Bracelets clanked down M.E.’s arm; gold rings lined her fingers, all embossed with various sets of initials, and Love, Forever, Always.… Was she wearing something new he hadn’t noticed, something delivered that morning?
“Why don’t you go down to the garden and get Loretta up here and act like a proper host, Sydney?” she said.
He envisioned himself at Alison’s, handing her a gift-wrapped jeweler’s box containing a small gold snake pin, with room enough on its back for an engraving: Alison, Sydney & Dr. T.
He said, “I wish I had the money to take Loretta someplace elegant for dinner,” intending to defrost Pfaelzer steaks from the freezer, “Someplace like the Sign of the Dove, Clos Norman, someplace like that,” where dinner for two could easily add up to thirty dollars. He would never wheedle money for a summer luxury out of Harold Skate without moving to Doylestown for the summer.
“I wish you did, too, love,” said M. E. Shepley Skate. “Maybe you’ll learn to budget and manage that the next time. Kick the lending library habit, Sydney—you’ll be a millionaire. Or learn speed-reading.”
He sucked in his breath and shook his head slowly as he exhaled. “Stone,” he said. “Solid stone from head to toe.”
“Which reminds me,” said his mother. “If I heard right and you are having a party here tonight, don’t give Estelle Kelly any pot. I don’t want her going home from here stoned.”
Then she came over and put her arms around him. “Give your old Ma a kiss, ducks.”
Shockproof smelled Cabouchard on her cheek and remembered Y. He thought of Cabouchard and Y intermingled.
On sight, Estelle Kelly and Loretta Willensky hated each other.
Mike and Albert agreed to charcoal broil the steaks on their grill in the garden, adding hamburgers and hot dogs for themselves, Deborah, the simultaneous orgasm philosopher, and a girl from the Women’s Liberation Front named Maxine. She was the same plump brunette Shockproof had seen Albert with before, the one with the wild, tangled hippy hair who did needlework.
Estelle Kelly sat across the garden from Loretta beside Shockproof, drinking Rob Roys, and calling Loretta “Pimple Chin” under her breath.
Shockproof and Estelle Kelly were the only ones drinking Rob Roys.
Mike and Deborah were drinking Dubonnet and smoking joints, Albert and Maxine were drinking Sangria and smoking joints, and Loretta Willensky was remaining adamant about proving that she could maintain a natural high, as a result of her sensitivity session several weeks earlier.
Maxine had brought the boys a gift she had made herself, two tin pie plates painted in psychedelic colors, placed face-to-face with a mirror contained inside. She presented it after dinner, when everyone was high and listening to “Let It Bleed” by the Rolling Stones. Loretta Willensky remarked that it was a Ying-Yang benefaction and it turned her natural high into a crescendo.
“She’s got more whiteheads than a cotton field at picking time,” Estelle Kelly whispered to Shockproof. “I bet she pees purple.”
“Shet yo mouf,” Shockproof whispered back. “We is guests on de ole plantation.”
“She’s uglier than Grace Cottrell,” said Estelle, “who happens to be the fuckface my father took for a bride.”
“She’s not ugly,” he said, a sense of fairness sallying forth from the maze of whiskey.
“If you put it in her, it’ll turn the color of cow dung and smell worse.”
“You’re a gutter head, Estelle Kelly. A filth mouth.”
“I bet they break the plates after she eats in a restaurant.”
While everyone had gushed endlessly over the pie tins, there had been very few remarks about the costume Estelle Kelly was wearing. When Shockproof had answered the door, she was standing there carrying a flaming torch made of kerosene-soaked rags attached to a broomstick. She was wearing a red, white, and blue plastic crown, a long white satin slip with an American flag over her shoulders, and white gym sneaks with red laces. She was carrying one of her father’s chammy shoebags with a thermos of Rob Roys inside. “Give me your turds, your poor, your huddled messes, yearning to breathe,” she had bellowed.
Each time a new person had arrived in the garden, Estelle Kelly had stood, raised her right hand, and shouted out the same greeting.
