HE lost nine pounds (a great blessing) dur?ing the eight months they lived in the apartment. They had not been slow to criticize his toes, teeth, belly, hair, or politics. "It seems to me," Veronica had said one day, "that you have no social responsibility." "My first social responsibility," he had said, "is that the building doesnt collapse." "Right right right," she said, "but you are after all a creature of the power structure. You work for the power structure." This was true enough, revolutionaries didnt build buildings, needed only clos?ets to oil their Uzis in, no work for architects there. On the other hand Veronica and the others derived their own politics from a K-Mart of sources, Thomas Aquinas marching shoulder-to-shoulder with Simone de Beauvoir and the weatherbeaten troopers of Sixty Minutes. They were often left and right during the same conversation, sometimes the same sentence.
His headaches had gone away but had been replaced by early-morning vomiting. A few ounces of yellow bile produced each morning. He meditated on too much, thought carefully about a sufficiency. When the women had been living with him he had thought of himself, very often, as insufficiently virile, or insuffi?ciently ambitious. Who needed this much excitation? On the other hand, who could resist it? Anne some?times looked like a twenty-year-old, especially when shed just bathed, the small breasts, the small hips, the dark hair. Dore was tall and bossy, there was no other word for it, and Veronica was, take your choice, sassy or critical, great lip on that kid, never without a spiked re?mark. He had the sense that he was a hotel, didnt mind being a hotel, okay Im a hotel. Two of them sucking his cock in the early mornings, taking turns, five or six oclock, he was drinking white wine, not very good white wine, and smoking, this went on for a long while, sometimes theyd turn to one another and one would begin to lick the inside of the others legs up near the cunt, quite near, Simon with his hands on that ones buttocks, around her waist and then moving down over the buttocks with slow appreciative strokes, raking them with his nails at intervals, but softly, little bites, but softly, the flesh is so delicious Dore said, or Anne said.
"YOUVE been bad Veronica."
"No I havent thats not bad thats hardly bad at all."
"I agree with her. Youve been bad."
"No I havent I dont call that --"
"Very bad."
"I dont call that bad thats not hardly bad at all you should see what Ive seen if you want to talk about --"
"Yes Veronica yes of course of course Veronica I didnt think youd admit it why should you? Cmon Anne theres no reasoning with her."
"Dore dont go I havent been bad shes just trying to tell you Ive been bad but I mean are you going to be?lieve her? Just because she says --"
"Well how do you feel?"
"Bad."
"You see."
"Oh God Dore now youve made her feel bad just talking about everything youve made her feel bad that shes done something some little something she shouldnt have done some little something that war?rants horrible contrition --"
"I dont mind making her feel bad. Shes bad."
"Veronica, are you essentially what she says you are? Bad? You can tell me Im your friend. I have other bad friends, if that --"
"Well spit. Thats what I think."
"Youre not going to talk is that it?"
"Hit her."
"Im not going to hit her shes a sister you cant hit a sister even a bad sister thats one of the eternal rules not even a terribly, terribly bad sister. Like Veronica."
"Im about as bad as I want to be, so far. I havent thought about havent grasped how bad I might want to be in the future when my ship comes in or something. Something, then, may be released in me that will allow --"
"I dont think shes going to acknowledge the clear facts. I dont think she has the humility. I give up I ab?solutely give up."
"Hang me if you want to I dont care. Wheres the rope? Get the rope. Hang me."
"Oh hit her go ahead and hit her I cant stand this mewling."
"I dont want to hit her."
"Hit me."
"Hit her."
"What with?"
"God I dont know use your fist kick her what do I care its not my problem is it. Hit her."
"You dont think thats a little severe?"
"Its gonna take a goddamn presidential order to get you to hit her?"
"Why me?"
"Okay Ive been bad. I admit it. But others have been worse. I could point some fingers."
"Lord Im tired of listening to this drivel if you dont get it together in the next three to five minutes Im going to --"
"What?"
SIMONS father died and he flew back to California for the funeral. He had to buy a dark suit, went to Barneys and picked the first one that seemed to fit him. In San Francisco he stood next to his mother, their arms entwined, while the Presbyterian minister said what he could. The chapel was empty ex?cept for the two of them and an elderly couple his mother had introduced as Connie and Bill and who turned out to be golfers, part of a mixed foursome his father had played with once a week. The other woman was unable to be present because of a daughter giving birth in Corvallis, Oregon. His mother didnt play.
Afterward, back at her handsome Pacific Heights house, his mother said: "What are you doing?"
"Taking a little time off."
"Its been months now."
"Excellent months."
"Just asking."
"Whats the money situation?"
"Your father was very good about that, as you know. That Carbide he bought years ago at twelve? He sold it just before he died at seventy-three. When they were having that trouble. He had almost ten thousand shares. Actually it went up to seventy-eight last week but he did very well, very well. We have some other stuff thats looking good."
"How about coming to New York? I have a place youd like. Needs furniture. We could go out and buy a lot of furniture."
"I dont want to buy any more furniture," his mother said. "I like it here. Ill have to see how it feels. If I need you Ill call you, rely on it."
"Nothing more fun than buying furniture."
