minute before somebody woke up and cut him off. He began by saying that there was no weather in Los Angeles and there never had been. The true weather was in ourselves; the true weather report had been concealed from the public all these years. Storm warnings up and down the subconscious. Ten-foot drifts along the outlying areas of the soul. Winds of gale force should reach the suburban psyche by midnight. There will be no flights in or out of the major idports. Then he had done a tapdance and sung a lyric that went 'hey jig-a-jig go fuck a rubber pig.' He had come a long way since then. His total earnings were close to a hundred thousand a year. Several national magazines had done stories on him. He accepted invitations to appear on many television talk shows. He had written a nonbook. Educated by Jesuits for eight years, Warren was able to regard his money, his notoriety, his four ex-wives with a combination of dispassionate wit, profound distress and a monumental Thomistic sense of the divine logic behind it all.
'Not again,' I said.
'It's the real thing this time, Tab. She's got big pink Renoir tits and she can cook. But I fear her crotch is haunted by the ghost of Joan of Arc, that prissy little suffragette. We're going to Dublin on our honeymoon, which may sound self-defeating, but I've always wanted to do something like that.'
'When's the wedding? I wouldn't think of missing it.'
'It's on her lunch hour,' he said. 'Tuesday, noon, Supreme Court Building. She's a dental hygienist. She cleans your teeth before Dr. Dachau takes over with all his dangling pain-utensils. She has to be back in the office by one- thirty but he's giving her a week off beginning the next day so I can fly her to old Dub and pretend she's Molly Bloom, the only woman I've ever really wanted to scissor with. The fantasies are taking over my life.'
'Warren, isn't this the third dental hygienist you've married?'
'Second,' he said. 'The one you're thinking of was a radiologist. Tried to zap my gonads once or twice. Tuesday then.'
I read two pages of a script about the melting of the polar ice caps and then called my father. His secretary said he would be with me in a minute. I tried to picture the soap beneath her fingernails.
'Hiya, pally. What's new?'
'Stennis makes forty-five,' I said.
'That's all? You're sure?'
'Unimpeachable source.'
'God bless you, sport.'
A few minutes later the phone rang. As I lifted the receiver Binky shifted positions and the coat slipped onto the floor and her skirt moved up her leg, making that fine hushing sound, and twisted nicely around her thighs. The telephone was quacking and I plugged it into my head.
'Dave Bell's my name; TV's my game.'
'David, why didn't you call me back? You are coming this evening, aren't you?'
'What do you want for Christmas, Wendy?'
'I won't say it over the phone. But if you were here, dar-ling.'
'You're just lonely,' I said.
'Remember college, David? Wasn't it wild? You're one of my oldest and dearest friends. Please come to my dinner party tonight. You can leave early if you want to. Do you still have your T-Bird and those super poems you used to write? You have no idea how upset I was when you showed up with a wife that last year. Listen, I have to tell you this one final thing. Are you listening? I got a card from my ex today. You wouldn't believe where he's spending the holidays.'
There were thirty-six small holes in the mouthpiece of my telephone. They were arranged in three circles of six, twelve, and eighteen holes each. There were only six holes in the earpiece. This disparity seemed significant but I didn't know exactly why. My eyes were on the sleeping girl on my sofa while my mouth and ear were engaged with the mouth and ear of Wendy Judd. I felt I was being sucked into the telephone. Only my eyes seemed to resist the whistling tunnel pressure of those forty-two holes. Wendy's mouth, enormous and frenzied, was burning at my ear; as I listened, my hand moved to that part of my thigh which corresponded to the area below the hem of Binky's skirt which my eyes had selected a moment before. My senses, it seemed, were scattering, eyes and hand allied, mouth and ears receding into the phone, drawn by the urgent voice, by the image I could not envision; and then, fiercely and strangely excited, I moved my hand across my lap and did a mad kind of loin dance, not moving from the chair, not taking my eyes from that land and sea arrangement of dress and leg, not resisting the tunneling lure of the telephone, the place where Wendy dwelt, unimaginably desirable, a victory of mouth and ear. It was my secretary who gave flesh to the disassembled words, who modeled for me the image on the other end of the wire, the picture I couldn't see without her help. I closed my eyes, feeling it was all too much, too involving, and cut across Wendy in mid-sentence, an incivility I knew she would not mind.
'I'll be there,' I said.
I hung up and immediately called Sullivan. She answered after the seventh ring. I felt a sudden chill, the vast white silence of my mother's deathbed, candlewax and linen, her enormous eyes, the breathing shallow and bad. Beneath the blanket her body was little more than ash, crumbs of bone; her hands were dry kindling. Death became her well, so horribly well, and when I heard the bells of an ice cream truck I had almost laughed. American sky- chariot come to take mother to the mansion with the familiar orange roof and the twenty-eight flavors. I had almost, but not quite, laughed; and then the chill had entered and she died.
'I have to get out of here, Sully.'
'David?'
'I no longer control the doors. Words blow in and out. I can hear them perfectly, with really astounding clarity, but I can't believe they're coming from my mouth. I think it's time to leave.'
'Nothing will be solved out there, you know. It's just telephone poles stringing together the cities. Those distances out there will only confuse you.'
'I had lunch with a friend recently. He cried. He wanted to build a boat and sail to Tasmania. I laughed at him. A week later he had a cerebral hemorrhage. We learn nothing from the stereotypes around us, not even that we're all the same.'
'I know what your problem is. You don't have any Jewish friends. Why don't you come on over tonight? I'm working on something new. I'd like you to take a look at it.'
'I'll be there,' I said.
I put down the phone. The door opened slightly, revealing the condensed figure of Mrs. Kling, six inches wide, armless and hipless. With the door open just a crack I didn't know whether she could see Binky on the sofa.
'Somebody took my stapler,' she said. 'It was on my desk when I went into Mr. Denney's office. Now it's gone. I've had it for nine years. My name is Scotch-taped to the bottom of it. I'm telling everybody that if it's not back on my desk by nine sharp on Monday morning there'll be trouble. That gives all of you the whole weekend to make up your mind.'
'Reeves Chubb took it. I saw him.'
'You're lying. Don't think I don't know how much lying goes on around here. What's she doing on your sofa with her legs like that?'
'She gets these mild attacks,' I said. 'It's some kind of minor diabetes thing. No cause for concern, Mrs. K.'
'I can see bare flesh above her stockings. Why are your hands under the desk?'
'I was just picking some loose skin off my fingers. You know the way the skin gets loose around the fingernails. I was kidding before about Reeves taking your stapler. Walter Faye took it. Say, I like your shoes, Mrs. K. I didn't know Dr. Scholl's had merged with Walt Disney Productions.'
After she left I dialed Ted Warburton's extension.
'Warburton here.'
'Hello, Ted. It's Dave Bell. I just wanted to say that I enjoyed that remark you made about Chip Moerdler. It's most gratifying to be supported by a man of your stature. What was it you called him-an ignominious baboon?'
'A thundering ignoramus.'
'Superb,' I said.
'I was sorry to hear your show is being cancelled. It had its faults but it was one of the few programs I made it a point to watch. Don't be disappointed, Dave. You're young and able. One of the turks. I've been hearing good things about you.'
