Gerald’s Game

Jessie didn’t think she could forget what her right hand was doing-it hurt too much. Whether or not it would be able to do what she needed it to do was another question entirely, though. She increased the pressure on the left side of the shelf as steadily and as gradually as she could. A stinging drop of sweat ran into the corner of one eye and she blinked it away. Somewhere the back door was banging again, but it had joined the telephone in that other universe. Here there was only the glass, the shelf, and Jessie. Part of her expected the shelf to come up all at once like a brutal Jack-in-the-box, catapulting everything off, and she tried to steel herself against the possible disappointment.

Worry about that if it happens, toots. In the meantime, don’t lose your concentration. I think something’s happening.

Something was. She could feel that minute shift again-that feel of the shelf starting to come unanchored at some point along Gerald’s side. This time Jessie didn’t let up her pressure but increased it, the muscles in her upper left arm standing out in hard little arcs that trembled with strain. She voiced a series of small explosive grunts. That sense of the shelf coming unanchored grew steadily stronger.

And suddenly the flat circular surface of the water in Gerald’s glass was a tilted plane and she heard the last slivers of ice chatter faintly as the right end of the board actually did come up. The glass itself did not move, however, and a horrible thought occurred to her: what if some of the water trickling down the sides of the glass had seeped beneath the cardboard coaster on which it sat? What if it had formed a seal, bonding it to the shelf?

“No, that can’t happen.” The words came out in a single whispered blurt, like a tired child’s rote prayer. She pulled down harder on the left end of the shelf, using all her strength. Every last horse was now running in harness; the stable was empty.

“Please don’t let it happen. Please.”

Gerald’s end of the shelf continued to rise, its end wavering wildly. A tube of Max Factor blush spilled off Jessie’s end and landed on the floor near the place where Gerald’s head had lain before the dog had come along and dragged him away from the bed. And now a new possibility-more of a probability, actually-occurred to her. If she increased the angle of the shelf much more, it would simply slide down the line of L-brackets, glass and all, like a toboggan going down a snowy hill. Thinking of the shelf as a seesaw could get her into trouble. It wasn’t a seesaw; there was no central pivot-point to which it was attached.

“Slide, you bastard!” she screamed at the glass in a high, breathy voice. She had forgotten Gerald; had forgotten she was thirsty; had forgotten everything but the glass, now tilted at an angle so acute that water was almost slopping over the rim and she couldn’t understand why it didn’t simply fall over. It didn’t, though; it just went on standing where it had stood all along, as if it had been glued to the spot. “Slide!”

Suddenly it did.

Its movement ran so counter to her black imaginings that she was almost unable to understand what was happening. Later it would occur to her that the adventure of the sliding glass suggested something less than admirable about her own mindset: she had in some fashion or other been prepared for failure. It was success which left her shocked and gaping.

The short, smooth journey of the glass down the shelf toward her right hand so stunned her that Jessie almost pulled harder with her left, a move that almost certainly would have overbalanced the precariously tilted shelf and sent it crashing to the floor. Then her fingers were actually touching the glass, and she screamed again. It was the wordless, delighted shriek of a woman who has just won the lottery.

The shelf wavered, began to slip, then paused, as if it had a rudimentary mind of its own and was considering whether or not it really wanted to do this.

Not much time, toots, Ruth warned. Grab the goddam thing whilethe grabbing’s good.

Jessie tried, but the pads of her fingers only slid along the stick wet surface of the glass. There was nothing to grab, it seemed, and she couldn’t get quite enough finger-surface on the thricedamned thing to grip. Water sloshed onto her hand, and now she sensed that even if the shelf held, the glass would soon tip over.

Imagination, toots-just the old idea that a sad little Punkin likeyou can never do anything right.

That wasn’t far from the mark-it was certainly too close for comfort-but it wasn’t on the mark, not this time. The glass was getting ready to tip over, it really was, and she didn’t have the slightest idea of what she could do to prevent that from happening, Why did she have to have such short, stubby, ugly fingers? Why? If only she could get them a little farther around the glass…

A nightmare image from some old TV commercial occurred to her: a smiling woman in a fifties hairdo with a pair of blue rubber gloves on her hands. So flexible you can pick up a dime! the woman was screaming through her smile. Too bad you don’t have a pair,little Punkin or Goodwife or whoever the hell you are! Maybe you couldget that fucking glass before everything on the goddam shelf takes theexpress elevator!

Jessie suddenly realized the smiling, screaming woman in the Playtex rubber gloves was her mother, and a dry sob escaped her.

Don’t give up, Jessie! Ruth yellecl. Not yet! You’re close! I swearyou are!

She exerted the last tiny scrap of her strength on the left side of the shelf, praying incoherently that it wouldn’t slide-not yet, Oh please God or whoever You are, please don’t let it slide, not now, notyet.

The board did slide… but only a little. Then it held again, perhaps temporarily snagged on a splinter or balked by a warp in the wood. The glass slid a little farther into her hand, and now crazier and crazier-it seemed to be talking, too, the goddam glass. It sounded like one of those grizzled big-city cab-drivers who have a perpetual hard-on against the world: Jesus, lady, whatelse ya want me to do? Grow myself a goddam handle and turn into afuckin pitcher forya? A fresh trickle of water fell on Jessie’s straining right hand. Now the glass would fall; now it was inevitable. In her mind she could already feel the freeze as icewater doused the back of her neck.

