinarily private function, crawled out from under the boardwalk to investigate the early morning commotion. He followed sandy blood up the wooden slats and found Calput seated on a bench, Ewing kneeling before her and winding his tee shirt, which had been hanging out the back of his shorts, around her bloody foot. Another strolling witness joined in merry triage.

  “Can I help the lady?” asked an elderly gentleman with a metal detector used to hunt buried heirloom watches, rare coins, sundry seaside artifacts of extrinsic value; he searched among his coins.

  “Emergencies is free don’t you know?” said the goddess.

  Ewing said, “I’ll call.”

  “No ambulance!” cried Calput. “They’re all morons and I’ll bleed to death.” She would avoid the city’s emergency room. Her car was parked half a block away, near the handball courts. “But I can’t drive with the hook in my toe,” and raising her shirt-wrapped foot to her lifeguard’s shoulder, she settled it there, hoping to staunch her blood flow, and encourage his.

  “I’ll drive you, lady. I’ll get a car ten minutes.” Generous offer from metal detective.

  “I won’t leave my car here.” She pouted at Ewing, who volunteered.

  “A doctor friend of mine starts early, no waiting guaranteed. I’ll take you,” said Ewing, and now he noticed her bright pink swimwear, its remarkably naturalistic ocellate pattern, its pair of eyes deployed as anatomical landmarks. Even if the colors were blatant fantasy, the ensemble suited her. And where did she hide her car key?

  The detective again: “My grandson’s roommate’s girlfriend’s a second-year resident. In Jersey.”

  “The lady needs a real doctor,” said the goddess.

  “A surgeon?” Calput asked Ewing, only to feign courtesy. Whoever the doctor, no stranger would touch her. Her toe throbbed; she would allow him to drive.

  “No,” said Ewing, “but he knows toes.”

  He watched as she coiled her hair -- scarlet tanagers were that red -- over her shoulder and squeezed. He followed the excess drip underneath her left pink ey
e, imagined its trickle over supple terrain and down, like a suffering bird’s tear, onto her exposed midriff. Her hands were perfect: slender, graceful, straight.

  “Pathologist,” said Ewing.

  “The morgue?” she asked.

  The detective offered his grandfatherly prognosis: “Wiseass him it ain’t fatal.”

  Calput considered Ewing’s substantial pectoralis, his cropped wet hair, the fine, blood-stained fingers that held her ankle, and his sincere attempt at kindness. His voice was too high-pitched for her taste, but she contained her urge to label him, again, as a less than perspicacious entity. “Take me to Treatment Complex. The ignition key’s in here.”

  He found her key.

  How, she wondered, to keep him hovering, even as he devised excuses to hover.

  He carried her to her car, this year’s foreign model of a stylish foreign coupe. Their entourage deposited their things in the back seat and pestered her with “speedy recovery” and “it could be worse.” She swiveled into the passenger seat. When her left foot touched the carpet, she remembered her slippers and jacket but said nothing. He attributed her silence to pain.

  “You’ll survive,” he said.

  “Help me, will you?” --- to raise her leg and prop it on the dash. She slid forward, leaned her head back and closed her eyes. “Treatment’s just off Surf. Turn right, one block.”

  He knew Treatment Complex from business connections but didn’t bother with conversation. It was a short drive on familiar streets, with enough time at a red light to admire her smooth inner thigh and her smell: sweat and the beach. He stopped in front of Emergency. Before he could open his door, a bloated guard yelled,

  “Read the sign, Pal, No Parking Here.”

  “My wife’s hurt.”

  The guard displayed his new digital watch and tapped its face in Ewing’s. “You got one minute.”

  Inside, patients and families stared, napped, whispered, paced. Ewing, still barefoot, deposited her on a seat near the door with “Be right back,” parked, and when he returned six minutes later, she was gone. An extraordinarily expeditious response to a simple fish hook, not the Treatment he knew.

  The reception desk was a chest-high semicircular counter.

  “I brought in a woman just now,” he said to the receptionist.

