Robert Coover - Gerald's Party

Gudrun as I lumbered past gave me an understanding glance as though in sympathy with my troubled thoughts (‘Okay, before we go, everyone together for the flash!’ Zack shouted) and rubbed her nose with a blue finger. ‘I think someone stole your wife’s dressing table,’ she said.

‘Come on! Curtain calls!’

‘What—?’

‘This is exciting! You know, Mr Quagg, I really love the theater life! ’

I leaned up against the doorframe. Even the dressing table … My wife was at the front door, saying good night to Inspector Pardew and Fred. They didn’t seem to want to leave. Or maybe they didn’t know how. She wanted me near, I knew — I caught it in her sorrowful gaze as she glanced up at me from Vachel’s lifeless and begoggled buttocks — but between us the tall cop Bob had Patrick slap up against the wall, jabbing him with his stick, cursing him out for being a nuisance and a whore, and I lacked the will, or maybe even the courage, to push on past. ‘If you don’t stop bugging the Inspector, you scummy little poufta, you’re gonna get your goddamn place of business tweezed!’ ‘ Well! Is that a promise? ’ Patrick simpered brazenly, twitching his puffy lips up at the black-bearded TV cameraman now looming beind the cop’s shoulder. ‘You goddamn pervert—!’ ‘You got problems, little buddy?’ asked the cameraman, taking a fierce grip on Bob’s neck that made the cop whistle and drop his nightstick. In the living room (to be at a crossroads, I realized, was actually to be nowhere: there was unexpected comfort in this) applause erupted as the actors took their curtain calls, Mee joining them now, sliding spookily past me out of the toilet, as though sucked in by the slapping hands. Scarborough focused the lights, Regina doffed her bedsheet (there was a lot of good-natured booing), Zack dragged Fats on stage to take a bow. Fats, feigning shyness, shuffled up doing a little hunched-shoulders soft-shoe routine, hands in his pockets and rolling his eyes. ‘Spread it, sweetie!’ laughed Brenda, clapping the loudest: ‘Let’s hear it for him, folks! the one and lonely!’ ‘Now if you’ll just pick up my gear there, pardner, and haul it along with us,’ the cameraman said beside me, making Patrick gasp and flutter his lashes (‘Oh my! yes!’), then he highstepped the cop to the front door, one hand gripping his skinny nape, the other the seat of his pants, Bob’s gimpy leg brushing through the scum of whipped cream on the floor like a dangling plummet. ‘Hot it up, Scar!’ shouted Quagg. My wife opened the door and the cameraman heaved the cop through it, then turned to wait for Patrick. ‘Okay, strike it and take it away, crew, we’re sloughing this dime museum!’ People were starting to head out this way: I joined my wife.

‘Such in the main are the degenerate dregs of humanity, whom we have never, I regret to admit, learned to curb or eliminate,’ Pardew was saying, as though into some kind of closing recitation, ‘characterized chiefly by their stupidity and depravity and their inability to play the game—’

‘Oh yes?’ said my wife vaguely.

Patrick, his hands full of camera gear, paused at the door to pucker his battered lips at me and wink, then pranced out after the cameraman, my wife still holding the door open. Her lips moved as though she might be counting. Behind us, the actors, laughing and shouting (‘And their, eh, deformed personalities, you see …’), were flowing into the hallway. ‘Well, back to selling pencils!’ ‘Christ, Vadge, get those things in a hammock before somebody steps on ’em!’ ‘No, believe me, baby, we got a backer! ’ ‘I believe you, Zack. Call me at the beach.’ ‘Somebody gimme a chaser!’ Fats called out, hauling on his down jacket. ‘A tailpiece for ole Fats — lemme hear it from the heart! ’ The Inspector had long since fallen silent. He peered down at my wife, nibbling his moustache. ‘Thank you so much for coming,’ she said.

Fats chasséd past us, waggling his hands beside his face and singing, ‘You’re gonna miss me when I’m gone,’ my wife pushing the storm door open just in time to keep him from crashing through it. ‘ Ta-DAAA-AA-aa-aaa …’ The police marched out behind him. ‘Watch where you step,’ I could hear the Inspector mutter peevishly, his voice echoey in the night. ‘It’s really too bad about Vachel,’ my wife said with a sigh.

‘Yes, well … I never did like him very much, though.’

‘I know.’ The actors had applauded Fats’ exit and Brenda was now giving them all a hug. ‘But he was always good with children.’

‘Next party at our house, everybody! Promise!’

Hilario leaned toward us and said: ‘Your keetchen, do you know, she ees smokeeng!’

‘What —?!’ Yes, I could see it, rolling in from the back like some kind of mephitic vapors.

‘It’s all right, Gerald,’ my wife said. ‘Fats just left some things on the burner. As usual.’

‘Ees what you call a bloody mass, no?’

‘Shall I go see if—?’

‘No.’ She took my arm. ‘I already turned it off.’ There was a peculiar gentle flush in her cheeks. ‘Dolph and Louise are back there, making up,’ she whispered.

‘Ah …’

‘ Bren! ’ cried Fats, staggering wide-eyed back in through the front door, making us all jump. ‘My god , Bren! It’s that plumber! Whatsisface! ’

‘What—? Oh no! No—?!’ She came rushing silkily past us, but paused to give us both a hug — ‘You’re a super guy, Ger,’ she breathed in my ear, her gum snapping, ‘you’ve got a great heart … and wonderful hands!’ — then clambered on out behind Fats: ‘ God! I can’t believe it, Fats!’

‘Hey, poison curls!’ Zack Quagg exclaimed. ‘Our angel descends!’

I looked up, we all did: it was Alison’s husband, escorting Alison down the stairs in front of him, followed by Olga and Prissy Loo. Alison was dressed now in Brenda’s red pants suit, a couple of sizes too big for her, stained at the knees, the cuffs flopping around her bare feet. The actors all applauded. Alison, her makeup smeared across her face, hair snarled, stumbled when she saw me. Her eyes searched mine. Was her lip quivering? She held the baggy-kneed red pants up with one hand. There was a patch sewn on the crotch now, probably one of Sally Ann’s, which, even from here, I could see was in the shape of a road sign.

‘And have we got a show for you! ’

Alison’s husband sniffed. ‘Theater,’ he said frostily, ‘is dead.’

‘What—?’ Zack laughed, staggering back a step. ‘I told you, Zack.’ ‘Is it time for my part?’ asked Prissy Loo. She was wearing Beni’s plumed hat and false moustache, my fingerless golfing gloves, and one of my mother-in-law’s girdles, ornamented with what looked like rolled-up bloody socks. Olga was trying to stretch my wife’s yellow nightie down below her high muscular croup. Zack spread wide his caped arms as though unfolding a curtain. ‘Hey, ha ha! you gotta be kidding , man!’

Alison’s husband shook his head. ‘No, it’s dead. All over. I see that now.’ He prodded Alison on down the stairs.

‘Aw, goddamn it, Prissy, you overdid it!’

‘Well, that was a short run.’

‘Don’t blame me, Zack, it was Olga’s idea.’

‘What idea?’

‘Yah, goot! In a minute!’

‘DANGER: BUSY CROSSROADS,’ the patch said. She stood there in front of me, echoed dismally in the hall mirror, clutching the baggy pants, looking lost. ‘Did you bring a coat?’ my wife asked politely. ‘It’s boring, it’s repetitious, and it’s dead-ended,’ said Alison’s husband. ‘And it’s a lie.’