Gerald's Party

by Robert Coover

  ‘Ah. Good.’ I really didn’t know what I was saying. Regina came sweeping in, drew up short when she spied Teresa, cried out: ‘How come she got the part?!’ and went storming out again in a stylized pique I was sure I’d seen before. I was totally confused. I didn’t know whether the night was running forward or backward. I was afraid the doorbell would ring and it would be Ros at the door. Backing out, her cloak wrapping her, her welcoming hug dissolving into a wishful fancy – and then the doorbell did ring! ‘Oh no!’ I cried.

  ‘Not more people!’ my wife groaned, and took my arm. But it was: little Bunky Baird, the actress who’d played ‘Honeyed Glances’ in The Lover’s Lexicon, one of Lot’s daughters, and Jesus’s nymphomaniac sister in The Beatitudes, escorted by some older guy in his fifties and a young gigolo who might have been partnering either or both. Quagg had just been explaining to Alison’s husband that, ‘So what we’re going for here is the transmutation of stuff from deep down in the inner life, see, into something out front that we can watch, something made outa language and movement, you dig, to show forth the –’ when Bunky let out a terrible shriek from the doorway: ‘Stop him! he’s going to kill her!’

  Teresa squealed as though Gudrun, now rouging her bottom, might have jabbed her with something, Olga yelped and dropped her drink, Jim looked up: ‘Don’t be silly,’ he sighed (‘We need a butterfly on that float at the mouth,’ shouted Scarborough), shaking his loose shock of gray hair, ‘I’m only trying to chip this damned plaster off.’

  ‘It’s all right, Bunky,’ Quagg explained, his arm around her. ‘She’s already dead. It’s Ros.’ ‘Okay, hit it – that’s it, now make it hot!’ ‘She had a big heart, I wanta use it in this production.’

  ‘It’s getting so confusing,’ my wife murmured, her hand on my leaden elbow (‘Yeah, I heard a rumor you had something going on the boards, Zack – looks fab!’ Bunky was saying, calming down as deftly as she’d aroused herself, and Vachel, flipping irritably through Anatole’s script, complained: ‘Wah, don’t I getta do any fucking?’), ‘I don’t even know a lot of these people.’

  ‘That’s good, kill it!’

  ‘Hey, what took you guys so long?’ Quagg asked, as Steve the plumber and Horner came in, lugging the ping-pong table.

  ‘Catchin’ the reruns in the pit, Zack.’

  ‘Isn’t that your athletic supporter Vachel is wearing on his head?’

  ‘Looks like it.’ Also my golf shoes and Bermuda shorts, my ski goggles on his bulbous rump, and Mark’s blue SUPERLOVER sweatshirt.

  ‘This where you want it?’

  ‘Yeah.’ They set the table down, still collapsed, at the entrance to the cave: apparently it was meant to serve as a kind of stage. ‘See what you think, Hillie,’ Quagg said, then, shifting his penis from the left to the right side of his unitard crotch, turned to Bunky: ‘What’re you doing these days, kid?’

  ‘I’m, uh, between shows, Zack.’

  ‘I – I don’t know what to say,’ I said, and my wife said (‘C’mon,’ Quagg smiled, ‘we’ll spot you in’): ‘I’ll go put the coffee on.’

  ‘Thanks, Zack,’ said Bunky softly, touching him under the cape. She already had her coat off, her two men bumping past me into the dining room with it, on their way to the sideboard. Back there, I could still hear Vic babbling on helplessly: ‘Turned to salt … what—? … exactly the problem … ice all gone … who – whoof! harff! – wanted that … ? No, goddamn it!’ Yes, I thought, feeling a little better, coffee would help.

  ‘Now lemme see that script, kid.’

  I moved out of the traffic toward Jim (he seemed suddenly very weary, his hair in his eyes and square jaw adroop, as he dug away at the plaster on Ros’s breast), Hilario rapping out a vigorous staccato on the ping-pong table as I passed that sounded like machine-gun fire. Behind his fierce rat-a-tat-tat, I could hear Anatole explaining excitedly that his play was really a kind of metaphysical fairy tale, a poetic meditation on the death of beauty and on the beast of violence lurking in all love, Vachel grousing in his squeaky voice: ‘Yeah, but at least I oughta get to squeeze some goddamn tit, hunh, Zack?’ ‘Christ, so much – gasp! – waste … over and over …’ You could hear him all the way in here, growling and spluttering. ‘Got a side for me, honey?’ Bunky asked. ‘Am I right … ? story – kaff! snort! – what? kills!’ ‘Vic’s in bad shape, Jim,’ I said. It was a relief to be around a familiar face. ‘I think he needs you.’

