you feel with us in here and them out there?” she asks.
“Nervous.”
“We’re very tolerant.”
“I see that. What’s that wham-wham-wham noise?”
“Veronica.”
“Is she making obscene comment?”
“She’s just mindless when she gets on the trampoline. She can go for hours. She thinks she’s got a problem with her rump. I don’t think there’s a problem but she thinks there’s a problem.”
“Makes me nervous.”
“Everything makes you nervous.”
“True.”
“Is this a male fantasy for you? This situation?”
“It’s not fantasy, is it?”
“It has the structure of a male fantasy.”
“The dumbest possible way to look at it.”
“Well, screw you.”
“Our purpose here, I thought.”
“Where did you go to college? Was it Harvard?”
“No it wasn’t Harvard.”
“Lots of people didn’t go to Harvard.”
“There’s just not enough Harvard.”
“Maybe we could start a branch. In Florida or somewhere.”
“They probably don’t feel the urgency.”
“What are you going to do after we leave?” she asks.
“Go back to work, I guess.”
“I wish I could do something.”
“Work is God’s best invention. Keeps you all seized up and interested.”
Simon wanted very much to be a hearty, optimistic American, like the President, but on the other hand did not trust hearty, optimistic Americans, like the President. He had considered the possibility that the President, when not in public, was not really hearty and optimistic but rather a gloomy, obsessed man with a profound fear of the potentially disastrous processes in which he was enmeshed, no more sanguine than the Fisher King. He did not really believe this to be the case. He himself had settled for being a competent, sometimes inventive architect with a tragic sense of brick. Brick was his favorite material as the fortress was the architectural metaphor thathe had, more and more, to resist. To force himself into freshness, he thought about bamboo.
Getting old, Simon. Not so limber, dear friend, time for the bone factory? The little blue van. Your hands are covered with tiny pepperoni. Your knees predict your face. Your back stabs you, on the left side, twice a day. The soul’s shrinking to a microdot. We’re ordering your rocking chair, size 42. Would you like something in southern pine? Loblolly? Send the women away. They’re too good for you. Also, not good for you. Are you King Solomon? Your kingdom a scant 259,200 square inches. Annual tearfall, 3¼ inches. You feedeth among the lilies, Simon. There are garter snakes among the lilies, Simon, garter belts too. Your garden is overcultivated, it needs weeds. How’s your skiwear, Simon? Done any demolition derbies lately? You run the mile in, what, a year and a half? We’re sending you an electric treadmill, a solid-steel barbell curl bar, a digital pedometer. Use them. And send the women away.
When he asked himself what he was doing in a bare elegant almost unfurnished New York apartment with three young and beautiful women, Simon had to admit he did not know what he was doing. He was, he supposed, listening. These women were taciturn as cowboys, spoke only to the immediate question, probably did not know in which century the Second World War had taken place. No, too hard; it was, rather, that what they knew was so wildly various, ragout of Spinoza and Cyndi Lauper with a William Buckley sherbet floating in the middle of it. He’d come in one evening to find all three of them kneeling on the dining-room table with their asses pointing at him. Obviously he was supposed to strip off his gentlemanly khakis and attend to all three at once, just as obviously an impossibility. He had placed a friendly hand on each cul in turn and said, “O.K., guys, you’ve had your fun, now get back to the barracks. Out, out, out,” he’d shouted, and they’d scattered, giggling. One night on his back in bed he’d had six breasts to suck, swaying above him, he was poor
“Nervous.”
“We’re very tolerant.”
“I see that. What’s that wham-wham-wham noise?”
“Veronica.”
“Is she making obscene comment?”
“She’s just mindless when she gets on the trampoline. She can go for hours. She thinks she’s got a problem with her rump. I don’t think there’s a problem but she thinks there’s a problem.”
“Makes me nervous.”
“Everything makes you nervous.”
“True.”
“Is this a male fantasy for you? This situation?”
“It’s not fantasy, is it?”
“It has the structure of a male fantasy.”
“The dumbest possible way to look at it.”
“Well, screw you.”
“Our purpose here, I thought.”
“Where did you go to college? Was it Harvard?”
“No it wasn’t Harvard.”
“Lots of people didn’t go to Harvard.”
“There’s just not enough Harvard.”
“Maybe we could start a branch. In Florida or somewhere.”
“They probably don’t feel the urgency.”
“What are you going to do after we leave?” she asks.
“Go back to work, I guess.”
“I wish I could do something.”
“Work is God’s best invention. Keeps you all seized up and interested.”
Simon wanted very much to be a hearty, optimistic American, like the President, but on the other hand did not trust hearty, optimistic Americans, like the President. He had considered the possibility that the President, when not in public, was not really hearty and optimistic but rather a gloomy, obsessed man with a profound fear of the potentially disastrous processes in which he was enmeshed, no more sanguine than the Fisher King. He did not really believe this to be the case. He himself had settled for being a competent, sometimes inventive architect with a tragic sense of brick. Brick was his favorite material as the fortress was the architectural metaphor thathe had, more and more, to resist. To force himself into freshness, he thought about bamboo.
Getting old, Simon. Not so limber, dear friend, time for the bone factory? The little blue van. Your hands are covered with tiny pepperoni. Your knees predict your face. Your back stabs you, on the left side, twice a day. The soul’s shrinking to a microdot. We’re ordering your rocking chair, size 42. Would you like something in southern pine? Loblolly? Send the women away. They’re too good for you. Also, not good for you. Are you King Solomon? Your kingdom a scant 259,200 square inches. Annual tearfall, 3¼ inches. You feedeth among the lilies, Simon. There are garter snakes among the lilies, Simon, garter belts too. Your garden is overcultivated, it needs weeds. How’s your skiwear, Simon? Done any demolition derbies lately? You run the mile in, what, a year and a half? We’re sending you an electric treadmill, a solid-steel barbell curl bar, a digital pedometer. Use them. And send the women away.
When he asked himself what he was doing in a bare elegant almost unfurnished New York apartment with three young and beautiful women, Simon had to admit he did not know what he was doing. He was, he supposed, listening. These women were taciturn as cowboys, spoke only to the immediate question, probably did not know in which century the Second World War had taken place. No, too hard; it was, rather, that what they knew was so wildly various, ragout of Spinoza and Cyndi Lauper with a William Buckley sherbet floating in the middle of it. He’d come in one evening to find all three of them kneeling on the dining-room table with their asses pointing at him. Obviously he was supposed to strip off his gentlemanly khakis and attend to all three at once, just as obviously an impossibility. He had placed a friendly hand on each cul in turn and said, “O.K., guys, you’ve had your fun, now get back to the barracks. Out, out, out,” he’d shouted, and they’d scattered, giggling. One night on his back in bed he’d had six breasts to suck, swaying above him, he was poor
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