“Volkisch Currents in Early Live Electronics,” said Tommy. “National Socialism and the Darmstädter Ferienkurse,” said Scott. “Sonic Armaments of the Waffenamt?!” Tommy shrieked.
After getting in line at 9 AM and standing under a disgusting fine drizzle for almost three hours, Monique, too, got her shot. Just before nightfall she began to get chills and her temperature went up. After taking one paracetamol tablet and twenty drops of diazepam, she fell asleep. And had a dream:
And in the moment of me and my father, I see myself, I see my face in a tiny square in the corner of my phone and I’m flushed, I’m this red angry thumbprint listening and trying to think things through and waiting for it to all be over, and he’s in his bed holding the tablet or whatever they gave him at this terrible angle where I just get the underside of his chin and his hair splayed out on either side, it’s like the underside of his chin is a tiny featureless face jutting up out of the hospital gown, some weird eyeless monster, and all I’m hearing is wheeze wheeze crackle crackle.
We hadn’t spent time together in a while. I was already away at college and no longer had much contact with him, and suddenly I realized that I didn’t know him very well or was that just a feeling I had now, fifty years later, as his image gradually fades from my mind and I could no longer tell you if he was right- or left-handed.
He felt like somehow Livy had taken him in hand. They ran into others, an American who was spending the year at Wolfson in a small group of Oxford people, and Livy knew everybody and didn’t mind repeating herself. She said, “Why is everyone obsessed with Dennis Galway?” And also, “I’m obsessed with Dennis Galway.”