Dead Babies (29 page)

But pity the dead babies. Now, before it starts. They couldn't know what was behind them nor what was to come. The past? They had none. Like children after a long day's journey, their lives arranged themselves in a patchwork of vanished mornings, lost afternoons, and probable yesterdays.

54: TOO GOOD TO WASTE

"Keith!" shouted Andy as he wheeled the videotape into the center of the room. "Lie down and plug that bit in under there. You dumb fuck—not that bit! Christ. How long did Marvell say it'd take? An hour? Roxeanne—Diana—get me a brandy, willya. I'm practically blacking out here."

"This stuff should really be heavy," said Roxeanne eagerly. "We picked up the tapes in New York just before we came out—haven't seen all of them yet."

"Not really heavy," droned Skip. "Just with pigs, shit like that."

"It remains axiomatic," observed Villiers, "that sex films fatigue. If they're not sexy, they're sexy. Which is the more tiresome?"

"That's good coming from you," said Marvell.

"I've never seen a sex film before," whispered Giles over his glass.

"Keith! Will you—will you get the fuck out of there?"

Whitehead had been subject to crawl beneath the bottom shelf of the fitted bookcase in order to plug in the videotape. So very short were his arms, however, that he couldn't reach the socket. Andy kicked at and stomped on his tremblingly obtruded legs.

"Give me that." He snatched the plug from Keith's hand and knelt on the carpet. He sipped his drink. "You're too

fuckin' fat anyway."

At length Andy slapped the cartridge into the tape console, turned on the power, and sat down, adjusting his groin and staring with hostility around the room.

"Right then. If I don't get a bonk," he said, "somebody pays."

Twenty minutes later the room was awheeze with boredom.

Various unspeakable acts had been variously portrayed. A porker had indeed made a young lady his, and there had been an additional coupling between a twelve-year-old boy and a representative of the monkey tribe. Large helpings of excrement had been consumed ("Oh, wretched evacuees!" Quentin cried), people had showered in urine, and they were shown a genuine sex death, in which an elderly actress was asphyxiated on a brace of craning phalloi. The remainder was a jangling bestiary, in whopping closeup, of gaping vaginas, rhubarb penises, and gouged behinds.

"Fuck you, Marvell," said Andy. "Fuck you. I wouldn't cross the street to
do
all this shit, let alone watch it. I don't know why the fuck I'm still sitting here. I don't know the fuck why I am."

"Why not put on something really sexy," said Lucy, "like
Dumbo."

"What, what's the matter?" asked Skip. "Nothing wrong with this stuff."

"Change it. I don't like all the . . ." said Giles in a muffled voice. His head had been buried in a cushion ever since the first reel, when an actress had removed her false teeth the better to fellate a crippled Negro.

Marvell shifted in his seat. He appeared to be genuinely pained by the coolness of the Appleseed response. "Hey, Skip, get— put on the thing Archie gave us. The new one." He turned to Quentin as Skip broke the cassette seal. "Yeah, I know. But this one's different. Some Canadian sex outfit put it together. This should be new."

"Can anything be that any more?" breathed Quentin, crossing his legs and folding his arms.

The scene opened up onto a featureless suburban sitting room. Directly in front of camera stood a low-slung sofa. No other furniture was visible between it and the gray, picture-less far wall. Simultaneously, from either wing, a young man and woman entered and sat down next to each other. Dressed in white shirts and dark suits of conventional cut, they were of pleasant but unremarkable appearance. After a stylized
pause, the young man put his right arm round the young woman's shoulders. She turned to him with an expression of cordial reserve. They kissed. The young man moved closer, by way of consolidation, but the girl was not responding so much as lending her acquiescence, her hands remaining palm upward at her side. When, half a minute later, he began to kiss her throat and ear, something flickered remotely in her half-closed eyes. He cupped her far cheek with his left hand, allowing it to ski down her shoulder to the top button of her blouse. The girl shrugged the hand away. The action was repeated several times, the girl retaliating with less and less resolve. Then the man's palm descended quietly, contingently, on the bosom of the girl's blouse. Their kisses grew more arrowy.

"The fuck with this. That Archie's gonna—"

"Shut up," said Andy, erasing Marvell with a wave of his arm. "Shut up."

By now the top two buttons of the girl's shirt had been breached and the man had begun to pay studiedly oblique attention to her thighs. His long right arm was hooked round her shoulders, where it continued to mobilize her chest, as his left casually smoothed her neat charcoal skirt. The girl diverted her hands against this new threat. Another button popped open.

"Jesus," whispered Andy. "She's wearing a bra!"

The girl's ambiguous resistance was by this stage centered exclusively on her nethers, abandoning the quarter-naked billows of her breasts to the man's importunate palm. As he stepped up the tempo of his kisses, he endeavored to slide his left wrist between her kneecaps. They remained firmly clamped. Changing his tactic, the man raised his left hand to her breasts and began to circle his elbows on her loins. The skirt hitched up a few inches.

"Stockings," said Andy raptly. "Bloody
hell."

Whether through arousal or agitation, their movements had become strained and aggressive. Bearing down on her breasts with his face, the man had introduced a stretched left leg which he attempted to steer between hers. The girl's legs gave. Now he seemed to be climbing on top of her, his mouth and both his hands congregating on her breasts while his forearms and torso hoisted up her skirt. As he did so the girl gave the impression of settling below him but abruptly
:
began to slither out from underneath. Her skirt rode high up her thighs, shoving into camera view stockings, white suspender-belt, and taut pink panties—on whose strained mound the young man closed his fingers.

