— My play, I… Otto commenced.
— Yes, Chrahst, you ought to try selling a battleship.
And the two young men finished their drinks and stood silent, staring vacant-eyed on the room, vaguely jarred by the words spattering around them.
— The one about the lady from the First Unitarian Church of Kennebunkport, M.E. who orders monqgrammed napkins for a church luncheon and. . Oh, I've spoiled it.
— And even barely more than a hundred years ago there weren't ten bathrooms in all the private houses in Paris. .
— In a hundred years the population of Europe has tripled, what does that mean?
— And have you heard the Far Rockaway locker room story? — I said to him, if you really believed what you wrote there, you'd be morally obliged to blow your brains out.
— Well whisky's all right, said the girl with the bandaged wrists, — but for God's sake don't give it gin, gin stunts the growth, we tried it on a kitten.
Nearer by, the woman in the collapsed maternity dress said, — Cross-eyed people bring me bad luck.
— Not just cross-eyed, the tall woman went on, — but with a withered hand, on crutches, and an idiot. Can you imagine one person having all those things? And in a suit with a pleated, belted back?
— An embarras des richesses, or they would be for that woolly-headed boob over there on the couch. His main trouble is that he never finished his analysis, some girl was paying for it of course. . There was a tug at her skirt. — And what do you want?
— Mummy sent me up for some more sleeping pills.
— What are you reading. .?
— Oh I'm not readin this, the little girl said, holding up Toilet Training and Democracy. —Some man…
— Here, said the tall woman, opening her bag. — I have some right here. She took out a Chinese toothpick box, and worked with its intricate catch. — Oh wait a minute. . my God, I almost gave you my Seconal. A friend of my husband's brings it from Mexico, she went on, rummaging. — Here you are, dear. .
— Now you'd better march right downstairs and. .
— Don't hurt the poor child's feelings.
— Another sensitive minority, children? If I hear once more. .
— I mean Chrahst, sensitive minorities, you know? Ed Feasley took up, turning to Otto. — I mean it's really people like us, you and me, we're the persecuted minority. White, Protestant, male, over twenty-one, 1 mean we don't belong anywhere, you know? And finally we're all just parodies of each other. I mean Chrahst sometimes I wish I'd studied something in college. What's the matter? he broke off, seeing Otto's expression.
— Nothing. That girl, that blond girl, for a minute I thought. . nothing.
— Her? I know her from somewhere, you want me to introduce you? Otto mumbled something, and reached for a full glass nearby. — You don't? I don't blame you, Chrahst why start all over again? I mean, it's just like that marathon walker, you know? What do you do when you get there? You eat and go to bed.
— I know, Otto said dully, looking at the floor. — It's funny, I used to think that to go to bed with a girl older than I was or bigger than
I was, that made it all right. Then you know, when I was in Central
America, it was funny, I thought that if you paid a girl, that made it all right, but if you paid a lot it was more sinful than if you paid a little, but it seemed more honest to pay with money than. . than with pretending that you. . than paying with. . yourself, he finished vaguely, still looking at the floor.
— I know, you know? I mean imagine just starting in now. My old man says you're not a man until you're the head of a family. He's had it, Ed Feasley went on, as vaguely, looking at his shoetops. — There's this great big old house up in the Hudson River Valley. Cornwallis had his headquarters there, or maybe it was Lafayette or General Sherman, I don't know, but you can't go into the place without thinking about the parties they've had in it, ambassadors and presidents, you know, I mean it's historical as hell. And now my mother sits up there opening packages, that's the only thing she ever thinks about, whenever a package comes for anybody she gets so excited. I mean even the laundry. Even the groceries. You know? And now they've built this state hospital three miles away, it's full of feebs, feeble-minded people, and some niggers are building this crazy religious camp right across the river. I mean I've got nothing against niggers but Christ, you know? Ed Feasley finished his drink. — Whenever I go home, it's like everything's wearing out. I mean just imagine being the head of a family in that place now. Just starting in now. I mean Chrahst everything wears out, you know? People wear out, friends wear out, cars wear out, sometimes it's easier to smash them up while they're still new, and you don't have to watch them wear out.
They were being approached by a short shiny figure in a gray sharkskin suit who was, himself, being hounded by someone saying, — Are you the guy who's telling people that our company puts drugs in its dog food so dogs get addicted to our brand. .?
— Oo, coño… I was warned about this sort of thing, the Argentine said, escaping in Ed Feasley's direction. — Excuse me, do I intrude? We became separated while speaking of…
— Battleships, said Ed Feasley wearily, and taken in charge, he left Otto staring into an empty glass. He did not even raise his eyes when someone beside him said, — She told me there was food in the kitchen, but I went in and there are two lunatics in there, one of them's almost naked and the other is buttering him.
Stanley's voice droned steadily as a distant undercurrent, — Yes but just let me finish… to Agnes Deigh. — I'm not trying to say I'm exempt from it, this modern disease, he went on with an insistence which prevented him from seeing that she was more than tired, was in fact exhausted in a sense so severe that it was physical only in its trembling expression. — That's what it is, a disease, you can't live like we do without catching it. Because we get time given to us in fragments, that's the only way we know it. Finally we can't even conceive of a continuum of time. Every fragment exists by itself, and that's why we live among palimpsests, because finally all the work should fit into one whole, and express an entire perfect action, as Aristotle says, and it's impossible now, it's impossible, because of the breakage, there are pieces everywhere. .
Suddenly Otto's hand shot up to his inside breast pocket: one might have thought he'd been bitten, so involuntary had this reflex become.
— A nation of watchmakers, can you imagine any country better qualified to make atom bombs?
— Oh God, to be in Europe, anywhere in Europe, even in France. .
— Maude, is this yours? Big Anna was wearing it under her shirt.
— Even in Mauberge, even in a coal mine.
Otto's face expressed nothing: unobserved, his features apparently had no reason to arrange themselves one way or another. His brow was level and without lines, his lips together and even. But slight marks of agitation drew up round his eyes when he raised them toward the door, where Esther stood with a woman wearing an orchid upside-down, and two or three others clustered about the guest of the evening, who afforded a spectacle of sartorial sloppiness and postural dilapidation consistent with the humility 'which he offered, in his soul-searching best-selling book, to share with others. At that moment Esther caught his eye with a querulous look which drew Otto's face up in immediate confusion, and widened his bloodshot eyes; though why, he could hardly have said, as he turned and pretended to be speaking with the woman in the collapsed maternity dress who had just said, — Monasteries are a good thing for America, they help keep the homosexuals off the streets.