SIMON remembered Sarah screaming when he tried to turn off the television set. The thing had captured her and anyone who laid a hand on it was subject to a full-scale tantrum with kettle drums and cannon. She was, for some reason, inordinately fond of Daffy Duck, although the Road Runner was also a fa?vorite. She was queenly in expressing herself. At two, she produced a sentence that Simon still marveled at. When events were not marching to her satisfaction she would say, gravely, "You are making me angry." After this sentence joined the households sentence-hoard Simon ceased to worry about language acquisition. In the early mornings she would rush into the bedroom and climb into bed with Simon and his wife, settling in between them with soft little groans of satisfaction. When she grew up, she said, she wanted to be a balle?rina. Her mother made her a tutu out of some pink gauzy material and she pranced about the house in this, white Danskins, and a cardboard tiara on which gold stars had been pasted, exhibiting all the grace of a tall gesturing cactus. When she was fourteen she was picked up for shoplifting, frightened as thoroughly as possible, and released. The item in question was a tube of lip gloss called Penumbra.
He remembered Carol jumping on him for using the mitt to hold the end of the veal bone while he tried to cut meat from it. "Thats not what the mitt is for!" He had told her to shut up, it was his mitt, hed use it for any damned thing he cared to including cleaning the grease trap if he cared to. Mitt nights. After dinner she told him not to eat onions from the pot. The baby standing on the kitchen table and singing
Im pretty
Im pretty
And I dont care
Memories of mitt.
"This guy slapped Veronica."
"Why?"
"She doesnt know. She went out for pizza and stopped at the Korean market. She had a big cauli?flower in her hands, she was kind of feeling it to see if it was --"
"And he slapped her?"
"A black guy. Walked up to her and slapped her in the face. Knocked her sunglasses off."
"Whatd she do?"
"He was a Vietnam vet."
"How do you know?"
"He said so. He said, Im a Vietnam vet and Im crazy. Then he slapped her. Then he asked her for money."
"Did she give him any?"
"Of course not, she threw the cauliflower at him."
"Did it hit him?"
"No it hit an old lady. Right in the mush. She didnt throw it so well?"
"What happened then?"
"The Korean guy behind the counter had a fit. Fell down and foamed at the mouth."
"Is he okay?"
"The paramedics took him away."
"What happened to the black guy?"
"He split."
"Is Veronica okay?"
"Sure. Shes used to it. Being bashed around. This is a great town you have here."
Dore is angry. Shes holding the box that the frozen pizza came in.
"Youre actually going to feed us this pizza?"
"Whats the matter with it?"
"This frozen pizza?"
"So its frozen."
"Do you know what its got in it? Enriched flour."
"Whats the matter with enriched flour?"
"The enriched flour has in it flour, niacin, reduced iron, thiamine mononitrate, and riboflavin."
"All great stuff. I remember riboflavin from my childhood. They put it in Wheaties or something."
"Were just getting started. Were just going into our windup here. We get water, hydrogenated soybean oil, yeast, salt, and something called dough conditioner. The dough conditioners got sodium stearoyl lactylate, calcium sulfate and sodium sulfite."
"Soybeans are good. Invented by Martin Luther King."
"Moving right along, we get cooked pork and mozzarella cheese substitute. The mozzarella cheese substi?tute contains water, casein, hydrogenated soybean oil -- you notice the soybean is doing a lot of work here -- salt, sodium aluminum phosphate, lactic acid, natural flavor whatever that is, modified cornstarch, so?dium citrate, sorbic acid, sodium phosphate, artificial color, guar gum, magnesium, oxide, ferric orthophosphate, zinc oxide, B-12, folic acid, B-6 hydrochloride, niacinamide, vitamin A palmitate, xanthan gum, thia?mine mononitrate -- I ask you."
"What?"
"Is this food or a chemistry set?"
"Doesnt taste too bad."
"I could make a nuclear weapon with less stuff than this pizza has in it."
A bare leg against a purplish sheet.
The thing is, they discuss him.
"He could lose maybe fifteen pounds."
"I think its kind of cute. Like Santa Claus with what does it say a bowl full of jelly."
Good shoulders. Deep chest. Thats in his favor."
"And hes got good posture. Were you ever in the service, Simon?"
"Two years."
"When was that?"
"In the 50s."
"You do anything?"
"Of a military nature? No, I just put in my time."
"A little bowlegged dont you think?"
"Its not bowlegs its just that the knees are too close together."
"Big feet."
"Well hes a big boy."
"The hands look a little toilworn to my eye."
"You need to use some kind of lotion, Simon, Lubriderm or --"
"But hes still got pretty much hair for a guy his age, thats a plus."
"I think you need a haircut, Simon, get away from that shaggy look, thats not the look of today."
"Veronica can cut it for you. Veronica knows how to cut hair."
"A five-buck tip, Simon, thats all it takes. Thirty for the haircut and five for the tip."
They say, over and over:
"Catch my drift?"
"Catch my drift?"
"Catch my drift?"
Anne says, "You never had to stand around in your frillies with all those guys looking at you."
