Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me Read online

  “C’est ça,” added Kristin, absently tapping Gnossos on top of the head.

  “Hey you are,” came Rosenbloom’s protest, “that ain’ the end. He go on more to say—”

  “Quite all right, Juan,” from Oeuf. “We really don’t need to hear any more.” He was fingering the platinum keychain around his neck. “Miss Pankhurst has unwittingly become our particeps criminis. Wouldn’t you say, Kristin?”

  “I don’t really understand,” from Fitzgore weakly. “I haven’t been very well, you know.”

  Kristin crossed the room to get the paper and lit a cigarette, explaining: “How could we talk undergraduates into conflict without some kind of moral issue?”

  “The seeds of agitation are sown,” said Oeuf. “Ab initio at least. But spring is the season of rebellion. If the weather is warm and eyes are on the sparrow—”

  “—very few will watch the dove,” finished Kristin, blowing a smoke ring.

  Gnossos fumed at the air of conspiracy. Nurse Fang had begun taking shorthand in her notebook. Rajamuttu whispered secrets to the wall. Fitzgore shook his head: “It’s all Greek to me. Will someone pass me that other jar of honey there?”

  Nurse Fang had ceased writing on her shorthand pad and was lifting her pencil skyward, as she might have a torch. “We really can claim,” she intoned reverently, blinking back the tears, “to have God—”

  “—on our side,” said Heffalump, seeing it all.

  “Dios mío,” reinforced Rosenbloom, blessing himself quickly, kissing his Saint Christopher.

  From under the bedclothes Oeuf produced a piece of three-ply cardboard with a window in its face. He handed it to Youngblood, who had remained respectfully quiet. The window opened on a group of rotating numbers.

  “Today is D-day,” he told them, moving the numbers ahead one digit, “minus nineteen.”

  Juan Carlos Rosenbloom manfully choked a sob; Nurse Fang recorded it in shorthand; and Agneau watched her with unabating desire.

  Alone in the surgical silence of the infirmary john, Gnossos stewed in his own Aegean juices. But he tried to reason, because clawing not all that remotely at his forebrain was the possibility he had been jockeyed. Oeuf, he could maybe understand, a regular Tammany Hall Santa Claus, suffering the jaded drip-drop of his tool while charting constituencies in a political hamlet. But Kristin, man, turning off like a cold-water faucet, you’d think the monkey had nibbled on her ass. All that pedantic Mickey Mouse chitchat.

  He stuck out his most malevolent tongue, showing it to her ghost on the bathroom wall. There was a pair of stainless steel scissors looking back from an open medicine cabinet, giving off a suggestion of potential energy. He ignored them, buttoned his fly impatiently, brushed maple seeds out of his hair, and headed for the door. Maybe some time at the local funny farm would help.

  But just before he slid the bolt, an uncanny bit of protective strategy took him by the ear. It returned him to the cabinet, where he picked up the scissors. What the hell, baby, if the fault isn’t in the stars, it may as well be our own. Mea most maxima culpa.

  He reached into his rucksack and removed one of the foil-sealed Trojans. Between his thoughts and the physical experience of what he was doing, there was no distance whatever. He unrolled the rubber, peeled it back the entire way, and blew it up like a balloon. When it was almost eight inches in diameter he flicked at the special receptacle which protruded like an erect nipple. He played with it momentarily, pushing it inside out with his forefinger, chuckling wickedly. Then he snipped it away with the scissors. The rubber collapsed.

  He rolled it back carefully and reinserted it in the foil package. Finally he dropped it into the rucksack, turned his baseball cap back to front, and returned to the salon.

  The room was nearly emptied out. Heff and Jack were waiting at the door, Fitzgore was being wheeled across the threshold by Nurse Fang, and Kristin was getting up from a whispered conversation with Oeuf. “Are you ready?” she asked.

  “We got a cab waiting,” said Heff. “Come on, man.”

  As they turned to leave, he paused and tried a sudden question on Oeuf. “What’s my cut, baby?”

  “What?”

  “I just want to know if you’ve figured out my cut.”

  “Why, Gnossos, I’m surprised at you. I thought we discussed all that.”