No one but Shockproof had known quite what to make of her. Loretta Willensky had remarked sotto voce to him that Estelle Kelly appeared disturbed to her.
He had answered. “Who isn’t?”
“I mean dis-turbed.”
Now Estelle Kelly was sitting in her crown and satin slip, minus the flag and torch and gym sneaks. The soles of her feet were covered with soot. “I think stingers would be appropriate now,” she told Shockproof.
Loretta Willensky was arranging the chairs in a circle for the sensitivity session.
Shockproof went inside to make stingers for Estelle and himself, deciding that amongst these “heads,” Estelle and he were anachronisms.
Albert had asked them all to think of themselves walking toward a wall, carrying an idea in their hands. On the other side of the wall was someone to whom they were giving their ideas. Everyone was free to enlarge on the fantasy. “It does not even have to be you walking to the wall,” Albert had said. “It can be Brer Rabbit, Freud, Paul McCartney, or Aleister Crowley—that’s for you to decide.”
“Aleister Crowley?” Estelle Kelly said.
“He was a mystic,” Shockproof told her.
“Hell, Sydney, you can’t sum up Crowley that simply,” Albert said.
Mike said, “Never mind Crowley now, back to the game.”
“It’s not exactly a game,” said Loretta Willensky.
Albert said, “You must tell us who is going toward the wall, what the idea is, how you get it across to the receiver, and who the receiver is. You must be honest. Tell your first fantasy.”
“If you’re honest,” said Loretta Willensky, “it’ll really pay off.”
“What a challenge!” Estelle Kelly whispered to Shockproof in her Bette Davis “what a dump” imitation; then she crossed her eyes and stuck out her tongue as though she were gagging.
“Just go along with it,” he said.
Shockproof was Atlas carrying the world in his hands instead of on his shoulders. On the other side of the wall was another giant carrying his own world. They met atop the wall, bowed politely, and exchanged worlds, but when Shockproof jumped back down and looked inside his palm, he saw that he had received a world which was all in pieces. The giant giggled and said, “I’m really super-sorry, Sydney.”
No.
Shockproof decided to carry the idea himself. Everyone in the garden was on the other side of the wall. He pole-vaulted over the wall skillfully and presented the idea for an orgy.
He chuckled to himself. He waited eagerly for his turn. The girls were going first. What did he care about a day of radiant colors with Loretta Willensky skipping through a wood of thick foliage—“Very sensual,” Albert remarked—an idea in her hands for some new unfathomable joy, utlilizing all the senses, shattering the wall with its wisdom? Albert could not contain himself and clapped before she’d even finished. What did Shockproof care that on the other side of the wall were people who had never received love? He had the real goods to deliver, the true let’s-do-it-in-the-road message: a sevensy.
“No one can top that,” said Maxine, flushed with admiration for Loretta.
Albert said, “As Kahlil Gibran once said, ‘You give but little when you give of your possessions. It is when you give of yourself that you truly give.’ Your honesty is beautiful, Loretta. That was really giving of yourself.”
Mike began to analyze whether or not it was an idealized fantasy, while Deborah watched him with her wet lower lip hanging down hornily.
In a bored voice, Estelle Kelly said, “I feel a draft. Sydney, fetch me my flag.” She was smoking her brown Nat Sherman cigarettes, alternating between matchbooks from Benihana of Tokyo, Ginger Man, and Luchow’s.
Shock
proof put her flag around her shoulders.
“I’d rather play elevator roulette anytime,” she said.
“What’s that?”
But Estelle Kelly could not answer. Maxine was into her fantasy: a lone woman walking naked to a barrier, handing across an idea to a world of men. “Love us,” said Maxine, “for our natural hair, our eyes devoid of mascara and eye shadow; look and see our hands, our arms, our feet, and let the turning of my wrist be as exciting to you as the roundness of my breast…”
On and on.
Albert was nodding with understanding. Loretta Willensky was frowning with appreciation. Mike was surly-looking. Deborah’s mouth was turned down in a grimace.
