Robert Coover - Gerald's Party

‘You avvertisin’ that ugly tally-whacker, Big G, or juss givin’ direck-shuns?’ asked Charley, leaning boozily over my shoulder, my wife’s dustmop under his arm as a crutch, Jim helping him at the other elbow.

‘Yup, vanished days and all that …’

‘Don’t laugh, Charley. It hurts.’

‘Seen a lot of ’em like that in my day,’ sighed Lloyd, still squirting from time to time. ‘They weren’t workin’ too well either, of course …’

‘Who’s laughin’? I’ll trayja even’n throw in m’new alligator golfshoes b’sides!’

‘Whoo- EEEE! Jes’ call me Pipi’ ’cuz Ah’m all your’n! ’ hooted Earl Elstob, joining us (‘Thieves’ hangouts, we called ’em in the trade …’), shooting a stream out over the flowerbeds and — thrummm! — against the toolshed wall. Jim and Charley were already firing away at shorter range and I was able at last to join in as well. Our radiant streams gleamed in the pallid glow from the windows (the man who had been standing there had disappeared) like a row of footlights. Tania had once spent six months on a painting she’d called ‘The Garden,’ trying to capture this glow, this strange yearning (she’d related it to what she’d called ‘the sleeping dragon, the hidden force of nature’), and what she’d ended up with, she’d said, was a fair facsimile of an illustration from a children’s book she’d had as a little girl.

‘Hey, Earl,’ laughed Charley, ‘didja hear the one about the guy who takes his wife to the theater, ’n atta — ha ha! — innermission—’

‘The thee-ater?’

‘Move over, ladies,’ said Fats, joining us, ‘I gotta re-hearse the scenery here!’

‘Yeah, ’n atta innermission he’s gotta take a leak, so he hurries off to the can. But he goes through a wrong door somehow ’n ends up inna goddamn garden!’

‘Oh yeah? Huh huh,’ snorted Elstob from under his overbite, still managing to hit the wall but no longer threatening to drill a hole through it, and Fats, crossing Earl’s stream with one of his own, said: ‘Too-chay!’

‘Well, the garden’s very fancy, y’know — inna French style, as y’might say—’

‘Yuh huh hee,’ Earl sniggered, jiggling around. Lloyd had left us, but his place was taken almost immediately by a guy in corduroys and a tweed jacket with suede elbows: ‘This the place?’ he asked, smiling apologetically around his bent briar pipe, and someone in the bushes behind us, grunting, said: ‘Well — ungh! — there goes a little bit of eternity …’

‘And in a fancy garden like ’at, Earl, he don’ wanna weewee onna lotuses nor leave no nasty puddles around, right? So, real careful-like, he lifts a plant out of a flowerpot ’n unloads in ’at, ’n’en putsa plant back ’n — hoff! — tippytoes back to his seat—’

‘Sounds like the one about the audience catharsis at the tragical farces,’ remarked Jim, winding down.

‘Yes,’ I said, meaning something else. Alison had made some remark about intermissions that night at the theater, giving them an importance that haunted me now. ‘Exactly …’

‘Onlya goddamn play’s awready started up again when he gess back to his seat, see—’

‘My name’s Gottfried,’ the man beside me offered, extending his free hand. I changed hands and took it.

‘Oh yes — you came with Fiona.’

‘’N he leans over to his ole lady,’ Charley rumbled, leaning over toward Earl, ‘’n he says to her, he says (‘Fiona—?’): “Hey, sugarpuss, whuzz happen so far iniss act?” ’ What Alison had said that night we met, smiling up at me over her fresh cup of coffee, was that perhaps without intermissions there could be no catharsis in modern theater — and only much later did it occur to me (‘I feel like all my energy’s just leaking away,’ someone murmured behind us, ‘and it gives me a very mystical feeling, like I’m in tune with the universe or something …’) that what she’d really said was ‘intromissions’ … ‘ “You oughta know, you dumb shit,” his wife says,’ Charley was saying, ‘all scrunched down ’n mad as a bear with a bee up its ass: “ you were in it! ” ’

Earl staggered backward, yaw-hawing uncontrollably, making us all duck, just as Leonard skipped out from behind the toolshed in front of us and started popping photos: ‘Help! I’m blind!’ wailed Fats, shooting straight up in the air.

‘Come on, Leonard, what’re you doing?’

‘This goin’ in the sports pages or the church announcements?’

‘God, all I see are spots!’

‘The hard thing sometimes,’ sighed Gottfried beside me sucking on his drooping pipe, ‘is just letting go …’

‘Obishuaries, mos’ like …’

‘Jesus, I thought those two yoyos left when they took Yvonne away!’

‘ Yvonne—? ’ cried Fats (‘…And then, other times, there’s nothing to it …’). ‘ Who did?’

‘Hurry!’ Alison whispered urgently behind me, rushing past. ‘I’m almost done!’ I gasped, trying to blink away my momentary blindness, but she was already gone, vanished like an apparition. ‘Wait!’ Then Leonard’s flashgun went off again and I saw her, running barefoot toward the back porch (how small she looked!), clutching her tights like a spare wrap, her green sash loose and fluttering behind, pursued by Dickie and that guy in the chalkstriped suit — ‘ Hey! ’ I shouted, just as Dickie caught a toe in a croquet wicket and slapped into the mud. Leonard missed it, shooting instead at a confused and bedraggled Howard being helped down the porch steps by Daffie and Anatole (‘Ugh! just don’t look back,’ someone muttered behind me), Noble following them out, holding his crotch, his glass eye lighting up with the pop of the flash. ‘Oh Christ,’ Dickie swore, brushing futilely at the dark stains on his bright white trousers, as Alison, with a desperate backward glance, crashed into Noble, ‘not shit—! ’ ‘Yvonne?’ Fats was blubbering. ‘I can’t believe it!’ Leonard’s flashgun went off again (Howard stuck his tongue out at it, Anatole threw his hand up): Alison, Noble, and the guy in the chalkstripes had disappeared.

‘Well, folks — shlup! — Godspeed!’ announced Earl Elstob with a toothy self-congratulating grin, doing himself up and wandering off. He headed toward the porch, but seemed to lose his way, circling back into the bushes behind us instead.

‘No need for you guys to rush away on our account,’ Daffie announced, her tongue slurred with gin, as she and Anatole dragged Howard over and propped him up beside us (Fats had just gone charging off, crying: ‘ Bren! My god , Bren! It’s Yvonne! They’ve took our Yvonne …! ’ and Jim was zipping up). ‘Nothing going on in there but a goddamn funeral.’

‘ ’Ass pretty much whuzz goin’ on out here,’ remarked Charley, shaking his member out. ‘Well, anyway I won’ be hard to find inna dark …’

‘Funeral?’

‘… Juss feel around, it won’ be hard …’

‘Yeah, for Ros. Fucking ghost festival, they’re calling it, talking to spirits — they’re outa their conks.’ She opened up Howard’s pants, fished around inside. She was having trouble keeping her footing. Someone shrieked back in the bushes, Elstob sniggered giddily, there was a thump, and Earl reappeared, doubled over, making his way once more toward the back porch. ‘Jesus, Howard, where is the damned thing —?’

‘Can I help?’ offered Jim.

‘I c’n do’t myself! ’ Howard cried out, but it was all bravado, he was helpless. Distantly there were squeals and laughter coming from the upstairs bedroom, largely drowned out by the squeals and laughter behind us as Leonard’s flash went off in the bushes.