  Jim sighed, staring down at Ros. ‘Some damn party I’m having,’ he said. One of Ros’s bagged-up hands was in the pilaf. There was a loose scatter of paper napkins, turkey bones (‘Damn it, you gotta dumb it down, kid,’ Quagg was remonstrating, Alison’s husband hovering over his shoulder, trying to read the script, ‘you’re outa school now, so cut the fancy shit – this is theater!’), Alison’s silk sash, chorizo chunks, somebody’s vibrator, used silverware. Like Time’s dropped breadcrumbs, I thought: no, we were not going around in circles, Ros wasn’t anyway. And the sash: it was greasier than ever. There are no reverse loops, it seemed to say. The borders are absolute. Things end. Replay, instant or delayed (the TV cameraman had just moved off Jim’s hands to focus on Teresa, clown white from head to toe, except for her bright red breasts and bottom, now being urged up onto the ping-pong table to dance with Hilario, Scarborough meanwhile nailing my skis to the front corners of the table, apparently creating some kind of proscenium arch, the raps of his hammer syncopating contrapuntally with Hilario’s chattering tapdance and Zack Quagg’s barking lecture to a deflated Anatole: ‘You might as well learn right now, son: keep it simple! The mystery just gets chewed up in all this razzamatazz. If you got something to say, come straight out with it!’), was a manipulation not of time but of matter. Benedetto came in, pulling on Roger’s bloodsoaked business suit (this was new): ‘It’s still sopping!’ he complained (he hadn’t said this before), trying to stretch it around his operatic belly. ‘Gudrun, old sock, could you let this out a bit?’ ‘How’s the shoulder, Gerry?’

  ‘Stiff …’

  ‘Just remember, kid, the most mysterious sentence in the world has only three letters in it. Everything else is nothing but a fucking footnote to it, variations on a – hey, why so glum?’

  ‘There’s only about an inch or so back here,’ Gudrun said, examining the seam in the seat of Roger’s pants, Benedetto peering down at her over his shoulder. ‘Why don’t we just make you a codpiece?’

  ‘I’m sorry, Mr Quagg. It’s my fault. I guess I really don’t know much about this—’

  ‘Whaddaya mean, you’re doing great!’

  ‘I am?’

  ‘Hey, Scar, look what I found!’ exclaimed Horner, coming in with Mark’s pedalcar. Scarborough was up on a stepladder, his mouth full of pins, hanging our drapes over the ski uprights like theater curtains, so folding them as to make the splotches of blood resemble large crude hearts. ‘Terriff,’ he called down lugubriously, taking a tuck, ‘see if he’ll fit,’ and Vachel squeaked: ‘No, man, I’m not getting in that thing!’ Gudrun was meanwhile measuring Beni for his codpiece and it reminded me, as I settled back against the table, accepting it all now, Ros, Roger, Tania, the police, the wounds and bruises, everything, or almost everything (‘Sure, kid! You got bucketsa talent!’ Quagg was booming), of the time Ros, holding the head of my exhausted member up in the air, said: ‘I don’t care how big it is, Gerry. I don’t even care how hard it is. I just care how here it is …’ Yes, I thought – I was watching Teresa’s crimson cheeks bob like ripe apples as Hilario, looking pained, clapped her along – this is the one sweet thing we have: the eternal present. Our only freedom. It seemed to flatten out beneath me, all resistance crumbling at last.

  ‘Gerry … ?’

  ‘I mean, I love the fairy tale bit, kid, that old granny in the ice castle, little orphan Ros at the door – like, we’ll put her in a basket maybe, shaking a rattle or sucking a dildo or something – flash all that in the hello frame to key some motifs, ring a few bells, then punch in
this torture number to set up the death dance and Last Supper routine: shit, man, it’s a fucking classic!’

  ‘It is?’

  ‘No, no, no, Teresita! You are the, how you say? the goddess off loave, no?’

  ‘And this line about bats in daylight – I mean, wow!’

  Clock time might take things – Ros, for example – further and further away, or seem to, but human time (‘So awright, kid, get on with it!’) – what had the Inspector said?

  ‘Now, anybody here get off on a git-box?’

  ‘Gerry, you’re, uh …’

  ‘You muss leeft! and leeft! So!’

  Pulsations, yes. Perhaps. (He said.) But flow, no.

  ‘Whew, I don’t believe this!’

  ‘How ’bout me, Zack? Gimme a kit, I’m magic, man!’

  ‘Vic’s daughter plays, I think.’

  ‘Gerry … ? Hey … !’

