天涯在线书库《www.tianyabook.com》 《Paradise》 Back Cover: SIMON IS IN HOG HEAVEN. . . ISNT HE? A fifty-three-year-old architect with a &quise of brick," Simon takes a years sabbatical from his job and his marriage and moves to New York. The apartment he sublets is spacious ay, so when he meets three geous lingerie models -- half his age and a little down on their luck -- at a Lexington Avenue bar, it seems perfectly natural to ihem to move in. The situation, they point out, "has the structure of a male f九九藏书antasy." Simons houseguests prove to be surprisingly perceptive and intelligent, but they are each a little lost, struggling to find their way in that difficult city. Simon, by turns doting and iive, tempted and horrif藏书网ied, offers them his skewed philosophies of life and love. Privately, he mourns his age, his stalled career, his diminishing sexual prowess, and the iable day when the women will leave him. In the quirky, inimitable style that has always characterized Donald Barthelmes work, Paradise is a bawdy, optimistid provocative tale of lives meshing in a quixotic world. "A wry meditation, id melancho
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ly. . . A charming book" -- Newsweek "Paradise is Barthelmes su, mellowest and most eaining book. He has fixed his eye on the aging, urban man and liberated woman, heir frailties, the dreadful chaos of their lives, and smiled." -- People 1 AFTER the women had gone Simon began dreaming with new iy. He dreamed that he was a slave on a leper island, required to the latrines and pile up dirty-white shell for the roads, wheelbarrow after wheelbarrowful, then rake the shell smooth and jump up and down on it until it acked solid. The lepers did not allow him to wear shoes, only white ath?letic socks, and he had a difficult time finding a pair that matched. The head leper, a man who seemed to be named Al, embraced him repeatedly and tried repeat?edly to spit in his mouth. He dreamed that his wife, Carol, had driven a large bus, a Metro bus filled with people, into the front of his building. It was not her fault, she told him, a Japanese man who had not had exact ge whe on the bus, in fact had asked her to ge a fifty-dollar bill and had, moreover, in?sisted that she stuff nine fives into little envelopes printed with colorful out-ister ses from the Bible for his First Presbyterian tributions over the nine Sundays, was the true culprit. Simon woke early, five oclod six oclock, cracked new bottles of white wine and smoked tasteless Marlboro Light 100s and wondered what to do . He put all the extra beds in one room, the room Anne had had toward the front of the house. Stacked on top of one ahey looked like a mea for a princess. He bought a new plant, a gold-flecked acuba, and a pot for it at rans, a glazed off-white ceramiumber. He ed the refrigerator, throwing out seven half-full tainers of Dannon Strawberry and Dannon Blueberry as well as four daikon in various stages of redu. They did love salads. He added the remains of an osso buco, capers and red wio his dark roiling sauce base. He found a red wrinkled bra hanging like a cut throat over the shower rail and not knowing what else to do with it, threw that out too. He shifted four thousand dollars from stocks into his Keogh at to help upholster his enfeebled retire?ment years. He called his wife in Philadelphia but got no answer -- still, hed called. He trimmed his toenails, the monstrous left and the even more frightening right big toes knocked bato civility. He ied his prid said, "My youre looking fresh and pretty this m." THis so good of you," Dore says, "this is Anne and this is Veronica. This is so good of you. Boy is this place empty.bbr>藏书网" "I put two of the beds in the ba and one in the front," Simon says, "I thought Id get some plants maybe tomorrow are you guys hungry let me go see what Ive got i." "Booze I hope," Dore says dropping her bags in a er. "Boy is this place empty. I dohat as a criticism." "The owners left the coud those two chairs and thats about it. Who would like what? I have beer. . ." "Beer for me," Veronica says, "where do you sleep, Simon?" "In the middle room. I have vodka, Scotch, white wine. . ." "Vodka for me," Dore says, "and vodka for my horse here, no thats a joke, Anne will have vodka too. Plants are a good idea. Big plants. Rocks with that, just rocks. Anne will have just rocks too. Really this is so good of you. I guess we figured it a little close in terms of funds --" "Bloody assholes is what we were," Veronica says. "Believing what they told us." "So you made a miscalculation," Simon says. "But this is dumber than necessary dont you think? Dumber than absolutely necessary? Where I put this?" She shows him a round thing three feet in diameter, in a vas case. "My trampoline. I boun it. Thats how I keep in shape." "Anywhere," he says, handing around the drinks, "lean it against the wall. Ive got some ribs I broil you guys eat ribs?" "God that tastes good," she says, "I was at my wits end, we were at our wits ends, that jerk at the agency I could kill him --" "We were dumb," Anne says. "No point in flagellating ourselves," says Dore. "I drink to Simon. What did you think, Simon? Holy. When you first walked into the bar." "I was stunned. servatively speaking." In white lingerie, hand on hip, the three of them, chatting with the patrons, theyd just fihe show the barteold him, fashion show every Friday, week, nightgowns. "The hell of it is, we gave all this moo Africa. Before we came," Dore says. "Thats why were so low. We each sent three thousand bucks to Africa. To allevi?ate hunger. We saw this thing on television." "Probably you sell the beds after we go," Anne says. "Its got high ceilings," Veronica says, looking at his Dover White-painted ceilings. "You could hang your?self in here." 2 Q: Youre how tall? A: Six foot and a bit. Q: Not much hair. A: Lucky to have what Ive got. Q: Youre not fat. Except for the gut itself. Some few red freckles around the shoulders. One-inch gash in the left lower back, result of falling upon a half-bri childhood. Slight hemorrhoidal tissue maed at the fl of the anus. Wretched-looking toenails. A: I dont see how you do this. Q: What? A: Practice. Q: Its not bad. I dont have any special expectations. A: It would drive me crazy. Q: Ever been subject to epilepsy? A: I had seizures when I was a child. They stopped. I think it etit mal. Q: Scarlet fever? A: No. Q: A severe headache every day at approximately eleven-thirty. A: Sometimes a little earlier. Q: What do you think about the Knicks? A: Kings knee has got me worried. Q: Are the women gone? A: Been gone for a week. Q: Well I give you some Extra-Strength Tylenol. Thats supposed to be good.bbr>藏书网 You acquired them, maybe thats not the word, in a bar. A: At five oclock iernoon. The day was quite beautiful. The light, afternoon light -- Q: This bar was where? A: In a hotel on Lexington. I dont remember the name of the hotel. Q: What kind of a hotel? Was it seedy, or was it -- A: Seemed to me quite okay. Not a luxury hotel by any means, more of an ordinary tourist place. Q: You walked into the bar. A: Which was just off the street. And there were these three women, tall, statuesque even. In a crowd of people. People were sitting at tables and sitting at the bar, and the women were chatting with them. Wearing this marvelous white lingerie. Modeling it. And every?one was being very calm, very cool. Q: You too? A: I sat at the bar and stared. Discreetly. Q: Did you order a drink? A: Of course I ordered a drink. I said to the bar?tender, Whats this? He said, Fashion show. Every Fri?day. Q: Theyd finished when you came in. A: The show was over, they were moving about the room chatting with the ers. Q: Bikini pants burning at eye level. A: Were you there? Q: Im imagining. A: White merry widows and white teddys and white this and that. It was quite stunning. I couldnt believe it. Two of them were blond, one darkhaired. Q: Then what? A: One of them came and sat dowo me. There was ay seat. Q: You offered to buy her a drink. A: She accepted. She wanted a Rob Roy. Q: What in the name of God is a Rob Roy? A: Some kind of thing they drink in Denver. Q: They were from Denver? A: The Denver area. Two from Denver and one from Fort Lupton, which is nearby. Q: The white lacy Büstenhalter enpassing the goldes nudging your arm. A: She was quite circumspect. Asked me what busi?ness I was in. I said I was on a kind of sabbatical. Q: Whie was this? A: Dore. Q: Then she gave you the story. A: It came out piecemeal. About the agency thing blowing up in their faces and how they had no place to stay and no money. Q: So you said what? A: I said I had a lot of room but that the place was kind of bare. Q: And she said? A: She said that didnt matter. Q: And you said? A: I said I didnt know what we were going to do for beds. 3 "So tell me about Fort Lupton," Simon says to Dore. "Its between Brighton and Platteville. Basically a wide pla the road," she says. "But pretty wide. We even had crack." "Did you." "We had crack very early, before the rest of the try." "Why was that?" "Some pioneer cowboy chemists. As ９９ｌiｂ?a matter of fact I was married to one of them for a while. Guy named Paul." "Where is he now?" "In the pen. Got four more years before he even think about probation." "Im sorry. "Im not. Guy cut me in the fae time with a li?noleum knife. He was explaining himself." Simo uand how anybody could do this. "What was he mad about?" "Hed been fired a lot, from various jobs. Usually he got fired the first week. He was good at getting hired but he was a genius at getting fired. I was in a shelter for battered women for six weeks. They did any?body know where it was." "All of you been married?" "Not Anne. Shes never found the right guy." "Your husband was the right guy?" "Well he seemed ni the beginning, Si?99ｌｉb?mon. He gave me an off-the-road vehicle for a wedding present. Those are big in Colorado." Veronica is fiddling with a shirt button. Theyre iting room. "What was your first sexual experience, Simon?" He thinks for a moment. "I was about ten. This teacher asked us all to make little churches for a dis?play, kind of a model of a church. I made o of cardboard, worked ve..ry hard on it, and took it in to her on a Friday m, and she leased with it. It had a red roof, colored with red crayon. Then anuy, Billy something-or-other, brought ihat was made of wood. His was better than mine. So she tossed mi and used his." "That was your first sexual experience?" "How far back do you want to go?" "How olds your kid? Sarah, is it Sarah?" "Sarah. Shes een. When she was little she used to sing Im proud, proud, proud to be a cow. Thats something the cows sing on Sesame Street." "Do you miss her?" "Of course." "What does your wife want?" "More fun." "Whats the matter with that?" "Not a thing in the world." "What does she do?" "Shes a lawyer in Philadelphia. A deputy mayor, at the moment." "You straight ay?" "Historically, straight." "Me too. Nothing wrong with being straight." &quht." "Great twat out there oreets you want some of it?" "Only in principle." "You like young twat, go after it. Onward to the merry hunt. You ever live and love in a garage apart?ment?" "Never have." "Theyre kind of snug. Especially if its a three-car garage. Up irees." "Must be nice." "Depends upon who youre cohabiting with. Dore has a hatpin. Six inches of cold steel." "To disce creeps and weirdos." "You got it." "Has she stuybody with it?" "Not in New York State. Ive been reading in the paper about these rabid skunks." "Theyre getting closer." "You wouldnt think youd have to worry about them in a city like this." "Its a great city. We have everything." "The mayor seems like a ." "Hes a great mayor. Hes got it dowly right. Couldter. Hes what we want." Theres a funny chirping s the smoke alarm. "What the fuck is that?"?9９ｌｉb.; "The smoke alarm." "Whats it trying to say? Theres no smoke." "Telling us that the batterys wearing down." "Well disect it for Christs sake." He does so, standing on a chair, my God how cheap plastic be? feels like 99ｌｉｂ?paper -- "Youve got a good ass Simon." The Times is spread all over the bar i. "This one I like," Simon says. "Death May Haunt Calcuttas Streets, But Teeming City Throbs With Life." "Uable," says Anne. Shes making a salad. "Although --" "What?" "Slain U.S. Major Had One Exploit." "A one-exploit man." "Rather like having only one --" "That was lousy Tex-Mex last night." "Better than no Tex-Mex at all." "True." "Whats that weed youre putting in there?" "Thats Veian marigold. Tastes like mint." "Oh. Looks funny." "It does, it does." Shes slig a big radish with rapid Japarokes. "Anyone who sees Parsifal twice is a blithering idiot." "You mean the movie." "In any form. Land, sea, or in the air." "Well I wont take you. You have my word." "Thanks. This salad is going to be good. I guara. Let me have the lemon-pepper." "Here. You using the fancy olive oil?" "Extra-virgin. Just like me." 4 Six oclo the m. Hes awakened by voices from the back of the house, from outside. A woman laughing. He gets out of bed and walks to the big sed-floo..r windows overlooking the garden below. In the garden, separated from the oh him by a high wooden fence, a man and a womaretched out on the flagstones, making love. The fence slashes them in half diagonally. The woman lies on top of the man, her dark-red skirt bunched about her hips. Simon t see the color of her hair. He rubs his eyes and goes to the refrigerator. Reaches for a bottle of white wine which sits, corkless, in the re?frigerator door. He pours wio a tumbler, tastes it, makes a face, and walks bato the bedroom for his cigarettes. Behind him the mans voice says "Hey, hey, hey." Six oclock? And the flagstones t be wonderfully fortable. Ardent lovers must these lovers be. The building hes living in is one hundred and seven years old. The window wall in the back has separated from the party wall and light be seeween them. Simon, early in?９９ｌib. the m, stuffs spackle into the opening, and, two hours later, sloshes a little white paint over it. Not bad fover work, he thinks. The big closet has a large jagged hole in the ceiling, little tufts of insulation floating at its edges. He decides to do nothing about this; he wont be here forever. Hes been told not to use either of the fireplaces because the eys have not been ed for years. He closes up his paint and washes out his brush. Now, breakfast. Popovers from the deli with rare cheeses. On his way out to the deli to get the group breakfast he hears giggling from the front room. Did you sleep well? And you? And you? Outside, oreet, some?ones screaming. Peering from the front window he sees two meing a cop with a nightstid fists. The cop is a blaan, slight of build. Theres blood on the back of her head. Simon throws open the window and yells "Hey!" -- a prodigious shout, the shout that kills. The astonished men look around, then take off in two different dires. Simon runs out the door and rushes dowairs. The cop is trying to pull herself to her feet by the iron railing in front of the building and at the same time wiping blood from the scalp wound out of her eyes. Simon places his hands under her arms, half-drags her to the steps, sits her down. "Motherfuckers," she says. "Goddamn mother?fuckers." "Sit still," he says. "Ill call an ambulance." "Dont need no９9lｉｂ? ambulance. Wheres my stick?" Simorieves it for her. Shes produced a handker?chief and is holding it to her head. "Wheres my cap?" He finds the uniform cap and hands it to her. She stuffs the handkerchief ihe cap and places it on her head. She leans forward, half-rises, then moans and sits down again. "Motherfuckers." "You wao call the prect?" "No. Ill be fine. Just gimme a minute." Shes pretty, maybe twe or twenty-nine. "Those creeps had more muscle than I figured them for," she says. "Perps lookin for something to make happen. Shake em down and youll find burglar tools. They dress up all raggedy and you think theyre not as young as they really are. Got my damn stick away from me." "You wao walk you down to the hospital?" "Im gonna walk in just a minute." She pulls a radio from her back pocket and calls in, telling the prect about "two white males, lookin to do a break-in," and the location. "Thank you," she says to Simon. "Youre a good citi?zen. Got a good yell on you." She stands and, stagger?ing slightly, moves off dowreet. She turns and calls again, "Thank you!" Simon goes baside and pours anlass of wine. Death may haunt Calcuttas streets, but teeming city throbs with life. 5 Q: You got the beds. A: I went to this bed store and bought three beds. The guy said for ara fifty he could deliver them by eight oclock. He had his own truck, he said. Got them there right otoripped off the card?board and plastid set them up. Two in the ba and one itle room in the front. Q: Where were you? A: I had the bedroom in the middle. I already had a bed. Q: Youd sublet this place. A: For a year. The owners had left me the bare es?sentials, dishes, towels, that sort of thing. A few pieces of furniture. Q: Did the women like it? A: They kept saying, This is so good of you. The other thing they said robably you sell the beds after we go. Theyd sent all their moo Africa. To fight hunger. Q: Did they just hang around all day９9lｉｂ?, or what? A: They came a. They ehe city. They went to Bloomingdales and the Met. They went to the Cloisters. They went to Astis and banged on their water glasses while the Anvil Chorus was being sung. They went to Sweet Basil and heard Wynton Marsalis. I went with them that night, he played very well, had his brother Branford on tenor. They went to the Museum of Modern Art and bought postcards in the gift shop. They went to Lin ter and saw various things, the film festival and all that. They got excited by the Strand and came back with books. They went to the Palladium and saw Lily Tomlin or some?body. They didnt always go together. Sometimes Veronid Dore went, sometimes An by herself, and so on. Sometimes they went together to Balduccis and came home with various exotic foods. They cooked together, sometimes. I remember a partic?ularly good Cream of Four Onion soup. They spent a lot of time just walking around looking at things. I think they were happy. Although in limbo. Q: Limbo. A: They were in an iween state, it was hard on them. Id e in and Anne would be sitting on the couch, weeping. The couch wasnt much. Some kind of dull gray fabric. Ask her why shes weeping and shed say she didnt know. Veronica hit me once. Hauled off and slugged me in the chest. It was just frustration. Still, I wondered what in her gave her permission to slug me. Then she made a pie, a blueberry pie -- Q: Did they ever go to Fizz? A: I believe they went there quite often. Q: What went on there? A: It was a meat rack, a heterosexual meat rack. From what theyve told me. Q: So they picked up guys there. . . A: They did, I suppose. They may have been just playing, just exerg. . . Q: How did that make you feel? A: I didnt like it. Q: Sometimes I think I should have been a shrink. A: Why arent you? Q: Its not medie. A: I imagihem thinking, talking to each other. . . Q: What did they say to each other? A: I dont know, of course. I imagihey were care?ful, thoughtful. Direct. Q: My wife was the worlds champion at leaving things lying around. I spent muy marriage pig up after her. Shed strew things about, as a sower scatters seed over a field. She could not so much as strike a match without leaving the matchbook and a bu.rnt mat some ve surface. If shed go into the John with a magazine you could be sure that shed leave the magazine in the John, open to the page shed been reading. She was a marvel. Youd call this to her attention and she wouldnt uand what you were talking about. Little balls of Kleenex everywhere, yellow Kleenex, occasional grapefruit hulls -- Were you worried that it would end? A: Good Lord no. Maybe worried that it wouldnt. Those women were powerful preseook up a lot of space, made a lot of clatter. There were days when I couldnt hear myself think. Q: All in all, then, it was oressful side. A: We talked a lot. I think of it as a series of ver?sations. A series of ordinary versations. Simple as pie. They were very good people. I miss them. Q: Do you hear from them? A: Postcards. Q: These women spread out before you like lotus blossoms. . . A: ly like lotus blossoms. Q: Open, blooming. . . A: More like anthills. Splendid, stinging anthills. Q: You fall face down onto an anthill. A: Something like that. Q: The ants are plunging toothpicks into your s, as it were. As they withdraw the toothpicks, little particles of flesh like shreds of ground beef adhere to the toothpicks. A: Very much like that. How did you know? Q: Im not inexperienced. A: By what standard? Q: Generally accepted standards. 