pizza and sat down. I looked them right in the eye. They were gabbing over orange juice, their eyes bright with self-satisfaction. They had their finger on the pulse of today’s taste. It’s true that an era deserves the writers it gets, and it was edifying to watch them. My pizza was barely warm and very greasy. I wondered if they hadn’t invited the worst of the lot, just in case anyone had any doubts. Perhaps the theme of the show was “How to Sell a Million Copies with Nothing to Say, No Talent, No Soul, No Love, No Suffering, Nor the Ability to Put Two Words Back to Back Without Making People Yawn.” The other channels weren’t much better. I turned the sound off and just watched the screen.
After a while I realized that I was just spinning my wheels. Still, I had no desire to go to bed, especially not there, in the heart of such a hideous trap. I took a bottle and went to Bob’s. When I walked in, Annie was busy breaking dishes. She looked at me, a salad bowl poised over her head. There was debris all over the floor. Bob was hiding in a corner.
“I’ll come back later,” I said.
“No, no,” they said. “How’s Betty?”
I forayed into the fray and set the bottle down on the table.
“She’s okay,” I said. “It isn’t serious. I don’t feel like talking about it. I just didn’t want to be alone…”
Annie took my arm and sat me down in a chair. She was in her bathrobe; her face was still pink with anger.
“Of course,” she said. “We understand.”
Bob got out the glasses.
“Am I interrupting something…?” I said.
“Don’t be ridiculous…” he said.
Annie sat down next to me. She pushed away a lock of hair that had fallen over her face.
“Where are the kids?” I asked.
“At the bastard’s mother’s,” she answered.
“Listen,” I said. “Don’t mind me-just act like I’m not here.”
Bob filled the glasses.
“No, we were having a little tiff-it’s nothing…”
“ ‘Nothing,’ he says. The son of a bitch is cheating on me, and it’s nothing!”
“Jesus Christ, you’re so full of shit…!” said Bob.
He moved aside, thus avoiding the salad bowl, which exploded against the wall. We raised our glasses.
“Cheers!” I said.
There was a brief moment of silence while we drank, then they started back at it again, harder. As far as I was concerned, the ambience was perfect. I stretched my legs out under the table and folded my hands over my belly. To tell the truth, I wasn’t very interested in what was going on. I felt the turbulence spinning around me- their screams, the sound of things smashing on the floor-but I felt my sadness calm down, and crumble away like a cookie. For once I gave my blessing to the thing I hated most in the world: a cocktail made of light, humanity, heat, and noise. I slid down in my chair, having first taken care to refill my glass. Everywhere in the world there were men and women fighting, loving, tearing each other apart; people pissing novels without love, without madness, without energy, and most of all without style-taking us to Hell in a handbasket. I was at this point in my literary reflections when I spotted the moon through the window. It was full, majestic, and auburn. Somehow, it made me think of my little bird, her eye wounded on a mimosa branch-I barely noticed the colored bowls flying across the room.
At that moment I felt a kind of inner peace. I grabbed on to it. It was quite something after all those dark hours. It put a mindless smile on my face. Things were heating up. Bob had been dodging things pretty well. He saw Annie with a projectile in each hand. She feigned with the mustard jar, then let loose with the sugar bowl. I’d guessed it. Bob took it in the skull and collapsed. I helped him back up.
“You’ll excuse me,” he said. “I’m going to bed.”
“Never mind me,” I said. “I feel better already.”
I guided him into the bedroom, then came back and sat down in the kitchen. I looked at Annie, who had started sweeping up. “I know what you’re thinking,” she told me. “But if I don’t do it, who will?”
I helped her pick up some of the bigger pieces. We made a few silent round-trips to the garbage can, then lit cigarettes. I held the match for her.
“Listen, Annie, I know this isn’t exactly the best time, but I was wondering if I could sleep here tonight. I feel a little strange, all alone in the apartment…”
She exhaled a little mushroom-cloud of smoke.
“Shit, you don’t even have to ask,” she said. “As for Bob and me, we don’t love each other enough to really fight. What you saw wasn’t even serious.”
“Only for tonight,” I added.
We finished straightening up, talking about the rain and the weather-the abominable heat that had melted over the town like a gallon of maple syrup. Just sweeping up had us sweating. I sat on a chair. She set her behind down on a corner of the table.
“Just take Archie’s bed,” she said. “You need anything? Something to read…?”
“No thanks,” I said.
She had slid the sides of her robe off her thighs. It was easy to see that she wasn’t wearing anything underneath. She was probably waiting for me to say something, but I didn’t. Thinking that she wasn’t making herself clear, she opened the thing up wide. She spread her legs and put her foot up on a chair. Her pussy was a nice size, and her breasts larger than average. I passed an appreciative moment looking, but didn’t awkwardly spill my drink. I just drank it, then went into the next room. I grabbed a few magazines, then sank into an armchair.
I was reading a thing on the North-South conflict when she came in. The robe was now closed.
“I think your attitude is truly stupid,” she started in. “What do you think is going to happen? You’re making a mountain out of-”
“No, not a mountain exactly. A small hill, yes…”
“Shit,” she said. “Shit, shit, shit.”
I got up and went to look out the window. There was nothing but the night and the branch of a tree, its leaves limp in the heat. I slapped my leg with the magazine.
“Look, what would we gain by sleeping together? You have something special to offer me? Something out of the ordinary?”
I turned my back to her. I felt a slight burning on the back of my neck.
“Listen to me,” I went on. “I never was much for fucking around, I never got much out of it. I know that everybody else does it; but it’s no fun if you just do like everybody else. To tell you the truth, it bores me, It does you good to live according to your ideas, to not betray yourself, not cop out at the last minute just because some girl has a nice ass, or someone offers you a huge check, or because the path of least resistance runs by your front door. It does you good to hang tough. It’s good for the soul.”
I turned around to tell her the Big Secret; “Over Dispersal, I choose Concentration. I have one life-the only thing I’m interested in is making it shine.”
She pinched the end of her nose wistfully.
“All right,” she sighed. “If you need any aspirin before you go to bed, there’s a bottle in the medicine chest. If you want, I can go get you some pajamas. I don’t know-maybe you don’t sleep in the nude.”
“Don’t bother. I sleep in my underwear, and I always keep my hands above the sheets.”
“Jesus, where’s Henry Miller when you really need him…?” she muttered.
She turned on her heel, and I was left alone. You don’t need much room when you’re alone and not expecting anyone-Archie’s bed did the job nicely. His rubber sheet squealed as I lay down. I turned on his little ladybug lamp. I listened to the silence fill the night like invisible, paralyzing cream.
26
