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Chapter 19: February in Paris Bare trees, branches and roots as above so below, sky like a sieve, rotgray, drear and wet ... no snow, though. The cloistered season. From behind whose windows the displaced ever stand, noses to pane. The Arab cafe, offering relief to the exiles of Allah, rocks on every night. Across the street, two buildings over and four flights up, the occasional eye of Olney Garkle looks out from his station at the kitchen table. Working through a rough time, there. Same scene every night. Rhonda goes out. Maggie in silence goes early to bed, reads herself to sleep. "Good books," mulls O., "must admit, not crap." The candles still burning from dinner, O. waits for his brain to stir. Pours another low-grade eau d'secours. "Must move this meat machine, but, oh." And will O. work on the book tonight? "Yes! Energy leaking in all directions, though. Purpose in meltdown, core burning up that brain marrow. S'nvabitch." Sip. Encore un sip. On his way. "That conyak," sez he to the room, "marvelous stuff. O thee, twice distilled. Even this here Monoprix-brand cheapy, smelling as it do like petrol and burns the mouth. Said mouth--à cause du said pétrole--now growing puckered in places, and in other places white swellings do burgeon and multiply. Note: buy a papaya tomorrow. Unlike other leading fruits, papayas act fast tenderising cancres and other villainous abscesses in the rot of yr gob whilst ye wait." O. wouldst testify: "Friends and admirers, let none amongst you doubt that cognac and papaya are like unto each other as hemorrhoids and Preparation H are themselves unto each other also quite like." Beaming, he holds up his hands in a gesture for silence, but party apparatchiks from far and wide, enthused by a promising talent for obfuscation, continue to applaud. Banners are waved, balloons set aloft. Yes, it appears they want Olney Garkle to lead them into the next election. At last, he is able to resume. "But wine," sez he, "O that wine doth maketh the blueth, er, blues." More applause. It appears he's their man, all right. Mind wanders appropriately, murmurs a fellow to his neighbor. What about beer? asks a wag from the congregation. "Why, beer is a fatso and a punchhappy pug, all rarin' to fight in grain country pubs." Scattered applause. Titters. Uncomfortable coughs. Dangerous continuity there, replies the neighbor. He should have evaded the question. "Didja here the one about Scotch?" asks the sweating candidate, suddenly articulate. Grumbles abound. He's not going to give us three connected sentences in a row, is he? asks the fellow of another neighbor. "Now Scotch sits around in empire bars, disillusioned with mick'ry and African whores ... " Silence. The bandwagon's tires have gone flat. You'll have to speak less clearly, says a spokesman for the group. How do you expect to win nomination if the voters can pick apart your words? General sounds of agreement flood the hall. Right on, say a few hopeful contenders for seats in someone's, anyone's, cabinet. "But I thought, I mean, who's got a clue as to what that means?" asks the also-ran, glancing at the wings, already aflutter with dark horse grooming. "Say, I've got one about tequila. Wanna here it?" Stern nods from the sea of citizens. "Goes like this: Tequila makes babies." Outrageous clarity, someone yells. Within minutes the hall is deserted. "Hey, wait." The defeated would-be Leader of the People looks out to the emptiness faced by all intelligent life in the universe. "I was just kidding! I really can confuse the issue. Listen to this, you'll love it: With respect to the honorable member's request for more information on the bill tabled before parliament, let me assure him that in due course a complete evaluation concerning the full measure of benefits accruing from our desire to benefit the lives of all citizens by reducing health care, eliminating social services, and increasing taxes will ... oh, shit." O. pours another oaken-hued glass of the waters of fire. "Yep, stony stuff that mezcal, and smooth like quicksilver. Proven baby-maker despite inept PR on my part. But! No one 'round here to progenate with ce soir, heh-heh." He raises the glass to his trumpet-shaped lips. "A toast: Cone-yik uber all of 'em!" Sip! Fire. Sip! Fire. Coughs rudely, ostentation backing up his nose. "Ahhhh." Wipes a tear or two from an