  ‘What?’ I realized Jim had been trying to get my attention for some time. I leaned back toward him (‘She’s in the dining room, Zack. Her old man’s got a problem …’), cradling my numb arm in my live one and recalling that game Ros and I used to play with our toes and noses – toeses and noses, we called it – and the delicious pucker of concentration on her lips, the tip of her tongue slithering out between them like an animal’s erection …

  ‘Okay, sign her on. Now – hey, sweetheart, whaddaya doing—?!’

  ‘… Sitting on her hand,’ Jim said.

  ‘Oh—!’ I lurched away from the table, and her arm swung loose. ‘No … !’ I’d almost forgotten she was there. Jim put her hand back. The fingers knuckled, looked more like a bag of marbles inside their plastic wrap.

  ‘This is not a singalong, baby! We’re not watching the bouncing ball! This is a dance of death! Doesn’t that mean anything to you?’

  ‘It’s just … I – I’ve never done anything like this before,’ Teresa whimpered, her hands trembling, white on white, on her tummy.

  ‘That story about Roger and Ros and the old lady, you know, is a complete fabrication,’ Jim added. ‘And Zack knows it.’

  I nodded, feeling too weak to stand alone, yet too appalled to lean back against the table again (I still felt her brittle fingers, knuckled into my rump like some kind of summons), or even to look at it, keeping my eyes fixed instead on stubby Teresa, now trying, coached by Hilario and Quagg, to ‘fly like a beard’ (as Hilario said) – ‘No, no, guapa! like a doave, not a tour-key!’

  ‘Is this what you’d call a metaphor?’ asked Alison’s husband from under his floppy hat. Olga, it seemed to me, had her hand in his pocket.

  ‘Ros came to see me that day. Somebody had apparently given her a hallucinogen of some kind without her knowing what it was, and she was frightened. Not by the visions, but by the feeling it gave her, she said, of being alone.’

  ‘Mate a – vot?’

  ‘Curious …’

  ‘Wait a minute! Wait a minute! Let’s get serious! This is death we’re talking about, baby, death! – you know, the last fucking call, the deep end, so long forever: now, come on, what does it make you think of?’

  ‘Why don’t you stick a feather up her butt, Zack, and let her try it on all fours?’

  ‘Ros hated to be alone. She even wanted someone in the bathroom with her when she was brushing her teeth or …’

  ‘I know …’

  ‘I – I once imitated a person flushing herself down a toilet,’ Teresa offered timidly. ‘Of course it was a long time ago …’

  ‘His blind daughter?’ Bunky asked, studying Anatole’s script. Lloyd Draper had entered the room in his hat and coat, photo albums under his arm, Iris beside him. ‘Yeh heh heh!’ he exclaimed, discovering me, and they came strolling over.

  ‘At … at church camp …’

  ‘Beautiful!’ enthused Benedetto, admiring the silky patch Gudrun was holding up to his gaping fly. ‘Whose were those?’

  ‘Awright,’ Zack barked, losing patience (‘Take your pants off,’ Gudrun said around the needle in her mouth, ‘and I’ll sew it on …’), ‘let’s see it!’

  ‘Everything was just delicious!’ Iris exclaimed, and Lloyd agreed: ‘Yes indeedy! I’ll second that!’ He grabbed my right arm and gave it a painful shake. Someone behind me was tuning up a guitar. ‘God, she’s terrible!’ Zack groaned, hand clapped to his eyes, peeking out between his fingers at Teresa trying to flush herself. ‘We sure been travelin’ first class tonight, haven’t we, Mother?’

  ‘I didn’t even know he had a daughter!’

  ‘Yeah,’ laughed Horner. ‘It’s wonderful!’

  ‘Thank you so much for asking us!’ She was wearing the peckersweater, I saw, pinned to her dress like a corsage or a political button. ‘We looked for your wife …’

  ‘How is she, Sally Ann?’ Jim asked behind me.

  ‘She’s probably in the kitchen …’

  ‘Well, please tell her …’

  ‘Still about the same.’ She plunked at a guitar, picking out a chord. ‘He doesn’t seem to be bleeding as bad, but his mind’s getting worse.’

  ‘Can I stop flushing now?’

  ‘Say, Mother, doesn’t that remind you of those dancers we saw in the East – you remember …’

  ‘No, guapa, ees byootifool!’

  ‘Poor Dad. I don’t think he’s got much longer.’

  ‘Oh yes. The red paint, you mean. It was quite lovely, as I recall, dear, and very skillful – but I didn’t like the heads on the stakes after.’

  ‘Now theenk like you are toilet all stop opp!’

  ‘What—?’

  ‘And flow! Effrywhere! Ffflo-oo-ow!’

