“My God,” he murmured.
“Yes,” Patty said.
The girl reduced her speed by extending her arms in a sort of Indian petition, then spun even more fiercely as she pulled them back in. Oddly, she looked like someone stylishly, melodramatically cramping. She looked an expertly demonstrated toy, a Yo-Yo perhaps, whipped about its cat’s-cradle track of string. They followed her gyroscopic feints, her speedy yaws and peppy bucks and pitches. Then the girl stopped herself suddenly with the blade of one skate, sending up a showery splash of silver ice like vapor burning off at the base of a rocket.
“Oh oh,” Patty said, and pointed to a newcomer on the ice, a girl who skated out pushing a strange device in front of her at present arms. It was exactly like a kid’s compass, only it was as tall as, taller than the girl.
“She’s going to make — Look,” Patty said.
The girl stopped in the center of the practice room, fixed one spiked leg of the compass on the ice, widened the arc of the second leg, and proceeded to trace an immense and perfect figure 8.
“Could you have imagined?” Patty asked.
“That instrument?”
“Yes.”
“No.”
“Good Lord, Ben, I’d never have dreamed. Oh,” she said, “oh, the world’s closed systems, it’s thousand thousand dialects and shoptalk. Thank you for showing me this.”
“I didn’t know about it myself.”
“Let’s go into the arena. Do you suppose they’ll be practicing?”
There were at least twenty-five people on the ice. Ben and Patty stood near where the timekeeper would have sat at a hockey game.
“Look,” she whispered, “some are wearing shoes. They’re the coaches. They must be the coaches.”
“I guess,” Ben said.
“It’s amazing.”
The skaters moved, propelled by an invisible torque, their incredible strength disguised by the rich caramels of their hose, their fetching costumes like a kinky lingerie, each hard-muscled ass yellow-ruffled, white, the gorgeous paydirt of their tough crotches—“They must shave themselves!” Patty said — a state secret, cunningly guarded. On their high skates they were tall as goddesses, and Ben ferociously watched them, angrily studying their silent fury, his own heart pounding at their long quiet glides and sudden swoops, the transcendent self-possession of their punishing narcissism. He wanted to kill them, to climb high, high up into the arena, take Texas Tower potshots at them from beneath the broadcasting booth. He wanted them to collide, to explode against each other, and though they came close, must in their floating, driving imminence have sniffed the ice-shrouded odor of each other’s personal gall, they always swerved at the last moment, almost driven off, bounced off the secret laws of right-of-way like people come up against force fields in science fiction. It was as if he were watching natural traffic patterns, a misleading random decreed by instinct.
He could not understand his anger, which went deeper than jealousy, closer to the bone than envy. There was despair in it, the accusation of a wasted life, of the wrong moral choices. He wanted to lacerate himself with it and edged away from his friend.
“Listen,” she said. “Listen.”
The coaches, only a couple of them men, had been shouting instructions to their skaters in a jargon that sounded to Ben like military code, secret password.
“Your threes, your threes and brackets.”
“Go to a mohawk.”
“That’s it. Choctaw. Choctaw.”
“Double lutz.”
“Rockers. Rockers.”
Now the coaches were silent and all one could hear, what Patty had asked him to listen to, was the steam-engine hiss of the skates, the shhh shhh of ice being torn at its surface by the speeding blades. It was the flat unconsummated sound of surf. Tea kettle and shore, train engine and the whistle of standing, sibilant jet.
“So?”
“It’s the sound of water, Ben, in all its states at once.”
“Why are they so dedicated? They’re like Brides of Christ.”
“They’re wonderful.”
“Yeah, yeah, they’ll live forever. Not one of them smokes and they practice eleven hours a day and they’ll dance on my grave. They’re not out of fucking high school. What are they doing here? Who pays their way?”
“I wish I could skate,” Patty said.
“You can’t? That’s good news. Let’s go back. We’ll drink coffee and smoke cigarettes and stay up all hours. It gives me the creeps this place. It makes me old and multiplies my sclerosis.”
In the room Patty rolled two joints. She handed one to Ben and kept the other for herself. “Too much is wasted,” she said, “when you pass it back and forth.”
“Is that an insight?”
“It’s an observation.”
Ben had had grass before, of course. He had turned on with several of the people who ran his franchises. He had always found it pleasant. Now he discovered its analgesic properties. His hand — he knew it was an illusion — felt almost normal to him. He was not so conscious of the grainy quality of all surfaces. They lay in bed and Ben stroked Patty’s naked back with his bad hand. “This is very nice,” he said.
“Twice as many women as men are homosexuals,” Patty murmured comfortably. “This is because from toilet training on they are required to touch themselves at both ends.”
“Is that an observation?”
“It’s an insight. Let’s speak insights, Ben. I’ll do one, then you do one. It’s your turn.”
“No. You could have had that one saved up. Give me a different one.”
“Don’t you trust me?”
“Me? I trust everybody.”
“All right,” she said, “The Last Picture Show turned our culture around and started the nostalgia business. That and that song—‘American Pie.’ ”
“That’s a lousy insight.”
“You do better.”
“Okay. All your insights relate to music.”
“They don’t. What about the salad dressing? What about the menus and the thing about twice as many, what did I say, twice as many girl queers? They have nothing to do — to do with music.”
“Those are exceptions. Many of your insights relate to music.”
“That’s because—”
“That’s because Julius Finsberg had this theatrical costume business. Because he dressed all those musical comedies.”
“That’s right.”
“That’s right. There’s a lyric in my godblood la la.”
“All right. But it doesn’t count unless you do one about the culture.”
“The culture.”
“The culture — salad dressings, menus, top of the pops.”
“It wouldn’t be fair,” Ben said. “It wouldn’t be a fair contest.”
“Try. You can do it, Ben.”
“I know I can do it. What, are you kidding? It wouldn’t be fair to you. I’m Mr. Softee, I’m the chicken from the Colonel. Cock-a-doodle-do and the sky is falling. I’m the Fred Astaire man. I’m the Exxon dealer, we thought you’d like to know. It wouldn’t be fair to you. To you it wouldn’t be fair. I’m a — What was I saying? I was going to say something. Oh yeah. I’m a cultured man. I’m One Hour Martinizing and the Cinema I, Cinema II in the shopping center. I’m America’s Innkeeper, I’m Robo-Wash. I’m Benny Flesh, K-O-A, and Econo-Car International. I’m H & R Block, but it’s seasonal. The culture? I’m the culture! Ben Flesh, the Avon lady, Ben, the Burger King. Or maybe you meant something more academic? Sure. Okay. Howdoyoudo? I’mEvelynWoodofEvelyn-WoodReadingDynamics. Pleasedtomeetcha. WannareadWarandPeaceonyourlunchbreak? The culture. Sweetie, I’ve got ice-vending machines in every Big Ten campus town in the Midwest. Want, want to know something? My hand don’t work but I’m — hah hah, this’ll kill you — Mister Magic Fingers. Yes!”