‘And have we got a show for you!’
Alison’s husband sniffed. ‘Theater,’ he said frostily, ‘is dead.’
‘What—?’ Zack laughed, staggering back a step. ‘I told you, Zack.’ ‘Is it time for my part?’ asked Prissy Loo. She was wearing Beni’s plumed hat and false moustache, my fingerless golfing gloves, and one of my mother-in-law’s girdles, ornamented with what looked like rolled-up bloody socks. Olga was trying to stretch my wife’s yellow nightie down below her high muscular croup. Zack spread wide his caped arms as though unfolding a curtain. ‘Hey, ha ha! you gotta be kidding, man!’
Alison’s husband shook his head. ‘No, it’s dead. All over. I see that now.’ He prodded Alison on down the stairs.
‘Aw, goddamn it, Prissy, you overdid it!’
‘Well, that was a short run.’
‘Don’t blame me, Zack, it was Olga’s idea.’
‘What idea?’
‘Yah, goot! In a minute!’
‘DANGER: BUSY CROSSROADS,’ the patch said. She stood there in front of me, echoed dismally in the hall mirror, clutching the baggy pants, looking lost. ‘Did you bring a coat?’ my wife asked politely. ‘It’s boring, it’s repetitious, and it’s dead-ended,’ said Alison’s husband. ‘And it’s a lie.’
‘Wait a minute, what do you know about theater, you dumb fuck?’ Quagg exploded.
‘Hell, he’s nothing but a goddamn preacher, Zack.’
‘One goddamn night of pissing around, and you think you’ve seen it all? You weren’t even in at the death, fer chrissake!’
‘Don’t tell me it’s all over!’ Prissy Loo wailed, her moustache listing. ‘Zack, you promised!’
‘What do you know about blocking and backing, asshole? Glue guns and gobos?’ Alison’s husband only smiled faintly. ‘What about conventions, eh? Peripety, goddamn it? Teasers, timing—’
‘Timing?’ Alison’s husband gazed round at us, stroking his beard. ‘Peripety?’ He reached forward suddenly and yanked at the top half of the red pants suit as though to whip it off: Alison clutched at it and her pants fell down. He stepped on them and, as she bent over to grab them up, he shoved his hand in under his shirt and cracked a mock fart in his armpit. She blushed, tugging frantically at the trapped pants; he reached forward and grasped the nape of his wife’s neck, pressing her head down. He poked his finger up her rectum, felt around, came out with one of Ginger’s kerchiefs – in fact a whole string of them, knotted together: out they came, one after another, fluttering in the air as he tossed them high, more kerchiefs than you could imagine there’d be room for in there. And at the end, knotted to the last kerchief: the Inspector’s white silk scarf! The door opened behind us: it was Fred. ‘Excuse me, the Chief seems to have left his – ah! thank you …’ There was a burst of applause and whistles (Fred backed out with the scarf, hand to holster, looking nonplussed, or pretending to), even Zack had to join in. ‘You know, I think that sonuvabitch was just using me!’ he laughed.
‘You!’ cried Prissy Loo.
‘Yah?’ said Olga.
My wife was giggling beside me; I think it was the first time I’d seen her laugh all night. I smiled: just as Alison straightened up, flushed and hurt, to stare at me. I tried to erase the smile, but it seemed frozen there, as though stretched forcibly over my teeth. ‘The bright moon is serenely reflected on the stream,’ Hoo-Sin said, gazing into the hall mirror behind Alison: ‘What is it for?’ Well. I could only hope she understood. I tried to think of some way of explaining it all to her (‘Gosh, I give up,’ Janny yawned, ‘can you give me a hint?’), or at least of deflecting some of her anger, something about theater perhaps, or time, but before I could come up with anything, she had stumbled out past me, red pants binding her ankles, had tripped at the threshold, and completed her exit on her hands and knees, chased by another round of laughter and applause.
‘Whoo-hoo!’
‘Look at them blue hereafters!’
‘Just as well her parents missed that,’ my wife murmured.
‘That was somethin’ special!’
Alison’s husband paused at the door, all eyes on him still, his on me. Out in the front yard, someone shouted: ‘Hey hey! What wuzzat just creeped past?’ ‘I dunno, Dugan, but it was wearin’ the biggest smile I ever seen!’ ‘I believe you still have our watches,’ he said.
‘Oh yes, sorry! I’ll get them!’ But my wife stopped me: ‘I’m afraid someone … they’re not there anymore, Gerald.’
‘The watches, too—?!’
‘This way, squad! I think we found the source!’
