The Cheese Monkeys: A Novel in Two Semesters
Page 14
He lumbered towards us, a large shape emerging, out of the Skeller murk.
Roaring. Breath combustible. Levi's, a kelly green Lacoste and a khaki windbreaker. Planted himself across from me and next to Mills, who was dying.
She croaked, “As a matter of fact, we were just leaving—”
“Kiddies! What'll ya have! Round's on me.” Winter seemed so happy to see us, I couldn't even talk.
Hims: “Jar. Of Rolling Rock.”
“Two.”
He sprang up to get them.
She glared. “Beyond the bleeding pale. A coupla Jacks and he's Santa Claus? We shoulda poured it in his pipe before crit. Where's the zipperhead who ate and shat you out this afternoon in a single gulp?” She didn't wait for an answer. “Shit. I'm gone.”
“Wait! Stay! When'll we get this chance again?”
“Never, please.”
“Stay. For the Wrigley evening news.”
A breath. “You're not going to save it for crit?”
“This is too good to pass up. Besides, he'll never remember it anyway.”
She seemed . . . strange—frightened? No, never. “Okay. Ten minutes. That's it.”
He came back with the beers and another Jack D— neat, in a beaker.
Hims went into Nanette Fabray mode. “So, where's Mrs. Sorbeck tonight? Sewing circle?”
A dark chortle. “Darlin', wish I knew. She made me her wasband a long time ago. After giving me many a wood shampoo.”
“Sorry to hear it.”
I changed the subject, lickety-split, feeling like Edward R. Murrow interviewing the first Martian in captivity. “Uh, where did you teach before here?”
“Heh. Everywhere. Yale first, and the longest. Helped start the program. With Albers.”
Whoever that was. “Really. Why'd you leave?”
“Hurmm. Complicated. Him, mostly. You know all those squares he does?”
Hadn't a clue. “Yeah?”
“Those are side views of his head.”
“I see.”
Himillsy moved the conversation to art theory. “Speaking of which, I have a new, definitive axiom, about sculpture,” she announced. We were all ears. “If you can set a drink on it, it's good. If you can set two drinks on it, it's better.”
Winter snickered. “So, Joseph Cornell . . . ?”
“God's own.”
“And Brancusi . . .”
“Worthless!''
“Waitaminute!” I protested. “What about Rodin?”
She didn't miss a beat. “They all have bases, don't they?”
“Girly, think ya got somethin' there.”
I felt emboldened by drink. “Uh, Winter?”
“Shoot.” He took a pull on the mash.
“I, just wanted to tell you.”
He swallowed . . .
“Sketchy Spear says hi.”
. . . and choked. “Huk!” He wiped his mouth. “Well, I'll be goddamned.”
Those eyes, back on me, where they belonged. Unbearable, diamond-blue drills.
“You are a magician, Hap! My ideal!”
Could have stared at them till I was Swiss cheese . . .
• • •
Two hours and three rounds later, we were somehow onto Matisse. I didn't have much to offer, except a snippet I'd read in Life magazine: “He wasn't much on discourse. Once said, ‘Painters must begin by cutting out their tongues.’ ”
“Sheesh—why stop there?” Winter slurred, “If he would've done his hands next, all those innocent little pieces of paper could've been spared.”
Hims was hooting. “Ha! It's so, so true! You sound like Clement Greenberg!”
“CLEMENT GREENBERG?! I HATE Clement Greenberg!”
“What's wrong with him?” she dared.
“The problem with Clement Greenberg,” he was fading fast, “is that when God put teeth in his mouth, he ruined a perfectly good ASSHOLE.”
And he was out, head on chest. Check please.
“Charming,” Hims hissed.
“Last call.” Greck made the rounds.
“Well, we're off.” She shouldered her bag.
“We can't just leave him here,” I pleaded.
“Oh, I think he sort of goes with the decor.”
“Hims, I'm serious.”