"Well, thats true."
"Also, my boobs are too small."
"By what standard?"
"Generally accepted standards."
Her breasts are in fact quite perfect. "Look, dear friend," he says, "one would have to journey many days, cross mighty rivers and slog up and down tower?ing mountains, cut through thick mato grossos with machetes in each hand, to find a more beautiful woman than your sweet self."
"Do you really think that?"
"Of course."
"Doesnt do me any good if Im dumb, does it?"
"What makes you think youre dumb?"
"If I wasnt dumb I wouldnt be a professional model."
"Doesnt follow. Look at --" He gropes for the name of a model who is also amazingly intelligent but his knowledge of the field is inadequate. "Lauren Hutton," he says.
"She makes movies too."
"Tons of intelligence there," he says. "A glance convinces. Probably dreams three-dimensional chess. QED"
"Youre very supportive, Simon."
"I love you guys."
"Thats the first time youve said that."
"I slipped."
"Were in March now. This is March, right?"
"The sixteenth."
"Weve been here what, a month?"
"Just about."
"So. Are you satisfied?"
"In what regard?"
"With us. Being here."
"Of course. Very much so."
"Youre not going to boot us out."
"Why would I do that?"
"Maybe you dont like the deal."
"Do I seem itchy?"
"I cant tell with you. Youve got a hard shell."
"Look, Im fine. I dont think Veronica is too happy."
"Yeah, its a problem. Shes always been that way. She kind of expects the worst, you know? Shes got an affinity for the worst. She seeks it out."
"Why?"
"Its her mind-set, I guess. She got knocked around a lot as a kid. She talks about it sometimes."
"People get over it."
"No they dont."
A: A dead bear in a blue dress, face down on the kitchen floor. I trip over it, in the dark, when I get up at 2 AM to see if theres anything to eat in the refrigerator. Its an architectural problem, marriage. If we could live in separate houses, and visit each other when we felt particularly gay -- It would be expensive, yes. But as it was she had to endure me in all my worst manifestations, early in the morning and late at night and in the nutsy obsessed noontimes. When I wake up from my nap you dont get the laughing cavalier, you get a rank pigfooted belching blunderer. I knew this one guy who built a wall down the middle of his apart?ment. An impenetrable wall. He had a very big apart?ment. It worked out very well. Concrete block, basically, with fiberglass insulation on top of that and sheetrock on top of that.
Q: Well, how does it make you feel? Adultery.
A: Theres a certain amount of guilt attached. I feel guilty. But I feel guilty even without adultery. I exist in a morass of guilt. Theres maybe a little additional wal?lop of guilt but I already feel so guilty that I hardly no?tice it.
Q: Where does all this guilt come from? The extra-adulterous guilt?
A: I keep wondering if, say, there is intelligent life on other planets, the scientists argue that something like two percent of the other planets have the conditions, the physical conditions, to support life in the way it happened here, did Christ visit each and every planet, go through the same routine, the Agony in the Garden, the Crucifixion, and so on. . . And these guys on these other planets, these life-forms, maybe they look like boll weevils or something, on a much larger scale of course, were they told that they shouldnt go to bed with other attractive six-foot boll weevils arrayed in sil?ver and gold and with little squirts of Opium behind the ears? Doesnt make sense. But of course our human understanding is imperfect.
Q: You havent answered me. This general guilt --
A: Yes, thats the interesting thing. I hazard that it is not guilt so much as it is inadequacy. I feel that every?thing is being nibbled away, because I cant get it right --
Q: Would you like to be able to fly?
A: Its crossed my mind.
Q: The women were a little strident dont you think?
A: No I dont think that.
Q: Sometimes a little strident?
A: Everybodys a little strident sometimes.
Q: Sometimes you have to scream to be heard. Isnt that what you think?
A: I dont think that.
Q: I never scream. Im a doctor.
A: Your good fortune.
Q: It has nothing to do with good fortune. It has to do with years of the most strenuous intellectual effort. Were they strident in bed?
A: Different styles in bed as elsewhere. I guess you could call Veronica strident. Stridency is a response to dissatisfaction.
Q: Where is satisfaction?
A: In sleep?
WHAT if they all lived happily ever after together? An unlikely prospect. What was there in his brain that forbade such felicity? Too much, his brain said, but the brain was a fair-to-middling brain at best, the glucose that kept it marching, metabolized creme br?lee, was present but there was not enough vinegar in this brain, it lacked vinegar. Simon drank vinegar in the mornings from bottles sold to him as white wine and thought of Paris, where every fifteen-franc bottle was good, better than anything else hed ever tasted. In Switzerland, in the summer, in Zurich and Basel, hed found chilled red wine not bad either, a learning experi?ence, also that he did not want to live in a country so ferociously tidy. The prostitutes in Zurich were handsome well-dressed zebras, favoring stark black and white, street furniture ornamental as the staid perfect cops or the show windows of the Bahnhofstrasse, much gold winking behind heavy glass. He did not want a watch or cufflinks or a gold-plated coffee service, he was at a disadvantage. What was there to do with these women? Hed send them all to MIT, make architects of them! Women were coming into the profession in in?creasing numbers. The group could chat happily about mullions, in the evening by the fireside, tiring of mullions, turn to cladding, wearying of cladding, attack with relish the problems of blast-cleaned pressure-washed gun-applied polymer-cement-coated steel. Quel happiness!
