WILL AND WAY
375
paper, at her door. But when she was only half through, eagerly
ripping off wads of the pink fuzz with her unnecessary teeth, Mr.
Obscenity leaped on the bed and took her. Amid the twanging of
bedsprings the slim cardboard cone, swathed with the wet sticky
mess, fell unnoticed to the floor.
Sometimes people dropped
in
for dinner. While Mr. Obscenity
presided at the end of the long oak trestle table, various swarthy
figures bandied talk of Communism, free love, race mixing. Some of
the women wore long gold earrings. Some of the men had pointed
shoes. Miss Flatface had some notion of foreigners from movies.
What she hadn't known about was their dreaful table manners, like,
for instance, the way they tore off chunks of bread with their
fingers. And the rich garlicky stews and foamy custards did not al–
ways agree with her. After dinner there was usually a good deal of
solemn belching. Miss Flatface happily joined in.
Though sometimes unnerved, as much by the pulpy confusion
of foods as by the tenor and momentum of the conversation, Miss
Flatface had by now a good deal of confidence in Mr. Obscenity.
He, whatever the state of his guests, was always immaculate and
neatly buttoned. Her confidence was further increased by the clip–
board stuffed with mimeographed papers which Mr. Obscenity
often carried and frequently consulted, even at the dinner table.
This augured well, thought Miss Flatface. There is some system here.
Hearty and ready for fun at the drop of a hat, that's how Miss
Flatface tried to think of the guests. When lewd plaster statuettes
were passed around the table, her neighbor might nudge her in
the groin to express enthusiasm. Occasionally a pair of guests would
sink beneath the table, which would shudder for a while until the
flushed and disheveled couple re-emerged.
Observing that Mr. Obscenity seemed to wish to show her off
to all his friends, Miss Flatface resolved to be as friendly as pos–
sible. One day, she hoped, there would be nothing that he might
ask of her that she could not do.
"Sure is a nice little woman you got there," observed one of
his black friends, a man everyone called Honest Abe. The black man
flinched, flicking his cigar ash into a gold-plated diaphragm that served
as an ashtray, and tilted back his chair.
