Players

'He has no genitals.”

'They're in diere somewhere.”

'Kidding aside, let's talk,' she said.

She crawled along the bed, wearing a shirt and jeans, and settled next to him, pressing contentedly. He made a sound, then started to bite her head. She scratched lightly at his ribs.

'Better watch.”

'I bite heads for a living.”

'Better watch, you. I know where and how to strike.”

He made gulping sounds. This seemed to interest him more than most noises he made. He evolved chokes and gasps out of the original sound. He began to drown or suffocate, making convulsive attempts to breathe. Pammy answered the phone on the fourth or fifth ring, as she always did, either, he thought, because she considered it chic, or just to annoy him. It was Ethan Segal. He and Jack were dropping over. What do we have to drink?

Lyle called Dial-a-Steak. By the time the food arrived, everyone was a little drunk. Ethan shuffled to the table, a chess-playing smile on his face. They sat down, having brought their drinks with them, and began to strip aluminum foil from the steak, the salad, the potatoes, the bread, the salt and pepper.

'It's Jack's birthday.”

No one said anything.

'I'm thirty.”

'Welcome to Death Valley,' Lyle said.

'I feel different.”

'But none the wiser,' Ethan said.

'I used to think thirty was so old. I'd meet people who were thirty and I'd think God, thirty.”

'Wait till you're fortyish,' Ethan said. 'All hell breaks loose for about ten minutes. Then you begin to grow old quietly. It's not bad, really. You begin wearing house slippers to the theater and people think you're some unbelievably interesting man about to get written up in What's Happening, you know, or People Are Talking About, in Vogue or some such.”

'We forgot to open the wine,' Jack said.

'At what specific time,' Pammy said, 'does one become fortyish?”

'Wine, Lyle.”

'We're out. There is no wine. Our cellar was auctioned off to pay taxes on the estate.”

'We brought wine,' Jack said. 'We came with wine.”

'There is no wine, Jack. You're free to look around.”

'It's in the cab,' Ethan said.

Jack said: 'The cab.”

'We left it in the cab. I remember distinctly that we had it when we got in the cab and I don't recall seeing it after that.”

'Because you drank it,' Pammy said.

'Because I drank the wine in the cab.”

'Do I hear diet cola?' Jack said.

They were talking quickly and getting laughs on intonation alone, the prospect of wit. This isn't really funny, Lyle thought. It seems funny because we're getting half smashed. But nobody's really saying funny things. Tomorrow she'll say what a funny night and I'll say it just seemed funny and she'll give me a look. She'll give me a look-he saw the look but did not express it in verbal form, going on to the next spaceless array, a semi-coherent framework of atomic 'words.' But I'll know I'm right because I'm making this mental note right now to remind myself tomorrow that we're not really being funny.

Shut up, he told himself.

Jack Laws nurtured an element of hysteria in his laugh. His head went tilt, his hands came up to his chest in paw form and he shook out some cries of phobic joy. It was an up-to-date cultural mannerism, an index of the suspicion that nothing we say or do can be properly gauged without reference to the fear that pervades every situation and specific thing. Jack was broad-shouldered and short. He had a snub nose, small mouth and well-cleft chin. His face, over all, possessed a sly innocence that quickly shaded off into grades of uncertainty or combativeness, depending on the situation. His presence in a room was an asset at most gatherings. The area he occupied seemed a pocket of sociability and cheer. In some rooms, however, people's reactions to Jack, whether friendly or indifferent, were based on their feelings for Ethan. Pammy was aware of these angles of reflection. She tried to divert Jack at such times, subtly.

Ethan was back in the armchair, smiling cryptically again. He was onto vodka, neat. Jack finished off Pammy's steak, talking at the same time about a friend of his who was in training to swim some strait in Europe, the first ever to attempt it north to south, or something. There was a comedy record on the stereo. It was Lyle's latest. He played such records often, getting the routines down pat, the phrasing, the dialects, then repeating the whole thing for people on the floor in slack times. This one he played for Ethan's benefit. He watched Ethan, studying his reaction, as the record played, as Jack ate and talked, as Pammy wandered around the room. After a while he followed her over to the bookshelves.

'Did you pay the Saks thing?”

'No, what thing?”

'They're panting,' he said. 'They're enclosing slips with the bill. Little reminders. They're calling you Ms.”

'Next week.”

'You said that.”

'They'll wait.”

'Where did I tell you the battery was for the Italian clock when the one in there now runs out?”

'I don't know.”

'You forgot already.”

'What battery?' she said.

'I went to nine places, looking. It's one point four volts.

You can't go around the corner. It's a certain size. Least you could do is remember where it is when I tell you.”

'There's a battery in there.”

'For when it runs out,' he said. 'It's a ten-month-some-odd life expectancy and we've had the clock nearly that long already.”

'Okay, where's the battery?”

'In the kitchen drawer with the corkscrews and ribbons.”

Lyle went into the bedroom and turned on the TV set. That was the only light. He watched for a few minutes, then began coasting along the dial. Jack came in and he had to stop. It made Lyle nervous to watch television with someone in the room, even Pammy, even when he wasn't changing channels every twenty seconds. There was something private about television. It was intimate, able to cause embarrassment.

'What's on?”

'Not much.”

'You watch a lot?' Jack said. 'I do.”

'Sometimes.”

'It keeps the mind off things. You don't have to involve yourself too much. Listen, talk, anything.”

'I talk all day,' Lyle said.

'Exactly, I know.”

Jack hadn't moved from the doorway. He was eating a peach, standing in light from the hall. When he turned and laughed, reacting to something Ethan or Pam had said, Lyle saw the patch of white hair above his neck. He thought of saying something about it but by the time Jack turned his head again, he'd lost interest.

'Bed's a mess but come on in, find a chair, cetra cetra.”

'That's okay, I'm just snooping around.”

'Nothing's on, looks like.”

'But can you believe what they show sometimes? I think it's disgusting, Lyle. I can't believe. It's so sleazy. Who are those people? I refuse to watch. I totally do not watch. Ethan watches.”