Robert Coover - Gerald's Party

‘I think this is where I came in,’ my wife said. ‘I’ll go see if I can win the kitchen back from Fats.’

‘ No one,’ said a commanding voice from the hallway door, ‘goes anywhere! ’ It was Inspector Pardew, clutching his lapels, white scarf draped loosely around his neck, thick moustaches bristling. ‘Oh oh,’ someone said. ‘Where’s the, uh, toilet?’ ‘It’s all right, m’um,’ Pardew added, nodding firmly, and my mother-in-law took a deep breath, smoothed her skirt down with trembling hands. ‘We have all we need now. Thank you for your assistance.’

‘Wait a minute—!’ objected Zack Quagg. My mother-in-law straightened her back, drew her chin in, and, glaring at Quagg, stepped down off the ping-pong table. ‘ Hey—! You can’t do this! We’re just cli maxing this spasm!’ Others had started drifting in, some shepherded by the two police officers, Bob and Fred. ‘I’ll check upstairs,’ said Fred. My wife, taking my arm, whispered: ‘I’m afraid the coffee’s going to get cold,’ and the Inspector glanced up sharply: ‘Did someone say something?’ ‘Yeah, I did, you hick dick! This is our pitch, man, get outa here, this space is booked—! ’ Bob lashed out with his baton: ‘ Whuff-ff-FF-FOOO! ’ Quagg wheezed, crumpling to the floor, curled up in his purple cape. ‘I hope,’ said the Inspector, withdrawing his briar pipe from a jacket pocket and tapping it in the palm of his hand as he gazed around at us all (Anatole interposed himself between Zack and the cop, Sally Ann kneeling to whisper: ‘You okay, Mr Quagg?’), ‘there will be no further disturbances.’

He filled the pipe from his leather pouch, cupping his hand around the bowl to form a funnel, then, tugging the drawstrings of the pouch closed with his teeth (Quagg groaned and stretched out: ‘Ow, something’s … caught …!’ he gasped), stepped aside as Fred came down the stairs behind him, herding a group of people toward us, Hilario leading the pack and showing off with a complicated set of hops and pirouettes down the steps, followed by Kitty, Dolph, Janny and Hoo-Sin in each other’s clothes, Charley, Regina, the guy in the chalkstriped suit — or pants rather: down to an undershirt on top now and a towel around his neck. His jaw gleamed as though he might have been shaving. Regina, wrapped up in one of our sheets (Sally Ann, on her knees, was tugging speculatively at the seam of Zack’s white crotch: ‘Here, you mean, Mr Quagg?’), swept past Hilario into the room, eyes rolled up and the back of one wrist clapped to her pale forehead, crying: ‘Is nothing sacred?’ ‘Caught her jerking off,’ Fred explained to the Inspector behind his hand, Dolph meanwhile slipping off behind him, unnoticed, toward the kitchen. ‘There’s a few more upstairs’ll be down in a minute, Chief. Meantime I’ll go check out back.’ Pardew nodded, slapped his pockets for a light. Bunky’s gigolo friend took a wooden match from behind his ear, popped it ablaze with his thumb, and held it, shielded with his cupped hand, over Pardew’s pipebowl. ‘Ah! Thank you,’ said the Inspector, Zack Quagg echoing him throatily from the floor (Sally Ann, stretching the crotch of his unitard down, was carefully easing his testicles to one side). ‘Now, I’ve gathered you all together here in this—’

‘Hey, big Ger! ’ Charley boomed out, stumbling heavily into the room through a tangle of collapsed cave wall, his arms wrapped around Janny and Hoo-Sin. Janny looked radiant in her kimono, Hoo-Sin in the wrinkled pink outfit oddly weathered and innocent at the same time. ‘I’ve riz up in the world again, ole son! I’m standin’ firm! Thanks to these two lovely ladies, I got a bone t’pick with any one!’

‘Easy, Charley,’ I cautioned, nodding toward Bob, who was just behind him, scowling darkly, club at the ready.

Charley reared up heedlessly, swung round, his big head swiveling. ‘Who, ole Bobbers here? Nah, he’s one a my bess clients , Ger! Him’n his pardner both, I give ’em a fan tas tic deal! A — yaw haw! — joint policy! ’ He grinned expectantly, his head bobbing drunkenly. ‘C’mon, ole scout, ’sbeen a long night, give us a smile! A joint policy!’

Bob had turned toward the dining room door, through which Fred was now prodding another group of guests: ‘Whoa, man, you gonna make me char the hash!’ Fats was protesting, the Inspector’s gray fedora rocking back and forth on top of his head.

