Robert Coover - Gerald's Party

She held up a pair of my pale blue stretch denims that my wife had up here for mending. ‘These okay?’

‘Sure.’

She got one foot on all right, but had trouble managing the other, stumbling and loping through the pillows and laundry until she hit a wall that propped her up. ‘Tell me something, Ger,’ she panted, ‘that was your joystick in the photos with Ros, wasn’t it?’ I nodded, feeling a prickling in my eyes again. ‘I thought I recognized it when you were outside hosing down the roses. Who took the shots?’

‘Some guy. We spent all afternoon at it.’ Daffie had the jeans up past her thighs but was having difficulty, in spite of the give in the material, squeezing the rest in. ‘A funny thing, there was a matinee on that afternoon, and Ros was supposed to make a final brief appearance as one of a group of resistance fighters, which she forgot about until she heard them shouting for her. She went drifting dreamily away from us and, through the wrong entrance, out onto the set, wearing luminous green paint, some feathers on her tail, and a golden crown, which of course brought the house down. Then, apropos of nothing happening on stage, she delivered her one line: ‘ Follow me, brothers, we have lost the battle, but we have not lost the war! ’ Daffie laughed, but she was crying too. I wiped at my own eyes with my shirtsleeves. ‘Probably her finest hour …’

Daffie took my arm. The jeans were stretched so tightly around her hips they seemed almost to glow, but the waistband gaped above like an open barrel. ‘Come on, Ger, stop your snuffling, let’s go get juiced.’

‘Do you want a shirt?’

‘Nah, it’s too hot …’

Earl Elstob came dragging a dazed Michelle into the room as we left it. ‘Huh!’ he slobbered, weaving a bit, his eyes crossing. ‘Yuh know how tuh — shlup! — make a gal’s eyes light up?’

‘Listen, Michelle,’ Daffie said, reaching for her free hand, ‘let’s go suck a turkey leg.’

‘It’s all right,’ Michelle murmured, ‘I don’t mind.’

‘Yeah, but come on , honey, this birdseed?’

‘ Yuh plug her in! ’ Elstob hollered, falling back against the doorjamb. Steve the plumber and some older guy, I saw, were trying to repair the door into my son’s room, watched grimly by my mother-in-law; Janny stood by, looking bored, chatting with Hoo-Sin.

‘I know how he feels,’ Michelle said gently. ‘I had a dream once that I had teeth like that in my vagina.’ Hoo-Sin was sweeping her hands about as though describing a vast space: ‘In the West you think of it as a river, but in the East it is a placid silent pool,’ she said. Mark seemed to have settled down at last. ‘Everybody laughed at me and pushed awful things up me to watch me chew. My Daddy took me to an orthodontist, but when he pointed to the problem, I ate my Daddy’s finger off.’ She sighed. ‘Yuh huh huh!’ Earl snorted, slapping his knee, and Janny said: ‘I guess I mostly think of it as a leaky faucet.’ ‘After that, the teeth weren’t there anymore, it was a different dream …’

‘Hey — huh! — yuh know what a bedspring is?’

‘Spare me!’ begged Daffie, pulling me toward the stairs, where we nearly crashed into our new neighbor, Mrs Waddilow, stumbling pale-faced out of the bathroom, her eyes popping from their sockets: ‘For the love of God, why didn’t somebody tell me—?!’ she croaked, and went clambering weak-kneed down the stairs ahead of us. ‘I know what a buzz you get outa your wonky guest lists, Ger, but where’d you ever dig up that squirrelly suck-egg?’

‘Charley brought him …’

The porch door flew open at the foot of the stairs and in strode Benedetto and four or five friends, all dressed up still in their Renaissance theater costumes. Discovering me on the landing, Beni flung his arms wide and cried: ‘Sir! What sort of affair is this? There’s a body out there in the bushes!’

‘What—?’

Daffie seemed to stumble and she clutched my arm. ‘Was he … dressed in white?’

‘Madame, I am not even certain it was a he! Which is not, I hasten to add, a present dilemma …!’ He twirled the tip of his false moustache, ogling her bosom grandly, then swept off his plumed hat and bowed.

