Michael Malone

by Dingley Falls

  After about an hour, the live Ms. Harfleur began to moan and spasm in her shackles. As her day fragmented on the wall, the screen filled with blood. It poured out of the eyes of a poster of Mary Pickford and soaked the mattress. All the bedfellows were washed away in a red tumble, the filmmaker herself went limp, and that evidently was "The End," for the lights came on and everyone began to clap.

  "That blew my mind away!" said a young woman with a crew cut, dressed as a Russian peasant. "Didn't it yours? Washed in the blood of the lamb. Reborn! Wow."

  "Why, thank you, no, I don't smoke," said Evelyn Troyes as she declined the rather smelly and messy (could it be Russian?) cigarette offered by her neighbor, who appeared to have at least six shawls tied around various parts of her body.

  The girl gooed, "I just love your outfit, it's wild. Where'd you ever find feathers like that?"

  "I think, yes, abroad, I'm afraid." (In Paris, in fact, where she had also bought the Chanel suit of raw silk Della Robbia blue that she now wore with the gray-blue pheasant-feathered cap. In Paris that summer when Blanchard had only months to live and they had thought they had a lifetime.) "A long time ago," Evelyn added.

  Around the loft—someone's home, evidently, for those blue things Tracy said were chairs, and the orange ones, tables—conversation crackled to the crunch of dipped raw vegetables and the munch of slivered meats.

  "I told Jer, 'Look, Jer, if I am getting bent out of shape, it's because my play's getting bent out of shape by that hop-head hyena!'"

  "Whuddah'd Jer say?"

  "Said he and the hyena were having an affair. I could have torn out my tongue."

  "But everybody knows that! He's really nuts about her. He sent her to Boston and had her dried out."

  "En pointe? You're kidding! He must weigh two-ten!"

  "First she horns in on my analyst, and now she wants Dr. Meddrop to see her lover too! Can you believe that, Charlie? She's got the apartment, the stocks, the kids. Now she wants Dr. Meddrop. You know what the rent was on that apartment? Only one-ninety a month!"

  "Come on, Kurt, don't start crying again. Please. People are staring at you. You've had a little too much to drink. You'll find a new apartment, you'll see."

  "I know. I'm sorry. I guess you're sick of me parking myself at your place. I'll get out. I'm sorry. Sorry sorry sorry. Sorry sorry sorry. But fuck, Charlie, I mean, Dr. Meddrop's all I got left."

  "A ticket to that show Saturday? Your body wouldn't buy such a thing. When this town moves, it's like lemmings to the sea."

  "Death is in. I'm telling you, it wasn't forty-eight hours after all those coeds died from the defective foam insulation in their dorm that Paul had a treatment slapped on a producer's desk. Forty-eight hours, and he got two hundred grand for it."

  "I don't want to know, don't tell me. Greed and envy are eating me alive anyhow. My mother told me she tried, but she just couldn't read my novel. She wants me to write for 'Marcus Welby.'"

  "I told you death was in."

  "Marjorem's stuff is passé. Nobody cares about the stupid screen anymore. Now, my new film, people watch the light coming out of the lenses, see what I mean? Light! The meaning's in the shift of light, what it reflects."

  "Smoke?"

  "Form! Form! Form!"

  "I was apeshit over that animal. I mean mentally he was a yo-yo. But, sweetie, he could ball! I was coming three and four times a night. But after his coach benched him, he just lay around my apartment all day in his well-hung glory, sucking Tootsie Pops and watching reruns of 'Gomer Pyle' on my tube. Besides, it was like feeding a St. Bernard. Finally, I had to throw him out."

  "I admit it, I'm a workaholic. I don't have time for men. Four times a night? I couldn't fit it in. A woman can't take time off to go whoring around like a man can. But I'm so damn horny. Maybe I'll become a lesbian."

  "Forget it. Take it from me. That takes time too, and you end up going to meetings every other night."

  "Told me she couldn't get me any big-name blurbs for my book because I didn't have any Reality Content."

  "So what gives you Reality Content?"

  "Having big-name blurbs on your book."

  "I love it."

  "All I'm going to say now is, we're talking six figures, and think of this: it's the gay Death of a Salesman."

