PRINCES
“I don’t like the looks of Prince Rainier’s stool,” said Yvonne. She stood in the doorway, smartly dressed in navy blue, an Hermès scarf drawn loosely about her neck.
“I hate aesthetic discussions,” said Ingraham. A fat, sallow man of medium height, he faced his wife from a red leather seat that swiveled behind a large fruitwood desk. “One feels so empty, afterward.”
“Not aesthetic. Physiological.”
“‘Good news, bad news.’ The wrong way round, my dear. It should be ‘bad news, good news.’”
“Be careful, my friend. Someday you might hear only the quid and miss the quo,” said Vinnie. Vinnie, in a white shirt, ecru slacks, and a green brocade vest buttoned up his narrow chest, sat perched on the window seat, knees clasped, gazing outward at the evening rush hour traffic below.
“I’m sixty-five years old, so nothing – not least The Inevitable Worst News – would astonish me,” said Ingraham.
“My husband, the Diaghilev,” said Yvonne.
“Some persons have noticed a resemblance,” said Ingraham,
“It is a physical similarity that has been remarked on,” said Vinnie.
“Thank you, Vinnie for taking us back to the physical realm,” said Yvonne, “where, what do we find, but Prince Rainier’s stool?”
“Please, Yvekins,” said Vinnie, “that is a physiological phenomenon, not a physical one. The resemblances that have been noted between Ingraham and the Russian maestro are in their appearance, not their digestions.”
“Physiology is included in the physical.”
“The resemblance is physiognomic, not physiological,” Vinnie corrected.
“Not just physiognomic,” said Yvonne. “The entire corporeal organisms are involved.”
“Now that the existence of the soul has been discredited, the psyche has been relegated to the status of an organ, like the spleen, and the persona has become nothing more than an extension of one’s hair-do,” declaimed Ingraham.
“Don’t try to horn in on our little phy-suffix gavotte, with the psy-suffix, mon brave,” said Vinnie, who then turned to Yvonne. “To keep to the nitty-gritty: in terms of the science anciently known as ‘opticks,’ where on the spectrum falls this distressing shade?”
“Between yellow and orange, closer to yellow.”
“That rings a bell,” said Vinnie.
“Only in an extremely old-fashioned laboratory,” said Ingraham.
“It looks a bit like Prince André’s stool, but more yellow,” said Yvonne.
“Poor Prince André,” said Vinnie. “There, now neither of you have to say it. I do pull my weight around here, I don’t care what some persons say.”
“Prince Rainier is the subject of this conversation,” said Yvonne.
“Oh, Yvekins,” said Vinnie, “you are worried. It’s probably nothing. Isn’t that what Doctor Olehorst said about Prince André’s poop? Poor Prince André’s poop.”
“Nothing is not always a good thing.”
“You’re thinking about nothingness, sweetie,” said Ingraham. “Medically speaking, nothing is always a good thing.”
“One blessing is that he did not have to go through all those unpleasant tests.”
“Poor Prince André. And poor Carol,” said Vinnie.
“One never expresses compassion for the villain, Vinnie,” said Yvonne. “It confuses things. Besides, UPS must have its own grief counselors.”
“It’s a remorse counselor Carol would need,” said Ingraham. “If only the Princes could speak.”
“They can.”
“They can vocalize, darling, not verbalize. Since they cannot speak, we can only speculate on whether or not Carol’s becoming an endless supplier of dog treats for the survivors has earned their forgiveness.”
“If they could speak, they could say, ‘Poor Prince André,’” said Vinnie.
“But why does this keep happening, this discoloration? I wonder if it’s something in the insulation?”
“Yvonne, this is too much! The dogs must not be allowed to gnaw through the walls,” joshed Ingraham.
“Some chemical in the insulation that’s getting into the air,” said Yvonne.
“That turns shit different colors?”
“Canine shit only, surely,” said Vinnie. “None of us has reported feces of alarming hues.”
“Well, we wouldn’t, would we?” said Ingraham.
“But we know about the green,” said Yvonne. “Prince Leka had worms.”
“And the cats are all right, darling?”
“It’s just Prince Rainier.”
“Who has a rare susceptibility to what is being exuded by the insulation?”
