Why had he opened the door?
A reflex? Because he was onstage before
the customers and felt obliged to acknowledge
the knock? Because he expected someone he
knew and was not above granting a glimpse of his
good fortune?
We took in what he was doing, he took in
that we were taking him in and he began to chase
us, tucking himself in even as he tore himself
from his situation. We ran. He ran.
It was a stretch-and-grab-at-you kind of chasing,
an all-out effort, I don't even want to think
about it. We flew on the wings of panic.
Dogs joined in.
After that we didn't go near there.
And now, here was Gabrielle! At the
party! She wasn't with Gaston we noticed
immediately--for Toad too was watching--she was
with Barry, a ticket-holder. Breath returned
to us.
She was a respectable entry, one couldn't
fault Barry, indeed one had to admire him for
stealing her out from under Gaston, so to speak,
but one look at Olga of course and he knew.
One knew.
Nevertheless there were formalities to be
observed and Toad and I went forward to attend
to them, he to take the reading, I to keep them
on center. "How's Gaston?" I asked her.
"I am bored of him," she said. "He
shouts at my ears till I am double as bored.
Then he brings me flowers and I have to pass two
days on my back with my legs in the air."
"Gee," I said, "don't you have a vase?"
"Toby," said Toad. He beckoned me
with a confidential jerk of the head.
"Be right back," I told them, and went to
Toad following his eyes to the meter. I
checked the list. Calculating for Barry's
weight and converting to pounds we made Gabrielle
at two hundred and eighty.
I looked at Toad. He at me.
We at them. Barry couldn't hold her any
more and they were already on the dancefloor.
"Something's wrong," said Toad.
"Maybe she lifts weights. She's solider.
More densely packed."
"I had this won."
"There's a lesson there, all right, Toad."
I left him chewing his lip and went off
to dance with Marie-Danielle. But, "I am
tired to go forth and back all the time," she
said. "Shall we eat?" This was by
way of asking permission. Marie-Danielle
felt guilty about eating. "Tomorrow I am
starting a regime so I'll be better for looking
at," she said. "Let's have some smashed
potatoes."
At the table there was competition.
Already there had been depredations. Crumbs
of blue cheese in the chevre, I cannot tell you
how I hate that! But I plucked a little
of this and a little of that and soon my plate
was piled like a pyramid.
"You want fruits?" said Marie-Danielle.
"I'm glad I'm not the wash-disher!" Her
enthusiasm carried her along away from me while
I stood and watched Toad take Barry over and stand
him on the scale. He looked at the list,
looked at Barry. The weight seemed to check.
The woman standing on my other side must
have come in on Toad's watch. "Hi," I said.
"Hello." American.
I liked the bend of her hatbrim. I
don't mean she was wearing a hat. She was
no question about it fat but there was a form
to her. Her hips were sort of saddle-shaped.
Broad but, I don't know.
"Is this your party?" she said.
"I'm a co-host."
"What do you do?"
"As little as possible. Teach English."
"Are you good?"
"At teaching English?"
"Yes."
I shrugged. "I give emotional support.
You want to dance?"
It was a good moment for it. The floor
was vacant. Stan Getz was on, running his
hands all over a melody. And as the push-button
radio in my rusty Chevy taught me, change the
music and you change everything. Lynn, her
name was. I had that experience where the
rest of the party disappears.
"I don't trust you," she said.
"Ah."
"These women are all overweight. There
isn't a slender woman here. Are you making
fun of us?"
It was a moment to speak the truth.
Not to think about it and speak. But I hesitated.
What was I going to tell her? I took refuge
in silence and we danced looking at each other.
I had no choice but to endure judgement.
The elevator doors opened and a woman got
off so fat she had to come out sideways.
Top to bottom she was a series of overhanging
layers that spread on each other, making her wider
than she was tall and obscuring her shoes.
Andre followed her out, hands in pockets, tight
little smile on him.
Toad, now besieged by serious thoughts,
was immediately there to register them, and given
her enormous presence she needed no slowing down
as she crossed the carpet. He took his time,
got a firm number and gave me a brief look of
limited relief. Olga had her beat at least.
Andre didn't care. He knew he was
into bonus money, of which he could see at a glance
there was now more than actual prize money and
no one to share it with. He paused by us
beaming insufferably. "This is Louise,"
he said.
At the sound of her name his champion arrested
her progress toward the food, rotated her bulk
and gave us a flicker of smile before sweeping
away to the table. Andre made a little bow.
"Nobody likes a smart-ass, Andre," I said,
and he went away to attend her.