6 SUNDAY m. Simon listening to one of his radios藏书网. "Jesus is a ro a weary land," says the radio. The preacher is black, with a deep sonorous voice. "I wrote a little song that says, dont wait till the battle is over, you shout now. Cause you know that in the end, you gonna be victorious. That dont mean you aint gonna cry. That dont mean you aint gonna feel pain. But in t?９９lｉb.he end, you will prevail, in His name. Lift your fa, a Him lead the way. Re?joice. Its all right. Rejoice. Its all right. Rejoice. Its allllllright. Despite what may be going on around you, you , you find perfect peace. How much, ?tinuously, do we love Him." Simon thinks about a day many years before when his wife was takin藏书网g the baby to the park. "Goodbye, you dirty rat," his wife said. The baby was wearing a blue parka and a brown knitted watch cap. "Goodbye, you dirty rat," the baby said. When Sarah was borood in the delivery room wearing green paper pants, a green paper shirt, paper bags on his feet and a green paper cap on his head. He lacked only a fool-yellow rubber bulb of a o be a perfect . He pressed his back against the green-painted wall, trying to keep out of the way. His wife had been in labor two hours and forty minutes; a monitor had indicated fetal distress and the doctor, a man known for not doing Caesareans, h.ad a choiake. The doctors name was Zernikie and he had a pair of large dull-steel forceps ihe birth al and was grappling for purchase. The instrument looked to Simon, who knew something of the weight and force of tools, capable of shattering the babys head in an instant. After all these years, he thought, thats the best they do? Carol was gripping his hand. The dla Simon and said, "Gross, isnt it?" The circulating nurses exged pained looks. "No no," he had said, "doing fine, keep going." Zernikie had rueen blocks in a blizzard to get to the hospital after disc that his car wouldnt start. He took hold of the hea..d with the forceps and pulled, calmly and steadily. The head, bright with blood, emerged to the level of the eyes. The doctor rotated the shoulders, pulled the baby out and placed it ohers stomach. A nurse began sponging the babys face as the doctor cut and tied off the cord. The baby had dark bruises oher side of her head. A nurse picked her up. "Heres Sarah," she said. Simon said, "Hello, Sarah." 7 WHEN he found a pipe bomb wired under his Volvo Simo Philadelphia. Hed been w on transf an old armory in a rundown area into a school and had just ordered the tractor to rip out and replace six thousand square feet of expensive case?ment windows. Probably the mans profit on th?t>e job, he figured. Oher hand, the bomb might have e from any one of a half-dozen small suppliers who were not allowed to bid the project because they couldnt make a performance bond. Or, he told himself, it could have been the ghost of Louis Kahn, mad with jealousy. The Volvo had been leaking oil and hed gotten into the habit of bending down to check the pavement for oil traces after hed been parked for ah of time. The bomb was tied ly to the tailpipe. The bomb squad came, big burly men in aprons like goalies wear with the differehat these were made of Kevlar. They had a barrel-shaped truck draped in wire mesh. "Aremely well-done bomb," a sergeant told him, after the device was safely iruck. Simon had turhe job over to one of his partners and given himself a sabbatical, his first in fourteen years. Iy, it wasnt the bomb but the prospect of listening to his wifes voice for another hour, another minute. When she was a child Sarah would occasionally stick a 9D battery in Simons ear and he would then make a sound like a fire engine, or, alternately, a garbage truck. When the women were living with him Simon and one or another of them would sometimes go together to the A & P, at the appropriate hour, just to watch the fire?men buy supper for the firehouse. The double-jointed engine was double-parked outside the store with a fireman in the cab, waiting, and inside four or five tall healthy young men in dark blue FDNY t-shirts would be arguing about what to put in the spaghetti sauce. "Im up to here with mushrooms," Shorty would say, fiercely, and anuy would lobby for hot Italian sausage. The firemen were good-looking, Simon no?ticed, appeared strong and trustworthy and very det. He wondered about the fireman-population, where all this ded goodness came from. The firemen gazed at Veronica or Dore and then looked away, abashed. Later Veronica, or Dore, would say, "Dont be jealous, Simon." Then, after a pause, "Were not harpies." Did she mean that the firemeoo young or rather in some sense sacrosanct? He had given Sarah a fire engine she could sit in when she was four and she had put out maing fires with it. Bridges should not be painted blue, Simon thought, the horrible Izod blue of the Ben Franklin bridge in Philadelphia ever in his mind. crete, he felt, wonderfully useful and wonderfully ugly, should never be seen in publiless covered with ivy, or, better still, aper. Steel retty, he did not know why. Brick was good and wood best, for all purposes uhe sun. As a student he had submitted a project to redo Rockefeller ter in pickled pine. He had also, on formal occasions, worn a dog collar instead of a tie, most sportif. Hed dreamed that he was supposed to be on tele?vision for five hours and had prepared nothing. The television people, young men with clipboards, were friendly, were standing around waiti藏书网ng for him to get dressed and proceed to the studio. They seemed fi?dent that he could do what he had tracted to do. There were some notes in another building, a building far from the building in which he was getting dressed, which might help him if he could reach them in time. His gray pin-striped coat was binding his arms like a straitjacket and Simon struggled against it as the clodicated that time assing. When he had missed the opening of the program -- he had removed and re?placed the jacket several times, each time with enormous exertion -- the television people became un?friendly and began making supercilious remarks. He had the sehat he could still salvage the situation if he could get to the building where his notes rested in a manila folder. Yes, hed be late, but the notes were of value, inplete to be sure but enough to allow him to bullshit his way through the performahe sed, third, fourth, and fifth hours, or, now, the third, fourth, and fifth hours, because time assing and he had, somehow, put on his blue Oxford shirt over the gray pin-striped jacket, which was, he uood, wrong -- "SIMON, youre famous!" Veronica says. Shes waving a copy ressive Architecture. "You saw the piece." "Looks beautiful. Big building." "Four million something." "Its got a very fancy outside." "Some of thats fiberglass. We had to take molds to reproduce a lot of the capitals, that stuff on top of the ns. It drives you crazy because youve got to add a fire-retardant to the gel coat and that ge the color and youre trying to match the color of the exist?ing building." "Do architects make a lot of money?" "You go broke," he says. "You do very well. The more time you put into a job, the less money you make. My partners kept me solvent." "Whats it feel like to be famous?" "Feels very much like not being famous." "Are you going to fall in love with one of us?" Shes serious. "How could I not?" "It could all e to nothing," she says. Theyre in the back of the house, sitting at the bar i, looking out of the windows. Its getting warmer, Simon thinks. "Youre what, fifty-three?" "Yes." "Thats pretty old." "And life is short." "When I.９9ｌｉb? was in high school," Veronica says, "they dedicated the yearbook every year to the guys from our school who had been killed inam. They had pic?tures, every year, of the latest bunch. Every year for four years. So youre married, huh?" "Yes. More or less." "I was married. Wasnt so bad, wasnt so great. We used to screw every m before he went to work." "Every damn m?" "Well not every m Simon dont be so literal-minded." "In the m I got the ched jaw," Simon says. "I khat something had happehe night before." "Like what?" "A fight." "You couldnt remember?" "I was drinking. I cooked a lot in the evening and when I cooked I drank. Mingling two pleasures." "Are you a good cook?" "Getting there. Give me aen years." "Look! In the sky!" A silver blimp, then another, like two silver buildings majestically horizontal. "When I got married," she says, "I married this guy who was a Catholic. So we had to get a priest to do the job. So I called this priest and explaihe situation. I said I was not a Catholid the priest says, Well, we work with you on that. Then I told him I was still married to anuy, the guy I was married to before I met this guy. And the priest says, Well, we work with you on that. So I just thought Id tell him that I was born without a vagina, that I just had this sort of marble i where the vagina was supposed to be, to see if he would say, Well, we work with you on that. " 8 SIMON is amazed by what he doesnt care about. Hes bought nothing but a couple of new shirts and a few books. Hes thought of no new projects. He reads Progressive Architecture and critiques what he sees there in a mood of amiable colleagueship. Hed done a building in 1981 that had pleased him, a Cath?olic chur a not-good area emple Uy, where the liquor stave you your bottle by request over a formidable ter, no browsing iacks. The parish was so poor that hed cut his fee to almost nothing; the other partners were not happy about it but had aodated him. The church was a bare-boeel building with is of glass block as its only de?sign flourish, these however stacked eightee high in twelve bays oher side of the sanctuary -- the glass block was the light-giving element, aed thiev?ery, too. It had been popular in the 30s, sidered a design cliche in the 40s, 50s, 60s and 70s, and pre?seself again in the 80s, fresh as new dung. Some?thing to be said for being fifty-three, you could enjoy the turning of the wheel. He feels every additional day a great boon. He doesnt uand people who have futures, palpable futures. He takes an i in the obituary pages of the neers, the summations, tidy packages, So-and-so gets three inches whereas Tra-la-la got seven. He has a pain where his liver is presumed to be and is vomiting rather too much. Hes paid $35,107 in Federal taxes for last year and has before him a re?quest from the IRS for an additional $41.09. These people are wonderful, he thinks, they want the last forty-one bucks and nis. Youd think with the thirty-five thou theyd say lets have a beer and fet about it. Dore is brusque upon awakening, Anne cheerful as a zinnia. Veronica frequently es to the breakfast table (hardly a table, a slab of butcher blo top of some ets with four stools around it) pale with de?spair, then is overtaken with great gusts of enthusiasm, for Lohengrin or oyster mushrooms or Pierr.rudeau. Theyre so lovely that his head whips around when one of them ehe room, exactly in the way oices a strange woman in a crowd and t avoid, t phys?ically avoid, loud and eous staring. My senses are being systematically dérégled, he thinks, five me, Rimbaud. Dore is relatively tall, A so tall (but they are all tall), Veronica again the middle term. Breasts waver and dip and sway from side to side u-shirts with messages so much of the moment that Simo uand a tenth of them: ALLY SHEEDY LIVES! Who is Ally Sheedy? In what sense does she live, and why is the fact worthy of ent? They know, he doesnt. Simon has actually met Pierre Tru?deau (at a three-day city-planning feren Ot?tawa) and found him a charming and thoughtful man. This earns him about a crayons worth of credit with his guests. He attempts generalizations. Dore is crusty, Veron?ica is volatile, Anne is a worrier. The generalizations are banal but f, like others hes been faithful to over many years, architecture is frozen musid art is a source of life. In the middle of the night he senses someoand?ing over his bed. "Whos that?" "Its me. Dore." He switches on the bedside lamp. "Whats up?" "Do you have any money?" "You mean cash? In the house?" "I need a couple of hundred." &quht now?" Shes wearing a white lace peignoir with long filigree sleeves. &quht now. Two hundred, if you have it." "Let me look." Simos out of bed and opens a book, On Adams House in Paradise. He takes out a stack of bills and ts out two hundred iies. "Its my bad brother," Dore says. "Hes downstairs. He always arrives without warning. One of his endear?ing traits. Thanks. Ill pay you back." She gives him a quick kiss and starts to leave, then pauses. "Whats your wifes name, Simon?" "Whats my wifes name?" "You dont have to tell me." "Carol." "Pretty name." They say, repeatedly: "See what Im saying?" "See what Im saying?" "See what Im saying?" A: In the dream, my father laying the piano, a Beethoven something, in a large cert hall which was filled with people. I was in the audiend I was reading a book. I suddenly realized that this was the wrong thing to do when my father er?f, so I sat up and paid attention. He laying very well, I thought. Suddenly the ductor stopped the performand began to sing a passage for my fa?ther, a passage that my father had evidently botched. My father listetentively, smiling at the duc?tor. Q: Does your father play? In actuality? A: Not a note. Q: Did the ductor resemble anyone you know? A: No. Q: What did you do, after work, in the evenings or on weekends, in Philadelphia? A: Just ordinary things. Q: No special is? A: I was very ied in bow-hunting. These new bows they have now, what they call a pound bow -- Also, Im a member of the Galapagos Society, we work for the enviro, its really a very effective -- Q: And what else? A: Well, adultery. I would say thats how I spent most of my free time. In adultery. Q: You mean regular adultery. A: Yes. Sleeping with people although legally bound to someone else. Q: These were women. A: Invariably. Q: And so thats what you did, in the evenings or on weekends. . . A: I had this strange experieoday is Saturday, right? I called up this haircutter I go to, her name is Ruth, and asked her for an appoi. I needed a haircut. So she said she had openings at tehirty, eleven, eleven-thirty, twelve, twelve-thirty -- on a Satur?day. Do you think the world knows something I dont know? Q: Its possible. A: What if she stabs me in the ear with the scissors? Q: Unlikely, I would think. A: Stabs me in the ear with the scissors in an excess e? Q: Yuilt. I reize it. Clearly, guilt. A: Nonsehe prudent man guards his eardrums. The prudent man avoids anomalous circumstances. Q: Yard yourself as prudent. A: I regard myself as asleep. I go along, things hap?pen to me, there are disturbances, one copes, thinking of the golden pillow, I dont mean literally golden but golden in my esteem -- Q: Let me play this track here for you, its by Echo and the Bunnymen -- A: Ill pass. Q: I also have a video of the Tet offeh Wa?er kite. . . "HES not potent more than forty-two per?t of the time." "Maybe we could feed him nourishing broths." "They say that vitamin E is good for that." "Thats what I hear too." "What if we give him too mu藏书网ch vitamin E and it poisons him?" "I dont think you give somebody too much of any particular vitamin. The body takes what it needs as the rest I read about it." "Its because hes so old." "I dont think so I read about this guy who was hree and still was fathering children when he was hree." "Perhaps at long intervals after he had been carefully fed with vitamin E and nourishing broths." "Maybe we should offer stimulating photographs." "Of what?" "Potentially arousing ses." "You mean the photographs would be more arousing than we are?" "Well I dont know how their minds work." "Maybe we should offer him potentially arousing ses that are not photographs." "You mean like real life." "Thats what I mean." "sisting of what?" "I dont know Id have to look in some books." "Hes doing the best he ." "Thats your opinion." "I think he works quite hard at it, spends hours and hours." "I