William Gaddis - Carpenter's Gothic

— Billy why, why! and he doesn't talk about it, he's never talked about it he won't even…

— Then who talked about it, I mean who told the old man how he's sleeping in this Bachelor Officer Quarters when these VC sappers break in there and blow him up with a mortar round, you think he made that up? and like where he's got this Bronze Star with clusters going into combat with these real bright ribbons sewed on his camouflage jacket and his fucking one gold bar it's supposed to be dulled and he wouldn't dull it? Like he's going to show them, I mean he's got this platoon they're under strength like two thirds of them black from Detroit and Cleveland I mean they don't give shit for being a hero but he's going to show them. He sets himself up this perfect target and he's setting up the whole fucking platoon I mean it's the old man Bibbs, where he always had to be the big deal at the expense of everybody under him. I mean did you ever tell him what Paul told you his own father said when he went in? his fucking own father? that he was God damn lucky he was going in as an officer because he wasn't good enough to be an enlisted man? From a pocket somewhere he came up with a crushed cigarette and stood there lighting it, spitting out smoke — I mean how Paul could ever have told you that, how he could even have told you…

— What are you going to do in California, she said finally.

— Man like if I had anything to do why would I go to California. I mean come on Bibbs pack up. We'll be there in the morning.

— I can't. I can't, it's not just Paul it's, things I have to do, doctors, these lawsuits about the plane crash I have to see their doctor before the…

— You've seen him Bibb you've seen him fifty times I mean you're in there with ninety other people, how's that going to change the lawsuit.

— Not just mine it's Paul's too he, it doesn't matter no I don't want to talk about it. I just can't go.

— Paul! That's what I mean everything comes back to fucking Paul, you mean his lawsuit? this bullshit about half a million dollars for loss ot these fucking services he's trying to go through with it? Oh man… and he reached abruptly across for the blank pad by the phone, seized the pen with it — I mean he's the one that's wiping you out Bibb not some old plane crash, look… Figures mounted the paper, — half a million dollars, if he had a hundred dollar a night call girl that's five thousand nights every night, that's thirteen years screwing every fucking night you think any court's going to listen to that bullshit? He thrust the pad away, cracking the knuckles of one hand in the other, looking at her. She didn't look up, didn't move, and he got up suddenly. — I went out to that place, he said, his voice fallen, — yesterday, out to Hopewell.

— But what, she looked up sharp — what…

— Nothing. I just went. He'd turned away, — all these spaced out old cruds they had them around this long table making nut cups for Halloween, I mean it was like nursery school at the wrong fucking end of the line. She just lies there, this tube in her nose she didn't even know I was there. There's this big sign somebody put by her bed You are in Hopewell, New Jersey. I mean she must wake up sometimes and ask them where she fucking is. I've got to go, Bibbs… he'd come round and put a hand on her shoulder. — You sure? All he got was the shake of her head coming up from her shoulders but she came with him, came as far as the door where she seized his wrist.

— Could you stay?

— Have to be at Newark by ten… That was all; and she stood with all her weight against the door motionless in the sudden glare of headlights, until they swept an arc across the windows and were gone.

In that house more frequently now she would find herself paused to listen, as she did passing back to the kitchen, though for what it was never clear. Once there, she turned on the radio which promptly informed her that traffic was being detoured in the vicinity of the BQE because of an overturned tractor trailer truck and she turned it off and picked up the hundred dollar bill, and then she came round to find the crumpled check on the floor and smooth it carefully against the refrigerator door before she put them both under the napkins and placemats in the drawer. Lights went out behind her, TEARFUL MOM wailed mute from the coffee table where Town & Country lay menaced by the Masai in a glint from the streetlight.

In the tub she examined a fading bruise on the inside of her knee. In the bedroom, she brought the television screen to life with two men struggling on the top of a speeding train until one hurled the other off as it crossed a trestle and she watched, wrapped in a towel, for the satisfaction of the flailing figure dashed on the rocks below before she pulled open the bureau's top drawer as the train sped on.

Two, then a third palm size page fell free of the worn address book, a meticulous chaos of initials and numbers, crossings out, writings in, arrows spanning continents, bridging oceans, MHG Golf Links New D tlx 314573TZUPIN; Bill R, Midi and numbers crossed out for BA and new numbers; for funding GPRASH Luanda and numbers; Jenny Dpnt Crcl and numbers; SOLANT and numbers crossed out; Seiko and numbers, IC, more numbers; she restored them haphazard and dropped it into the folder spread open on the bed where she came down to the last page taking her pencil straight to a man somewhat older and drawing it through another life, writing in other lives; through another woman for other women; through somewhere, for a wife hidden now in Marrakech, biting the nub of the eraser over his still, sinewed hands when the phone brought her upright.

— Yes hello…? No, no he's not here who is it, if he calls I can… Well yes he was here briefly Mrs Fickert, but he had to turn right around and… pardon? Well he, well yes of course he's married. I mean I'm his wife. Do you… hello?

The train sped toward her and she caught the towel together at her breast up fetching Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary, and it roared right over her as though she'd gone down on her back there between the tracks. Opened to the Ds now, licking her fingertip past dogtrot, dive, her finger ran down dishevel, dishpan hands till it reached disinterested, where the precisely incorrect definition she sought was confirmed in a citation from a pundit for the Times, she drew a line through indifferent and wrote it in, worrying at calm with faint prods of the pencil point: the cool, disinterested calm of his eyes belying? She hatched calm in a cuneate enclosure, licking her finger paging back to the Cs for cunning, past cut-rate, curt, running down from cuneiform and held, abruptly, at cunnilingus. She was reading it slowly, finger back to her lips, pp. of lingere, more at LICK, when the phone rang again.

— Yes? she cleared her throat — yes? hello… She came back on the pillows staring at a woman rudely her junior and blonde at that emerging refreshed from the shower. — No I'm not but, but wait. Wait, hello…? She, whoever you are, I mean you don't need to keep trying to call her here she, you see she's been gone for two years…

The woman on the screen caressed a chaste limb with something from a bottle, turning to look straight at her, and where she came forward now to run her finger with a resolute tremor on to stop sharp at cunning her eye leaped it to cunt. And as though there'd been no interruption, no two years fallen away in Zaire, Maracaibo, Marrakech, — Places like that… BA, Mtdi, Thailand? — never been there… she lay back on the bed as though she'd never left it, — all these lovely things it looks like she'd just gone for the day… the damp warmth of the towel turned chill and fallen away, feet curled in on the bed in the frolic of the streetlight through the trees, her nipples drawn up hard and a hand passing down her breast and out to the knee flexed up for its reach to touch the bruise there, gliding down slowly on a hard edge of nails to the rising fall where its warmth lingered with the close warmth of breath in the suspense of her knees fallen wide broken, shuddering, by the shock of her own voice.