I gazed at her mirrored image, unable to see her shadowed back between us. A great pity welled up in me. ‘You are too willful …’
‘You can goddamn well say that again!’ growled Vic, looking up. ‘Now the rest of the night I want you downstairs where I can—’
‘Oh, pee!’ she pouted, clenching her little fists to her sides. ‘Both of you can kiss my elbow!’
Vic lunged at her: ‘Why, you little—!’ But she was out the door. He stood there glaring furiously for a moment, his broad sweat-darkened shoulders hunched; then the strength seemed to go out of him and he sank down again on the dressing-table stool. I sat on the edge of the bed to pull the clean socks on, tie my shoes, and relieve the tingling between my cheeks. I was thinking still about death and parody and mirrors and the essential formlessness of love (my mother-in-law appeared in the doorway, glared at us, and snapped the door shut), and about how I might explain it all to Alison. And then: how she’d gaze up at me … ‘You keep a bottle up here somewhere? Under the mattress or something?’
‘You might find some hair tonic in one of those drawers …’ And so what about marriage then, Gerald? Just another parody? I seemed to hear Alison ask me that.
Vic grunted. His face was in shadows, but his shaggy white hair was rimmed with light right down into his sideburns. He spied the two glasses on the dressing table, sniffed them, chose one, dumped the cubes from his own glass into it. I transferred the things from the pockets of the old pants to the new, shocked again at the obscenity of the bloodstains (and how had I come to pocket a can-opener, this medicine dropper, these shriveled oysters and bumpy little marbles?), then threaded my belt through the linen loops. ‘Jesus, what am I going to do, Gerry?’
‘I don’t know, do you ever talk to her?’
‘Talk to her! What the fuck about? My father was a happy-go-lucky tough-ass illiterate coal miner, hers is a sour bourgeois overeducated drunk – what could we possibly have in common? Hell, she understands my old man better than I can understand either of them!’
‘That figures.’
‘Come on, don’t get supercilious with me, pal—!’
‘I only meant—’
‘You meant what we all know: love blinds. I ruined myself as a thinker the day I knocked up my wife. I haven’t been worth stale piss ever since.’ I couldn’t argue with him. He hadn’t written a thing since Sally Ann was about six years old, and had slacked off long before that. But I didn’t believe it was that simple. It’s one thing to reduce the world to a mindless mechanism, another to live in it. Flow had surprised him, offended him, dragged his feet out from under him. Even now, as he reared up and paced the room restlessly, he seemed to slip and weave. ‘Let me tell you something about my old man. Just because he could belt the shit out of you, he thought he was tough. And smart. The sonuvabitch was full of cocky aphorisms, proverbs – he had the secret. And you know what it was? Power. This cringing yoyo, who spent his whole life slaving away down in the nation’s asshole when he wasn’t in the breadlines, believed in power like kids believe in fairy godmothers. He still does. Still talks tough and acts smart and lies there in his goddamned hospital bed in the old folks’ home waiting to be blessed with it. With Sally Ann, on the other hand, it’s experience. Spoiled, naive, unable to grasp anything more complicated than a goddamned confession magazine, a girl who wouldn’t recognize the real world if it rolled over her, and what she believes in – guides her whole life by – is experience!’
‘What are you trying to tell me, Vic?’
‘That I know what my fucking problem is, goddamn you – but what burns my ass is that I can’t seem to do anything about it!’
‘Well, you’re coming around in your old age …’
‘What, to paradox? Hell, no, I’ve always accepted that – I just don’t make a religion out of it like you do, that’s all.’
I took a sip at the drink Vic had turned down: something between a Manhattan and a gin rickey. Awful. Against the light: lipstick smears on the far rim. Full lips. Cherry red. ‘And what do you suppose Eileen believes in, Vic?’
He sighed, finished off his drink, chewed an ice cube. ‘I can’t imagine. Ecstasy maybe? Belly laughs?’
‘You’re awfully hard on her – why do you even go out with her?’
‘She’s got a comfortable hole I can use. And when I’m done I can go away and she doesn’t complain.’
‘Is that fair?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t think about it.’
I shook my head. ‘I don’t think I could enjoy it that way.’
‘Well, you’re more considerate than I am. You give parties, I don’t.’
‘Maybe the trouble, Vic, is that you’ve never been in love.’