“I was just thinking out loud.”
Ingraham’s chair emitted a pert little chirp as he leaned back and raised his eyes to the large plaster rosette at the center of the ceiling. “’Thinking out loud.’ What a wonderful description of the act of speaking. Much better than ‘verbalizing.’”
“Not all verbalization is thinking out loud,” said Vinnie. “I’m speaking as someone who does not necessarily say what he thinks.”
“But we always know what you mean, Vinnie.”
“Cruel Yvekins! And you only tell me now? My whole life has been a sham.”
“A sham life can be quite a comfortable and respectable mode of existence,” said Ingraham. “I wonder if we can apply the same adjective to my darling’s current anxieties.”
“Are you implying that I’m dissembling somehow?” said Yvonne. “My God! Am I suffering from Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy? And with a pack of dogs, no less?”
“That would be Life as a Lie,” said Ingraham. “Life as a Sham would have Prince Rainier somehow tinting his feces in order to deceive you.
“There could be other possibilities, as well,” said Vinnie.
“We can soon find out,” said Yvonne. “I’ve kept the stool. It’s in the refrigerator.”
“Oh dear, and I helped myself to a surreptitious snack of something or other this afternoon. We’d better call nine-one-one,” said Vinnie.
“It’s clearly labeled ‘Prince Rainier’s Stool.’ I’ll go fetch it. Just confirm that the color is worrisome and it will leave the house, will exit irrevocably from your lives, sham or otherwise, and be left in the capable hands-”
“Rubber gloves, surely,” said Ingraham.
“-capable rubber gloves-”
“Gloves have no skills of their own.”
“-the capable rubber-gloved hands of Dr. Oldhorse.”
“Oh, is that what that was?” said Vinnie, after Yvonne returned. “I thought it was a gourmet chili pepper you picked up at the farmer’s market. I can attest that it is an alarming yellow.”
“We really don’t like looking at dog turds if we don’t have to, my love. It’s what we pay Bill Olehorst for.”
“I’ll take it straight there. I should be about forty-five minutes.”
The genteel flourish with which Yvonne left the room warranted a few beats of silence.
“An optimistic estimate,” said Vinnie, motioning toward the window and the murmur of the stalled traffic.
“Does Yvonne believe that Olehorst’s name is really Oldhorse?” asked Ingraham. “It’s not an idle question.”
“Isn’t the only idle question the one that goes unasked?”
“There are three kinds of idle questions. (Since we’re verbalizing, or thinking out loud, as Yvonne so picturesquely put it, we’re dealing not with a word, but with a phoneme, ‘eye-dull.’) ‘Isn’t the sky blue?’ is an i-d-l-e question. ‘What do you think is the significance of the fact that the ears on the Met’s Ankaran Baal are out of proportion to its other features?’ is an i-d-o-l question. ‘Have you noticed how large Baal’s ears are?’ is both an i-d-o-l and an i-d-l-e question.”
“The definition of idleness is subjective. Everyone’s definition of idolatry is pretty much the same, although it is ascribed to different artifacts, depending on individual preferences, but your definition of idleness and his,” referring to a driver outside, stuck in traffic, who had been honking his horn in a funereal rhythm, “would not be the same.”
“Not at all. We are all experts on idleness these days, and are all aware of its myriad manifestations. We have as many different words for idleness as the Eskimo has for snow. Gossip, obsession and compulsion, metaphysical speculation, fanaticism, bathing are just a few. Of course, naturally there are disagreements, as is usual in a group of experts.”
“Baruch, old maat, you’ve been grinding too many lenses.”
“Nothing exists from whose nature some effect does not follow.”
“For example, Yvonne’s charming little Oldhorse-Olehorst tic.”
Vinnie chuckled. “Either, One: Yvekins knows perfectly well what the veterinarian’s name is and is teasing or indulging or patronizing us.”
“Please, Vincento, let’s not get into motivation. We don’t have the time.”
“Either, One: Yvonne believes that Olehorst’s name is Oldhorse- ”
“In which case, neither Bill Olehorst or any of his minions have bothered to correct her.”
“The names sound so similar, they might not have noticed.”
“It’s interesting that she makes out the checks to the Compton Veterinary Clinic,” mused Ingraham.