  Lloyd and Iris Draper, saying their goodbyes along the way, had stopped to talk with Alison’s husband. He pivoted toward them, causing Olga to stumble and fall to her knees. ‘Well, I love my father very much,’ Sally Ann was saying (someone had just asked her why she’d left him alone in his condition, in fact I had), ‘but, after all, Gerry, I do have my own career to think about.’ ‘Don’t worry, I’ll check on him,’ Jim assured her, as Alison’s husband shrugged and glanced over at me. ‘I don’t know,’ he said, or probably said. Olga and the Drapers, following his glance, also peered back over their shoulders.

  I turned away, just as Eileen came strolling in in her khaki raincoat, collar up, hands in pockets, staring right at – or through – me. ‘You look ridiculous!’ she said. ‘I know,’ I slumped a bit, and there was an echo just behind me: she’d been speaking, I realized, not to me but to Teresa. ‘Can – can you please find Wilma?’ Teresa whimpered, and Eileen (‘This bearded fruitcake’s driving me nuts, Priss!’ Zack was hissing) said: ‘She and Talbot’ve already gone, Teresa. And we’re going, too.’ She bumped past me, pulling off her raincoat. ‘Put this on.’

  ‘Why don’t you and Olga take the sonuvabitch up and get him laid?’

  ‘Who, this boiled hat, Zack?’

  ‘I don’t know if I can—’

  ‘Sure you can, Teresa. All it takes is two feet. Come on, I’m fed up with all this cheap sensationalism. Let’s get the hell out of here.’

  ‘Yeah, he’s loaded, Priss, I’m cultivating him – hey, hold up there! That’s our star! Leave her alone, goddamn it!’

  ‘You see?’ Teresa shrank into the raincoat that Eileen wrapped around her, as Horner, Scarborough, and Quagg started crowding menacingly around. Goldy, at my elbow, spat into a cup and said: ‘You know, if I was them guys, I wouldn’t fuck with that broad …’

  ‘That’s far enough, you cold-ass bitch!’ Horner snarled, blocking their exit. Eileen coolly snapped her knee up and Horner crumpled, howling pathetically, the others backing off a step. ‘Like I said,’ laughed Goldy, and – poytt! – shot another gob into the cup.

  ‘All right,’ said Eileen impassively, ‘who’s next?’

  In reply, there was a sudden gasp from the onlookers crowded up near the hallway door, and they all fell back: standing there was a weird naked figure wrapped like a mummy in plastic cleaning bags, with
a condom pulled over his head. It was Malcolm Mee. He looked like something from outer space – or inner space, rather: a kind of aborted fetus. He took two bounding steps into the room (Prissy Loo screamed, Fats fell over a coffee table, pulling down part of the cave wall), paused, crouching; in his raised hand: the ice pick! ‘Oh no … !’

  ‘Hey, man, we’re not ready for this!’ Scarborough protested, and Mee mutely flashed the pick at him as though to strike. He was breathing heavily, erratically, through a tiny puncture in the condom, the rubber snapping in and popping out with each breath. I wasn’t sure, but he seemed to be smiling. The TV cameraman was squatting, shooting up at the flapping rubber under his nostrils. Beni said: ‘What is this?! I haven’t even got my codpiece yet!’ – but he went quickly silent when Mee turned on him, swishing the pick through the air, making it whistle.

  ‘Christ, I think he’s serious … !’

  ‘Malcolm—?’

  ‘You’ve got to stop him, Zack!’ a woman cried out.

  ‘Shut up!’ Quagg snapped, drawing his purple cape across his body like a shield, and Prissy Loo seemed to faint. Or maybe she just tripped over her heavy galoshes. Horner, clutching his scrotum and grunting painfully, dragged himself off across the carpet, out of the way, watching Mee warily. ‘Shit fire … !’

  ‘Is this some sort of protest—?’

  Mee leaped lithely out of the shadows onto the spotlit stage and posed there rigidly, pick upraised. Everyone crept back except Teresa and Eileen, who were seemingly unable to move. ‘Please … !’ Teresa whimpered, the raincoat falling away from her painted breasts, bright now in the overhead lights. Eileen, clutching the coat to Teresa’s shoulders, watched Mee intently; Quagg knelt; Fats stared goggle-eyed, wrapped in collapsed cave wall.

  ‘Come on, Mee,’ I said, finding my voice, or some of it anyway. ‘Enough’s enough, damn it!’

  He appeared not to hear me, took a lurching step toward Teresa as though losing control, seemingly transfixed (his dilated eyes were clearly visible through the stretched rubber sheath, the flesh around them mashed back like shiny scar tissue) by her heaving red spots, the pick quivering in his poised fist.