William Gaddis - J R

— Jack don’t be silly!

— What’s so God damned silly about…

— It’s simply unbecoming Jack I don’t like to hear you talk this way as though you could never…

— Well what about last night then! What about last night!

— Well what about last night.

— If there ever was a, spend a whole God damned lifetime preparing if there was ever a time I, the one time in my whole God damned life I…

— Don’t be silly, you’d been drinking and you were tired there’s nothing to be…

— And the wasted…

— Jack stop it! If you’d, Jack if you’ll stop holding your head and just try that suit…? she’d picked up the tray, — I thought we might go out for a walk… and she turned to the hall with it leaving him there hands drawn down his face, eyes left on the paper heaped crumpled at his knee before he reached for the dry cleaner’s bag and came half dragging it on the carpet. — Along the park, the lights should just be coming on, she called from the kitchen, — Jack? Can you see the moon from that window? where the whole corner of it’s gone? My mother used to say that’s where the fairies were spending it…

The only sound was running water, and after the door closed behind them, none, until the doorbell rang, briefly, then long, a brief burst, and darkness accumulated, pierced by the telephone, repeated, repeated, plumbing chortled somewhere beyond the carpeted hall.

— I’m really quite hungry aren’t you? Can you get the light? I thought I’d die at the look on Larry’s face when he saw you in that suit you wouldn’t think doormen noticed those things, do you like lobster Newburg Jack? It’s just a frozen kind I got it when you were in the liquor store, I’m afraid there’s not much lobster in it and Jack? No I can’t really kiss you with these bundles, will you have just one drink? before we eat? I’ll try to hurry, no please. There’s the paper. I’ll hurry… He followed her for a glass, back at the sofa undid the waist of the trousers, sitting, did it up at the sight of the tray. — Can you just move those papers, oh and we need a corkscrew don’t we…

— I’ll get it…

— No sit down… He sank back, turned as the lights went out to a flicker behind him. — It’s hardly a candle is it but it’s all I could find, she said bending to put it before them. — What is it?

— Nothing. Your throat. I was staring at your throat.

— Jack please, eat…

— Hardly see… he moved the candle end closer, little more than flame hovering over a pool of wax by the time he leaned for it with a cigarette that flared up as they touched.

— And your throat? those can’t help it…

— All I’ve got, I thought you’d bought some in that little bag you came out with.

— Those were cough drops I got for you, where did you find these?

— In that raincoat, must have cultivated cancer to keep down his waistline, he said unfastening it, sitting back, — snappy dresser wasn’t he.

— Oh he just wanted so to, he must have had forty pairs of awful socks he’d got in France those really short ones, little designs and elastic at the top and all that dead white skin showing when he crossed his knees but there was no way to tell him, I had to pretend they were getting lost in the laundry and it took me months to get rid of them. It was always a game he had to win, playing against him and helping him win.

— Thought that’s what every woman knows.

— No but I was so young, and he did try hard but he had such ideas of himself, of what he thought my family thought he should be and they never quite matched, Jack please don’t…

— Well what… his hand dropped of its own weight, — tell you the story about the lady who has her portrait done by the Italian who scarcely speaks English? When she sees it she says it lacks sympathy, that’s a word he doesn’t know so he finds the dictionary says it means fellow feeling in bosom and the next time he shows her the port…

— I don’t like that kind of story.

— Oh.

— Well you needn’t be…

— What, old Lucien didn’t like fellows feeling in bosom?

But she just sat there away from him, her head back and the wavers of light on her throat, twisting a strand of hair until she said — No, no he wasn’t jealous really, when he sent back low necks I’d bought it wasn’t for what anyone might do if I wore one, it was what they might think, of him, I was his wife and what they might think of him but he’d always point out décolletage to me at parties or a girl in a top her nipples showed through and I never really knew what he, I even bought a cigar once and almost made myself sick smoking it half way down and put it out right there in that ashtray where he’d see it when he came in, and he didn’t say a word… She drew the twisted strand across her lips in the last flareup of the candle — and it all, it just wasn’t fun anymore…

— You don’t have music here do you.

— No we, we simply never did, we’d go to concerts and things but we never did… Her hand closed in his between them, closer until their shoulders touched and he brushed the warmth of her throat, lips lingered at her ear and she turned her face to his in the dark. Suddenly he was bolt upright. — Was that like kissing a man?

— Amy what in, wait…! he was up, after her where lights came on down the hall — damn it Amy…? The bathroom door came closed against him, left him to turn to the bedroom for the light between the beds, shed the jacket in a heap to the floor.

— Look it does, doesn’t it! She was there in the doorway yellow robe pulled open where she held up the strand of hair across her lip, — look like a mustache?

His eyes dropped, he cleared his throat, — Yes and stop it or I’ll, I’ll come tousle the beard…

— Jack… she pulled the robe closed but paused again, turned to the glass — it does doesn’t it!

— Yes and stop it!

— It must be strange, she said turning, coming between the beds holding the robe loosely, sitting across from him, lying back as he fought off those trousers — for a man, kissing a man, wouldn’t it be embarrassing?

— I’m sure it would.

— But not as much as a woman with a woman… and she caught her breast away from him crowding beside her, brushing the warmth of her throat, lips lingering at her ear and then his tongue abruptly tracing its details, hand gone from breast to breast under the robe until they went crushed under her as he came to one elbow to sweep its yellow from all the whiteness of her back. From his her own hand came, measuring down firmness of bone brushed past its prey to stroke at distances, to climb back still more slowly, fingertips gone in hollows, fingers paused weighing shapes that slipped from their inquiry before they rose confirming where already they could not envelop but simply cling there fleshing end to end, until their reach was gone with him coming up to a knee, to his knees over her back, hands running to the spill of hair over her face in the pillow and down to declivities and down, cleaving where his breath came suddenly close enough to find its warmth reflected, tongue to pierce puckered heat lingering on to depths coming wide to its promise, rising wide to the streak of its touch, gorging its stabs of entrance aswim to its passage rising still further to threats of its loss suddenly real, left high agape to the mere onslaught of his gaze knees locked to knees thrust deep in that full symmetry surged back against him, surges his hands on either side bit deep as though in their possession all her eloquent blood spoke in her cheeks till he came down full weight upon her, face gone over her shoulder seeking hers in the pillow’s muffling sounds of wonder until they both went still, until a slow turn to her side she gave him up and ran raised lips on the wet surface of his mouth.