“Since the Compton Veterinary Clinic is the name under which Olehorst does business, what would be interesting is if Yvonne wrote the checks out to Dr. Olehorst or Dr. Oldhorse.”
“Thank God we live in an age of reason,” muttered Ingraham.
“Either, One: Yvonne knows his real name and feigns she does not-”
“For whatever reason.”
“Or, Two: she believes his name is Oldhorse.”
“For whatever reason,” Ingraham repeated.
Vinnie raised his eyes to a painting across the room, an 18th century oil by an unknown hand, presumably French, of a pineapple, around the base of which coiled the tail of a small monkey, whose wizened head peeped out from behind it, and which was surrounded by a circle of beets.
Ingraham swiveled around and followed his friend’s gaze. “There is a third possibility.”
“Either she knows or she doesn’t.”
“She may believe that Olehorst’s name is something else, something other than Olehorst or Oldhorse, maybe an amalgam of the two, but a third name of which you and I remain unaware,” explained Ingraham.
“And the effect of that would be -?”
“A subtle, unanticipated alteration within a certain range of our interactions with Yvonne.”
“Verbal interactions?”
“And sportif.”
“Backgammon, Scrabble, and those hideous cliffs in the Catskills?”
“I’m thinking more about, oh, mello-yellow and emerald-oz stools, for example,” said Ingraham.
“Sportif as far as you and I are concerned, but not sportif for Yvonne.”
“She may be more aware than we give her credit for.”
“What-you-mean-‘we?’ I, for one, would give more credit to the lack of awareness – otherwise known as innocence – that would keep her ignorant.”
“But she does enjoy it,” affirmed Ingraham. “It provides a healthy emotional exercise.”
Vinnie lowered his chin and peered at Ingraham as if over a pair of spectacles. “Sportif, after all? Might she have an inkling?”
“If so, it would be a most blurry, Impressionist inkling.”
“Neither Oldhorse nor Olehorst.”
“Women are so interesting,” said Ingraham.
“Ssh,” said Vinnie, “the walls have ears.”
“Sorry. I meant to say that people are so interesting in so many different ways, sometimes depending on gender.”
“That should fly, I think.”
“It’s pleasant, imagining Bill Olehorst and Yvonne huddled intently over Prince Rainier’s yellow stool.”
“Still in its Mason jar, I trust.”
“Olehorst may decide to examine it more closely.”
“Please.”
“Don’t fear. He’ll keep it in the jar. He’ll send it out for testing.”
“Yes,” said Ingraham, at the same time opening a drawer in his desk. “Somewhere a laboratory assistant in a fresh white smock-” He removed a large box of crayons.
“Gender?”
Ingraham placed the crayons on the desk and threw up his hands in delight. “Who cares?”
“Not I.”
“-in a fresh white smock gazes-”
“In awe?”
“No, no, no, only in mild puzzlement, or curiosity, at best. -at the same stool which days, or even hours earlier, had been oohed and aahed over by our turtle doves.”
Vinnie nodded, reverently letting fall the lids of his eyes.
After a rapt silence, Ingraham said, “A prince?”
“With pleasure,” said Vinnie, and he slipped off the window seat and left the room.
Ingraham peered for a moment into the crayon box, then removed a blue crayon. Reclining comfortably, with some attendant squeaking from his chair, he carefully tore away most of the paper sleeve. He tapped the length of the crayon on the desktop, in the melancholy twilight, in time with the throbbing of the engines of the cars creeping by outside.
Vinnie returned with a sleek, nut-brown dachshund.
“Whom have we here?”
Vinnie set the dog down on Ingraham’s desk, where it obediently remained, panting slightly. “Prince Metternich.”
“Of course. It’s an honor, your highness,” Ingraham said. Addressing Vinnie, he held up the crayon, “Cerulean?”
“That will give them something to think about,” said Vinnie, as he clasped his hand firmly around the dachshund.
Prince Metternich gave a brief yelp as the crayon entered his anus, then remained rigid as a statue, only panting somewhat more heavily than before, a sound which offset the plaintive murmur of the commuting vehicles as, before, Ingraham’s tapping of the crayon had done, but in an entirely different way.
