Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me (31 page)

Oh no, man, dear sweet Mary, I’m holding her thing.

But almost as quickly she gave the hand back and stood. The sari closed over the fold. Gnossos was still sitting in the full lotus, his hand held foolishly in the air.

“Pebbles and bones?” she asked him, still mocking. Then turned and went back through the swamp, disappearing in the somber darkness of the trees.

Until he could no longer see her, Gnossos remained on the damp grass, staring, not able to move. For a delicate moment he considered going after her,
yet the part of him that wanted to dwell in bees and fish faltered, and he passed.

It was not a simple matter, getting up and staggering back across the country fields and roads to the apartment on Academae Avenue. But the menace had gone by degrees out of the night; the demon seemed comfortable, if frustrated, in his cave; and there was really very little else to do.

When he got there, exhausted and feverish, Proctor Slug was waiting in his prowl car, asleep at the wheel. He awoke as Gnossos shuffled up the flower-lined path in his loincloth, but only wrote something on a pad and failed to utter so much as a cynical good morning.

That’s right, baby, from under the drowsy lids. Later. But much later.

The anonymous typewritten letter barely questioned Kristin’s fidelity, but Gnossos sat like a cross section of preoccupied stone on the floor of Oeuf’s antiseptic salon. She stood tenuously by his side, leaning away from him, wearing gray, summerweight knee-socks.

Nurse Fang waited at bedside attention with a Pitman notebook under her arm. Juan Carlos Rosenbloom guarded the reinforced door, playing with a straight razor. Heff paced a carpeted zone of neutrality between Jack and Judy Lumpers, keeping them apart. Dean Magnolia occupied a plushy red-leather loveseat, which had not been there before, fingering silica marbles. Byron Agneau, wearing shades, gazed longingly at Nurse Fang. George Rajamuttu mumbled incoherently in the corner, sipping from a sixteen-ounce glass of gin and grenadine, through double heavy-duty soda straws. Fitzgore, twenty pounds slimmer, lay on a stretcher along one wall, eating honey. And Oeuf—under his tailored John Lewton pajama tops—wore a sea-island shirt and English challis tie.

Gnossos, however, gave most of his extrasensory attention to the red-leather loveseat, the very presence of which provoked a discomforting suspicion.

But before he could identify its cause, there came a coded knocking on the door and Rosenbloom sprang to act as sergeant at arms. Drew Youngblood was waiting in brown loafers, sweatsocks, pressed chinos, and a clean white shirt (the sleeves held up by rubberbands). He smiled at the group of nervously expectant faces, nodded the silent affirmation they’d been
waiting for, and produced a damp proof of the following morning’s
Sun
, which he stretched across his chest. The pages smelled of printer’s ink and Youngblood looked like the cat with the key to canary headquarters:

“I think Gnossos ought to be the one to read it.”

“God yes,” from Lumpers.

But Pappadopoulis eased his crumpled baseball cap forward on his eyebrows and pulled up his knees. “I pass, gang. Try Juan Carlos, why don’t you?”

Rosenbloom saluted and waited for the go-ahead from Oeuf. He got it from Kristin instead, took the proofs, swept away his ten-gallon hat, scanned the room for attention, and tried valiantly to be intelligible.

“‘
Miss Panghurt’s Stateming.
’ Thas the headline only.”

“Whart?” asked Rajamuttu.

“The statement,” translated Agneau, turning away from Nurse Fang, fingering his shades to get her attention.

“Thas only the headline,” said Rosenbloom.

“Whose pang hurts?” asked Fitzgore feebly from his stretcher. “I’ve been ill.”

“Come on, you guys,” from Jack, “we ain’t got all day, Heff an’ me have to pack.”

Gnossos watched Kristin with microscopic intensity and read anxiety into her every gesture.

“Undor the headline,” continued Rosenbloom, “he say, ‘The adminestrating has approve with two-thirds majorities the new proposing for apartmings in Lairvilles.’”

“Whart?”

“‘We feel tha’ the presence of coeds in excess of the new restrictings would be conducive to pettings and intercourse.’”

There were murmurs of satisfaction from Magnolia and Oeuf.

“Thas the en’ of the paragraphs. Then he go to say—”

“
C’est assez
,” from of all people Kristin, half under her breath. Gnossos’ mouth dropped open.

“He go on to say—”

Heff stopped pacing and looked at Rosenbloom, “Conducive to what, man?”

