“What rumors, Quickskill?”
“Oh, I … don’t want to say.”
“Quickskill, you generalize so.”
“Come on, Quaw Quaw, let’s stop arguing.” He grabbed her hand. He was pulling her toward the sofa. She was between him and the television set. He could hear from the stillness of the audience that Tom Tyler’s new play was about to begin.
She was resisting. “It’s been a long time, Raven. I have to get used to you again.”
Before he knew it he had a tiny nipple in his mouth. Her sweater was pulled up about her neck. It was a soft purring sweater made of lamb’s wool, a rose-colored sweater. She was wearing some kind of hip Bohemian college-women’s scent, Bonnard ’60. The kind of women who studied under teachers who scolded them for not being able to identify more than twenty-five spices, or not being able to walk right. They never walked splayfooted and bowlegged, with their necks lowered. It had a French name — posture.
DUN: Miss Florence, will you be kind enough to tell Miss Georgina all about that American relative of yours.
FLO: Oh, about my American cousin; certainly. (Aside to Harry) Let’s have some fun. Well, he’s about seventeen feet high.
DUN: Good gracious! Seventeen feet high!
FLO: They are all seventeen feet high in America, ain’t they, Mr. Vernon?
VER: Yes, that’s about the average height.
FLO: And they have long black hair that reaches down to their heels; they have dark copper-colored skin, and they fight with — What do they fight with, Mr. Vernon?
VER: Tomahawks and scalping knives.
FLO: Yes; and you’d better take care, Miss Georgina, or he’ll take his tomahawk and scalping knife and scalp you immediately.
He let his tongue linger there for a while, darting, taking long agonizing strokes, moving like a feather.
ASA: There was no soft soap.
DEB: Soft soap!
AUG: Soft soap!
VER: Soft soap!
MRS. M: Soft soap!
FLO: Soft soap!
GEO (on sofa): Soft soap!
DUN: Thoft Thoap?
ASA: Yes, soft soap. I reckon you know what that is. However, I struck a pump in the kitchen, slicked my hair down a little, gave my boots a lick of grease, and now I feel quite handsome; but I’m everlastingly dry.
FLO: You’ll find ale, wine and luncheon on the side table.
ASA: Wal, I don’t know as I’ve got any appetite. You see, comin along on the cars I worried down half a dozen ham sandwiches, eight or ten boiled eggs, two or three pumpkin pies and a strong of cold sausages — and — Wal, I guess I can hold on till dinnertime.
DUN: Did that illustrious exile eat all that? I wonder where he put it.
ASA: I’m as dry as a sap-tree in August.
Her head was lying back. Her black hair was hanging over the couch. His dick was hard and was trying to break out of his pants. He had removed that left white cup from over her breast mound, and now his fingers moved the other white cup up. And he slithered across her chest till he reached that one. Then he went to town, his free finger bringing down that zipper. “Oh, Quickskill,” she was saying. “Oh, Quickskiiiillll.” She’d draw it out. His finger moved underneath her short white panties, which were embroidered around the edges with lily designs. He dug that, the contrast. Those denims and those panties. The denims now down over her ankles.
She started breathing real hard; he was, too, and she helped relieve him by zipping down his pants and taking out his dick. She was moving the brown skin up and down with her hand. He was moving his finger into the vagina crescent. They started to move in a seesaw fashion. Then there was some hip-swiveling and bending backwards.
AUG: Oh, Mr. Trenchard, why did you not bring me one of those lovely Indian’s dresses of your boundless prairie?
MRS. M.: Yes, one of those dresses in which you hunt the buffalo.
AUG (extravagantly): Yes, in which you hunt the buffalo.
ASA (imitating): In which I hunt the buffalo. (Aside) Buffaloes down in Vermont. (Aloud) Wal, you see, them dresses are principally the nateral skin, tipped off with paint, and the Indians object to parting with them.
She got up and took her clothes off, threw them on a chair, removed the pins from her hair and let it down. He was trembling, removing his shoes. He was always trembling at this point. He would tie his shoelaces in knots, or he’d spend time trying to put his clothes in one place so that he wouldn’t be missing a sock or having his host find the wrong thing underneath his couch or caught under the seat of a chair.
FLO: What’s that, sir? Do you want to make me jealous?
ASA: Oh, no, you needn’t get your back up, you are the right sort too, but you must own you’re small potatoes, and few in a hill compared to a gal like that.
FLO: I’m what?
ASA: Small potatoes.
FLO: Will you be kind enough to translate that for me, for I don’t understand American yet.
ASA: Yes, I’ll put it in French for you, “petites pommes de terre.”
The lights went out. The television light was the only one in the room. It gave out a bluish haze.
ASA: Yes, about the ends they’re as black as a nigger’s in billing time, and near the roots they’re all speckled and streaked.
DUN (horror-struck): My whiskers speckled and streaked?
ASA (showing bottle): Now, this is a wonderful invention.
DUN: My hair dye. My dear sir.
ASA (squeezing his hand): How are you?
DUN: Dear Mr. Trenchard.
He could see her round red back reflected in the television screen. He was holding on to her. They were moving up and down. She was holding him around the neck. What they must mean when they say “cleaving.” He clove. She clove. She was in his mind; he in hers.
ASA: Wal, I guess shooting with bows and arrows is just about like most things in life, all you’ve got to do is to keep the sun out of your eyes, look straight — pull strong — calculate the distance, and you’re sure to hit the mark in most things …
They were as complex as the hedges trimmed by the Royal Gardener of London. They were underneath in a subaqueous city. If the Devil had reared this city, then the Devil was better than God. That’s why God always maintained a dour expression and the Devil was grinning all the time. This primitive act made them behave like children, and they began to giggle and tease and play hide and seek. There was a lot of hiding and seeking and seeking and hiding. They reached the hilt and then …
ASA: … You sockdologizing old mantrap!
Screams.
“What’s the matter, Quickskill?” she whispered.
The cameras were focused upon the President’s box. Lincoln lay slumped to his left side, his arm dangling. The assassin must have been a Southerner, because he was dressed to kill. And before he hobbled off the stage he struck one of those old theatrical poses; his slicked hair gleaming, his weak spine curved, a hand to his chest, he yelled, “Sic semper Tyrannis” and “Revenge for the South.” Quickskill sat staring into the set; Quaw Quaw, aghast, her hand shielding her mouth, sitting next to him. Somebody from the party played around with the doorknob to the den, but then, realizing that it was locked, joined the commotion coming from the other room of this “Good Friday” party.