His sour laughter boomed out. ‘No, you silly shit, you’re right – I’ve loved, god-damn I’ve loved, but in love is one fucking place I’ve never been! Except …’ He paused, sobering some, ran his broad hand through his hair. ‘Except once maybe …’ He leaned against a bedpost, his craggy face softening.
‘Anyone I know?’
He sighed, rubbed his jaw, lurched away from the bedpost. ‘Yeah.’
I drank in silence while he paced. He was clearly in pain. Not Eileen’s kind of pain, sullen and stoic: it was more disturbing than that. He seemed riven by it, his stride broken, his vision blocked, and I thought: Yes, I’ve known all along – Eileen on the couch, Vic standing over her, his back to the rest of us, his neck flushed, fists doubled … ‘Ros,’ I said.
He nodded. ‘It was right after my wife and I broke up.’ His voice was husky, and as though to cover, he cleared his throat and sucked up another cube to chew. ‘I needed somebody quick and easy,’ he said, the words crunched with ice. ‘No complications.’
‘Like Eileen.’
‘Like Eileen. Only it didn’t turn out that way.’ He sighed: more like a groan – then dropped onto the stool as though undermined. He sat there, his back bent, elbows on his knees, staring mournfully into his empty glass. ‘We ran into each other at a political rally. Roger was defending some prisoners who’d rioted down at the jail—’
‘I know. I read about it.’
He grunted. ‘For some reason, he’d dragged Ros along. Probably afraid to leave her on her own anywhere. The rally was held on the steps of the courthouse, and those of us who were organizing the thing were up on the porch, under the colonnade, facing the crowd. I was pressed up against Ros when we first arrived, and pretty soon we found ourselves holding hands and asses and finally all but jerking each other off – Jesus, I was horny! We must’ve excited everybody within thirty yards of us!’
‘Where was Roger?’
‘Up front with all the main characters. He was pretty nervous about her as usual, but though he kept craning his head around, he couldn’t really see anything – except for the flush on Ros’s face and the way she twitched around.’ He paused, licking idly at the melting ice, his thick brows knitted. ‘You sure you want to listen to this?’
‘Yes …’
‘It’s not just a cheap cocksman’s brag – I mean …’
‘I know.’
He leaned forward again, staring off through the far wall. ‘She was wearing a soft woolen skirt, lambswool maybe. I never notice women’s clothes, but I know every goddamn thing she had on that day. By feel anyway. I don’t remember for sure what color the skirt was – a greenish plaid, I think – but I’ll never forget what it felt like to grip her cunt through it.’ The fingers of his right hand closed around his knee. ‘A fat furry purse, a little soft bristly stuffed animal that you stroked between the ears – Christ, I’m getting a hard-on just thinking about it!’ He scratched his crotch, sucked up a cube, spat it back again. Tears glinted in the corners of his eyes. I screwed the lid on the petroleum jelly. ‘Anyway, it came my turn to speak, and I whispered to Ros before I left her how fucking unhappy I was, and how much I needed something human to happen to me. She was waiting for me when I’d finished – I don’t know what I said
out there, but it must have been good, taut and hard and nothing wasted, my whole body working on the message, as it were – and when I got back she pulled me gradually behind the others and finally on into the building, smiling toward Roger all the while. She knew the courthouse pretty well, I guess because of having to go there with Roger at lot. She hurried me up some stairs, down a corridor, through an empty courtroom and into a little cloakroom where the judges’ robes were hung. We could hear the speeches and chanting and applause from in there, so we were able to time it pretty close. Or I could anyway. I don’t think it mattered to her. Probably we weren’t up there more than ten or fifteen minutes, but thinking back on it I feel I spent the best half of my life in that cloakroom, and I left enough seed in Ros and all over those fucking robes to turn a desert green! Jesus! I knew it was crazy, adolescent, unreal, but I didn’t care. I came down out of the goddamn building about three feet off the ground! It’s too bad we weren’t storming the fucking barricades that day, I could’ve died a happy man!’ He smiled broadly, thinking about this, and for a moment, a glow of warmth and innocence lighting up his craggy face, he looked like a different man. Then the skepticism returned, the sour shrewdness, the weariness: he glanced up at me to see how I was taking it, shrugged at my sobriety (oh, I knew it, knew what she could do, knew what I’d lost, what we’d all lost), set his glass down. ‘It was so goddamn beautiful, Gerry …’
‘Yes …’
‘Fucked me up politically though. My head was useless, she blew a hole right through it. No will. Everything was body.’ He seemed, guiltily, to savor the thought. I was thinking about that old joke of Charley’s: making it stand up in court … ‘A weird kind of connection. For me anyhow. The illusion of … owning time …’
‘I know. We have the past, we have the future, but what we never seem to be able to get ahold of is the present.’