  "This is Ralph Ang, he just had a one-man show in Leopold's, and this is Chauncey Cohen, Chauncey wrote that piece on the PreRockwellites for the New Yorker. This is Olivia."

  "Sorry, I didn't catch what you do, Olivia."

  "I don't. I am, and I hate the way Americans define themselves by what they do. The whole shmeer turns me right off."

  "I know what you mean. We're like those fish that push those mud balls along the ocean floor with their noses."

  "Hey, I like that."

  "So my bones have completely reknitted, and I'm back up to three miles before breakfast again."

  "Great."

  "Plus the racquetball."

  "Great."

  "And I'm down to a pack and a half a day."

  "Great."

  "Tried the punch?" asked a man in a jumpsuit with long gray hair and a beard like Moses. He was wrapping ham and roast beef in napkins and stuffing them into a shoulder bag.

  "No, I haven't," replied Mrs. Ernest Ransom, who stood by the refreshments from some vague sense of social security in their proximity.

  "Don't. It's sheep dip….Who's the Oreo?"

  "I'm sorry?"

  "The Afro-Saxon in the gray stripe, you were talking to him over there by the pinball machine."

  "Really, I'm a stranger here. He was simply discussing the film."

  "You know, I figure him for a straight tush man. You know, wasp mink. No offense. I'm pretty ripped. Haven't eaten in about a week either. No offense."

  "I beg your pardon?"

  "Well, the guy trying to put the make on him now, the guy in the applejack cap and the platforms? Well, he's going to crash, isn't he? Maybe the Oreo swings both ways. I don't know; I was just wondering."

  "Ah. Would you excuse me, I see my friend over there."

  "No offense."

  Mrs. Canopy was chatting with someone she knew (indeed supported)—the Apollo Belvedere of modern sculpture, Louie Daytona, now released on parole and residing in her townhouse. They were discussing a common acquaintance, the Pakistani painter Habzi Rabies.

  "You see Hab's new stuff?"

  "Bent Void One through Sixty-five?"

  "Yeah, well, he's flushed it, Trixie."

  "Tracy."

  "Yeah, Tracy. Hab really had something, back, seventy-one, seventy-two. That Kama Sutra mural he did on your dining room ceiling at my place. Bootiful! But he's pissed it all away now. He's in a making-it bag, and that's always a bad scene. Sixty-five stretchers with no canvas in them, come on now! So the wood's warped, so what. I don't call that art. Do you call that art?"

  "I don't mind telling you, Louis, I was a bit puzzled as to what Habzi might be getting at."

  "Jack! That's what he's getting at, Trudie, jack and more jack.

  Painting all the presidents on the lousy Alaskan pipeline! Man, that's sad. Nobody can paint with their fists full of dollars."

  Mrs. Canopy, who had paid Louie Daytona $3,500 for Vincent's funeral monument, defended Mr. Rabies in vain.

  From across the room three handsome gentlemen observed Mr. Daytona and Mrs. Canopy, while Evelyn Troyes, standing nearby, heard but did not catch what the gentlemen said.

  "I have just flashed on heaven, girls. Look at the basket in those bells! The faunlet over there making up to the kitschy fag hag in cashmere."

  "Sweetheart, that's Louie Daytona. He's twisted, totally unglued.

  He just got out of jail for assault."

  "I don't want to marry him, my dear. Just a sordid fling."

  "Never happen, you're too ladylike. Daytona cruises the meat track, seafood, really rough trade."

  "I think I'll join the navy then. Anchors aweigh!"

 
From across the room two handsome gentlewomen observed the handsome gentlemen.

  "Will you look at Werner over there giggling with those two queens?"

  "I know. Christ Almighty, I wish Werner'd never come out. He's gotten so enthusiastically campy, it's like having all three of the Andrews Sisters sit down next to you in one chair."

  "Well, I love his blouse! Wonder where he got it."

  "Looks Bloomie's to me."

  From across the room the husbands of the handsome gentlewomen observed the world.

  "It gripes my balls."

  "Look, don't make noises. He's in the barrel. Ted'll fire him before the week's out. They got plenty of ammo against him."

  "Fire him! They ought to ream his ass out. The whole lousy account he cost me! I feel like personally going over there and beating the royal fuck out of that joker."

  "No need to make it into a big machodrama."

  And all around the room, names were dropped like manna.

