“Oh fuck,” T.W. said, shouting above everyone’s laughter. “Somebody take his pipe away from him.”
Borka leaned her bass against the wall and lifted the ashtray with the pipe of grass burning in it from the floor and put it on the table by T.W. Roger glared at her.
“If you screw us up again, I’m going to stab your eyes out,” T.W. said, holding out the Bic pen to Roger. Roger looked humble. T.W. was in a bad mood because he had agreed to play for a bar mitzvah, on Long Island, and he hated things like that. Nobody in the band wanted to do it either, except that they all needed the money. Halfway through the next song, there was more activity. Dickie was wrestling with Roger. They all turned and saw Roger’s horn lifted in the air. Dickie had gotten it away from him and was handing it to Borka.
“You’re all a bunch of fucking imbeciles,” T.W. said and threw the pen into the center of the group and slammed out of the house.
“I got his horn! He’s going to sit this song out!” Dickie called after T.W., but it was no use. The door slammed before Dickie had finished speaking. Dickie sighed and handed Roger his horn back.
“What’s going on?” Perry said, coming downstairs. Everybody looked at him gloomily, and no one answered. “What?” Perry said.
“Roger made T.W. mad,” Borka said.
“ ‘You must remember this,’ ” Roger boomed, a capella.
“ ‘A kiss is just a kiss,’ ” Borka sang, in an unnaturally high voice.
Roger picked up his trumpet. He thrust out his hips and raised his horn high, over his head, playing “As Time Goes By.”
“I think he’s getting not very funny,” Dickie said, brushing past Perry to get a beer in the kitchen. “I think Roger’s acting like a moron.”
The rest of the band sat slumped on the floor, enduring Roger’s song.
“All right!” T.W. screamed, rushing back into the house. “On your feet. Roger, you put your horn away and go sit across the room. We’re going to do this practice so we can do the job and get it over with.”
“Why do we have to play at a circumcision?” Roger said.
“Shut up, Roger,” T.W. said.
“I’m going to play ‘As Time Goes By’ at the circumcision.”
“Go sit in that chair, Roger,” T.W. said, pointing to Perry’s Morris chair. “If we have to tie you into it and stuff your sweater into your mouth, we’re going to do that.”
Roger skulked off to the chair. Everybody stared at him, and nobody smiled.
“Now let’s play this fucking song,” T.W. said.
Perry sighed and wandered into the kitchen to see if there was any meatloaf left over from dinner the night before. There was a small end slice, and he picked it up in his fingers and ate it. He thought about taking part of it to Francie but ate it all himself. For the past several days, not at all distracted by the band, she had been making a sketch for a huge painting she wanted to do of all her friends. They were going to be standing on the canvas holding hands, like paper dolls. It was a realistic painting except that Francie had sketched a horn in place of Roger’s arm, and she had put a fox’s head on T.W.’s body and a chicken head on Borka’s body. T.W. and Borka were sleeping together.
It was August, and hot in the house. Several of the screens were ripped, and there were a lot of flies buzzing around. At dawn the flies would dive-bomb everybody. The last several nights, Perry had bought the newspaper so he could roll it up and hunt flies.
Francie had put her house up for sale. Nobody had made a good offer yet, and she was getting anxious for it to be sold: she didn’t feel right about taking Perry’s money, and all the money she had now was what she had made from the sales at the gallery in New York where her show had opened. The show had been a success, and Francie was getting what she wanted — she was going to be famous, all of them were sure. That afternoon a man who was writing about contemporary women artists was coming to Vermont to interview her. She had gone upstairs to sketch because all of them had been teasing her. Roger had said that when the man came, he was going to open the door naked. Perry worried that Roger might really do it now that he was so stoned, but he didn’t say that to Francie. He just listened carefully for the car so he could be the one who opened the door. He figured that if Roger started to throw off his clothes, the band would tackle him.
On the calendar in the kitchen was penciled: “Miner—Village Voice.” It was hard to believe that someone was coming to interview Francie — that Francie was living in his house, in the first place, and that someone was coming here to interview her. He wanted to stay with her when the interview took place, but she had already told him that she didn’t want him there; she didn’t want any protection and, it was true, she didn’t need any.
He was very proud of her. Some days he thought that his importance in life was to take care of other people — that he would be remembered as the person who housed them and looked after them: T.W.’s band was going to be famous, he was sure, and when Miner’s piece came out in the Voice, Francie was going to be interviewed much more, and have more shows. It made him slightly sorry for himself that there was nothing he excelled at. He had done a good job finishing the inside of his house, but there were a lot of people who did good carpentry work.
He wanted to ask her to marry him now, before she was famous, but he didn’t dare. She had had nothing but withering things to say about marriage since her own marriage had gone bad, and although she liked Nick and Anita, she also thought their togetherness was a little ridiculous. He was embarrassed at what he wanted lately: to have T.W. and the band go away, to have the house to him and Francie, to marry her.
He went upstairs. She was where he had left her, painting.
“What are you doing?” he said.
She laughed at him; they both knew he was being petulant, that he was more nervous about the interview than she was. He was standing and admiring the work she had done that day when they heard the car in the driveway. Francie pretended indifference and went on painting. He looked out the window and saw the old Saab pull into the drive, and the man, the interviewer, get out of the car. He had a backpack that he put on, nudging away Perry’s neighbor’s puppy with his foot. The puppy kept yapping, so finally the man bent and patted it. He stood outside his car a minute, stroking the puppy’s ear, not realizing that anyone was watching. He stood there, sizing everything up: the rainbow Borka had painted on the front door, the cars in the drive, the puppy running in circles, the loud music from T.W.’s band. Then he came toward the house, one hand smoothing down his hair in the back, amused — Perry was suddenly sure, from the slight smile on his that he was about to interview someone in a commune.
Perry turned away from the window to answer the door; the phone rang.
A Clever-Kids Story
The two clever kids are Jane and Joseph. The names alliterate. Our parents planned that — two cute kids with alliterating names, born two and a half years apart.
The summer that I was five and Joseph was seven and a half he began to tell me the clever-kids stories when we were put to bed. We lived in what had been our grandparents’ house in New Hampshire — a huge barn of a house with high ceilings and rose-splotched wallpaper. My parents moved there when Joseph was four and a half and I was two. He claimed to remember New York City. It was one of the many things I envied him for: he had been born in a hospital as high as a skyscraper; I had been born in a bed in the house in New Hampshire. When my grandfather died, my parents sold their furniture and my father quit his job, and they moved to the woods of New Hampshire, into the house where our family had spent the summer. My grandmother, after my grandfather’s death, moved to the warmer weather in Georgia and was able to live with a cousin whose husband had died a few years before. My grandmother came to New Hampshire in June and stayed until the first of September.