“No!”

She twisted her right shoulder a little farther, opened her fingers a little wider, let the glass slide a tiny bit deeper into the straining pocket of her hand. The cuff was digging into the back of that hand, sending jabs of pain all the way up to her elbow, but Jessie ignored them. The muscles of her left arm were twanging wildly now, and the shakes were communicating themselves to the tilted, unstable shelf. Another tube of makeup tumbled to the floor. The last few slivers of ice chimed faintly. Above the shelf, she could see the shadow of the glass on the wall. In the long sunset light it looked like a grain silo blown atilt by a strong prairie wind.

More… just a little bit more…

There IS no more!

There better be, There’s got to be.

She stretched her right hand to its absolute tendon-creaking limit and felt the glass slide a tiny bit farther down the shelf. Then she closed her fingers again, praying it would finally be enough, because now there really was no more-she had pushed her resources to their absolute limit. It almost wasn’t; she could still feel the wet glass trying to squirm away. It had begun to seem like a live thing to her, a sentient being with a mean streak as wide as a turnpike passing lane. Its goal was to keep flirting toward her and then squirming away until her sanity broke and she lay here in the shadows of twilight, handcuffed and raving.

Don’t let it get away Jessie don’t you dare DON’T YOU DARE LETTHAT FUCKING GLASS GET AWAY-

And although there was no more, not a single foot-pound of pressure, not a single quarter-inch of stretch, she managed a little more anyway, turning her right wrist one final bit in toward the board. And this time when she curved her fingers around the glass, it remained motionless.

I think maybe I’ve got it. Not for sure, but maybe. Maybe.

Or maybe it was just that she had finally gotten to the wishful-thinking part. She didn’t care. Maybe this and maybe that and none of the maybes mattered anymore and that was actually a relief. The certainty was this-she couldn’t hold the shelf any longer. She had only tilted it three or four inches anyway, five at the most, but it felt as if she had bent down and picked up the whole house by one corner. That was the certainty.

She thought, Everything in perspective… and the voices that describethe world to you, I suppose. They matter. The voices inside your head.

With an incoherent prayer that the glass would remain in her hand when the shelf was no longer there to support it, she let go with her left hand. The shelf banged back onto its brackets, only slightly askew and shifted only an inch or two down to the left. The glass did stay in her hand, and now she could see the coaster. It clung to the bottom of the glass like a flying saucer.

Please God don’t let me drop it now. Don’t let me dr-

A cramp knotted her left arm, making her jerk back against the headboard. Her face knotted as well, pinching inward until the lips were a white scar and the eyes were agonized slits.

Wait, it will pass…it will pass…

Yes, of course it would. She’d had enough muscle cramps in her life to know that, but in the meantime oh God it hurt. If she had been able to touch the biceps of her left arm with her right hand, she knew, the skin there would have felt as if it had been stretched over a number of small smooth stones and then sewn up again with cunning invisible thread. It didn’t feel like a Charley horse; it felt like rigor-fucking-mortis.

No, just a Charley horse, Jessie. Like the one you had earlier. Wait itout, that’s all. Wait it out and for Christ’s sweet sake don’t drop thatglass of water.

She waited, and after an eternity or two, the muscles in her arm began to relax and the pain began to ease. Jessie breathed out a long harsh sigh of relief, then prepared to drink her reward. Drink, yes, Goody thought, but I think you owe yourself a little morethan just a nice cool drink, my dear, Enjoy your reward…but enjoyit with dignity. No piggy gulping!

Goody, you never change, she thought, but when she raised the glass, she did so with the stately calm of a guest at a court dinner, ignoring the alkali dryness along the roof of her mouth and the bitter pulse of thirst in her throat. Because you could put Goody down all you wanted-she practically begged for it sometimes but behaving with a little dignity under these circumstances (especially under these circumstances) wasn’t such a bad idea. She had worked for the water; why not take the time to honor herself by enjoying it? That first cold sip sliding over her lips and coiling across the hot rug of her tongue was going to taste like victory… and after the run of lousy luck she’d just been through, that would indeed be a taste to savor.

Jessie brought the glass toward her mouth, concentrating on the wet sweetness just ahead, the drenching downpour. Her tastebuds cramped with anticipation, her toes curled, and she could feel a furious pulse beating beneath the angle of her jaw. She realized her nipples had hardened, as they sometimes did when she was turned on. Secrets of female sexuality you never dreamed of, Gerald, shethought. Handcuff me to the bedposts and nothing happens. Show me aglass of water, though, and I turn into a raving nympho.

The thought made her smile and when the glass came to an abrupt halt still a foot away from her face, stopping water onto her bare thigh and making it ripple with gooseflesh, the smile stayed on at first. She felt nothing in those first few seconds but a species of stupid amazement and

(?huh?)

incomprehension. What was wrong? What could be wrong?