She swiveled. “After what he did to you, this afternoon? To me? I wouldn't piss down his throat if his heart was on fire.” She motioned for me to hightail it. I was crestfallen—we were having such a good time.
Mills was baffled with me, disgusted. “The grade can't mean that much.”
“It's not the grade. Jesus.”
She went for the stairs. “Right. The Dodd Express is pulling out. All aboard. Toot toot.” Gone.
“Hims . . .”
Greck came up to me.
“I know where his wheels are.” He nodded to Winter's broken form. “Ya want a hand?”
“Really would. Thanks.” Maybe if I got him to his car, he could snap to and get home, wherever that was.
Greck lifted Winter with a Huff! and hauled him, amazingly, upstairs. I trailed. Mills had vamoosed.
Damn it. She really left me. “You gonna drive?” Greck asked. He was skeptical, to say the least.
It hadn't even occurred to me. “Suppose I am.”
He stuffed Sorbeck into the passenger seat and headed back down the stairs before I could thank him again. I looked at the car, not quite believing—a Jaguar two seater, almost as small as Himillsy's Corvair—talk about ten pounds of potatoes in a five-pound bag. I sat, Winter spilling over next to me, and got acclimated. Pulled the seat front. I'd driven a standard before, once—cousin Sal's Ford. How different could this be?
Greck had gotten me the keys from Winter's pocket and the address from his driver's license—west side of town, didn't know it at all. Stopped at the Shell for directions.
Finally on our way, the stratospheric absurdity-sank in, with all its implications: I'm in his car, driving, by fits and starts. He's unconscious, and on this day of days, totally dependent . . . on me.
IF I WANT YOUR OBLIVION, I'LL DRIVE IT INTO YOU! Fate was playing pinball with me, but so what. It felt good —whoops! Wrong word. It felt better than that, it—
“Jew baller yet?”
Almost swerved into a ditch. “P-pardon?”
Eyes shut, not moving. But awake. “The pixie. Jew baller?”
Good heavens. “No.”
“I did.”
Somehow, I kept my eyes on the road; my hands obeyed me—despite their better judgment—and clutched the wheel instead of his throat. Jealousy hot and crippling. Jealous of whom, actually?
“Not worth it. A lunger. Screamed like a cat in a bag . . . ” And he was out again. Sawing wood.
And I remembered, back at the Skeller, just now—the coda to something Himillsy said.
After what he did to you, this afternoon?
To me?
Pig. You pig.
• • •
I finally found the house—only passed it three times. Very hard to see—a box ranch model— almost completely overtaken with ivy, no lights on. The driveway: a perilous drop, garage at the finish line. No thanks. I parked on the street in front. With an arm like a yoke over my shoulder, I barely managed to drag him to the door. The keys for the house and the car, thank God, were on the same ring. Once in, I snapped on a light.
Yowza.
After a trip down the main hallway that would have felled a boot camp marine, I got him to the bedroom and plopped him down. Then I caught my breath and went on safari. Several rooms were filled with boxes—still packed. But the living room and kitchen and den were all set up. I clicked on another lamp. Spectacular: one face of the double-height living room was covered with old game boards, none of which I recognized. I went up close to one to find the manufacturer and discovered it was . . . a painting. On wood, as were the rest.
The wall thirty feet or so across from it was a floor-to-ceiling array of glass shelves holding wa
ter pitchers, which shamed you with the realization that you never seriously considered before what water pitchers could look like, that they really could attain the grace of futurist sculpture without the pretension. He must have traversed the globe to collect them all. I gingerly took one down: a glazed Lilliputian streamlined skyscraper, handle where the extension's penthouse would be. I turned it over—just a small stamp, plain letters: WS. He had . . . cast it himself. I examined three more. All WS.
He'd made all of them. Forty, easily.
In the room's corners, Depression-era five and dime display cases held battalions of tin robots. Silent sentries in all sizes. Hundreds.
