Robert Coover - Gerald's Party

‘… With a wart on it …’ Mavis pushed herself away from the wall and stood there, her feet planted far apart, rocking unsteadily.

‘God, that poor devastated sonuvabitch has had it,’ murmured Bunky’s gigolo friend, taking the brandy bottle back. It was true. Vic looked feverish now, an unnatural flush in his craggy cheeks, his breath coming in abrupt little gasps. The gigolo, taking a deep swig and pushing the bottle away (‘Is there anything left to eat?’ Gudrun asked, accepting a tumbler of whiskey. ‘If I toss this down the void, it’ll take me with it!’), belched and said: ‘He’s gonna get put beddybye tonight with a fucking shovel, that one!’

‘Don’t count on it,’ laughed the older man, picking up the bottle again. Vic tongued his swollen lips — Howard was carrying on grandly about art as ‘man’s transcendence of the specious present, his romance with eternity, with timelessness’ (‘But then what about Malcolm’s tattooed prick?’ Kitty interrupted) — and his eyelids fluttered again. ‘Doesn’t exist! ’ he bellowed. ‘I beg your pardon?’ said Gottfried. ‘Yes, it does,’ Kitty insisted. ‘I’ve seen it.’ ‘I think some strawberry shortcake passed me, going into the living room.’ ‘ Eternity! ’ ‘Doesn’t sound like the right thing to go with bourbon.’ ‘What’re they up to in there now?’ the man in the chalkstriped suit asked Scarborough. ‘Another … fucking illusion! ’ Vic yelled. It was pathetic to watch him. ‘I once knew a guy,’ this was Bunky’s older friend, putting the bottle down after a long guzzle (‘And the present is …’) and carrying on, ‘got shot like that and took days to die.’

‘… Is not specious … goddamn it!’

‘Some kid’s grisly visit-to-the-underworld spasm,’ Scarborough replied (‘That guy’s death rattle alone lasted eight hours!’), ‘called “Rec Room Resurrection,” or some such shit,’ and Gudrun reminded him: ‘He’s still just a boy, such things are important to him right now. He’ll grow out of it.’

‘Did I … only imagine it?’ Mavis asked herself, rocking gently.

‘What you’re trying to say, as I understand it,’ Gottfried interposed, leaning toward Vic with his mike, ‘is that action is a sort of rude language, emanating from the reflex centers of the—’

‘ I’M NOT FINISHED YET! ’ roared Vic, startling us all. ‘Sorry,’ whispered Gottfried, having reared back into Howard, and Mavis, still mumbling hollowly to herself, added: ‘And am I … imagining it now …?’ Earl Elstob was wheeling about, doubled over, yuck-yucking noisily: someone told him to shut up. ‘Huh —?’ We waited. This was it. Or might be. Vic sucked in air, let it rattle out again. There was a trickle of blood at his lips: he licked at it. ‘What was I …?’ His eyelids fluttered open, his eyes rolled down out of their contemplation of the top of his skull, searching for me. ‘Is … is that you, Gerry …?’

I squatted in front of him and his eyes closed again. ‘Yes. Take it easy, old man. It’s all right …’

‘Don’t … shit me it’s all right, goddamn it … I know better. Listen … is one of those — oof! damn …! — one of those cops around?’

‘Yes, but—’

‘This is important , goddamn it!’ Mavis had lumbered slump-shouldered away, rocking heavily from one foot to the other, still half-dazed, but the rest of us were crowding around, watching Vic. He wheezed and snorted laboriously. ‘Ignore him, he’s a stupid and intolerant monomaniac,’ Howard declared petulantly, but in fact it was Howard who was being ignored. ‘Can he … hear me?’

‘Sure.’ I glanced up: Bob watched Vic without emotion, leaning against the sideboard.

‘All right. Tell him … tell him I did it … I killed them!’

‘What? Killed who, Vic?’

‘ All of them, goddamn it!’ He struggled to sit up, but his coordination was gone, and the effort seemed to be tearing him apart. ‘Ros, Roger …’

‘Vic, listen, you don’t know what—’

‘Who else?’ he groaned. ‘Who else , goddamn it — I can’t think—! ’

‘You mean Tania?’

‘Yeah, that’s right … Tania, stabbed her … too!’

‘She wasn’t stabbed, Vic.’

‘Strangled, I mean!’

‘She was drowned.’

‘Drowned, that’s what I … what I — choke! — said!’

‘Hey, listen, nice try, Vic, but—’

‘No! I held her under, I — just look at my hands …! They’re the hands … of a murderer, they — what —?! ’ His chin shot up, one leg straightened, a shoulder twitched. ‘Where are they? My hands , Gerry! Where are my goddamn … hands—?! ’

‘Here, Vic, easy …!’

‘You see?’ sniffed Howard.

‘Jesus,’ somebody muttered softly, ‘someone oughta put the poor bastard outa his misery!’

‘Oh shit,’ Vic was weeping, ‘I can’t … I can’t feel them … I can’t feel anything! ’

I glanced up at Jim, who shook his head sadly. Howard looked disgusted. ‘You’d be doing him a favor,’ the police officer said.

‘What?’

‘It’s true, Gerry,’ said Jim quietly. Indeed, it was very quiet all around, broken only by Vic’s rasping breath, the ice tinkling brassily in someone’s glass, Earl’s chronic sucking noise. The cop took his revolver out of his holster, checked the chambers. ‘It’ll only get worse for him.’

‘A drink! ’ he yelled, making us jump. ‘ For chrissake, Gerry—! ’

Jim handed me his own glass. I sniffed it. ‘Is it—?’ ‘He won’t know the difference.’

‘Where is everybody—?’

‘Right here, Vic.’ I held the glass to his lips. He sucked and slobbered, most of it ending up as a kind of bloody foam that dribbled down his chin and shirtfront like baby drool. ‘Easy now …’

‘ More! ’ he demanded, jerking his head about, batting the glass with his nose, thumping his head on the wall. Once, when I was very small (I was thinking of this now, watching Vic try to keep his head up, his eyes open), we found a dead tomcat in my grandmother’s backyard. A few nights later, she incorporated him into her bedtime story about the climb to heaven. The cat was not well-suited for this climb and I probably fell asleep very near the bottom, but I did hear the preamble and remembered it still. Interested in a lady cat next door, the tom had come out to serenade her and had got shot by an irate neighbor who didn’t want his sleep interrupted. At the entrance to the stairway, there was a kind of ticket-taker, like the ones outside carnival rides and circus tents, and the cat complained to him about the injustice of being shot for singing: ‘Is that what you get for bringing a little beauty into the world?’ he protested. ‘It’s not fair!’ ‘What do you mean, you were lucky!’ the ticket-taker replied. ‘There’s no big deal in a long life — what counts is the quality of the departure. Yours was beautiful! You died quickly, more or less painlessly, and at the moment of your greatest happiness!’ ‘No, you don’t understand,’ the cat objected, ‘the singing was only the preparations. ’ ‘Exactly!’ smiled the ticket-taker. Indeed, now that I thought about it, I’d said something very much like this to someone earlier tonight, only …

‘Ah, listen! ’ Vic barked.

‘ What—?! ’

‘I said, listen, damn it! I’m talking … about what’s happening … here tonight …’

‘Ah …’ My heart was pounding. Bob, I realized, was holding his gun out to me, butt first. Jim took the empty glass. ‘But … do you really think—?’