‘I’ll give him a call,’ I said, pulling away. Hilario, standing at the foot with two drinks in his hands — a highball and what looked like dregs from the bottom of a mop bucket — said: ‘Beni, you haff see anytheeng yet, I theenk!’

I remembered a play I’d seen, Ros wasn’t in it, in which the actors, once on stage — it was ostensibly some sort of conventional drawing-room comedy — couldn’t seem to get off again. The old pros in the cast had tried to carry on, but the stage had soon got jammed up with bit actors — messengers, butlers, maids and the like — who, trapped and without lines, had become increasingly panic-stricken. In the commotion, the principal actors had got pushed upstage and out of sight, only a few scattered lines coming through as testimony to their professionalism. Some had tried to save the show, some each other, most just themselves. It was intended to produce a kind of gathering terror, but though I hadn’t felt it then (a stage is finally just a stage), I was suddenly feeling it now.

I dialed the number, turned to Daffie, who’d been stopped by Hilario: ‘I cannot find peenk, so I meex violent and green — hokay?’

‘Hello?’

‘Benedetto!’ cried Quagg, brushing past me, his cape flying.

‘Zachariah! My friend!’

‘Hello? Is that you, Dickie?’ Daffie, without looking at the drink, tossed half of it back — then, wheezing, held it out at arm’s length, bugging her eyes at it. Zack was carrying on noisily about the act he was getting up (‘We got this wild frame, man, about a jealous old hag who spooked Roger and cast a spell on Ros — a kind of fairy godmother, ancient sex queen, and death-demon all in one, see …’), Beni approving exclamatorily and booming out introductions, while behind me people were clambering up and down the cellar stairs, or coming in from the backyard, there was music pouring out of the living room — I couldn’t hear a thing. ‘Dickie—?’

‘Who is this? Ger?’

‘Benedetto!’ cried Regina, sweeping past.

‘Dickie! Are you all right?’ I shouted. Daffie, her damp breasts drooping with relief, slumped back against the stairway and, wrinkling her nose up (‘Regina! My little dumpling!’), carried on with her drinking.

‘Hell, I dunno, I think I drank too much. Listen, Ger, call me in the morning when I’m feeling better, okay?’

‘Ach! Regina!’

‘Olga!’

‘I’m sorry, Dickie, there’s a … a body outside — and we thought—’

‘Yeah, I saw it. Hey, what did you do to my little Nay, Ger?’

‘What do you mean?’ I glanced at the traffic on the basement stairs. Noble came up holding his crotch, his good eye dilated from the dark, the mock one apparently having fallen out. ‘Christ!’ he groaned happily, ‘I think my goddamn balls are turning blue!’ He was wearing my new herringbone shirt — I hadn’t even taken the pins out yet; it was stretched out of shape and already sweaty in the armpits. I turned away.

‘Well, she’s over the moon, Ger, you’re all she talks about.’

‘She’s there with you?’ Vic had appeared in the living room doorway, looking rumpled and tired, ready to go home probably. The song on the hi-fi was a melancholic old showtune, ‘It’s All Happened Before,’ a song from one of Ros’s plays, The Lover’s Lexicon.

‘Yeah, well, I admit I’m only second best. You’ve got the touch, Ger — she’s taken a real shine to you, as you might say.’ It was a relief to know she was all right. What had I been thinking? ‘I don’t know if it’s over,’ the vocalist was singing, ‘or if it’s just begun …’ Quagg had found Alison’s husband somewhere and now dragged him over to meet the newcomers. One of the women kissed him. Benedetto gave him a big hug and planted his floppy wide-brimmed hat on his head. He flushed and, pulling on his beard, grinned sheepishly underneath it. Vic watched benignly, seeming to hover at some empyrean remove. I felt his detachment like a kind of balm and began, myself (‘… but tonight,’ came the song, ‘you’re the only one …’), to disengage. After all, I thought, what else was there to do? ‘She says you’re the kindest sweetest man she’s ever known.’