Robert Coover - Gerald's Party

‘It’s very nice,’ said Iris, and my wife sighed and said: ‘It serves its purpose, I guess.’ Alison’s husband frowned when he saw me; what’s-his-name (Geoffrey?) from outside smiled and waved. ‘Do you need any help, Gerald?’

‘Jim’s coming,’ I gasped, gritting my teeth, and Wilma, buttoning Teresa up the back, said: ‘You should have seen Cyril just now on television! You really missed it! He’s a natural!’ ‘He’s a pig.’ ‘How can you say that?’ ‘Haven’t you heard?’ Gottfried, that was his name (‘Fiona? Really —?’), I could hardly think. My head seemed to be full of little sparks. ‘But you’re … all right—?’

‘All right?’

‘The — gasp! — interview …’

‘Oh yes, Woody was very helpful. Some of the things they were doing were apparently illegal.’ She was wearing that plasticky apron with the old soap ad on it, and it made her look stiff and mechanical somehow. ‘He made them take the candle out, for example.’ Iris came by, evidently studying the paintwork, or maybe all the childish decals on everything. ‘Goodness, I suppose it was a mistake to do all that laundry …’

The bearded guy with the video camera on his shoulder pushed in behind the others, viewfinder to his eye, one hand working the zoom. I tried to turn my back to him, but it hurt too much to move. Iris spied the fallen peckersweater and picked it up: ‘Interesting!’ she said, adjusting her spectacles. Sally Ann reached up and covered herself as the cameraman closed in. ‘If you haven’t really done it, Gerry, don’t let him see.’

‘Wait for me!’ called Teresa (Wilma was in the doorway, introducing herself to the two strangers, a stout man in a brown three-piece suit and a white-haired lady in lime slacks, a pink-and-lemon shirt, Iris saying something about having to go through her catalogues when she got home, see if she could find one, Lloyd was always getting a chill). ‘My other shoe …’

‘I think I’m lying on it,’ Daffie grumbled, and Hilario, turning to go, asked: ‘Ees peenk woe-man, no?’

‘Any color you can get, lover.’

‘The only trouble,’ Iris decided, after a stroll through the room (‘What’s she trying to hide?’ the cameraman wanted to know, and Cynthia tugged Sally Ann’s hands away: ‘Don’t worry, dear, it’s all right …’), ‘is that there’s not enough light.’

‘I know, it’s on the north side.’

‘No, I meant the wallpaper.’

‘Well, now, let’s see what we have here,’ Jim said, announcing himself, and the cameraman moved on (‘It’s called “Paintbox Green,” ’ my wife was saying) to pick up Daffie. ‘What do you think about the breakdown of law and order in our society?’ he asked as he zoomed in. ‘She seized up on him,’ Cynthia explained quietly, lifting the root of my penis. ‘Just here at the neck.’ Jim set his bag down and knelt beside us. ‘Hmmm,’ he said, probing Sally Ann’s thighs and the muscles around her anus. ‘All this handcream she has packed in here might’ve helped if she’d put it in the right place …’

‘That’s the sort of sewing machine I’ve been telling you about, honey,’ the lady in the lime slacks said.

‘Ah, yes …’

‘These are our new neighbors from down the street, Gerald. Mr and Mrs Waddilow.’

I craned around to look at them. ‘We heard the music and just stopped in to say hello,’ Mr Waddilow smiled. ‘Hope you don’t mind.’ Alison’s husband had disappeared, Hilario as well, but Howard was in the room now, over in the far corner near the ironingboard closet, wearing Tania’s half-lens reading glasses on the fat part of his nose, watching the cameraman as he panned the horizon of Daffie’s body. ‘You’ve got a nice place here,’ said Mr Waddilow.

‘Why don’t you stuff that ray gun up your ass, cowboy?’ Daffie suggested.

‘It’s lightweight and almost entirely automatic, with a special attachment for lace edging,’ Mrs Waddilow called from across the room.

‘What?’ her husband toddled over to look at it, his pantcuffs riding an inch or two above his white socks and two-toned shoes, crossing paths with Howard, who floated out now without saying a word, hands clapped decorously over his brassiere cups. ‘Oh yes, I see. Very good.’

‘Mr Waddilow is an airline pilot, Gerald.’ ‘Does this hurt?’ asked Jim. ‘ Yes! ’ cried Sally Ann, and I yelped as well. ‘I don’t think we’ve ever had a real pilot in our neighborhood before, have we?’

‘No … but — ow! — if you don’t mind …’

‘Retired, actually,’ Mr Waddilow said, hooking his thumbs in the pockets of his brown vest. ‘I’m in travel now.’

‘This old sewing basket is nice, too,’ Mrs Waddilow added.

‘You should check on Mark,’ I gasped, ‘they broke the door down—’

‘I know, I was just in there. Mother’s fixing Peedie.’ That’s right, I noticed now, I couldn’t hear him anymore. ‘Someone put the ears on backward.’

‘I’m afraid that was my fault,’ smiled Cynthia, looking up over her shoulder. ‘I don’t know much about rabbits.’

‘ Wah—! ’

‘Sorry …’

‘If I can be of any help,’ Mr Waddilow said. ‘I used to raise rabbits.’

‘You can feel here the adductor muscles,’ Jim was explaining (Woody had returned and now squatted by Cynthia, pursing his lips thoughtfully), ‘the so-called “pillars of virginity,” how tense they are, right up into the vagina.’ ‘Oh yes …’ He searched through his bag, watched closely by the cameraman, who, kneeling beside us, focused now on Jim’s hands. ‘What are you going to do?’ Sally Ann asked apprehensively, propping herself up on her elbows.

‘Take your tonsils out,’ Jim smiled. ‘Now just settle back …’

‘I haven’t seen one of these things in years,’ Woody murmured. His shorts, still on backward, bagged up oddly above his thighs.

‘Come, I’ll show you our guest room,’ said my wife.

‘When you think about it,’ Cynthia whispered, gently separating with ringed fingers Sally Ann’s spongy outer lips, ‘it’s really a kind of packaging problem.’

‘Though actually right now it’s being used by my mother.’

‘Catch you later,’ Mr Waddilow called, following my wife out, and Gottfried tucked his long bent pipe in his mouth and waved again. ‘Oh, do you have your mother staying with you?’ someone said out in the hall. ‘You’re very fortunate!’

‘I’m going to make a very tiny incision,’ Jim explained, and I felt her flinch again. ‘And then you can do the rest with your fingers.’

‘Won’t it hurt …?’

‘Only a little.’ He pulled a stick of gum out of his pocket and handed it to her. ‘Here, this will take your mind off it.’

Sally Ann lay back and unwrapped the gum, her eyes dark with worry and smeared makeup. ‘Is she no longer a virgin then?’ the cameraman asked, zooming in as Jim leaned forward.

‘Who can say? Technically, she’s neither one thing nor the other, but—’

‘ Yow!! ’ I cried.

‘Sorry, Gerry.’

Woody cleared his throat. ‘Well, legally—’

‘Something stabbed me!’

‘I know. Here, hold this up for me, will you?’ he said to Cynthia, pincering the shaft gently between thumb and forefinger. ‘Don’t let it sag …’ Sally Ann’s jaws snapped at the gum as though trying to speed up time, and for a brief moment I felt a certain empathy with the child, roughly but intimately linked with her as I was, as though I’d been giving birth to her and the navel string had knotted up and needed cutting. Not (I shuddered, and Cynthia patted my member gently: ‘Won’t be long now …’) that the image was a comforting one.