Estelle excused herself and slipped into the dining room to set the table. Naomi dropped away to help. Jean wandered over to the spice rack and picked up the bottle with the yellow powder in it and held it up to the sunlight to admire it some more. Robert and Dan leaned against the marble counter, taking sips from their drinks and studying their shoe tips in a way that suggested they might or might not be listening to what Ron had to say.
Ron's diminished audience only unnerved him further. Yet he kept going as though he were talking to a room full of people until Estelle whisked back in to interrupt him gaily and announce lunch was ready.
She drove her guests into the dining room with merry amplified goat-herder gestures, where everyone gathered around the green-tinted glass table with the solitary sunflower in a green-tinted glass vase in the middle. Estelle came in behind them and pointed each to his or her seat. Once they had unfolded their napkins and complimented the salads, Naomi said: Did you hear about the circus elephant that went berserk in Honolulu? It killed its trainer and made a break for it.
Oh, god, Jean said. I know. Wasn't that terrible?
Poor thing, Estelle said. It must have been petrified. She skewered a beige chunk of turkey meat with her fork, raised it to her lips, then noticed everyone was waiting for her. Eat, eat, she said, waving her hand at the food before them.
Poor thing? said Robert. Imagine how the trainer must have felt.
So what happened? asked Ron.
The police had to shoot it eighty-six times before it went down, Naomi said, chewing.
Dan noticed she had a dark strand of spinach stuck between her front teeth.
Eighty-six? Ron said.
They have the whole thing on film. This is absolutely delicious, Estelle. You're amazing. Apparently the elephant was a juvenile delinquent. Last year it tore up a mosque in Pennsylvania and terrorized all these school kids out on a field trip.
What's a mosque doing in Pennsylvania? Robert asked.
When we were kids, Ron said, we got to go to the planetarium and ice-cream-making factories.
Yeah, said Estelle. What's next? Gas stations?
I think your elephant was just trying to distance itself from the GOP, Robert suggested. But, then again, who wouldn't? Did you hear Dick Armey's latest pearl? I've been to Europe once, he told this reporter. I don't have to go again.
As opposed, you're saying, said Estelle, to our great communicator who can't keep his slick willy inside his britches? Now there's a mensch for you.
Oh, please, said Robert. He swished sparkling wine in his mouth, savoring. Nice. Like we're supposed to believe the allegations of an Arkansas hick with bad makeup and a schnozz that would've made Jimmy Durante blush.
You mean Bubba?
You're a riot, dearest. I mean Paula (he slid into a bad southern accent) I Think I'll Just Sit on My Ass In This Here Trailer Park Three Years Till Bill's Elected President of the Goddamn U. S. of A. Before Uttering a Peep So I Can Make Some Mighty Big Sorghum Boodle Jones. Gimme a break. At least Clinton doesn't go backing Nicaraguan Contras.
That we know of, sweet pea, Estelle said, that we know of.
Sorghum? Jean repeated. Boodle?
Words, admittedly, one is required to use sparingly, Robert said. Not unlike catawampus and, well (he looked up at the ceiling, searching his memory), spondulics. Imagine on how few occasions one's lips form such sounds over the course of an average lifetime.
Flibbertigibbet, Naomi offered. Bloviate. Supposititious.
Dactylonomy, said Jean.
Dactylonomy? Ron asked.
The operation to remove an ugly metrical foot, Robert offered.
Close, smarty pants, Jean said. It's the art of counting on your fingers sans abacus. As in the Middle East before Allah knows when.
Now explain to me why, Estelle asked, if you have a perfectly good abacus in your galabeya, you would want to use your fingers to count.
Robert looked at her over the top of his wine glass.
What? she said.
I once had the wrong tooth removed, Ron volunteered. I was a kid. Well, it wasn't the wrong tooth. Teeth. They were the right teeth, but they weren't supposed to be removed. At least I didn't know they were supposed to be removed. Neither did my mother. Or, um, the orthodontist, evidently. Until he removed them, I mean. See — this was when I was getting fitted for braces — he was just fishing around inside my mouth, like orthodontists do, when all of a sudden he picked up those pliers thingies of his and started twisting.
Twisting? Estelle said.
Without any novocaine or laughing gas. Yeah.
Aggggh, said Naomi. Which reminds me. I had to stay in the dorm my first Thanksgiving at Sarah Lawrence? My parents were biking in Switzerland or some such cultivated shit, and I hadn't befriended any of the neurotic black-bereted fembots known as my peers yet. So I cooked up these hotdogs and beans on my electric burner and read Dostoevsky for my world masterpieces class. Notes from Underground. How sad is that?
Which has exactly what to do with being attacked by your dentist? Estelle asked.
I'm getting to that. I'm getting to that. See, there was this other loser staying in the dorm that weekend. This gal lived five rooms down from me and had long black hair and an Italian name that sounded not unlike a kind of pasta. We had the place all to ourselves. She was, it so happened, in possession of a pistachio-green canister of laughing gas.
In possession of?
Her boyfriend was busy finding himself in some microbially challenged country. He'd left it behind as a going-away present. So every night she turned up her stereo loud as it'd go and put on the 45 of “A Day in the Life.” “A Day in the Life”! She had it set so that when it reached the end the record would automatically start playing again. It repeated — I'm guessing conservatively here — about fifty thousand times in a row while this girl sat in the hallway in her black bra and panties, sucking at the canister, racing her pet turtles.
She had pet turtles, said Robert. Of course. Why not?
Romulus and Remus. We were all pretentious little twits back then, weren't we? She'd painted peace signs on their shells with metallic lime nail polish. Every time I passed on my way to the john, she pretended I wasn't there. Come to think of it, I don't think she was pretending. She'd probably gone temporarily blind in her pharmaceutical euphoria.
Is laughing gas technically a pharmaceutical? Estelle wondered.
Are you familiar with our new neighbor, Amélie Tautau? asked Robert. From across the hall? The TV star?
The so-called TV star, Estelle corrected.
The so-called TV star married to the so-called shipping magnate, Robert said. With the very loud soi-disant dog. You can't hear it now. Naturally. That's because the fucker waits until we're all asleep or resting comfortably before… well, it doesn't so much bark as yrip. Yrip, yrip, yrip. Yrip, yrip, yrip.
You're not going to tell this story while we're eating, Estelle said, are you?
Ron meaningfully ticked his veneers with his fingernail in Naomi's direction. Naomi stared back at him, stumped. He mouthed the word spinach.
She didn't understand.
Spinach, he repeated in an exaggerated whisper. Here.