Robert Coover - Gerald's Party

‘Wewacsh, Gewawd …?’

‘Yes … good …’ It all comes down to words, as I might have argued with Vic. Or parts of them. ‘Is this a new dress?’

‘Yeumf,’ she said, working my trousers down to my ankles: I lifted one foot out and raised it to the couch. ‘Do woo wike it?’

‘Right now, it’s in my way …’

‘You say the nicest things, Gerald,’ she sighed, taking her mouth away. She located the fastener, unhooked it, pushed at the skirt: I pulled it away and, stretching forward, eased it past her feet. ‘What are you doing with pancake makeup on the back of your neck?’ she asked.

‘I don’t remember.’

I tugged at her panty girdle, stretching it down past her soft hips, and she took my penis in her mouth again, warming it all over, closing one hand tenderly around my testicles. She kneaded them softly, pulling them toward her as though gently pumping them, sliding her other hand around to stroke my buttocks, finger my anus. Only one arm worked for getting her clothes off her: I left the dead one between her legs for the time being and she squeezed her thighs around it. ‘Just … a minute …’ The panties and stockings came off in a tangle. I ran my tongue slowly up her leg from her calf, past her knee, and up the inside of her thigh: she spread her legs and, as I nosed into her vulva, lifted the top one over my head. ‘Mmmmf!’ She had her finger up my anus now and was sucking rhythmically, her mouth full of foamy saliva like a warm bubble bath. I had found the nub of her clitoris with the tip of my tongue and now worked against it as though trying to pry it open. I reached round from behind, dipped my fingers into her moist vagina, pushed one of them up her rectum — ‘ Ouch! ’ she cried, letting my penis go.

‘Sorry …’ I pushed my nose deeper between her thighs to have a closer look: her anus was drawn up in a tight little pucker, inflamed and cracked, slightly discolored as though rubbed with ashes. ‘How did you—?’

‘You know. The police.’ She paused, holding my penis by the root. Perhaps she was studying it. Or simply reflecting.

I pressed my chin against the hood of her clitoris, gazing thoughtfully at her crinkled anus, remembering now her position on the butcherblock (as though being changed, I’d thought as they lowered her), her thighs stretching back, belly wrinkling, tiny little red lines running down her cheeks. ‘What … what’s an exploding sausage …?’ I asked uneasily.

‘Oh, Gerald!’ she laughed and wagged my penis playfully. ‘Don’t you know a joke when you hear one?’

‘Ah …’ I stroked her buttocks gently as my penis returned to its soothing bath, rubbing my chin rhythmically against her pubic knoll. Like veined marble, they’d seemed to me at the time, as I remembered, something like that, though now they sparkled with a kind of fresh dewy innocence (it was the kind of feeling I had between my own legs now) under the bright overhead light. She was beginning to grind vigorously against my chin, thighs cuffing my ears, so I moved my mouth back over her rosy lips, dipping my tongue into their warm mushy depths — I was aswim in warm mushy depths, we were both—

‘Say, uh … where the hell is everybody?’ someone asked. I peered up between my wife’s convulsing thighs, my own hips bucking against the cushions: it was Knud, standing bleary-eyed over us, rubbing the back of his neck. ‘Crikey!’ he muttered, his voice phlegmy with sleep. ‘You’ll never believe the dream I just had!’

‘Everybody’s gone home, Knud,’ I gasped, my chin sliding now in the dense juices beneath it.

‘Hunh?’ He frowned at his empty wrist. My wife had stopped pumping her head up and down the shaft of my penis, but she was still sucking at it rhythmically and stroking it with her tongue, marking time, as it were, her throbbing clitoris searching for my mouth. ‘Even Kitty? Jeez, what time is it?’

‘ Everybody’s gone, Knud. It’s late .’

‘Holy cow, I must have slept through the whole goddam party,’ he rumbled, still staring at his wrist. He yawned, belched. ‘Boy! What a dream, though!’ My wife’s hips had stopped pitching. She held my testicles and one buttock firmly, but had let my penis slide past her teeth into one cheek. ‘I was like in some kind of war zone, see, only everyone was all mixed up and you didn’t know who was on your side—’

‘Not now, Knud,’ my wife panted, letting me go and twisting round to look up at him. Her buttocks spread a bit, giving me a clearer view of Knud: he was puffy-eyed and rumpled, tie undone, shirttail out, pants damp and sticky, and he looked like he needed a shave.

‘No, listen, it was a lot longer. And really weird. Since you couldn’t be sure who anybody was, see, just to be safe you naturally had to kill everyone — right? Ha ha! you wouldn’t believe the blood and gore! And all in 3-D and full color, too, I kid you not! I kept running into people and asking them: “Where am I?” They’d say: “What a loony ,” or something like that — and then I’d chop their heads off, right?’

‘Please, Knud—?’

He glanced down at my penis withering in my wife’s hand, at her buttocks flattening out in front of my face. ‘Oh, right … sorry …’ He gazed around at the living room, running his hand through his snarled hair. ‘Say, do you remember, was I wearing a watch when I came here tonight?’

‘Well …’ my wife began tentatively, raising herself up on one elbow, and I cut in: ‘I can’t remember, Knud.’

He seemed to accept that. He squinted up at the lights on the ceiling for a moment, yawning. ‘Kitty been gone long?’

‘No, you can probably catch her.’ I was beginning to feel my wife’s weight: I gave a little push and she lifted herself off my face.

‘Don’t get up,’ Knud insisted. ‘I can find my own way out.’ He stumbled away, stuffing his shirttail in. My wife, sitting up, let her hand fall idly on my hip. We could hear Knud peeing noisily in the toilet bowl. It was a lonely sound, but not so lonely as the silence all around it. ‘At least it’s working,’ my wife said. She picked up her stockings and panty girdle, toweled between her legs with them. ‘Hey, thanks,’ said Knud from the doorway. ‘See you at the next one.’

‘Flush it, please, Knud!’ my wife called, but he was already out the door. ‘Oh well.’ I curled around her from behind, hugging her close, and she patted my hip with sleepy affection. My penis nuzzled between her cheeks. It felt good there. It was something to think about. ‘Do you notice a kind of chill in here?’ she murmured sleepily.

‘Well, all the windowpanes are out,’ I said. I ran my hand along her thigh where it met the couch. ‘We could try the TV room now that Knud’s vacated it …’

She smiled, a bit wearily, then took my good hand and pulled me to my feet. I kicked off the trousers, still tangled around one foot, and, holding hands, we stepped out from under the tented drapes and linens into the glare and wreckage of what was once our living room. She drew close to me suddenly, pressing her naked hip against mine. I was feeling it, too. As though the house had not been emptying out so much as filling up. The windows, stripped bare and paneless, seemed to crowd in on us, letting the dark night at their edges leak in like some kind of deadly miasma. Hugging each other’s waists, we picked our way barefoot through the shards of broken pots and glassware, the food squashed into the carpet, the chalk outlines and bent cocktail skewers. The wall next to the dining room doorway was splattered and streaked with a mince pie someone must have thrown, and even that, innocent as it was, seemed to add to our feelings of apprehension and melancholy.