THE poet gives him a picture of herself posed naked as a Maja on a couch. The Polaroid is ill-lit, badly composed, unflattering to her stomach, and she is shiny of nose. Furthermore, the couch is ugly, done in inch-square black-and-white hounds-tooth check. "Who took the picture?" Simon asks. "Someone," she says, and snatches it away from him.
He is a layman, not a figure in her world. "Youre not a poet, youre a real person," she says. "Of course poets are funnier than real people." She names for his enter?tainment the second, third, fourth, and fifth most beautiful male poets in the country. "But whos the first?" the layman asks. "We keep the position open so that the guys will have something to aspire to," she says. Does she know all of these beautiful poets? Are they all present or former lovers? Simon has no idea how poets behave. Outrageously would be his best guess, but what does that mean in practice? The poets long red hair strays out over the pale-blue pillowcase; her right foot taps time to a Pointer Sisters record. "The dust in your poems," Simon asks, "is it always the same dust? Does it always mean the same thing? Or does it mean one thing in one poem and another thing in another poem?" The poet places a hand under a bare breast, as if to weigh it. "My dust," she says, "my ex?cellent dust. Youre a layman, Simon, shut up about my dust."
She was raised in Kansas, where her father is a whole?sale grocer. "He gave me this," she says. She opens a book and removes a twenty-thousand-dollar bond. "It was supposed to put me through medical school. I didnt want to go to medical school." The bond is pretty and blue with some kind of noble statuary on it. "Shouldnt this be in a money-market fund or some?thing?" asks the layman. "I guess so," she says. "If youre not from Kansas, people in Kansas ask you: What do you think about Kansas? What do you think about our sky? What do you think about people in Kansas? Are we dumb?" She replaces the bond in the book. "You find a high degree of sadness in Kansas."
"WELL its just what I thought would happen what I thought would happen and it hap?pened."
"Hes a free human individual not bound to us."
"Maybe were too much for him maybe he needs more of a one-on-one thing see what Im saying?"
"It may be just a temporary aberration that wont last very long like when suddenly you see somebody in a crowded Pizza Hut or something and you think, I could abide that."
"But if shes a poet then she wont keep him poets burn their candles down to nubs. And then find new candles. Thats what they do."
"I dont know I still feel threatened I mean Im as generous as the next man but I still feel emphatically that our position here has radically altered for the worse. Somehow."
"Poets eat up all of experience and then make poems of it is she any good?"
"He thinks so."
"What does he know hes an architect."
"He was doing Comp Lit before he got kicked out of USC."
"Whatd he get kicked out for?"
"Slugged a dean in a riot, it was a First Amendment thing he says."
Tim comes in wearing a dark-blue flannel suit with a faint pinstripe. He leaks prosperity.
"Tim!" Veronica says. "Whats happened to you?"
"This is from Paul Stuart," Tim says. "Seven hun?dred bucks. Do you like it?"
"You look like a new man. A new and better man."
"I got something going," Tim says. "Im president of this new outfit were putting together. Medlapse. Its a law firm."
"But youre not a lawyer," Dore says. "Are you?"
"The concept was mine," he says, "lawyers you can Xerox on any street corner. Were specializing in mal?practice, its everywhere. I estimate that forty-seven percent of all patient-physician encounters have ele?ments that would tend to support a successful action. We project a ninety-eight percent rate of recovery over two years."
"Veronicas been going to this guy over on Hudson Street," Anne says, "hes kind of peculiar."
"You think hes peculiar I dont think hes peculiar," says Veronica.
"Whats. . ." Tim reaching into his jacket for a notebook.
"He insists on being paid in cash only."
"Diddling his taxes."
"He doesnt have a nurse."
"Violation of AMA guidelines on sexual oversight, hes OB-GYN?"
"His name is Linh pronounced Ling hes Vietnam?ese he was a general in Vietnam."
"They were all generals in Vietnam," Tim says,
"Whatre you seeing him for if you dont mind my asking?"
"Just various things hes cheap, twenty dollars for an office visit."
"When youre ready, Medlapse is ready, can I take you ladies out to lunch, rip up a chop?"
"Where did you have in mind?"
"Blimpies?"
"Youre not going to Blimpies in that suit?"
"Our cash flow is not on line as yet."
HES chopping garlic. Six big cloves of gar?lic. He minces the garlic and sautes it in olive oil. Meanwhile hes cooking a package of frozen broccoli in a half-cup of salted water. He drains the broccoli and places it in the saute pan for two or three minutes, at the same time heating a can of chicken broth and half a can of water. He adds chopped parsley to the pan, lets it cook for a bit, then scoops the contents of the saute pan into the chicken broth and adds a number of slices of hot cooked Italian sausage. He cooks this for a time and then pours it into bowls and adds generous por?tions of grated parmesan.