“I don’t like the looks of Prince Rainier’s stool,” said Yvonne. She stood in the doorway, smartly dressed in navy blue, an Hermès scarf drawn loosely about her neck.
“I hate aesthetic discussions,” said Ingraham. A fat, sallow man of medium height, he faced his wife from a red leather seat that swiveled behind a large fruitwood desk. “One feels so empty, afterward.”
“Not aesthetic. Physiological.”
“‘Good news, bad news.’ The wrong way round, my dear. It should be ‘bad news, good news.’”
“Be careful, my friend. Someday you might hear only the quid and miss the quo,” said Vinnie. Vinnie, in a white shirt, ecru slacks, and a green brocade vest buttoned up his narrow chest, sat perched on the window seat, knees clasped, gazing outward at the evening rush hour traffic below.
“I’m sixty-five years old, so nothing – not least The Inevitable Worst News – would astonish me,” said Ingraham.
“My husband, the Diaghilev,” said Yvonne.
“Some persons have noticed a resemblance,” said Ingraham,
“It is a physical similarity that has been remarked on,” said Vinnie.
“Thank you, Vinnie for taking us back to the physical realm,” said Yvonne, “where, what do we find, but Prince Rainier’s stool?”
“Please, Yvekins,” said Vinnie, “that is a physiological phenomenon, not a physical one. The resemblances that have been noted between Ingraham and the Russian maestro are in their appearance, not their digestions.”
“Physiology is included in the physical.”
“The resemblance is physiognomic, not physiological,” Vinnie corrected.
“Not just physiognomic,” said Yvonne. “The entire corporeal organisms are involved.”
“Now that the existence of the soul has been discredited, the psyche has been relegated to the status of an organ, like the spleen, and the persona has become nothing more than an extension of one’s hair-do,” declaimed Ingraham.
“Don’t try to horn in on our little phy-suffix gavotte, with the psy-suffix, mon brave,” said Vinnie, who then turned to Yvonne. “To keep to the nitty-gritty: in terms of the science anciently known as ‘opticks,’ where on the spectrum falls this distressing shade?”
“Between yellow and orange, closer to yellow.”
“That rings a bell,” said Vinnie.
“Only in an extremely old-fashioned laboratory,” said Ingraham.
“It looks a bit like Prince André’s stool, but more yellow,” said Yvonne.
“Poor Prince André,” said Vinnie. “There, now neither of you have to say it. I do pull my weight around here, I don’t care what some persons say.”
“Prince Rainier is the subject of this conversation,” said Yvonne.
“Oh, Yvekins,” said Vinnie, “you are worried. It’s probably nothing. Isn’t that what Doctor Olehorst said about Prince André’s poop? Poor Prince André’s poop.”
“Nothing is not always a good thing.”
“You’re thinking about nothingness, sweetie,” said Ingraham. “Medically speaking, nothing is always a good thing.”
“One blessing is that he did not have to go through all those unpleasant tests.”
“Poor Prince André. And poor Carol,” said Vinnie.
“One never expresses compassion for the villain, Vinnie,” said Yvonne. “It confuses things. Besides, UPS must have its own grief counselors.”
“It’s a remorse counselor Carol would need,” said Ingraham. “If only the Princes could speak.”
“They can.”
“They can vocalize, darling, not verbalize. Since they cannot speak, we can only speculate on whether or not Carol’s becoming an endless supplier of dog treats for the survivors has earned their forgiveness.”
“If they could speak, they could say, ‘Poor Prince André,’” said Vinnie.
“But why does this keep happening, this discoloration? I wonder if it’s something in the insulation?”
“Yvonne, this is too much! The dogs must not be allowed to gnaw through the walls,” joshed Ingraham.
“Some chemical in the insulation that’s getting into the air,” said Yvonne.
“That turns shit different colors?”
“Canine shit only, surely,” said Vinnie. “None of us has reported feces of alarming hues.”
“Well, we wouldn’t, would we?” said Ingraham.
“But we know about the green,” said Yvonne. “Prince Leka had worms.”
“And the cats are all right, darling?”
“It’s just Prince Rainier.”
“Who has a rare susceptibility to what is being exuded by the insulation?”
