The Land Of Laughs

by Jonathan Carroll

"I can never get over how clear the sky is out here at night. They must have filtered out all of the impurities."

  "Ninety-nine and forty-four one-hundredths pure Missouri sky."

  "Exactly."

  "Let's go. It is cold out here."

  The station wagon smelled of apples. I turned around and saw two bushel baskets filled with them on the backseat.

  "Can I have an apple?"

  "Yes, but watch out for worms."

  I decided not to have an apple. She smiled. In the car's blue darkness, her teeth were as white as the stripe on the road.

  "What's a 'midnight picnic'?"

  "You aren't allowed to ask any questions. Sit back and enjoy the ride. You'll see everything when we get there."

  I did what I was told. I let my head fall back on the seat and looked down my nose to the night road moving by.

  "You have to be careful out here at night. There are always cows or dogs or raccoons on it. I once hit a female opossum. I got out of the car and ran back, but it was already dead. What was worse was that all of these little baby possums came crawling out of her stomach pouch as soon as I got there. Their eyes were still closed."

  "Nice."

  "It was ghastly. I felt like such a murderer."

  "Uh, how's old Petals? Nails sends her his love."

  "She's in heat, so I have to keep her locked away for two weeks now."

  The road snaked up and down and around. I was tired, and the heat blowing up from the floor made my eyelids feel like heavy velvet curtains.

  "Thomas, can I ask you a question?"

  "Sure. Can I turn down the heat?"

  "Yes, press the middle button. Do you mind if it's personal?"

  I pressed the wrong middle button, and the blower huffed into high gear. She reached down, and going over my hand, pressed the right one. The huff died away, and I could hear the sound of the engine and the wheels for the first time.

  "What's your personal question?"

  "What is your relationship with Saxony?"

  Here we are – Saxony safely ensconced in the hospital, my little black night commando at the wheel right beside me… I could have answered her question so many different ways. What did I want her to think – that I was a happily unmarried man? That I was just passing time with Sax until the right someone came along? That I wanted Anna to be the right someone, even if that was taking the whole thing too far?

  "My relationship? Do you mean do I love her?"

  All alone. If something happened out there between the two of us that night, no one would ever know. There was no way Saxony would be hurt if I told a small lie about what went on in that darkness. Impossible. It was eleven o'clock at night, Anna was there and I was there and Saxony wasn't there… and what I ended up saying was, "Yes, Anna, I love her." Then I sighed. What the hell else could I do? Lie? Yes, I know I could have, but I didn't. Aren't I wonderful?

  "Does she love you?" She kept her hands on the top of the steering wheel and her head facing forward.

  "Yes, I guess so. She says she does." With that, I felt something in my body let go and deflate. It made me feel calmer and less on edge. As if the jig was up and my main energy center could shut down for the rest of the night because I wouldn't be needing it anymore.

  "Why are you asking, Anna?"

  "Because I'm interested in you. Is that so surprising?"

  "That depends. Professionally interested or personally?"

  "Personally." That was all. That was all she said in this Lauren Bacall-deep "if-you-need-anything-just-whistle" voice. "Personally." I didn't dare turn to her. I closed my eyes and felt my heart beat throughout the upper part of my body. I wondered if I would die someday of a heart attack. I wondered if I was about to have a heart attack. Two seconds before, I had been about to fall asleep.

  "Uh, what am I supposed to say to that?"

  "Nothing. You don't have to say a word. I was only answering your question."

  "Oh." I took a deep breath and tried to find a comfortable position on the plastic seat for both me and my eleven-foot-long erection.

