history of the dance. She glanced that way every time he turned a page.
'Well dial the thing.”
'Color very lurid.”
'Thanks, seeing what I spent.”
'Color is roloc.”
'We have to connect it,' he said. 'It has to get hooked up on the roof.”
'Roof is foor.”
'They'll get a guy.”
'There wis green. There wis pink. There wis o-range.”
'Master antenna, as in 'master antenna.''
Pammy sat back. She raised and flexed her legs, alternately, as though limbering up. She put her hands on her head and moved her legs faster now, cycling. After a while she stood up, took off her jeans and did stretching exercises. Lyle developed an erection. She sat and watched television. It was nearly dark. The Mister Softee truck was on their street.
'Pant, pant.”
'Out of shape.”
'Way out of shape,' she said. 'You wouldn't believe what's inside this body. What a little old dried-up crone. It's down there, hear it? Bang crash, you son of a bitch. I'd like to call someone. Run over a dog, truck, and get shot by its owner, oompty boom.' 'Right, complain.”
'Sympathize or you can't read my book that I purchased.”
'I'm saying complain. Call Broadway Maintenance. They'll come with a light bulb next Tuesday.”
She turned her attention to something in the carpet, leaning over to pick at tufts of fabric.
'Look at me when you speak. Take your face out of my purchase that I bought. We need shampoo for this rug-o and still that wax for in there which is your appointed task that you have to get.”
'You'll forget. You'll go out and buy fruit.”
'Your task, you.”
'That's all you'll buy.”
'You buy.”
'You'll come home with fruit by the gross weight and announce it grandly and wash it with songs of ritual washing and put it away in the box below and it shrivels and rots every time.”
'It's called a fucking crisper,' she said.
'It's a bin, what kind of crisper. It's a fruit compartment.”
'It's a fucking crisper, you asshole.”
'Watch the tube.”
'They're green, look.”
'Dial the fucking dial.”
'Neerg,' she said. 'They're all neerg. These people here are neerg.”
They chattered and made sounds a while longer and got up and walked and stretched and ate-and-drank a little and bumped each other and gestured, this the commonplace aim-lessness of their evenings, a retreat from stress lines and language. Pammy watched Lyle reseat himself near the TV set.
On the screen some people on a talk show discussed taxes. Something about the conversation embarrassed her. She didn't know what it was exactly. Nobody said stupid things or had speech defects. There were no public service commercials showing athletes teaching retarded children to play basketball. It wasn't a case of some woman in a news film speaking ungrammatically about her three children, just killed in a fire. (She wondered if she'd become too complex to put death before grammar.) These people discussed taxes, embarrassingly. What was happening in that little panel of light that caused her to feel such disquiet and shame? She put her hands over her ears and watched Lyle read.
Early the next morning he was with Rosemary Moore in a place with exposed beams, fake, Oscar's Lounge, and a coat of arms of some sort over the bar, sitting at a table in a dark corner, solemnly watching the other patrons. A waiter kept moving in and out of the swinging doors that led to the kitchen, talking angrily as he emerged, beginning to grouse again even before he'd re-entered. For a while they listened to his argument with the unseen chef.
'This is the kind of place,' Lyle said, 'where the ketchup always comes out of the bottle without having to hit the bottom. Don't ask me what that means but it's true. I like this kind of eerie sameness about this kind of place. It's metaphysical.”
'My drink is way too strong.”
'I'll get another.”
'It's all right.”
'No problem, I'll get another.”
'No, it's all right.”
'It's all right,
Everything he said and did seemed all right to her. It was all right to come for a drink so long as she didn't stay too long. The walk over here was all right. The place itself was all right. It was all right to sit either at the bar or back here. Again there was a lull as they watched the other customers. Everybody seemed to be having a better time than they were. It was hard to tell whether Rosemary was uncomfortable. There were shades of blandness from genial to serene; hers was closer to the median, lacking distinctive character, dead on.
'So you've been with the firm how long?”
'About three weeks now.”
'Before this, what?”
'I had a job where I was on the phone all day talking to buyers. That was crazy. Then I was a stewardess, which was all right at first, places to see. Then a friend got me a job in a shipping office. That wasn't too bad but I got mononucleosis. I was a temp for a while after that. Then I got this.”
'We hope you'll stay.”
'I have to see.”
'Do you smoke, Rosemary? See, I'm using names. Mustn't forget that.”
'Some people can never quit. I smoke for a few days and then I stop. Getting addicted to things is in your personality. Somehow I can stop.”
'Where do you live?”
'Queens.”
'Of course.”
'You should see the rents, what difference.”
'My powers grow stronger with age.”
'But you have to get there,' she said.
'What about when you were a stewardess? You were right there. You lived in a high rise with four hundred other girls in their neatsy-clean uniforms. Always near the phone. Sorry, love, I'm on standby. Roach coach to San Juan.”
'I'm lucky I have friends with a car,' she said. 'Except the traffic.”
'Can't trust those porta rickens to sit there like civilized folks. I don't mind the cha-cha music but when they start in with the green bananas, it's too much, the FAA ought to do something, banana peels coming out of the overhead compartments not to mention in the seat things inside that wrinkled cloth. You know that wrinkled cloth?”
He caught the waiter's eye and gestured. The man brought two more drinks. Lyle felt a strange desolation pass over him. They sat awhile in silence. He watched a man at the bar put a partially melted ice cube in his mouth.
'This is my last,' Rosemary said.
'If it's too strong, I'll get him to take it back.”
'I don't think it will be.”
'Cigarette?”
'I just finished but all right.”
'How did you get your job, this one, if I can ask?”