just think weve gotten ourselves into a funda?mentally false position here, I dont blame the poor bastard its just more than the male meism is equipped to do." "I saw this guy in a movie once I couldnt believe it." "They have these special guys they use for those movies theyre not what you usually run into. Theyre specialists." "We dont want to stress him beyond his capacity or have him go mad or something." "He shows no signs of going mad." "Hes raveling his clothes. Plug at threads." "I just think that means he doesnt have very good clothes. His clothes have a lot of loose ends and its nat?ural, I think, when you see a loose end to pluck at it." "I use Lubriderm on him sometimes, that helps." "Ive noticed youve been buying a lot of Lubri?derm." "I share it what are you getting so het up about?" "I havent heard that expression since I was a child. Het up." "Well were mature women we should be able to cope with this." "Has he made a will?" "Thats an evil thought, has he anything to will?" "Beats me I wouldnt take it if he did." "Sure you would." "He could be more tan his red color is from drinking Ill bet a nickel." "Not a perfect deal hes an animate wreck." "Well Ill tell you Ive never had that many asms with anybody else to give the devil his due." "Well if you want simple frottage." "He does appreciate what hes given." "As well he should hes in hog heaven, objectively speaking." "Where are we?" "Were in some sort of waiting room. Waiting." "How old is he actually?" "He says hes fifty-three." ONCE when he had e home with Carol early from a cert a police car arked outside the house, so they hurried. Inside on the couch with the babysitter there was a half-naked poli. He had retained his uniform trousers. His gu was on the coffee table and the babysitters blouse on the coffee table, a bottle of Dewars there as well, "This is Rob," the babysitter said, and they said, "Hi, Rob." What breasts, Simon thought. He went into the kit and mixed himself a Gelusil and Carol went searg for a faraway closet to hang her black-beaded jacket in. Rob removed himself into the felon-thiight, Carol gave the babysitter twelve dollars, and Simon looked in on the sleep99ｌｉｂ.ing Sarah. She had kicked the covers off and he replaced them. "Do you think he was on duty?" Carol asked, re-doing the covers. "Yes," Simon said. "Did you say anything to her?" "I didnt think it was necessary. She was blushing all over. Never seen a stomach blush like that." "Did he leave the bottle?" "No, took it." "I think Ill call the chief. Fill him in on this matter." "Oh, e on." "What is she, fifteen?" "Fully fifteen." "A ripe fifteen." "I saw." She led the way to the kit. "I guess thats Sarah eleven years from now." "Oh misery me." "You want to jump the babysitter." "Where does this word jump e from?" "I know you." "I dont think Ive ever said that to anybody. I know you. " "Youre too ed up in your own stuff even to try. To know someone." "The phrase is a bit total. As in, I totaled the Buick. " "You worry about the way I say things but you dont worry about what I mean." "Thats not so. Anyhow, I dont want to screw the babysitter." "You would if you could." "Maybe in a state of nature. Philadelphia is not a state of nature." "Youre dumb. Youre just dumb, Simon." "I didnt hire the babysitter." "She was highly reended." "Had this guy today tell me he was the feion of his family to lose money itle busi?ness. A t. What he was really saying was that he was cattle aristocrad he made enough from his oil leases so that he could run two thousand head of cattle as a hobby. Thats known as self-depreg humor." "Youre ging the subject." "It needs ging." In bed, he was almost asleep. She came in and threw four quarts of icewater at him. 9 VERONICA is boung orampoline. Dore is reading Flowers fernon. Simon is in bed with Anne. "Youre about as tender as a sea lion," she says. "Have you ever dohis before?" "I remember having do before." "How does it make you feel with us in here and them out there?" "Nervous." "Were very tolerant." "I see that. Whats that wham-wham-wham noise?" "Veronica." "Is she making obse ent?" "Shes just mindless whes on that trampoline. She go for hours. She thinks shes got a prob?lem with her rear. I dont think theres a problem but she thinks theres a problem." "Makes me nervous." "Everything makes you nervous." "True." "Is this a male fantasy for you? This situation?" "Its not a fantasy, is it." "It has the structure of a male fantasy." "The dumbest possible way to look at it." "Well screw you." "Our purpose here, I thought." She turns him around and rubs his ass with her t in long swooping motions. "Where did you go to school?" "Here and there." "What did you learn?" "Lots of important stuff. Almost everybody Ive met since resent in my first-grade class. Maybe thirty-two kids in that class. Every type represented. When I run into somebody who was not present in my first-grade class I think Ive sighted a rare bird." "Where did you go to college? Was it Harvard?" "No it wasnt Harvard." "Lots of people didnt go to Harvard." "Theres just not enough Harvard." "Maybe they could start a branch. In Florida or somewhere." "They probably dohe urgency." "Whats redeye gravy?" "Ham drippings with a splash of coffee." " we make some?" "Go ahead." "Blackeyed peas?" "I love blackeyed peas." "Collard greens." "Fine." "Well need some likker." "Try the likker store." "Be good if we had some hounds lazing about." "I draw the li hounds." "Simon, Im trying to do this thing right." "I know you are." She looks beautiful, her long dark hair done up in a pony tail. Her ARM THE UNEMPLOYED t-shirt. "What are you going to do after we leave?" she asks. "Go back to work, I guess." "That what you want to do?" "Work is Gods best iion. Keeps you all seized up and ied." "I wish I could do something." "You could always go to school." "I dont like standing in lines." "I know what you mean. The Army used up most of my standing-in-line capacity." "But suppose youre at a reception and yoing to meet the President and theres a long line of very well-dressed people --" "Im not in a hurry to meet the President. If he wants to e over and have a drink and a little guacamole dip, thats fine. My door is always open." "You dont care about anything." "Listening to the radio." "You do love your radios." "Im thinking of getting another ohey have these roof jobs for the bath --" "I like a quiet reflective bath." "Ill e in and put toads ier." "Where would you get toads in New York City?" "Toad store. They got big toads, little toads, horoads, no-horn toads --" "Its a great city." "Its a great argument for cities." Simon wanted very much to be a hearty, optimistic Ameri, like the President, but oher hand did not trust hearty, optimistic Ameris, like the President. He had sidered the possibility that the President, when not in public, was not really hearty and optimistic but rather a gloomy, obsessed man with a profound fear of the potentially disastrous processes in which he was enmeshed, no more sanguihan the Fisher King. He did not really believe this to be the case. He himself had settled for being a pe?tent, sometimes iive architect with a tragise of brick. Brick was his favorite material as the fortress was the architectural metaphor that he had, more and more, to resist. To force himself into freshness, he thought about bamboo. Getting old, Simon. Not so limber, dear friend, time for the bone factory? The little blue van. Your hands are covered with tiny pepperoni. Your knees predict your face. Your back stabs you, on the left side, twice a day. The bellys been discussed. The souls shrinking to a microdot. Were your rog chair, size 42. Would you like something in Southern pine? Loblolly? Send the women away. Theyre too good for you. Also, not good for you. Are you King Solomon? Your king?dom a st two hundred fifty-housand, two hundred square inches. Annual tearfall, three and one-quarter inches. You feedeth among the lilies, Simon. There are garter snakes among the lilies, Simon, garter belts too. Yarden is over-cultivated, it needs weeds. Hows your skiwear, Simon? Done any demoli?tion derbies lately? You run the mile in, what, a year and a half? Were sending you aric treadmill, a solid steel barbell curl bar, a digital pedometer. Use them. Ahe women away. When he asked himself what he was doing, living in a bare elegant almost unfurnished New York apartment with three young aiful women, Simon had to admit that he did not know what he was doing. He was, he supposed, listening. These womeaciturn as cowboys, spoke only to the immediate question, proba?bly did not know in which tury the Sed World War had taken plao, too hard; it was, rather, that what they knew was so wildly various, ragout of Spi?noza and di Lauper with a William Buckley sher?bet floating in the middle of it. Hed e in one eve?ning to find all three of them kneeling on the dining room table with their rumps pointing at him. Ob?viously he was supposed to strip off his gentlemanly khakis and attend to all three at once, just as obviously an impossibility. He had placed a friendly hand on each cul in turn and said, "Okay, guys, youve had your fun, now get back to the barracks and polish the Renoirs." That boy has no talent, muttered Mao Mo oernoon in the garden, about Renoir. "Out, out, out," hed shouted, and theyd scattered, giggling. One night on his ba bed hed had six breasts to suck, swaying above him, he oor tattered Romulus. When they could a part of him theyd play with each other. SIMON and Dore sitting i. The radio making music. "They play the best music late at night," Dore said. "Whehink nobodys awake." "Thats Keith Jarrett." "Whos he?" "Piano player. Very famous." "Whats that funny noise?" "He kinds of sings when he plays." "Oh. I guess you old guys know a lot of different stuff, dont you. How old are you?" "Fifty-three." "You dont look it. You look maybe fifty, fifty-ohat was good chi we had." "Thank you." "I wrung a nece. In Fort Lupton. It was a mess." "By hand?" "All the way off. It was a mess." "Now they use electrocution." "I read about it." "All the chis hooked into this moving trivance --" "Their heads dangling in water --" "Then whfft! whfft! whfft!" "Its horrible." "The father chi says to the son chi, Son, Ive got bad news for you." "Then, whfft!" "This try runs on chi." "Just think of it. A little bird like that. Fueling the nation." "At night, in the great chi factories, whfft! whfft! whfft! whfft! All through the night." "They dont do it in the daytime?" "Under cover of night. So people dont realize the extent." "If I was a chi Id fly away. Before they got me." "Theyre bum fliers. A ham fly better." "How do they kill the hams?" "You dont want to know." "Simon. Youre not a serious man." "Yes I am." Dore likes to scold people. When anyone in the house does anything that does not 藏书网meet her specifica?tions for appropriate behavior, Dore scolds. "Simon youre not supposed to talk to Anne like that." "Like what?" "You were desding." "In what way?" "Okay, she never heard of the Marshall Plan. You dont have to explain it to her. In that way." "Was I pompous?" "Not more than usual. It was that incredulous look. Like you couldnt believe that somebodyd never heard of the Marshall Plan." "It was a big deal, historically." "Simon you are twice as old as we are." "That does not absolve you of the y of know?ing your own history." "Thats pompous. Thats truly pompous. Thats just what Im talking about. And ahing." "Oh Lord, what?" "When you made that joke about Geershwin and his lovely wife, Ira." "Well?" "Anne didnt know it was a joke. You t make jokes that are based on people not knowing things. Its not fair. Its demeaning to women." "Why to women?" "Women dont pay that much attention to silly things like that. All that detail. And theres one more thing." "Which is?" "You should take the laundry sometimes. Just be?cause were wome mean that we have to take the laundry all the time." "Okay. Good point." "We dont like sitting in that tacky laundromat aer than you do." "I told you to leave it ahem do it." "You save for four peoples clothes eight to ten dol?lars. I think thats signifit." "But you dont have to do it that way." "Also I met this iing guy there last time. Hes a professional whistler." HES listening to one of his three radios, this one a brutish black Proton with an outboard sed speaker. The announcer is talking about drum?mers. "Cozy Cole es straight out of Chick Webb," he says. Simon nods in agreement. "Big Sid Catlett. Zutty Sion, Dave Tough. To go even further back, Baby Dodds. All this before we get to Krupa and Buddy Rich." Simon taxes his memory in an attempt to extract from it the names of ten additional drummers. Louis Bellson. Shelly Manne. Panama Francis. Jo Jones, of course. Kenny Clarke. Elvin Jones. Barrett Deems. Mel Lewis. Charlie Persip. Joe Morello. , twenty bass players. Our nation is ri talent, he thinks. He calls his mother in California. "What do we do with brisket?" he asks. "What fool bought brisket?" "A friend." His mother uands what this means. "Youve got to boil the hell out of it," she says. "Hoounds?" "Four." "Id give it three and a half to four hours in stock with carrots. Never did see the point of carrots but they must be good for something. Sli onion and put in some red wine. Whats your friends name?" "Theyre just some people whore stayiem?porarily." "Hows Sarah?" "Doing well. She got a General Electric fellowship. Four thousand bucks." "Every little bit helps," his mother says. "You and Carol speaking to each other?" "At intervals. Shes very busy." "Does she have a friend?" "Probably. I dont know." &q藏书网uot;Make a sauce for it with capers, horseradish, mayonnaise and some of the cooking stock. Chill the sauce, its best cold. Thats all I know about brisket. You could stie red cabbage into the pot for the last thirty minutes of cooking. Also, if I were you Id buy some Union Carbide." "Why?" "Do what your mother tells you,". she says, and hangs up. His mother likes to present herself as a tough old bird, and in fact, thats the way he thinks of her. But there is a lustrous photograph of his mother sitting by the side of a pool in the 30s, radiating a formidable sex?uality. Then no tough old bird but rather a bad, bad ar?ticle, ready for Clark Gable and Lord Mountbatten, too. NEW architecture is "soulless," Simon reads, again and again and again. He has trouble dis?agreeing when what is being talked about is a seventy-story curtain-wall building on Sixth Avenue. People dont like to live or work above the sed floor in any building, the third at the outer extreme. No building should be taller than a ship. People like light; oher hand, they also like caves. An austere fa?ade pleases architects; people like decoration, a modicum of drama. Embassies are now being designed like banks, with more and more security as one moves deeper and deeper into the building, the most secure space, deep inside, mighty like a vault. Recile that with the idea of an embassy as a pleasing, friendly presence. Metal detectors set up at the entrances of schools. Gun-toting Wahuts in supermarkets (part of the desiger a jewelry store and above the selling floor theres a booth with bulletproof glass with gun ports and a guy with a shotgun. Giant crete flowerpots all around the Capitol which have nothing to do with love of flow?ers. The messianiiacal idea that architecture will make people better, civilize them, tral to much 1920s-1930s architectural thought, Corbusier, Gropius, even Wright, abandoned. Although modesty is not what architects do best, there is more restraint now, Simon thinks. Ill do my piece of the problem and you do yours. Not at all soulless, rather more cottage indus?try, S.O.M. notwithstanding. The image that seems to him really on the mark is the circus. "Mans chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever," says his radio. Hes been listening to a lot of Christian rock lately, finds it surprisingly robust. Jesus is ro a weary land. He wonders how, say, Dodo Marmarosa would sound playing Christian rock. Dore es in and shoves a breast in his ear. He makes a sound like a smoke alarm. He has something cut off his forehead, a skin cer thats been there for years, a dark spot the diameter of a pencil eraser. The doctor is a tall gloomy man with a Southern at. He doesnt waste time, has Simon oable and is scraping away with a curette within two minutes. First, four sharp stings as he places the lidoe; afterward, the smell of burning brain as he cau?terizes the blood vessels. Simon writes a check fhty-five dollars. He walks back to the apartment from the doctors office, some?thing like sixty-five blocks. Its cool and cloudy out. Bumptious loudmouthed swaggering teenagers ing dowreet, jostling people. Simon sidesteps them. t shoot em all. An absolutely beautiful woman in blue walking toward him. He turns and looks after her. She walks on without turning. Well, why should she? Hes fifty-three. 