  I am pretty inept at seducing women. For years I thought that the best way to do it was to have three-hour-long heart-to-heart talks where you ended up saying right out front that you wanted to go to bed with her. That way wasn't completely successful, however, especially when I was in college and the girls that I liked were mostly "intellectuals" who carried around copies of Nausea or Kate Millett and used a Renoir postcard to mark their place. The great problem that arose then was that I would have drunk so much image-building black coffee or poisonous espresso that if the magic moment ever did arise, I would have to keep slipping off to the toilet to piss it all out. I'm sure that I also bored any number of them to tears, because one day a girl said, "Why don't you stop talking so much bullshit and just take me?" It was a good lesson at the time, although I often tried it later and was pushed away more often than I was welcomed. As a result, even at this late date I never knew if (1) a woman wanted me or not, (2) if she did, how I was supposed to "take her," (3)… It's not necessary, because I think the picture is pretty clear. Luckily, with Saxony it had been mutual – and, God, I was thankful for that. But Anna? Anna France, sweet-mama daughter of my hero? Was she saying here that she wanted me, or was she flirting and trying to see how far she could go before I made my move and she would have to shoot me down?

  "Anna?"

  "Thomas?"

  "I don't know what you want me to do. I don't know if you're saying what I think I'm hearing. Do you know what I mean?"

  "Yes, I think so."

  My hand was shaking when I lifted it toward her. It was my left hand. I chose it because if she didn't want me to touch her she could push it away and I'd have it back on my side of the seat quicker. Then I didn't know where it should go when it reached her, now that it was halfway there. Her knee, breast, arm? But it knew that it had to go to her face. Slowly, still shaking, I touched her cheek and found it hot. She took my hand in hers, and bringing it around to her lips, kissed it. She squeezed it tightly and brought it down to rest on her right knee. I felt as if my head was about to explode. We rode the rest of the way to her "picnic" like that.

  The best description would be to say that Anna totally gave herself to me. Not that she was into any kind of bondage or kinky stuff, but when I made love with her I instantly got the feeling that she would let me do anything I wanted to her, or that she would do anything I asked her to. She didn't leap around or set fire to the ceiling, but she was so there that sometimes I felt I had gone all the way through her and would have to work all the way back before either of us was done, much less satisfied. Later, when I asked her if this had been the real purpose of the picnic from the beginning, she said yes.

  I even got her to talk a little about herself that night. Making love brought down some of the barriers, and by the time the sun began to come up (we had adjourned to her double sleeping bag, which we put near the car on a high hill that overlooked meadows and cows), I knew that she'd gone through much of the same famous-father crap that I had. She kept repeating that her experiences were nothing compared to mine, but her stories about playmates, high school, special treatment from others, etc., rang so many bells that my head almost fell off from nodding so much.

  I told her about myself and didn't feel strange or uncomfortable doing it.

  We went to a diner out on the highway, and both of us had a "Trucker's Special" for breakfast – eggs and pancakes, sausages, toast, and all the coffee you could drink. I was famished and ate everything. When I'd finished and looked her way, she had swept her plate clean too, back to its original red and white stripes. She put her hand on my knee and asked Millie, the waitress, for more coffee for both of us. I wanted the other people in the diner to know that Anna France was with me and that only a few hours before we had made love again and again on top of a hill two miles away from there. I was exhausted and happy and I wasn't thinking about Saxony.

  After that, until Sax
came home, I spent at least part of every night at Anna's. Either she would cook dinner (God forbid) or I would come over later and we would talk or watch television, but then inevitably we ended up in bed. Later on I would stagger out of there at one or two in the morning and drive home in my freezing car.

  At the beginning it was an incredible ego trip. Lovely, charming Anna France wanted me. The great-looking daughter of Marshall France wanted me, me, not the son of Stephen Abbey. That had happened more than once with other women – as soon as they knew who I was, it was like a switch being thrown in them: if I can't have the father, then why not the son? Do you know what it's like to screw someone who you know is not doing it with you but with someone you represent?

  With Anna I assumed that if there was any other, more bloodless reason, it was that I was her father's biographer, and liking what I'd already turned out, she wanted me to continue writing at the same pitch. Her body, if I really wanted to be cruel and cynical, was being thrown in as an added incentive to do a good job.