I thought: Garnett should see this. It's ordered, it's not confining, it's different. But it's comfortable, and minimal in its own way—it didn't seem cluttered or busy because the other two white walls, save for large black cubical leather sofas (one of which held a calico cat twice the size of Colonel Percy, asleep and purring), were virtually untouched and provided oases of blank space for the eye to rest upon. You could sit and look at it all for hours.
“Whoozzatt.”
Oh, my Christ.
He lurched in the doorway, squinting, in the weak light. Undershirt, shorts. A magnificent shipwreck.
I said, loudly, “I-it's me. It's alright. You're home.”
He blinked.
“I brought you home.” Might as well have been speaking Esperanto. I pointed to the wall. “The game boards, you made them?”
He struggled to respond. “Grad thesis, twenties.” Whether his twenties or the century's wasn't clear. He coughed miserably, disgust published all over his face, as if he couldn't bear the sight of them. “Pritt. Tee,” he spat.
I looked again at the luminous wall of diagrammatic color and shape—a playland mosaic dedicated to the ultimate rainy afternoon's distraction. Each unique, but they blended into a seamless symphony of hue, type, line, system: clowns, fire trucks, monsters, playgrounds, witches, rocket ships, animals of every type—all taken apart and reconfigured, invaded by geometry and rules of abstraction. It was impossible to imagine them ever separated. Such carefree regiment, so urgent in their frivolity. So . . . whimsically diabolical. If only life could be this way—this figured out, with the goals so clear.
“They're more than that, and you know it. Or you wouldn't have made them in the firs—” I turned back to him.
Not there. I went into the bedroom.
Collapsed. Flat on his back. Snoring.
I was about to turn the light out and go on exploring when the great graphic design gods took pity on me and tapped my shoulder.
“Idiot! Look! On the sideboard!”
A Polaroid camera . . . like Dad's. With flash, tripod, and film. Oh, I couldn't.
“You only live once!'' “But what if he wakes up?'' I implored them, “That's it, the end! I'm through!''
“Ya takes yer chances, kid!'”
And they were gone.
I crept up to Winter's bulk. It rose and ebbed with each hoggy wheeze.
“Winter,” I said, not quietly, next to his ear.
“Can you hear me?” Nothing. A final test: I had to.
Oh, please don't move.
I lifted up my hands and in single instant brought them together in front of his face with a sickening smack!
Held my breath.
Dead to the world. Wow: Jesus was my pal. I got onto the bed, taking the plunge—God, I hadn't even dared dream of this. Off with my shirt. Straddled him.
My face over his—a statue's, the marble all the more beautiful for the cracks and splits. The tiny veins mapping the perfect nose, the lightning bolt valleys radiating from each eye's outer corner. I was exploring the moon—so used to it so far away for so long and now I've landed. On the Moon God. The gravity was different here— nearly none. Our lips touched. His: warm leather.
He stopped snoring.
Holy, holy shit.
I didn't move. He didn't either, just made a small noise. Regular breathing. I told myself: If he wakes up now, he'll still be drunk. I can tell him he'd lapsed into a coma and I'm giving him mouth to mouth. Barechested.
(Cut me some slack—it was a little tense.) My eyes went to the bedside clock. I let a minute pass.
A minute, in this situation, is an era.
I decided: onward. My tongue coaxed his lips, and they parted, the curtains lifting on my command performance. The jaw, already slack from the snoring, unhinged itself and I descended. My tongue met his, slid, and came to rest.
The taste became the smell became the touch. It was all there, somewhere—sweat, age, skin, strength, whiskey, flesh, salt, hair, coffee, teeth, the sweet cream of the pipe tobacco, the earthy musk of sleep. Him. I was . . . in him.
He who'd christened me and so now I was: Happy, in the Forbidden Planet.
The breath from his nose whistled and whipped innocently around my ear. Delicious. I held it a beat more. God, so this is what it was like. I slowly, reluctantly withdrew. Sighed. I didn't have forever. I went and got the camera. Loaded the film. Was I really doing this?
Yes.