eye or two. Relaxes. Stares into space. Jolts upright. "Must remember, dearly b'loveds, why we're here." Why're we here? Why're we here? cry a chorus of infant hecklers representing his lifelong effort to mature. "We are gathered here this night to invite the Muse." Ha-ha-ha. "And to welcome Her, we're offering a little fire to clarify our need for Her Sizzleship." Olney is a drunkard, Olney is a drunkard. "Nonsense. Cognac is bait for the Muse ... better yet, catch us a Musette. O inspiration, come sit on my knee." Dirty old man! "Please! Some cool breezes to clear mine thought." Olney smoking, drinking, waiting; yet no patient Siddhartha, he. "And no Muse tonight either, mister. Nothing going on here but the usual willful decline, let's get that clear." He looks around the kitchen. The overhead light on, he sees his reflection in the shiny, dark blue wall paint. Jumps up turns the light off, sits down, mumbling. "Candles burning down. Little ones for cheap from the Franprix on Rue de l'Eglise. Burn, say, about two hours, maybe more, I (sigh) dunno. Point of interest here: how many Rue de l'Eglises in a French lifetime? Rue Gambetta's galore. Not one Avenue Trochu, though, nor Bazaine ni Petain. And nowhere in the world the likes of a Hitlerstrasse or a Goebbelsgassen or an Eichmannplatz. And potz! by the way to you, dear Maggie. Gonna fuck that Rhonda. Soon's she stays put. Gone all the time, hardly ever here, doggone it. Oh, well. Guess'll just have to be patient, sknicker sknicker." The cognac is tickling O.'s blood, cells and corpuscles rolling in the aisles. "Real rotter here. But I'd rather be rotter than righteous. Now, if Maggie, my little cutie with so-recently-a-stoneface-all-the-time-I-wonder-why, would just try. Doesn't seem to care. Silly girl bought horse meat today. I'm game, but she went out to buy mutton, dammit. Wanted mutton tonight. Like mutton. Didn't even see the horse's head over the door. Goddamn French, eating horse meat, anyhow. Fault no doubt of the goddamn Prussians, horse meat their legacy to future French melancholia owing to thentofore unheard of defeat, mostly of soul. Defeat so bad, they, the French, took it out on their own kind. Yep, and a century later here's me with the girl who can never remember the name of the song she'll never forget. That's Maggie-o. Pootita d'amore. Too pooped to pop. Just won't pay attention. Won't even try. Mercy. What can I do to help? Where did I go wrong? And France never got over it. Rest of the world neither, s'pose." O., tippled, rises. Takes a last look out the window. Steamy like a rose, the Arab bar resonates to an orchestra of ouds blaring over the smoke and aspirate fellowship. In his mind, O. shouts courage camarades to the two talking in the window there, he the Arab speaking French to the Arab he, as up 'n' over, no he-man he pinches the candles goodnight. "Well sir, might as well." Olney pads to the bathroom for road show midgets, bends to ablute. A lifetime of face looks back from the speckle-spattered mirror. "Looks a hundred years old. Then why yet a child? Pauvre mec." Grabs a face cloth. "Let me with vigor wash thee O weary face of infant progeriac. Teeth next. T-e-e-eth. Lotsa little e-e-e's good for morale. Better'n eugh. Say Po-o-o-o-tie. Oo-o-o helps i'measur'bly too. But anyway. Time for a pee. Yah, comes so slowly 'ny more. At the end a million little squirts 'n' spurts. No longer the horsepiss of youth, ah me." And Olney does softly sing accompaniment: "Squirt dumdeedum "Eh, the Pootie." Olney enters the bedroom, thinks: there she is, sleeping as easy as the pure and deemed holy. Whereas moi, unless boiled in cognac, lay half the night watching mad monkeymind swing and chitter through an alien reach, sca-reech. No rest til the wee hours for dastardly deeders such as Ik. But the Poot there. Falls in'n instant, lucky girl. O. sways slightly at the foot of the bed, undresses watching her. Too bad she's not twelve like she looks, what the hell. Inflames a body, she does, in that pre-fallen, pre-apple way. Fuck that girl til blue in the balls, coming never the objective. Oh, if she weighed, I don't know, 75 pounds? Well, maybe 90, like a full grown Malay. He stands next to her, fascinated by sleeping females. Oh, my yes. Not-that-of-course I don't like 'em awake too. But sleeping in their warm skin ... ummm ... pliable to the hand. Drugged even better. Turn 