“Pettings and intercourse. But like I say now, thas only the firs’ paragraph. Affer that he still go on—”

“Sounds like you’re in the money,” said Jack to Judy.

“
C’est ça
,” added Kristin, absently tapping Gnossos on top of the head.

“Hey you are,” came Rosenbloom’s protest, “that ain’ the end. He go on more to say—”

“Quite all right, Juan,” from Oeuf. “We really don’t need to hear any more.” He was fingering the platinum keychain around his neck. “Miss Pankhurst has unwittingly become our
particeps criminis
. Wouldn’t you say, Kristin?”

“I don’t really understand,” from Fitzgore weakly. “I haven’t been very well, you know.”

Kristin crossed the room to get the paper and lit a cigarette, explaining: “How could we talk undergraduates into conflict without some kind of moral issue?”

“The seeds of agitation are sown,” said Oeuf. “
Ab initio
at least. But spring is the season of rebellion. If the weather is warm and eyes are on the sparrow—”

“—very few will watch the dove,” finished Kristin, blowing a smoke ring.

Gnossos fumed at the air of conspiracy. Nurse Fang had begun taking shorthand in her notebook. Rajamuttu whispered secrets to the wall. Fitzgore shook his head: “It’s all Greek to me. Will someone pass me that other jar of honey there?”

Nurse Fang had ceased writing on her shorthand pad and was lifting her pencil skyward, as she might have a torch. “We really can claim,” she intoned reverently, blinking back the tears, “to have God—”

“—on our side,” said Heffalump, seeing it all.

“
Dios mío
,” reinforced Rosenbloom, blessing himself quickly, kissing his Saint Christopher.

From under the bedclothes Oeuf produced a piece of three-ply cardboard with a window in its face. He handed it to Youngblood, who had remained respectfully quiet. The window opened on a group of rotating numbers.

“Today is D-day,” he told them, moving the numbers ahead one digit, “minus nineteen.”

Juan Carlos Rosenbloom manfully choked a sob; Nurse Fang recorded it in shorthand; and Agneau watched her with unabating desire.

Alone in the surgical silence of the infirmary john, Gnossos stewed in his own Aegean juices. But he tried to reason, because clawing not all that remotely at his forebrain was the possibility he had been jockeyed. Oeuf, he could maybe understand, a regular Tammany Hall Santa Claus, suffering the jaded drip-drop of his tool while charting constituencies in a political hamlet. But Kristin, man, turning off like a cold-water faucet, you’d
think the monkey had nibbled on her ass. All that pedantic Mickey Mouse chitchat.

He stuck out his most malevolent tongue, showing it to her ghost on the bathroom wall. There was a pair of stainless steel scissors looking back from an open medicine cabinet, giving off a suggestion of potential energy. He ignored them, buttoned his fly impatiently, brushed maple seeds out of his hair, and headed for the door. Maybe some time at the local funny farm would help.

But just before he slid the bolt, an uncanny bit of protective strategy took him by the ear. It returned him to the cabinet, where he picked up the scissors. What the hell, baby, if the fault isn’t in the stars, it may as well be our own.
Mea
most
maxima culpa
.

He reached into his rucksack and removed one of the foil-sealed Trojans. Between his thoughts and the physical experience of what he was doing, there was no distance whatever. He unrolled the rubber, peeled it back the entire way, and blew it up like a balloon. When it was almost eight inches in diameter he flicked at the special receptacle which protruded like an erect nipple. He played with it momentarily, pushing it inside out with his forefinger, chuckling wickedly. Then he snipped it away with the scissors. The rubber collapsed.

He rolled it back carefully and reinserted it in the foil package. Finally he dropped it into the rucksack, turned his baseball cap back to front, and returned to the salon.

The room was nearly emptied out. Heff and Jack were waiting at the door, Fitzgore was being wheeled across the threshold by Nurse Fang, and Kristin was getting up from a whispered conversation with Oeuf. “Are you ready?” she asked.

“We got a cab waiting,” said Heff. “Come on, man.”

As they turned to leave, he paused and tried a sudden question on Oeuf. “What’s my cut, baby?”

“What?”

“I just want to know if you’ve figured out my cut.”

“Why, Gnossos, I’m surprised at you. I thought we discussed all that.”

“Come on, Paps,” from Jack.

“Immunity, baby, that’s what we discussed.”

