J. Donleavy - Wrong Information is Being Given Out at Princeton

“Jesus Christ, Dru, did you hear that rattle. I just thought the goddamn rattler moved.”

“An electric button in the bed we must have just touched. Just a little joke my friend has to scare the shit out of boyfriends who she feels need the stimulus.”

“Thanks a bunch for telling me after my heart failure.”

“Nothing honeybunch is failing. Nothing. Aim. Fire.”

“Dru. Holy cow. Dru.”

“Squeeze your cock tight in my cunt. So you can’t get away. My honeybun sailor boy in his turret. Boom, boom.”

An echoing hoot of a boat out passing on the river. And the lives that make not a sound in this city anymore. The world assaults you with tragedy and anguish when least you have anger to fight back. “Excuse me, sir. Do you know when the next bus is to Suffern.” Still see her stopping, turning to look her last look. One so handsomely healthy beautiful, desiring death. “Excuse me, sir. Do you know when the next bus is to Suffern.” Thought she said I’m suffering until I found Suffern on the map. Across the Hudson River. Through it the Erie Railroad runs. North to Sloatsburg and Tuxedo Park. The adagio from Dvořák’s Symphony No. 9 in E Minor sounds slow, like all freight trains that go by lumbering click clack on the rails of the tracks, whistles blowing in D Major.

“Oh honeybunch, Stephen, fuck me, fuck me into the beyonds of the eons.”

“Doing my best, ma’am.”

“And you are dearest, even doing better than that. As I take, if I do say myself, a singularly selfish interest in screwing.”

The rattler rattles again. Sending a shiver of the sharp fear of death up the old roosel. The black mambas coming alive in the other room. Said to be a snake that with its head held as high as a man’s face, attacks without provocation. Maybe just what this lady who lives here entertains in her imagination and enjoys for a frisson. But that other death. That destroyed face. Her eyes still open, staring as she lay on the bus station floor. Left there nameless and lost in the passing swarm. To whom does one go to get the right information from Princeton. Or to find her grave. To put a flower there. Will my music ever be heard before I die. Brahms with his second piano concerto, was hissed at by the Viennese people. Who so shabbily treated so many of the great composers who lived there struggling in their midst. Shake my fist at them. When Brahms died in Vienna, at least all the ships in the harbor of Hamburg where he was born, lowered their flags to half-mast. Oh my God, Dru. You’re surely the cat’s pajamas. I’m standing on your front porch, my hair washed and combed, my fraternity pin shined, to take you for a Saturday-night soda. I must play for you Brahms’s heroic orchestral sounds. The piano erupting forth to intercede in passages such as does a brook babbling through the silence of a forest. Then the piano notes thundering. Oh fuck me lover boy, Stephen. Kiss my tits. Kiss yours. Give me all that you’ve got. I’ll give you everything that I’ve got to give you. That Max suggested came from the profit of oil, tobacco, soapsuds, coffee, chocolate, soda pop, and renting out electricity. Do I dream her voice can be heard singing. Darling, your music is going to be heard. It’s wonderful. I love it. I’ll buy the goddamn orchestra for you. They’ll be glad to have a job. Get a whole warehouse and fill it up with instruments. And you can conduct. And the dirty bastards who have kept you down will shrink sneakily back into their feeble shells. No one is ever going to be able to ignore you again. Not in this town, they ain’t. And I know you’re wondering. Of what I said was unspeakable. It’s other’s carnal knowledge of corpses. Watch the living fuck the dead. A form of necromancy as you might say which puts one into erotic turmoil. And to hell with all the hubris, Zeitgeist and the ditsy eponymous. Sorry about those nutty words. They make as much sense as saying that it is good to be rich. And your own goddamn parents’ fault if you’re poor. But boy, if you think it over, can anything be more true than that. And that only women with money can afford not to be whores. But can be whores anyway if they want. Call me ma’am again. You gorgeous man. And let me call you angel.

Listening to her whispering voice. Calling me angel. Sweet bliss on this wistfully sad day of unfavorable omen. Like snakes that strike. Demons come from nowhere. And are by the symphonic strains of Boccherini driven away by a rhythm I do believe may be entirely too fast to fuck to. Invited to France to go top-hatted racing. Whereas I am too broke even to go to a hot dog stand for a mustard-encrusted and sauerkraut-smothered frankfurter. But without a bean I am at least crowned with the joy of this woman’s beauty and body, whose husband like ole Max is away shooting and fishing. And then she said as I listened.

“Dear boy angel, there will be one day in your life when you need not worry about the mundane anymore. Even if great wealth from commissions doesn’t devolve upon you or appointments materialize to conduct the great orchestras of the world. And, oh God, I am sated.”

In the candlelight, Stephen O’Kelly’O by the bed, bending to kiss Dru on the brow as she lies, arms outstretched, staring up into the ornate folds of the canopy. Strains of Boccherini’s Cello Concerto in G. Allegro, adagio, allegro. As one navigates around the rattler. And steps into the splendor of this bathroom. Toiletries abound. Bath salts. Emollients for the skin. Caswell-Massey sandalwood lotion. The oldest chemist’s and perfumers in America since 1752, it says on the bottle. But not a sign of any soothing balm for the brain or I’d help myself to some. Glass-enclosed shower. A sunken marble tub. A whole afternoon disappeared into evening and sudden disillusion. A plaything for someone who can afford to play. Dru said she had to rush.

“Oh darling. Would you take a rain check on dinner. I’ve got to get ready to go to Montana. I’ll telephone. Will you be there. Jonathan’s back in the morning. And Sylvia’s gone, as she usually is, God knows where.”

Dru suggesting we leave the house one at a time and send me first. Warning of newspaper columnists who hang about the Stork Club to witness café society idling away their nights and that their prying absence could never be assured. Even though she’d only once gone to the Stork Club. She links her arm in mine as we go down the stairs, kissing me on the forehead as we stand in the middle of the black-and-white-tiled vestibule.

“Lover boy angel, illicit liaisons require meticulous planning, total discretion, and unwavering nerve, cela est seloncirconstances. ”

“As for me, sûrement va qui n’a rien .”

And I wanted to fuck her again where we stood. But where, backing away to the door I nearly knocked over a bust of Archimedes, whom I at least finally recognized and could remember had once run through the street naked screaming “Eureka” upon his discovery of something to do with the weights of a metal and the volume displacement of water. And plenty about precious metals was on my mind as I was abjectly broke and had no money for a taxi and would walk instead of taking the subway back downtown.

“Lover boy, still waters flow deep.”

“Well, Mrs. Wilmington when can I open the flood-gates again.”

“Now that I look, I have rather a lot of appointments to keep tomorrow. Up early, nine-thirty A.M. pedicure, ten-thirty A.M. hypnotherapy, then my swim at the Colony Club and lunch with the lady who loves her stuffed snakes. After lunch, my current psychic. Then four P.M. to five P.M. the osteopath and massage. After that, I must catch up with some business correspondence. Then I must shower and get ready for a dinner party. Then home to pack to fly to Montana first thing in the morning. But let me telephone you.”