Robert Coover - Gerald's Party

‘Here,’ I said, straining the drink into a cocktail glass and handing it to her. My hand was shaking. I glanced past her shoulder, creased by its heavy strap, into the TV room, where Charley had Steve the plumber in a huddle, apparently trying to sell him something. The Inspector stood just behind them, watching the television, his back to the door. Well, I thought, if things seemed out of focus, I could do something about it. I reached into the ice bucket for the pick. The handle felt worn and comfortable in my grip. ‘Now if you don’t mind, my son asked me …’

‘I’ll go in with you.’ She didn’t seem to want to let go of me.

Charley passed us in the doorway, giving the thumbs-up sign. ‘I may get group outa this,’ he growled happily, ‘if I c’n juss fine — hah, there she is!’

As though this were an announcement, Pardew turned around and said: ‘Good, our engineer! Perhaps she can help!’

Steve was squatting behind the TV set once again, assisting the bearded technician. Images were flickering intermittently on the screen, and sometimes in montage, as though the switching cables had somehow fused. ‘Such commotions had a way of flarin’ up at public executions in olden times — and recent ones, too, y’know,’ Lloyd Draper remarked, peering down his nose at the set (I caught fleeting glimpses there of the back of Jim’s head, Noble doing an obscene handkerchief trick, Fats on the floor, the stopped-up toilet, Elstob yipping and snorting, Mee testing a razorblade across the palm of his hand, a patch on Sally Ann’s fly that said ‘OPEN CAREFULLY AND INSERT TAB HERE,’ Horner with her, getting a message in his ear, someone’s fist in a bowl of peanuts, bright lights, out of focus), and Pardew said: ‘I know. Contagious hysteroid reactions of this sort are typical wherever masses are assembled — it’s an imitative ritualization of the bizarre and hallucinatory tendencies of the odd few, and always, I’ve noted, with a tinge of the burlesque. Frankly, it’s the sort of thing I see too much of.’ Patrick, not far from the Inspector’s elbow, gave a sympathetic little sigh.

‘I think we’ve got it now,’ Cynthia said, detaching some cables, plugging in others. The image had stabilized on Mavis (‘ — determined that it was best for all concerned to bring the child home to live with my husband and me for a while,’ she was saying into the camera, her gaze intent yet misty, ‘in order to keep her under daily observation, and perhaps to assist her — through close personal guidance and a more precise education — to transcend her singular and somewhat—’) and they switched it now to Quagg, being interviewed, or perhaps interviewing himself.

‘Okay,’ said the technician, crawling out from behind the set, adjusting slightly the color. ‘I’ll go pick up the camera.’

‘That’s right,’ Quagg was saying, ‘Ros had just got the lead in our new feature spasm, Socialist Head. It’s a radical and theatrically mind-blowing miracle play that examines the modes and variations of oral sex in a revolutionary society — dynamite stuff really, and of course Ros was like handmade for the part. Howzat? Something special? You betcher ass, baby! We’d really hoped to hit the nut on this one, get our tokus outa the tub, but now … with poor Ros on ice …’ His voice broke. ‘Aw shit …’

As the camera, hand-held, began to move away from Zack past Vic and Daffie, Eileen, Scarborough in a gloomy hangdog slump, Alison’s husband, the crowd around Mavis (‘ — but little did we imagine —’ I heard her say), and on out into the hall, where Horner and the man in the chalkstriped suit could be seen racing each other for the basement stairs, Teresa peeking into the downstairs toilet (the camera seemed to be headed either out or up: now the front door came into view), the Inspector, clutching my son’s stuffed rabbit in his arms, his finger in its hole, continued his angry harangue about what he called ‘this compulsive attraction for the new, for sensations, thrills, overloaded circuits, the human imagination unchecked by the proper and necessary intervention of sober critical faculties, and so laid open to all manner of excess and delirium.’ Patrick punctuated this monologue with his infatuated yeasaying (‘Oh yes! Absolutely! Dreadful! Utterly insane!’ — his split lip had made his lisp worse), all the while trying to touch the bunny in Pardew’s arms. Staring at the glass eyes of the stuffed bunny, I seemed to see my mother-in-law’s stern demanding gaze. Right now , she’d said. I cleared my throat. ‘Excuse me, Inspector, I—’

‘ Sshh! ’ Pardew hissed, squinting at the set, and Patrick snapped: ‘Yes, Gerald, don’t interrupt!’

‘But you must — the police — your two officers — in the kitchen, my—! ’

‘Not now, damn you!’

‘ But—! ’ My throat was all knotted up, I could hardly speak. ‘My son needs her! It’s not fair! ’ I might as well have been shouting into the wind. I held up the ice pick in my trembling fist: ‘ Look! ’ Cynthia glanced up in alarm. ‘ Here’s what you’ve been—!’

‘ There! You see?! ’ Pardew was pointing excitedly at the TV, where Ginger, seemingly in a state of shock, her pigtails collapsed, wavered at the top of the stairs. ‘Who was that man with her just then?’ ‘I didn’t see, we’ll get it on playback …’ Clutching a kerchief to her mouth and a hand to her bared breast, she wobbled forward, but as if unaware of the stairs in front of her: she hovered there a moment with one foot out in space like a divining rod, then came down hard, striking the edge of the first step with her thin stiletto heel, her ankle warping, knee buckling, and down she pitched, looping arse over elbow, kerchiefs flying, limbs outflung in all directions, all of it slowed down and thus mockingly balletic in its effects, like someone tumbling on the moon. ‘ A redhead! Of course …! ’ Somehow she hit the landing on her feet, sinking softly into a kind of frog squat, her back to the camera, which was slowly zooming in — but not for long: her narrow bottom bounced in slow motion off the floor like the head of a twin-peened hammer and she began to rise again, floating up into space once more, arcing head-first and heels high toward the camera. ‘It should have been obvious to me!’

‘In Greek theater, you know,’ Patrick confided at his elbow, ‘they put these lovely red wigs—’

‘ What’s happened—?! ’ Pardew cried, so startling Patrick that he fell backward onto Knud, who grunted irritably and rolled over. The screen had gone blank just as Ginger in full tilt was revolving feet-first toward the in-zooming camera, and now the Inspector beat on it with his fists: ‘ Come on, damn you! ’

‘I don’t think it’s the CRT,’ Cynthia said. She worked the switches, picked up Mavis (‘ “— is what it’s for , Aunty May,” the sweet child explained, touching me. I … I didn’t even know I had one …!’), then Daffie tapping her gleaming teeth with a spoon, Noble with a straw up his nose, but only a blank screen where Ginger should be. I lowered my arm, which ached now with its dull news.

‘ It’s a plot! ’ Pardew raged, kicking the set and swatting it with Peedie so hard one of the ears flew off.

‘Uh … I’ll go check the camera,’ Steve the plumber mumbled, slipping away.

‘ Where are my officers—?! ’

‘ That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you! ’ I cried, pointing past his shoulder with the weapon in my hand. But I was pointing in the wrong direction. The two of them were in the doorway behind me.