  “Come on, Paps,” from Jack.

  “Immunity, baby, that’s what we discussed.”

  “Certainly. However much you need.”

  “It may not be enough is all.”

  “You want more?”

  “I might, Alonso, who knows? Have a good vacation.”

  “Thank you, no. Some flags are still too green.”

  In the cab Kristin pretended to ignore him and made small talk about going home to Washington during the coming week. She was crowded in the front seat with Rosenbloom and Jack, who chatted busily about Cuba, and she directed her conversation at Judy: “So you and Juan will only be going along for the ride?”

  “If you can call it that. We’re hitchhiking in couples to make it easier. I mean, Fitzgore won’t let anyone use his car, and buses are really too depressing for words.”

  Gnossos crouched next to a rear window, waiting for an appropriate silence, then said, “I know a guy. No sweat.”

  Heff had been making notes on distances between Southern cities. He looked up, “A car, man?”

  “Who do you know with a car?” from Kristin.

  “There’s a guy is all.”

  “Wow,” said Jack, affectionately touching Heff’s shoulder, “anything to get us through Georgia.”

  “We were already off schedule,” from Heff, “I’m supposed to meet Aquavitus on the ferry from Miami.”

  “Oh God,” said Judy Lumpers, “a ride. All four of us together. How perfectly 1920’s.” Then to Gnossos and Kristin: “Really, you guys ought to come along.”

  “Got to study the stars, sweetheart. We also serve who stand and wait. Send me a postcard.” He winked at Heffalump, who winked back and crumpled up his notes.

  “There you go, Piglet, no more menace.”

  They were looking at the large dustless space above the mantel where the Blacknesse painting had been. Kristin sniffed the air tentatively and moved around the apartment. All doors and windows were open to the outside, and gentle breezes blew.

  “That’s not what I wanted to talk to you about, anyway.” She put on an actresslike expression and cocked an eyebrow. “I wanted you to come and meet Daddy over spring vacation.”

  Gnossos choked on his chewing gum and she had to get up and slam him on the back. He coughed hoarsely for nearly a minute and his face turned purplish. “You what?” he finally got out.

  “I’ve written him about you, nothing to do with your wanting to get married, just your name and everything. I thought it would be sort of nice, don’t you?”

  How well she lies. He coughed again and was silent.

  “What do you think, Pooh?”

  He said nothing whatever.

  “Well, come on, you must think something, it’s not that difficult a problem.”

  “You know damned well what I think.”

  She slammed him once more on the back and stormed over to the couch. “Really, Gnossos, please, for God’s sakes, instead of us going and having a huge thing over it, couldn’t you just somehow manage to come because I’m asking you to?”

  “What are you talking about, man, come? No, of course I couldn’t come just because you want me to, since just because you want me to doesn’t make it cool.”

  “Cool,” she told the ceiling.

  “Yeah, cool.”

  “That’s all you’re worried about, is how cool it would be. It doesn’t occur to you for a minute that I might want to do it out of, oh, some traditional respect for my family!”

  “Hey, what are you talking about?”

  “Respect for my family, that’s what.”

  “Family? Where’s that at? Man, a regular Bavarian
Nazi for a father and you call it a family?”

  “Oh, what’s the sense anyway, what the hell do you know about families, you never so much as breathe a word about your own, I don’t even know if you’ve got one.”

  “You bet your ass, man, so why go? You want me to wear tails?”

  “Oh, just forget it, would you please?”

  “What? Are you getting guilty now all of a sudden?”

  “I said please to forget it, it was apparently the wrong thing to ask. I didn’t expect such a traumatic reaction.”

  “Traumatic ain’t the word. Baby, if he even looked at me one of his peptic ulcers might hemorrhage right on the floor. And that French crap in Oeuf’s pad, where’d you pick that up, anyway, that c’est assez crap?”

  “Really, forget the whole damned thing, please, would you?”

  “A regular Molly Pitcher, stoking the guns.”

  “Go to hell.”

  “S’il vous plaît. C’mon hey, where’d you get shit like that?”

