Joseph McElroy - Lookout Cartridge

John (who is about to remain silent but — this time the face in the close shot — speaks): Don’t speak, Nash. Suck on a ring, but do not—

Nash (automatically bringing ring hand up to mouth, then dropping it while a familiar voice that conjures up its own narrow, tan, virile face speaks in answer to John): Don’t you tell anyone shut up. Nash can speak. Speak Nash.

Frenchman (looking at his watch while speaker not the Frenchman blurts): All I say is your sister June speaks on authority too damn much. I never heard of any windbreakers. So don’t talk to me about windbreakers.

Incremona (rocking on his own private axis as we hear the Frenchman): Za Catwight gell.

Incremona (forestalling a CUT, by speaking): We got her.

Cartwright (halting on the side of the room opposite John-of-Coventry and between Mike and Jan as she suddenly says): You are heartless.

But what Len said is close to the bone. Bills in pigeon holes. For a piano. For the builder. Doctors. Magazine renewals. Bills on the floor in riffled sequences, in swirls, little white frames with names and numbers, strewn by Incremona. He’s unmarried. Jenny wants a proper shower. Lorna likes a bath; the scum gurgles down the drain, never a problem though in the winter of ’63 the outside pipes clotted, but I always paid the bills and they were there in the desk for Incremona to go through two weeks ago because Lorna saves them like the yearly New York Metropolitan Museum of Art calendar richly colored oriental medieval Moslem what have you, that my mother sends us that as Lorna looks back through our code of names, phone numbers, times, can tell her what we did. But you who have me know what Incremona doesn’t, that it looks like not one lost income but two or three, the charters, the boatyard, add to that the perqs through Dag, cheap booze, a blender, and for Will for Christmas though we sing our carols live a Sony 110 cassette recorder (like a policeman’s walkie-talkie in lieu of his traditional whistle), toss in a brandied plum pudding you can’t even buy at that Knightsbridge landmark Harrod’s where according to Queenie Stone the Queen and Philip have a charge — and American smokes though those I give or sell away. Yes, Mike, I could kill — kill Len for going in my house. Forget the diary he burgled.

Not a marvelous country house; a city house. Not a revolutionary life; a plain life. Where suitcases are packed and unpacked (never mind if Tessa says to Lorna Let him pack his own bloody case). Where the soap opera of our marriage has serialized itself in cartridges I’ve packed away in a hole in my study wall behind a picture. And where a park is near, and if we wish I and my wife may let the grass grow under our feet and the garden walls decay and title to the turtle grow as communal and friendly as the weatherman’s crystal-clear forecast of bright intervals for a hungover Sunday. Our children grow up.

A house at London’s highest point (Y’don’t say, murmurs my father, affable once standing on our Highgate stoop) — near park and pub and bus, outdoor summer concerts, history, tennis courts, near a good school for my son with Mr. Ogg and the digressions he spontaneously maps.

I lost my temper and asked Len if he found the five-pound note in the far-left pigeon-hole, and Len too quickly said that when he knew where he was going to pick up twenty grand cash, no sweat. Len rocked back, and John grumbling about a chair got out the door to the other room that I probably had not seen.

My answers came out of nowhere. These people did not quite know, but I was one with them, and like a pedestrian accosted in the New York subway I wasn’t sure whom I could protect by giving them what they wanted.

I said, I keep the red jaguar with my weapons, but what if you do find out if I’m going to blow the whistle or revive the film which I don’t even know myself?

Cut it out, came a voice from Corsica, Mike’s, cut it out— you know Chad didn’t mean the film.

But Incremona (a face from Corsica as stiff as its eyes are bright) speaks (and rocks, as if to give the words a secret beat): Who said the film was destroyed?

Depend upon it, I said, and heard our spools clanking down Claire’s chute.

But Jan, now kneeling, hands clasped, said: Oh yes, oh yes, more than I knew when I first said the word, oh Christ yes! heartless —he doesn’t even ask where she is.

Heartless! I said. I fell to my knees. What about these people around you? I bet you don’t know who Nash was with , that day—

The words go on while Jan and I retort.

The words go on down fifteen floors to Claire’s furnace, then back up like a loop, and they’re not quite the right words, for here captive in a room and speaking of cruelty, I’d meant to say Len and said instead my very words to Jenny Tuesday.

Which day? said Jan.

That summer Sunday, the fiasco, Nash, Len, Reid, my daughter—

Nash?

Incremona , the one who bashed him up — And what’s it matter? The film’s gone, your idea’s safe.

Oh I used it like a weapon, said Jan.

Len stood aside as the door opened. You were a long time finding a chair, he said, and John brought in a straight chair and puffed himself down.

And it wasn’t original, said Jan.

And I–I had found out that what threatened to be revived was not the film.

So: if Flint but not film (and if Len flaunted Whitehead before me)—

What fiasco? said Len. He had come toward me from his post by that door and was standing above Mike.

The jaguar, I said, and stopped. At Graf’s, said Gene.

You were there Teeyoosday, said Chad, you phoned June.

Balls, said John. Get him back to London, put him under house arrest. Simplest thing.

At Graf’s, said Incremona, and turned his back to me and faced the door he’d knelt by. Chad at the other door seemed to have forgotten me.

It was Dagger DiGorro, said Jan.

House arrest? said Nash, house arrest? Where do you get house arrest? He blew Bill and Ronnie at South Ken. How many copies of the diary are there? He’s got connections, connections.

Shut up, said John.

Like the telephone, said Len, looking at John.

Krish got it from Cosmo, said Nash, Cosmo got it from DiGorro’s wife: DiGorro didn’t know what his own partner might do.

Shut up, said John and Len looking at each other.

Len’s fist clenched and unclenched again, the same knuckles that as my breath like a brain swashed here and there in some equal time had gripped Gilda’s cash register; and I said Stupid (the English way, steeyoomd ), why should Nash shut up? — does him good to talk — like autographing Tessa’s daughter’s cast in Golders Hill Park to contact Tessa — like acting independently — so don’t shut him up, he’s getting it out of his system and I know all he’s saying anyhow.

But like a cartridge track without its containing cartridge, Jan was saying that the idea had been that none of us know enough — that was the idea, and it wasn’t original because it came from Dagger and Dagger was good. The thick pale eyebrows frowned, the heart-shaped face finds me dangerous and tries to look through my impurities that bring this group together, and the face can’t understand how I could wait patiently to hear about Jenny what I do suddenly hear from Incremona clenching and clenching the fist, says Stupid eh? which he probably did not say after Chad with his English pronunciation called him (I’m now sure) stupid downstairs or upstairs for delivering that blow to my chest (for it must have been Len) — Stupid, eh? We make you disappear, how about that? You and your girl, she’s with Reid and he’s with Sherman and you know where they are just like I know where your little weapons cache is, right, Cartwright?