  “Name,” without looking up from her bottle of lavender nail lacquer, she stroked the brush over her left thumbnail.

  “Just now.”

  “Name.”

  “In a pink swim suit.”

  “Name.”

  Her plush black lashes fluttered until she had gathered sufficient patience for this waster of her relatively quiet morning; she opened her eyes without looking up at him. He turned away from the desk, preparing a new approach, when he saw her on a gurney in the corridor. A sheet covered her. Bashful about his state of undress, he crossed his arms on his chest and rushed over, before he lost his nerve.

  “Anything else I can do?” he asked.

  “Oh would you? I forgot my jacket and slippers back at the beach. We left in a hurry, didn’t we,” and pinching his forearm, she teased him with a smart twist of his dark hair. His counterattack, to entwine five lovely fingers in his.

  “I’ll go.”

  “The window on the men’s room side, near the trash can. My plastic bag’s hidden, down between the slats near the top. I’d be forever grateful.”

  “Take your car?”

  “You have my key,” and she tipped her head.

  “Dilly!” called a plump blonde woman, heavy mascara, short-sleeved white coat tagged Patricia Whimbrel MD Attending Emergency Physician, she hurried toward them and greeted Ewing, “You must be her savior.”

  He only shrugged. Short white sleeves, long black sleeves underneath. Loggerhead shrike.

  “Thank you, we all thank you,” said Dr. Whimbrel. “They’re ready, Dilly.”

  So it was Dilly.

  “It won’t take long,” Dilly said to him, “not for me.” And she was rolled away.

  Twenty-six minutes to the men’s Comfort Station, two more for his sneakers, still under a bench, and back, he returned to the waiting room, now busier and noisier than before. Her retrieved bag held a pink jacket, folded and wrapped around pink plastic slippers, soles pressed heel to toe; hidden between the slippers, one key on a ring. He stood near the desk and waited, anxious but polite, while a short, loud young woman leaned, chubby chin anchored to the desk, and harangued the receptionist.

  Her repeated, rumbling guffaw, what call was that? Ewing heard human discourse as chirp. Avian societies invited him to join, but he preferred his own birds, without birders, and played his obsessive labeling game. Long black hair shined like Corvus; her voice was of another genus. Yellow hibiscus-printed baggy pants, loose white hooded tee, she bellowed “application” and “letter” and heaved another laugh from the deep.

  “Please excuse me,” Ewing said to the receptionist, “but my friend’s name is Dilly.”

  Another guffaw; it reverberated for heavy seconds. She was dumpy, and Ewing so repelled that he stepped away -- he could hide in a blind -- but she followed him with, “She called me,” and she poked the bag, “you got her stuff.”

  Waterfowl.

  She held papers in hands lovely as Dilly’s; heavy lips; sumptuous dark lashes; tiny white bumps on left winking membrane, left eye smaller than right; her face was forgettable. He guessed, younger sister.

  “She said you helped her!” she announced, and was amused again.

  Vocal attributes, some grunt of bufflehead but more squawk of hooded merganser, female in heat, if there was such a thing. He wasn’t sure about the female.

  “My mom said you’re nice. My real name is Pearl but everyone calls me Oca.” She offered him her hand. He was too noble to refuse Dilly’s daughter.

  “Hey Oca,” a pair of nurses greeted her as they walked toward the exit; she waved and giggled, and chased them to show off her papers. Ewing sat, glad to be rid of her; she was back the next minute, sitting beside him.

  “My friends,” she said.

  “I gather that your mother works here.”

  “Me too, sometimes. But I’m applying for the police. The academy. I really want to be in K9. Doggies.” She laughed. “I love doggies. Here.” She unfolded her application; five wrapped sucking candies, striped red and white peppermint rounds, fell into her lap. “Look. Want to read it? And my letter to the sergeant?”

  “No thanks.” He wanted to wait. Were they amputating her toe? Oca patted his shoulder, which surprised him, and laughed again, which didn’t.

  He saw Dilly in a wheelchair. Oca followed. He deferred to the daughter.

  “I found him, Mom. And he’s so nice.”