“I was just thinking out loud.”
Ingraham’s chair emitted a pert little chirp as he leaned back and raised his eyes to the large plaster rosette at the center of the ceiling. “’Thinking out loud.’ What a wonderful description of the act of speaking. Much better than ‘verbalizing.’”
“Not all verbalization is thinking out loud,” said Vinnie. “I’m speaking as someone who does not necessarily say what he thinks.”
“But we always know what you mean, Vinnie.”
“Cruel Yvekins! And you only tell me now? My whole life has been a sham.”
“A sham life can be quite a comfortable and respectable mode of existence,” said Ingraham. “I wonder if we can apply the same adjective to my darling’s current anxieties.”
“Are you implying that I’m dissembling somehow?” said Yvonne. “My God! Am I suffering from Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy? And with a pack of dogs, no less?”
“That would be Life as a Lie,” said Ingraham. “Life as a Sham would have Prince Rainier somehow tinting his feces in order to deceive you.
“There could be other possibilities, as well,” said Vinnie.
“We can soon find out,” said Yvonne. “I’ve kept the stool. It’s in the refrigerator.”
“Oh dear, and I helped myself to a surreptitious snack of something or other this afternoon. We’d better call nine-one-one,” said Vinnie.
“It’s clearly labeled ‘Prince Rainier’s Stool.’ I’ll go fetch it. Just confirm that the color is worrisome and it will leave the house, will exit irrevocably from your lives, sham or otherwise, and be left in the capable hands-”
“Rubber gloves, surely,” said Ingraham.
“-capable rubber gloves-”
“Gloves have no skills of their own.”
“-the capable rubber-gloved hands of Dr. Oldhorse.”
“Oh, is that what that was?” said Vinnie, after Yvonne returned. “I thought it was a gourmet chili pepper you picked up at the farmer’s market. I can attest that it is an alarming yellow.”
“We really don’t like looking at dog turds if we don’t have to, my love. It’s what we pay Bill Olehorst for.”
“I’ll take it straight there. I should be about forty-five minutes.”
The genteel flourish with which Yvonne left the room warranted a few beats of silence.
“An optimistic estimate,” said Vinnie, motioning toward the window and the murmur of the stalled traffic.
“Does Yvonne believe that Olehorst’s name is really Oldhorse?” asked Ingraham. “It’s not an idle question.”
“Isn’t the only idle question the one that goes unasked?”
“There are three kinds of idle questions. (Since we’re verbalizing, or thinking out loud, as Yvonne so picturesquely put it, we’re dealing not with a word, but with a phoneme, ‘eye-dull.’) ‘Isn’t the sky blue?’ is an i-d-l-e question. ‘What do you think is the significance of the fact that the ears on the Met’s Ankaran Baal are out of proportion to its other features?’ is an i-d-o-l question. ‘Have you noticed how large Baal’s ears are?’ is both an i-d-o-l and an i-d-l-e question.”
“The definition of idleness is subjective. Everyone’s definition of idolatry is pretty much the same, although it is ascribed to different artifacts, depending on individual preferences, but your definition of idleness and his,” referring to a driver outside, stuck in traffic, who had been honking his horn in a funereal rhythm, “would not be the same.”
“Not at all. We are all experts on idleness these days, and are all aware of its myriad manifestations. We have as many different words for idleness as the Eskimo has for snow. Gossip, obsession and compulsion, metaphysical speculation, fanaticism, bathing are just a few. Of course, naturally there are disagreements, as is usual in a group of experts.”
“Baruch, old maat, you’ve been grinding too many lenses.”
“Nothing exists from whose nature some effect does not follow.”
“For example, Yvonne’s charming little Oldhorse-Olehorst tic.”
Vinnie chuckled. “Either, One: Yvekins knows perfectly well what the veterinarian’s name is and is teasing or indulging or patronizing us.”
“Please, Vincento, let’s not get into motivation. We don’t have the time.”
“Either, One: Yvonne believes that Olehorst’s name is Oldhorse- ”
“In which case, neither Bill Olehorst or any of his minions have bothered to correct her.”
“The names sound so similar, they might not have noticed.”
“It’s interesting that she makes out the checks to the Compton Veterinary Clinic,” mused Ingraham.
