"For me." Marie shut the refrigerator door and sat down, putting a quart of milk on the table.

"For what?" Phyllis lightened her coffee with the milk.

Marie shrugged. "I still got those cramps."

"I thought they went away." Phyllis picked at the cake.

"They did. They came back. And I started bleedin' a little too." Marie extracted a cigarette from her red plastic case. "Schindler said it's from aggravation."

"Aggravation?" Phyllis repeated incredulously. "He's a goddamn horse doctor. How come you don't use Schwartz?"

Marie shrugged.

"What Schwartz forgot is more than Schindler'll ever know."

"I dunno. He gave me some tranquilizers."

"He's a quack," Phyllis said contemptuously.

"At least he's better'n Marcus. Remember Marcus?"

"Marcus, even if Marcus was a horse doctor, he'd still be a quack."

"Remember when I was in Parkchester with Albert?"

"Oh, with the tubes?"

"The tubes?"

"Yeah. The thing with the tubes, you remember."

"Oh that. I almost forgot that. God, that was something, but I wasn't thinkin' about the thing with the tubes, I was thinkin' about the thing with the blood," Marie said.

"What thing with the blood?"

"You know, with the needle?"

"I don't remember."

"Maybe I never told you ... when Marcus took blood?"

"No."

"Remember, I was in Parkchester two days before I had Albert? The night before I had him Marcus had to take blood from me. One of the big needles that they take from here." She tapped the inside of her elbow. Phyllis made a face. "You know I'm not squeamish or anything. When Stony opened his head on the wall that time I was the only one that could stand there with the ice cubes," Marie said.

"I remember Tommy fainted." Phyllis raised her eyebrows.

"Yeah, big tough guy. Anyways, so you know, I'm not afraid of a little blood. But what Marcus did ... I was sittin' in a wheelchair. They had me in a white smock, and you know how Marcus always had the shakes?"

"Yeah, well, he was shootin' up all the time," Phyllis said offhandedly. "That was the only thing that kept him going. I saw him do it once in the bathroom. He came over one time when Chubby had the flu. He walks in the house and goes straight to the bathroom and shoots up. It was probably speed," Phyllis added knowledgeably, "that's the only way that old bastard could keep goin'. He wouldn't take on a younger doctor to help him. I saw him shoot up and I said forget it, that's it. I don't need a junkie doctor for me an' my own. You remember I called you that day? You didn't believe me."

"If I called you then, would you believe me?" Marie shrugged. "Whatever ... anyways ... I'm sittin' on a chair in my room. It's night; Tommy just left, and I was reading a Life magazine." She flicked the ash of her cigarette. "This nurse comes in with a wheelchair and wheels me down to this lab or something and there's Marcus waiting for me with this big needle to take blood and I see he's into his "Shimmy Like Kate" number. The nurse gets me up on this table, ties one of those rubber things around my arm and Marcus goes in with the needle. I was scared because he was shakin' like he just got religion. But it don't hurt much, it's over real quick and he starts injecting the blood into this test tube. The nurse starts takin' the rubber tube off my arm and she must've bumped a tray or something off the table but all of a sudden there's this crash. Marcus ... Marcus jumps twenty feet in the air and spills all the blood in the test tube all over me, all over my white smock, and I look down and I'm drenched with my own blood."