'em this way and that way ... feel 'em just here and just there. Tumble their londonbridges to below knee and all the way off ... well, not all the way off. Leave 'em dangling, cool silk or cotton, round an ankle, or just above knee... He sits on the bed. In the soft light of the lamp her hair is the color of poplar leaves in autumn. He takes a bunch in his hand; the friction of strand rubbing strand makes a rustling heat. He bends to the pleasing smell, like the smells of budding girls in summer, the smell of them after a morning shower and hours of play in the gold and green, the hot salt nectar of their virgin napes ready to be licked and tickled and cooled by the breath of his devotion ... his face in Maggie's nape now, breathing her into his soul. He reaches for her hand, cups it round his cock. From a dream her fingers contract lightly; shivers fly up his spine. Unable to stop himself, he covers her face with kisses: she awakens. Uh-oh. That's why when drugged even better. Sweet little things, so warm and unconscious. But, oh, well. Her expression, a little disgruntled, makes him laugh, releases the tensions in his heart with a rush of desire. Free falling between sleep and awake, she is all suppleness in the wrap of his arms. Purls of pleasure ride the musk of her warm breath as he licks her eyes, her small ears, the fuzz above her lip. His tongue slips lower to stroke the hollow of her throat, her prominent collar bone, the tropical juices of her armpit. He bathes her breasts with the overflow, sucking and biting russet nipples into stiff little lingams. His hand plays the curve of her body, lingers at the small of her back, fingertips skimming pale down nestled in spinal vale and pond-like pelvic dimples. It sweeps in spirals over cool moons of symmetry and down to her Goddess-bone knees and behind, the warm skin between tendons sending shudders of female love through his body. Parting her legs, he kneads her thighs, the muscles beneath deepwaving the damp flesh as she tenses, relaxes. He presses his mouth upon hers. Breathing each other, all the air they need is in their lungs, spittle from both running freely from the corners of her mouth. His hand moves to the rise of her hipbone, skims its summit, slips downslope to press on her belly, sinking it far from the eminence of mons. His fingers, spread wide, creep stealthily through steaming grasslands to the edge of the world and over, a sheer drop through shimmering mists, not stopping at heaven's door but tricking, to the catchbreath below. "Don't!" she hisses. "I will!" he growls. Hissing and growling for position, they move without grace to feast on each other. As he licks her elixir his cock fills her mouth, her tongue, prodding, stretching to seek its root. Brinking, brinking together, he pulls away with a sucking pop. Sliding now, sliding it up and down her swollen, fluttering cunt until she whimpers, begs him to fuck her, and wet satin snake enters wet satin lake. His fingers, maddened and moving, reach for her throat, so small in their grasp, squeezing and stroking, squeezing and stroking. She tries to pull away but her throat is like God in his hands, his penis like God in her cunt. Cursing, choking, she pries at his wrists while sucking him deeper inside. She rasps out a scream, he roars in response, letting go, but the power is too good. He grabs a handful of her hair, her violent breathing cut short by a gasp as he pins her hands and head to the mattress. She can't move, he is all moving, moving to fuse, to shatter and burst new-bang into geneses of sparkling free falling... §§§ February in Paris. No euphony there, Basie wouldn't touch it ... among the last thoughts of monkey mind folding in on itself, snooze-ready with tail wrapped. No tune possible to help the heart in this season. But oh, the body is fed by night. He cuddles Maggie spoon fashion. She is asleep again, and so is he, any minute now. The best fuck in the world, that Pootie. If only animals we were and not human. The mind so anti-body so often, seeking fleshless complexities ... better to spend life making love, over and over again and again, neverending, mind machines programmed and dedicated to body love and to hell with evolution and its divisive needs, fanatic beliefs, shrinking isolations, desolate days ... gotta write that down, get started ... on the book ... §§§ Chapter 20: Rhonda's bonne idée! |