10 When Simon wonders what kind of ani?mal he is, he identifies with the giraffe. An improbable design, a weird ensemble overall, no special reputation for wisdom, an uncle-figure at best. ed by the auto industry: niraffes on the highways. Simon too has a long neck, often ented upon, and a pe?culiar gait, sort of a shamble. He gets a call from his wife, Carol, in Philadelphia. "You havent paid the car insurance," she says. "Oher car. I got stopped by a cop yesterday and he jacked me up about the insurance." "Whatd you get stopped for?" "Taillight." "Call Bud at the offid tell him to take care of it," Simon says. "Hes got all the paperwork on the in?surance. How are you?" "sidering what our mayor is up to, Im rea?sonably sahis thing is really w out much better than I thought it would. Your being gone, I mean." "The absence of a plan is itself a plan," Simon says. "Heard from Sarah?" "She called a day or so ago. Shes dropped German and history." "Oh Lord. Why history?" "They had to write papers." "She hardly avoid writing papers." "She needs a typewriter." "Buy her a typewriter." "Simon, Ive got other things to do. Ill give her a check but I t futz around shopping for type?writers." "Okay, fine. Is she happy?" "Shes been going out with some kind of Finn. I think hes a Finn. Very goodlooking. Hes in the busi?ness school." "Hows his English?" "Very Brit. What are you doing?" "Reading. Walking around." "Chasing tail." "No Im not chasing anything." "It was just a sociological observation. I dont care." "I know that." "Keep in touch." "I will." "Your bad brother," Simon says to Dore. "Why is he in New York?" "Nothing for him in Denver, he thinks. Hes thirty-three. Two years in jail for auto theft. Hes on proba?tion now. He deals when he get enough moo buy something to deal. Hes good at calculating how often he hit people up. He has me down for a cou?ple of hundred every three months or so. His name is Burt." She holds out ay wineglass. Simon p. "Hes an engineer, actually. He desighis electric car, where you didnt have an array of batteries that had to be charged every two or three days. It had a circuit that allowed the batteries to recharge themselves just like gas engines recharge their batteries. There was a tiny puter in there somewhere. That was the car he stole. He was in partnership with these guys whod put up the development money and when the prototype worked, they cut him out of the pany. So he repos?sessed the car one night but they had the cops waiting for him." "Couldnt he have started up again after he got out?" "He fot how he did it. Hed hurt his brain, drink?ing busthead in jail. He tried, drove himself crazy try?ing. Hes still trying." "Bad luck." "Yeah. It could do y on the highway, too. My family is ly a blue-chip outfit." She takes his glass out of his hand. "You drink too much." "Goddamnit woman, leave my glass alone." "Id hate to see your liver." "Most uhat you ever will." "And I dont like it that when we have roast lamb you take all the crag for yourself." "Anything else?" "Yes. This place isnt ." "So it." "Its a matter of setting an example. Youre the jefe grande around here." "Whats that mean?" "Big chief." "Not what I feel like." "Im talking basic reality." A: I sometimes think of myself as a person who, you know what I mean, could have done some?thing else, it doesnt matter articularly. Just something else. I saw an ad in the Sunday paper for the CIA, a recruiting ad, maybe a quarter of a page, and I suddenly thought, it might be iing to do that. Even though Ive always been opposed to the CIA, when they were trying t Cuba down, the stuff with Lumumba in Africa, the stuff iral America. . . Then here is this ad, perfectly straightforward, "where your career is Americas strength" or something like that, "aptitude for learning a fn language is a plus" or something like that, Ive always been good at languages, and Im sitting there thinking about how my resume might look to them, starting pletely over in something pletely new, ging the very sort of person I am, and there was an attra, a defi?tra. Of course the maximum age was thirty-five. I guess they want them more malleable. Q: So, in the evenings or on weekends -- A: Not every night or every weekend. I mean this de?pended on the circumstances. Sometimes my wife and I went to dinner with people, or watched television -- Q: But in the main -- A: It wasnt that often. It was on a while. Q: Adultery is a sin. A: It is classified as a sin, yes. Absolutely. Q: The Sixth a says -- A: I know what it says. I was raised on the Sixth a. But. Q: But what? A: The Sixth a is wrong. Q: Its wrong? A: Its wrong. Q: The whole a? A: I dont know how it happened, whether its a mis?translation from the Aramaic or whatever, it may not even have been Aramaic I dont know, I certainly do not pretend to scholarship in this area but my sense of the matter is that the Sixth a is an error. Q: Well if that were true it would ge quite a lot of things, wouldnt it? A: Take the pressure off, a bit. Q: Have you told your wife? A: Yes, Carol knows. Q: Howd she take it? A: Well, she liked the Sixth a. You could reason that it was in her io support the Sixth a for the preservation of the family unit and this sort of thing but to reason that way is, I would say, to take aremely narrow view of Carol, of what she thinks. Shes not pre９9lib?dictable. She oold me that she didnt want me, she wanted a suite of hus?bands, ten or twenty -- Q: What did you say? A: I said, Go to it. Q: Myself, I think about being just sort of a regular person, one who worries about cer a lot, every little thing a predi of cer, no I dont want to go for my every-two-years-checkup because what if they find something? I wonder what will kill me and when it will happen and how it will happen, and I wonder about my parents, who are still alive, and what will happen to them. This seems to me to be a proper set of things to worry about. Last things. A: I dont think God gives a snap about adultery. This is just an opinion, of course. Q: So how do you, how shall I put it, pursue -- A: You think about this staggering cept, the mind of God, and then you think Hes sitting around w about this guy and this woman at the Beeut Travelodge? I think not. Q: Well He doesnt have to think about every particular instance, He just sort of laid out the general prin?ciples -- A: He also created creatures who, with a single pow?erful glance -- Q: The eyes burn. A: They do. Q: The heart leaps. A: Like a terrapin. Q: Stupid youth returns. A: Like hockey sticks falling out of a long-shut closet. Q: Do you play? A: I did. Many years ago. Q: You find them in parks. You blunder upon them in parks. A: Ive noticed that. Q: They sit in parks a lot. Especially when theyre angry. The solitary bench. Shoulders raised, legs kig -- When he was in school at Penn, the resi?dent master was Louis Kahn. Kahn was given to mut?tering. Once he stood behind Simons draughting table and muttered for almost five mihe young ar?chitect was too intimidated to ask him what he was saying. The story was told of Kahn that when he was a young architect he had worked for Paul Cret, the French maestro who presided at Penn in the 20s. Wheher draughtsmen, thirty of them, quit for the day Kahn would take a roll of trag paper and go from board to board, leaving critiques of each archi?tects work as an overlay. He did not he boards of the firms three principals. I love the excesses of my profession, Simon thought, heroid mock-heroics. Michael Graves and Robert Venturi, plexity and tradi as a text. All those fivers enjoying themselves as Michelangelht and his cape, Mies and his pinstripes. Michel?angelo most of all: "Where I steal I leave a knife." An appropriate High Renaissance se. The walls of the architecture labs at Penn had been covered with graffiti. "This is hell, nor are we out of it." "Hell is other architects." "The road to hell is paved with naugahyde." White underwear with golden skin. Acres and acres of it. Was it golden? ventionally described as golden. The color of white birch stained with polyurethane. What do we think of this color bina?tion? Some people vote for bladerwear with such skin but these people are the same people who paint their bathrooms black. Walking in the garden, Modigliani said to Saint-Gaudens, about Renoir, "This roughneck will never be a painter." Dressed women, half-dressed women, quarter-dressed women. Simon was, as the womeedly told him, existing in a male fantasy, in hog heaven. He saw nothing wrong with male fantasies (the Taj Mahal, the Chrysler Building) but dehat he was in hog heaven. Where did they get such expressions? A Southernism that hed not heard in thirty years. IN the ms, large figures shrouded in terrycloth lurch bad forth between the several bedrooms and the sihroom. Dore runs, in the ms, picks up breakfast at the market on the way back, fresh Italian rolls, green garlicked Krauterbutter, a quarter-pound of breast of veal. She has bee the manager of breakfast, takes pride in varying the fare, fine cheeses one day, a det kidew the , blueberry crepes and then chi-fried steak with beaten biscuits. "This breaded burlap," Veronica says, "nicely done, but what are you, trying to kill us, or what?" "Try more pepper." Still in her sweats, she washes the dishes and stows them away, theles down with the Business Day se of the Times, Revco Gets $1.16 Billion Buyout Bid, Troubled Farm Banks to Get Regulatory Aid, Jap?aba Chip Prices. Scratg a bare foot with one hand, flipping pages with the other. Then she showers, dips into MTV (shoulder to shoulder with Anne for fifteen minutes). Thens she off to the New School for her Tuesday class, Iment Strategies for the Eighties. "Howd you get in?" Simon asks. "Im auditing," she says. "I go early a a seat. The class is so big they ake the roll." "You getting anything out of it?" "You t play unless you have something to play with. Still, its educational." After class, her nap. She throws herself on her bed and is dead to the world for an hour and a half, wearing only spun-sugar V-shaped briefs by Olga. Simon stares, on occasion, at the beautiful body at rest, face down on the bed. What miracles of bawdiness it perform without thinking, the operator quite unaware. In sleep, she scratches her belly. He feels the urge to sit on the edge of the bed (hurl himself into the bed), but does not. At night, she either puts herself together for Fizz or reads Dis. Shes bought four Dis novels in worn Everymaions at the Strand and is moving through them methodically. "The thing about Dis is," she tells him, "he khe value of a pound, when you didnt have one. All his people are scrambling for money." "So?" Simon says. "I identify with that." Late at night she sits with Simon drinking a Dos Equis and listening to Horace Silver. "Youre the mother of these guys," he says. "Im not. Last among equals." "Veronicas a handful." "Shes her own person. I admire her. Shes the smartest." "How long have you three known each other?" Diggles. "We all worked for a retail outlet in Denver. It was called Fredericks of Hollywood of Den?ver. It had nothing to do with the real Fredericks of Hollywood." "Is that clothes?" "Yes. Clothes." Dore knows orick which may one day place her among the worlds managers, how to walk. Dore always walks briskly, head up, arms swinging in good military style, moving from one very important assigo the , a bit rushed, look-what-those-apes-in-Purchasing-have-doo-us-now. Simon, having spent some time in large anizations, uands what Dores walk means, appreciate its brittle bouncy R.A.F. au?thority. Veronica dawdles and Anne lurches, although at moments of fusion all lurch, banging into each other as if blindfolded. Simon shambles. Veronica is often out on mysterious errands which the others do not ent upon. What is she doing? Simon tries not to think about this -- its none of his business -- but he t help speculating. Is she taking a shift as a blackjack dealer in Atlantic City? Loading tainer ships in Hoboken? Re-fletg arrows at the Museum of the Ameri Indian? Pushing odi?ties in a bucket shop on Varick Street? The darker pos?sibilities he refuses to plate. She enters in a flurry, having missed dinner, and declares shes starv?ing. Simon plops a stuffed pork chop on her plate, wild rice, white asparagus. Dore and Anne scarcely notice her, theyre talking about life after death. "No way," Anne says, "do I want to live after death. Its hard enough as it is." "But youre not close to the e," says Dore. "The end is not near. When the end is near, you may feel differently." "I doubt it. Ay of keeping the armpits tidy? No thank you." "The graves a fine and quiet place. Thats not it. The graves a fine and pleasant place. Thats not it. What is it, Simon?>.." "Dont know." "Private," says Veronica. "The graves a fine and private place. I remember that one. He goes on to say that theres no sex in the grave." "But what if you leap over the grave and into some?thing new? Something that has been imagined only by saints and mendit friars in their robes of grass and rope?" "Like what?" Anne says. "Some kind of church thing? I never did like church." "Church is punishment for our sins," Dore says, "everybody knows that. The only question is whether by the time you die youve done enough church to be punished enough." "I havent," Veronica says. "I dropped out when I was ten. Actually they asked my mother to leave be?cause she was living in sin with my father and had been for ten years and they decided it was too flagrant." "What denomination was that?" Anne asks. "Assembly of God. Their motto was The Fellow?ship of Excitement. It was very exg whehrew my mother out. A ittee called on her and told her. There were three men and two women. She served apple juid chocolate-chip cookies. All she said afterward was that it was a waste of apple juice." "I kind of liked it," Dore said. "I guess it was my authoritarian personality. We were Lutheran. A rare bunch, the Lutherans, they take everything very serio藏书网usly. What were you, Simon?" "A simple Presbyterian." Veronica places five hundred-dollar bills oable. "A little tribution to the household ey." "Where in the world did you get that?" "It wasnt hooking." "So, where?" "O.T.B." "You bastard! What was the horse?" "Crushed Rose." SIMON buys an artwork. The artwork is a print by the artist John Chamberlain as a lot of automobile bumpers smashed together into a sculp?tural block. Its very small, ten inches square, modestly framed. He has trouble plag it on the big empty walls of the apartment; wherever he puts it, it looks ri?diculous. Finally he hangs it by the front door. Anne looks at it. "Whats that?" "A print." "Who by?" "Guy named Chamberlain." "Not very big." "No its not." She moves closer food look. "Car bumpers." "Yes." "I like it." "So do I." "Terribly small. For this big wall." "This is not the Frick." "Looks funny all alone like that." "A brave little picture. Holds the wall." "I guess if you like it and I like it, thats all that ts." She turns and holds out her hand. "Sweet of you to try." "We get more. One of these days." "Maybe just have this one. Symbolizing the situa?tion." "What do you mean by the situation?" "We have hot dogs for dinner.&quo.９９ｌｉｂ?t; "How did you know I wanted hot dogs?" "I just intuited it." "Getting pretty domestic around here." Shes flipping a kit knife around and catg it by the blade in a dangerous manner. "I guess. Still, we know the truth." Sarah calls. "Who was that who answered the phone?" she asks. "That was Anne." "Whos she?" "A guest. I was i." "Bluebeard." "How are you?" "I got a ypewriter." "What kind?" "Smith-a. It spell fifty thousand words right." "More than I spell right." "Me too. I gnant. Mom tell you?" "No. She didnt." "Then I spontaneously aborted. Last month." "She should have told me. Or you should have told me." "No big deal." "This the guy from Finland?" "Yeah. He went back." "His reindeer were on fire." "He was going bayhow. I told him to go." "How do you feel?" "Im not having world-class luck." "Probably theres something wrong with you," Simon says. "Some kind of character flaw, final and ineradicable." "Thats it," she says. "You ing home any time soon?" "Itll be a while yet," he says. "Sweetie, you e over here. Whenever you want." "Scared of what I might see," she says. "So long." 11 SIMON remembered Sarah screaming wheried to turn off the televisiohe thing had captured her and anyone who laid a hand on it was subject to a full-scale tantrum with kettle drums and on. 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 sentehat Simon still marveled at. Whes were not marg to her satisfa she would say, gravely, "You are making me angry." After this sentence joihe households sentence-hoard Simon ceased to worry about language acquisition. In the early ms she would rush into the bedroom and climb into bed with Simon and his wife, settling iween them with soft little groans of satisfa. When she grew up, she said, she wao 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 icked up for shoplifting, frightened as thhly as possible, and released. The item iion 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 damhing he cared to including ing the grease trap if he cared to. Mitt nights. After dinner she told him not to eat onions from the pot. The baby standing o 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 happehen?" "The Korean guy behind the ter had a fit. Fell down and foamed at the mouth." "Is he okay?" "The paramedics took him away." "What happeo 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, nia, reduced iron, thiamine mononitrate, and riboflavin." "All great stuff. I remember riboflavin from my childhood. They put it iies 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 ditiohe dough ditiot sodium stearoyl lactylate, calcium sulfate and sodium sulfite." "Soybeans are good. Ied by Martin Luther King." "Moving right along, we get cooked pork and mozzarella cheese substitute. The mozzarella cheese substi?tute tains 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 starch, so?dium citrate, sorbic acid, sodium phosphate, artificial cuar gum, magnesium, oxide, ferric orthophosphate, zinc oxide, B-12, folic acid, B-6 hydrochloride, niaamide, 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 on 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 o use some kind of lotion, Simon, Lubriderm or --" "But hes still got pretty much hair fuy his age, thats a plus." "I think you need a haircut, Simo away from that shaggy look, thats not the look of today." "Veronica cut it for you. Veroniows 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, ighty rivers and slog up and down t 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 ie. "Lauren Hutton," he says. "She makes movies too." "Tons of intelligehere," he says. "A glance vinces. Probably dreams three-dimensional chess. Q.E.D." "Youre very supportive, Simon." "I love you guys." "Thats the first time youve said that." "I slipped." "Were in Marow. 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 t 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 mi, 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 o floor. I trip over it, in the dark, when I get up at 2 A.M. 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 maions, early in the m and late at night and isy obsessed noontimes. When I wake up from my nap you dohe laughing cavalier, you get a rank pigfooted belg blunderer. I khis one guy who built a wall down the middle of his apart?ment. An imperable wall. He had a very big apart?ment. It worked out very well. crete block, basically, with fiberglass insulation on top o藏书网f that and sheetro 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 e from? The extra-adulterous guilt? A: I keep w if, say, there is intelligent life on other plas, the stists argue that something like two pert of the other plas have the ditions, the physical ditions, to support life in the way it happened here, did Christ visit ead every pla, gh the same routihe Agony in the Garden, the Crucifixion, and so on. . . And these guys on these other plas, 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 uanding is imperfect. Q: You havent answered me. This general guilt -- A: Yes, thats the iing 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 t 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: Yood fortune. Q: It has nothing to do with good fortu 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 respoo dissatisfa. Q: Where is satisfa? 