Robert Coover - Gerald's Party

‘ Gerald …? ’

‘Ah, the … the innateness?’

‘Yes. What’s in the sack?’

‘I don’t know, a bottle of something. Fats brought it.’ I handed it to her, and she peered inside, saying: ‘Fats? But I thought they’d already …?’ I had apparently missed seeing the short cop, Fred, leave the room, but he entered from the dining room now with a freshly made sandwich, just as his gimpy partner, tugging his cap brim down over his brow, went lurching out: they collided in the doorway, the sandwich popping out of Fred’s hand onto the floor, and Bob, backing up with his scissors uplifted like a sword, stepped in it with his short leg (there was distant applause: the folk album was a recording from a live theatrical performance), squirting catsup and mustard out over the carpet. I felt my wife wince as his foot came down. ‘I hope we have enough food,’ she murmured. Alison was distracted by Brenda and Anatole. ‘Everyone seems to have starved himself before coming tonight, and those two are the worst of all.’ Bob scraped the mess off his boot on the rung of a chair, as, out in the hall, the doorbell rang again.

‘Oh no, not more …!’

‘Maybe that’s the ambulance.’

‘I’ve got everything for moussaka, I think. And I could fix some eggrolls and chicken wings …’

‘Can I help clean up?’ asked Naomi, rushing up with an ashtray full of cigarette butts and olive pits. She cast me a meaningful glance (I could hear new voices out in the hallway, loud and insistent, and there were quick bursts of light) and dropped the ashtray. ‘Woops!’

‘Oh, Naomi! I just cleaned in here!’

‘Honest, I’m all thumbs!’ She squatted to gather up the litter, smiling at me and nodding toward Alison.

My wife knelt in front of her, reaching toward a little constellation of spilled pits (‘You know, I think I’m beginning to like other people’s parties better than my own,’ she sighed), then paused, her hand outstretched, sniffing curiously.

‘I’ll see who it is,’ I said, pulling away (someone was shouting: ‘As if it weren’t bad enough—!’), just as Soapie, an old acquaintance of ours from the city newspaper, painstakingly seedy in his sweaty press hat, black horn-rimmed spectacles, tweed sports jacket and frayed tennis shoes, came striding in with his photographer Leonard: ‘There she is, Leonard! Beautiful! Looks like she’s screaming or something! Don’t miss that bottle of pills! Or — wow! — the pinking shears!’ He greeted Woody and Patrick — ‘No, hold it! Just like that! Got it, Leonard?’ — then waved at Noble, slapped Fats on his paunch (‘Howzit goin’ champ?’ ‘Not so dusty, Soap …’), lit a smoke, watching Alison slip around behind Woody and Patrick, aimed Leonard at Brenda. ‘Holy moley, Yvonne!’ he cried. ‘What kinda party games you been playing? Leonard, get a picture of that mess!’

‘Get my good side, Leonard! The back one!’

Leonard, dipping and twisting, fired away, Soapie instructing. Some ducked, some smiled painfully, others turned away as though to ignore the newsmen. Behind me, over the simple throbbing chords on the hi-fi, I could hear my wife laugh and say: ‘Darts! Goodness, Naomi, I don’t know which end you throw at the target!’

‘Whoo- eee ,’ exclaimed Soapie, rubbing his finger along a blotch on the wall and tasting it, as Leonard crouched for a shot, through legs, of the soles of Ros’s feet, ‘this is the real stuff! Did she get it with her socks down like that?’

‘No, she—’

‘She just got a part in some new play, didn’t she? I heard that somewhere — something about a rapist who turns out to be the President or God or the Pope maybe, I forget which—’

‘She said it was about a private eye who—’

‘Yeah, you think there’s any connection, Ger?’

‘You mean with the murder?’

‘Not likely, hunh? Nothing private about our gal Ros, right? I’ll never forget that toyland musical where she was a limp puppet with strings tied to her bazongas, but nothing else! What was it—?’

‘ The Naughty Dollies’ Night —’

‘Right! Sensational! Just so long as she didn’t have to act, eh? Why was she carting around all this junk, by the way?’

‘Well, actually that’s not—’

‘I mean, like pipe cleaners? Wacko!’ He scratched out a note, his cigarette between his teeth like a blowgun. ‘Best ever, though, was that pillar-of-salt thing — remember that, Leonard?’

Leonard licked the thick brush under his nose and rolled his eyes, then focused again on Yvonne, who, pulling some strands of stiff gray hair under her nose, said: ‘What would you say to a pillar of blood blisters, Leonard?’

‘Yummy,’ Soapie remarked absently, watching Brenda put her arm around a wobbly Anatole, Howard trying to hide himself in the shadows of the drapes. Soapie picked up a fallen ashtray, stubbed his butt out in it, then tossed the ashtray over in a pile of swept-up debris, fished his pack out for another smoke. I saw we didn’t have to worry about how to get the stains out in the white easy chair: they’d been cut out. ‘This is where you found her?’

‘No, more like …’ Suddenly we were all looking around on the floor. ‘Here!’ I said, pointing down to her chalk outline. It was almost completely trampled away, a ghost drawing.

‘Are you kidding?’ argued Noble. ‘That’s where I was standing.’

‘She was over — here!’ said Wilma, pointing down at another outline, this one of Ros spread-eagled. ‘Here’s the place!’ Yvonne stretched round in her bindings, trying to see, winced, sat back hurt and frustrated. I was afraid she might start crying again. ‘Then what about this one?’ Fats asked, standing over a third, and Lloyd Draper, disencumbered now of his timepieces, came in and, thumbs hooked in his red suspenders, pointed down at yet another, this one of Ros curled up, near the foot of Yvonne’s couch. ‘Here’s where she was, young fella, the poor thing.’

Soon everyone was arguing about this, moving around the room from outline to outline as though on a guided tour, plumping for one chalk outline or another, even Dickie, winking at me and grinning around a toothpick, pointing at the place where Roger had knocked me down. ‘You can see the bloodstains here at the heart.’

Yvonne reached out and took my hand, slipping something into it. ‘Listen, do me a favor, Gerry,’ she whispered (‘So what, they’ve all got bloodstains!’): a small gold loop, an earring …

‘Sure, Yvonne—’

‘Whatever happens, just don’t let them take me away!’

‘But no one’s—’

‘Please?’ She squeezed my hand, held it tight, her own hand trembling. ‘Promise?’

‘Of course I promise. But nobody’s going to—’

‘I love you, Gerry,’ she whispered, while around us the argument raged on: ‘Her legs were together! Like this one!’ ‘No, apart! Here!’ ‘You care …’

‘Do you like this one better, Leonard? Okay? Then, let’s get started!’ By a kind of vote, they’d chosen the one chalk drawing I knew to be impossible, for, until Roger had knocked it over running wild, our brass coffee table had stood there. Now, Soapie instructing, Fats, Woody, his cousin Noble, and Alison’s husband began shifting the body. ‘ Easy—! ’

‘Jesus, she’s so fucking cold! ’ Noble complained, letting go and wiping his hands on his trousers, and Lloyd, patting him on the shoulder, took over for him. ‘That’s right, old man,’ grumped Noble, ‘it’s more in your line.’

‘Really? In a swoon? ’ his girlfriend asked, fingering her medallion, and Patrick, commanding a small group with his tale of Roger and the old hag, nodded gravely: ‘That’s what he said.’