Robert Coover - Gerald's Party

Teresa squealed as though Gudrun, now rouging her bottom, might have jabbed her with something, Olga yelped and dropped her drink, Jim looked up: ‘Don’t be silly,’ he sighed (‘We need a butterfly on that float at the mouth,’ shouted Scarborough), shaking his loose shock of gray hair, ‘I’m only trying to chip this damned plaster off.’

‘It’s all right, Bunky,’ Quagg explained, his arm around her. ‘She’s already dead. It’s Ros.’ ‘Okay, hit it — that’s it, now make it hot!’ ‘She had a big heart, I wanta use it in this production.’

‘It’s getting so confusing,’ my wife murmured, her hand on my leaden elbow (‘Yeah, I heard a rumor you had something going on the boards, Zack — looks fab!’ Bunky was saying, calming down as deftly as she’d aroused herself, and Vachel, flipping irritably through Anatole’s script, complained: ‘Wah, don’t I getta do any fucking?’ ), ‘I don’t even know a lot of these people.’

‘That’s good, kill it!’

‘Hey, what took you guys so long?’ Quagg asked, as Steve the plumber and Horner came in, lugging the ping-pong table.

‘Catchin’ the reruns in the pit, Zack.’

‘Isn’t that your athletic supporter Vachel is wearing on his head?’

‘Looks like it.’ Also my golf shoes and Bermuda shorts, my ski goggles on his bulbous rump, and Mark’s blue SUPERLOVER sweatshirt.

‘This where you want it?’

‘Yeah.’ They set the table down, still collapsed, at the entrance to the cave: apparently it was meant to serve as a kind of stage. ‘See what you think, Hillie,’ Quagg said, then, shifting his penis from the left to the right side of his unitard crotch, turned to Bunky: ‘What’re you doing these days, kid?’

‘I’m, uh, between shows, Zack.’

‘I–I don’t know what to say,’ I said, and my wife said (‘C’mon,’ Quagg smiled, ‘we’ll spot you in’): ‘I’ll go put the coffee on.’

‘Thanks, Zack,’ said Bunky softly, touching him under the cape. She already had her coat off, her two men bumping past me into the dining room with it, on their way to the sideboard. Back there, I could still hear Vic babbling on helplessly: ‘Turned to salt … what—? … exactly the problem … ice all gone … who — whoof! harff! — wanted that …? No , goddamn it!’ Yes, I thought, feeling a little better, coffee would help.

‘Now lemme see that script, kid.’

I moved out of the traffic toward Jim (he seemed suddenly very weary, his hair in his eyes and square jaw adroop, as he dug away at the plaster on Ros’s breast), Hilario rapping out a vigorous staccato on the ping-pong table as I passed that sounded like machine-gun fire. Behind his fierce rat-a-tat-tat, I could hear Anatole explaining excitedly that his play was really a kind of metaphysical fairy tale, a poetic meditation on the death of beauty and on the beast of violence lurking in all love, Vachel grousing in his squeaky voice: ‘Yeah, but at least I oughta get to squeeze some goddamn tit , hunh, Zack?’ ‘Christ, so much — gasp! — waste … over and over …’ You could hear him all the way in here, growling and spluttering. ‘Got a side for me, honey?’ Bunky asked. ‘Am I right …? story — kaff! snort! — what? kills! ’ ‘Vic’s in bad shape, Jim,’ I said. It was a relief to be around a familiar face. ‘I think he needs you.’

Jim sighed, staring down at Ros. ‘Some damn party I’m having,’ he said. One of Ros’s bagged-up hands was in the pilaf. There was a loose scatter of paper napkins, turkey bones (‘Damn it, you gotta dumb it down, kid,’ Quagg was remonstrating, Alison’s husband hovering over his shoulder, trying to read the script, ‘you’re outa school now, so cut the fancy shit — this is theater!’ ), Alison’s silk sash, chorizo chunks, somebody’s vibrator, used silverware. Like Time’s dropped breadcrumbs, I thought: no, we were not going around in circles, Ros wasn’t anyway. And the sash: it was greasier than ever. There are no reverse loops, it seemed to say. The borders are absolute. Things end. Replay, instant or delayed (the TV cameraman had just moved off Jim’s hands to focus on Teresa, clown white from head to toe, except for her bright red breasts and bottom, now being urged up onto the ping-pong table to dance with Hilario, Scarborough meanwhile nailing my skis to the front corners of the table, apparently creating some kind of proscenium arch, the raps of his hammer syncopating contrapuntally with Hilario’s chattering tapdance and Zack Quagg’s barking lecture to a deflated Anatole: ‘You might as well learn right now, son: keep it simple! The mystery just gets chewed up in all this razzamatazz. If you got something to say, come straight out with it!’), was a manipulation not of time but of matter. Benedetto came in, pulling on Roger’s bloodsoaked business suit (this was new): ‘It’s still sopping! ’ he complained (he hadn’t said this before), trying to stretch it around his operatic belly. ‘Gudrun, old sock, could you let this out a bit?’ ‘How’s the shoulder, Gerry?’

‘Stiff …’

‘Just remember, kid, the most mysterious sentence in the world has only three letters in it. Everything else is nothing but a fucking footnote to it, variations on a — hey, why so glum?’

‘There’s only about an inch or so back here,’ Gudrun said, examining the seam in the seat of Roger’s pants, Benedetto peering down at her over his shoulder. ‘Why don’t we just make you a codpiece?’

‘I’m sorry, Mr Quagg. It’s my fault. I guess I really don’t know much about this—’

‘Whaddaya mean, you’re doing great!’

‘I am?’

‘Hey, Scar, look what I found!’ exclaimed Horner, coming in with Mark’s pedalcar. Scarborough was up on a stepladder, his mouth full of pins, hanging our drapes over the ski uprights like theater curtains, so folding them as to make the splotches of blood resemble large crude hearts. ‘Terriff,’ he called down lugubriously, taking a tuck, ‘see if he’ll fit,’ and Vachel squeaked: ‘No, man, I’m not getting in that thing!’ Gudrun was meanwhile measuring Beni for his codpiece and it reminded me, as I settled back against the table, accepting it all now, Ros, Roger, Tania, the police, the wounds and bruises, everything, or almost everything (‘Sure, kid! You got bucketsa talent!’ Quagg was booming), of the time Ros, holding the head of my exhausted member up in the air, said: ‘I don’t care how big it is, Gerry. I don’t even care how hard it is. I just care how here it is …’ Yes, I thought — I was watching Teresa’s crimson cheeks bob like ripe apples as Hilario, looking pained, clapped her along — this is the one sweet thing we have: the eternal present. Our only freedom. It seemed to flatten out beneath me, all resistance crumbling at last.

‘Gerry …?’

‘I mean, I love the fairy tale bit, kid, that old granny in the ice castle, little orphan Ros at the door — like, we’ll put her in a basket maybe, shaking a rattle or sucking a dildo or something — flash all that in the hello frame to key some motifs, ring a few bells, then punch in this torture number to set up the death dance and Last Supper routine: shit, man, it’s a fucking classic! ’

‘It is?’

‘No, no, no, Teresita! You are the, how you say? the goddess off loave , no?’

‘And this line about bats in daylight — I mean, wow! ’

Clock time might take things — Ros, for example — further and further away, or seem to, but human time (‘So awright, kid, get on with it!’) — what had the Inspector said?