“Since the Compton Veterinary Clinic is the name under which Olehorst does business, what would be interesting is if Yvonne wrote the checks out to Dr. Olehorst or Dr. Oldhorse.”
“Thank God we live in an age of reason,” muttered Ingraham.
“Either, One: Yvonne knows his real name and feigns she does not-”
“For whatever reason.”
“Or, Two: she believes his name is Oldhorse.”
“For whatever reason,” Ingraham repeated.
Vinnie raised his eyes to a painting across the room, an 18th century oil by an unknown hand, presumably French, of a pineapple, around the base of which coiled the tail of a small monkey, whose wizened head peeped out from behind it, and which was surrounded by a circle of beets.
Ingraham swiveled around and followed his friend’s gaze. “There is a third possibility.”
“Either she knows or she doesn’t.”
“She may believe that Olehorst’s name is something else, something other than Olehorst or Oldhorse, maybe an amalgam of the two, but a third name of which you and I remain unaware,” explained Ingraham.
“And the effect of that would be -?”
“A subtle, unanticipated alteration within a certain range of our interactions with Yvonne.”
“Verbal interactions?”
“And sportif.”
“Backgammon, Scrabble, and those hideous cliffs in the Catskills?”
“I’m thinking more about, oh, mello-yellow and emerald-oz stools, for example,” said Ingraham.
“Sportif as far as you and I are concerned, but not sportif for Yvonne.”
“She may be more aware than we give her credit for.”
“What-you-mean-‘we?’ I, for one, would give more credit to the lack of awareness – otherwise known as innocence – that would keep her ignorant.”
“But she does enjoy it,” affirmed Ingraham. “It provides a healthy emotional exercise.”
Vinnie lowered his chin and peered at Ingraham as if over a pair of spectacles. “Sportif, after all? Might she have an inkling?”
“If so, it would be a most blurry, Impressionist inkling.”
“Neither Oldhorse nor Olehorst.”
“Women are so interesting,” said Ingraham.
“Ssh,” said Vinnie, “the walls have ears.”
“Sorry. I meant to say that people are so interesting in so many different ways, sometimes depending on gender.”
“That should fly, I think.”
“It’s pleasant, imagining Bill Olehorst and Yvonne huddled intently over Prince Rainier’s yellow stool.”
“Still in its Mason jar, I trust.”
“Olehorst may decide to examine it more closely.”
“Please.”
“Don’t fear. He’ll keep it in the jar. He’ll send it out for testing.”
“Yes,” said Ingraham, at the same time opening a drawer in his desk. “Somewhere a laboratory assistant in a fresh white smock-” He removed a large box of crayons.
“Gender?”
Ingraham placed the crayons on the desk and threw up his hands in delight. “Who cares?”
“Not I.”
“-in a fresh white smock gazes-”
“In awe?”
“No, no, no, only in mild puzzlement, or curiosity, at best. -at the same stool which days, or even hours earlier, had been oohed and aahed over by our turtle doves.”
Vinnie nodded, reverently letting fall the lids of his eyes.
After a rapt silence, Ingraham said, “A prince?”
“With pleasure,” said Vinnie, and he slipped off the window seat and left the room.
Ingraham peered for a moment into the crayon box, then removed a blue crayon. Reclining comfortably, with some attendant squeaking from his chair, he carefully tore away most of the paper sleeve. He tapped the length of the crayon on the desktop, in the melancholy twilight, in time with the throbbing of the engines of the cars creeping by outside.
Vinnie returned with a sleek, nut-brown dachshund.
“Whom have we here?”
Vinnie set the dog down on Ingraham’s desk, where it obediently remained, panting slightly. “Prince Metternich.”
“Of course. It’s an honor, your highness,” Ingraham said. Addressing Vinnie, he held up the crayon, “Cerulean?”
“That will give them something to think about,” said Vinnie, as he clasped his hand firmly around the dachshund.
Prince Metternich gave a brief yelp as the crayon entered his anus, then remained rigid as a statue, only panting somewhat more heavily than before, a sound which offset the plaintive murmur of the commuting vehicles as, before, Ingraham’s tapping of the crayon had done, but in an entirely different way.