William Gaddis - J R

— Look Edward we, we have to get back in to New York Stella’s got some dinner to get to and, watch that glass Stella…

— Rift the hills and roll the waters! flash the lightnings… he pounded chords, — the pulsating moment of climax playing teedle leedle leedle right inside your head… he found a tremolo far up the keyboard.

— Edward that’s enough please, we’re leaving…

— Wait wait trust me cousin! you wanted to hear this part… he banged C, hit F-sharp and bracketed C two octaves down — how she turned her bosom shaken in the dark of…

— Stella you think maybe we should wait and…

— I think we should leave yes, Edward…?

— Now for me the woods may wither, now for me the rooftree wait here’s Norman’s part, it may be my lord is weary, that his brain is overwrought… he hunched over the keys to echo the Ring motif in sinister pianissimo, — he will hold thee something better than his dog, a little dearer than…

— All right yes maybe we just better go along, Edward?

— Rain or hail! or fire… he slammed another chord, stood there, and tapped C. — Master tunesmith wait… he dug in his pocket, — make a clean breast of the whole…

— Once you get things straightened out maybe you can call us up Edward? I’d like to get this waiv…

— Oh please! she caught his arm closing his suit jacket and his coat, hat on now tucking ends of his muffler and seeming all clothes beside her, — Edward? goodnight…

— We’ll call you up Edward, you’ll just be right here will you?

— I don’t know! he was getting a foot up now — I’ve had some offers, I’ve…

— But where would you…

His foot came down on the cluster at middle C — to, yes to Tribsterill go into the shoe business there… he bent to tie the lace — get to wear them around of course, where the muck runs down to…

— Please!

— Or wait yes that other place what was it, go into import export there in the privacy of my own…

— Well you just let us yes I’m coming Stella, watch that shovel there… and he got her arm past curtains stirred through the broken pane and the screen door hanging there on one hinge, neither open nor closed. — Kind of hate to just leave him there like that but I couldn’t see where there was anything we, watch that puddle… he caught her elbow as they gained the lawn.

— A laughing place… stabbed after them making their way round the yew, and then a sprinkling of piano notes, as beams of the police car swept them in an officious turn and sought the opening in the hedge.

— You think maybe we ought to stop in there again? He nodded over her head to the lighted windows where streak mounted streak down clapboards and glass from the gutter dangling at the corner of the house and branches thrashed where the trees rode high losing sight of each other as though readying to hurl their fruit in all directions and make a real night of it, one to emerge from with old wounds reopened and new ones inviting attention. — Or just to tell them goodnight…? but he was already holding opened for her the door of the car, and nothing turned her to look out or back as their lights caught the opening in the hedge, and then moved through it.

She leaned forward to turn on the radio, fleeing one wad of sound for another there as he swung the curve past the pepperidge tree. — Uh? She’d snapped the radio off. — I kind of liked that, he said as she rested back with that aspirate sigh leaving no sound but the regular rhythm of the windshield wipers. Passing the firehouse he began to hum and, passing the dark cavity of the Marine Memorial Plaza, she turned the radio on and sat back abandoning it to a novelty group playing Phil the Fluter’s Ball with vocal accompaniment that could only be described as suitable.

— Kind of hated to go off and leave him like that… they stopped for a light, — the way he was acting, you think he’ll be all right? The car moved ahead. — Stella?

— What is it.

— I said do you think Edward will be all right.

— Whatever all right means.

— Well does he always go around with his necktie tied out over his neck and his hair like that? and his shirttail out under his jacket in the back? Just seeing his face, the look on it…

— I’m sure you’d have a look on your face if we came home and found the place ransacked.

— That isn’t just what I meant though, he…

— You’re driving too fast with this rain.

— It was you that was in such a hurry.

— I just, I thought we should leave.

— Do you think he’s going to press a claim? to your father’s estate I mean.

— If you force him to.

— Me? Why would I want to do that?

— Just by going on about it the way you do.

— Well hell Stella what am I supposed to do then, it’s all got to be settled he could just as well give you that waiver even if he wants to claim your father for his instead of James like you said he…

— That’s not what I said. Can’t we go more slowly?

— All right, but you said…

— I said maybe Edward’s suddenly afraid he’s not Uncle James’ son. There’s quite a difference.

— Why. What’s James got to leave him? The car slowed somewhat. — Stella? What’s…

— I heard you! You just can’t understand anything you can’t get your hands on, anything you can’t feel or see or, or count…

— Well I just meant…

— Be careful…!

— It’s all right I saw him coming, the way they build these little foreign cars they don’t give you room to move your…

— Obviously it wasn’t built for someone your size I don’t know why you insisted on buying it, but you can’t drive so fast on these wet roads.

— It’s all right, he said, — I saw him coming… and he leaned forward and turned the radio off, and stayed that way, leaning forward over the wheel as though searching for landfall on a horizon far out ahead. — Why hell, I’m just trying to hold things together here, everything your father and I built up there. All this time every penny’s gone right back into the business so there’s just no cash, there’s no excess cash around to pay off these death taxes and they come in, the tax people come right in and take their bite before anybody else even gets to taste, you see what I mean? There’s two, three million dollars tied up here, maybe closer to four altogether but there’s no way to know what value the tax people will put on your father’s forty-five percent because it’s a family company and the shares have never been traded. They can just get some shyster appointed to administrate forcing us to go public and sell shares to raise cash for these taxes, they all end up with a nice cut and we end up with a crowd of stockholders squabbling for dividends and bankers who know as much about punch cards and continuous forms as a hog does about holy water in there telling us…

— Yes, all right.

— You see what I mean? And we’ve already borrowed against assets, we borrowed for that last big expansion and now the tax people are even trying to deny us interest on that loan as a deduction like we been taking it the last six years, can you beat that? And they’re trying to force us to settle that claim right now, too, can you beat that?

— No.

— What?

— I can’t beat it, no. I can’t even understand it. I simply wish we could stop constantly talking about it.

— Stella how can we just not talk about it if you’re going to be the administrator? You come right down to it after all, it hasn’t been too bad to you.

— What are you talking about.

— Just these concerts and benefits of yours and these artists and people you collect…

— What people do I collect.