PARTISAN REVIEW
595
"It's ... wanting to give everything up. I'd like
to
be.
. Don't laugh!
I'd like to be you."
"Wow!" Hyde claps the palm of his hand to his rodent-like forehead.
"What a load of middle-class crap! You'd like to be me?" He lurches up,
awkward as ever, from the floor. "Xou'd like to lead my trashy life? Man, you
are clean out of your ever-loving, nit-picking skull!"
"But," says Jekyll , "if your life depresses you, why don't you move back to
the city?"
"And get busted?" screeches Hyde. "Thanks a lot!"
"But things can be arranged, you know that. I'll tell Lanyon."
"That asshole?" Hyde pivots, the bottle in his claw. "He's senile."
"He's not. And you're drunk."
"Just because you keep that shyster alive with these injections of yours,
you don't have to defend his health," Hyde rants. "Lanyon couldn't get a D.A.
to reduce charges on a baby who landed in the Tombs for stealing a diaper."
"Don't drink so much. 1 hate to think what your liver looks like."
"Cool it, man!" Hyde snarls, halting his lame progress around the room.
"Want to see my tracks?" He fumbles with the left sleeve of his work-shirt,
tugging it up over his elbow. "Well, I'm clean now, see! And lowe it all
to-good--old-booze!" He pats the bottle and then slams it down on the
rattan table. Utterson raises his glass of Armagnac, scans the long oval table in
the refectory, and proposes a toast. His favorite subject for a toast is a certain
kind of idiot. During a high-spirited dinner several years ago, Utterson had
invented a whole taxonomy of spiritual retardedness; "idiots," as he insists on
calling them, were classified into ingenious categories and sub-categories, the
interest being to determine into which category each person at the table falls .
The game is still being played,with pupils nervously interrogating themselves,
and Utterson reserving the right to pronounce the final verdict. Utterson sips
the Armagnac and grins.
Jekyll is continuing. "Well, if you won't come back to the city, would you
consider moving somewhere else? We could...." He hestitates, then
plunges. "We could go somewhere together. 1 mean, I'd go with you."
That does stop Hyde's gyrations, at least momentarily. "What would you
want to do that for? Man, you have really flipped your wig!" Jekyll feels,
through the strong roots of his hair, his scalp tingling.
"I know it sounds crazy...." Jekyll pauses. "But we wouldn't have to
stay in one place. We could be on the road most of the year."
"Hey, what is this? A proposition? Don't tell me that after umpteen years
of happy marriage you've discovered you're some kinds of fruit.
Dh,
man,
that would be too much!" He falls to the floor, flops over like a dog, then
