Джозеф Хеллер - Something Happened

"I could handle you all. I could show you a good time. I could show you what it's really all about," she taunted pertly with a speculative smile. "If you weren't all so afraid."

It was lunchtime. The other two weren't afraid, and when she came to her feet with gripping, rigid, insensible arms to begin by kissing me (for them. I remember elbows like angle irons), showing off (for them. I knew it was as far as she wanted to go. It was an awful, corrupt, inane performance on her part — I was being used like a bedpost or stage prop, while she showed off for them — unworthy of her, an unemotional, almost malign procedure speeded up for the occasion like an old movie film into a grotesque and sterile parody of muddled, bumping, fumbling motions. A marble, nonhuman tongue was knocking about my mouth and the fingers scratching wildly at my head and neck were brittle and cold. She ground her face against mine; perhaps that looked good to them. I grabbed her breast because I did not know what else I was expected to do), they went at her from the rear and sides and were under her skirt with their dozens of hands and infinity of mechanized fingernails before she knew what was happening. They were at her buttons, snaps, and elastic waistbands. They were forcing her knees in from behind and trying to press her to the floor. They had her down for a moment nearly into a squatting position. She struggled back up. "You tore my stocking."

Her face looked frantic. They kept kidding ruthlessly with hard smiles, muttering inaudible remarks incessantly to sustain the pretense it was all only a pleasant bit of horseplay that ought not to be misunderstood. (I learned for the future how to execute variations on the same masquerade from them.) I saw flashes of pale flesh and eggshell lingerie. I saw no twat or bush. I looked and was disappointed (although I did not want to). I imagined it huge, thick, and snarled. I imagine it now. The tough, gruff one she didn't like left off for a moment with one hand to go for his zipper — I flinched and tried to shut my eyes and turn away. I did not want to see his oily tube flop out. My feeling now is that it would have been soft. I knew it would be long: I'd urinated with him in the men's room. (I didn't want her to have to see it. Not in front of me.) Where was passion? Why were all of us doing it? There was not even a genuine sex drive at work — but grabbed her again when she nearly squirmed free.

"No."

Feet were scuffling on the floor and heels were kicking against the legs of chairs and the bottoms of file cabinets.

"Sure."

"Come on."

Clusters of little frightened cries and groans were sounding in her as she tried with all her might to keep her feet and maintain a smiling face. Everyone but me, it seemed, was trying to smile. Images flashed and persisted, returning under layers of each other like double exposures: glimpses of garter snaps, thighs, and stretched eggshell underthings, a masculine, crawling hand with weeds of curling, black hair on the knuckles moving briefly for a zipper, then covering her lower belly, the pinky hiking her skirt up by the hem.

"Let me go now. I mean it. Please."

"Uh-uh."

"I'm coming, Virginia."

"You've got to do it."

"You said you would."

"You know that."

"Not until you do it."

"No. I won't. Stop now. Please."

"No."

"No."

"No. Not until you do it. You've got to do it with one of us."

"You've got to do it with one of us."

"Do what?"

"You know."

"Anything."

"Just one."

"Which one?"

"You pick."

"Just one?"

"Then me. You said you could handle us all, Ginny. Prove it. Why not?"

"You're lying."

"You'll see."

"Where's that good time?"

"Be a sport."

"Be a big sport."

"Don't forget that life is short."

"It's only human nature after all."

"When a fellow gets a girl against the wall."

"Stop that. You'll break it."

"Did you ever take it into your head to make money?"

"Just one," she agreed dubiously. Her nostrils and bloodless lips were flaring and shaking skeptically and pugnaciously.

"Remember."

"Just one."

"I mean it. I'll scream. I'll tell the police."

"Horseshit. There's no need to do that."

"Pick."

She picked me.

"Him."

She looked at me for help with plaintive eyes. I thought my knees would buckle.

"Him?"

"Help me," she said.

Hands pushed me toward her.

"Let her go," I cried.

"She wants you."

"We'll watch."

"Go outside," she bargained. "Not while you're here."

"No, sir. We want to make sure."

"It's a free show."

"We may have to show him how."

"You'll lock us out."

They were still touching her all over with greedy hands, taking things that did not belong to them.

"Let her go!" I screamed threateningly, in a voice that cracked and must have quavered with hopeless cowardice and resignation. "I mean it."

(I was her hero.)

My fists were clenched in adolescent fury (and my heart was fluttering in adolescent dismay). They could have beaten me up easily, either one (taken an arm and twisted it, broken it in its socket). I felt faint with misgivings. They stared at me with amazement and scorn. She slipped free of them. I hardly noticed her leave. When I heard the door click closed, I loosened my fists and waited. I did not want to fight. I did not want them to beat me up. I don't think I would have fought to defend myself. (I would have preferred to succumb. I was like my boy in the play group. I don't think I've ever wanted to fight with anyone except my wife, my daughter, my boy, and Derek, and with Derek's nurses.) I waited to see if they would beat me up.

"You prick," they said (and I was relieved when I saw they were not going to beat me up. I was being set free).

"We could have had her."

"We'll get her without him."

That thought struck pathos into my soul. I was not allowed to feel like her hero for long. By the time I returned upstairs, she was at her desk chatting with both of them over what had happened, flirting brashly with them again, especially with the tough, coarse, sinewy one she hadn't liked (mending her torn silk stocking with colorless nail polish, lifting her breasts for him as she had always done for me, tilting her head and tempting him with her ruby, saucy smile. He was a tough, swarthy Italian, like Forgione, and I felt he had just shoved me out of the way again, as he had downstairs. I hated her. My feelings were hurt. I felt she would have fucked for him from that time on sooner than she ever would for me, if he was smart enough to pose and wait — "I'm on my back, he's in my crack," was part of another bawdy song she liked to sing to me — even though she still liked me better), and I felt pangs of jealousy. (What good did it amount to, being liked, if she wanted to fuck for people she didn't like?)

"You were jealous," she said. "Weren't you?"

I must have been gazing at her moon-eyed with all the pain of my broken heart flooding into my expression. I have never been able to cope with jealousy. (I wish someone would teach me how.) It leaves me weak and at a loss for honest words. I can't make jokes. My eyes water and I want to cry. (Marie Jencks would accuse me of staring at her like a mooncalf. Perhaps I did, especially after I found out about her and Tom in the storeroom. I wanted to be absorbed into her embraces also. I didn't like feeling left outside. I still do stare at girls who are attractive, and look away quickly if they stare back. Today, I chuck brassy, overpowering women of twenty-eight like Marie Jencks under the chin nimbly and pass them by with a half-hearted falsehood. Today, girls of twenty-eight don't try to boss me around. Derek's nurses do.) Other men go berserk with jealousy and fly into Herculean rages. I produce tears.