‘Yeah, well, the present is in the hands of a very few.’ I could see his jaws grinding under the heavy sideburns.
‘Have you seen a lot of her?’
He peered up at me under his shaggy gray brows, his eyes damp, then back down at his empty glass. ‘We met a few times afterward, but as you know, with Roger it’s not easy. And it was against my principles, in ruins as they were by then, to fuck another man’s wife, so finally I got enough self-control back to bring an end to it. The fucking anyway. I still wanted to be around her whenever I could, even if I had to exercise my imagination a little and get my rocks off in a substitute. I mean, no offense, but Ros was pretty much the reason I came here tonight. Just to be … well … and now …’ He bit his lip, reared up, and began stalking around the room again, rubbing his face with one thick hand, breathing heavily. ‘They’re using a goddamn fork on her down there, Gerry!’ he cried.
‘A fork—?’
‘Those fucking cops!’ He smashed his fist into the wall. I recalled now that view I’d had into the living room over the heads of Daffie and Jim and the others, Inspector Pardew on the floor on his knees, reaching back over his shoulder toward his two assistants like a surgeon asking for a scalpel. Vic whirled around suddenly and bulled out, fists clenched, slamming past some people just outside the door: Dolph and Talbot spun back against the wall, Charley Trainer fell on his arse, his scotch flying, a woman giggled nervously. ‘Beautiful!’ exclaimed Charley from the floor, his face dripping whiskey, and the woman, a rolypoly lady I didn’t know but judged from her rouged cheeks, colorful print dress, bloodied broadly at the belly, short socks and loafers (why did I think of her in a garden?) to be Mrs Earl Elstob, tittered again. There was a crash down on the landing and somebody cried out. ‘Jesus, what was that?’ Dolph asked thickly, bumping up against the back of the fat lady, who looked surprised and moved away.
‘Maybe he forgot about the stairs,’ Talbot said, and licked his palm. His bandaged ear made him look like he was growing a second head.
I gave Charley a hand getting to his feet, hauling him up out of the dirty dishes. He’d sat square in a plateful of Swedish meatballs, but he didn’t seem to care. ‘Physical contact – I love it!’ he declared, weaving, and flung his arm around me, the bottle of scotch at the end of it thumping heavily against my shoulder. ‘You’re a wunnerful guy, Big G!’ He belched sentimentally, his eyes crossed, and Dolph echoed him more prosaically.
‘I heard that one before,’ said Talbot stupidly. They looked like bloated parodies of horny teenagers, papier-mâché caricatures from some carnival parade, and for a moment they seemed to be wearing their mortality on their noses like blobs of red paint: yes, we’re growing old, I thought, and felt a flush of warmth for them.
I started to pull away, but Charley hugged me tight, the neck of the whiskey bottle pressing up cold and wet under my ear. ‘Hey, I love this fella!’ he exclaimed to the fat lady, and she commenced to giggle. ‘Honess t’god, Gladys, he’s my oldess ’n bess friend! He’s a – he’s a prince!’
‘Oh you!’ she tee-heed, her face flushed and blood-flecked.
‘No, s’true, Gladys! He’s a real goddamn prince! And I wanna tell ya something—!’
Oh oh. ‘Listen, Charley, no kidding, I—’
‘Charming,’ said Dolph drily, a bit slow in his beery distance. ‘Prince Charming.’
‘Pleased, I’m sure,’ giggled Gladys, holding out a reddish hand, and Talbot, taking it, said: ‘And this is our fairy godmother, Prince. Make a wish – any wish!’
‘I wish I had another beer,’ said Dolph quietly, his face flattening out, and Charley, laughing loosely and dragging me lower as his knees sagged, said: ‘No, wait a minute! Ha ha! This’ll kill ya! We were out inna country, see—’
‘Keep it clean,’ admonished Talbot, holding a small patch of silk to his nose. He sniffed and, winking, offered me the scrap: I turned away, clamped still in Charley’s grip. Distantly, I could hear Woody’s wife, Yvonne, complaining loudly and drunkenly.
