William Gaddis - J R

— What is it.

— I just wasn’t sure you were listening to me Stella, I mean I thought going out there to see them like we just did we’d at least get a clearer line on things even if we didn’t dig up these papers but your aunts, I just couldn’t get across to them, your Aunt Anne there talking about somebody called the young planter whose father was an undertaker part of the time I don’t think they even knew who I was. And Edward there, I can see how he’d be that upset coming into the place like he did but standing up there singing like that, talking about going into the shoe business someplace nobody’s heard of… he swirled the ice in the glass, drank off the bit of water to rattle it again. — Stella? I mean I just don’t know what you meant saying maybe he’s suddenly scared James isn’t his father, did he say if…

— I just mean he’s a rather selfish boy, that’s all.

— Yes well that’s what I mean he certainly looks like he can use the money, that’s…

— Well it’s not what I mean! her sudden turn lost her the sheet from her shoulders, — he’s a boy with a lot of romantic ideas about himself and everything else I tried to help him get rid of that’s all, now please…

— Well but Stel…

— And please stop calling me Stella! she pulled the sheet up as though it was the force of his stare that had abruptly bared her breast spilled toward him there, turned on her back to reach the light.

— But, but that’s…

— Oh I just mean stop saying it… the light went out and the mass of her thighs rose again under the blanket as she turned away.

Back in the kitchen half tending his eggs he poured some more bourbon finally settling down to eat with his left hand, a blunt pencil in his right sketching, adding, subtracting, crossing out on a kitchen pad he brought with him into the living room when he was finished, moving among the furniture like a stranger looking for a chair large enough, a lamp bright enough, moving Spring in Derby biscuit and Brassaï Retrospective to make space enough for his forms and papers and the latest catalog of Ardo Heavy Duty Stamping Equipment and Parts List, squeezing off his shoes and working on a larger yellow pad until the telephone rang. He looked down the hall as he crossed the room to answer it to what appeared to be light under the bedroom door, but it continued to ring until he answered it, and then went dead in his hand.

In the bathroom he lifted her things dripping from the basin across to the tub and washed, in the bedroom stepped on Wagner as Man and Artist broken open on the floor between their beds looking, as he got into his own, at the shadow of her thighs’ descent there just beyond reach and unchanged it seemed in any detail next morning as he paused again up on one elbow to look, and then stepping on Wagner as Man and Artist got to the bathroom and shaved, lifted her things from the tub to the basin and picked up his shoes dressing half in the hall, restoring Spring and Brassaï, gathering papers and locking the door after him humming, out into the day and as he steered through streets and over the bridge and down rows of false fronts desperately simulating brick and fieldstone, stray fretful bars of Phil the Fluter’s Ball.

— Leo? he called barely inside over the clatter of machinery, — come over here a minute. Look… he spread yellow pad pages on a filing cabinet. — This problem we been having over there with number three, if we just go get this wall knocked out right here and move this whole setup right over around this way we’ve got the line running right through with nothing to hinder, you see what I mean?

— Run into money.

— Well hell I know that. It’ll double this whole production run just about too.

— You might double your rim all right, but it will run you into money.

— Well let’s see how much. You get onto those people we had to do those shipping platforms, that little Eyetalian, get them in here for a cost estimate.

— Mister Angel? If you got a minute there’s something here I think you’d ought to know about, we’d maybe ought to go over here out of the path… Leading the way to the shelter of filing cabinets he dug in the inside pocket of a suit curled round its collar down the length of its lapels coming up with a soiled envelope, — I figured you…

— Mister Angel…?

— Wait a second, that’s Terry calling me.

— Mister Angel? Oh, I didn’t see you back there. Mister Coen’s on the telephone from the hospital.

— Coming. I’ll see you later Leo, get hold of that Eyetalian… He followed her down a hall of plastic flats and cement block painted a green, eyes held on the practiced rise and. fall of her step one foot crossing the path of the other before her and a tight turn at the door where she pushed red hair away from her face and held up the phone. — Gee they hung up on us…

— That’s all right he’ll call back.

— Gee I wouldn’t have picked him for reckless driving, you know Mister Angel? Like he’s always so shy and quiet when he comes in, you know?

— Well it wasn’t reckless, he’d broke his glasses, been out in Long Island and couldn’t see where he was going.

— Gee, she said turning back to her typewriter, and he leaned back hands clasped behind his head, looking across to how the fullness curbed in her simulated leather skirt spilled from the sides of the orthopedic typist’s chair, abruptly bringing his eyes up to the hair pushed back at each return of the carriage.

— Terry? What would you think of a little redecorating in here, maybe getting some of that paneling up on the walls and covering over those pipes up there.

— Gee, I think that would be real nice.

— We even ought to get some carpet in here and plants, we could get some plants in here and get a new leather sofa instead of that old chair over there, and a coffee table.

— That would be real nice Mister Angel.

— And we ought to get some pictures up on the walls here.

— I saw one downtown of the ocean that was real nice, you could like almost hear the waves looking at it.

— We have pictures back in the files here, historical pictures of some famous musicians autographed to old Mister Bast back from the days when the business was piano rolls we could even, there’s an old Welte-Mignon down there in the basement we could get working, shine it up and put it out in the front there where you come in, you know what I mean?

— Yes I, that would be real nice.

— For, you know, when we have visitors to come in, somebody coming in that didn’t know anything about the business, I think they’d be pretty impressed…

She turned to answer a buzz. — They want you out on the floor, Leo. That would be real nice Mister Angel, she said as he got up and hung his jacket on the coat rack, going out.

— You get that Eyetalian in this quick, Leo?

— What? Oh. No, it’s this what I was going to show you before.

— What’s that Leo, he said following him to the shelter of the filing cabinets.

— I figured you better have a look at these. The soiled envelope came out and he closed a frayed buttonhole behind it, — see what goes on here.

— Where did these come from?

— Boys in the shipping room had them.

— But the, this, is this Terry here?

— Don’t know who else it is, with a ass like that on her.

— But who’s the, the man here, that’s not one of our men.

— Might be one of the soldiers from over to the base there.

— And, this one? these?

— More soldiers I guess. What you going to do.

— Well hell I, I don’t exactly know right off. You can’t just go and be that sure from these they’re none of them real sharp and…

— You mean you think they maybe ain’t her? They used that kind of camera that develops itself but just because you can’t see the color of every hair, you don’t see tits like that come down the street every day. I don’t know who else it could be with a ass like that.