He looked back at the TV, finally unmuting it.
He was drunk.
Joan was drunk.
“You dumb cunt,” he said, staring at the model. “Oh! And people are calling in to ask her shit. I’m telling you, Joan, I have this fucking show memorized!”
“I can see that,” she said, with a smile.
“It’s on my hit parade! I had someone at Guerdon burn DVDs, I’m serious, I’m givin em out for Christmas. (Don’t tell Axel!) She keeps talking about the garbage, crushing her pelvis! Look, look,” he said, raising then lowering the volume. “One of the callers — a guy, of course — is asking Shtupermodel if she’ll need ‘further surgery’ on her hips! On her hips! Loose lips sink shtuperhips! He was just like Larry, a horny motherfucker, you could tell all he really wanted to know was When can you get back to spreading for cock. A woman calls and says, ‘Think you’ll ever fall in love again?’ and Shtuperwhore says something like, ‘Ya, ya, it’s too soon,’ blah. ‘Ya, it’s too soon, but I am looking for the future, whatever it brings.’ Bringing up baby! Coming soon to a theater near you! Coming soon on her shattered pelvis! Another guy has trouble spittin out a question but finally says he was a survivor—that’s why Larry’s people probably patched him through — says he was just up the beach from where Slippery Nip Shtupmod was stuck in the tree, but oh! Larry’s a hardass! Toughass Jew. Man, he was rough on this call-in motherfucker! Ol cardio-fartin Larry keeps cuttin the slob off, saying, ‘What’s your question, what’s your question?’ just like he was at Nate ’n’ Al’s with the gang — then he hangs up on the guy! See, Larry doesn’t want any fellow victims bonding with her, she’s his, he wants that wet, fractured pussy all to himself! The answer my friend is blowin in his wind! See, Larry doesn’t dig the idea of some guy who was on the same beach when the wave hit — he don’t dig it at all. So Larry’s passin gas under the desk, sounds like fucked-up muffler, soiling his jock, marking his turf! Surf and turf! I’m tellin you, look at him, he’s got new suspenders — look! — new suspenders, a fresh haircut, and horny as hell! I look at that bitch and all I can think of is my sister-in-law, impaled on that sundari. I guess God smiles on the beautiful. Esther was no prize. And let’s face it, Shtupermodel Fiancée is beautiful. Up in the tree for 9 hours, it held her in its arms, that’s what she said—Esther’s whorefuck tree wasn’t so benevolent. At least they found the boyfriend’s body. Poor Superfiancé. Samuel wasn’t that lucky. Maybe if he had a manicured bush, the bureaucrats wouldn’t have ‘misplaced’ him. Stupid fucks.”
Joan brought up a Faulkner story she’d read in college about a Mississippi River flood. A pregnant woman, stranded in a tree. (Indirect reference to Katrina, which she always tried to avoid around him, but she was inebriated and couldn’t help it.) A convict rescues her.
Then Joan blurted out that she was pregnant, she, not Faulkner’s lady, not Esther, not Superwhoever, but she, Joan Herlihy, and Lew was quizzically, quietly uncomprehending before soberly nodding his unsober head. She hadn’t expected such speedy, almost elegantly impersonal acquiescence, but that was why he’d made billions, he could reframe and conform his energies to the wildly brand-new. His expression became that of someone listening to a confession of illness, humbly attending the details of what could or couldn’t be done to effect a healing.
She didn’t stay much longer. He asked her not to leave, but suddenly Joan got nauseous and emotional and didn’t want to be that way around him, not now, not tonight, and didn’t want to hear the inevitable question: whether she was certain, but more, whether she was certain it was his, didn’t want to hear that now, not tonight. Joan knew she would have to take a paternity test, both parties would demand it — she would reserve the right of dignity to beat him to the punch and suggest (she would need to move soon: tomorrow morning) what she knew his attorneys would require anyway — she was going to keep this child, Joan knew it was his and she wanted to raise it, but not tonight, she did not want to discuss any of it tonight, did not want to feel anything more, no strength or will or heart or bowels to engage in dialogue, spoken or unspoken — not tonight.