‘I awways keep it clean, Tall-Butt, you know that!’ Charley was rumbling, drooling a bit at the corners of his mouth. ‘I soak it three times a day in hot borax, beat it on Saturdays, n’ hang it out to air on Sundays – how clean can ya get? No, cross my heart – ask Gladys here, she’s seen it!’
‘Oh my!’ she gasped as the others yukked it up. ‘I’ve … I’ve never been to a party like this before!’
‘Firss time fr’evrything, my love!’ Charley declared, the dark pouches of his left eye flexing in a drunken wink. ‘I’ll drink to that!’ said Talbot confusedly, and Charley, staring at us quizzically, mouth adroop and eyes rheumy, asked: ‘Whawere we talkin’ about? Hunh? God-damn it, men!’
‘The … the prince … ?’ whispered Gladys.
‘’Ass it! You got it! By God, Gladys, you got it!’ He slumped toward her, pulling me with him (once in a film when the heroine said her lover took her breath away, Charley’s wife Janny had sighed wearily and said she knew just how the lady felt, and I thought of her now, blanched with the terror of some knowledge, as though – could this be it? – as though hugged once too often …), resting his empty glass on her big round shoulder. Down below, Yvonne was hollering something about the sky falling in. ‘You got it,’ he growled, ‘an’ I want it!’
She squealed again, clapping a pudgy hand to her mouth, and the big soft mounds of her bosom bobbled with giggling, watched glassily by Dolph and Talbot. Charley winked at me, hugging me close, but behind all the clowning I saw a soggy sadness well up in his blue eyes, a plea: help me! it’s terrible, old buddy, but this is all I can do … !
‘I think your wife’s about to bust a vessel down there,’ Dolph put in, crumpling his beer can and dropping it in the hallway clothes hamper. ‘She asked me to tell you—’
‘Yes, I know.’
‘You got a goddamn mess downstairs, you wanna know the truth,’ Charley declared, frowning drunkenly down his nose at me. ‘We come up here t’get away from it all, Earl’s sister here’n Doll-Face’n ole Tall-Butt’n me – all us birds of a feather, we gotta, you know, go flock together
!’ Talbot grinned sheepishly, glancing toward the head of the stairs, Dolph’s ears turned red (he pulled a spare can of beer out of his back pocket as though in self-defense), Gladys looked blank. ‘ ’N hey! we’d be honored t’have yer company, you ole scutlicker, if you careta join us—?’
‘Thanks, but I have to go see what my wife—’
‘Woops, I feel rain, boys!’ Charley hollered, ducking, as Dolph popped the beer open, and I was able to squeeze out from under his arm at last. ‘We better get under cover! There was a slap, a nervous titter, something about age and beauty, while ahead of me, Yvonne: ‘Just break the goddamn thing off, Jim, and throw it away – what the hell do I need it for anyway?’
‘C’mon back, Ger, when you get a chance! Awways room for one more!’
The mess in the hall seemed to be worsening – not just the dirty plates and glasses (picking my way through it, I was reminded of a similiar occasion, stepping gingerly by moonlight through the wreckage of an ancient ruin somewhere in Europe, I was there with some woman, she was Czech, I think, though she said she was French), but pits and crusts, ashes, butts, napkins, toothpicks: I stuffed ten glasses full of debris and picked them up with my fingers in their mouths (I’d been experimenting around a lot and felt the need for tradition, something stable – but the ruin was a terrifying cul-de-sac, capriciously dangerous in the moonlight, and the woman’s sudden wheezing appetite for oral sex scared the blazes out of me; afterward, so I was told, she threw herself down a well), paused a moment to listen at my son’s door. My mother-in-law was reading to him: ‘… endeavoring to appear cheerful, sat down to table, and helped him. Afterward, thought she to herself, Beast surely has a mind to fatten me before he eats me, since he provides such plentiful entertainment …’ The way she read it, it sounded like a Scripture lesson – no wonder Mark had been telling us lately he didn’t like fairy tales. As I listened to her recount the trials of beauty in a world of malice and illusion, I was reminded of my own grandmother’s bedtime stories, variations mostly on a single melancholy theme: that people are generally better off not getting what they think they want most in this world. For her, the Beast’s miserable enchantment would have been paradise compared to the Prince’s eventual regret.