“Certainly. However much you need.”

“It may not be enough is all.”

“You want more?”

“I might, Alonso, who knows? Have a good vacation.”

“Thank you, no. Some flags are still too green.”

In the cab Kristin pretended to ignore him and made small talk about going home to Washington during the coming week. She was crowded in the front seat with Rosenbloom and Jack, who chatted busily about Cuba, and she directed her conversation at Judy: “So you and Juan will only be going along for the ride?”

“If you can call it that. We’re hitchhiking in couples to make it easier. I mean, Fitzgore won’t let anyone use his car, and buses are really too depressing for words.”

Gnossos crouched next to a rear window, waiting for an appropriate silence, then said, “I know a guy. No sweat.”

Heff had been making notes on distances between Southern cities. He looked up, “A car, man?”

“Who do you know with a car?” from Kristin.

“There’s a guy is all.”

“Wow,” said Jack, affectionately touching Heff’s shoulder, “anything to get us through Georgia.”

“We were already off schedule,” from Heff, “I’m supposed to meet Aquavitus on the ferry from Miami.”

“Oh God,” said Judy Lumpers, “a ride. All four of us together. How perfectly 1920’s.” Then to Gnossos and Kristin: “Really, you guys ought to come along.”

“Got to study the stars, sweetheart. We also serve who stand and wait. Send me a postcard.” He winked at Heffalump, who winked back and crumpled up his notes.

“There you go, Piglet, no more menace.”

They were looking at the large dustless space above the mantel where the Blacknesse painting had been. Kristin sniffed the air tentatively and moved around the apartment. All doors and windows were open to the outside, and gentle breezes blew.

“That’s not what I wanted to talk to you about, anyway.” She put on an actresslike expression and cocked an eyebrow. “I wanted you to come and meet Daddy over spring vacation.”

Gnossos choked on his chewing gum and she had to get up and slam him on the back. He coughed hoarsely for nearly a minute and his face turned purplish. “You what?” he finally got out.

“I’ve written him about you, nothing to do with your wanting to get married, just your name and everything. I thought it would be sort of nice, don’t you?”

How well she lies. He coughed again and was silent.

“What do you think, Pooh?”

He said nothing whatever.

“Well, come on, you must think something, it’s not that difficult a problem.”

“You know damned well what I think.”

She slammed him once more on the back and stormed over to the couch. “Really, Gnossos, please, for God’s sakes, instead of us going and having a huge thing over it, couldn’t you just somehow manage to come because I’m asking you to?”

“What are you talking about, man, come? No, of course I couldn’t come just because you want me to, since just because you want me to doesn’t make it cool.”

“Cool,” she told the ceiling.

“Yeah, cool.”

“That’s all you’re worried about, is how cool it would be. It doesn’t occur to you for a minute that I might want to do it out of, oh, some traditional respect for my family!”

“Hey, what are you talking about?”

“Respect for my family, that’s what.”

“Family? Where’s that at? Man, a regular Bavarian Nazi for a father and you call it a
family?
”

“Oh, what’s the sense anyway, what the hell do you know about families, you never so much as breathe a word about your own, I don’t even know if you’ve got one.”

“You bet your ass, man, so why go? You want me to wear tails?”

“Oh, just forget it, would you please?”

“What? Are you getting guilty now all of a sudden?”

“I said please to forget it, it was apparently the wrong thing to ask. I didn’t expect such a traumatic reaction.”

“Traumatic ain’t the word. Baby, if he even
looked
at me one of his peptic ulcers might hemorrhage right on the floor. And that French crap in Oeuf’s pad, where’d you pick that up, anyway, that
c’est assez
crap?”

“Really, forget the whole damned thing, please, would you?”

“A regular Molly Pitcher, stoking the guns.”

“Go to hell.”

“
S’il vous plaît
. C’mon hey, where’d you get shit like that?”

She lifted the martini pitcher by the handle and glared. It occurred to him how close she was to throwing the remaining contents in his face. Little motion picture histrionics, dash the crystal in the fireplace. Why not, man, get her feeling sorry, slip her into the sack. Take hours otherwise, too much temperature up.

He stuck out his jaw and said, “
Chacun à son goût
, sweetie pie.”

She removed the stirring rod as a warning but said nothing. He got up from the butterfly chair, crossed to within an arm’s length of her shoulder and tried, “
Rien à faire.
”