Robert Coover - Gerald's Party

Teresa returned with a tumbler of iced bourbon. ‘Here,’ she said and, bending over, spilled her plate of food in Vic’s lap. ‘Oops! Darn, that’s all the stuffing there was left!’

Cynthia took the glass and held it to his lips — he slurped at it greedily, choking and spluttering, then knocked it to the floor; it rolled across the hall, the ice cubes scattering like thrown dice.

‘Hey,’ warned Bob, waggling his revolver.

‘Do you mind?’ asked Teresa, picking the food off his lap with her fingers and eating it. ‘It’s a shame to waste it.’

‘The way I see it, we got Ros playing herself — we use the corpse, I mean — but the rest of the cast interacts with it like she’s alive, you dig? The trick being to make the audience get the sense she really is alive!’

Vic peered up at us under his shaggy gray brows, his eyes crossing. ‘ Another one! ’ he demanded, and broke into a fit of coughing.

‘I don’t like it,’ Regina objected. ‘It’s like abusing the dead or something.’

‘I think he’s going …’

‘We’re not abusing Ros, baby, we’re abusing death itself through Ros — really, it’s an affirmation!’

‘I dunno, Zack, somehow it’s like that time you pulled that onstage autopsy—’

‘He needs help,’ said Cynthia. ‘Is that doctor—?’

Bob twirled the revolver on his index finger (‘But that was beautiful , Vadge!’), slapped it into the holster. ‘I think I seen him in the kitchen.’

‘Yeah, if you could stop from throwing up.’

‘I’ll get him,’ I said.

Before I could reach the kitchen door, though (‘Say, where’s that sewer hog?’ Quagg turned to ask as I passed him. ‘We could use him as an extra grip to help the Scar.’ ‘There’s two of ’em here now, Zack,’ said Horner, ‘him and his partner …’), Talbot, Dolph, and the guy in the chalkstriped suit came whooping and hallooing through it, bearing Anatole on their shoulders. ‘Ta- DAHH! ’ they cried. Anatole, half-dressed and grinning sheepishly, begged to be put down, but his porters only hooted the louder, parading him around the room, getting everyone to clap and join in on a chorus of ‘Pop! Goes the Weasel!’ The door whumped open behind them and Brenda came streaking through, holding her red pants in front of her face — ‘ Hip hip HIP! ’ they shouted — and I slipped through behind her.

Jim was at the kitchen stove, sterilizing a needle in what looked like a sardine can. ‘Jim!’ I cried. The room had dimmed, things had been put away, a kind of calm had descended here. Or been imposed. But I did not feel calm. I made it to the butcherblock and leaned against it. Fred, the short cop, sat in his shirtsleeves and neckbrace at the breakfast bench, eating sausage with chilled vodka from the fridge, my wife on a chair nearby sewing the brass button on his coat. There was something incongruously domestic, almost emblematic, about the three of them — cooking, sewing, eating there in the stillness, the subdued light; behind me the others reveled as though at some other party. ‘It’s Vic! He’s been shot! ’

‘All right,’ he said wearily. ‘Won’t be a minute.’

‘It’s urgent , Jim!’ I held up my bloody hands.

He glanced over at me. ‘Yes, I know, it’s always — say, what’s the matter with your shoulder?’

My wife looked up in alarm. ‘It’s nothing, a scratch—’

‘Come here, let me take a look at it.’

The other policeman stuck his head in the door behind me. ‘Got him, Fred.’

‘Yeah, thanks, I just heard.’

‘Looks like you’ve been grazed by a bullet. Were you near Vic when—?’

‘Yes, I was on the phone, but—!’

‘Mmm. That explains it.’ He turned the fire off under the needle, knelt to search through the black bag at his feet. ‘Do you need help, Jim?’ my wife asked.

‘No …’

‘I do wish people wouldn’t use guns in the house.’ There was a tremor in her voice.

‘Vic’s been hit bad, Jim. I think you ought to—’

‘First things first, Gerry. That’s not a serious wound, but it should be cleaned up right away.’ He came up with a bottle of iodine, a swab, and some bandages, and set them on the stove, then went to the sink and rinsed a gray dishrag out under hot water.

‘If I had my way, I’d outlaw the things, ma’am,’ said Fred around a mouthful of garlic sausage, ‘but you might as well outlaw eating and sh — uh, shaving.’ Louise stepped out from a dark corner — I hadn’t noticed her there before — and, as though pursued, rushed on out of the room, watched sorrowfully by my wife. Fred washed the sausage down with vodka. ‘I hope I didn’t say nothing—’

‘No …’

‘Now let’s see what we’ve got here,’ said Jim, ripping my shirt away from the wound. ‘This may sting a bit …’

‘Yes — OW! ’

‘He’s such a baby,’ my wife smiled. This was true. I dreaded the iodine to come more than being shot again — just the gritty dishrag was bringing tears to my eyes.

‘A millimeter more,’ Jim said, the gray lock flopping over his brow, ‘and you might have lost some bone.’

‘You gave me a button like this once, Gerald. Do you remember?’

‘No …’ Instead I remembered, for some reason, Naomi bent over the toilet, Dickie looking frazzled, Tania saying something (and there was this strange sensation of having just completed some kind of antiphonal figure, like a round of passed bids: echoes as it were of those shots still ringing in my ears) about cowardice and hysteria. Maybe it was the musty-smelling rag in Jim’s hand …

‘You know, you should stop worrying about others so much, Gerry,’ he counseled now, ‘and start thinking a little about yourself for a change.’

‘My wages, you said.’ She turned to Fred. ‘He said if I gave him a good time I’d get a second one.’ She sighed. ‘But I never did.’

Fred chuckled, winking at me. Jim dipped the swab in the iodine. ‘He got it in the chest, Jim. At least twice. I really think you ought to — YOW! ’

‘My goodness, Gerald — you’re worse than Mark when he’s having a sliver out!’

‘Don’t let him fool you, he’s braver than you think, ma’am,’ said Fred with another wink.

‘Come on , Jim, that’s enough! ’

‘Easy! A little more …’

‘Did you see the look on Cyril’s face when Peg told him she was leaving him?’ my wife asked as though to distract me.

‘I don’t know if I’ve seen them all night,’ I gasped, and Jim said: ‘You’re kidding! Not Cyril and Peg—?!’

‘Yes, I don’t understand it at all, do you, Gerald?’

‘What? No! Yes! Ow! I’m not sure!’

‘What are you trying to say, Gerald?’

‘I think Tania told me,’ I explained, pushing the words out through gritted teeth. Was this true? It seemed unlikely, even as the words came to me. Cyril and Peg? ‘Or was about to. Oh! Ah! It has something to do with Ros, the lines from some play and wanting to ad-lib or something, I don’t know — OUCH! ’

‘Well, that certainly makes it all clear as pie,’ my wife remarked wryly, raising her eyebrows at Fred, who laughed and forked another hunk of sausage in his mouth.

‘I really find it hard to believe,’ said Jim. He had stopped molesting the wound with his swab and was now unrolling a bandage. He pressed a fold of gauze to my shoulder. ‘Hold that, Gerry.’

‘Anyway, I guess that’s one party we’ll miss out on,’ said my wife. She bit the thread off, pinned the needle in her calico apron, held the coat up. ‘That must make you and Mavis the real veterans here tonight, Jim.’