I started to say something, God knows what, but there was this cock in my mouth, and it seemed to be hardening again.
“Let’s go inside now,” Priss said. “There’s more room. And we can all be together now. I think that would be very nice, to be all together, all of us.”
PRISS
I saw that cartoon. I knew.
I never told you this, did I? Not wanting to seem too calculating. Better to heed Lady Macbeth’s advice: Look like the innocent serpent, but be the flower under it.
Believe me, I did that one on purpose, Harry. It’s not always stupidity, you see. Sometimes it’s a playful attempt at humor.
I saw that cartoon. I don’t know how Rhoda could have entered the room and almost left it without seeing it, because I noticed it while walking past the room, noticed it from the doorway, and went in at once to have a look at it.
I don’t know much about art, but I know what I like.
And another thing I knew was that we all had to be together soon. That Harry and Rhoda had to have each other, and that I had to do what I could to facilitate this. And also that I then had to let them know that I did not object. Because in certain ways I was the crux of this matter. At the present time I was at the whatever-it-is of a triangle. The Ajax? Oh, fuck it. I was at the top of the triangle, the only one involved with both of the others. So it wasn’t really a complete triangle yet, it was like a tent, an Indian teepee, with Harry and Rhoda at either side and lines running from them to me, at the top. But there was no line across the base, no line from Harry to Rhoda, and that line had to be drawn so that the whole mass would have geometric stability.
I find it convenient to think in these symbols, and only hope they are not too much a part of my private vocabulary to make sense to you two. Or to the others, the readers.
Readers?
So I decided to scheme, to put Harry and Rhoda together. I never mentioned this later. Maybe you both already knew. I don’t know. But if I have learned one thing from this book-writing experience it is that we are all of us more calculating than we have willingly let on up to now. Even in our most open moments there are aspects of motivation, thoughts, ideas, privatenesses, that we shield from one another. I don’t doubt that this is emotionally essential. Otherwise one simply gushes and bleeds all over the place. Well, that’s what this is for, isn’t it? Not merely to make us all rich and famous, guest spots on television and our pictures in all the papers, but also and more truly to give us that chance to gush and bleed, but to do it on paper, neatly, antiseptically. Aseptically? I can never remember the difference, and can’t believe it’s too important. To gush and bleed, however. To bleed like the innocent flower, and gush like the serpent under it.
(I feel more than a little giddy. Rhoda began writing the last chapter early in the afternoon and was still at it at dinner time. She wouldn’t stop, took the typewriter into the other room while Harry and I sat down to one of my less successful shots at stuffing a veal breast.
(She finished typing shortly after we finished dinner. We were drinking brandy when she sauntered into the kitchen, face flushed, eyes glassy. She said, “Do you suppose either or both of you might feel like taking me to bed?”
(I said, “You’ve written yourself into a state.” She agreed that she had. Harry said that there ought to be a cure for that sort of thing. We went upstairs, the brandy bottle in tow, and we drank and petted and drank and foreplayed and drank and balled, and somewhere along the way I lost touch with what was going on, which may have been apparent to the other two, or may not have been.
(I felt shut out. I felt as though all of the interaction was happening between Rho and Harry, and as though I was a party to it all in the same way and to about the same extent as the bed we happened to be balling on. My role was thingish rather than personal. I didn’t resent this, I don’t think, nor did I feel that I was being shut out by anyone but that it was an effect on my own inner mood.
(This is not really rare when the three of us are together. One person may be less in the mood than the others, less sexy, and may thus get less involved. There’s nothing really wrong with this, I don’t think. Whoever is in that kind of a set can simply go through the motions, or play Watchbird, or even leave the room.
(But I digress from the digression itself. I did feel out of things, and sexually inert, and when with whoops and hollers the two of them reached their climax-and is anything in the abstract as pleasantly absurd as other people’s passion? I think not-they subsided at once into a deep relaxed sleep, and I didn’t. Didn’t subside, didn’t relax, and didn’t sleep.
(Instead I came out here and read the chapter that had inflamed Rhoda. This, perversely, excited me. I could have gone off to awaken one or both of them, but that seemed a bad idea, and instead I sit here, in the kitchen once more, the typewriter returned to its habitual location, a fresh pot of coffee working, a cigarette burning. Call it sublimation, but here I am, writing this.)
Where was I? Scheming? Bleeding and gushing?
Doesn’t matter.
I told Rhoda I wanted to go shopping, made the suggestion purposely vague-“Some things I thought I would look at, actually I just want to get out of the house for a little while, come along if you happen to feel like it.” It was easy for her to stay behind, and she did.
I drove away. I drove about half a mile down the road and pulled off onto the shoulder. I remember pulling off the road and falling into a clinch with Rhoda. When had that been?
That was Tuesday. This was Thursday.
Incroyable!
Mais vrai, ma cherie.
I lit a cigarette and watched the smoke rise from it. They say that if you can’t see the smoke you don’t get anything out of smoking (except cancer and emphysema, that is.) I watched the smoke rise and still didn’t get very much out of it, and after a while I threw the cigarette out the window, rolled the window up again, drove far enough on down the road to find a place to turn around, turned around, and drove back home.
I parked out in front. I even cut the motor some fifty yards down the road and coasted in the rest of the way, which becomes more ridiculous the more I think about it. Priscilla the great conspirator.
I got out of the car. The sun warmed me. I looked up at the house at the top of the more or less hill, and the phrase Mistress of all I survey popped into my head. Mistress of all and of everyone I thought. And in my mind I saw myself standing at the apex of the triangle (that’s the word, of course, not ajax, Christ!) in flowing robes, arms extended, with Harry and Rhoda crouched at my feet. One at either foot. And I could hear myself saying to them, in matriarchal tones, “My children, I give unto you the gift of love.”
I have a strange mind. I am aware of this.
I lit another cigarette with the idea of forcing myself to linger there until I had finished it. I took two puffs and threw it away like one of those malcontents in the Viceroy commercials. “Hey, didn’t you just light that cigarette?” “Oh, these fucking cigarettes have lost their taste.” “Here, try one of mine.” “Say, this cigarette really tastes good.” “Of course it does, schmuck. It’s grass. It’ll get you stoned, too.”
I walked up the winding path, thinking of primrose paths, primrose paths paved with good intentions, with creeping thyme between the flagstones. Creeping time, I thought. Time to creep, time to fog in on little cat feet.
I thought of taking off my shoes to make my approach soundless, and laughed inwardly at myself, and when I reached the door of the house I did take off my shoes, and did pad around from room to room as quietly as possible. When a room-by-room search failed to disclose their whereabouts, I experienced an irrational moment of profound panic. Obviously they had run off and left me and I would never see them again.
Paranoia is never all that far from the surface, is it? Just a silly millimeter away…
Out Back, I thought almost at once, and knew they would be there, knew it for certain. But first I went into Rhoda’s room again and found the drawing. She had tucked it underneath her pillow. I picked it up and looked at it very carefully. I put it back under the pillow and lay down on Rhoda’s bed for a few seconds, snuggling my head on
