Robert Coover - Gerald's Party

‘Ah!’ I said and cleared my throat. ‘We were just, eh …’

‘You’ve found your earring,’ he said tersely, ignoring me.

‘Yes, that nice man in the white pants discovered it for me,’ she replied, turning dreamily toward him. ‘On the living room floor — wasn’t that lucky?’ She smiled, touching the earring as though to show it to him, her free hand slipping into my back pocket to scratch subtly at my buttock, as though to sign her name there. ‘We’re just going out for some fresh air.’

‘Yes, of course,’ he said with an abrupt pinched smile, glancing at me, then away again. He seemed to want to look back over his shoulder, but restrained himself, pushing his hands into his jacket pockets, biting briefly at his beard. ‘Watch where you step,’ he added as he marched past us.

Alison took my hand and pulled me out into the darkness of the back porch. ‘ Hurry—! ’ She tore my wrap-tie shirt open, flung her arms around my bare back. ‘ Kiss me! ’ she begged, pulling herself upward to meet my mouth with hers. Her mouth was open, her tongue pushing between my teeth as though to mate there, her perfumed breath mingling with the nostalgic country odors of the backyard and the sweet scents sweeping up from within her dress. I clutched her body tight to mine — it was the right thing to do, I knew, the timing perfect! — and kissed her eyes, her cheeks, her mouth, her throat, my hands burrowing up under the whispering charmeuse skirt, childhood memories of camping trips, midnight hikes, forest dew, Inspiration Points filling my mind (it was a damp night, chilly, dense), and, her sash loosening, down into her tights. ‘ Oh Gerald! ’ she gasped (her flesh down there was cool, sleek, so smooth it felt powdered, maybe it was, the fluff between her wriggling cheeks as soft as swansdown), jamming her hands inside my waistband, trying to, finally in frustration scrabbling frantically over the outside of my trousers (‘No more rehearsals, Superlover,’ I seemed to hear her say, ‘I want climax, I want the weenie! ’ — but her mouth was pressed on mine), digging, fumbling for openings. I slid one hand around the curve of her hip onto her soft belly, and down into the damp velvety thatch between her thighs which heaved up to meet it, her legs spreading as in my mind’s eye (and thus in truth! in truth!) they’d been spreading since the night we met. Yet even bare skin is a kind of mask, I thought wistfully, pushing deeper, my fingertips meeting, fore and aft, in the syrupy depths of her amazing furrow, maybe in fact it was something she had said that night during intermission: that desperate but futile effort (but I was trying, I was trying) to touch what can never be touched. I had suggested that night that theater, like all art, was kind of a hallucination at the service of reality, and that full appreciation of it required total abject surrender — like religion. ‘Yes,’ she’d said, setting her coffee cup down. ‘Or love …’ ‘ Oh fuck! ’ she whimpered now, tearing wildly at my trousers, clawing my back, tugging at my testicles, while thrusting violently (it was, yes, this incredible impression of wholeness, this impression of radiance, of universal truth, the seeming apprehension of it, that surrender made possible, I thought, almost unable to think at all, unable to breathe — what had I just said?) into the little orifice I’d created with my two fingers and the bent knuckle of my thumb — ‘ You’re the most beautiful man I’ve ever met! ’ ‘Alison—!’ I groaned, pushing deeper from behind. ‘( Gasp!) A little … more—! ’

Someone squeezed my hand and I jerked it away. It was Dickie, his white suit glowing spectrally in the dim light. ‘Wondered what she was growing back there,’ he said, lifting Alison’s skirt to peer closer, playing the heckler, the hick in the gallery. ‘Anyhow, I’m glad to see that, as an artist, Ger, you’ve got a good grasp of your subject.’ He slapped her behind as though blessing it. I started to squeak out something, something stupid probably, but he had already turned away. ‘Hey, Hot Pot!’ he laughed, stepping down off the porch. ‘Whaddaya say we go get some grass stains back behind the bushes!’

‘It’s filthy back there,’ Sally Ann retorted. ‘Like you, you creep!’

‘Gerald,’ Alison gasped hoarsely — she lay collapsed against my chest now, breathing deeply, my arms around her shoulders, hers around my hips, ‘where can we go?’

‘I’ll have to think. They’ve taken over my study and—’

‘How about the green room upstairs?’

‘Green room?’ I was still struggling to find my voice. I felt weirdly suspended, not quite outside time but not in it either.

‘Where you kissed me …’

‘Yes, the sewing room, okay …’ Sally Ann stood nearby, staring — or probably staring, it was hard to tell — seemingly taken aback at finding us here, and I worried that if we didn’t move, she wouldn’t. ‘But first …’ I unlocked my arms (a titter of laughter floated out and I noticed again the chill in the air) and led Alison down off the porch — we were both a bit unsteady, our bodies still making moves of their own, our legs more or less elsewhere.

‘Woops!’

‘Steady now!’

It was a little brighter in the yard, lit up from inside, and I saw that her dress hem was caught in her tights: I pulled it out, smoothed it down, reveling (I don’t like silk) in the feel of silk, and she cuddled closer. ‘Can I hold it for you, Gerald?’ ‘Sure.’ Anyway, she already was, leaning on it like a cane. A swaggerstick. If she’d let go, she’d probably have fallen down. There were others out here, whispering, chatting quietly back in the bushes, grunting, and I felt once more — though not so intensely as a moment ago with my hands between Alison’s legs — that nostalgic flush of country memories: campouts, bike hikes, an all-night picnic back in college (the girl who’d held it for me that night had stupidly pinched it, trying, she’d claimed, to dot an i ), sweet harvest evenings along the Rhine and the Douro, our Alpine honeymoon, star-gazing with my father at my grandmother’s place (‘Look, Gerry! there by the Fishes: the Chained Lady!’): there even seemed to be a fragrance of apples in the air.

I led Alison over toward a shadowy corner near the toolshed (there were muddy tracks everywhere, puddles, wadded-up cocktail napkins, cigarette butts), and she knelt to undo my fly. ‘God! it’s gorgeous! ’ she exclaimed softly as she opened up my shorts and let it fall out, pale as a stone pillar, into the night. She stroked it gently. I felt nothing: it was all puffed up, numb with excitement and anticipation. Inside, somebody squealed, and I could hear what sounded like the clacking of spoons, someone blowing on a sweet potato. A tall man stood, shadowed, in one gaping window, looking out as though to mirror me. ‘Where shall we point it?’ ‘Well, away from the flowerbeds —’ But she was gone. ‘Alison—?’

‘Hate to tinkle all over your wife’s garden,’ rumbled Lloyd Draper, standing beside me, ‘but I’m an old man and I just can’t hold it in anymore.’ I thought I heard her whispering behind me — I couldn’t be sure, it might have been anyone: ‘Is there room …?’ ‘Sure, honey, sit down, sit down …’ I looked around, but it was too dark to see anything but a few bushes, squatting like luminous trigrams, black at the roots. ‘What’s the matter, son? For a young lad, you seem to be having trouble making water there,’ Lloyd remarked, squinting down through his bifocals. ‘Oh, I see.’ He spurted briefly, stopped, spurted again. ‘Well, that takes me back a bit …’

‘I just hope there isn’t any poison ivy back here …’