the bear said, very slowly, “I’ve heard the howling of the dogs.”
The depth of feeling in the bear’s voice was not the idle stuff Penrod generally heard at functions like this. “I know exactly what you mean,” answered Penrod. “Our literary values are being totally corrupted by men like Ramsbotham over there.” He pointed to the other prominent critic in the room, Samuel Ramsbotham of NYU, whose book
The Literary Revolution
had been outsellingPenrod’s two to one. “Dogs? You’re absolutely right. They’re howling at our door.”
The bear’s gaze shot toward the door of the loft, and the ridge of muscle at his neck swelled. “I hate dogs.”
“There’s always one or two who show up, usually with an entourage of sycophants.” Penrod cast another disdainful glance toward Ramsbotham.
The bear’s neck muscles quivered. “I’ll tear them apart.”
“I hope you do.” Penrod was impressed. This man Jam lived his beliefs. So rare. So very, very rare. “I’m eager to read your novel, of course. I’ve heard a great deal about it already from Bettina and Elliot.”
The bear nodded, but his eyes kept returning to the door, and then to the window. His indifference to talking about his own book further impressed Penrod. He’s not consumed by ambition, reflected the critic. He’s concerned, as I am, about the crisis in literature. “I think you might get something out of my
Decline
,” said Penrod. “I’ll have the publisher send you a copy. It’s pioneer work, of course, but there are
some
points with which you’ll be in sympathy.”
“How are you two getting on?” asked Bettina, returning in a whirlwind and spilling champagne into Penrod’s vest pocket, where it gave a good soaking to his heirloom pocket watch.
“Oh god, Ken, I’m sorry,” said Bettina, trying to soak up the spilled champagne with her scarf.
“Quite all right, Bettina,” said Penrod. “You’ve been spilling things on me for years. I look upon it as something of a ritual.”
The bear went to the window of the loft, looking anxiously in the direction of Washington Square, through which he could never walk again. “Dogs,” he said to himself.
“What about them?” asked Gadson, coming up alongside him.
The bear struggled to say more, but couldn’t express the nuances of a hostility that was ancient. “Talking is hard.”
“I know,” said Gadson. “I was three years old before I spoke a single word. I had the words in my head, but I was making sure of my listeners.” They moved at the edge of the crowd, along a library wall that was lined with Gadson’s collection of first editions. “Books were always my best friends. As I’m sure they were yours. You were raised in a rural area, and I don’t suppose you saw many people.”
“I saw a man through a window.”
Gadson was at a loss. “And did you get to know him?”
“I hung around,” replied the bear, trying to express his memory of the time, because human beings did that,they talked about things that’d happened to them. The past is unimportant to a bear, but he wanted to become human, so he attempted to describe it. “He had something I wanted.”
Gadson wondered: Was Jam’s peculiar shyness simply a matter of him not being able to come out of the closet? He drew Jam to the end of the room, near a painted screen that framed the doorway, the screen depicting two Japanese sailors and another man, in shadow, along a waterfront.
“I wanted his meat,” said the bear. “He left it around.”
“You wanted … his meat?”
“I couldn’t help it.”
“And?”
“I grabbed it.”
Gadson suddenly saw it all, a warm summer afternoon, and the unknown man stripped to the waist, possibly tossing hay around, sinews rippling. It sounded idyllic.
“Meat,” repeated the bear, remembering more clearly the hunk of venison he’d romped off with. “Sweet buck meat.”
“How frankly you put it, Hal.”
The bear’s long tongue came out and
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