". . . YEAH!" roared Andy.

At once the girl lurched to her feet, struck the man forcefully across the cheek, and strode off the screen. The picture melted on a face all beaten up with lust.

Giles had frozen with a glass inches from his parted lips. Blood had suffused Whitehead's visage, momentarily banishing its dull cadaverous sheen. The Villierses had clutched each other, and Diana and Lucy were glancing confusedly around the room.

"She . . . she ..." Andy writhed in his chair. "She didn't fuck him . . . she didn't fuck him," he croaked.

Only the Americans had showed no reaction. They consulted one another cluelessly; and then Roxeanne spoke. "If that's . . . Listen—" She raised her voice to pierce the jerky chatter.
"Listen.
If something like that gets you up, why don't we get something going right here."

". . . hit him—just cos he . . ."

". . . almost made it. Thought he was gonna . . ."

". . . laid it on that bra . . . those fuckin' stockings . . ."

Roxeanne looked threateningly at Marvell, who spread his hands and said, "Quent. Hey, Quentin! Listen, uh, we're . . . Is just that Rox is all pissed off cos nothing's happening?"

Quentin's exquisite brow puckered. "What species of thing isn't happening?"

"Doesn't anyone like to fuck around here?" asked Roxeanne.

Andy climbed to his feet and gazed down giddily at his groin. "My prong. I can hardly blink!"

"Hey, Andy," called Marvell, "why don't you start things rolling?"

"Yeah," said Roxeanne, "now that you've got one."

"Mm?" He looked up. "Nah. Nah, fuck all that. Do it yourself." He began to stagger toward the door. "I'm gonna have a wank. This is too good to waste. Awww, my
snake,"
cried Andy brokenly as he tumbled from the room.

"I'm beginning to see what's the matter with you people," said Roxeanne. "You're so fucked up you can't even— What have I got to
do.
Any of you. Let's just get going. Let's
move.”

She looked at Quentin, at Giles, at Celia, at Diana, at Lucy, at Quentin again. "Any of you. Come on. Let's just start with
something."

"With me?" asked Whitehead.

55: DON'T BE DISGUSTIING

For the rest of his life Keith was to remember the divine comedy of that slow, andante ascent to the Rectory attic. One part of his mind, of course, was still anxiously trained on his immediate surrounds. The exit from the sitting room, for instance—with what eerie ease it had been conducted! Roxe-anne had simply turned to him—had, then, actually,
smiled
—and walked coolly out of the door. Picking his way through a forest of embarrassment, Whitehead had followed,
encountering neither laughter, protest, nor spontaneous intervention from any member of the room.
As he now scaled the thinning stair carpet, a different area of his mind—though a no less self-conscious area—shook with hilarious awe. Another step. Watching Roxeanne's strong legs lift in front of him, he felt that whatever happened, however pathetic and grotesque the scene turned out to be, he would have captured something of real and lasting value. Another step. He would have swerved his life alongside something not entirely ridiculous, would have completed a raid on the inarticulate, would have transcended this bad body, would have touched good skin. Another step. Foreboding flashed against him as they passed Andy's creaking room. Another step. Safe. On the last flight he experienced a rush of sheer gratitude; he wanted to stop, to take her in his arms, to kiss her at length and with soft languor, and return in silence to his friends. Another step. But things started speeding up.

She walk fast into room, turn, take off shirt, slip down she jeans, no pants, take she breast in she hand. On bed. "Come here." He go, he kneel, she mouth over he lip. She push he back on bed, climb up front of he to kneel across he shoulder, grip he ear to press to she pubis. Straddle he lap then. Undo he shirt, shinny down he trousers next. He sit up sudden take off he boot, she lick he back and she lick
he under arm. He lie down she climb onto he again for tug he hair, drive sheself up he face. She swivel full circle, bend forward. She draw he genital into she mouth and gimmick she perineum to he face so good. She urinate some. She climb down he body so lick he thigh. She get she finger, grind it to it root up he anus. He defecate some. She press she nail into he hip, drag breast up he leg, feed on his penis. He head stretch back in long silent scream.

As Andy slipped down the stairs, Quentin loomed out of the passage shadows. Together they stole into the kitchen.

"A good one?"

"Fuckin' marvelous," said Andy, dusting his palms. "I don't know why people bother with anything else—I really don't. I was practically bent double."

"Guess what's happening?"

"Lemme see. Skip's fucking Mrs. Tuckle."

"Wrong. Roxeanne is fucking little Keith!"

"Quentin," said Andy, "call the police."

"To arrest Keith?"

"To arrest Roxeanne. What kind of pervert can we have up there?
Keith!"

"No, it's true."

"Don't be disgusting, man. I mean, it's not that I'm shocked; I just don't happen to think it's particularly funny, is all."

"It's
true,
Andy. No one else would, so little Keith volunteered."

Andy threw his head back in a roar of dark, anarchical laughter. "Keith! That shape!"

"If shape it could be called that shape had none."

"Still, you know, you've got to give her credit. Come on, man, you have. Anyway, what difference does it make in the end? You get used to all kinds of shit." Andy wagged his head at the sitting-room door. "What gives in there?"

"Not a great deal, as it happens. Skip's trying to pull Lucy, who appears to be trying to pull, or at any rate solace, Giles. And—well—Marvell's trying to pull Diana. ... I