  I didn't want to think about all of the complications that were due to hit the fan momentarily. I worked in the morning, and worked well, visited the hospital in the afternoon, and went to France at night.

  The doctors had had to put some kind of special pin in Saxony's leg, which prolonged her stay in the hospital. The news made her very depressed, although I did what little I could to cheer her up. I brought her everything that I had written and asked her to proofread it and make corrections and suggestions. She asked for a box of big black Dixon Beginners pencils and made her comments everywhere on the manuscript. She had turned into an excellent editor, and more often than not our thoughts were on the same wavelength. When she wasn't at it with her pencil, she was reading biographies of everyone – Andrew Carnegie, Einstein, Delmore Schwartz – and taking pages of notes on them. I'm sure that the nurses thought that we hated each other, because we argued all the time. She would sit propped up in bed with her big white cast sticking out from the sheets and lecture me from a black-and-white school notebook she kept. I had a matching notebook (another couple of treasures from Lazy Larry's), and I'd make an occasional note in mine, though not as often as she said I should.

  I don't know if she felt helpless there or if she sensed something different in me. Whatever it was, although she was often crabby and short, she seemed more fragile and fallible than I had ever seen her. It made me love her like crazy, but the love didn't keep me away from Anna.

  I had never felt so high and explosive before in my life. Every, every day had twenty different reasons for being there. Getting into bed late at night, I could hardly fall asleep – tired as I was because the thought of tomorrow was so exciting. I loved leading all of my different lives – writer, researcher, Anna's lover, Saxony's man. But I knew too that that totally convenient world would end any moment, and that then I might be jumping around as if the floor were on fire, trying to salvage whatever I could. Ask me, though, about the most incredible time in my life, and unquestionably it was those weeks in the fall in Galen before the winter and the dead began.

  Part Three

  1

  La-de-da-de-da – I was waltzing on over to Anna's one night, a little earlier than I'd told her I'd come. Saxony was due back in a couple of days, but I still wasn't going to worry about that until the time came. I got to within a house of Anna's when I saw her porch light go on and the front door open. She came out with Richard Lee. They were laughing and she had her hand on his shoulder. He was facing away from her, but at the last minute he turned around and took her in his arms. They kissed right under the light. It went on and on and on. Richard Lee. For God's sake – Richard Lee! When they pulled apart, he put both hands on the front of her white blouse, and she laughed at something he said. She lifted one of his hands to her mouth and kissed it. He turned and walked down the porch steps. Petals followed him all the way to his truck, which was parked just in front of the house.

  "So tomorrow's okay, Anna?" he bellowed over the roof to her.

  She nodded and smiled. He slapped the top of the truck happily and laid a patch of rubber in the street as he pulled away.

  When I "arrived" a few minutes later, she seemed pleased that I was there so early. Her cheeks also seemed flushed as hell. I dragged her up to the bedroom and made love to her as if she were a tackling dummy. When we had finished it wasn't two seconds before I was over her again and working even harder. We very rarely said anything when we fucked, but this time I asked her if she was doing it with other men.

  She rocked and moved under me, and her fingers squeezed and pinched me wherever they were. Her eyes were closed and her mouth was open in a lovely sensual smile.

  "Yes. Yes. Yes." She squeezed my neck very tightly and groaned in my ear. She didn't open her eyes but she kept smiling. I know because I was watching.

  "Who?" I had her breasts in my hands, rubbing her plum-colored nipples roughly with my thumbs. I didn't know if I wanted to hurt her or screw her to death or run away or what.

  "Yes. Yes. Yes." She rocked and nodded and spoke all at the same time. The words moved with her hips.

  "Who?"

  "Richard Lee." Her eyes stayed closed. "You-and-Richard. Oh! You-and-Richard!"

  Why the hell did it have to be him? Why had she chosen that slob in a baseball cap? Had he bought that huge box of Trojans that day to use on Anna? A hundred cheap rubbers jamming away in her?

  She said nothing more about it, but I was sure that she would have answered any other questions I had about "them." That openness only confused me more. I spent the night there for the first time.