Alison’s husband snorted disdainfully and touched his beard. Outside there was drunken laughter, curses, stumbling on the steps: ‘Wah! Look out! This place is alive!’
‘However, if they turn up later—’ my wife began, reaching forward to take his hand, but he turned his back on her and strode stiffly out the door, a final ripple of appreciative applause trailing in his wake.
‘Whoa!’ exclaimed someone outside who, from the sound of it, had just tumbled down the porch stairs.
‘Down boy!’
‘Yowzer!’
‘Where was that dude goin’?’
‘Hard to say, Doog, but he was either awful sober – or awful drunk!’
‘I dunno when I’ve had so much fun!’ Charley Trainer laughed, throwing his arms around us both. Janny stood by with her hands pressed together below her chin, eyes closed, listening to Hoo-Sin, while around us, some people I’d never seen before were pounding and clattering through the door, singing, shouting greetings, brandishing bottles and bits of clothing. ‘Oh dear,’ my wife sighed, shrinking into Charley’s arms. One guy was carrying a woman, wall-eyed with drink, on his shoulders: she failed to see the doorframe as he passed under it and smacked it with her face. ‘Somebody knock?’ asked the guy confusedly, swinging around, still holding the woman’s ankles and so wearing her collapsed body over his shoulders like a cape. ‘Ha ha! Who’s there?’ called another and Charley hugged us close: ‘You guys’re the cream!’
‘Leda!’
‘Leda who, Moose?’
‘I mean it, Big G! My heart is full!’
I could feel my wife’s heart emptying out, but she smiled and said, her voice catching: ‘I – I’m so glad you could all come …’ No one heard her but me – and Charley Trainer, who, pitching forward drunkenly, knocked his head on hers and growled: ‘Me too – but lemme tell ya, I hadda work like hell!’
‘Hey hey hey! Izzat little Bunky Baird?’
‘Leda horse to water?’
‘Axel!’
‘Do we know these people?’ I whispered.
‘Naw! Guess again!’
‘And I’ll tell you no lies?’
‘I think we may have met some of them at Wilma’s house a long time ago, when she was still married to Miles …’
‘Miles?’
‘Benedetto!’
‘A Leda goes a long way?’
‘Gwendoline! My love!’
‘Love the silk pocket, Beni! Très charmant!’
The new arrivals were spreading recklessly through the house, as though the place itself were hemorrhaging. ‘Please,’ I said, but no one was listening, they were all (‘Ha ha, we give up, Moose!’) hooting and laughing. ‘My oh my, look what’s not in that nightie!’ ‘Hey, I’m looking for Serena!’ ‘Is that rhubarb pie?’ ‘She ain’t here, Ralphie!’ ‘Vot’s hoo-bob?’ asked Olga, grinning stupidly and pushing the nightie down past her navel: at the back, it climbed halfway to her shoulders. ‘… Like so many particles of dust …,’ Hoo-Sin was murmuring in Janny’s ear, and Charley (‘Am I drunk, or are those lamps up onna ceiling?’), dipping his heavy head, smirked hopefully: ‘Hey, Ger, heard any good jokes lately?’ At the back, they were fanning the kitchen door (‘Leda me beside distilled waters—!’) to clear the smoke. I could hear the refrigerator door whumping, drawers being opened and closed like marching feet.
‘… Floating, rising …’
‘You’re drunk, Claudine – and the lamps are on the ceiling!’
‘… Disappearing like clouds …’
‘ – Before da party’s SOBER!’
‘Send your ole dad home with a l’il chuckle, whaddaya say?’
‘Haw haw!’
‘I’m fresh out, Charley. Nothing’s funny.’
‘… In the vast emptiness of unending space …’
‘Moose, you’re a scream!’
‘Aw, c’mon, Big G, have a heart!’ Charley pleaded, and Janny, her head tipping to Hoo-Sin’s shoulder, sighed: ‘You’ve got such a nice voice, Hoo-Sin …’
‘Do you think they’ll want something to eat, Gerald?’
‘No!’
‘… It nearly puts me to sleep …’
‘Well, y’don’ hafta be sore about it, buddy!’
‘Sorry, Charley, I meant—’
‘Whatever thoughts you have, they are not to dwell on anything,’ Hoo-Sin said softly as Janny’s head snuggled in under her chin and her hands dropped to her sides. ‘That’s easy, Hoo-Sin …’
‘Why don’t you tell him the one about giving the testicles to the girl, Gerald,’ my wife suggested, looking small and vulnerable under Charley’s arm.
‘Testicles?’ Charley grinned broadly.
‘You already have,’ I said.