  She lifted the martini pitcher by the handle and glared. It occurred to him how close she was to throwing the remaining contents in his face. Little motion picture histrionics, dash the crystal in the fireplace. Why not, man, get her feeling sorry, slip her into the sack. Take hours otherwise, too much temperature up.

  He stuck out his jaw and said, “Chacun à son goût, sweetie pie.”

  She removed the stirring rod as a warning but said nothing. He got up from the butterfly chair, crossed to within an arm’s length of her shoulder and tried, “Rien à faire.”

  She threw the liquid at his mouth. But he ducked and leaned forward. Their movements worked together, and surprisingly the glass shattered over his eye. He gasped and they jumped apart. Kristin dropped the broken handle as a line of dark red bulged, then flowed down over his nose. Almost instantly she cried his name and burst into tears. Gnossos sitting on the floor from the force of the blow, waiting for the blood to run down his face and off his chin before getting up with exaggerated dizziness.

  “Oh no,” she said, rising with him, terribly alarmed, looking for a handkerchief to stop the bleeding, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—”

  He waved her aside casually and wandered into the kitchen, testing the semisweet trickle with his tongue as he went. She followed at first, then ran ahead to turn on the cold water. Let her do the Nightingale, fall into your stricken arms. Try limping.

  She dampened a dishtowel and made him sit on a stool as she sponged away the blood and gently patted the gash. “Does it hurt you, Gnossos? God, I’m terribly sorry.”

  He shook his head stoically and tried to look at nothing.

  “Oh dear, it’s deeper than I thought. Now wait right there, don’t go away.” She ran to the bathroom and returned with a vial of merthiolate, unscrewing the dropper. “Hold still. Does it sting?”

  He winced despite himself, but shook his head, and she blew on it softly.

  Within ten minutes the tepid evening breezes were puffing quiet gusts across their bodies. Kristin wearing only her summerweight gray knee-socks and a pair of high heels he’d insisted she keep in the closet for just such emergencies. Gnossos wearing only a bandage over his eye. Fingers of penitent passion made tunnels in the tangle of his curls. Atoning lips traced the hairline down his belly.

  When she was more than ready, he selected the altered Trojan from his rucksack, rolled it on where she couldn’t see the insidious hole, and climbed on from behind. He wanted it good and deep. As the semen left his loins he bucked with disquieting force and wished it Godspeed, helping it on its way home.

  That night he wrote an explanatory note and left it with the sign-in girl at the dorm. Since Fitzgore had had the audacity to demand his car keys back, he hot-wired the Impala with Pamela’s stiletto and drove directly to Heff’s.

  “Call the whole gang, baby, see if you can get them to the student union in half an hour.”

  “Half an hour?”

  “Bags packed.”

  Heff went to the phone as Gnossos lit a straight Chesterfield and picked up an old copy of Ebony. He leafed through it and was in the middle of an article on the mulatto model in America when the last call was finished. “What’s up, Paps?” came the question, “you’re looking a little weird.”

  “You got any shit, man?”

  “Yeah, quarter ounce maybe.”

  “I want it all.”

  Heff watched his eyes. “All right.”

  “Any lush?”

  “Some Irish whiskey left, Powers, I think.”

  “Lovely, let’s go to Cuba.”

  “You’re coming?”

  “I’m coming, man.”

  “Oh wow.”

  “I’m also coming back, but let’s say I need a change of view.”

  “Don’t explain, man, it’s all cool. Rosenbloom even said something about a credit card. What about the chic?”

  “Fuck her. For the time being, so to speak.”

  “Right. You got any luggage?”

  “You’re looking at it.”

  Heff sat between Jack and Judy Lumpers in the back seat, Juan Carlos took the first driving shift, and Gnossos put away the remaining paregoric, Mixture Sixty-nine, and Irish whiskey, in that order. He did not wake up until Delaware, and he said to Heff, “Hey, baby, where are we?”

  Heff was driving by then. “Delaware, man,” he said.

  “That’s pretty funny.”

  “It’s even funnier when you look at it.”

  “Oh yeah? You got any shades?”

  “Jack, give Paps the shades.”

  “And hey, man, when I finish digging it, wake me up in Washington. I gotta make a call.”

