Robert Coover - Gerald's Party

‘Now, anybody here get off on a git-box?’

‘Gerry, you’re, uh …’

‘You muss leeft! and leeft! So!’

Pulsations, yes. Perhaps. (He said.) But flow, no.

‘Whew, I don’t believe this!’

‘How ’bout me , Zack? Gimme a kit, I’m magic, man!’

‘Vic’s daughter plays, I think.’

‘Gerry …? Hey …!’

‘What?’ I realized Jim had been trying to get my attention for some time. I leaned back toward him (‘She’s in the dining room, Zack. Her old man’s got a problem …’), cradling my numb arm in my live one and recalling that game Ros and I used to play with our toes and noses — toeses and noses, we called it — and the delicious pucker of concentration on her lips, the tip of her tongue slithering out between them like an animal’s erection …

‘Okay, sign her on. Now — hey, sweetheart, whaddaya doing—?! ’

‘… Sitting on her hand,’ Jim said.

‘Oh—!’ I lurched away from the table, and her arm swung loose. ‘ No … !’ I’d almost forgotten she was there. Jim put her hand back. The fingers knuckled, looked more like a bag of marbles inside their plastic wrap.

‘This is not a singalong, baby! We’re not watching the bouncing ball! This is a dance of death! Doesn’t that mean anything to you?’

‘It’s just … I–I’ve never done anything like this before,’ Teresa whimpered, her hands trembling, white on white, on her tummy.

‘That story about Roger and Ros and the old lady, you know, is a complete fabrication,’ Jim added. ‘And Zack knows it.’

I nodded, feeling too weak to stand alone, yet too appalled to lean back against the table again (I still felt her brittle fingers, knuckled into my rump like some kind of summons), or even to look at it, keeping my eyes fixed instead on stubby Teresa, now trying, coached by Hilario and Quagg, to ‘fly like a beard’ (as Hilario said) — ‘No, no, guapa! like a doave , not a tour-key! ’

‘Is this what you’d call a metaphor?’ asked Alison’s husband from under his floppy hat. Olga, it seemed to me, had her hand in his pocket.

‘Ros came to see me that day. Somebody had apparently given her a hallucinogen of some kind without her knowing what it was, and she was frightened. Not by the visions, but by the feeling it gave her, she said, of being alone.’

‘Mate a — vot? ’

‘Curious …’

‘Wait a minute! Wait a minute! Let’s get serious! This is death we’re talking about, baby, death! — you know, the last fucking call, the deep end, so long forever: now, come on , what does it make you think of?’

‘Why don’t you stick a feather up her butt, Zack, and let her try it on all fours?’

‘Ros hated to be alone. She even wanted someone in the bathroom with her when she was brushing her teeth or …’

‘I know …’

‘I–I once imitated a person flushing herself down a toilet,’ Teresa offered timidly. ‘Of course it was a long time ago …’

‘His blind daughter?’ Bunky asked, studying Anatole’s script. Lloyd Draper had entered the room in his hat and coat, photo albums under his arm, Iris beside him. ‘Yeh heh heh!’ he exclaimed, discovering me, and they came strolling over.

‘At … at church camp …’

‘Beautiful!’ enthused Benedetto, admiring the silky patch Gudrun was holding up to his gaping fly. ‘Whose were those?’

‘Awright,’ Zack barked, losing patience (‘Take your pants off,’ Gudrun said around the needle in her mouth, ‘and I’ll sew it on …’), ‘let’s see it!’

‘Everything was just delicious!’ Iris exclaimed, and Lloyd agreed: ‘Yes indeedy! I’ll second that!’ He grabbed my right arm and gave it a painful shake. Someone behind me was tuning up a guitar. ‘God, she’s terrible!’ Zack groaned, hand clapped to his eyes, peeking out between his fingers at Teresa trying to flush herself. ‘We sure been travelin’ first class tonight, haven’t we, Mother?’

‘I didn’t even know he had a daughter!’

‘Yeah,’ laughed Horner. ‘It’s wonderful!’

‘Thank you so much for asking us!’ She was wearing the peckersweater, I saw, pinned to her dress like a corsage or a political button. ‘We looked for your wife …’

‘How is she, Sally Ann?’ Jim asked behind me.

‘She’s probably in the kitchen …’

‘Well, please tell her …’

‘Still about the same.’ She plunked at a guitar, picking out a chord. ‘He doesn’t seem to be bleeding as bad, but his mind’s getting worse.’

‘Can I stop flushing now?’

‘Say, Mother, doesn’t that remind you of those dancers we saw in the East — you remember …’

‘No, guapa, ees byootifool!’

‘Poor Dad. I don’t think he’s got much longer.’

‘Oh yes. The red paint, you mean. It was quite lovely, as I recall, dear, and very skillful — but I didn’t like the heads on the stakes after.’

‘ Now theenk like you are toilet all stop opp! ’

‘What—?’

‘And flow! Effrywhere! Ffflo-oo-ow! ’

Lloyd and Iris Draper, saying their goodbyes along the way, had stopped to talk with Alison’s husband. He pivoted toward them, causing Olga to stumble and fall to her knees. ‘Well, I love my father very much,’ Sally Ann was saying (someone had just asked her why she’d left him alone in his condition, in fact I had), ‘but, after all, Gerry, I do have my own career to think about.’ ‘Don’t worry, I’ll check on him,’ Jim assured her, as Alison’s husband shrugged and glanced over at me. ‘I don’t know,’ he said, or probably said. Olga and the Drapers, following his glance, also peered back over their shoulders.

I turned away, just as Eileen came strolling in in her khaki raincoat, collar up, hands in pockets, staring right at — or through — me. ‘You look ridiculous!’ she said. ‘I know,’ I slumped a bit, and there was an echo just behind me: she’d been speaking, I realized, not to me but to Teresa. ‘Can — can you please find Wilma?’ Teresa whimpered, and Eileen (‘This bearded fruitcake’s driving me nuts, Priss!’ Zack was hissing) said: ‘She and Talbot’ve already gone, Teresa. And we’re going, too.’ She bumped past me, pulling off her raincoat. ‘Put this on.’

‘Why don’t you and Olga take the sonuvabitch up and get him laid?’

‘Who, this boiled hat, Zack?’

‘I don’t know if I can —’

‘Sure you can, Teresa. All it takes is two feet. Come on, I’m fed up with all this cheap sensationalism. Let’s get the hell out of here.’

‘Yeah, he’s loaded, Priss, I’m cultivating him — hey , hold up there! That’s our star! Leave her alone, goddamn it!’

‘You see?’ Teresa shrank into the raincoat that Eileen wrapped around her, as Horner, Scarborough, and Quagg started crowding menacingly around. Goldy, at my elbow, spat into a cup and said: ‘You know, if I was them guys, I wouldn’t fuck with that broad …’

‘That’s far enough, you cold-ass bitch!’ Horner snarled, blocking their exit. Eileen coolly snapped her knee up and Horner crumpled, howling pathetically, the others backing off a step. ‘Like I said,’ laughed Goldy, and — poytt! — shot another gob into the cup.

‘All right,’ said Eileen impassively, ‘who’s next?’

In reply, there was a sudden gasp from the onlookers crowded up near the hallway door, and they all fell back: standing there was a weird naked figure wrapped like a mummy in plastic cleaning bags, with a condom pulled over his head. It was Malcolm Mee. He looked like something from outer space — or inner space, rather: a kind of aborted fetus. He took two bounding steps into the room (Prissy Loo screamed, Fats fell over a coffee table, pulling down part of the cave wall), paused, crouching; in his raised hand: the ice pick! ‘Oh no …!’