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 marg, metabolized crème br?lée, resent but there was not enough vinegar in this brain, it lacked vinegar. Simon drank vinegar in the ms 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 Zurid Basel, hed found chilled red wi bad either, a learning experi?ence, also that he did not want to live in a try so ferociously tidy. The prostitutes in Zurich were handsome well-dressed zebras, fav stark blad white, street furniture oral 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 old-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 ing 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-ed pressure-washed gun-applied polymer-t-coated steel. Quel happiness! Someone would get pregnant, everyone would get pregnant. At seventy hed be dealing with Pampers aeeth. The new children would be named Susan?nah, Clarice, and Buck. Hed stroll out on the lawn, iwilight, 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 oclo the afternoon. The women are i, 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 thihinks hes doing the right thing." "I dont think hes a nut." "I dont think hes a her." "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 watg 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 Ameri." 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 khis guy he was a tractor he tracted 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?" "town. 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 strohan a rat much stronger and the rat food didnt affect it, it was in good dition 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 t 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 t 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 tell one from another. Hes ied 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 distin between making things seem a certain way and having them really be a certain way." "Well even if hes only ied in making things seem a certain way that means hes not indifferent. To the degree that he makes the effort." "Thats true." "But maybe, oher 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 teiques." "Well I think were putting this thing too mu a teical basis, thats iing 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 respoo a test. It might make him mad." "Well this is not the only pla the world we 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 er." 12 Simon was delighted to be fifty-three, lean and aggressive except for his belly which was not lean and aggressive. He was youhan I. M. Pei, youhan Dizzy Gillespie, youhan the Pope. He had more wisdom packed in his little fihan was to be found iire Sweets catalog, with its pages of allurial moldings and fire-rated expansion joints. He had kept asbestos and asbestos-taining products out of every job he had ever worked on, sometimes at siderable cost. He had a daughter who would e into the kit at breakfast and say, "Whos got the goddamn New York Times?" Sarah did not wake well. He could spell 49,999 words correctly and make a pretty good stab at many of the rest. He had a Broar, courtesy of a clerk-typist in his unit whose gift for writing citations for routinely rotating personnel had been envied even at Corps level. The IRS regarded him as a cash cow, on a small scale, and regularly sent him loving salutations, including, one year, a box of Godiva chocolates. He could speak persuasively iings, maintaining a grave and thoughtful tenand letting all the dumb guys speak first. He had about twice the élan of youth, normal élan plus extra élan derived from raw need and grain spirits. Several of the male members of his family had lived to be fifty-nine or sixty. "Grow or die" was the maxim that most accorded with his experiend when he did not think of himself as a giraffe he thought of himself as a tree, a palm, schematically a skinny curviical with a lot of furor at the top. With colored felt pens and a pad of trag paper he could produce impressive sketches iy minutes, which he then had to recile with reality and sweat over for forty days, cursing himself for his facility. "What about the stalk?" A design prof had told the students that there were nht angles in nature, and Simon had raised the ques?tion of the stalk. Had he to do it again, thirty years later, he would have raised the question of the tele?phone pole, a deterioration of sensibility, perhaps. He rushed toward things, normally, his present quietude a parenthesis in a life not unmarked by strife and tes?tation. Pipe bombs did not bother him so long as they did not blow his face off. The assassination of the Swedish Prime Minister, oher hand, scarred his brain. He had met Palme o a feren the work of the Greek planner stantin Doxiodes in Sto in 1972, at which Doxiodes had declared himself a criminal because he had put human beings into high-rise buildings. Palme had been a benefit presence, a short man who wanted everything to go well, wahe world to succeed in good socialist fash?ion, gay and optimistic. "The deed of a lunatic," the Swedish police said, Simon feeling despair for human?kind. A friend, a Polish architect who had been at Penn with him, visited him in Philadelphia in 1984 on a grant from the Ford Foundation. Carol had made osso bud they had talked for hours. "Socialism, finally, doesnt work," Ryszard had said. "You get, you know, too many bad guys at the top." Ryszards father had been a deputy in the Polish parliament, a unist who sat for some years and had then been jailed follow?ing a ge in the leadership. It was the first time that anyone had said to Simon, with the authority of three decades of involvement, that socialism didnt work. "You get, at the summit, not the worst but the -worst." Simon took Ryszard to the airpave him as a going-aresent a Tizio lamp, regretted that he saw him so seldom, wished that he lived door, on Pireet. Carol, when they were twenty-five and twenty-six, had been a smart-ass, an admirable smart-ass. "I love you but its only temporary," she had said. She was fond of saying to people, "Heres wishing you a happy and successful first marriage." Simon could lift refrigerators other people couldnt lift. He had almost crushed his left haing a refrigerator down a set ht-aairs for a neighbor. His muscles responded brightly to challenge. Fifty-three, he thought, was not so much worse thay-three. All giraffes think this. "HE used a rolled-up neer," Veron?ica says, "what youd use on a dog. Only he put his bato it, when I was twelve and thirteen and four?teen. What I say? Sadisti-of-a-bitch. If hed been a drunk I could maybe have fiven him but he ９９lib?didnt drink. He iano salesman, worked for this piano store downtown. He played pretty well himself. Hed wao be a doy mot rid of him, eventually. Not soon enough." Simon thinks of his own large, calm father, still ac?tive at seventy-five, playing the market and raising hell on behalf of the ADA. Shes wearing patched jeans (patches at the back of the knee, just under a buttock, on the right thigh) and a dead-black sweater. Blond hair done in rows this m, a copy of Interview in her lap, somebody named Kim Basinger on the cover. He wants to hold her tight, rock her, even -- a non-rational impulse, shes almost as tall as he is. "Well, its a bitch," he says. This sounds feeble even to him. "He looked ni a suit. He had these pretty ex?pensive suits, maybe a dozen suits. He had a lot of shoes, I remember the shoes with shoetrees in them. He gave me a very good camera when I was fifteen, a Mamiyaflex, a twin-lens reflex. I used to take pictures of lizards, lizard-on-branch, lizard-on-brick-wall, lizard looking at camera --" "And your mother?" "She was kind of a dishrag, to tell the truth. Then. She pulled her socks up after she got rid of him. Shes still back there, in Denver. Shes a school principal, elementary school. Got a boyfriend, the shop teacher. She thinks shes doing Lady Chatterleys Lover." She pauses. "Guess what," she says. "What?" "Youre not a father-figure. That surprise you?" "No." "Youre more like a guy whos stayed out in the rain too long." Does this translate into experieried-and-true, well-tempered? Or pulpy, hanging-in-thin-strips? He pulls at an ear. "I mean worn, but with a certain character." Rust never sleeps, he thinks. "Well," he says, "shall we take the children to school?" "What children?" &quht." "Are you going to have any more children?" "Probably not." TIM, the professional whistler, is a sad Saab of a man about thirty. He has appeared on a number of local tv sholays club dates occasionally. He whistles "Twilight Time," "Tumbling Tumbleweeds," and "My Blue Heaven," the latter taken note-for-note from the famous record by Gene Austin. His whistling is tough, very tough, with many plicated flourishes. Tim says that the most famous whistler of all time was Fred Lowry, who whistled for both Vi Lopez and Horace Heidt and His Musical Knights. The version of the "William Tell Overture" Lowry did with Heidt has never been surpassed, Tim says. After dinner (roasted squab with chi-fried po?tato skins) Tim talks additionally about whistling. Dore is moving nervously betwee and the sitting room. Fred Lowrys version of "Indian Love Call" sold more than two million copies, Tim tells them. He him?self has had several careers other than whistling, nota?bly high-tech elei California. "I had this pla Mountain View. I had every?thing, proje television, walk-around no-hands tele?phones, stereo, a Nautilus mae, whirlpool bath, two BMWs, two dogs, PC with printer, shotguns, lots of shotguns, handguns, Alvar Aalto chairs and tables and chaises, art, some very fi, three Diebenkorns, two Clemehe house was by Frank Gehry, great trees, wine cellar, great California wines, I used to go around to the vineyards for the tastings, got to know a lot of the growers, thirty suits, this one is by Issey Miyake, he did it especially for me --" "Any of this true?" Veronica whispers. "How would I know?" Simon whispers. Tim is drinking Black Russians. Simon has go to obtain Kahlua and brandy. "What we were basically doing," Tim says, "was voice synthesis. The first application is clearly for peo?ple whove lost their voices because of operations or ohing and ahen toys, vending maes, voiceprint applications for banking and of course the whole teleunications thing. Bell Labs is heavily, heavily into this but we were doing some things that would have scared them if theyd known." Dore looks at Simon. Simon ines his head to the left, meaning Could be. "Digital is unbelievable," Tim says. "I take an ordinary utterand give it a nasty sneering tone, just by bending some numbers. I --" Veronica says, "So what are you doing now?" "Car wash," Tim says, "over oh Avenue. Washing cars. What most people dont know is that the finish on todays cars, especially the Japanese cars, actually embraces the dirt. I mean if you wahe dirt to adhere to the finish you couldnt e up with a better. . . There are these tiny pits uniformly distrib?uted over the surface of the car that act like traps for the grime, reach out and suck it up. It bees like plaque oh. Now, you wonder why they t de?vise a solvent that would dissolve the plaque and not harm the enamel. Im telling you, the formula exists. It is in being. But because the big dentifrice outfits dont want to lose a very, very lucrative market, you and I get zip. Have to go in twice a year and have some dental assistant scrape away with the old hand tool for an hour. Are you familiar with the work of Buster Fuller? Have you read what Fuller has to say about copper wire? The earths supply of copper is finite. Our per capita iment in copper, for every man, woman and child oh --" Simoing tired. "But of course you look at it in another way," he says. "Look at what?" "The whole thing. The deficit. The gover is the biggest er in the try, right? And thats going to be true by and large of all govers everywhere. So if every gover tract were tied to a proportionate amount which would go to redu of the deficit, if you could gover work without --" "Theyd just cost-plus you," says Tim. "No more cost-plus," Simon says. "Weve done away with it." "Theyd just bury it somewhere else." "More auditors." "Banks wouldnt give you your capitalization." "Nationalize em." "You want an across-the-board standardization of profit? Where do you get your iive?" "Say three tiers of iive tied to productivity. So thered be a meaningful variation but not flat-out rape, if you know what I mean." Tim sighs and strips off his jacket. "I once heard Fuller speak for seven straight hours. I only uood a tenth of what he was saying. By the end of the eve?ning there were only five people left in the audience. Hed started with three hundred. I went home and began to make tetrahedrons with Play-Doh and tooth?picks at two oclo the m. What would the three tiers be?" "Say the prime rate is six, owo and three times the prime rate. To get eighteen youd have to do aw?fully good work." "Who decides?" "Be the reverse of cost-plus. The multiplier would be how much ahead of time and how muder bud?get." "Underh the paint, God knows what." "Our iors would take ses." Tim says, "Thats terribly rational, Simon. The idea ress is philosophically dubious, you know that." "Not talking about progress. Talking about move?ment. Were not necessarily married to the present situ?ation." Tim looks at the three women. "Too bad. Engineering is key. We havent even floated the subjeoking. Every day, fifteen to twenty Ameris are injured by their ashtrays." SIMON enjoyed life as a ghost, one of the re?wards of living in the great city. So many units rushing to and fro that nobody noticed anything much or had time to remark on strangers in the house, in the neigh?borhood. Sublets were everywhere, two men and a grand piano might pop up in your building any Wednesday. Maybe old blockwatchers of thirty years standing were keeping running suses of the popula?tion, but Simon did not know the old blockwatchers and so felt fortably anonymous. For amusement, he cooked, or went to a neighborhood movie. He saw The Benny Goodman Story and Silverado, the first with Anne and the sed with Dore and Veronica. Dore and Veronica had not heard of Benny Goodman and thus werent ied; Anne didnt like Westerns. "How you not like Westerns?" Simon asked her, truly amazed, and she had said that when she was a child she had seen one in whidians had tied a man to two bent-dolings and then cut a rope and the saplings had rent the man into two distinct pieces and that she had never seen a Western since. Simon told her that not all Westerns had that kind of thing in them but she remained unpersuaded. Simon read, much of the time, and sulted with them on their plans. The first plan was to return to Denver, and nobody liked it. "Be damned if I will," Veronica had said, and Anne had said the same thing. The sed plan was to go to Paris and affiliate themselves with one of the cou?ture houses there, Saint-Laurent or Karl Lagerfeld. Al?though the best stuff was ing from Milan, they said. They talked knowledgeably about Memphis, at least the fabrics. The third plan was to join the Army and acquire training in a number of sophisticated elec?tronid puter skills. The fourth plan was Burger King. "A lot of Ameris work at Burger King. On a ?tingency basis." "Ameris of every creed and stripe." "Id rather go to Harvard?" "Transferring one-and-a-half ragged years at Fort Lupton unity?" "Yeah, yeah, I know." "I want to write music." "What kind of music?" "Serious music. Big musitire striions bending to the work." "You could study that." "I could. Where is this Juilliard place?" "I think you have to play something before you get in." "Tambourine? Naw thats a joke I know tambourine is no good." "Do you thiarted too late?" "Its oo late. In principle." "Chase has a plan for bank tellers." "I dont want to be a bank teller." "Well its a start." "Toward what?" "I dont want to think were fucked. I really dont want to think that." "We could go out and marry some more people." "The last thing I have in mind." "Yeah it does sound a little retrograde." Anne is in a retrospective mood. "I won the Colorado Miss Breck," she says. "I didnt wiional, though." "t win em all," Simon says. "It was very exg. This stuff is very exg when youre a kid, people making a fuss over you. It bees less exg. I wao be a doctor." "Everybody wants to be a doctor. Veronian the child-beater wao be a doctor." "I know," she says. "Helping people. Your existence is justified." Simon looks at his khakis; theyre a bit on the filthy side. Buy another pair. "You could still do that," he says. "Medical school." "Do you want to get married again?" "Hadnt thought about it." "Probably somebodyd marry you." "Like who?" "Some dumb woman. A odity with which the world is amply supplied. Me, for example." "That would be pretty dumb. You need a young sol?dier." "You telling me what I need?" &qu to." "I feel affeate toward you, Simon." "I feel the same thing. Not a good idea." "Who says?" "Aetna Life and Casualty." 