"What is it," said Lynn, "a theme party?
I'm so glad to be included."
"It's not," I said. What else could
I say? We were still in the dance position,
my arm around her waist. She had a waist.
Her back, pliant. Her voice, what, elastic.
Flat, soft, accepting, no doubt capable of a snap
but it would be a moral rather than a vocal one.
Only her look was stiff. Not her face, not
her eyes. Something in them.
Fuck. I felt bad.
Louise had now presented herself at the
table, people making way for her out of wonder,
almost out of fear. The glance behind just
kept travelling. She moved around gathering
salmon, pate and cheeses with the dexterity of
Minnesotta Fats on a run, pushing it in with her
palm, washing it down with Cotes du Rhone and
moving on again, a spaghetto dangling from her
chin. I mean this was not glandular, folks,
I'm sorry.
Andre poured a glass of wine and sipped
it with the exaggerated delicacy of one who congratulates
himself in public. "Toad," he said as this
latter passed, "what time is the presentation?"
But Toad made no answer. He was clearly
on his way to do something he wanted to have over
with.
"A woman's ultimate image of a man is power,"
Gabrielle was saying to Barry, "but not a developed
woman." Then she saw Toad standing there.
"You're cheating," he said.
"One is not obliged to be faithful to za
same man all za time!" she protested. "Don't
you believe in boredom? It is mathematically
proved!"
He deployed his hands as to erase these
errors. "You," he said, "are cheating.
You're wearing weights." He gestured at
her midriff, at which she also looked. It
was draped by a silk shirt that hung straight
from her nichons. "Under there."
She looked up at him. "You want to
see under there?"
"Yes, please." This was not uttered
with the usual Toad lubricant. There was
a certain edginess about it. A certain lack
of confidence.
"Hah!" she said, not smiling. "I fold
myself in half."
People were gathering around. Only
Louise continued to eat.
"You cheated, Toad!" said one of the men.
"You had Olga all ready!"
Male voices murmured in sullen unison.
At the sound of her name Olga looked around,
confused but pleased to be at the center of things,
if only conceptually.
"There's no rule against that," Toad proclaimed,
not taking his eyes from Gabrielle's.
I didn't look at Lynn but I felt her looking
at me.
Marie-Danielle came and confronted me.
"You took me here because of my grossesse, isn't
it! It's really inferiorating!"
Other women were catching on and lifting
their voices in an outrage from under which the
men's suddenly ran away and hid.
"This is not a big wise thing!" said Marie-Danielle.
"Forget about your good-lookings! You must
have made me the brainwashing!"
I stood there. I could think of no
way to suggest a superior motivation. She
turned and thumped away.
"This is awful," said Lynn.
"Could I have my money now, Toad?" said
Andre.
But Toad's stare was locked on Gabrielle's.
Gaston came in through the door to the stairs.
No one heard him but I caught sight of him and
became nervous. "Toad," I said but he didn't
seem to hear me. Some kind of abrasive music
was on by This, That and the Other. "Toad?"
As Gaston emerged into the open area he struck
the radio to the floor and, as that didn't silence
it, stamped on it till it died and lay crushed.
Only then did the hammering on the ceiling below
become audible. Otherwise there was silence.
Everyone looked at Gaston but Toad, who looked
at Gabrielle; and Gabrielle, who looked at Toad.
"I can no longer associate myself with this
project, Toad," I said.
He took Gabrielle's shirt in both his hands
and ripped it from her. A collective gasp.
She stood there. Her breasts were, I don't
know. And below them, piled from her hips
to her rib cage, were bandeleros of scuba weights.
Gaston flew at Toad who, smirking around in triumph,
saw him and ran. Olga turned her head like
Brontosaurus Rex and looked at Gaston. If
it came to shifting her whole stance, her look
said, there'd be trouble. But he tore past
her. Toad reached the window, threw it open
and jumped out. Gaston climbed out after
him, Andre behind him shouting, "Where's the fucking
money, Toad?"
We went to the window and watched Toad inch
around on a sloped shingled ledge toward a latticework
of beams supporting grapevines, across which he
tightropewalked, Gaston in close pursuit, toward
a vast intimacy of balconies from which he was
separated by a glass roof over a conservatory
in which singers and a string quartet were giving
a recital to an audience in evening clothes, the
baritone jerking his head back and forth, the
soprano trembling as one about to void.
