Robert Coover - John's Wife

Ronnie’s missing kid had also long since lost, though no loss by him was felt, all sense of time and place, such coordinates being of little consequence to him in this dimensionless paradise wherein now, in joy, he drifted. He was in — he understood the meaning of this mysterious word now and he would not forget it — he was in ecstasy, pleasured in the mind and in the heart and in the body tip to toe. His journey to this blessed condition had been long and not without its false turnings, lured first as he’d been to other enticements, other anticipations. Foremost: fulfillment of all the implicit promises of those books that Fish had shown him, their images of enchanted couplings spread out below him in a panorama of such congested diversity as to dizzy the mind, even while prickling the weenie, drawing him downward, the better, he’d imagined, to see, and then, if he could, to do. But the view had not improved as, through an ever denser medium, he’d descended, and in some ways it had lost its clarity, as when a book is brought too close to the nose, becoming blurred and grainy and distorted. An effect, he’d supposed, of the strange atmosphere which, once passed through, would vanish like a mist, the way that the mind clears when full knowing is achieved, and he’d understood then, or had thought he understood, that he had seen all that could be seen by eye alone and that one must now do to see what was as yet unseen. Okay. I get it. So: ready or not… He’d braced himself for this manly test and, letting his clothes go as had seemed to be their own desire, he had thrust valiantly against that which was keeping him out, but try as he might, he had not been able to progress, feeling as he sometimes felt in bed at night, pressing against his sheets and pillows, barred from some unimaginable delights just beyond his ken. Then, as he’d pushed and fumbled, groping for flesh and contour where there were none to be found, he’d come upon a tiny rift in what he’d suddenly realized was something more like a movie screen, containing all these images but only as an illusion on its vast curved surface: he’d thrust one hand into the small gap and then the other, there’d been a soft crisp ripping sound as of discovery, and the scrim had suddenly split apart like drawn curtains, vanishing into the distance and carrying all those busy fornicators with it, leaving Little afloat in a luminous infinity decorated with brilliant-hued galaxies in the way that a Christmas tree might be hung with colored lights. Bright blue and scarlet comets and golden falling stars, and emerald, flashed across the depths like sensuous writing and there was an intensely beautiful murmur in the air as of hidden angel choirs that seemed not so much to strike upon his eardrums as to caress them and the rest of him as well. The colors of this spectacular cosmos did not remain constant, but slid through hue’s inexhaustible spectrum as if color were a kind of liquid, washing through it in tidal floods, and he felt intimately stroked, within and without, by these chromatic ebbs and flows. Delicate aromas floated upon the ether like edible fog in celestial icecream flavors, entering him through all his orifices, and he felt his body stretch out like modeling clay as though to offer more territory for their invasion. As the gentle murmur rose to a rhythmic hum, embracing him all over and penetrating him to the core with its rich hydraulic beat, he ceased to wonder where he was and instead surrendered to a bliss he knew to be — so many meanings this voyage had revealed to him! — beatitude itself. He was — his mind knew this, his heart felt it to be so, and his body, fondled by sound and color and fragrance as though these things were animate beings, ardently attentive upon his person, responded by raising his stiffened weenie like a quivering flagpole — in the land of glory. It was going to happen! It was really going to happen! No! It was already happening! He gazed down upon his resplendent weenie — no, not a weenie, but a penis —no, not a penis, but a prick, a dick, a what? a cock! — which now, so had he grown, seemed half a universe away, its bold head haloed by its own dazzling radiance and vibrating in the cosmic wind like a crawling thing’s antenna. It seemed to be trying to uproot itself — he could see the roots which were spreading their green tentacles through the tropical heat of his vast glowing body, as though reaching for securer moorings in anticipation of the brewing storm — and he felt a desperate and delicious tugging, not only in his thighs and bowels, but throughout his trembling frame, in his head and chest and even in his fingers and his toes. And then, as the kaleidoscopic colors burned in hotter hue and the air grew redolently spicy and the angelic chorus gave way to piercing trumpets, his whole body suddenly shrank into itself and then gloriously exploded, scattering itself majestically throughout the throbbing cosmic space to form vibrant new constellations in all of heaven’s hues, scintillant as sugar crystals, and Turtle, overpowered, overjoyed, at one with the universe and with himself, suffering still the honied aftershocks, gratefully wept, thinking: Wow. Cool. I like it.

