The barrier Kirk had come upon (but not come upon) when he tried to pull a 401 (breaking and entering) was a false hymen made of elasticium, a newly discovered trivalent metal whose outstanding characteristic was enormous resiliency. Elasticium’s discovery had been made possible by a grant from Citizens Against the Rape of Mommies (CAROM), an organization whose membership was limited to those who had had at least one child (or were in the seventh to ninth month of pregnancy) before being attacked (usually by their husbands, an independent survey revealed). CAROM’s work was a clear case of mother succor (and thus an aid to rhymesters). Vindictiveness would soon lead CAROM’s leadership to share false hymens with the world (“Maidenheads® are available in your choice of Cherry pink, Vestal Virgin white, or Black Widow black”), but Oreo had been able to get hold of a prototype because of her acquaintanceship with its inventor, Caresse Booteby.
À propos de bottes, Parnell helped Kirk off the floor with the toe of his boot and sent him back to the mat, as if to say, “I don’t know what happened, but it shit-sure ain’t gon happen again.” It did. Kirk lowered his boom and boing-ed off Oreo’s indehiscent cherry as if it were a tiny trampoline — which indeed, in effect, it was.
By now, the nine prostitutes were having a finger-popping time, whooping and hollering with uncontrolled delight. Parnell was hoarse from screaming at them to quiet down, polyped from screeching yet another set of futile instructions to the thwarted Kirk about the solution to Oreo’s architecture. Poor Kirk’s sexual charette availed him nothing. His back was lacerated from racketing against walls and furniture (once he had hit the black bottom woman’s empty chair and had bounced on the floor like a dribbled basketball). After each encounter, totally confused and uncomprehending, he fanned the head of his angry-red penis, occasionally patting it in consolation for its failure. The battering his quondam battering ram was taking was making Oreo feel sorry for him. He was lathered with sweat from his efforts, his great heart about to burst. Oh, the heartbreak of satyriasis.
Oreo got up, tired of playing this game. “He’s exhausted, fagged out—oysgamitched! It takes a better man than him to break my cherry,” she taunted. “Why don’t you send this gelding back where he came from?”
She knew that her words would enrage Parnell — the choler of a master whose pet has been maligned. Parnell rushed at her. This was the part she had been waiting for. Ducking his pimply right cross, she dealt him the humiliation special — a quick fō-han-blō, a lightning bak-han-blō. He dropped to the floor, more out of surprise than compulsion. The blōs had been meant to sting, not fell. The women made no move to help Parnell. They were immobilized, as if permanently, a frieze on an Attic temple.
Parnell shook his head in disbelief. “I’m not jiving now. Woman, I am gon break your natural ass.”
“No shit?” said Oreo as he started to get up. “Don’t talk so much with your mouth,” she advised, quoting one of her grandmother’s favorite lines, and she gave him a pendulum tō-blō to the lower jaw to make sure he would not. The slight crepitation she heard she at first feared was Parnell’s mandible mealing. When she saw what had made the sound, she was even more horrified by what she had done: she had broken one of her sandal straps. “Oh, drat and double phoo,” said Oreo. She dealt Parnell an el-bō-krac to the ear out of frustration. They were her favorite sandals.
So far Parnell had not touched her. He groped toward her like a man in a dream’s slow motion running after a silent, insidious double-time train, a train he must catch before the something that is gaining on him engulfs him. She eluded his grasp. She was making her domination of Parnell into a contest the integrity of whose outcome she would consider compromised if the oil from the whorls of one of his fingers was seasoned with the salt of her light film of sweat. Her mezuzah flew, her bra osmosed moisture, her sandal flapped, lofting zephyrs of air that cooled her Maidenhead as she went through her repertoire of WIT: sarcastic blōs from hed to tō, the irony of a fut in the mouth, facetious wise-kracs, kik-y repartee, strīk-ing satire — in short, the persiflaging of Parnell.
When she had amused herself sufficiently, she straddled the prostrate pimp, arched his neck backward in a modified hed-lok, and addressed herself to the nine prostitutes. “How many of you would like to step on Parnell’s boots?” she asked.
“Who?” they chorused.
She had forgotten that she had made up the name Parnell and now did not want to know his true name. “Him,” she said, ducking her head and maintaining leverage on Parnell’s chin.
The frieze unstuck. Five women came forward, leaving metopes among the glyphs — a majority decision in the absence of the working whore, who still had not reappeared. Oreo blindfolded Parnell with the scarf of one of the five so that he could not see which of his bootblacks were scuffers, which (by abstention) still buffers. She turned him around with a semi-ul-na-brāc. As she did so, she looked around for Kirk. He was standing in a corner asleep, his legs crossed, his hands cupping a gathering of gonads, a tear runnel glistening on one cheek of his hanging head. “Poor thing,” Oreo double-entendred.
All the gristle had gone out of Parnell too. He seemed depressed. His proud, swanlike carriage was gone. In its place was a manifestly terminal droop. Swan’s down, Oreo punned to herself. He stood quietly until the first of the five laid a dulling toe on his blue-black boots, then a tremor went through him.
Of the two women Oreo knew by name, Cecelia was a buffer, Lil a scuffer. If loyalty to Parnell had to be judged by this b-s choice, then Oreo had better use Lil as her intermediary for her final task in this house.
After the laying on of feet, Oreo called Lil over.
12 Procrustes, Cephissus, Apollo Delphinius
Oreo at Kropotkin’s Shoe Store
While the manager, a Sidney, was on the phone, Oreo idly twirled her walking stick. Her dress was wrinkled from sleeping on the floor of Mr. Soundman, Inc. She had left Parnell’s triumphant but weary. When she saw the slightly open window of the studio, she knew she could go no further that night. She pried the sash up with her cane and ducked in. (She left Slim Jackson a didactic balloon about carelessness.) Before she dropped off to sleep, she briefly considered how Parnell’s ménage à douze might be affected by her little visit. She did not really care too much — except that it was the place where she had finally learned her father’s address. As she had judged, Lil had been willing to help her. While Samuel was otherwise engaged, Lil had skillfully pilfered his ID.
Now that Oreo knew where Samuel was, she was in no hurry to get there. First things first. She needed new sandals. Hence her appearance, in the early bright, at the first shoe store she had found open — Kropotkin’s. She tuned in to the young manager on the phone.
“Yeah, yeah, I know, I know. This is a terrible location. It’s depressing, especially on a rainy day. The people up here want fashion, but they don’t want to pay for it, what can I tell you? You should see my store. It’s immaculate. You could eat off the floor. All my stores are like that. I tell you one thing, I’m glad for the experience… Yeah, yeah, but now I know how to do all that stuff. I just want him to take me with him is all. I’m ready for bigger and better. I’m telling you, one store on Thirty-fourth Street would be better than two here. We did three thousand here last week, and we’re happy to do it. I’m used to doing forty-three, maybe forty-six hundred. .. So when are you getting your promotion?… Oh, I hear things, you know. I hear that maybe they’re going to move Herbie Manstein and put you in his place… No, I’m not kidding you. I’m not guaranteeing that’s what’s going to happen, but that’s what I hear, anyway… Yeah, for a small store I’m not doing so bad, but now I’m ready for bigger and better.”