13 VERONICA is missing. Not precisely missing, absent, rather. For several days nobody mentions the fact. Then on a Monday Anne says, "I wonder where the hell Veronica is." "Probably with Thag," Dore says. "Thag? Who is Thag?" Simon asks. "Guy she met at the laundromat," Anne says. "Hes a broker. Hes with Smith Barney." "If hes a broker whats he doing at the laundro?mat?" "So hes thrifty. She should have called, though." "Probably having a great time. The time of he.99ｌｉｂ.r life," says Dore. "Theyre probably sitting there drinking Dom Perignon and buying and selling Carbide right now." Dore reads the financial pages of the neers carefully and has fifty shares in a that is mar?keting a corrective for dry eye, or the inability to tear, a painful and depressing dition that afflicts hundreds of thousands of Ameris and tless fners, she says. "What kind of a name is Thag?" Simon asks irrita?bly. "I think its a beautiful name," Dore says. "Very Sdinavian." "Well if she does her ass back here pretty damn quick Im going to give her bed away." "Simon!" Anne exclaims. "Youre being possessive!" "I dont mean it." "I know. Thats the hell of it." "You dont wao be possessive." Oreet Simon and Anne gaze at a brand-new Honda, the paint a glittering dy red. "I dont like what Honda did with the frohis year," he says. "Yeah, its iive." Simon makes a shapiure with his hand. "That snout." Anne nods. "Very wrong. Still --" He puts an arm around her. "The first car I ever bought was a Hillman Minx. Ever see one of those?" "Before my time," she says. "A boxy little ragtop. Had all the power of a lawn-mower. Never had a car after that I liked as much." "During which marriage was that?" "You getting on me?" "Not me." "And I was going to take us for oysters at the Oyster Bar." "Im ready." "A certain dryness sets in. The situation dries out, as it were." "I dido pry." "When I was young I thought everything was very funny. I cracked up a lot. Dont do that anymore." "Youthful arrogance." "Id still like to think everything was funny." "I used to work with children," Anne says. "Disturbed children?" "Not more disturbed than any other children. Just ordinary children." "What did you do?" "I worked with them. We worked toget９9ｌiｂ.her, me and the children." " you be more specific?" "I just worked with them. Ordinary children. The children need a lot of work. Theyre just like anybody else. They need a lot of work. Theyre not finished. We glued things to paper plates. I worked with them. Daily. On a daily basis." "You had a place where you worked with them?" "Yeah it was a kind of nursery. Painted greige. Gray-beige. The color is thought to have a bearing on how the children feel. Some places have a lot ht colors, thats aheory, this was a soothing calm?ing creige." "So what were the children like?" "You t generalize, they were all different. Not every child feels the same thing at the same time. They were all different. For example, some of them were male." At the Oyster Bar under Graral they sit at a table o four men in business suits. One of the men has no arms and has removed his shoes. He has mittenlike socks on his feet and holds, between the big toe and the of the right foot, what looks to Simon like a Gibson. Q: You must be tired. Fatigued. A: No Im not a bit tired. Q: All of that. . . activity must have left you a bit tired. A: Yes I suppose you could think that. Q: Youre not tired. A: You meaally tired? Q: Physically. A: No Im not tired. I feel fine. Q: How are the headaches? A: Havent been having them. Q: That doeshey wont e back. A: The aspirin did the job. Q: It wasnt aspirin it was Tylenol. Extra-Strength Tylenol. A: Did the job. Q: Yes its supposed to be quite good. The drug houses send people around, detail men, they leave me samples of all sorts of things, I give them to patients. Free. A: Thats extremely generous. Q: Well otherwise theyd just rot, wouldnt they? I mean I have buckets and buckets. All brightly colored. A: I assume you dont drink. Except in moderation. Q: Also, Ive given up smoking. It was quite a battle. The sed finger on my right hand used to be brown, a yellow-brown. Now its not. A: You feel better. Q: I feel a little less stupid. So you were pretty mu hog heaven, there, with the three women, for all those months. . . A: As a situation, as a domestic situation, it was not unstressful. There were, naturally, peting is, people whose is at any oime were not ?gruent -- Q: You mean they fought. A: They were sisterly most of the time. On a while they fought. Q: Using what means? A: Mouth, mostly. Q: Not laceration of the skin by fingernails, hair-tearing, bosom-bashing. . . A: None of that. They were, most of the time, very good to one another. Q: Remarkable. A: I thought so. Q: When I was first married, when I was twenty, I didnt know where the clitoris was. I didnt know there was such a thing. Shouldnt somebody have told me? A: Perhaps your wife? Q: Of course she was too shy. In those days people didnt go around saying, This is the clitoris and this is what its proper fun is and this is what you do to help out. I finally found it. In a book. A: German? Q: Dutch. DORE sitting in the back of the house, watg a bird-fight. Two black birds are struggling in midair he ailanthus. "That one sucker is going to get the other sucker," she says. "Going to his clock for him." "Thats the way it is in this world," says Tim. "What does he win if he wins?" "Dont know." "You think Simons been all right lately?" "Morose," she says. "I get a definite moroseness." "Yeah. Thats kind of what I was talking about. Some people t stand prosperity." "You think he wants to go back to Philadelphia?" "He hasnt said yea or nay. I gather things werent so wonderful in Philadelphia." "Where did you go to school?" "ell." "What did you study?" "Electrical engineering." "Is that a good place for it?" "Its okay." "Whats your wifes name?" "Carol." "Everybodys wife is named Carol. You ever notice that?" "I didnt know that, no." "Is she pretty?" "No. Maybe kind of." "Oh. Whats she like?" "I see her in long red robes with a little red yarmulke on her head and a big gold cross on a around her ned a ring that you have to kiss. Standing just to the left of the throne and whispering into the ear of the king." "Is that Machiavelli?" "I was thinking more of that guy who worked for Nixon." "What does she think of you?" "Not much. I work at the car wash, remember?" "But thats only temporary." "By me everythings tempood things and bad things." "That must be fasating. The ierminacy." "Its fasating." 14 HE lost nine pounds (a great blessing) dur?ing the eight months they lived in the apartment..９９lｉｂ? 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." &quht 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. Oher hand Veronid the others derived their own politics from a K-Mart of sources, Thomas Aquinas marg shoulder-to-shoulder with Simone de Beauvoir and the weatherbeaten troopers of Sixty Mihey were ofte and right during the same versation, sometimes the same sentence. His headaches had gone away but had been replaced by early-m vomiting. A few ounces of yellow bile produced each m. He meditated on too much, thought carefully about a sufficy. When the women had been living with him he had thought of himself, very often, as insuffitly virile, or insuffi?tly ambitious. Who his much excitation? Oher 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 sehat he was a hotel, didnt mind being a hotel, okay Im a hotel. Two of them sug his co the early ms, 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 he t, quite near, Simon with his hands on that ones buttocks, around her waist and then moving dowhe buttocks with sloreciative 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? Aheres 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 trition --" "I dont mind making her feel bad. Shes bad." "Veronica, are you essentially what she says you are? Bad? You 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 t 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 iure when my ship es in or something. Something, then, may be released ihat will allow --" "I dont think shes going to aowledge 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 t 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 do together in the hree to five minutes Im going to --" "What?" SIMONS .99ｌｉｂ?her died and he flew back to California for the funeral. He had to buy a dark suit, went to Barneys and picked the first ohat seemed to fit him. In San Francisco he stood o 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 ie 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 uo be present because of a daughter giving birth in Corvallis, on. 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 seve last week but he did very well, very well. We have some other stuff thats looking good." "How about ing to New York? I have a place９９ｌib? 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 iate, but not the smallest. Simon remembered odd mo?ments: putting a huge dollop of Worcestershire sau 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 sed Louis-Schmeling fight, sitting by the radio all night long in 1939 listening to ats of the German invasion of Poland. When Simon had been expelled from USC, before he went to Penn, he had e home and told his father about it, and his fathers only ent 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. Ba New York he receives a notice for jury duty. How this be? Hes nistered to vote. he?less he dutifully hauls himself down to 60 tre Street one Monday m. 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 versation 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 huhousand a year for the pany, profit," she says. " you believe it?" She produces fourteen issues a year, with each issue running to y-six pages of editorial and God knows how many of ads. "Its hard to think of things to feature after a while," she fesses. "How many ways of bifurg breasts are there? We take a lot of clues from the artists. Memphis is in now, spatter and clatter." The lingerie editor tells him that her assistant is a berserko and that its impossible to get good subordi?hese days. Simon, empaneled, is knocked off a murder case, empaneled again, is knocked off a rape case. "The defendant is accused of sexual misduct," the blond woman judge tells the jurors. "Will the defendant stand up so that the jurors see him?" The defendant stands and almost involuntarily takes a little bow. Wheorneys, questioning Simon in the jury box, ask him what he is, he says he is an architect. At the lunch break ohird day, he meets, in a cluster of fast food stands in a little park he 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 w their way down the list. Simon designed and had printed posites for them and they left these at every ad agency of any size iy. 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 sideration be?fore 1999, when they would be too old to begin train?ing. Anne and Veronica are fighting. "Stupid bitch!" "Asshole!" ", 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 t of 1986." "Whats this about? Whats the issue?" "Simon youre so fug 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?" "vention. The National Sprinkler Association. At the Ameria. We have to stand uhese things a 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 stogs." "No thrill in body stogs." "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 wao 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 es." "You 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 Pireet house, both cars, sixty-five thousand dollars a year in alimony, child support at a level sonant with the childs previous style of life, fifty pert of all re?tirement funds, IRA, Keogh and the firms, fifty per?t of his partnership i in the firm iuity, and fifty pert of all odds and ends of stocks, bonds, cash and real property not subsumable under one of the previous rubrics. The t has been severely damaged in all ways by Simoion 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." "ure skin." 15 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." &quht 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. Oher hand Veronid the others derived their own politics from a K-Mart of sources, Thomas Aquinas marg shoulder-to-shoulder with Simone de Beauvoir and the weatherbeaten troopers of Sixty Mihey were ofte and right during the same versation, sometimes the same sentence. His headaches had gone away but had been replaced by early-m vomiting. A few ounces of yellow bile produced each m. He meditated on too much, thought carefully about a sufficy. When the women had been living with him he had thought of himself, very often, as insuffitly virile, or insuffi?tly ambitious. Who his much excitation? Oher 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 ?hat he was a hotel, didnt mind being a hotel, okay Im a hotel. Two of them sug his co the early ms, 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 he t, quite near, Simon with his hands on that ones buttocks, around her waist and then moving dowhe buttocks with sloreciative 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? Aheres 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 trition --" "I dont mind making her feel bad. Shes bad." "Veronica, are you essentially what she says you are? Bad? You 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 t 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 iure when my ship es in or something. Something, then, may be released ihat will allow --" "I dont think shes going to aowledge 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 t 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 do together in the hree 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 ohat seemed to fit him. In San Francisco he stood o 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 ie 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 uo be present because of a daughter giving birth in Corvallis, on. 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 seve last week but he did very well, very well. We have some other stuff thats looking good." "How about ing 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 iate, but not the smallest. Simon remembered odd mo?ments: putting a huge dollop of Worcestershire sau 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 sed Louis-Schmeling fight, sitting by the radio all night long in 1939 listening to ats of the German invasion of Poland. When Simon had been expelled from USC, before he went to Penn, he had e home and told his father about it, and his fathers only ent 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. Ba New York he receives a notice for jury duty. How this be? Hes nistered to vote. he?less he dutifully hauls himself down to 60 tre Street one Monday m. 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 versation 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 huhousand a year for the pany, profit," she says. " you believe it?" She produces fourteen issues a year, with each issue running to y-six pages of editorial and God knows how many of ads. "Its hard to think of things to feature after a while," she fesses. "How many ways of bifurg breasts are there? We take a lot of clues from the artists. Memphis is in now, spatter and clatter." The lingerie editor tells him that her assistant is a berserko and that its impossible to get good subordi?hese days. Simon, empaneled, is knocked off a murder case, empaneled again, is knocked off a rape case. "The defendant is accused of sexual misduct," the blond woman judge tells the jurors. "Will the defendant stand up so that the jurors see him?" The defendant stands and almost involuntarily takes a little bow. Wheorneys, questioning Simon in the jury box, ask him what he is, he says he is an architect. At the lunch break ohird day, he meets, in a cluster of fast food stands in a little park he 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 w their way down the list. Simon designed and had printed posites for them and they left these at every ad agency of any size iy. 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 sideration be?fore 1999, when they would be too old to begin train?ing. Anne and Veronica are fighting. "Stupid bitch!" "Asshole!" ", 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 t of 1986." "Whats this about? Whats the issue?" "Simon youre so fug 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?" "vention. The National Sprinkler Association. At the Ameria. We have to stand uhese things a 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 stogs." "No thrill in body stogs." "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 wao make a little pile of money and burn it right here on the flobbr>or? Theres enough money around. Take it easy. Wait until you find something you want." "Were es." "You 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 Pireet house, both cars, sixty-five thousand dollars a year in alimony, child support at a level sonant with the childs previous style of life, fifty pert of all re?tirement funds, IRA, Keogh and the firms, fifty per?t of his partnership i in the firm iuity, and fifty pert of all odds and ends of stocks, bonds, cash and real property not subsumable under one of the previous rubrics. The t has been severely damaged in all ways by Simoion 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." "ure skin." 16 SIMOhe poet at the Iional Arrivals Building, holding one hand behind him. The nine-hour Finnair flight from Helsinki has been ex?hausting, but she has met A, B, d D -- Russias so fabulously gifted that none of them has been allowed to publish so much as a weather report. "Thats terrific," he says. "You look beautiful." "They all speak English," she says, "this half-misuood English which is three times as good as regular English." She notices that he is holding something be?hind his back. "Whats that?" He produces a large, eak, a steak big as a Sunday Times. She is em?barrassed and pops the steak into her vas carryall. "I do your metaphor," she says in the cab. "Is it hunger?" Shes right, it is hunger. Dont tell her. They sit in her kit. "The burning barns in your poems," he says, "why so many? Isnt that a little. . . repetitive?" "My burning barns," she says, "my splendid burning barns, Ill burn as many barns as I damn please, Pappy." He is older than she is, by ten years, and she has given him this not altogether wele niame. She looks absolutely stunning, a black three-quarter-length skirt embossed with black bird figures, a knitted sleeveless jacket, a yellow long-sleeved blouse, a red ascot. "Seriously, do you think there are too many? Barns?" Its the first time she has asked his opinion about anything ected with her work. "I was half teasing," he says. "But they did burn," she says. "Every one Ive ever known." "Simon says," Simon says, "Simon needs a beer." She rises and moves to fetch a St. Pauli Girl from the refrigerator. The poet lives in the try, in an old Putnam ty farmhouse that she has not touched except to paint the walls pale blue. She has painted over the old aper, and the walls