Someone would get pregnant, everyone would get pregnant. At seventy hed be dealing with Pampers and new teeth. The new children would be named Susan?nah, Clarice, and Buck. Hed stroll out on the lawn, in the twilight, and throw the football at Buck. The foot?ball would rocket about two feet, then head for the greensward. The pitiful little child would say "Kaint anybody here play this game?"
LIGHTNING. Four oclock in the afternoon. The women are in the kitchen, enjoying the display in the big windows.
Anne says, "What are we going to do about this bozo?"
"Whats to do?" Veronica asks.
"He hasnt hurt anything. Yet," says Dore.
"Hes been very circumspect."
"I think too circumspect."
"I think he thinks hes doing the right thing."
"I dont think hes a nut."
"I dont think hes a nut either."
"He likes those Windham Hill records."
"I dont think that makes him a nut."
"He uses too much butter when he cooks. Hes mak?ing pasta, he throws half a stick of butter in just before he serves it."
"Butter makes everything taste better."
"He looks around to see if anyones watching before he throws it in. Then he whips it around in there real quick. Hoping it will melt before anybody sees it."
"Its just an effort to raise the level. That kind of shows I think an effort to raise the level of life thats not too terrible. Typically American."
A majestic crash. They jump.
"That was a biggie."
"Not too bad."
"But what of us? What are we going to do?"
"Bide our time."
"I like that expression."
"Have you ever hung out with an architect before?"
"I knew this guy he was a contractor he contracted Port-O-Sans."
"What are they?"
"Movable outhouses."
"Good Lord this man is old."
"Fifty-three. Old enough to be our father."
"Yet he has a certain spirit."
"Weve got to get something going."
"Like what?"
"Something."
"This town is creepy."
"Its so big and vast."
"What about the rabid skunks?"
"They found another one."
"Where?"
"At the Cloisters."
"Is that far away?"
"Way uptown. Fort Tryon Park."
"What was it doing?"
"It was eating rat food. The stuff they put out to kill the rats. In the basement. I read it in the paper."
"Did it bite anybody?"
"No. But the rat food didnt hurt it, its stronger than a rat much stronger and the rat food didnt affect it, it was in good condition when found, they said."
"Well what about its mate?"
"Well maybe it didnt have a mate. There was noth?ing in the paper about finding its mate."
"So its mate is probably lurking around the Cloisters waiting to bite someone."
"Probably no one will go to the Cloisters until they find its mate."
"Maybe it didnt have a mate. Maybe it was a bache?lor or something."
"Well you cant just assume that."
"Maybe it was seeking its mate. That got lost in the vast basements of the Cloisters."
"I dont know why you have to romanticize a rabid skunk."
"I was just thinking."
"Hes indifferent."
"I dont think hes indifferent. He fucks well enough. Not the best Ive ever seen."
"He cant tell us apart."
"Oh I dont think thats true. He asked me when my birthday was."
"Whatd you tell him?"
"I told him. July third."
"Well what does that prove?"
"Hes thoughtful. He can tell one from another. Hes interested in us as individuals."
"Maybe its just a fa?ade. Maybe he just knows what to do to make us think he cares about us as individuals and is doing it."
"Why would he do that? If he cares about us as indi?viduals?"
"Because he likes us to have the feeling that he cares about us as individuals? Because it makes things more warm?"
"Well if he wants to make things more warm Id say that was something in his favor."
"Yes but you have to make a distinction between making things seem a certain way and having them really be a certain way."
"Well even if hes only interested in making things seem a certain way that means hes not indifferent. To the degree that he makes the effort."
"Thats true."
"But maybe, on the other hand, he really cares. About us as individuals."
"How would we know?"
"There would be little touches, little individual touches --"
"Like what?"
"Well when I fuck a guy, when hes inside me, I have this little individual thing I do, I dont know how to describe it, its a kind of hooking motion, it, by it I mean the vagina, grabs the penis around the throat, what you might call the throat, at a certain point, a kind of choking, and then it lets go and then it does it again."
"Well what about it?"
"Well he noticed."
"Well I have some things I know how to do too."
"Like what?"
"Well thats my business isnt it? I dont necessarily have to go around explaining my techniques."
"Well I think were putting this thing too much on a technical basis, thats interesting but its not the main thing. The main thing is whether he really cares about us on an individual basis."
"How do we find out?"
"Maybe we could give him some sort of a test."
"I dont think Simon is the kind to respond well to a test. It might make him mad."
"Well this is not the only place in the world we can live."
"I know that but how much money do you have?"
"I have a check my grandmother sent for my birth?day."
"How much?"
"Twenty-five dollars."
"Thatll take us about to the corner."