Barry Hannah - Geronimo Rex

We’d just driven over thirty miles on gravel roads and had knocked off a pint of vodka with Seven-Up and smoked as many cigarettes as we could get in our mouths. (I myself was carrying three different brands in my coat at the time.) Also, we’d gone to work against each other’s mouths for about an hour, and I had a rosy-tasting tobacco and alcohol spit rolling around in my throat. Tonnie Ray went off to change into suitable party wear. I made my way casually toward the head, and passed Ollie Sink’s niece in the hall. She noticed me, stopped, and gave me a smile of withering sweetness. This girl, whose nickname was Lala, had tiny bones and a sort of emaciated prettiness that grabbed you only if you thought on it a while. The big brown eyes were there, all right, along with the small lips, which always seemed to have a glint of juice on them. She stepped like a baby stork, and wore girlish-ritzy clothes. Her family was rich, and yet she was shy and always seemed to be apologizing to you with those big eyes. I imagined that her hard little brassiere was stuffed with hundred-dollar bills. She was dressed in a pants and sweater outfit of creamy pink. I was high enough at the moment to think I loved her and had always loved her, only her. But I couldn’t think of anything to say. So I just ran back and blocked her and looked at her sincerely.

“Oh, Harriman,” she said timidly, looking down with closed eyes. “Tonnie Ray looks so nice tonight!”

Those days I was wearing an affected serious-musician’s hairdo, with long lanks and a part almost in the middle. I thought this would really sink Lala, and was slaughtered by what she said. Yeah, Tonnie Ray. Lala passed by and didn’t feel my hand as I reached to her back in agony and swept my fingers down the soft fuzz of her sweater. I thought of Tonnie Ray and went to take a leak.

I was thinking wistfully of Lala Sink and having that minor orgasm of urination, when I felt somebody’s breath on my bare backside.

I turned and saw one of the college honchos standing behind me. He held a blown-out match in one hand and was sucking a cigarette.

“Hey! Watch where your breath goes,” I complained.

“Sorry, buddy. This is a crowded head.”

I recognized him as the Tulane romeo I’d seen playing little fingers with this magnificent natural-blond gal from Dream of Pines. They were standing against the sliding glass door, on which the hearth fire and mantle were reflecting, and they did indeed look like an ideal couple in a ski-lodge plate from National Geographic . He had a dark, slightly skeptical handsome face and the girl was like pale butter molded lovely, and the way she was lounging toward him, his slouching power in his fern-green windbreaker, the chain of his fraternity pin lobbing back and forth brilliantly, you imagined he was the one who had molded her. I hated him with a hate that came deep, out of my dreams. And I had been drinking, of course. But I pulled it off rather well, I think.

“You’re a lucky dog, brother.”

“Why … what … wh …?” he wanted to know.

“Come on. You know what I mean. Your girlfriend. Blond. Personality. She’s simply tremendous. You couldn’t do any better if you tried.”

“Thanks. Thank you very much.”

“Listen. I know . And Earl and Bob. We’ve all gotten it from Sherry, and I mean, she can put it to you. She can really throw the junk at you. Man! She’ll grind you out of the backseat of a car. (I whistled and wagged my head dazedly.) Uuuummph!”

He collapsed as much as a man can and still stand up. His face broke and fell into a saggy frown, as he watched me zip up — an action I made a lot of to-do about, realizing that it gave a sort of authenticity to everything I’d told him. At this point I was a dramatic genius, having acted in the senior play, etc. I left the head; the Tulane romeo was by the commode shredding like a cigar butt you might see in a toilet.

Tonnie Ray was in one of the bedrooms chattering away with another roach. She was still in her evening gown. The fact was that she was prettier in that gown than she’d ever been before, and maybe knew she’d never be that pretty again and was hesitant to get out of it. I called to her and said let’s go out to the pool. She said wait a minute, and I said come on, now . Tee hee, I was such a brute, she giggled to the other roach, also still vainly wearing her evening gown. This other girl had on one of those huge, stiff bell-like contraptions and looked like a pumpkin seed stuck up in a bowl of sugar. I made off with the intention of deserting Tonnie Ray and her sickening friend. Tonnie Ray swept out in the hall, however, and clamped on my arm with her swimming suit in hand. She managed to do a lot of winks and poses to the society we passed in the kitchen. The old man parent of the house was trying, with the help of two boys in dinner jackets, to cram a horrid, bloody pig corpse into the rotisserie of his electric range. Everybody had to eat a slab burned to char outside and completely raw inside that morning at the house party breakfast.

The pool was in the back yard. It was late May and still cool, but there were a few body-conscious football players thrashing in the water yelling for their dates to jump in. I dragged Tonnie Ray into the bathhouse, a building made of two separated rooms with V-shape roofs and curtains inside hanging from a rod which went across the middle of the V. The view from inside gave you a triangle of glass above curtains at two ends, three tables in a concrete room like a teepee, and a brownish single light bulb hanging on a frayed old-timey wire of pleated yellow and black. We were alone.

“This is the girl’s room, stupid!” Tonnie Ray laughed. Her voice was as thin as an ill-poached egg thrown against the treble strings of a harp, like I did once. Besides that, it had a little wavering crackle in it Tonnie Ray was slightly drunk.

I was very sad that night, especially after seeing Lala Sink and wishing for her. Almost sorrowfully, I was re-signed to getting from Tonnie Ray whatever I could get Oh, I thought of taking Tonnie Ray out to the pool and drowning her in her evening gown. I felt some betrayal to Earl and Bob for not killing her in an inventive way. But I went on. Said what I had to say.

“I know where we are. Let’s change together.” My curiosity mounted, with a little conscious effort from me.

“Ohhhhh. Naughty!” she rebuked me coyly. But she sat up on one of the tables and started working her panties down. Her evening gown fell back to her knees, and her feet became coiled in a mess of garters, stockings, and shoes. When I saw her open her knees a little to make room for everything, I leaned over, grasped down her thigh, and put my middle finger up to her prize, felt her slippery flaccid sex, and plunged in. My finger was attacked by salty, numbing chemicals. It seemed to float. Solid to muscle to jelly to gas. I was trying very clinically to understand it She reared up her face. It looked like an old servant in a horror movie, only … there was a wide swipe of red smile on it. Her feet turned together in her white high heels. She was uniquely unalluring. Then her head went down and she started working, seriously. I saw a woman, how a woman does, in the act, without her man. This was a sight. I looked on like a doctor.

“Harry, Harry!” she began spewing. “You are a serious musician, and I am your date to the senior party, and oooooh! … Oh, Dream of Pines High! What fun it’s been … oh, I was such a … success! Yes. Success, success, success, sue, sue, success! The parties — I had dates , real dates . I didn’t miss a thing !”

Her dress thrashed and scrunched around her hips, wide white silk sliding everywhere. Felt to me as if I had my arm down in a bin of popcorn. Tonnie Ray had her moment She froze, lifted up, and moaned like an emergency stroke victim. Then a big expulsion of shark’s breath blew out of the lifted dress. It was hard to forgive her that. I was really outraged. I pinched her with my thumb on top.