Pardew, pipe clamped in his jaws, was smoking vehemently. ‘Now, as I say, I have called you all here, here to the scene of the crime, in order to —’

‘All I’m sayin’ is you guys got no respect for the inner man!’ Fats complained, then ‘ Rrnkh-HH! ’ grunted as Fred suddenly jabbed him fiercely in his aproned belly with the end of his nightstick, doubling him over: the hat fell off, Fred caught it, handed it to the Inspector. ‘Ah … yes …’

‘’Swhut I love about you, ole buddy,’ Charley rumbled, wrapping a fat arm around me, ‘you laugh at my jokes. Goddamn it, ole son, you lissen! ’

‘What?’

‘Where do you want these, Zack?’ called out Scarborough, carrying in, with Benedetto helping, a stack of windowpanes, and Earl Elstob asked: ‘Hey, huh! yuh hear about the gal who couldn’t tell putty from Vaseline?’ Charley winked at my wife, Regina flung herself on the couch in seeming despair, Dolph popped the top on a can of beer, and Kitty, helping Fats straighten up, said: ‘Well, that’s one way to kill an appetite!’ Pardew, brushing irritably at his hat, looked up as though about to speak, but just then Charley hollered out: ‘ Whoa! I smell coffee , girls!’ and pushed away, startling Louise, who, backing off, stepped crunchingly on Fred’s foot. ‘ Oww! SHIT! ’ he yelled, and whirled on Louise, nightstick flashing — Dolph reached up, almost casually it seemed, and caught it on the upswing, stopping it dead. He handed his beer to Earl and slowly, Fred resisting, brought the club toward him, gripped the end of it with his other hand, and — crok! — snapped it in two. ‘Thanks, Dolph,’ Louise said softly, her face flushed. Fred, scratching the back of his head above the neckbrace, gaped in amazement at the shattered stub of nightstick in his hand, and Earl said: ‘Yuh, well, huh! all her windows fell out!’

‘Ah, fuck everything,’ said Daffie vaguely, and left the room.

Pardew, biting down on his pipe, continued to fuss with his fedora, but, attempting to put the crease back in, chopped at it so fiercely in his rage that he knocked it out of his own hand. Angrily, he reached down for it, but somehow managed to step on it at the same time. ‘Damnation!’ he mumbled around the pipe. ‘ Cream ’n sugar, girls? ’ Charley called out. ‘ SSSHH! ’ Patrick hissed. ‘Hunh?’ Charley looked around blearily at the quiet that had descended. We were all watching the Inspector. He was trying to lift his foot off the hat, but it seemed stuck to his shoe. He studied the situation, one hand in a jacket pocket, the other holding the bowl of the pipe in his mouth. Bob approached him, but he waved him away, knelt, untied the shoe, took his foot out. Except for a light titter from some of the women at the holes in his sock, the room was hushed. Regina was sitting up now, watching; Zack, too, helped by Sally Ann and Horner. The Inspector lifted the shoe off the hat: no problem. He gazed quizzically at the sole of the shoe, shrugged, put it back on, tied it. Unfortunately, he was stepping on the hat as he did so, and when he lifted his foot, he found the hat was stuck again. He scratched at the back of his neck, under the scarf, thinking about this. He stepped on the hat with the other foot to hold it down, tried to lift the first foot off but without success. Then he discovered that the second one was stuck as well. He struggled with his problem for a moment, doing a kind of sticky shuffle, peevishly muttering something about the sense he’d had all night of having ‘intruded on some accursed place, some forbidden domain, which was not what it seemed to be.’ Finally he looked up at the taller cop and nodded toward his holster: Bob handed him the gun. The Inspector checked the chamber, sucking thoughtfully on the pipe: ‘One thing about homicides I’ve learned to watch out for,’ he said around the stem, his pate gleaming under the overhead lights, ‘is the murderer’s attempt to conceal the fact that what we’ve got is indeed a murder.’ He took a firm grip on the revolver with his right hand, took the pipe out of his mouth with his left. ‘There’s been no limit to the ingenuity of murderers in masquerading their act — or even of removing all evidence of both victim and act. Bodies have been burned, blasted, buried, embedded in concrete, dissolved in acid, disassembled, and devoured.’ Sighting down the barrel, he let his arm fall in a slow arc until pointing between his feet. ‘You name it, it’s been tried.’ There was a terrific explosion that startled us all, even though we’d been expecting it. ‘Of course, in this case, we’ve not only got a victim plain to see,’ the Inspector went on, handing the revolver back to the policeman, taking his feet off the hat, and reaching down to pick it up, ‘she’s also got a hole in her’ — he held it up and brushed at it lightly — ‘as big as your hat!’ This got a burst of applause and laughter, led by Patrick (even Zack Quagg was joining in, if reluctantly), and the Inspector, handing the hat to Bob, nodded curtly.