The body as a cosmic, or at least an outsized presence and, when grasped entire, potential source of revelation, was also the subject of Otis’s sober (more or less sober) study, when abruptly interrupted by the arrival of John striding into his office at the police station with that team captain’s bearing of his and asking what was going on. “Material evidence,” Otis said, hurriedly shuffling the photos into a drawer. “Odd case. Has me stumped. I’m glad you’re back, John.” And he was, too, but wished he’d been announced, unable yet to stand to take John’s hand. It was the phone that rescued him. “Hasn’t stopped,” he said, leaning around to pick it up. Another call about the traffic lights, all out of sync. And who switched the street signs at Third and Main? “Some kid’s prank,” he growled, rising. “We’re working on it.” He hung up, ordered all calls put on hold, and John, shaking his hand, asked then about the photographer, offering to pay his bond and find him legal help; Otis said there was none to pay, he was letting the man out soon, and legal help was not the sort that sad fruitcake needed. He filled John in on what had been happening out at the mall and apparently at the swimming pool, too, maybe right out there on Main Street, they had a real problem here. He didn’t tell John about the ruined photos of Pauline he’d seen hanging in the basement darkroom, because he didn’t understand them himself. Like the man was losing his touch or something, and it might be pushing him over the edge? No, too simple and it didn’t explain Pauline. Might just be something artsy he was trying that Otis didn’t understand — or it might be more sinister than that. John wondered aloud about the newspaper that hadn’t come out yet this week, and Otis said he didn’t know what was wrong over there but planned to check it out when he got a moment free. Which wasn’t going to be right away, the calls were coming in about one every three minutes; he told John about them, disguising his own misgivings by saying it was probably just the kids let out of school with nothing better to do than mischief, and John, laughing, agreed. John did make Otis feel better just by being here, as though his mere presence in town were somehow a calming force, jurisprudential in nature, decreeing order and the common good. Otis told him so in his own gruff words (“This town needs you, John, you should stay home more!”), and when asked, agreed to tear up the overdue parking tickets (also two for drunk driving) of some of John’s visiting business associates on the grounds that the fines might get in the way of much larger investments here. Sure, why not, made sense. Hard to collect them anyway. He was glad to hear about the trucking firm, less happy about the racetrack, though he didn’t say so. Together, they went over the planned safety and security procedures of the parade route, which ended as usual with patriotic and political speeches in the civic center parking lot, where local churches, clubs, and merchants would be setting up the stalls that had replaced the old Pioneers Day fair since the city park had disappeared. Otis explained how he intended to have the cars off the parade route streets the night before, then went on to mention, a bit hesitantly, that, speaking of cars left on the street, he’d found one of John’s abandoned late at night a couple of times while he was gone, and had had to take it home for him. John thanked him, adding: “She’s getting a bit too big for her britches, that girl, I’ll have to talk to her. Let me know if it happens again.” That’s right, it could have been the kid, that made sense, too, as with most everything John had to say, and Otis let it go at that, but he didn’t think this was the answer to what he felt more like an eerie taunt. They were releasing Gordon just as John was leaving and Otis could see by the wince of consternation that John had instantly grasped how disturbed the man was, his round face flushed and his eyes damp and inwardly focused, his mouth partway agape. “If there’s anything my wife or I can do for you—?” John offered, startling the photographer, who seemed to see him now for the first time: he turned pale and began to tremble, then spun about and left without a word. “Better go with him,” Otis told the officer who’d brought him through. “Make sure he gets home okay. And check on his wife.” John had left while this was going on, saying he’d be out at the club if he wanted him, so Otis added: “And don’t be surprised by what you see.” More phonecalls then, stacked up on hold (“There’s been some kinda robbery over to the drugstore, Otis, I’ve sent a couple guys over to check it out…”) while John had paid his courtesy call, among them the sullen motel-keeper out by Settler’s Woods, reporting the bold daylight theft of sheets and food. “Right out the back door. A whole damned truckload, Otis. I think it was that dipshit kid from the drugstore.” Oh oh. Before he could get through to the photographer’s studio, his officer called in on his cellular phone: “It’s a mess over here, Otis. She’s broke out and took the back door with her.”