Inside the abbey Monica was feeling the empty triumph of the conqueror. She had won the Scrabble game by hook and crook. As she totalled her points she cried.
Jay was still in pain from her dirty remark about his talent. She felt sorry for him and for herself. Victory in the game calmed her. She was now free to be nice. Jay needed some nice. He looked older by firelight.
"Darling," Monica said, "forgive me. There's always room for improvement. And it's not easy for me either with every erectable male person in the whole wide world wanting to have sexual congress with me. Sometimes at night I can feel my fans dreaming so hard I practically drown in seminal fluid."
"Don't I have that too?" Jay said. "The women plus the queers."
"Cheer up," Monica said. "It's so clammy and dismal out. We've got hours to kill and I'm not sleepy. I'm not the least bit sleepy. Tell me a story. Tell me how it was when you first saw me."
"No."
"Please."
"Stop tonguing your upper lip."
"I will."
"I first saw you in your first flick, Beloved Runt, and my breathing clamped. I thought at last the lord hath made a broad sufficient unto me."
"Fabulous."
"And I thought I've got to have her. So I met you and had you."
"What a way to tell it," Monica said. "How you hate me. You left out the entire love play sequence."
"You came at me so quickly I had no time for love play."
"I came at you? Jay, I was a star while you were doing improvisations in the Village."
"I did not say you had no distance on you when we met."
"I was discovered at 15."
"I'll bet you were."
"It was never like that. Never."
"Baby, you saw more ceiling before 20 than Michelangelo in a life of decorating."
"You are a filthy mouth. A sore loser. And don't ask me to calm you down when the going gets rough. Whisper never talked like you talk."
"Whisper Jones weighed 50 pounds when you married him and 34 ounces at the divorce."
"Annulment."
"All he wanted was custody of the oatmeal. You broke that boy's spirit."
"And Sherril? Didn't her pubic hair fall out from nerves?"
"How do you know that?"
"Never mind. It was all over town. Her follicles shriveled from mental cruelty. Hell, it must have been mental."
"What does that mean?"
"You break the code. Big virility symbol."
"Listen Monica, face the fact that your entire reason for being is to transport your mammaries to and from the studio. My work at least has a chance of contributing something, some little thing to the pool of artistic achievement. The best you can hope for is a medal in the tit Olympics. And they're getting saggy, if you want to know."
Monica inhaled and held her breath. Her face turned red. Jay watched her take in still more air. And more. She did very well.
"If you burst it's on your own head," he said.
Monica let the air gush out.
"Saggy?" she said.
She looked for something to break but there was nothing, only her hand mirror, so she threw a can of vegetable soup which went rolling around the stone floor.
Jay fell to his hands and knees and roared. Monica threw another can, string beans this time, and he scampered away. He knew that she would soon begin to play zoo, being a cat or some kind of rhino and that the argument would end up in jungley love. They had played zoo five times in six days and he was bored with it, but there was nothing better to do. The stone chilled his knee caps.
A log fell into the fire and sent up a shower of ash and sparks. The shadows leapt too, filling half the room with Jay and Monica, dolls cut from black velvet.
Outside the creature made a sound like goorumbumbum for no particular reason. It was on land, sloshing along. The air felt funny after years of water, amphibious or not. The switch from gills made the creature heady, a little drunk. It waved a score of flippers and swooshed a hairy tail. The wind confirmed that fresh meat was imminent.
The creature was sure of its prey. It began to think selectively, like a housewife at a butcher's shop, trying to remember the Dominicans and what of them was most succulent. Bonk. Its vanguard antenna touched something. The abbey gate. The creature had no time to knock. It secreted chartreuse juice, dissolved the rusty metal and squished toward the house.
"Sleep in your own bag," Monica said to Jay.
She was wriggled inside the sack, all the way in, and curled up sniffing her own perfume. Jay was pacing back and forth hitting his fist into an open palm.
"Once I stepped on a child star," Jay said, "and she didn't scream or yell or howl like other kids. You know what she did? She said 'Hi, there'."
"I'm sleeping," Monica said.
"And the awful thing is, Monica, that child star could have been you, It's what you would say. 'Hi there'. Oh Christ Almighty."
Monica's head came out of the bag.
"Try it," she said. "Try stepping on me."
"I am speaking symbolically," Jay said, "so I don't expect you to comprehend. Go back in the bag."
"Hi there," Monica said. "You think you're so damn superior. Didn't Mr. Bipley tell me how you were latching on to my star?"
"Huh?"
"How did he put it? He's marrying you for your light. He is a planet, a lousy planet, not himself a source of heat and smoke. That's what he told me. Hi there."
"Bipley told you that? Well stop the presses. He told me the same thing. He said, Jay let's face up buddy baby if HE hadn't rested on the seventh day maybe things in the world would be rosier, but he rested so we're stuck with our kismet and must own up to basic truth. Monnie, which is what he calls you, is a great shape, but an empty bottle and you will empty yourself trying to fill her. Beware, Jay, she needs your inner illuminations."
"Bipley told you that?"
"Monnie is a vampire who lives on reflections, he said. Reflections from mirrors, from eyes, from puddles, from hub caps, from sunglasses. Boy, was he a hundred percent accurate. Zowie."
Monica began twisting inside the bag.
"Finished." she said. "It's done. You are out of my life. You are dead and buried. You are garbage. I'm going home right now, you miserable pig bastard, and in a year from now nobody will remember you except like they remember a stain on the toilet bowl."
"That's great imagery coming from a girl," Jay said. "Go wet your lips."
"Don't worry yourself about my lips," Monica said, jumping out of the bag. "Worry about acting lessons."
"You membrane," Jay said, "You no talent. You physical bum."
"Listen to limpy," Monica said.
The creature wrapped itself cozily around the abbey like a moist rag. It started on the East Wing, then gooed over the North, slithered part of itself to the West and met its tail with its nose on the South. The moment of confrontation, front to rear, was rare for the creature and for an instant it fell under the impression that it had encountered a friend. It would have tipped its hat if it had a hat, but it had no hat so it snorted recognition. Its rear end gave no sign, except a faint pulsation, so the creature bit it in primitive rage. A bubble of pain ran through its nervous system along internal cords like seaweed and reached its medulla oblongata with a clonk. The creature wailed. A teardrop formed and gurgled out of a red eye.
"Both parties suffer in divorce," Jay was saying when the wail sounded.
"If you're dreaming dreams about community property," Monica said, "over my dead body. Because I've got you under your own skin. Don't think she didn't tell me."