The Second Coming

on.
    He felt an urge to get away from the silent white enveloping cloud and to go inside to the cheerful living room with its screen of lively sparkling colors and watch the doings of Kojak.
    He rose carefully, taking care not to excite the gyroscope inside his head, then sat down with a thump.
    Jesus Christ, he thought. I’m in the old folks’ home.
    5
    The friendly atmosphere of St. Mark’s was marred by two fights which occurred within the space of half an hour. He found himself embroiled in both of them. Remarkable! It had been years since he’d been in a fight or even seen a fight.
    Kitty came to St. Mark’s and assaulted him. Then Mr. Arnold and Mr. Ryan, his roommate for two years, got in a fistfight. Kitty must have found his suite empty and tracked him all over St. Mark’s because she burst into the small room where he was visiting the two old men. It was clear when she came through the door that her rage had already carried her past caring who heard or saw her.
    â€œYou bastard,” she said. Her eyes showed white all around like a wild pony’s. “You—” She broke off.
    â€œWhat?” he asked, noticing that he felt scared, and wondered if this natural emotion were not another sign of his return to health.
    â€œWhat my butt,” she said. “Now I know why—” she said and again her voice broke off, with a sob. Then with a grunt of effort as if she had to fling down a burden, she raised her woman’s fists, thumbs straight along the knuckle, and, leaning across Mr. Ryan, began to beat him on the chest.
    Later Mr. Ryan told him, “It looked like that lady was put out with you about something.”
    â€œNow I know why you didn’t come to Dun Romin’ or the summerhouse or anywhere at all, you—” Again her breath caught as she shoved past Mr. Ryan’s bad knee to get at him. “You—you dirty old man!”
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œBecause you were shacked up in the woods with Allison, you—”
    Mr. Arnold and Mr. Ryan were lying in bed and watching Hollywood Squares as if nothing unusual were going on three feet above them.
    â€œShacked up?”
    â€œYou—snake in the grass! Taking advantage of a psychotic girl. You—you—”
    â€œDirty old man?” said Mr. Ryan, looking up for the first time.
    â€œYou shut your mouth, you old asshole,” said Kitty, without looking down.
    â€œYes ma’am,” said Mr. Ryan.
    â€œWell, I’m here to tell you one damn thing, old pal. I hope to God you’re pleased with yourself. She is now hopelessly regressed. She won’t say a word. And I’ll tell you something else. I’m fixing it so you’ll never get your filthy hands on her again, you—snake in the grass. That’s exactly what you are, a snake in the grass!”
    â€œYou mean she won’t talk to you?” he asked her.
    â€œI mean she won’t talk period, won’t eat period, won’t live period—unless I do something about it. You bastard,” she said softly. “You knew where she was all along.”
    He had spied Mr. Arnold in the hall hopping along on his crutch. There was no mistaking that peeled-onion head and the one bright eye in his shutdown face. Then, after Kitty left, flung out, jammed her fist into her side and flounced her hip with it—it’s amazing, he reflected, how trite rage is: enraged people in life act exactly like enraged people in comic books: there were stars and comets and zaps over Kitty’s head—then Mr. Arnold and Mr. Ryan had a fight.
    Mr. Arnold was sitting on the foot of his bed, fisted hand cradled like a baby in his good arm. Though it was his bed and his right to sit there, he was blocking Mr. Ryan’s view of Hollywood Squares. Mr. Ryan began shifting his head back and forth in an exaggerated way to see around Mr. Arnold. He asked him to move but Mr. Arnold either didn’t hear or pretended not to hear.
    â€œYou may be a pane, Erroll,” he said to Mr. Arnold with an angry laugh, “but I can’t see through you.”
    Mr. Ryan had a neat white crewcut, a youthful face, its skin smooth and pink-creased like a baby waking up. But his eye had a cast in it. One leg was gone from the hip and the other freshly amputated and bandaged below the knee. Diabetes and arteriosclerosis, he explained, watching Will with a keen and lively eye to see how he would take it,