  2

  "Home again! Are you in seventh heaven?"

  She was on those old-timey wooden crutches. Her face had a hospital pallor. She hobbled over to our bed, put the crutches across it, and sat down hard. The springs sproinged and spinged.

  "Could I have a glass of water please? Nails, will you please stop?"

  He had been dancing around the room ever since she came in. At first she had been tickled by his joy at seeing her, but it quickly turned into full-blown anger when he kept getting in her way. I didn't say anything, although I thought she was being a little oversensitive about the whole thing. He couldn't help being happy.

  "I bought you some tomato juice, Sax. Would you like me to fix you up a Virgin Mary? We've got some Worcestershire sauce and pepper."

  "I feel so tired already. God, it's so stupid. I just got out of the hospital about ten minutes ago and I feel like collapsing."

  I went over and sat down next to her. I put my hand where her knee had turned to hardened plaster. "Listen, that happens all the time when you're in bed for a long time. Your body just gets used to being horizontal. It's no big deal. What do you think you have to do, go out and run the Boston Marathon?"

  "Tell me all about it, will you, Thomas? Like maybe I don't know what it's like to be in a hospital? Like maybe I haven't spent half of my goddamned life in one?"

  "Take it easy, Sax. Don't have a coronary."

  I fled the room at the first possible chance, Nails hot on my heels. I hadn't seen her this edgy since the first day we'd met and I'd wanted to buy the France book from her.

  The kitchen was drowning in sunlight. It was cold as hell outside, but our apartment was toasty-warm, and the sun coming in made it feel alive and cozy.

  I got out a glass and held it up to the light; Saxony had a fetish about eating off either dirty plates or silverware. The glass passed the Abbey inspection and I went to the refrig for the can of tomato juice – her all-time favorite drink.

  Clump-clump-clump from the other room, and then she was in the doorway, leaning heavily on her crutches.

  "Thomas?"

  "Yes, my buddy?" I speared the can with an opener and turned it so that I could punch a hole on the other side.

  "I hated being in that hospital. I'm sorry if I'm stupid and wrought-up now, but I'm just so glad to be back here with you and Nails and everything that it's all comi
ng out of me the wrong way. I'm being a bitch and I'm sorry."

  I put the opener down and looked at her. The doorway made a big white frame around her in her pine-green dress. Her face looked both tired and guarded at the same time. A flash of Anna, naked and under Richard Lee, crackled across my mind.

  "Sax, do you want to make love? I mean, would it make you feel better if we did? More relaxed? Maybe that's the best way to break the ice. Just not say anything more and go right to bed. Get it all out of us."

  "Could you do it with this thing on me? Wouldn't it be too hard? That's another thing I was worrying about when I was in there." She looked at the floor and shook her head. "You have so much damned time to think about stupid things, and then you create all kinds of new worries. I was afraid that we wouldn't be able to do our funny business for months with this thing on my leg."

  I picked up a spoon and held it in my hand like a cigar. I wriggled my eyebrows like Groucho Marx. "My little dandelion, the only thing hard will be keeping me away from you once this tango has begun!" I wriggled my eyebrows again and tapped the ash off my cigar. I had no desire to make love. "Say the secret word and the bird comes down and pays you fifty dollars!"

  I went over, and bending at the knees, hefted her up and over my shoulder. She felt warm and heavy and soft, and she smelled like clean laundry. I did a Tarzan hoot and, stumbling a bit, wobbled off to our bedroom.

  And then how was it? Okay. Good. Fine. No, the exact truth of the matter was that it was all right. Very all right. It had nothing to do with the cast, either.

  3

  Suddenly everyone in Galen was nice to me. I didn't know whether it was because they knew that Anna had liked my first chapter or because they knew that we were lovers (or rather that I was one of her lovers). In any event, I was sure that Mrs. Fletcher knew what was happening, because she often made it easy for me to get out of the house and over to Anna's after Saxony had returned from the hospital.