Hoo-Sin reached down under Janny’s sagging knees to pick her up. ‘We return to the origin,’ she whispered, as Janny wriggled closer, ‘and remain where we have always been …’
‘Flo! Where’d you find the fodder?’
‘No, the one about how you find out if she’s ticklish or not.’
‘In the back there, Rocco, but you gotta scrape it off the pans …’
‘How you find out – oh Jesus!’ Charley doubled up, roaring with laughter.
‘You find that funny?’ I asked in some amazement. At the foot of the stairs, Prissy Loo shook her plumed hat (‘Chet!’) and stamped her foot. ‘But you said you’d wait, Zack!’
‘I guess – whoosh! hah! – I guess it’s all,’ Charley wheezed, falling back on the hall bench, holding his quaking sides (‘Ha ha! Not Chet!’), ‘in how you tell it!’
‘I knew he’d like it, Gerald,’ my wife said. ‘Now go ahead and tell it.’ Whereupon Charley, tears in his eyes (‘You’re a real heel, Zack!’), nearly fell off the bench.
‘You kids off?’
‘Careful, Charley, you’ll hurt your back again.’
‘Oh shit! – hoo ha hah—!’
‘Yes, thanks a lot, Mr Quagg! As soon as we’re in our new place—’
‘– I awready did!’
‘Better come quick, Zack! One of those drunken yobs gave Olga something heavy and she’s freaking! She thinks she’s a bird and keeps throwing herself at all the walls!’
‘What am I, some kinda nursemaid?’ Zack protested.
‘Say, where’d you hide your sewing machine?’ asked Prissy Loo, slapping over (‘Well, keep in touch, kid—!’) in her big galoshes. ‘I went in there to sew these sanitary napkins on my costume and—’
‘You mean it isn’t there?’ my wife exclaimed.
‘And let me see what you write!’
‘It probably cost me my part!’
‘That’s right,’ someone said (‘You bet!’), ‘your dressing table was gone, too,’ I said.
‘Unh, Big G … ? I – hoof! – I can’ get up … !’
‘The dressing table! But that old thing is worthless!’
‘Well, aw-moss!’ yuffhuffed Charley, struggling clumsily, ‘but, Jesus, don’ go tellin’ everybody!’
Anatole gave me a hand pulling him to his feet, while Hoo-Sin stood patiently by, holding Janny, now breathing deeply, in her arms. Howard had joined us and, peering down through Tania’s half-lens glasses, was trying to button his coat, while at the same time holding on to the sheaf of drawings the tall cop had made of the scene of the crime. ‘Here, let me help, Uncle Howard,’ Sally Ann said.
‘What I don’t understand, Gerald, is how they got all those things out of here?’ In the dining room we could hear Olga crashing around, yelling: ‘Tveet! Tveet!’ ‘Tell her she’s a fucking flower!’ Zack was shouting. ‘Or a stone!’
‘Cute,’ said Prissy Loo, fingering Sally Ann’s dirndl.
‘You gotta catch her first, Zack!’
‘’At wuzza bess laugh I had all night! Hoo!’
‘Do you think they had a truck?’
Anatole cleared his throat. ‘Uh, do you want to tell them, Sally Ann … ?’ he said, blushing.
‘Well …’ She took Anatole’s arm, looked at each of us in turn.
‘Tveet – squawk!’
‘Oh oh,’ said Prissy Loo, puckering up.
‘We’re … we’re going to get married.’
‘I knew it!’ wailed Prissy Loo and burst into tears. ‘I always cry at the clinches!’ She planted a blubbery moustachioed kiss on Sally Ann’s cheek and Anatole’s (‘That’s wonderful,’ my wife was saying, ‘I’m so happy for you!’), then went clopping off into the living room in her plumed hat and decorated girdle. ‘Whuzzat? Whuzzat?’ asked Charley blearily, careening around, and I said: ‘But how will you live?’
‘Oh, Gerald!’ my wife scolded, taking my arm. ‘Hush now!’
‘That’s all right,’ said Sally Ann gently. ‘I knew he’d be upset.’
‘I’m going to drop out of school and write for Mr Quagg,’ Anatole explained. ‘And Dickie’s getting Sally Ann a job in one of his massage parlors.’
‘You see, Gerald?’
‘And we’re going to live with Uncle Howard,’ Sally Ann added, taking the older man’s arm. ‘He needs us, and we need him. Now that …’ Her voice broke and Anatole’s eyes began to water up.
‘I assume you are aware, Gerald, that the “Susanna” is missing,’ Howard said in his rigid pedantic way.