  In Washington, Kristin’s father was in conference with the President of the United States. But Gnossos got him on the line by telling them that Mrs. McCleod had just been machine-gunned by the Soviet cultural attaché.

  “My God,” said Mr. McCleod at the other end of the phone, “how did it happen? Have you notified the Pentagon?” He had a voice like a radio announcer’s.

  “It didn’t happen, baby, just get yourself a glass of milk and sit down.” It was eight o’clock in the morning and Gnossos was standing in a gas station booth, watching the others stretch by the side of the car. The breeze already had a foreign, exhilarating odor.

  “Who is this? What’s happened to my wife?”

  “I already told you, man, nothing, but I had to talk to you, dig? You cats are difficult to reach.”

  There was confused muttering at the other end of the line, extensions being clicked in, delicate whispers, then: “Would you mind telling me—”

  “I probably knocked up your daughter is all. I wanted you to know.”

  More whispers. “What did you say?”

  “But I’m planning to be big about it, and you shouldn’t lose your cool.”

  “What?”

  “Ought to be a good-looking kid, actually, Greek, lots of curly hair, dark. My name is Pappadopoulis.”

  “How do you do. What’s this all—”

  “I can’t talk much longer, man, I’m low on coins and we’re off to Cuba.”

  “To where?”

  “Later, right? Tell the President we’re all pulling for him.”

  He hung up and returned to the car, climbing in with Judy Lumpers. “You got any Clorets or anything, baby, my breath is a little swampy.”

  In Maryland he found a postcard that showed a girl in a polo shirt and short shorts, having trouble with a cocker spaniel. The dog had run circles around her and the leash was tangled on her thighs. Her mouth was open in a sensuous oval of surprise and she wore a sailor hat. Gnossos sent copies to everyone he could think of, including Louie Motherball at the old Taos address, with a Please Forward on the front.

  God, they say, is love.

  And someone’s got to pass the word.

  17

  When his head was straight, Gnossos drove. Once he got the rhythm he couldn’t lose it and no one could take it
away. The Impala did 111 miles an hour on the straight, 120 coming out of a downhill grade. He took them from the gas station on the perimeter of the city, over the freeway, across the mall, to the Washington monument. He stopped the car and asked them each to pay homage. Crowds of tourists strolled on the grass and ate ice cream, gazing myopically at the towering obelisk.

  “Look at it, man,” he said. “It’s George Washington.”

  Jack was being trusted alone with Judy in the car. Juan Carlos stood at his side with Heff. “Where?” they asked.

  “I’m not exactly sure, but around here somewhere. I feel him.”

  “He’s all yours, Paps baby. Fat white father.”

  “Now now, Heff, mustn’t be bitter.”

  “General Washingtons,” said Juan Carlos militantly, placing his cowboy hat over his heart. “I salute him.”

  “Phooey,” said Heff. “He was a fascist.”

  “Notice the architecture, good Heffalump. The clever lines. The way they travel—how shall we say—up. And down as well. The devilish simplicity.”

  “Stuff it.”

  “Our spiritual heritage? You can’t be serious. So proud. So erect.”

  “He had holes in his face.”

  “But he walked on the water, chopped up cherries, something like that.”

  “He wore a wig, man.”

  “Façade, old sport. Fox the Tories, that was his ploy.” Gnossos shielded his eyes from the spiritual light, turning away speechless, in humility.

  “Hey come on, man, let’s split, we got a boat to catch.”

  “The valor. Do you dig the valor part?”

  “Valors,” echoed Juan Carlos, again nearly weeping.

  “Martha Washington, wife and mother.”

  “Ecch,” said Heff.

  “Only Batman is closer to the heart of an American boy.”

  The girls were calling from the car but he went on. “Only Mark Trail has more cool.”

  In Richmond, Virginia, they wandered optimistically into Mother Fischer’s Kountry Kitchen for hush puppies and shakes, but no one came to offer service. Gnossos pounded on the table. After breathy whispering behind the counter Mother Fischer herself placed a sign under their noses, which said in effect that Heff was a nigger. Gnossos went and sat on top of the refrigerator and had to be carried to the car by a deputy sheriff.