  "And I was just wearing some old shmatte, so when she asked us to come backstage and meet—"

  "And he was lying there in the buff and no makeup when the cops showed; well, you know what they say about him and pills—"

  "And listen, this is straight, he's gay—"

  "And listen, she tells everybody she slept with her father—"

  "Listen."

  And into the loft walked Richard Rage and Beatrice Abernathy. Heart hand-fast in heart the lovers stood. Rage in his tweeds. Beanie in deep chiffon green with fluttery sleeves. The poet was humming into her ear that greensleeves was his heart of gold, as near them Ms.

  Harfleur asked the host, "Who's that? With Rich. She looks like a giant sequoia."

  Rage was an old friend of the host, Charlie Rolfe. Beanie, of course, was an old friend of three of the guests. Unnoticed by the others, the couple had come into the loft after the film started, had left for a walk along Village streets before the film ended, and now had returned so that Richard could again press Rolfe for the $200

  owed him, for he wished to find some haven in which to shelter this woman, if possible, forever. Last night they had spent at a painter's on Bank Street, where, for the evening, they had left Beanie's dog, Big Mutt, whom the painter wanted to use as a model. He needed a bear and couldn't afford one.

  "My God, Tracy! There's Beanie!" said Mrs. Ransom.

  "It is!" said Mrs. Canopy.

  "With Mr. Rage," said Mrs. Troyes.

  "What in the g.d.h. does she think she's doing?"

  "She's eating shrimp salad at the buffet."

  "Evelyn, for God's sake. I see that. Two days ago she elopes with a middle-aged hippie after thirty years of marriage and tonight she's happily eating a quart of shrimp salad?!"

  Over marched Priss. Tracy and Evelyn followed in quick step.

  Beanie saw them come, remembered what she had done to them, to her boys. She flushed and put down her plate.

  "Beanie. Dear, dear. Is this true?" asked Tracy. "Did you mean what you said in your note? Forgive us, but Arthur read it to us. He thought we should know. It's just coincidence we're here, but are you really leaving Winslow?"

  "Beanie! You have simply lost your g.d. mind. This is hysteria."

  "Beanie. Did he, wait, Priss, let me, did he force you to come with him? Oh, my dear, think of Winslow," whispered Evelyn.

  "Yes, I know, I do, and I'm sorry."

  "We'll just walk out right now and go home and forget it."

  "No, Prissie." Beanie had never said so flat a no to Priss before, and her obstinacy so disquieted Mrs. Ransom that she arrested her friend by the arm and led her off to the bathroom. Tracy and Evelyn came, too.

  Locked in with a purple tub and a toilet bowl in which cigarettes unhappily floated, the four women considered Beanie's future. She admitted she had not thought about it. She admitted she had not thought about her past either. Under Mrs. Ransom's cross-examination, Beanie was brought to further admissions. She admitted she was hurting her husband, her children, her unborn grandchildren, her friends, her neighbors, her community, her name, her sex and her country and the great chain of being. Seated on the edge of the tub, Beanie began to cry. From the rim of the toilet, so did Evelyn.

  "You must do what's right, right for yourself, Beanie," said Tracy, handing her friend some toilet paper. "But have you really thought?"

  "Of course she hasn't thought. The man has mesmerized her, she's under some kind of spell."

  "Yes, Priss," said Beanie. "I didn't mean for anything like this to happen to me."

  "Well, then, can't you see how absurd you are? Come home."

  "No."

  "Oh, my God, I cannot believe this. What are we going to do with you?"

  "Please don't worry about me. I know it's crazy for you. It's not easy for you to understand."

  "Not easy?"

  "Not possible. But it's true. I will talk to Winslow soon. But I can't come back right now. I know he thinks he's hurt, but he'll be all right. He's never loved me that way. You see?"

  "How do you know he doesn't love you that way, whatever that means, for God's sake?"

  "I just know, Prissie."

  "And this Rage of yours?"

  "I feel like he loves me."

  "Ha. What in the world do you mean by love?" Mrs. Ransom wanted to know.

  There was a rap-tap-tap at the door. "Darlin', you in there?"

  asked Rich Rage.

  "Yes," Beanie answered. "Just a minute."

  "I think I found us a place to stay. Something the matter? You okay?"

  "I'll be out in a minute. I'm all right."

