William Gaddis - The Recognitions

— And now friends, you've probably been hearing so much about this wonderful new protein diet. He looked up, having reached one hundred thirty. The dial in the next room was being turned.

— To take the odor out of perspiration. Fifty-two per cent more effective.

He gave up counting the money, thumbing over the rest before he put it away, and went to the mirror with a necktie. There he studied his eyes anxiously for a moment, then noticed that his skin appeared pale beneath the surface of color, and the mustache hairs were brought into separate and ragged prominence.

— And so friends, to get your free. Christ sent me not to baptize but to… That wonderful he-man aroma that girls really go for.

Then a pneumatic pavement-breaker-started in the street below, some ten yards from where it had been torn up, and repaired, the week before. He considered leaving the sling where it was, empty, on the table, for it was proving more of an impediment than he had anticipated. But fearful of meeting someone who had seen him in it, he hung it round his neck, and went back to the mirror to arrange it.

The pavement-breaker below stopped just long enough for him to hear through the wall,

— You have just heard the oria from Gluck's Orfeoadoiradeechay. and he stood in his open door looking at the closed door just to his right. He raised a hand to knock; but glancing back as his own door came closed saw the large manila envelope on the table, returned to pick it up, and took the smaller less familiar one with it.

The morning was exceptionally fine, the streets still comparatively unlittered by those tons of ingeniously made, colorfully printed, scientifically designed wrappings of things themselves expendable which the natives drop behind them wherever they go, wary as those canny spirits down under cluttering the path to paradise.

As he walked toward the bus stop, he noticed that his watch was fourteen minutes slow. Turning the corner, he started to run; and the bus which had been waiting roared away as he arrived, bearing faces which looked with benign satisfaction on him catching breath in the exhaust fumes. He waited. A cab stopped right before him; and the next bus, unable to approach the curb, roared past. The taxi driver had looked at him questioningly, now disdainfully, and drove after the bus. The downtown bus he boarded a quarter-hour later was driven by a mustached man in a leather jacket, whose swashbuckling motions recalled the devil-may-care bomber pilots of the motion-picture screen. His cap, its wire frame removed, clung rakishly to the back of his oily head, as he guided his huge machine down the runway for another takeoff. Otto rocked back and forth, holding a strap, attempting to appear as vacant as the faces before him while he stared straight forward at

Take someone to church with you next Sunday You'll both be richer for it

The phantasies of the passengers were suspended, as they tore through clouds, shuddered at air-pockets, dove low over landmarks.

Otto had finally turned round, and was staring at 1,500,000 Americans have SYPHILIS or GONORRHEA and don't know it

From their empty faces, none of the passengers resented the driver's incursion into their own phantastical domains: watching his weaving back, they appeared to respect his right to perform in allegory, to redeem, as best his numb imagination would permit him, the absurdity of reality.

Anselm said nothing; but smiled without recognition as they passed in Washington Square. Otto caught his breath and lowered his eyes quickly from the thin newly shaven face to the crimson-covered book under Anselm's arm, and went on to the doorway he had left only hours before. The stairs had the familiarity of a staircase descended in a dream. He had seen them last unlit, with other eyes than these of morning: now they interested him, for he could see himself climbing them, often and regularly, up and down. The door he approached was blank, anonymous. He knocked sharply: still it stood, no hint of what was resident behind it.

Knock knock knock. And more silence than before.

— Esme? he called.

— Who is it?

— Otto.

— Who?

— Otto.

— Oh. But it's so early.

The instant her voice stopped the door, flat, blank, regained its anonymity, and she was gone, nowhere.

— Otto?

— Hello?

— Will you come back in an hour?

— An hour?

— I have to take a bath.

— All right, he called at that resolute door, and went down the stairs.

A small hairy face turned to him from the lap of the blonde whom he sat beside at the drugstore counter. He ordered coffee, and started to tamper wich the green ribbon on the dog's crown. The blonde straightened herself, looking the other way, the lhasa turned to stare at the Coca-Cola machine, and she bent forward to blow softly in its hair. On his left, the hairy-armed counterman rested his hands on the counter. — Yeh, I could write a book, he said to the girl sitting there — I bet it'd be banned in Boston, she said. She laughed. — Not oney in Boston, he said. They laughed. The blonde with the dog coughed, and moved down a seat. Otto blew more cigarette smoke straight before him, and put the packet of Emus on the counter.

Over his third cup of coffee, staring at the two manila envelopes, he suddenly remembered the smaller one which contained a short story written by a navy veteran, handed him at the party the night before after he said he had a friend with a magazine. That friend was the girl who had caused him untold misery three years before, by not marrying him. Having got all of the poetically incumbent recriminations out of his system, Otto remembered her now with condescending fondness. He wrote on a slip of paper, "My dear Edna: I enclose a copy of a story written by a friend of mine, because having read it over I thought it might go well in your magazine. If you can't use it, will you please return it to me, since he has no permanent address.," which note he signed and clipped to the papers in the envelope without even having to bother to take them out.

Stanley said nothing; but hung his head without recognition as they passed in Washington Square. When Otto returned to Esme's door, he was uncertain whether to kiss her uproariously, formally, or not at all. The restraint of not-at-all would be best rewarded, eventually, for then she would believe that she wanted him to kiss her, and arrange an unequivocal opportunity. He adjusted his sling.

She opened the door and smiled at him, as she probably smiled at the janitor when he appeared there. Otto said good morning, and came in. He took off his green muffler and tossed it to a chair, where it fell on the floor behind. — How do you feel this morning? he asked her.

— Like I feel in the morning, Esme answered, smiling, unhesitating as a good child.

— I mean after last night.

— Morning is always after last night.

— No, I mean the party, and…

— Oh. I was. what did you call it? Plastered?

— You were pretty far gone. Otto stared at her face: how she must have scrubbed it, making its hollows more cleanly cut, and then applied the dark lines of the eyebrows and no other make-up. He reached for her waist. She moved away.

— Did you bring me home? she asked.

— Did / bring you home? Esme… He stared at her eyes, wide in innocent curiosity. — Is something the matter? she asked.

— Don't you remember?

— What?

— Don't you remember anything?

— The party? she asked, happily. — It was a lovely party. And then poor Anselm was walking around like a dog and saying funny things, and then that poor young man hit that girl. She stopped.

— Herschel hit Hannah. And then?

— Yes, she said, — Herschel hit Hannah. She stopped.