Robert Coover - Gerald's Party

I laid a consoling hand on his shoulder. ‘Don’t worry, Howard, there’s ice in the kitchen and more gin down here below. Excuse me, Anatole.’ I knelt for the gin, and the boy jerked backward, thumping up against Vic, just coming for a refill of his own. Vic swore, Anatole stammered an apology, and Howard said: ‘And someone’s stolen the fruit knife for the lemons! ’ Looking up, I saw then that he’d been using his scout knife. His hands, stained and soiled, were trembling.

‘Those three dicks probably borrowed it,’ said Vic sourly, his speech beginning to slur. ‘I think they’re in there now, trying to peel Ros’s cunt with it.’

Anatole laughed, took a nervous puff on his French cigarette, and said: ‘That’s just it, those stupid turds can’t see what they’re looking straight at!’

‘I’m afraid the whole fucking species has much the same problem, son,’ Vic growled, cocking one shaggy eyebrow at Anatole. ‘Like bats in daylight, we can’t even see when we’re pissing on ourselves.’ Vic was a hardnosed guy with a spare intellect, but he had a weakness for grand pronouncements, especially with a few shots under his belt. I handed Howard a new bottle of gin, pushed the cabinet door shut with my knee, poured a wineglass full of vermouth for Alison, and then, on reflection, one for myself as well.

‘Here’s a good one,’ said Anatole. He was reading the cocktail napkins Kitty and Knud had given us, which were decorated with the usual party gags based on lines like ‘Please don’t grind your butts into the carpet,’ or ‘Thou shalt not omit adultery.’ The one he showed us was of a policeman frisking a girl bankrobber. He had her face up against the wall, her skirt lifted and her pants pulled down (as though on cue, the cop with the test tube limped in, pushing people aside, and snatched the salt away from Mrs Draper, went bobbing out again), from which heaps of banknotes were tumbling out, and what he was saying was: ‘Now, let’s get to the bottom of this!’

‘Tell me,’ said Vic, plunging his fist into Howard’s martini pitcher for a couple of ice cubes, Howard sputtering in protest, ‘where do you think the cop got that line? Did it come natural to him as a simple horny human, or did it get thrust on him somehow?’

Anatole flushed, a nervous grin twitching on his thin lips. ‘You mean about free will or—?’

‘I mean, has he emptied his own incorrigibly shitty nature into the vacuum of an occupation here, or has the job and society made him, innocent at birth, into the crude bullying asshole that he’s become?’

‘I–I don’t know … I guess a little of both—’

‘Just as I thought,’ grunted Vic, ‘another goddamn liberal.’ And he turned away as though in contempt, sucking the ice cubes, squinting down at some of the other cocktail napkins, held at arm’s length.

Anatole, badly stung, looked to Howard for support, but his uncle, absently stirring the martinis, was distracted, his head bent toward the TV room where several couples were necking. Ah. Probably the true cause of his bad temper: I’d interrupted his little spectacle. Howard the art critic. At the far wall, Charley Trainer’s wife, Janice, was in a stand-up clinch with some guy whose back was to us, her arms wrapped round his neck schoolgirl-style, her pink skirt rucked up over her raised thigh. Our eyes met for a moment and what I saw there, or thought I saw, was terror. ‘I guess I’ll get something to eat,’ Anatole muttered clumsily and slouched off toward the dining table, looking gangly and exposed. ‘I’m feeling drunk or something …’

Ginger was over there, jabbing clumsily at the sausages in the chafing dish with a toothpick. She caught the tip end of one, lifted it shakily toward her little comic-book ‘O’ of a mouth. It fell off. As she bent over, stiff-legged above her heels, to pick it up, Dolph stepped up behind her and, as though by accident, his eyes elsewhere, let his cupped palm fall against her jutting behind. Anatole saw this, spun away, found himself moving on through the doorway into the living room, puffing shallowly on his cigarette stub.

‘You were pretty hard on him, Vic.’

‘He’s all right. But he’s all style and no substance. He needs to grow up.’ Ginger rose, holding painfully with her fingertips the hot sausage, furry now with dust and lint. She looked around desperately for some place to put it, finally gave up and popped it in her mouth, then brushed at her rear end as though flicking away flies. ‘Isn’t she the one that cunt-hungry fashion plate brought here tonight?’

‘One of them.’ Dolph took his hand away and (Vic, moving like an aging lion, now stalked off into the TV room, flinging open doors, peering behind furniture) rubbed his nose with it. Poor Dolph. Bachelorhood, since his break-up with Louise, had not sat well on him. Ginger blew out her cheeks around the hot sausage and bobbed up and down on her high heels, her halo of carroty little pigtails quivering around her heart-shaped face like nerve ends.

‘Hey,’ I said when Vic returned (Howard had left us, taking up a position over near the dining table where he still had a view into the TV room, his fractured lenses aglitter with myriad reflections of the candles on the table), ‘fatherhood doesn’t last forever, you know.’

‘She’s a fucking innocent, Gerry, and I’m telling you, if that cocksucker gets his filthy hands on her, so help me’ — he ripped a wadded-up cocktail napkin apart in demonstration — ‘I’ll tear his balls off!’

I believed him. It was what made Vic more than just an armchair radical: he could kill. ‘I’ll get some more ice,’ I said, taking the bucket along with me, dumping the empty bottles in it, and Vic called after me: ‘If you see Sally Ann, damn it, tell her I want to talk to her. Right now!’ Alison’s husband came through just then with Roger’s law partner Woody and his wife, Yvonne, and as I passed them I heard them laugh together behind me. All three were carrying croquet mallets: had they been playing out there in the dark?

Louise stood up suddenly when I entered the kitchen, almost as though I’d caught her at something. She’d been squeezed in at the breakfast bench, watching my wife whip up what looked like an avocado dip — or perhaps helping with some of the chopping: there was a little cheese board and knife in front of her — and she nearly took the buttons off the front of her dress trying to jump out of there.

Patrick, halving a grapefruit at the counter with a small steak knife, exclaimed: ‘My goodness, Louise! I felt that all the way over here!’

‘You don’t have to leave, Louise,’ I said, raising my voice as the dishwasher thumped suddenly into its wash cycle. ‘I’ve only come for some ice and mix.’

‘Let her go, Gerald,’ my wife called out, getting to her feet. ‘She’s just eating up all my potato chips anyway.’

‘Are you still making more food?’ There was a huge platter of freshly prepared canapés on the counter, empty tuna cans and cracker boxes scattered about, dip mix packets, bread from the freezer, the wrappers still frosty, home-canned pickles and relishes up from the cellar, smoked oysters on toast squares. And something was cooking in the oven. ‘I thought you had everything ready before the party.’

‘So did I. But it’s all going so fast.’ Louise glanced suspiciously past the bucket of empty bottles I was carrying to the two full wineglasses in my other hand, as without a word but accompanied by the splashy grind of the dishwasher, she shifted heavily toward the dining room. ‘Did you notice how many sausages were left in the chafing dish?’

‘Not many. Should I turn the flame off?’

‘No, I’ve got more.’ She went to the refrigerator and brought out a ceramic bowlful, bumping the door closed with her hips. ‘Louise, would you mind?’ she called, stopping her at the door.