  "Okeydoke. I'm right by the table."

  In the bright light of the bathroom the four ladies sat or stood in silence. Then Beanie dried her eyes on toilet paper. "Thank you for caring about me," she told them. "But I had to go because I had to find out. You know, I almost lived my whole life and never knew.

  Tracy? You know? Could you just leave me here alone for a minute now? Please?"

  What could they do? Abduct her? So they unlocked the door and left her with Tracy's hug and Evelyn's kiss and Priss's warning.

  The whitewashed loft floated in layered clouds of gray and blue smoke. The loft winked with a hundred icy glasses. The loft warmed with the heat of hype. The Dingley Falls ladies had left, but the party stayed. The party laughed and leered and sneered and mooched and munched and stroked and quipped and tripped and never quit. For the flash-trash-cash-bash of the Big Apple is open all night.

  chapter 30

  Beanie was telling Rich that she could not breathe in his friend Charlie's apartment. That people here in Manhattan kept their lives in little squares, with more and more and more people on top of them, beneath, beside, behind, in front of them. That people here in Manhattan were penned like dogs in a pet shop, and some lay listless with the loss of hope, and some leaped about, manic with the chance of being bought. She could not breathe on these streets because earth could not breathe. The earth had been smothered in cement. Manhattan was a gray Titan's cemetery. And she felt dead here.

  She did not say this in so many words, of course, for Beanie was a woman of very few words. She said, "Richard, please, I feel so cooped-up here with these people. I guess I miss Dingley Falls. Could we go someplace green and quiet? Someplace living. Does that make sense?"

  Richard Rage was saying that he loved it here. That the spires defied the sky and drew him up to their height, inspired him with their clean, strong thrust at possibility. Manhattan raised his head and quickened his heart. Mammon and Moloch doing their mighty things out of steel and glass and power. The mind of man electrifying a megalopolis, splintering with lightning bolts a mound of rock. "Let there be light!" said no more than mammal man. And there was light! Here at the source of power, Rage plugged into a trillion electric sockets, he was sparked with all their energies. Here he saw himself transmitted and projected into twenty Richards, saw them simultaneously on twenty television screens in one store window. He was magnifiabl
e on millions of radios. He was sped through subterranean mazes of a fantastic game, led from one flash and spark to another like a pinball. He was elevated and escalated. He was instantaneous. He was high.

  He was jazzed by a billion car horns, cop whistles, shrill spiels, cameras clicking, transistors, subway screech, whoosh of wind, clatter of pushcarts, fiddles begging, ferry bleating fog, sirens singing fire, church bells ringing salvation. He was high with a thousand lingos.

  All around him cantatas of multitudinous accents and argots, tympanic, flat, sharp, glottal, nasal, dental, twang, slang, jive, and jargon. Chatter and woo and barter and curses in Bronxese, Blackese, Chinese, and all the Babelites that worked to build the mighty tower and called one another honkie, wasp, wop, spic, mick, kraut, polack, kike, and jig. All their voices amplified him. All the people dashing at him when the light flashed go. Fat, lean, gay, straight, crooked, hebephrenic, hale and hearty, melancholic, sober, drugged, yellow black brown red and white, all zippy in the dynamo of the giant power generator they call Manhattan. And he felt alive here.

  He did not say this in so many words, of course, for love is a sparing translator of differences. He said, "Darlin', New York's got everything! You want grass, you got it. Trees? A fucking forest! A forest with seals in it!"

  With a wave he hailed a pumpkin-yellow coach for his lady. The first cab that Richard called came at his bidding. "Love it!" he shouted. "Look at this! You're my luck, darlin'. I've got the world on a string, sitting on a rainbow! Central Park South," he told his driver, who was Armenian and a fan of the New York Yankees. Out of the radio sputtered the cheers and jeers of fans as the cab wove its wheeling way through the city lights.

  "What's the score?" asked the affable poet.

  "Nuddin', nuddin', top uh de tenffh. Tell me why I bodder wid de bums?"

  "Love," Rich told him. Love was in the air wherever he and Beatrice breathed, love and luck were wed in magic. And so there was one horse and carriage waiting for them. And a grandly mustached chauffeur named Curley McGuire who ate pieces of pizza from a cardboard box as they shambled along the curves of Central Park.