PARTISAN REVIEW
325
4
Nothing definite had been said about the job, but I felt I was
doing all right. Swoon, on the other hand, was down, spinning on
his back while the other man, with pointed shoes, kicked him in the
face, skipped away, stopped, kicked him in the face again and
skipped away. Beside me, a lady with bulging eyes and tendons scor–
ing her neck, shouted, "Get up, Jack, get up. Get up, you fairy."
Beyond the fight, through agitations of dancing couples, I saw his
hand on her thigh. She offered semiparted lips, lick of bare leg,
pure neck and arm, and inflexible attention to whatever he said.
She was lovely all in all. To me, a stranger. I'd have fucked her
myself, though the idea seemed unnatural. She was mother of my
child, not lady of this glory. However unnatural, I admitted that
she was the best-looking woman in the room and I wanted her and
envied her, and I wondered how long before I was homosexual by
circumstance. "Didn't you want me to do it, Phillip?" That they
hadn't once left the couch seemed proof they felt something. "I did
it for your job."
"That's a lie. I don't want to hear your lies. Just tell me if you
liked it."
"He was revolting. He's an old man."
"That means you liked it."
Swoon suddenly seized the dancer's crotch and dragged himself
up through seven or eight punches in the face. The move was bril–
liant and courageous and I found myself shouting with the lady
beside me and several others. "Go, baby. Kill. Kill. Kill," A voice
hissed into my ear, "Devil." In another dress, another degree of
fresher, whiter person, Nell smiled, then pinched at my kidney, twist–
ing and screwing the flesh until I th.rust an elbow into her abdomen.
I giggled and tried not to look at the fight or across the room at dirty
Mildred. To my lack of focus, giggles, and shifting, Nell responded.
"The toilet is that way." I said, "Thanks," wondering if I had to
piss. She smiled, and her smile deepened, taking knowledge of her
devil into places she'd taken the man. She knew him, this devil: he
had to piss. In fact he didn't, but he smiled, too, at her periodontal
plastic, pink, low in the gleaming tooth. As I started away she
grabbed my elbow.