A simple soup. Anne says she likes it. "The best soup Ive had in decades. I thought I hated broccoli but it just kind of falls apart in this soup and becomes vague green stuff, very tasty. Is it artificially colored?"
"Why do you ask?"
"Its too green."
"Thats Gods own sun."
"Youre sure its not Union Carbide."
"I dont think Carbide does broccoli."
"This household is a classic case of exploitation by inadversion."
Simon scratches his head like Lionel Barrymore in an old movie. "Tarnation take it," he says, "if I get your drift."
"The male manipulation of every dimension of expe?rience for the suppression and domination of female-kind."
"Right," Simon says. "A big subject."
"Getting bigger every day," she says, suddenly cheerful.
"You see a lot of suppression and domination around here?"
"No this setup doesnt fit the model because its so laissez-faire. But if we got into its deep structure --" She stops and begins again. "You dont care about any?thing, Simon. You just go along cooking dinner and fucking us indiscriminately and reading The Wall Street Journal. Your vital interests are not involved here. You dont give a shit."
"How do you know?"
Once hed been in the kitchen with Anne in the early morning. She was wearing a thin transparent shift, nothing else. They had already made love and in the kitchen scuffled for a long time alternately embracing and struggling, Simon running his hands over her breasts, her back, between her legs, Anne hugging him and then jumping up and wrapping her legs around his waist. "This is a female fantasy," she had said, "love in the kitchen." "Love instead of the kitchen," he said, and she said, "But I like the kitchen." Her buttocks were such as to drive men wild, drive men wild, he said, and she said that when shed been in high school shed worn extremely short shorts with just that in mind, had in fact been sent home a time or two. "My mother couldnt control me," she said, "I was uncontrollable." He picked her up and seated her on top of the refrigera?tor and she threw an avocado at him and he caught it as it smushed in his hand. He spread her legs and ate her as she sat atop the refrigerator , her arms cradling his head. "Play is what its all about," she said, "what does it taste like?" "Little bit salty," he said, his tongue lav?ing her belly button, "must be those blackeyed peas we had last night or maybe just your temperament in gen?eral."
"So she kicked you out," Anne says.
"She didnt kick me out, exactly."
"Was she better than we are?"
"It was kind of a detour."
"Are you sorry?"
"No."
"It would be nice if you were sorry."
"Everybody always wants somebody to be sorry. Fuck that."
"Veronica had a little thing with a fireman."
"Whered she get the fireman?"
"A & P. His name was Salvatore. He let her slide down the pole."
"Did he."
"He was married."
"Thats tragic. Is it tragic?"
"Just a detour."
He hugs her. "Frolic and detour, the lawyers say."
"But a real poet."
"Shes no realer than you are."
"Do you like women more than music?"
"A little."
"You came back because you love us more than you loved her."
"Well, I do."
A: I thought people werent supposed to have more than three or four nightmares a year. I have them every night, there is no night in which I dont have something that can fairly be described as a night?mare. Many of them have to do with clothes.
Q: The wrong clothes.
A: Not so much the wrong clothes as not being able to get dressed. In particular, the trousers, in dreams I have great, enormous difficulty bringing the trousers up over the knees. The shoes, for some reason I have put on my shoes first and then try to put on the trousers, try to pull them over the shoes. . .
Q: I often dream that my rifle isnt clean. You can clean it and clean it and then the sergeant looks down the barrel and decides its not clean, its got very little to do with whether the barrel is or is not clean, its a metaphysical proposition related to the Art of War, your poor place within that scheme. . .
A: Every night! Its too much. What recourse? The grinding of teeth.
Q: Where do you see yourself going from here? In life.
A: More of the same, I suppose. When I was married Id find myself looking forward to Dumbo, you know? Dumbo was going to be on television at say seven-thirty in the evening and the kid was going to watch it and that was what I had to look forward to, too.
Q: I liked it.
A: I liked it. Bizarre, when you think about it.
Q: The part I remember is when all the storks dropped all the parachutes from the sky and all the lit?tle baby tigers and hippos rolled out of the diapers -- the bundles the storks were carrying were diapers, those boys dont miss a trick -- before the eyes of their aston?ished tiger and hippo parents. That was cute.
A: Terrifying. Because it was so well done.
Q: I dont want to live on a farm, to go back to the farm. Its too risky and I dont know what to do. Some damn cow or other is yelling and I dont know what to do to alleviate her pain. Do I put the wheat in now or do I wait two weeks? The combine, its drive chain is acting up and I ought to be able to fix it by slamming it a few times with a hammer, but I dont know where to slam it. I dont know how to talk to the bank. Some guys know all this stuff and I tell myself Im not sup?posed to know it because Im not a farmer. Yet I think I ought to be a farmer or at least be capable of being a farmer. Maybe its atavistic. . .
A: Id be perfectly comfortable living in a hotel. I take that to be the opposite pole. Not necessarily a grand hotel, a shabby but still stuffy hotel.