“We are women!” Maxine said. “Not chattel!”
“We are cattle,” Estelle Kelly said. “Moooooooo.”
“Shhhhh!” said Loretta Willensky.
When Maxine was done, Mike said, “We’re philosophizing more than we’re working on our hang-ups. This is a form of exhibitionism: we seem to be saying ‘Look how beautiful our thoughts are,’ instead of letting it all hang out.”
“Perhaps you’re threatened by the idea a woman has thoughts,” said Albert.
“Let’s go on, anyway,” Loretta Willensky said. “We’ll just have a general discussion after each fantasy is presented. We’ll brainstorm after the whole group has participated…. Estelle?”
“You’re on the other side of the wall, Loretta,” said Estelle Kelly, “and my idea is for you to go fuck yourself.”
A useless whimper escaped from somewhere inside Shockproof, then silence in the garden, and Albert’s subsequent invitation to Loretta Willensky, Mike, and Deborah, for coffee inside.
Shockproof had never made out with anyone with such dirty feet. He was Barney on the road with Siam Miami, who never took baths and had a habit of farting. He was crocked and deep into that book while he laid Estelle in his bedroom. Estelle was Siam Miami whose raw and touching singing gave listeners the unguarded sex they dreamed about; her knishwarmer of a smile, her natural sex appeal, her ambitious drive can’t protect her from her vulnerable honesty.
He was headlong into their third go-around when Estelle said, “No more, no more, I came!”
Estelle slipped from 69 to 99. “Where’s my grog, mate?”
“On the table beside you,” Shockproof said. He rolled away from her and wiped his wet face with his wet fingers.
“Slippery deck tonight, sailor,” said Estelle, reaching for her stinger.
“What’s elevator roulette?” he asked.
“You have to be in a big modern apartment building with piles of elevators.”
“Go on.”
“You strip, and whoever’s with you strips. You all get into separate elevators on the top floor. It’s best to play it around one or two in the morning, when there’s less traffic in the elevators. The first one who meets anyone going up or down wins five bucks from the others.”
“Did you ever win?”
“Once.”
“What happened.”
“I got on at the twenty-second floor, and a lady got on at the eleventh. We were going down. She was walking her Yorkie.”
“What’d you say?”
“I was way over in the corner. She didn’t see me until the door closed. She looked at me and then looked away fast. I said, ‘Support Mental Health.’”
“What’d she do?”
“She just watched the floor indicator like it was a Geiger counter and the building was radioactive. Then when we got to the lobby, she picked up the dog and ran.… I won fifteen dollars.”
Shockproof closed his eyes to see if everything was going around. He opened them. “Sex sobers you up,” he said.
The mood down in the garden had become more solemn. He listened for a few seconds to Bach’s Mass in B minor.
“She really pisses me off,” Estelle Kelly said.
“Did you see the look on her face after you told her to go fuck herself?”
“I don’t mean the pimple chin. I mean Grace Cottrell. Gracious Me.”
“You’ll be going back to school soon,” he said.
“That’s what you think.… Don’t play with my tits. Sex is over.”
“Jesus,” Shockproof complained.
“They’re not letting me go back for my senior year. Gracious Me thinks I need a home life.”
“The Captain better get his gun out of that sock drawer.”
“He turned in his gun. Gracious Me has made him a real Goody Two Shoes. We don’t even have a cocktail hour anymore when he’s home. I can’t get anything stronger than Dr. Pepper around that place anymore.”
“I’m sorry, Stel.”
“Es-stelle.”
“You’ve gone to that school since you were twelve. You ought to be able to graduate with your class.”
“Gracious Me makes Mrs. Portnoy look like an indifferent parent.”
He thought of Portnoy and Monkey picking up Lina, the whore, on the Via Veneto for a triumvirate. His blood was coming back in circulation.
“Gracious Me has cut off his balls,” said Estelle.
“He had all his balls the night he lit into me.”
“‘Estelle,’ says she, ‘how would you like your room redecorated, dear, would you like that, dear? Wouldn’t it be fun to redecorate your room together?’ I’d like to re-decorate her twat.”
