William Gaddis - J R

— Wait eight, eighty cents each right? So eighty move the dot wait, seventy-two plus what am I giving you, plus eight seventy-four…

— Listen! who went in and didn’t come back out, did you…

— Wait nine forty-six right? I mean I can barely see five, six…

— Look we must have lost somebody! Will you…

— And thirty-five, forty-five I can’t hardly see I almost gave you a dime, wait, here’s a penny forty-six, right?

— No listen who went in with you on that field trip and didn’t come back out.

— Who Mrs Joubert?

— No! one of your…

— How do I know hey look out you’re dropping…

— And look what are you giving me this for this money, I just gave you the tickets to turn in didn’t I? You lent me the money to pay for them now turn them in and get it back and if you want me to pay you this int…

— What?

— I said you have the tick…

— No but it’s these two separate deals you know? I mean there’s this here loan which that’s one then there’s this where I bought these here discounted tickets off you so nobody gets screwed hey? Mister Bast? I mean like this here Mister Y which…

— I don’t want to hear about Mister Y! Just, goodbye I’ll…

— I mean there’s no big rush to pay it back okay…? the voice pursued over the high grass — because hey Bast…? its harsh edge followed him down the weeded ruts where the trees closed overhead — didn’t I tell you maybe we can use each other…? He walked faster looking, listening as though something had moved that instant before his look stilled a torn branch, a tire nested with leaves, the porthole ajar in a foundered washing machine then abruptly the car filling the turn as though it had simply chanced upright there, windows framing limbs that might have been caught in some random climax of catastrophe as he passed silent, distinguishable only as movement till the road’s end filled with illumination flinging his shadow suddenly forward in the headlights behind him and, at the gate there, as suddenly gone. He pulled it shut on the stubbled lawn infiltrating the terrace bricks fronting the studio where the screen door shook on the risen wind hung twisted on one hinge. Beyond it the door stood open. Next to it something, the handle of something, a shovel handle now he came closer, protruded through a broken pane, and thunder gently shook the space he left behind to crush glass underfoot, stepping inside. He stopped. Up, through the balcony rail, light cut across the door to the hayloft and was gone. A plate cracked under his step as he drew back and knocked the shovel to the stone floor, and there he crouched, clutching the shovel handle.

— Who’s there! he rose slowly and pushed the light switch by the door. Nothing happened. — Who’s up there! he called loudly, raising the shovel, crouching again as light danced past the door above, then through it to the stairhead to break down on him between the eaves.

— Yes? Who is it?

The shovel came down slowly. — Who… is that!

— Oh it’s you Edward, watch where you step.

— You, who… who… The light caught his face square, then the smashed ink bottle flooding the carpeted stone toward the stairs.

— You look quite threatening with that shovel, I’m glad I…

— But the… Stella? What… She’d turned away with her light back into the hayloft as he mounted the stairs. — What’s happened!

She sat on an end of the bed dangling a flashlight. — What you see, she said, moving the light now over drawers jammed open at angles, a lampshade crushed, a spoon, a dresser scarf and Piston’s Harmony torn through the spine, sheet music and a player piano roll flung toward the opened window he walked past her to close and sink on the windowseat there, poking into its opened drawer.

— But what, what would anybody… he stared where her light fell on a Bach Wagner Program of Miss Isadora Duncan and Mister Walter Damrosch at Carnegie Hall Wednesday Afternoon February 15,19u, at 3 o’clock — why anybody would…

— No I opened that… her light swept over postal views of Cairo, — looking…

— But what looking for what! he was on his feet again — how did, where did you even come from!

— Just now? From the house, Edward… she sank back on an elbow, pulling her dress from a knee where the light caught it — those papers they want, a birth certificate just anything, Aunt Julia thought they must be there in the windowseat. Norman’s having some business problems he’s rather desperate to get things settled, we…

— Business look everything smashed broken the whole place torn up you’re sitting here in the middle of it with a flashlight like a, talking about Norman’s business problems all you want is some scrap of paper to prove I, that I’m…

— Oh Edward.

— What oh Edward what! you, you came out here once to make me look like I, I shouldn’t have told you… he stood over her where she’d come up from her elbow, where the light fell now on a souvenir menu from the Hamburg America Line still as her fallen shoulders — I should never have told you about that day seeing you that day up at, at, seeing you… and the flash of lightning that filled the skylight over them arrested her rising hand, arrested in detail strands of her pinned hair fallen loose on the defenseless slope of her back where he’d bent closer, where perspiration beaded her neck, where the balance of near dark left his hand’s tremble stilled in hers as Stella rose.

— It’s stifling, almost hot she said, — why don’t you open that again, that window… Again her light came up as if to search its casement out but held on him as he turned from it, opened, swept slowly down the desperate inquiry he posed, and then went out. Some sound of his come forward with him broke and left her sigh, so aspirate it seemed laid out there even when it was done, so heavy that it squared her shoulders turned from him so he ran on her elbow raised up against him in what light there was. — Can you undo this? little hook…? Hands suddenly in collision there he sought it but — no, she said, — I’ve got it, and left his hands hung shaping indecision for the instant till he caught her waist and caught his parting lips against the damp hair fallen at her temple. She turned and stepped away, not even looking, her hand behind her coursed the zipper down. — You can save that till we’re in bed, she said, inclined to draw the gray dress up and off, to steady a hand against a rafter and thrust one shoe away and then the other. — You don’t have to try to seduce me, Edward.

— I, Stella I… from there the tremor ran right through his fingertips tearing at laces, at his belt, a button, buttons, her shape a white slip bending forth to bring the torn spread into line before she raised it over her, lay back, and stared into the shadow of the beam in the eave’s drop above her head, unblinking for the flash that filled the skylight and as motionless for the thunder that came after.

— Well?

— I just… wanted to look he whispered, his voice like one long out of use gone in abrupt and shapeless fragments that might have framed apology or gratitude, or both, coming down, fighting a foot out of the spread’s tear as his shoulders came down to hers and lips delayed at her throat brushed up the scar there, moistened quickly before they sought her own. The opened window beyond was still enough but she turned her face from his so sharply toward it there might have been a light, some sound, some sudden movement from outside to leave his lips lodged at her ear so, filling its convolutions with his gasp of shock at how unseen beneath the spread her hand, unhesitating and without surprise, caress, or brush of exploration found and closed on him swelled to bursting and, silent, motionless, knees fallen wide, led him left thicketed there in dry abrasion as he swarmed over her and clinging headlong wrenched her shoulder in a plunge that left her open eyes fixed on a gap between the rafters where, even in this light, the points of shingle nails showed through in irregular rows, her only sound one that she might have made out of impatience jostled in a crowd, her only movement that sharp turn of her head away from the quaking rise of his, catching the threat of his lips and protest stifled in a bleat against her throat.