Toad threw himself onto it and scuttled across,
keeping as well as he could to the steel framework
but slipping, breaking a window with a foot, dropping
through up to the crotch, pulling his leg out
and scrambling on, Gaston coming along behind
him in much the same way so that people looked
up at them.
Behind us Gabrielle unvelcroed her weight
belts and dropped them one by one to the floor,
each clunk followed by a renewed vigor of hammering
from below. Several policemen came in, saw
Gabrielle's breasts and blew whistles. This
was timely because the women were regaining the
momentum of their outrage and turning to me as
Toad's accomplice. The men, glad for the
moment to escape their attention, egged then on--"He
did it!" "C'etait lui!" and so forth--and
I was doing what I could to back away while surrounded
when the police broke through the angry knot to
crowd at the window and blow whistles at Toad
and Gaston.
Louise, meanwhile, now paused in her eating
and drinking and, under cover of this activity,
stole into the bathroom, drew the curtain around
her and brought herself into whatever complicity
with the bare porcelain she could negotiate to
make her deposit. And it was here, where
the dampness had seeped into the wood, that the
shifting stresses on the floor found their focus.
Under her superior weight the toilet was driven
through the moldy planks and, ripping away a shard
of understructure, dropped, still bearing Louise,
into the next apartment. The neighbors,
not content with having summoned the police, were
still engaged in hitting the ceiling with the
awning crank when the john hit with a wham that
raised them off the bed.
Louise no doubt looked around and wondered
where she was. One imagines a brief pause.
What was there to say? They could only have
seen this as an inconvenient intrusion, leaving
as it did a gash in the ceiling that brought them
into immediate communication with Toad's loft
and those of his guests who were staring down
through the hole.
The immediate thing of course was for Louise
to make her excuses, wipe herself as best she
could and leave, but she now found her buttocks
wedged so firmly in the mouth of the bowl that
she could not, try as she did, rise from it.
The impact, one supposes. It was not until
an ambulance was called, and indeed arrived, that
Louise could be wheeled out on a stretcher lying
sideways in the seated position with the fixture
still in place, though getting her into the hall
required the knocking down of some of the wall
by the front door. From there she was taken
down by elevator, and was delivered of the bowl
at the emergency ward by an orderly with a sledge
hammer. Very tacky.
At the police station we stood around feeling
morally repulsive while our guilt was assessed.
Some of us. We had been whittled to a nucleus
of the culpable and the curious. I felt
forced to thoughts of what might be typical.
Gabrielle, still bare-breasted, dismissed
Gaston's attempts to cover her. "It's over
since a long time," she told him. She took
Barry by the head, kissed him long and hard and
then pushed him away. "I don't like the
way you taste," she said. She was enjoying
herself.
Andre, not content with his triumph, insisted
that Louise had eaten five kilos worth of groceries
and the whole purse was properly his. Others
argued that her weight had equilibrated during
her visit to the bowl. Of course you shouldn't
speak of a lady that way.
Anyway it was academic. The presiding
sergeant informed us that the entire amount might
cover the damages to the conservatory roof and
the ceiling and wall of the lower apartment--indeed
the offended parties, still in nightgowns, were
vocal about it--and anything left over should
be applied to the ironing out of such visa problems
as might emerge in the course of the investigation.
Toad said nothing. He stood there
by Olga, whose presence beside him was touching,
hands folded before him, silent, defeated, disabused
of any notion he might have had of his
worth, of the fitness of things.
I had ceased to care. Lynn's presence
at my side was as a rip in my surface, I couldn't
look at her. She stood there measuring the
extent of the jape she'd been a victim of.
Within her an audible abyss of disbelief froze
into its opposite.
Out on the sidewalk she said, "Well, that
was enlightening." It was almost dawn.
I stood there with my hands in my pockets.
"How close did I come to winning?"
I shifted my weight.
"I would have thought someone like you would
be interested in higher things," she said.
There was no defense for me, and no use
trying to make one.
"I am interested in higher things," I said.
"My last girlfriend had higher things. She
was twenty. They were coming out of her
collarbone."
She looked at me.
We walked.
After a while I moved in with her.
She was a translator for a business service.
It wasn't much money but we got by. My own
practice had dried up, certainly I had lost Marie-Danielle's
patronage, and I gave myself to the pleasures
of domesticity. Someone to exchange eternities
with, show my sore thumb to. A new arrangement
of one's toilet articles.
Every once in a while you find someone willing
to roll her history up into a moment for you,
and before you know it you are her history.
One becomes a different person, sees different
movies. The tender nerve of the former self,
healed over. For a while.
We lived together for several months till
she was through with me.
