Stanley Elkin - The Magic Kingdom

So how could he, how could he know whose uncompromised oohs and ahhs, like someone watching birthday candles being blown out, came from the heart? Or that Colin Bible stifled his injury-nursed gasps and carefully suppressed sighs and whimpers as he stared down from Epcot Computer Central’s glassed-in balcony at the massive and complicated control boards that handled it all?

Or that Nedra Carp, seated between Janet Order and Tony Word, wondered why Mr. Moorhead hadn’t assigned her to a car with children who were her official responsibility rather than hustling her in with strangers? (Did she know the contents of their pockets, what awful contraband candy they might have brought with them? Had they had a B.M. today? Who’d made sure they’d tinkled before permitting them to come out?) And a bit angry with the children, too, or put off — she was not the sort to lose her temper with children, not like that woman Mary Cottle, who used to run off to the bathroom for a sulk whenever things didn’t go entirely spit-spot and now disappeared altogether whenever the poor dears fussed or grew cranky (and now she knew where, didn’t she, and maybe it was something more than a bit of a sulk, and perhaps, if she’d wanted Mr. Bale to find out, it had been something of a mistake to have entrusted Colin Bible, who’d probably known it anyway, with the information, birds of a feather and all that) — because they hadn’t protested, and had abandoned her without so much as a by-your-leave to finicky Tony Word with his peculiar tastes and foul vegetable breath, a boy, she suspected, who, had it been left to him, would actually have gotten down on the ground and rooted for potatoes, carrots, onions, the level radish and asparagus and pumpkin, the foreign zucchini and eggplant and broccoli, eating them from the soil, the earth itself; and that disgusting Janet Order, whose blue dreadfulness, even in the dark, was palpable to her, awful as vein, livid as beetle or basilisk. Or that she could not stop thinking about the woman?

Or that Benny Maxine couldn’t either, or of the two discrete and darkened hollows in her ass, larger, sweeter than dimples?

Or that Mr. Moorhead, having removed his watch and put it in the pocket of his jacket and, out of earshot of the others, inquired of semitic-looking tourists for the one hundred and sixty-eighth time the time of day — he was a scientist, trial-and- error was part of his training, watching their wrists as they raised their arms to within inches of their eyes — and, hypothesis too, they would have at least to be in their late middle age (the youngest among them would have been almost fifty by now) or, more likely, elderly, in their sixties, or, most probable of all, old, in their seventies, nearsighted, waited — patient observation was — and watched for the bookkeeping to appear on their skin, the fadeless, telltale numbers, the careful tattoo audit, and listened also — there could have been shame; they might have been wearing their watches on the opposite arm or worn a timepiece about their neck — auscultating their accents, and had found his Jew?

Or that Lydia Conscience no longer believed she was fooling anyone with her cheap rings and big belly? (That was made quite clear in that dream she’d shared with Mudd-Gaddis and Tony Word. They’d only been patronizing her. Mudd-Gaddis pretending Tony Word was the father! Tony Word! The remarks about morning sickness, her own bitter comments about the buddy system when all she meant, she supposed, was that she didn’t want anyone to know her details. Better to be known for a loose under-age slut than for a terminal! And people stared when they were with her. Mr. Bible sometimes wearing that white nurse’s jacket! Outrageous! Might as well take out an advert. As if Mudd-Gaddis weren’t advert enough. Or Rena Morgan, thinking she fooled anyone with her dumb hidden hankies. Didn’t the twit realize that the wet spots showed when she slipped them up her sleeve again? Or bald Tony Word, who didn’t even have the decency to wear a wig! Or blue-skinned Janet Order, who invaded her dream on the plane. “I dream of Janet with the light blue skin,” she sang to herself in her head. Or bloated Benny with his puffy face, and stupid Noah who couldn’t read and, now he was losing his fingers, couldn’t even count right!) And that was why she still wore the rings even though she knew they didn’t fool anyone anymore and, twice removed — once to make people think she was preggers and now to keep them from knowing just what the hell she was — merely masked the details she couldn’t bear anyone to know? Or that ever since she’d heard about Mary Cottle’s private room she’d been trying to work up the nerve to tell her she hadn’t spent any of her money and to ask her that, if she paid her fair share, could she use it just to get away once in a while?

Or that Noah Cloth, remembering the lady who’d visited him at home that time and recalling what she’d told him about denial, rage, bargaining, and acceptance — hadn’t the compulsive shopping been, at least partly, a kind of bargaining? if that were so, then even if he couldn’t recollect the denial and rage parts, he was almost gone — wondered whether, if she’d let him, maybe he could use Miss Cottle’s room as a sort of hospice?

Or that Janet Order had grown tired of her camouflage, the permutations of all those blue dreamed force fields that had shielded her, hidden her like so much dun-colored predator, dun-colored prey, like birds indistinguishable from the trees they perch in, or soldiers in the always-too-flat Indian summer drabs of battle dress? Because the fact was that blue, quite apart from the cyanotics of her illness, was her favorite color. And hadn’t she, in the ocean depths and sky heights of those blue dreams, at the balls and celebrations, the coronations, inaugurals, and masques, all the dress-blue ceremonials, lost against the royal- and midnight- and navy-blue buntings, against the sleep-wrought hyacinthine drapes and wall hangings, or hovering over the peacock- and robin’s-egg-blue napery, all the blue arrangements, all the deep cobalts of sparkling, spanking accessory, the sapphire studs, the violet eyeshadow, clothed in all the forget- me-not hues of her blue-jeweled skin, loved, even admired, above all else, herself? And now wants, actually needs, suddenly, quite simply, privacy — the bathroom’s too small (Tony’s and Noah’s medications, her own, Mr. Moorhead’s digestives and shaving equipment, all their toothbrushes, toothpastes, shampoos, and special soaps clutter the sink, its deep, wide counter); the children are suspicious of her in the toilet; if she runs the shower to cover the sounds of her inspections, the mirror clouds over — and longs to sneak into 822, wants, needs, to examine herself, at leisure to pry her blue behind, her budding cornflower breasts, her Prussian blue nipples?

Or that leukemic Tony Word, fearful because he’s not been eating properly, suspicious of the scraped strained vegetables he’s served, of the mashed, crushed potatoes, the creamed carrots and pea purées, the smashed beets and thrice-diced watery cauliflower, the brothy fruits and minced greens, beneath their staring, the kids’ and adults’ and waiters’, yields, discards what is not even the menu but only some rote-recalled menu of the head and asks what baby food they have, orders it, and feels anyway this sinful dietary guilt, vaguely religious, aware that he chews (and knowing that he needn’t, it’s like chewing soup), thoughtful and careful as any Jew or Muslim, profane food, as if, if he’s careful enough, he might be able to trap and spit out lumps of preservative and additive like bits of pork? Or that he is worn out by their curiosity (baby food? a kid his age?), dreads their attention at meals, and wishes to go back to the old regime, doing for himself (which would have been impossible of course until Mudd-Gaddis told him and he’d had the idea, now his dream), and thinks that if he can only get their permission he can use his food allowance, make up from cash whatever the difference comes to, and, specifying exactly the ingredients he needs, instructing the kitchen how long each must be boiled, what wood tools, what pots he requires, he could use Mary Cottle’s telephone and order his dinner from room service?