  “Is it out?” he asked.

  “It’s out,” Dilly said, “with enough codeine for a centipede.”

  “He found your stuff.” Oca grabbed the bag from Ewing and plunked it in her lap.

  “So I see.”

  “Mom? My car’s here. I’ll drive you.”

  Ewing was afraid he would lose her now; he held her key in his inside pocket.

  “This gentleman was kind enough to help me and to find my things. He deserves a ride back to the beach, or home, wherever he wants,” Dilly peered up at him, “assuming he wants.”

  He wanted. Mom.

  “I can drive him,” said Oca.

  “What about my car?” and Mother raised the pitch of her voice, quite a bit. “Think!”

  Gritty, shrill Clark’s Nutcracker with an alarming edge.

  “Oh. I forgot,” said Oca.

  Mother, again: “Don’t you have class this morning?”

  “Oh. I forgot.” Avid future academy hopeful, Oca drove off alone.

  An anxious, ambivalent Ewing wheeled Dilly to her car and followed her directions to Coneycatcher Mews, exclusive gated community of solid near-beach-front townhouses. Its recent vintage and classic flamboyance made it popular among moderately affluent strivers.
Mews guaranteed salt air, bucolic fountains, and impenetrable security. The uniformed guard, from his air-conditioned booth, waved them through when he recognized Dilly. Ewing parked in her designated spot, unlocked her front door and carried her, hospital gown protecting her peacock, inside the house.

  Gently, he settled her on the couch, center cushion.

  “Thirsty?” she asked.

  “Somewhat.”

  “You’ll have to get us drinks. Juice, whatever you want. Obviously, I can’t get up.”

  Two glasses of apple and Ewing sat beside her, to her right, discreetly distant from her wound.

  “You are thirsty,” Dilly said, released the knot of her hospital gown and let the gown fall from her shoulders. She took a glass and sipped at him.

  “How’s the toe?”

  She lifted her bandaged foot and pressed it across his thighs; he put one hand high up on her inner thigh, drank his juice, licked her salty shoulder, and the door opened.

  “Oh,” said Oca, “I forgot my laptop.”

  “Get it!” said Mother.

  Another exclamatory alarm, unidentified squawk. Ewing withdrew his hand.

  “I could take him home on the way to my lesson,” said Oca.

  “I think you’re already late,” said Dilly, and curled a smile at her daughter, “so go. Go!”

  “Oh. I’ll just use my notebook.” Oca fussed in her room for a moment, came out carrying a book, yelled “Bye” and slammed the door.

  Ewing’s rapture fizzled.

  “What’s your name?” Dilly asked.

  His own eagerness and her desperation had tripped him. This was too rushed. He lifted her leg and got up.

  “Are you leaving?” she asked.

  “You need rest. I’ve done all I can.”

  “No you haven’t. You could do much more,” and she frowned, one-sided, and tilted her head, so like his long-dead pet mynah Dinah, tipped her head twice.

  “What’s your name?” she asked, and even as he contrived excuses, even as he thought, any name but Ernest, he heard, “Ernest.”

  “Just Ernest?”

  He didn’t like the way she’d spoken to her daughter, despite his hot, pounding ears. “Maybe I’ll see you on the beach after your toe heals.”

  “Ernest.” She looked peeved, disappointed, but continued to smile at him. “Ernest, don’t go.”

  Against her orders and proud of his sudden fortitude, he opened the door, saluted farewell and left, relieved.

  Once past the gate he remembered his bags of shells, rocks, and feathers, still in her car. He stopped, shook his head, turned around and hesitated, decided to walk home, and walked back.

  “Remember me?” he called to the guard, “I forgot something,” and the guard nodded and let him pass. Ewing hurried toward her car. Windows open, his collectibles on the seat, no reason to go near the house, but her door was still open and he saw her hopping, like any damaged passerine, toward her bedroom. Her silhouette bounced. She turned and caught his stare.

  Hah.

  “I left my feathers in your car!” Ernest shouted, ran inside and bolted her door.