Robert Coover - Gerald's Party

‘All I did was oil her behind, Dickie.’

‘Well, you know what they say in showbiz, Ger, it’s not the egg—’

‘I know …’ It’s how you lay it. Or crack it. But sometimes, as my wife would say (‘It’s how you scramble it,’ Dickie was saying distantly, not to me but, off-mike as it were, to someone there in the room with him), it is the egg. Woody had joined Vic in the living room doorway, watching me over Vic’s shoulder. I smiled and nodded, but he didn’t return it. Vic was toying wistfully with a fork in his hand, looking as resigned and serene as I’d seen him all night. I remembered something he’d told me about so-called ‘waves of silence’ in the brain — perceived by some apparently as a kind of local conspiracy at the cellular level to shut down briefly and rest up — which he’d denounced as an example of ‘ideological biology,’ but which I saw, having more faith in chemistry than in will, as fundamentally applicable to all behavior, human and otherwise. I felt momentarily suspended in such a wave right now, in fact, as though this quiescent mood were not in me but in the hall itself, maybe the whole house, a conspiratorial nourishing, as it were, of the appetite for tranquility.

‘Hold on a sec, Ger! I got another beautiful lady here who wants to say hello!’ I could hear her shushing him. I’d supposed he’d have to rub it in. Her husband, Benedetto’s plumed hat down around his ears and a look of flushed infatuation on his face, was now preening for Quagg, who was peering at him through a circle of thumb and index finger as though giving him a screen test. I saw this as though peering through a lens myself, as though watching it on an editing table or in some darkened theater. ‘So, for the skeet, we use the faht lady, no?’ ‘She’s been holding out on us, Ger.’

‘The Arctic explorer? Nah, she’s in there purring like a cat, Hilly, but we can work in her crazy story — a kind of initiation bit, the sacred cave—’

‘She’s terrific …’

‘I’m sure,’ I said and swallowed. ‘Sacred cave?’ her husband asked from under the brim of Beni’s hat. He didn’t seem to know. Or if he did, he accepted it. Maybe I wasn’t the only one he’d struck a deal with. My head was starting to ache. ‘Yeah, it’s a symbol for the unconscious,’ Quagg was explaining to him. He looked pained. ‘You know, where all the action takes place.’ I closed my eyes. ‘Give her … my love,’ I whispered, remembering something she’d said that night we met: beauty in the theater is not a question of language or action, she’d insisted (I’d tried to argue it was a balance of both), but of the hidden voice and the mysterious illusion of crossed destinies. Yes (I opened my eyes), I could see that … Vic, his gray head tilted toward Woody (he was still peering at me, past Vic’s hunched shoulder), seemed to be boiling up again: perhaps the wave was passing. I turned to look into the dining room (‘You won’t believe what she’s got tattooed on her handsome little ass, Ger!’), but caught a glimpse of (‘ What?! ’ Vic roared — ‘ With Sally Ann—?! ’) Horner, mouth agape, eyes startled: ‘ Duck! ’ he yelped.

‘ You! You goddamn traitorous sonuvabitch — YOU were the one! ’

I whirled around just in time to see Vic lunging toward me, a terrible look on his ravaged face I’d never seen before, not frontally like this, his bloodshot eyes ablaze, lips drawn back, fist clenched around the fork, raised to strike — ‘ Vic! Wait—! ’

Two shots rang out, something hit me in the shoulder, there was a shriek and a tumble, people falling all around me — Vic slumped to one knee, a look of awe and wonder erasing his rage, then pitched forward and fell into my arms. The tall cop, Bob, crouched in the living room doorway (Woody had vanished), the smoking barrel of his revolver staring me in the face. ‘Oh my god! Vic—! ’

I felt something warm and wet on my hands. Vic groaned, his shaggy head heavy on my chest. The cop limped toward us, keeping his gun on him. ‘What have you done—? ’, I cried.

‘He was going for you, so I shot him.’

‘But — he was my best friend! ’ The cop grabbed Vic by the collar, threw him backward to the floor. There was a big hole in his chest. ‘All he had was a damned fork! ’ I was nearly screaming.

‘I missed him once — this time I made fucking sure.’ He kicked Vic but got no response. Vic was breathing in short gasps, his eyelids fluttering.

The others started picking themselves up. ‘What happened?’ asked Teresa, coming in from the dining room with a dessert plate heaped with turkey stuffing, cheese balls, and pickles. I stared at my bloody hands, my eyes watering, then knelt by Vic. It had all happened so fast … ‘Hey, old man …?’ There was no reply: his head lolled, his mouth gaped. ‘So that’s it,’ Eileen said stonily, standing framed in the living room doorway. ‘I knew it’d end like this.’ Perhaps she had known. I recalled her oracle on the toilet and even before that I remembered thinking, when she was lying on the couch in the living room, Vic having just struck her, that she had glimpsed something that none of the rest of us were aware of yet. Maybe Vic had seen it, too, and had merely been swinging blindly at a truth that enraged him. ‘I tried to warn him, and the sonuvabitch beat me up.’

Cynthia eased past her, squatted by Vic (‘You can come on back now, tiger,’ Daffie was saying, having picked up the fallen phone receiver, ‘they just shot that little girl’s old man …’), touched his throat. This seemed to help for some reason: he closed his mouth, blinked, tried to focus. When he saw me, a pained look crossed his face, then faded. ‘Get Sally Ann …’ he whispered.

‘Sure, Vic, but—’

‘And a drink.’

‘Listen, I’m sorry, but—’

‘ Fuck sorry! Get me a goddamn drink! ’ he croaked.

‘Vic—?’

‘He won’t listen to you,’ Eileen said dully. The others watched us now at a distance, keeping a wary eye at the same time on the cop, who was reloading his revolver. ‘He’s a smart guy. He knows it all.’

‘I’ll get him something,’ Teresa offered, sucking a pickle. ‘What’s his—?’

‘Bourbon.’

‘The kid? Nah, last I saw, that chirpy fatassed welfare worker was taking him out on the back patch to get his stake tolled,’ said Daffie glumly on the phone. ‘I’ve had nothing but the goddamn losers, Dickie, I don’t like it here.’

‘Where the hell am I?’ Vic wheezed. He groped weakly for his chest as though looking for something in his pocket there.

‘You’re at my house, Vic. A party—’

‘Jesus Christ! I’m bleeding! Oh, shit, Gerry! What have you done …?’

‘Hey, maybe we can work this in,’ mused Quagg, squinting down at Vic, as he slumped there against Cynthia (‘Well, who knows … maybe it’s the — gasp! — the way I wanted it …’), clutching his wound. ‘I like the fast action!’ Malcolm Mee, who’d joined him, nodded, then mimed the draw. ‘ Right! Blue lightning , man!’ laughed Quagg.

‘Yeah, well, when you’re done, you can kiss mine,’ Daffie mumbled tearfully, and banged the receiver in its cradle.

‘Only maybe the guy who gets his lights blown out is the one playing Roger on the stage, and it’s Roger himself, out in the audience, who does the shooting!’

‘Roger’s dead, Zack.’

‘Listen, I know, you think I’m crazy? I’m talking about the play , man!’

‘Roger—?’

‘It’s been a long night, Prissy Loo.’