Robert Coover - Gerald's Party

‘You know … what kind … what kind of a world … we live in …!’

‘You can see for yourself,’ said Jim. ‘The size of the wound, the blood lost, kidney and bowel dysfunction, numbness in the extremities—’

‘So why … are they letting you …?’

‘And that rattle means his lungs are filling up: he’s slowly choking to death, Gerry. Then, as he loses oxygen, the brain — well, just listen to him …’

‘… Letting you even … have parties like this?’

‘The poor guy,’ said Gudrun. Howard snorted scornfully. ‘Yeah? Whuzzamatter?’ asked Charley blearily.

‘I–I’ve never …’

‘Here,’ said Bob, showing me the safety catch. ‘It’s easy.’ There was a soft whirring noise behind me and the lights brightened: the guy with the video camera again. ‘Angle’s bad,’ he said. ‘Hang on, I’ll get a chair.’

‘Damn it, Gerry! I … asked you—!’ Vic burbled.

‘What? I don’t know, Vic. Maybe they don’t know any better.’ The weight of the thing surprised me: I nearly dropped it. It seemed nose-heavy or something. ‘Oh, I love the cowboy boots! ’ Patrick was gushing behind me in his swollen lisp. ‘They’re so well tooled! ’ My sudden shadow, which had been clouding Vic’s chest, now fell off him below my knees. Certainly he was a mess, I couldn’t deny that. ‘Grip it a little higher up the handle,’ the cop said, and Gudrun asked: ‘How are the skin tones?’

‘Don’t … underestimate them …!’

‘Not bad — could use a touch at the back maybe,’ said a voice high above me. ‘Under the hairline.’

‘Whoa! Whoozat tall sumbitch?’ Charley asked.

‘He’s not tall, Charley, he’s on a—’

‘No? Jesus, then maybe’s me! Maybe I’m shrinkin’! ’

My shoulder ached with this sudden awkward weight. Vic looked ghastly in the hot glare: it hurt to see him like this. ‘I’ve got a lot of things to do. I don’t think I like this …’

‘You’re okay, just hold it steady.’

‘Grrr-rrr- rr-rr !’ said Patrick, drawing a nervous laugh or two.

‘That’s it. Now all you have to do is squeeze.’

‘I just want to eat them!’

‘You get any goddamn spit on my boots, you old tart, and you’ll get one of ’em down your fucking throat — now get that mike outa the way!’

Gottfried ducked down beside me, squatting into my shadow. ‘Oh, what a brute! ’ exclaimed Patrick giddily. ‘Isn’t he simply fe- ro- cious!’

‘Don’t pull on it or jerk it, just close your fist, easy-like,’ said Bob.

‘In some way or other,’ Vic gasped, his shaggy head lolling under the bright lights (‘Hey, where you off to — is it getting too much for you?’ somebody asked), ‘you’re … useful to them …’

‘No, I wanta catch it live on the tube.’ Someone was stroking the back of my neck (‘It’s live here …’), taking the pain away. ‘I–I don’t think they know I exist, Vic,’ I sighed (‘Yeah, but I miss the zooms!’), and Bob said: ‘Listen, maybe you oughta use both hands.’

‘And pivot about thirty degrees, so I can see your cannon!’ the guy on the chair called down. ‘Wow! Funkybuns! C’mere! Lemme see ya!’ ‘Whaddaya mean …?’ Vic growled, just as little Bunky Baird, stark naked and painted a gleaming scarlet from head to toe (stark, that is, because even her hair was shaved away, her skull a gleaming red dome, her pubis sleek as a creased plum), pranced into the light between us. ‘ Hey—! ’ ‘Isn’t it just smashing? ’ she exclaimed breathlessly, one hand on hip, the other behind her ear (‘They’re here , Gerry,’ came the gravelly voice between her legs, ‘it’s a matter of record …!’), switching through a sequence of fluid poses to make the paint sparkle. ‘Gudrun here did it! It’s a masterpiece! ’ I stepped back out of her way, gave my arm a rest. She was bound loosely with a fine metallic thread that made her flesh bulge in peculiar places, and decorated with little silver ribbons, randomly attached to the thread. She looked like someone who’d got tangled up in the tail of a kite. ‘It’s for Zack’s terrific new show! It’s called Party Time , and I’ve got this great part — it’s so exciting! ’ She glanced up at the lights as though discovering them for the first time, flashed a bright innocent smile (‘Watch out you don’t shoot your foot,’ Bob muttered irritably in my ear): ‘Oh, hello! Am I interrupting something?’

‘Yeah, stop catching flies, sweetie, and move your fat act! We got something heavy going down here!’

‘What—?’ She turned to gaze down at Vic, gasped audibly, her hands before her face. She held this pose rigidly a moment, then let her fingertips slide slowly down her seamed body (‘Even pleasure …,’ he was muttering on the other side, ‘has its fucking consequences …’), coming to rest just at the crease between thighs and shiny buttocks, her shoulders bowed but back straight, bare feet straddling his body. When she turned around, two tears glistened in the corners of her uplifted eyes.

‘Oh yeah!’ applauded her younger friend (‘Gesture, stylized gesture,’ I’d remarked that night at the theater — perhaps it was her uplifted eyes that had reminded me of this, or else the heavy weapon in my hand — ‘is really a disguise for uncertainty: which is why we’re so attracted to it’ — but perhaps I’d been wrong about this), and the older one said: ‘Ha ha, come over here, baby, and see what your old man’s got for you!’

Because it might just as well be said (I wish I’d thought of this at the time) that what fascinates us is not the ritualized gestures themselves — for, in a sense, no gesture is original, or can be — but rather that strange secondary phenomenon which repetition, the overt stylization of gesture, creates: namely, those mysterious spaces in between . ‘What … what are you going … to do, Gerry …?’

‘Pardon?’ His eyes were open. One of them anyway: it was fixed on the revolver in my hand. ‘Ah. I’m sorry, Vic,’ I said, waggling it about ambiguously (‘God, it’s gorgeous! ’ Bunky was raving behind me, and Howard, staring grimly at my hand, said: ‘Would you watch where you’re pointing that thing, Gerald?’), ‘I’m only, you know …’ I lowered it. His open eye (‘Is it a sapphire?’) rolled up to meet mine briefly, then closed. ‘Ah well, it … it beats … senility, I guess,’ he wheezed, and effected a jerky little movement with one shoulder that was perhaps meant as a shrug. ‘Yeah, a little something to celebrate your new success, baby — slip it on your pinkie, there!’ ‘Anyway, it’s — it’s almost over, Vic, and I thought—’

‘ No , goddamn it, it’s not! ’ he blustered, spewing blood. ‘The sooner you get it over with, the better it’s gonna be for everyone,’ Bob growled in my ear. ‘It’s so big! ’ ‘More’s … more’s gonna happen, but I won’t … be here … to see it … and that … that scares me …’ I shared his dread: that door closed forever. Not being. Eternal absence. ‘Well, you’re a big star , sweetheart!’ It made me shudder just to think about it. This consciousness was what I had and, like him, I didn’t want it to — ‘I don ’ t … want it … to end! ’

‘I know,’ I said through the catch in my throat. ‘In fact, oddly, I was just—’

‘If I had a wish,’ he spluttered (‘Hey, don’t get that red stuff all over me!’ laughed the gigolo behind me, as Bunky passed out thanksgiving hugs and kisses), ‘I’d wish always to have … one … more … minute …!’ Of course, death itself caused no suffering, only this gnawing terror of it — it was, more or less, what I was saving him from. ‘Is … is my daughter …?’