" Warren, stop kidding." Gaffney was displeased.
"It's not me, Jerry. I swear. I keep deleting that. And it keeps coming back. Here we go."
The Leverkühn music, Yossarian saw, went over well. As the dying harmonies ending Götterdämmerung neared conclusion, a tender children's chorus Yossarian could not remember having heard before came stealing in ethereally, at first a breath, a hint, then rose gradually into an essence of its own, into a celestial premonition of pathetic heartbreak. And next, when the sweet, painful, and saddening foreshadowing was almost unbearable there smashed in, with no warning, the shattering, unfamiliar, toneless scales of unrelenting masculine voices in crashing choirs of ruthless laughter, of laughter, laughter, laughter, and this produced in the listeners a reaction of amazed relief and tremendous, mounting jollity. The audience quickly joined in with laughter of its own to the barbaric cacophonous ensemble of rollicking jubilation that rebounded from speakers everywhere, and the festal mood for the gala evening was ready to commence gleefully, with food, and drink, and music, and with more ingenious displays and aesthetic delicacies.
Yossarian was there and laughing too, he saw with a shock. He frowned at himself in reproach, while Olivia Maxon, at his side there in the Communications Control Center of the terminal, saw herself laughing with him in the chapel of the North Wing and said it was divine. Yossarian now looked contrite in both places. He was scowling, in this place and that place, in peevish detachment. Staring into this future, Yossarian was mesmerized to find himself in white tie and tails he had never in his life worn white tie and tails, the costume prescribed for all males in that elite group of insiders in the North Wing. Soon he was dancing a restrained two-step with Frances Beach, then in succession with Melissa, the bride, and Olivia. What displeased Yossarian often about himself, he remembered now, seeing these pictures of himself looking silent, acquiescent, and accommodating at that wedding awaiting him, was that he did not truly dislike Milo Minderbinder and never had, that he thought Christopher Maxon congenial and unselfish, and found Olivia Maxon, though unoriginal and unchanging, grating only when expressing strong opinions. He had an abstract belief that he ought to be ashamed, and another abstract idea he should be more ashamed he was not.
He was seated with Melissa and Frances Beach at a table close enough to communicate with the Minderbinders and Maxons, near Noodles Cook and the First Lady, awaiting the arrival of the President. The chair reserved for Noodles at the table adjacent to Yossarian's was vacant. Angela, who wanted desperately to come, was not there, because Frances Beach would not allow her to be.
"I don't like myself for feeling that way," Frances confessed to him. "I just can't help it. God knows, I did that same thing myself, more than once. I did it with Patrick too."
Dancing with Frances, for whom he preserved that special shared friendship some might call love, he felt only bone, rib cage, elbow, and shoulder blade, no fleshly thrill, and was uncomfortable holding her. Dancing equally inexpertly with pregnant Melissa, whose plight, stubbornness, and irresolution were agitating him at present into an almost ceaseless fury, he was aroused by the first contact with her belly in her sea-green gown and lusting to lead her away into a bedroom once more. Yossarian peered now at that belly to ascertain if the plumpness was fuller or whether the corrective measures restoring her to normal had already been taken. Gaffney regarded him with humor, as though again reading his mind. Frances Beach at the wedding spied his difference in response and ruminated dolefully on her sad facts of life.
"We're unhappy with ourselves when we're young, and unhappy with ourselves when we're old, and those of us who refuse to be are abominably overbearing."
"That's pretty good dialogue you give her," Yossarian challenged Hacker, with belligerence.
"I like that too. I got it from Mr. Gaffney here. It sounds pretty real."
"It should sound real." Yossarian glowered at Gaffney. "She and I already had that conversation."
"I know," said Gaffney.: "I thought so, you fuck," Yossarian said without anger. "Excuse me, Olivia. We say things like that. Gaffney, you still keep monitoring me. Why?"
"I can't help doing it, Yossarian. It's my business, you know. I don't make information. I just collect it. It's not really my fault that I seem to know everything."
"What's going to happen to Patrick Beach? He isn't getting better."
"Oh, dear," said Olivia, shuddering.
I'd say," answered Gaffney, "he's going to die."
"Before my wedding?"
"After, Mrs. Maxon. But, Yo-Yo, I would say that about you also. I would say that about everyone."
"About yourself too?"
"Sure. Why not?"
"You aren't God?"
"I'm in real estate. Isn't God dead? Do I look dead? By the way, Yossarian, I've been thinking of writing a book too."
"About real estate?"
"No, a novel. Maybe you can help. It begins on the sixth day of creation. I'll tell you about it later."
"I'm busy later."
"You'll have time. You're not meeting your fiancee until two."
"Are you getting married again?" Olivia looked pleased.
"No," said Yossarian. "And I have no fiancee."
"Yes, he is," answered Gaffney.
"Don't listen to him."
"He doesn't know yet what he's doing. But I do. On with this wedding, Warren."
"He still hasn't come," reported Hacker, puzzled, "and no ond knows why."
Thus far there had been no hitch, except for the absence of the President.
McBride, dutifully, tirelessly, had seen to parking space for the automobiles and coordinated their comings with the arrivals and departures of the commercial buses, routing many in both groups to the ramps and gates on the third and fourth floors. The one thousand and eighty parking places in the garages overhead provided room for most of the nearly seventeen hundred and seventy-five limousines expected. Most were black and the rest were pearl gray. Other cars were diverted to the parking lot across the avenue, where the sidewalk was lined with shish kebob and peanut vendors and clusters of shoeshine stands with convivial old black and brown men who sometimes spent the balmy nights sleeping at their stands beneath beach, umbrellas. They made use of the basins and toilets of the terminal, ignoring the enduring artwork of Michael Yossarian explicitly banning "Smoking, Loitering, Shaving, Bathing, Laundering, Begging, Soliciting," oral sex, and copulation. The shabby street scenes were amusing to many crossing the avenue to enter beneath the block-long metal-and-smoked-glass canopy, who assumed they had been staged expressly for them.
Photographers covered every access on all streets of the landmark, as though the structure were under siege, and journalists had come from foreign countries. A total of seventy-two hundred and three press passes had been issued to accredited newsmen. This was a record for an American wedding. Forty-six owners of foreign publications had come as guests.
Invitations to the gala occasion had been delivered in envelopes that were stiff and square, for they were on platinum, and only Sammy Singer on the primary list of thirty-five hundred invited declined to come, courteously pleading prior commitment to a trip to Australia. Yossarian thought better of Sam Singer than ever before. The secret agents Raul and carrot-topped Bob and their wives were on hand as guards as well as guests. Yossarian had exiled them deliberately to distant tables far apart from each other; now he saw with indignant surprise at the wedding ahead taking place just then that both were nevertheless seated right there with him at his own table in the inner sanctum of the North Wing, close enough to keep watch while taking in the epic spectacle of which they themselves were a part, and that Jerry Gaffney, who'd not been invited, was there with his wife at his table too!