Robert Coover - Gerald's Party

‘Sounds good to me,’ said Fred, rigging up a lamp with an odd-shaped bulb (‘Ultraviolet,’ he added when he saw me staring: ‘certain, um, substances usually always fluoresce …’), while his partner fiddled with a little rubber tube of some sort.

Eileen came in for some ice: For Vic,’ she said. The bruises on her face made her seem wistful and sullen at the same time. ‘He’s just been down to the rec room, he needs a drink.’

‘That sonuvabitch,’ Fred muttered, touching his neckbrace, and Bob grunted: ‘Don’t worry, pardner. We’ll get him.’

‘Have you been up … to see Tania?’ my wife asked, as though to change the subject.

It was strange. As I started to speak, I felt everything that had happened during the evening roll up behind me to feed my reply — and then, even before I got the words out, it faded … ‘Not … not—’

‘It’s like … she was trying to … to put the fire out,’ she added. I felt as though something were unfinished, like an interrupted sneeze. As though ( ‘Ouch! ’ she cried, wincing, and I felt my own eyes screw up in sympathy) I’d been preparing all night to do something — and then forgot what it was. My wife closed her eyes for a moment while Bob put his mouth to one end of the tube. ‘It must have been happening — ngh! — all night. I don’t know why I … didn’t notice …’

‘Well, we all see only what we want to see …’

‘Maybe she just got tired of waiting,’ said Eileen wearily.

‘I … I let the water … out of the tub …’ Her knuckles, clenched tight, were white as burnished salt. Eileen had left. ‘If you do go up, Gerald …’ she added, then gasped and held her breath a moment, ‘could you — oh! … check on Mark? He … can’t seem to settle down.’

‘Of course …’ Iris Draper pushed through the dining room door now with Michelle, the chants from the other side augmenting momentarily. They seemed to be parading around the table in there. ‘It was the same day,’ Michelle was saying, ‘that Roger had that dream about the old hunchback with her drawers full of gold.’ ‘Was that a dream?’

‘He dropped a bag of water on Louise’s head. It …’ She gulped for air. I stared down at the bald spot on the top of Bob’s head and thought about the Inspector’s view of time and what he called — how did he put it? — the specious present …

‘Yes, and apparently what happened, you see, is that Ros just opened the door and stepped out.’

‘It … made her cry …’

‘Really!’ Iris exclaimed, as they stepped outside. ‘She might have been killed!’

… The mysterious spread toward futurity …

‘Well, she was on acid or something …’

‘Perhaps, in the end, all self-gratification leads to tragedy,’ Alison’s husband murmured behind my shoulder. Fred was looking for a wall plug. ‘We’ll have to use an extension cord,’ he muttered, and Bob, peering closely at a little bottle, wiped his mouth and grunted. ‘But then, what doesn’t …?’

‘It was so sad. In the old days, I’m sure … she would have laughed.’ She opened her eyes again. There were tears in them. ‘Do you remember that big jolly laugh Louise used to have …?’

‘That was a long time ago.’

‘I don’t think you want to watch this,’ Fred said, uncoiling the cord. ‘We’ll let you know—’

‘No, I’m not leaving,’ I insisted, but just then Alison came through from the back, barefoot and unbuttoned, hair loose, eyes dilated from the darkness. She shot me a glance full of — love? betrayal? desire? fear? (‘And Dolph was so funny,’ my wife was saying, ‘we always had … such good times then …’) — then padded hastily on into the dining room, Noble and the man in the chalkstriped suit banging in behind her, their shirttails out: ‘Where’d she go?’ they laughed.

‘You must hurry!’ whispered Alison’s husband, clearly shaken (we shared this), and my wife reached out to touch my hand. ‘Yes, Gerald,’ she sighed, ‘it’s all right … you might be needed …’

‘I’ll — I’ll go find the Inspector!’ I declared (Noble, lumbering through the dining room door, had glanced back to smirk one-eyed at me, a streak of red down one cheek, Alison’s green tights tied round his thick neck like a superhero’s cape). ‘He’ll put a stop to this!’

‘Now, now,’ admonished Fred, peering round at me past his neckbrace (I was already at the door), ‘none of that …!’

‘Wait, Gerald!’ my wife called out faintly. ‘I nearly forgot …!’ Maybe, I was thinking, I should say something to the Inspector about Noble, the hairbrush and all that — he’s capable of anything. ‘I’ve made some nachos. They’re … they’re on a cookie tray in the oven … Could you …?’ ‘Nachos! But—?!’

‘These what you’re looking for?’ Steve the plumber asked, bumping in behind me with an assortment of small red-handled pliers in his callused hands, and Bob, setting down a can of hairspray, said: ‘That’s them.’

‘Please, Gerald … they’ve been in there … too long already!’

‘I changed the washers on the downstairs taps and reset the drum on your dryer,’ Steve said, moving over to the foot of the table, ‘but I haven’t been able to do anything yet about the stool upstairs.’

‘Please …’

From this angle I couldn’t see my wife’s face — my view was blocked by Fred and Steve between her legs — but I knew she must be near to tears. I hurried over to the stove, stuffed my hands impatiently into oven mitts (Alison’s husband was chewing on his beard again), and opened the oven door. ‘Good god!’ I exclaimed as I pulled the tray of nachos out. ‘There’s a turkey in here!’

‘Yes … it’s from the freezer,’ she gasped. Steve looked up and said: ‘I’ve rung my partner. He’ll bring the tools we need for the biffy.’ ‘It could use another … twenty minutes or so …’

‘But—!’

‘Don’t worry, we’ll watch the timer,’ Fred assured me, and went over to open the dining room door for me, seemingly eager to get me out of there. I heard the chants still, but more distantly, interspersed with waves of silence: they’d moved off to some other part of the house. ‘And don’t you be bothering the Inspector,’ he added, snatching up a couple of hot nachos and juggling them in his hands (Steve was watching closely as the tall cop plugged in his vacuum cleaner and limped toward my wife with the suction hose), then popping one in his mouth. ‘He’s got a lot on his mind right now.’

His warning seemed almost a challenge, a dare, and as I carried the tray of nachos into the dining room (Dolph was there at the table, scraping at the remains of a bowl of moussaka, Dickie using a candle to light up a joint), I thought: It’s clear, I’ve got to meet Pardew head-on right now. In fact, hadn’t I already made this decision before coming back in from outside? ‘Dolph, could you move that bowl so I can use the hot plate?’

‘Hey, nachos! Your wife finally remembered us beer drinkers!’

Across the room, Mavis, surrounded by those stragglers not interested in Quagg’s funeral parade in the next room, stretched her arms up, palms out flat, as though pressing them against some unseen wall: I sympathized with this. ‘And that’s coriander she’s traipsing through, if I’m not mistaken, and there’s sweet calamus,’ Iris Draper was saying nearby, identifying the plants in Tania’s painting for Eileen, who stood leaning against a wall, staring puffily into space. ‘And those look like jujube trees, which the ancients got mixed up with something else, and this is probably sandalwood …’ Between them, Vic, looking battered and unsteady but still strong, poured himself another drink. ‘Looks like you stepped pretty deep in the dew, Gerry,’ Dolph remarked around a mouthful of half-chewed nacho. ‘It’s halfway up your pantleg there …’