To the guy who designed the Wrigley's Goddamn Doublemint gum wrapper. To the guy who destroyed me today. I half wondered if this was what it was like for Himillsy.
No, because I'm in control. This is what it was like for him.
Trembling fingers—wouldn't yours?—grabbed the waistband of his shorts, stretched, and pulled.
They came off almost as easily as Mr. Peppie's.
Oh, wow . . .
• • •
I sat in the Jag for over an hour, to nearly daybreak.
In a mist of my own delirium, still trying to believe it, trying to compose myself; waiting for it to clear.
I've done the impossible.
I've disarmed you, Winter Sorbeck. From now on, whatever you say to me, I will look at you and see it in quotation marks.
The first pair will be your lips, askew; the second, mine.
• • •
v .
T H E F O U R T H C R I T I Q U E.
Art 127 ( Introduction to Graphic Design) ,
Winter Sorbeck, instr.
During which we shall present to the instructor an image that he has never before seen, and will never be able to forget.
There's a special feeling (I only experienced it one other time) when you're in an un-winnable war, and you're supposed to get creamed, but you just know you have impenetrable armor and the perfect weapon. The whole David and Goliath bit. Truman must have felt it when he dropped the A-bomb, and I was about to join him.
I should have been scared shitless by this crit, and, okay, I was, but not for the regular reasons. Mine was the fear of succeeding to a detrimental excess.
Mike went first again, eager to earn another Retarded Martyr Merit Badge.
A disaster. I'll spare you the details.
Oh all right, quick: He held up a small . . . American flag in shades of brown (?) which, he announced, was knitted by his grandmother. Probably thought this would cover the previously lauded America and grandparent angles.
Winter: “And what makes that so unforgettable?”
“S-she made it all out of her own hair.”
At least Sorbeck didn't waste a lot of time destroying it. In fact, he said, “Dreadful. And for you, Bestine, that's a quantum leap. Congrats.”
David David brought up a plastic sandwich bag. Inside was a small turdlike nugget. Had we come to this? Winter held it to the light.
“Seen mushrooms before, Deedee.”
“Not like this one. Pop it in your mouth, lay back. We'll talk.”
Suddenly, he seemed to know what Dave D was referring to, and put it carefully in his shirt pocket.
“Later. Sit.”
Maybelle's turn. But she hadn't shown up today.
“And where's Maybelleen?” Winter seemed to actually miss her. “She finally decide to cut bait? Pity. Girl was starting to show promise. Well, on to the next . . .”
The door flew open.
Our Mabes, arms aloft—an acid yellow showgirl, in ostrich feathers and a sequined one piece. Her voice was a needle dragged across a Puccini record at top volume.
“I had a dream! A . . . a dream about you, baby!”
Goodness, those thighs.
Winter was suitably appalled.
Truth to tell, I pulled her aside on Saturday and put her up to all of it, because I realized that Himillsy's goof the first day was legit: he did want theater, and the South in Maybelle had always been pure theater anyway. I swore it was her only chance.
Though maybe the eight-cylinder motorcycle was a bit much. I guess Erbie couldn't come through with the scooter.
“It's gonna come true, baby!”
She gave it the gas and started it up, just as Erb showed her. Then she revved the engine. Liking it.
“Gonna come through!”
No. Don't do that.
“Get off of my runway!” BRROOOOOOM!
Winter, at the top of his lungs: “Stop! Okay!”
“What?!” She jerked forward to hear above the engine.
The kick stand fell and she was off.
“AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!”
Not in the plan. She was never supposed to become mobile.
Luckily, she was still in neutral and going all of three miles an hour when he managed to stop her and turn off the ignition.
Maybelle was huffing and puffing, breathless.
“H-how was that?”
Sorbeck plucked one of the feathers and mopped his forehead.
“Seen worse. B plus.”
“Whew!” Eyebrows arched, “Will you remember it?”
He closed his eyes against the question.
“ 'Fraid so.”
Me: “I think it's only fair to warn you, we should do this in private.” Yeah, again! Ha!
“Why?”