Whitehead sat tight in his chair until the very last moment. Couples were dispersing in the direction of the bedrooms. Giles, once revived, had gaggingly swallowed his calmant and was being led by Lucy from the room. Diana had gone up, muscularly alone; Roxeanne had followed Andy, Quentin, and Celia from the room. Skip remained in his seat, his features fossilized in a blocked daze, then sloped off.
"Hey. Marvell."
"Oh yeah. Keith."
Keith left his chair, hoisted himself into the room and went nearer to Marvell, nearer and nearer until he could lift himself up onto the bench opposite him.
"Hey there," said Marvell, looking over the lid of his box. "What can I do for you?"
"Make me tall," said Keith. "Make me tall, make me tall."
22: WHO'S HE?
Andy unbuckled his belt and lowered his jeans. "Worrr, that's better. Christ, some scene with that cow. That mad fucker really whopped it, didn't he?"
"He really is mad," said Diana, leaving her pantie suit in a white puddle on the carpet as she stepped out of it and, naked, took up her hairbrush.
"Yeah. Those dead, undersea eyes," Andy said dreamily, untying his jockey pants.
"Mm."
Diana continued to look into the mirror, continued to brush her hair.
"You're skinnier, you know. You've lost weight," said Andy experimentally. She ignored him. Encouraged, Andy leaned a hand on the lower curve of her waist, where a trace of her bikini line was still visible. "Yes, I really think you've lost weight."
"Don't touch me."
"What for?”
"Just advice." Diana turned around. "It's just advice. I mean there's Lucy to consider, and that fat Yank. You've got stiff work to do tonight, big boy."
"No, I haven't. And what if I have?"
"I don't care what you do. Look, fats, I don't care what you do so long as you're not going to come in here afterwards just kinda jogging your shoulders and just kinda talking about it and just kinda showing how casual and liberated you—"
"Liberated.?"
"As if it's really quite attractive of you to do these things. I don't mind as long as it doesn't suddenly turn into something nice about you. Okay?"
At the beginning of the first speech Andy had compressed his neck, allowing his shiny fringe to fall over his forehead. Through it he reproachfully glanced at Diana's taut symmetrical face. She looked like a granite-hard hockey player recalling, for his consideration, a bad injury. "Diana, I really don't know what's the matter with you." Andy straightened up. He smiled suddenly. "No! I don't believe it! Come on, you're— you're jealous, aren't you?"
"Like fuck."
"Christ, You are! Well well well."
"I'm not jealous, just. "
"But we've discussed this," said Andy in disbelief. "Jesus. Did I grouse when you fucked that actor while I was in Amsterdam? When you fucked Bruce Howard after that party — did I beef?"
"So who's got the perfect memory — I didn't even fuck him I"
"So you blew him then. I mean, what the fuck difference does it make."
"What about you? You fuck girls you don't even want to fuck."
"How the fuck do I know I want to fuck them till I fuck them? Be reasonable, woman. And anyway, so fucking what? Diana, it makes me sick to hear this sort of talk in this house. Christ, you think you're living with civilized people and then someone springs this sort of crap on you." His tone had become confidently indignant, regretful. "You think you know someone — you respect them as decent, genuine human beings — then you find they've still got these sick anxieties about: something as trivial as— Now, Diana, you just, you just hear me out here. Nobody's getting away with that kind of dead babies when I'm living in this house. I'm fucked if I'm going to get leant on with this trashy talk—"
Diana sat on her bed with her back to him as Andy lectured cheerfully on. Her form grew preoccupied. She spoke softly, without turning around. "Andy. Did you write this?"
"— and that's real dead babies. What?"
"Did you write this?"
"Write what?"
Diana turned and held up a sheet of foolscap paper. Her face was pale and very cold.
"What is it, man?" said Andy, with concern.
The letter was written in erect black capitals, justified at either margin, and so uniform that at first it seemed to have been typewritten or typeset. Andy frowned.
DIANA. YOU DON'T NEED ME TO TELL YOU WHAT'S GOING ON. OR DO YOU? HAVE YOU EVER THOUGHT, TURNING TO THE MIRROR OR CATCHING YOUR EYE IN A SHOP-WINDOW, WHAT YOUR FEATURES SAY? GOOD LOOKS, SEX, AFFLUENCE, SELF-PRESERVATION? OH NO. I SEE WHAT'S IN YOUR MIND, THE DISGUST IN YOUR MOUTH, YOUR EYES FULL OF BURNING PUS. CAN'T YOU SENSE THE LOATHING THAT PULSES AROUND YOU IN THE AIR? DON'T YOU KNOW HOW WE ALL FEEL? WE'D LIKE TO CARVE YOUR FAT THIGHS, CHOP OFF YOUR SPROUTING LITTLE TITS, GRIND SABRES UP YOUR ANUS, CHEW AT YOUR PERINEUM UNTIL YOU DIE,
AND GET THE DEVILS OUT. JOHNNY
While Andy read, Diana folded her arms across her naked breasts and started to cry with childish volume, making no attempt to conceal her snot and tears.
"Christ," said Andy. It was only the second time she had cried in his presence. "Take it easy, baby. I'm looking after
you. Nothing's going to happen." Andy patted her shoulder.
"Hang on, baby, nothing's going to happen."
Andy belted a towel round his waist and walked out onto the landing. "JOHNNY!" he yelled. "Johnny." Appleseed Rectory again recessed into silence. "Who's he?" he heard Quentin say somewhere. A few seconds later Roxeanne came out of the sitting-room door.
"What's going on, man?"
On an impulse Andy skipped down the stairs and seized Roxeanne's shoulders. Tigerishly he slammed her up against the door and kissed her mouth with incurious violence; Roxeanne pumped her middle against his, whispered, "I want to drain you empty," pushed him against the banister, and walked regally upstairs.
Andy staggered off to find Lucy. One way or another he thought it was going to be quite an interesting weekend.
23: drunk space
Giles stands swimming in the center of his room. It is clear from his stalled face and dead posture that he is operating at drunk speed, a castaway in drunk space. His hands take interminably long to curl round the gin bottle and to train it on his mouth. While he swallows his eyes recede, as if only ten per cent of him were there. His face is a corpse's face, numb and luminous with a year of slow drunk hours.
Giles tilted away into his bathroom and steadied himself against the washbasin. The room was a real study. On a table by the basin stood two electric toothbrushes and seven manual ones of various rakes and texture, a waterpick, an economy tub of Selto, three sorts of toothpaste, four packets of Interdens, a serried rank of mouthwashes, a dentician's impression of Giles's teeth (which resembled a miniature mockup of a building site — pulleys, ladders, cranes) — and a white enamel tray of surgical instruments. Every sharp surface in the room, including the doorknob and toilet flush handle, was padded with sponge.
He bared his teeth at the mirror and jactitated feebly as a heifer ran toward him. On automatic, his hand crept out toward the gin decanter shelved to his left. He gazed with
more intentness at his face, leaning forward gradatim. He
watched himself for a full minute in puzzled accusation, and said, "You've got to stop crying." He closed his eyes and his: mind dropped back through a penny arcade of dental afternoons.
"Giles? Giles! It's me. Lucy."