Stanley Elkin - George Mills

“Here,” George said, “I’ll hand it to you.”

“ You dry me,” the girl said. She laughed. “A hundred strokes.”

“I think you’d better do it yourself, Miss,” Mills said.

“I’ll let you call me Mary.”

“I don’t mind calling you Miss.” It was true. He didn’t.

“You’re just scared Uncle Harry will see.”

“See what, Miss?”

“Go in, get wet. I’ll dry you off.”

“I’m in a state of grace, Miss,” George Mills said so gently that the girl might have thought she was being scolded. But Mills felt no anger. Even the mild, queer authority of maleness he’d felt, the odd thrust of his exhibitionist swagger, had somehow resolved itself, declined, his horsepower manhood gone off. I’m her servant, thought Mills. It’s proper she should tease me. There was a compact between them, the ancient, below-stairs displacements and goings on of history’s and the world’s only two real classes. She was there for his character as, in a way, he was there for hers. And her mother didn’t want to die until this child was ready. He knew that if he didn’t do something with his loyalty he was lost. So he told her.

“Because,” he said, “women always fooled me. Because whatever I thought about women was never what I should have thought.

“I mean their natures. I had this idea about their natures, that there was such a thing as a virgin heart. To this day I’m astonished young ladies let fellows. I’m not talking the sense of the thing. I mean if it makes sense, or even if it’s right or wrong. I mean it seemed to me it couldn’t happen, not shouldn’t, couldn’t. That the body itself wouldn’t let it. That that’s what a body was, being’s buffer, a place to hide. Lord, Miss, the things I thought. That marriage wasn’t so much a way of two people finding each other as something they did to keep others from finding them, from ever having to do again with anyone else what their bodies weren’t strong enough to keep them from doing with each other. To give back sovereignty, you see, even if it was devalued now, like bad dollars or a fixed income. That courtship was impossible, that a fellow’s lies and urgencies had to get past the hymen first, that they listen in their cherry, see Miss?”

The child, wrapped in towels now from head to toe, watched from where she lay in the deck furniture. Mills had a vagrant image of her mother in her sheets in the hospital bed.

He tells about the Delgado Ballroom. He tells about bringing Louise and her friends back to his apartment.

“This is swell,” Louise says. “Isn’t this swell?”

“Have you got television?” Bernadette asks.

“What’s in the fridge?”

“I don’t know. Just some eggs. Some stuff for breakfast.”

“Who wants cocoa? Raise your hand.”

“I don’t think there’s cocoa,” George says. “There may be some chocolate syrup in the cabinet where I keep the soap powder.”

“Where’s your phone?” Charles says. “Never mind, I see it. This directory looks like it’s never been used.”

“If you had the fixings I could make chocolate chip cookies. If you had the chocolate chips.”

“There’s Saltines,” George says.

“At least there’s a radio,” Herb says. “I’ll get some music.”

“Somebody get the lights.”

“Man, are you corny!”

“Who’s horny?”

“Sometimes Ray acts very immature,” Bernadette says.

“Got a church key?”

“In the drawer with my tableware.”

“Okay, I’ve got it. Look at this, he’s got service for one.”

“Maybe he isn’t registered.”

“Hey you guys, be still a minute.…Is this Mr. Stuart Melbart of 2706 North Grand Boulevard?…It is? Congratulations, Mr. Melbart, this is Hy Nichols of KSD radio. If you can answer the following question you and Mrs. Melbart will be the lucky winners of an all-expense-paid vacation in Hot Sulphur Springs, Arkansas, as KSD’s guests at the luxurious Park Palace Hotel. Are you ready for your question?…Good. All right, sir, name two members in President Eisenhower’s cabinet.…Sherman Adams is correct. You’re halfway there.…I can’t hear you. John Foster who? Speak up, please.…Yes, yes, John Foster. We have to have that last name, sir. Can you speak up?…No sir, I can’t.…Yes sir, I can now. Go ahead, sir, take one more try.…John, yes.…Foster, yes.…What’s that?…It must be a bad connection, yes.”

“Charles, that’s cruel. The poor guy must be fit to bust.”

“Did you hear him? Did you hear him shouting? What a goon!”

“Beer, everybody. Have a beer, George?”

“That sounds funny. Can’t you get a different station?”

“This is the only one that works. George must be some Browns fan. They left town two years ago.”

“Haven’t you even got a phonograph? ”

“No.”

“How big are your breasts?…I said how big are your breasts?…No, ma’am, I’m not being fresh. Isn’t this the take-out chicken place?”

“I’m expecting a call,” George says.

“Bern?”

“What?”

“Want to take a shower?”

“Oh, Ray. You’re the limit.”

“What the hell, Bern. We’re married.”

“I don’t have clean towels.”

“Why don’t you sit by me?”

“There, that’s better. Isn’t that better?”

“Hey, I can’t see to dial.”

“Why don’t you sit by me?”

“Where are they going? That’s my bedroom. Why’d they close the door?”

“George, they’re engaged.”

“Dibs on the couch.”

“Shove over you guys.”

“Okay. Quit your pushing.”

“All the good spots are taken,” Louise says.

“Did they just go into my bathroom together?”

“Maybe Bernadette had to go.”

“They’re running the shower.”

“I know, you don’t have clean towels. Maybe they could…” Louise giggles.

“What did you say?”

“Shh. Ruth and Charles.”

“We heard you, Lulu.”

“Well, mind your business then. You weren’t supposed to hear me. I was talking to George.”

“ Don’t, Charles, you could hurt the baby! ”

“Do you like that?” she whispers. “Does that feel good?”

“Yes,” George Mills says.

“Charlie, it could.”

“Hmnn. Hmmnn. ”

“You’re shy, aren’t you? You don’t open your mouth when you kiss. Didn’t you ever french a girl, George?”

“I french.”

“Kch, kch. Take it easy, you want to cut off my air?”

Ruth, beside him on the sofa, touches his arm.

“What?”

“Shh. Listen.”

Louise giggles. “Ruth, that’s mean. They’re in love.”

“He’s not going to sit next to me in those sticky pants.”

“They’ve only been in there two minutes,” Charles says. “Boy, was he hot to trot!”

“He couldn’t help it,” Ruth says. “She’s been teasing him all evening.”

“Well he’s calmed down now all right, all right.”

“I swear,” Louise says, “wham bam. You men have no staying power.”

“I don’t know.”

“Why don’t we have a contest?”

“A control contest,” Charles says.

“Everybody?” Louise asks.

“Sure. Tell those guys in there. Herb’s already out of it. Herb’s already lost.”

“Hey, you can’t go in there.”

“Bet?”

Charles gets up and walks to the bathroom door. He opens it. “We’re having a control contest. Herb’s out of it. On your mark, get set, go.” He leans his mouth against the bedroom door. “We’re having a control contest.”

“I thought Herb’s out of it. That he already lost.”