puff and wrinkle in places. The furniture is junk golden oak, one piece to a room except i, where there is a table and two mis?matched chairs. "This one is Biedermeier," the poet says, "from my mother, and the other, the potato-chip jobbie, is Eames, from my father. That tell you any?thing?" Simon takes the train from Graral to Put?nam ty. He doesnt like the train, almost always in miserable repair and without air ditioning, aes ging at Croton, the rush from orain to another more like a stampede than anything else, but the views of the stately Hudson from the discolored window>99lｉb?s are wonderful, and when he alights at Garri?son at the end of this trip she is sitting on the hood of her circus-red Toyota pickup, drinking apple juice from a paper cup. The poet sings to him: Row, row, row your bed Gently dowream. . . THE professional whistlers wife calls and says that if the resident bitches and tarts doheir hands off her husband she will cause a tragic hap?penstance. "Sounded a little pissed," Anne says. "These housewives," says Veronica, "I guess you t blame them they dont have the latitude." Dore says, "Let her e around, her ass is grass." "Simon is passive." "I dont think hes so passive he grasps you very tightly. I think the quality of the embrace is important." "I think hes more active than passive. Im still sore. I dont call that passive." "Hes at a strange pla his life." "Youre like one of those people who have tiny little insights of no sequence." "The hell you say." "Youre like one of those people who have weird fig?urative growths on their minds that e out in dismal exfoliations." "Youre funnin me." "Youre like one of those people who dont know their ass from their elbow." "Well theres o be vulgar." "Yes there is." "Who says?" "I say." "Well therbbr>es o be vulgar." "You want one?" "One what?" "Bang." "Whats it got on it?" "Sprinkles." "Naw Im not det." "Hes slender." "You call that slender?" "I except the paunch." "He go maybe eighteen times in a good month." "Thats depressing." "I think its depressing." "I really want to be more vulgar than I am at present being." "Well who the fucks stopping you?" "I guess nobody." "I guess we could dance cheek-to-cheek." "I guess we could tear up some little bunches of vio?lets." "Well theres o be destructive." "We pretend to be okay." "Im fine. Im really fine." "I was fine. Spent a lot of time on it, buffing the heels with one of those rocks they sell in the drugstore, oiling the carcass with precious oils -- Then I found out. How they exploit us and reduce us to nothing. Mere knitters." "Howd you find out?" "Read it in a feminist text." "I heard theyre not gon us read any more books." "Whered you hear that?" "Just around. On the Rialto." "Maybe it would be better for us so we wouldnt be so exacerbated." "Youre like one of those people who lay down the flag in the dirt before its time." "Well thats what you say you fool." "I want the y dreams." "What is it?" "Camaro." "Youre like one of those people who have really shitty dreams, know what I mean? Really shitty dreams." "How you say that?" "I played in a band once." "What was your instrument?" "Tambourine." "t get a union card for tambourine." "My knee all blad blue, I banged my tambou?rine on it. First the elbow, then the knee." "I saw a beautiful ass. In a picture. It was white and was walking away from the camera. She was holding hands with a man. He was oo it was a beautiful picture." "Howd that make you feel?" "Inferior." "Well thats what you say you idiot." "Id like to light up a childs life. I apologize I was wrong." "Yes you were wrong." "But I still think what I think." "Its hard to get a scrape when you want to light up a childs life." "Ive do three times." "Leaves you heavy of heart." "It does." A: Ive crossed both major os by ship, the Pacific twice, on troopships, the Atlantice, on a passenger liner. You stand out there, at the rail, at dusk, and the sea is limitless, water in every dire, never-ending, you think water forever, the movement of the ship seems slow but also seems inexorable, you feel you will be moving, this way forever, the Pacific is about sev?enty million square miles, about ohird of the earths surface, the ship might be making twenty knots, Im eating es because thats all I keep down, twelve days of it with young soldiers all around, half of them seasick -- On the Queen Mary, in tourist class, we got rather good food, there was a guy assigo our table who had known Paderewski, the great pianist who was also Prime Minister of Poland, he talked about Paderewski for four days, an o of anec?dotes -- Q: I was tempted to bee a shrink. But then I de?cided it wasnt sce. A: But what if she stabs me in the ear with the scis?sors? Q: Havent you realized that she is not going to stab you in the ear with the scissors? A: A lot of people go along assuming that. And then they get stabbed in the ear with the scissors. Q: You saw yourself, iion to the three women, as an artist w in fat. A: No no no. Q: Im a doctor. You tell me. Im used to hearing terrible things. A: I felt blessed. Q: Your hands are trembling. A: That happens in the ms sometimes. Q: Whie was the best? A: All lovely, all. Q: I dont have a clear idea of what these women looked like. A: Dore had a scar. Right on the cheekbone, parallel to it. A good ind-a-half. About as thick as a pencil line, but white. Her hair was what they call ash-blond; she had black eyebrows. Veronica was blond too, a blonder blond. Very good forehead. Wore a ponytail a lot of the time. Anne had dark hair, very long. She had the lo hair. Q: Did you feel, when you went out oreet with one of them, or to the market, that you looked straogether? A: Never occurred to me. Q: You do wear young clothes, youngish wretched clothes, garb of the youth culture slightly misuood -- A: Nothing the matter with my clothes. Ive always worn these clothes. Q: You see ts in those clothes? A: Of course not. I put on a jacket and tie and -- Q: Harris tweed, a blue chambray shirt, dark-red tie h wool -- A: Its a uniform, yes. Q: Im greatly forted. I dont like to think of people not wearing their uniforms, out of uniform. A: Nor do the ts. Q: Bellies. Ive always beely drawn to the fe?male belly, as a more subtle, less overt, sculptural repre?sentation of all the other tactile values we associate with -- A: All sculpture is about women, if you care to look at it that way. Buildings are about women, cars are about women, landscape is about women, and tombs are about women. If you care to look at it that way. The Grand yon. Q: The Eiffel Tower? A: About women in the sense of being addressed to women. Q: Who speaks for the male? A: Monks. Q: Is the bicycle about women? A: Speeds us toward women as twilight time de?sds and the lamplighters go about their slow in?diary tasks. Q: What about coveting your neighbors wife? A: Well on one side, in Philadelphia, there were no wives, strictly speaking, there were two floors and two male couples, all very nice people. Oher side, Bill and Rachel had the whole house. I like Rachel but I dont covet her. I could covet her, shes covetable, quite lovely and spirited, but in point of fact our relationship is that of neighborliness. I jump-start her car when her battery is dead, she gives me basil from her garden, shes got acres of basil, not literally acres but -- Anyhow, I dont think thats much of a problem, cov?eting your neighbors wife. Just speaking administra?tively, I dont see why theres aire a devoted to it. Its a mental exercise, coveting. To covet is not necessarily to take a. Q: I covet my neighbors leaf blower. It has this Vari-Flo deal that lets you -- A: I obey the as, the sensible ones. Where they dont know what theyre talking about I ig?hem. I keep thinking about the story of the two old women in church listening to the priest disc on the dynamics of the married state. At the end of the sermourns to the other and says, "I wish I knew as little about it as he does." Q: God critiques us, we critique Him. Does Carol also engage in dalliance? A: How quaint you are. I think she has friends whom she sees now and again. Q: How does that make you feel? A: I wish her well. Q: Whats in your wallet? A: The usual. Credit cards, pictures of Sarah, drivers lise, forty dollars in cash, Amex receipts -- Q: It seems to me that we have quite a great deal to worry about. Does the radish worry about itself in this way? Yet the radish is a living thing. Until its cooked. A: Carol is mad for radishes, t get enough. Ra?chel gave us radishes, too. Q: I am feverishly ied in these questioh?ics has always been where my heart is. Moral precept?ing stings the dull mind into attentiveness. A: Im only a bit depressed, only a bit. Q: A new arra of ideas, based upon the best thinking, would produce a more humane moral order, which we need. Apple honey, disposed upon the sexual parts, is not an index of dece. Dece itself is not as bad as its been painted. As for myself, I a..m ?tent with too little, I know this about myself and I do not end myself for it and perhaps one day I shall be able to ge myself into a hungrier being, one who acts decisively to grasp -- A: The leaf blower, for example. 17 THE poet gives him a picture of herself posed naked as a Maja on a couch. The Polaroid is ill-lit, badly posed, unflattering to her stomach, and she is shiny of nose. Furthermore, the couch is ugly, done in inch-square blad-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 fuhan real people." She names for his eaihe sed, third, fourth, and fifth most beautiful male poets in the try. "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. eously 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 meahing in one poem and ahing 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 atuary 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-ohing 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 dles down to nubs. And then find new dles. Thats what they do." "I dont know I still feel threatened I mean Im as generous as the man but I still feel emphatically that our position here has radically altered for the worse. Somehow." "Poets eat up all of experiend then make poems of it is she any good?" "He thinks so." "What does he know hes an architect." "He was doing p Lit before he got kicked out of USC." "Whatd he get kicked out for?" "Slugged a dean in a riot, it was a First Amehing he says." Tim es in wearing a dark-blue flannel suit with a faint pinstripe. He leaks prosperity. "Tim!" Veronica says. "Whats happeo you?" "This is from Paul Stuart," Tim says. "Seven hun?dred bucks. Do you like it?" "You look like a new man. A new aer 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 cept was mine," he says, "lawyers you Xerox on any street er. Were specializing in mal?practice, its everywhere. I estimate that forty-seven pert of all patient-physi enters have ele?ments that would tend to support a successful a. We project a y-eight pert 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 reag 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 ht, hes OB-GYN?" "His name is Linh pronounced Ling hes Vietnam?ese he was a general inam." "They were all generals inam," 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, 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 mihe garlid sautés 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 sauté pan for two or three minutes, at the same time heating a of chi broth and half a of water. He adds chopped parsley to the pas it cook for a bit, then scoops the tents of the sauté pan into the chi 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 bees 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." &quht," 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 fug us indiscriminately and reading The Wall Street Journal. Your vital is are not involved here. You dont give a shit." "How do you know?" Once hed been i with Anne in the early m. She was wearing a thin transparent shift, nothing else. They had already made love and i scuffled for a long time alternately embrag and struggling, Simon running his hands over her breasts, her back, between her legs, Anne hugging him and then jumping up and ing her legs around his waist. "This is a female fantasy," she had said, "love i." "Love instead of the kit," he said, and she said, "But I like the kit." 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 worremely short shorts with just that in mind, had in fact bee home a .9９lib.time or two. "My mother couldnt trol me," she said, "I was untrollable." He picked her up aed 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. "Frolid 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 fhtmares a year. I have them every night, there is no night in which I dont have something that 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 khe shoes, for some reason I have put on my shoes first and then try to put orousers, try to pull them over the shoes. . . Q: I oftehat my rifle isnt . You it and it and then the sergeant looks down the barrel and decides its not , its got very little to do with whether the barrel is or is not , its a metaphysical propositioed 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 buhe 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 bis drive is ag up and I ought to be able to fix it藏书网 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 fortable 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, Bara, Sto, 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 m. 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 pla 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 uies offered another path but ohey were not likely to take. The uies 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 overe, not only impatie a real loathing, whose source he did not really uand. Veronica told him that she had flunked Freshman English 1303 three times. "How in the world did you do that?" he asked. "a splices," she said. "Also, every time I wrote down something I thought, the small-se teacher said that it was banal. It probably was banal." Simon found what the women had to say anything but banal, 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. ?pare and trast extrinsid intrinsic motivation, giving examples of each. Father-beaten young women sideririnsid 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 structed 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 dowairs 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 void 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. "Chifuckers!" 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 uhe field jacket. "Up ygy fuckface," he screams, but a quieter scream. "Time for breakfast, Hal." "Thank you," Hal says in a normal versational tone, and takes the bill. He wheels and marches off dowreet, scream?ing "ts ts ts ts ts!" Simon goes back upstairs. Veronies 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 wao do?" "Talk to her." "What 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 pert of all Ameri wome 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, nht, no waiting in lis 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 phrase that better, youre chilly forever." No, thats not r.?ight, this is hog heaven, they fall into each others trotters, nothing be done wrong here, nothing wrong be done. . . 18 "AHA!" Simon says. "Not too bad," says Veronica. "Ill have another," Ralph says. He puts a ten on the bar. "Me too," says Veronica. "Ill go along," Simon says. "You two getting it on, or what?" Ralph asks. "Just acquaintances," Veronica says. "Mere ac?quaintances." "Dont look like mere acquaintao me," Ralph says. "I have a feel for that sort of thing. Theres a eople look. They kind of lean toward each other." "This music is a little muddy," Simon says. The jukebox is playing a Madonna number, "Into the Groove". "You mean ceptually?" Veronica asks. "I mean the sound." "I dont care," Ralph says. "If you twetting it on. Im just an old friend. If you twetting it on, Im happy for you. This kid is not my type, actually. I love her, but shes not my type. We spent the night to?gether once, and it was a damp, damp evening. Many, many tears. You remember?" "Dont remind me. I remember." "The Brown Palace," Ralph says. "Denvers fi." "You were trying very hard," Veronica says. "I always try very hard. One of the hings about me. But you just sat there a, all night long. First I said to myself, Ralph, what is this? Is this a tactic? Is this a maneuver? If its a tactic, whats the objective? I couldnt see an objective. So I decided it was grief, real grief." "It was grief." "So I said to myself, how am I to deal with this real, genuine grief? Room service? Booze? What?" "Booze we already had." "Stuff a cold, starve a fever," Ralph says. "I decided this was more in the cold area. We had their twenty-two dollar prime rib, if you remember." "I had just busted up with Jack." "So were sitting there tearing up this twenty-two-dollar prime rib in the Brown Palace at four oclo the m and she tells me I have a relentlessly pedestrian mind. Remember that?" "I guess I was in a bad mood or something." "I was not unaware of that," Ralph says. "he?less it hurt me, at the time. Now I laugh about it." "I robably too drunk to be as sensitive as I am when Im not drunk," she says. "You were pretty unhappy. You were probably thinking, what am I doing in this hotel room with this bozo?" "I hought of you that way. I always thought of you as kind of a friend." "I just bought a new Mazda, gold in color," Ralph says. "People who are referred to as kind of a frieo buy cars that are gold in color." "Now youre feeling sorry for yourself," Veronica says. "Stop it." "Back to Denver," Ralph says. "Denver and my gold Mazda." "This rounds on me," Simon says. "The same again? Everybody?" IN the first dream he was grabbed by three or four cops for firing a e-plated .45 randomly ireet. He had no idea where he had gotten the .45 or why it was e-plated. In the sed dream he awoke sitting on a lounge in a hotel lobby wearing pants and shoes but bare-chested. "Ive got to find a shirt," he thought. Then he was in an apartment, which he reized, trying to find a shirt. People were sleeping in the apartment and he kept banging into cymbals on stands placed here and there. He couldnt find a shirt. His mother came out of a clos藏书网doesnt see him. Onan didnt make it to Paradise? Seems unfair. Great deal of