"I agree. But it has to be going toward something."
Nothing to say to that.
His father had been a lumberman, a prophet of red?wood. Redwood was light, easily milled, plentiful, took a stain well, weathered beautifully. Tens of hundreds of thousands of board feet of California redwood had passed through the familys logging and milling opera?tions, his father not the biggest lumberman in the state, but not the smallest. Simon remembered odd mo?ments: putting a huge dollop of Worcestershire sauce on a hamburger in a restaurant and his father telling him, "Dont do that, son, it whips up the body." Sit?ting by the radio in 1938 listening to the second Louis-Schmeling fight, sitting by the radio all night long in 1939 listening to accounts of the German invasion of Poland. When Simon had been expelled from USC, before he went to Penn, he had come home and told his father about it, and his fathers only comment was, "What are we going to tell your mother?" The death of the father is supposed to release a burst of new creative energy, he remembered. He felt nothing but sadness and admiration.
Back in New York he receives a notice for jury duty. How can this be? Hes not registered to vote. Neverthe?less he dutifully hauls himself down to 60 Centre Street one Monday morning. The benches on the fifteenth floor of the Criminal Courts Building are filled with readers. He spots at least twenty paperback copies of le Carres The Little Drummer Girl, which he himself has read and greatly enjoyed. He falls into conversation with a young woman who is, he learns, the editor of a trade journal dealing with lingerie. Shes knitting furiously, a sleeveless sweater, as she talks. "We make nine hundred thousand a year for the company, profit," she says. "Can you believe it?" She produces fourteen issues a year, with each issue running to ninety-six pages of editorial and God knows how many of ads. "Its hard to think of things to feature after a while," she confesses. "How many ways of bifurcating breasts are there? We take a lot of clues from the artists. Memphis is in now, spatter and clatt er."
The lingerie editor tells him that her assistant is a berserko and that its impossible to get good subordi?nates these days. Simon, empaneled, is knocked off a murder case, empaneled again, is knocked off a rape case. "The defendant is accused of sexual misconduct," the blond woman judge tells the jurors. "Will the defendant stand up so that the jurors can see him?" The defendant stands and almost involuntarily takes a little bow. When the attorneys, questioning Simon in the jury box, ask him what he is, he says he is an architect. At the lunch break on the third day, he meets, in a cluster of fast food stands in a little park near the court?houses, a red-haired woman who says she is a poet.
THE three women looked for jobs but were turned down by Bendel, Bergdorf, Bloomingdales, Lord & Taylor, Charles Jourdan, Ungaro, Altmans, Saks, Macys. They tried all the modeling agencies, starting with Ford and working their way down the list. Simon designed and had printed composites for them and they left these at every ad agency of any size in the city. They applied for substitute teacher positions but found this a closed shop, they needed New York State credentials which they didnt have. In a moment of des?peration they filed applications for the Fire Depart?ment but were told they were so far down on the list that they had no reasonable hope of consideration be?fore 1999, when they would be too old to begin train?ing.
Anne and Veronica are fighting.
"Stupid bitch!"
"Asshole!"
"Cmon, guys," Simon says. "Whats the deal?"
"Shes a motherfucker and a dumb motherfucker," Anne says. "Crummy cheapo slut."
"Look whos talking," Veronica says, jumping out of Annes reach. "Miss Cunt of 1986."
"Whats this about? Whats the issue?"
"Simon youre so fucking reasonable," Veronica says, sitting down on the couch.
"I say, whats going on?"
"She got us a job," Anne says.
"Terrific," says Simon. "Whats the job?"
"Convention. The National Sprinkler Association. At the Americana. We have to stand under these things and get sprinkled. I wont do it."
"What if they gave us raincoats?"
"Its not raincoats they want to see."
"What if I said transparent plastic raincoats?"
"I might do it with transparent plastic raincoats."
"Ill call the guy and see what he says. Its two hun?dred each."
"Raincoats and body stockings."
"No thrill in body stockings."
"Let them use their vile imaginations."
"I just feel like a body."
"What in Gods name do you think they want?"
"I know, I know."
"Look at it this way," Simon says. "A body is a gift. A great body is a great gift."
"All I need. A Unitarian minister."
"You dont have to take the job."
"We dont have any money."
"You want me to make a little pile of money and burn it right here on the floor? Theres enough money around. Take it easy. Wait until you find something you want."
"Were concubines."
"You can make everything sound as terrible as you want," Simon says. "Im going to bed."
"Who with?"
Simons wifes lawyers letter arrives and outlines her demands: She wants full custody of the child, the Pine Street house, both cars, sixty-five thousand dollars a year in alimony, child support at a level consonant with the childs previous style of life, fifty percent of all re?tirement funds, IRA, Keogh and the firms, fifty per?cent of his partnership interest in the firm in perpetuity, and fifty percent of all odds and ends of stocks, bonds, cash and real property not subsumable under one of the previous rubrics. The client has been severely damaged in all ways by Simons desertion and the years of fiendish abuse that had preceded it, the let?ter suggests.
"What are you going to do?" Veronica asks.
"Give it to her, I guess."
"Were you really that bad?"
"He may be overstating it a bit."
"We are pure skin."