“Does she know how much you hate her?”
“‘Estelle,’ she says, ‘I know no one can take your real mother’s place. I’m not going to try to take your real mother’s place.’ I said, ‘Be my guest; there’s plenty of room in the cemetery.’”
Just as he was planning another mild assault on her, he perceived the fact Estelle Kelly was crying. He weighed the notion of putting his arms around her for sheer comfort, while he remembered the time Corita Carr had moved in. “Do you like ball games?” she had asked, punching his shoulder. “I like ball games. We’ll be tooling off to Shea and Yankee every chance we get, Syd.”
“In another year you’ll go to college, anyway,” he said softly, trying to pretend to her he didn’t know she was crying.
“Sure,” her voice cracked. “Hunter. Barnard. I’ll have my pick. As long as it’s in New York near Gracious Me and Balls Off. Oh, I know her, Sydney. She’s going to have me on a dog lead. I’ll be sleeping in a birdcage. The only way I got out this weekend was by telling them I was visiting Agatha Henry in Larchmont. They would have dragged me to Hawaii.”
Shockproof put his hand in hers. “Aloha,” he said.
She shook her hand away from his impatiently. “No shitty pity.”
He said, “Listen. Estelle. You’re going to be eighteen in the fall, aren’t you?”
“So what?” she sniffled.
“I’m going to be eighteen, too.”
“So what, so what, so what?”
“Siam, there is nothing I want to do more in this world than marry you.”
“Thank God for my hot crotch.”
“I’m not marrying you for your hot crotch.”
“Nothing,” Shockproof said. “We could get married.”
“Piss off.”
“We could.”
“Piss off, Sydney Skate. Why would you marry me?”
“There is nothing I want to do more in this world than marry you,” Barney said.
“Oh, fuck, do you think I’m swallowing that one?”
“Listen. Stel. I—”
“Es-stelle!”
“Estelle.”
“You what?”
“I’d marry you.”
“Why?”
“To get you away from Gracious Me and Balls Off.”
“You would?” She sat up in bed. “You would? Not because you loved me,” she said threateningly.
“No. I wouldn’t marry you for that.”
“Are you sure?”
“I said why I’d marry you.”
“Boy, that would make them shit chocolate ice cream.”
�
��You’d have to do something about the way you express yourself.”
“Anything. I’d do anything. I’d kiss Loretta Willensky’s ass.”
“I don’t know if you can do anything about the way you express yourself,” he said.
“Yes, I can. I can change.”
“Would you be willing to live in Ithaca, New York?”
“I’d live in a sewer.”
“I have to go to Cornell. You’d have to get a job in Ithaca.”
“I can type. I can wait tables. I’m as strong as an ox. Feel my muscle.”
“I believe you.”
“Feel it.” She put down her stinger and raised her arm in a fist.
“Super-strong,” he said.
“Sydney?”
“What?”
“Do something really foul to me fast. I don’t want to get my hopes up.”
In the early morning, Shockproof woke up to see the American flag moving across his bedroom. Estelle bent over to tie her gym sneaks.
His head was throbbing with pain. He held it between his hands as he sat up.
“Estelle? What are you doing?”
“What does it look like I’m doing?”
“Why are you leaving?”
She didn’t answer. Shockproof eased himself out of bed. He had crashed into a horrendous hangover. His whole being was churning with insecurity and need and the hangover hots. He made his way slowly across to her with an erection.
“Put something around you!” she snapped.
“Please” was all he could manage to say. He could no more have made out with her than he could have found the energy to gargle, but he wanted her there. He didn’t want to be left now in this shattered condition.
“I can’t find my change purse, or I’d have been out of here ten minutes ago!” she said.
“No. Don’t.”
“I need my purse for cab fare.”
“Why are you leaving, Stel? Estelle?”
“Don’t walk around like that!”
“I could walk out on Nineteenth Street like this and get less attention than you’ll get in that outfit at this hour!”
“Lend me cab fare. My purse is in the garden.”
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