Stanley Elkin - The Magic Kingdom

“Anything furtive,” Lydia Conscience said.

“Clandestine,” said Janet Order.

“Anything hugger-mugger.”

“Hole-and-corner.”

Benny Maxine looked from one girl to the other. “What’s going on?” he asked. If they had told him “sorority” he wouldn’t have known what they meant. They wouldn’t themselves. They were friends now, close as they’d been that day on the island, closer than their mortality could take them. (Closer than Tony and Noah, who slept in the intensive care ward together and made sure they sat next to each other at every meal and on all the rides. Who regarded each other as best friends. Closer than that.)

“What could be in there?” Lydia Conscience said.

“Something important,” Janet Order said.

“Do you think she has a lover?” asked Rena Morgan.

“A lover? Why would she have a lover?” Benny said angrily. “What do you mean do you think she has a lover?”

“That maybe she’s in love,” Rena said.

“She’s not in love,” Benny said.

“How would you know what people are?” Rena said.

“Come on,” Benny said. “She’s not in love.”

“What’s in that room?”

“Take us. Please? Do let’s go see.”

“Come on, Benny.”

“Please.”

“It’s crazy,” he said.

“We’ve been on all the other rides.”

“There’s nothing there.”

“She’s proper pissed, Ben.”

“There’s nothing there,” he said again.

Though of course there was. Her human geography. At least his memory of it. The sexual topography of those elliptical hollows, the two dark shadows, those twin stained darning eggs in her ass. At least there’d be the bedspread on which she’d lain.

So if he agreed to take them it was to honor the memory of those delicious relics.

They went at night.

They didn’t tell anyone where they were going and didn’t take the trouble to work out elaborate alibis. What happened was they simply managed to peel off individually from their respective groups. They’d handled themselves, Noah suggested, rather like flying aces in an aerobatic squadron. When one of them left, the ones who remained took up the slack and made just that much more noise, that much more fuss, neither adding nor detracting one whit from the general collective level of demand that any seven terminally ill children might put up under a similar set of dream holiday conditions. And really, when you came to think of it, it was quite a performance, one of the best-yet illusions in the magical kingdom. They weren’t missed until after they were missing.

Any one of them could have told you straight off about 822’s appeal. As soon as they saw it, it became for them what it was supposed to have been for Miss Cottle: a hidey-hole, a sort of clubhouse. Perhaps this was one of the reasons they were so neat. They managed to lie about the room, to fill its three chairs — four if you counted Mudd-Gaddis’s wheelchair — and queen-sized bed — at once the girls had taken it for their own — and even — the boys — put their feet up on the wide round table, to use, in fact, all the long, deep olive oblong room with its dark modern furniture without sullying the least of its pristine from-the-hands- of-housekeeping appearance. There were tricks. Rena Morgan directed the fellows to shut flush each drawer in the bed tables, each louvered drawer in the dresser. Lydia Conscience told them they must keep the sound off if they turned on the TV. And Janet Order, their third expert in camouflage, suggested that all the advertising cards be removed from the top of the trimline TV and hidden away, that they untangle the cord on the telephone and draw the patternless brown drapes.

So they sat, lay about in this curious rowdy tidiness — well, they were dying — and trim, discounted cleanliness and order. Very much at home. Very much at ease. They might have been snug and dry in a treehouse in rain. They watched the soundless images on TV as if they were logs on a hearth.

Each felt restored, returned to some precious condition of privacy they’d almost forgotten.

“When do you think they’ll think to look for us here?” one of them asked at last.

“They’ve already thought it,” Janet Order said.

“Too right,” said Benny.

“Oh,” said Rena Morgan, “then why haven’t they caught us?”

“Because they’re embarrassed,” Lydia said.

“Embarrassed.”

“Well, they are,” Benny Maxine said.

“Sure,” Rena said. “I suppose they’re afraid they’ll bust in and catch us out in some big orgy.”

“That’s not what they think,” Tony Word said.

“You know a lot about it.”

“Rena, it’s not.”

“No,” Noah Cloth said, “they’re embarrassed for Miss Cottle.”

“Or scared of her,” Benny said.

“Because she lowered the boom on them.”

“The room boom.”

“Probably they’ll call first.”

“No,” Rena said, “they’ll never be able to get the number out of the hotel switchboard. Isn’t that right, Benny? They don’t give out unpublished numbers? Isn’t that what you said?”

“For God’s sake, Rena,” Janet Order said, “once they have the room number they have the phone number too.”

“Little old daftie me,” Rena Morgan said.

“They won’t expect us to answer,” Benny said, “but probably they will call first. Give us time to clear out.”

“Of course we mustn’t answer,” Rena said, glaring at Janet. “What, and tangle the phone cord?”

“Ladies!” Charles Mudd-Gaddis said.

Rena patted the bedspread beside her. “Want to come up here, Noah, and rest by my side? There’s acres of room. Noah? Noey?”

“I’m fine.”

“What about you, Tony? Tonah?”

“Of course maybe they won’t realize most of us have figured it out and they’ll expect us to answer,” Lydia Conscience said. “I mean, maybe our friends haven’t figured it out themselves. Or maybe they’re just not the ladies and gentlemen you give them credit for, Ben.”

“Maybe,” Benny said. “I don’t think we can take the chance. If the phone rings we scarper.”

“I agree with Benny,” Rena Morgan said. She looked around the clubhouse. “Shall we put it to a vote? Who’ll make a motion?”

“Rena, for Christ’s sake,” Janet Order said.

“What is this, Rena?” Lydia asked.

“Well what?” Rena shot back. “Isn’t this our all-purpose, syndicalist, council-in-the-treehouse synod and social club? Aren’t we supposed to make motions? How do we occupy ourselves when we’re finished with old business? Or is the only thing on our plate what to do if the phone rings?”

“Rena’s got a bug up her ass.”

“Ladies!”

Benny Maxine punched off the television. “Who’s up for a ghost story?”

“A ghost story?”

“You got a better idea?”

“I love a good ghost story.”

“So do I.”

“Lots of gore.”

“Gobs of guts hanging about, decorating the room like strings of popcorn.”

“Moans. Howls of pain.”

“I love a good ghost story.”

“Takes me mind off things.”

“Who’ll go first?”

“Benny.”

“It was his idea.”

“That’s what I’m saying.”

“You go first, Ben?”

“How do I know you won’t cry?”

“I won’t.”

“Suppose it’s so terrible you can’t help yourself?”

“I won’t cry.”

“You give me a forfeit if you do?”

“What forfeit?”

“Your money?”

“Benny!”