marble about, he notices, shades of rose and terra-cotta; Paradise seems to have been designed by Edward Durell Stone. Sce had worked out a way to cremate human remains, reduce the ashes to the size of a bouil?lon cube, and fire the produto spa a rocket, solving the Forest Lawn dilemma. Simon had once done a sketch problem on tomb sculpture, for his soph?omore Visual Awareness course. No more tomb sculp?ture. Paradise unearned. It was, rather, a gift, in this way theologically unsound. It was a state or dition vis?ited upon him, like being in the Army. Simon had walked around in green fatigues for most of two years, doing the best he could from day to day, sometimes carrying drunken rades back to the barracks at night, outside Stuttgart, in a firemans lift. His days were spent in meaningless maneuvers with giant ?ons which the Army was afraid to fire for fear they wouldnt work. Mostly, wheed, they didnt. Simon read Stars & Stripes and very goobbr>d mystery novels by John D. Maald. On leave in Berliried to find buildings by Karl Friedrich Skel, whose work had not been lost ohe women would soon be gohe best thing he could do was to listen to them. "Ive had twenty-six years practi standing up. I do it," Anne says. Shes wearing sants with a dark gray eck sweater and medium-gray Reeboks. Shes been drinking tequila and shes terribly drunk. "I want to tell you something." "What?" "You think were dumb bunnies." "What makes you think that?" "Your attitude." Simons been reading Audubon A, "Arizona Dam Project Faew Challenge." "Whats my attitude?" "I see fatigue and disgust." "Sweetie, thats not true." "Dont call me sweetie." "Anne," he says, "you want to sit down?" "You think were nht enough for you." "Youre as bright as anybody. I mean it." "You have an attitude of disdain. Sticks out all over you." "Just not so." "Veronica thinks you want us out." "No. Untrue." "She thinks your mind is wandering." "Thats what my mind does. Wander. Right now Im thinking about the furniture of Paradise." "What is it?" "Knoll, basically." He pushes a sketch pad toward her. "But you see they havent allowed for the angels who have only one wing, so Im trying to --" "The angels have only one wing?" she says in aston?ishment. "Some angels have only one wing." He shows her an old engraving in which a single-winged angel is pic?tured. "How they fly with only one wing?" "What makes you think they fly? Ieral sense?" "Ive always seen them with two wings." "Artists like symmetry." "He looks imperfect." "You get a lot aplished with one wing. Fan the flames ahe orchestra. I saw Buddy Rich, the drummer, play with a broken arm one night. Did more with one hand and his two feet than --" "But itd be like having only one breast." He slips a hand inside her shirt. Her breasts are bare. "If Id spent the same amount of time w about my mind as I have w about my chest, Id be Hegel by now," she says. "I mean sihirteen." "Old Hegel." "Dont be so snotty. We have Hegel in Denver." "Hegel is quite sexy. Thesis, antithesis, synthesis." "You think thats where he got the idea?" "Could be." Simon positions the white plaster egg eight feet tall iting room. The womeg. He smashes it with an iron-headed maul. Inside are three naked youheir names are Harry. 19 Q: I sometimes imagihat I am i trol. I have a small white truck with a red diamond-shaped emblem on the door and a white jump suit with the same emblem on the breast pocket. I park the tru front of a subscribers hree-huhousand-dollar home, extract the silver ister of deadly pest-killer from the back of the truck, and walk up the brick sidewalk to the houses front door. Chimes ring, the door swings open, a young wife in jeans and a pink flannel shirt worn outside the jeans is standing there. "Pest trol," I say. She smiles at me, I smile bad move past her into the house, into the handsomely appointed kit. The ister is suspended by a sling from my right shoulder, and, pumping the meism occasionally with my right hand, I point the nozzle of the hose at the baseboards and begin to spray. I spray alongside the refrigerator, alongside the gas range, uhe sink, and behind the kit table. , I move to the bathrooms, pumping and spraying. The young wife is in another room, waiting for me to finish. I walk into the main sitting room and spray discreetly behind the largest pieces of furniture, an oak sideboard, a red plush Victorian couch, and along the inside of the fireplace. I do the study, spraying behind the masters heavy desk on which there is an open copy of the bia Encyclopedia, hes been looking up the Seven Years War, 1756-63, yellow highlighting there, and be?hind the forty-five-inch RCA television. The master bedroom requires just touches, like perfume behind the ear, short bursts in her closet which must avoid the two dozen pairs of shoes there and in his closet which ?tains six to eight long guns in vas cases. Finally I spray the laundry room with its big white washer and dryer, and behind the folding table stacked with sheets and towels already folded. Who folds? I surmise that she folds. Unless one of the older children, pressed into service, folds. In my experiehey are uo fold. Maybe the au pair. Finished, I tear a properly-made-out receipt from my receipt book and present it to the young wife. She scribbles her name in the appro?priate spad hands it bae. The house now stinks quite palpably but I know and she knows that the stench will dissipate in two to four hours. The young wife escorts me to the door, and, in parting, pins a silver medal on my chest and kisses me on both cheeks. Pest trol! Four oclo the m. Simon listen?ing to one of his radios, sipping white wiwo horn players are talking about Coltrane. "The thing is," one says, and the other bursts in to say, "Yeah, but wait a minute." A Woody Shaw record is played. Simons using ear?phones so he play the music as loud as he pleases without disturbing the women. At low volume you lose half of it, a thing his wife had never uood. Now one of the guests is praising D flat. "This is on ITC," the host says. "ITC is a new label thats just getting started in LA. Theyre getting new guys and doihings." The drummer on the Woody Shaw record is wonderfully skillful if a bit orotund. "Great one," says one of the guys on the radio, when the Wynton Marsalis track is over. "A lot of humility," says the other. "I mean he do it all." Simon suddenly remembers putting on his daugh?ters shoes, in the m, before his wife took her to nursery school. His wife brought in the child and the shoes, and Sarah would sit on his lap as sneaker was fit?ted to foot. "Make your toes little," hed say, and shed perversely spread them. "New York is a bitch," the radio says, "but theres more unity." Wheat-germ bubble gum was served At the Maniacs Ball He lays himself down in bed, sleeps fitfully for an hour and a half. At six hes up again, in a t-shirt and jeans, moving around the apartment. The women are all still sleeping. He looks out of the windows. Oreet a man in violet running shorts is carrying a woman on his shoulders, shes in fact riding him, her legs around his neck. The man is heavy, muscular, car?ries his rider with spectacular ease. The woman is in her early forties, the man the same age or a little youhe man runs in circles, the woman waves like a circus performer. Its six-thirty. When he goes out to get the Times there is a semi-corpse in the vestibule, a barely breathing Hispanic male. Hes vomited blood and blood is all over the red tile. Simon shakes the mans shoulder. Whiskey smell and no visible wounds. He shakes the man again. No response. Theres a hospital at the end of the block. Simon, on the sidewalk, stops a resident on the way to work. Hes Oriental, Korean or Japanese, white-clothed, a stetho?scope stu his right-hand jacket pocket. "Theres a man in here. Not in good shape." The doctor looks annoyed. "Call nine one one." "I think youd better look at him. He looks pretty far gone." With clear reluce the doctor, a small man with a mustache, follows Simon into the vestibule. He bends over the fallen man, taking care not to touch him. "Call the hospital. Something in the --" He moves one hand up and down his chest. "Drunk, too." Simes back upstairs and telephohe hos?pital. AND what if we grow old together, just the four of us? The loving quartet? What if we raddle to?gether? They of course raddling at a rate less precipi?tant than my own. I have a quarter-tury advantage, in terms of raddling. Hes WAD, as the medical stu?dents say, Whirling Around the Drain. What kind of old ladies will these old ladies be? Veronica will be, as ever, moody. Shell do something immensely foolish, like writing a book. The book will be aended medi?tation on the word "or," or the road not taken, or the road taken but not enjoyed, or the road taken and en?joyed to the fullest, a celebration of "or" not less fun-some than Kierkegaards. Twelve people will read the book. Four will write her letters. I will read the book but not write her a let藏书网ter. "Good work," I will say to Veronica, clapping her on the shoulder several times to signal hearty gratulation. "That type. . ." The book will have bee in Bulmer, a typeface most eloquent, anorexic Bodoni but speakiheless. Veronica will bring me my toddy as I sit by the fire, two pints of tequila laced with capers and a little gunpowder. Shell kiss my knee, which will probably, by this time, resem?ble a drill bit. Ill place my claw in her hair, now red and a very ving red thanks to improved Dupont manipulation of the Periodic Table. The old folks at home. Dore will e in and demand to know where my penis has got to. I dont know, Ill say, it was there yes?terday, more or less. You call that there, shell say, sfully, and Ill say, I am a poor relic, a poor husk, a leftover, a single yellow bean covered with g sailing on a flawed plate through the refrigerator of life. Yes, shell say, excuses, you promised us Eden, you did, I remember, not anything you said in so many words but by implication, you implied that we would be happy forever together. . . I didnt! Ill say, or scream, I always said that things would turn out badly, sult the records, look at the transcript, you have nht to -- Anne "ITS the fault of men. As a group." "They dont want us to bloom and flower." &qu to keep all the prosperity for a few self-selected individuals. Men." "Ive e on every side." "Whole societies have taken glee and satisfa from heg, humiliating and sc me." "Thought I heard a skunk barking." "They are tearing me apart with their defamations that whole worlds chuckle about." "I think we should buy some cars or something, Firebirds and Cutlasses." "The insequence of your thought is a burden to me." "Stick a screwdriver down your throat if you mess with me. A big screwdriver." "Gotta get that birds on the ground." "You start, in America, with just a nickel, and pretty soon you have a dime!" "Ive been busy, s buttons, ohing and an?other." "Polishing the doorknobs aing the fug out of the ers." "A few rows of figgers Id like you to check over." "Used to be able to stay up all night and roar. t do that now." "Wash my fingers frequently, bubbling in respoo forms and questionnaires." "We watched a movie in which a giant delier visited the earth and a lot of little green wimps hung about the edges of the frame, g." "Yeah I saw that one." "Guy came up to me oreet, black guy, he says, you spare a quarter for an Ameri citizen? " "You gave it to him." "How could I not?" "Caught in the itive squeeze." "Pink always struck me as sordid." "Hes got those little spots on his hands." "Burns. From cooking fried chi. The grease jumps." "If men knew what they were doing, they would ge with fear." "Older people should be treated with respeot much but some." "Thats really a very fiitude toward older peo?ple. I admire you for that." "Its hard to be bright and fresh when youre too old." "You actally shoot y. Ive known cases of that." "Old men with es gimping down the sidewalk. White hair a heads." "I dreamed about this pony last night. Very engag?ing pony. We kept it in Simons room." "They found more rabid skunks. Two in Brooklys and o the World Trade ter." "If they get here, how will they get here?" "From Brooklyn, they have to walk over the bridge. From downtown, all they have to do is walk up Hudson Street." "They could be on Hudson Street already. We wouldnt know." "They could be in the graveyards. Hiding out in the graveyards behind the sagging stones. We wouldnt know." "If they bite you then youre dead." "No you have to have shots iomach. Forty-two shots iomach." "What they do is bite your domestiimals, your cats and dogs, and then your domestiimals bite you. Or they bite other domestiimals and even?tually somebody bites you. Or your children." "Im going to stay off the streets." "No just wear boots. Then if one approaches you you kick it." "What does a skunk look like? Ive never seen one." "It looks like a wallaby except that it has a different kind of head. Less atteheyre black." "Ive only seen them squashed on the road." "Maybe we should put chi wire over the win?dows." "I think were getting into a panic here. Just wear boots." "Let Simon deal with them." "Do you think hes brave?" "No I dont think hes brave. But I think hes smart." "If hes smart why doesnt he make us happy?" "Who make us happy? I mean if you look at it realistically." "He said his wife finally asked him to stop introdug her to people as my wife. " "Thats not unreasonable." "One day there wont be any wives any more." "Or husbaher." "Just free units cruising the surface of the earth. Fly?ing the black flag." "Something to look forward to." "Do you really think so?" "What about the children?" "Get one and keep it. Keep it for yourself. Hug it and teach it things. Everything you know." "But they need fathers, in theory. That kind of qual?ity, that kind h quality. . ." "I fot about boys." "Reminds me of thick lumber stacked on the back of a truck, held down by s --" "How we leave him?" "How we not leave him?" "Hes gracious and good." "Hes not the only pebble on the beach." "Its an impossible situation." "But I like it." "The thing is, whether we believe in ourselves or not." "Its like three people reading a magazi the same time." "But well never see him again." "Well send postcards." "Little satisfa in that." "Well you t have everything." "Something is better than nothing." "The thing is, we just have to have the ce of our vis." "Well Ive learhis: To make progress, you have to give up something." "How do you know thats true?" "It sounds right. It includes pain." "I have hope," Simon says. "Not a hell of a lot of hope, but some hope. You ons of hope sim?ply in order to fun. Got to think that everything will work out. I dont think thats desding. I hope its not desding. Ive dealt with young peo?ple before. I taught Sarah to roll her eyes and groan, when she was four, we rehearsed it. She was attempting it already, herself, but she hadnt got it right. My father believed in the Sed World War, a good choice. I believe in bricklayers but even bricklayers get things wrong, you specify a course of trasting brick, vary the pattern of headers and stretchers and they misread the blueprints. I dont want to be desding. Trees have iy, t go far wrong with a tree. You want to make a building look good, budget heavily for trees. A bird iree is better than a ki the prosthesis. Thats all I mean. Thank you and good night." "Simon, I dont want to go," Anne says. "I dont want you to go." "But I have to." "I uand that. But you could be foolish and un?wise." "Youd get tired of me." "No. The reverse, if anything. We could sit around and watovies on television. Thats all I ask." "Thats not true." "I ask you, formally, to stay. Will you stay?" "No." "Why not?" "It wouldnt work out." "We could enjoy it for a short time. Might b>e as much as two whole years." "You make it sound like a cer situation. It wouldnt be fair to the others." "When is anything ever fair to the others?" SIMOo North Carolina to i a job hed done in Winston-Salem, a hospital. The ?stru was quite good and he found little to ?plain of. He admired the feration, done by his own hand. He spent an agreeable night in a Ramada Inn and flew back the day. His seatmate was a young German woman on her way to Frankfurt. She was six months pregnant, she said, and her husband, an Army sergeant in Chemical Warfare, had found a new girlfriend, was div her. She had spent two years at Benning, loved America, spoke with what seemed to Simon a Texas at. Her father was dead and her mother operated a dy store in Frankfurt. They talked about pregnand delivery, about how much wine she allowed herself, whether aspirin was in fact a dao the baby, and how both of her brothers-in-law had been born in taxis. She was amazingly cheerful given the circumstances and told him that the Russians were probably going to attempt to take over Mexiext. We had ed Mexico, she said. Over the Atlanti the long approach to Kennedy Simon saw a hundred miles of garbage ier, from the air white floating scruff. The water became agitated at points as fish attacked the garbage and Simon turned his mind to pa. When they landed he kissed the German woman goodbye and told her that although she probably didnt feel very lucky at the moment, she was very lucky. "I got to go away now," Dore says. "I got to leave this place." "I gots to make mah mark in de whirl," says Veron?ica. "The prophet Zephaniah appeared to me in a dream," Anne says. "He said, Split! Split!" "Time boogies on," Dore says. They are gathered by the door with much duffel. As?pects of optimisti. " Bye guys," Simon says. They lurch through the door. Q: Maybe theyll e back. A: No, no. Of course not. Why should they? Q: Do you want them to e back? A: I have peculiar dreams. But I sleep very well, on balance. Q: How many hours a night? A: Four or five. Q: Some people like Giaetti. As a sculptor. Al?though I suppose its foolish to speak of "liking" Gia?etti. Armature with impetigo. Hes not about women. A: Yes he is. Also, hes got a razor in his shoe. Q: Do you want some of these little greeheyre supposed to be good. A: I think not. Q: Feels like Saturday today, I dont know why. . . A: It does feel a bit like Saturday. . . Sotes, v4.0: Proofed very carefully, italitact. In many places, the punctuation may seem incorreissing, but that was the way it was i so blame eithere Bantam or Barthelme, not me. chapter1 天涯在线书库《www.tianyabook.com》