I nodded. ‘And not only that, Howard, they even took—’
‘Such carelessness, Gerald, is utterly inexcusable.’
‘Come along now, Uncle Howard,’ Anatole said huskily.
‘Whoa there, young fella!’ exclaimed Charley, holding Anatole back. ‘’Sa tough ole world out there, son – you can’ go get married on nothin’!’
Anatole looked offended. ‘It’s not nothing, Mr Trainer. Mr Quagg says I have a lot of talent and—’
‘No, hell, I know that, but juss hole on, goddamn it!’ He fumbled in his pockets. ‘Art, Gerald,’ Howard harrumphed, scowling at me over the spectacles, ‘is all we have. It is not a joke.’ Olga came bounding through on all fours, more like a lamb or a goat now than a bird, the yellow nightie up around her ears, pursued by Gudrun, Zack, and some of the newcomers. ‘Maaa-aa-aa!’ she bleated, frisking along into the living room, her head stretched high. ‘Come here, Olga! Stop that!’ ‘It is not a decoration, simple bric-a-brac. It is not a mere entertainment.’ ‘Maybe if she thought she was a dog, we could get a leash on her!’ ‘Maaa-aa-aa!’ ‘Just so she don’t start droppin’ pellets!’ panted Horner, limping along behind, and the guy with him stopped and pointed: ‘Hey! I know you jokers! Ha! I seen you in the photos!’ ‘Art, Gerald—’ ‘Photos?’ my wife asked. ‘ – Is the precipitate of the human spirit…’ Charley dumped all his change into the pockets of Sally Ann’s dress – or in that general direction: coins splattered the floor, rolled at our feet. ‘Yeah, some guy from the newspaper’s floggin’ ’em out in your front yard like souvenirs.’ ‘There! ’Sall I got, kids,’ said Charley, emptying his wallet and thrusting the bills at Anatole, ‘but, well – I mean, god-damn it—!’
‘I don’t go much for the shots of stiffs or all the blood and shit …’
‘Oh, Uncle Charley!’ cried Sally Ann, throwing her arms around him.
‘… The repository of the only meaning we have in this world …’
‘… But there’s one of some ole girl peein’ off the teeter-totter out in the backyard that’ll – Christ! – break your heart!’
‘I know, Howard, but—’<
br />
‘That must have been Wilma,’ my wife said.
‘In the end, Gerald, and I say this with all seriousness, you are a dangerous person!’
Hoo-Sin, carrying Janny, bowed slightly and backed out the door, Howard (‘I intend therefore to sue you for the remaining pieces in your possession,’ he declared, and my wife said: ‘Yes, you must come again soon!’), Anatole, and then Charley following. Some of the people chasing Olga had peeled off here in the hallway and it was filling up again. Not a familiar face among them. ‘Is that the only bottle you could find, Carmody?’ one of them asked. I recognized it. Alas. Central to the art of love, I knew (‘Yeah’n taze like piss, buh’ this time nigh’, who givshit?’), as to the art of theater, was the essential fusion of process and product, an acknowledgment of the inherent doubleness – one’s particularity, one’s universality, one’s self, one’s persona – of the actor/lover. In fact (‘I’m so glad you found each other,’ my wife was saying, ‘it’s just about the nicest thing that happened all night!’), I’d said something like this to her earlier tonight, and she’d agreed, probably it was while she was fingering my nipple, we’d seemed in perfect harmony, perfect collusion, and yet … ‘Gerry?’ I realized Sally Ann, hanging back from the others, had taken my hand. ‘Try not to be so sad, Gerry, it’s for the best, believe me – but I promise I’ll never forget you!’ Her eyes were full of tears and they were tumbling down her cheeks. ‘I – I was blind until you opened my eyes to love … !’ She tried to say something more, but it was choked off by a stifled sob. She kissed my mouth and went running out the door.
My wife, looking on, smiled and took my arm. There was a loud spewing sound behind us, someone gagging. ‘Young love … !’ she sighed.
‘Goddamn it, Carmody! This is piss!’
‘We’ll have to think of something for a wedding present …’
‘Hey, you guys! Come in here! You don’t wanna miss this!’ I could hear toward the back what sounded like (‘’Fya don’ like it, shifface, giv’t back!’) wild guttural laughter, utterly insane, and the crack of whips. Or belts.
‘Madre de dios! ees getteeng roff!’ Hilario gasped, staggering out of the dining room just as the others (something crashed) went pushing in. He wobbled toward us with his legs exaggeratedly bowed and his eyes bugged out. ‘Now Olga theenk he ees a horse and everybody ees rideeng heem! Hair.’
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