218
JUDSON JEROME
with repellant, fitted his mouth with new solid gold plates, combed
him, shaved him, manicured him head to toe, and one sweet .blonde
whisked Tum crumbs from his trouser cuffs. Soon, with a tall, cool
drink (in a long stem rose vase), and a napkin laden with hors
d'oeuvres (underdeveloped testes on toothpicks, imported), he found
himself settling finally to the news.
Actually it was not so much a television set as a hole in the wall,
which limited it to local reception-a view of the room he had just
left. From here, however, and refreshed by good service, Everett
could get perspective. He could not only see events but ponder their
significance.
The Visigoths were descending on Rome in furs. Arms were
disappearing into the jungle. The Pope, during his visit to Disneyland,
issued a Bull on brotherhood. The fad for setting off volcanoes was
spreading from campus to campus. A much discussed actress in dark
glasses, and nothing else, was seen stepping off a plane 30,000 feet
above Mexico City, where she was rumored to be meeting her much
discussed ex-fiance's ex-husband and gangland friends for a divorce.
Cuba had gone cannibalistic. The market was Bear. The President,
speaking at the opening of the first midget nudist colony in the Free
World (following Russia's by only months), predicted that there
would be room for midgets and other underdeveloped nations in
outer space. And behind the scenes one could detect the repeated
salvoes of the population explosion.
Everett snapped off the knob irritably, tossed it aside, mixed
himself another drink and went upstairs to bed. The news invariably
unsettled him. The same stories day after day, and why didn't the
world wake up? He slammed the bedroom .door so that Socialism
would not creep in.
Socialism, the cat, purred sociably on the bed while Everett
removed his shoes and teeth.
It
would
be
hours before
his
wife came
in. He lay back wearily and reviewed, as was his custom, the events
of the day, from Right to Left, seeing them all occur backwards:
soldiers enveloped again hy their mothers, teeth circling upwards out
of darkness, the booth flying up to its perch on the rocks, a back–
wards run up the staircase, gulls vomiting peeled shrimp gracefully
in midair, the egg gathering itself from the Sal Hepatica into its
shell.
He did not like to sleep before he had put things back in place and
had commented on important events of the day to his wife.