Q: Bedford Square. In London.
A: Never been to London.
Q: Where have you been?
A: Tokyo, Mexico City, Paris, Barcelona, Stock?holm, Palermo, Reykjavik --
Q: Lots of hotels in those places.
A: Stayed in the poorer ones, for the most part. Said to the chambermaid, your breasts look beautiful this morning.
Q: Shouldnt make fun of them.
A: I wasnt. I lusted after the chambermaids. Not every one.
Q: Nothing wrong with that.
A: But what if they stab me in the ear with the feather duster?
Q: Would you like to try some of these little yellow guys here?
SIMON was a way station, a bed-and-breakfast, a youth hostel, a staging area, a C-141 with the jumpers of the 82nd Airborne lined up at the door. There was no place in the world for these women whom he loved, no good place. They could join the underemployed half-crazed demi-poor, or they could be wives, those were the choices. The universities offered another path but one they were not likely to take. The universities were something Simon believed in (of course! he was a beneficiary) but there was among the women an animus toward the process that would prob?ably never be overcome, not only impatience but a real loathing, whose source he did not really understand. Veronica told him that she had flunked Freshman English 1303 three times. "How in the world did you do that?" he asked. "Comma splices," she said. "Also, every time I wrote down something I thought, the small-section teacher said that it was banal. It probably was banal." Simon found what the women had to say anything but bana l, instead edged and immediate. Maybe nothing that could be rendered in a 500-word theme, one bright notion and four hundred and fifty words of hay. Or psychology: Harlow, rhesus monkeys, raisins, reward. People did master this stuff, more or less, and emerged more or less enriched thereby. Com?pare and contrast extrinsic and intrinsic motivation, giving examples of each. Father-beaten young women considering extrinsic and intrinsic motivation. "We all went through this," he told them, and Dore said, "Yeah, and you smart guys did the Vietnam war." Simon had opposed the Vietnam war in all possible ways short of self-immolation but could not deny that it was a war constructed by people who had labored through Psychology I, II, III, and IV and Main Cur?rents of Western Thought. "But, dummy, its the only thing youve got," he said. "Your best idea." "I have the highest respect for education," she said. "The highest. Id be just as dreary when I came out as I was when I went in."
Howls from outside the front windows. Its past midnight. Simon goes down the stairs to the street.
A man in an old Army field jacket is screaming some?thing about the Supreme Court. Hes been screaming, up and down the block, for the past six months. He has an exceptionally deep voice and projects with an actors skill. Simon has learned from other people in the neighborhood that hes called Hal and sleeps on a grate in front of the hospital.
"Chickenfuckers!" Hal screams.
"Hal," Simon calls.
"Kissass mother!"
"Hal," Simon calls again. "Take this five bucks. Go eat something."
Hal approaches. Hes taller than Simon, about forty, and wearing a zippered jump suit under the field jacket.
"Up your giggy fuckface," he screams, but a quieter scream.
"Time for breakfast, Hal."
"Thank you," Hal says in a normal conversational tone, and takes the bill.
He wheels and marches off down the street, scream?ing "Cunts cunts cunts cunts cunts!"
Simon goes back upstairs.
Veronica comes into his room looking very gloomy,
"We have to talk," she says. Shes wearing a rather sedate dark-blue nightgown, one he hasnt seen before.
"Whats the matter?"
"Dore. Shes falling apart."
"In what way?"
"Shes lost her joy of life."
"I hadnt noticed."
"She tries to hide it from you."
"Maybe its just temporary."
"Ive never seen her like this. Shes been reading terrible books. Books about how terrible men are and how theyve kept us down."
"That should make her feel better, not worse. I mean, knowing the causes."
"Dont need your cheapo irony, Simon. Shes very upset."
"What do you want me to do?"
"Talk to her."
"What can I say? I agree with half that stuff and think the other half is garbage."
"Well its not for you to decide, is it? Whenever we say something you dont like you say were hysterical or crazy."
"Me?"
"Men in general."
"Have I ever said you were hysterical or crazy?"
"Probably you didnt want to stir us up. Probably you were thinking it and were just too tactful to say it."
"Are you sure its Dore whos got this problem?"
"Shes been lending us the books. What else do we have to do with our time?"
"So youre all upset."
"The truth shall make you free."
"What makes you think this stuff is the truth?"
"Thirty-five percent of all American women arent allowed to talk at dinner parties. Think about that."
"How do you know?"
"Its in a book."
In hog heaven the hogs wait in line for more heaven. No, not right, no waiting in line, its unheavenly, unhogly. The celestial sty is quilted in kale, beloved of hogs. A male hog walks up to a female hog, says "Want to get something going?" She is repulsed by his lan?guage, says "Bro, unless you can phrase that better, youre chilly forever." No, thats not right, this is hog heaven, they fall into each others trotters, nothing can be done wrong here, nothing wrong can be done. . .