Couples Read Free Page A

thighs, wrists, bumping him, the yellow peril. Whoofwheeieu. Wow . Better a foxtrot. Making fools of themselves, working off steam, it’s getting too suburban in here. The windows had been painted shut. Walls of books.
    Piet felt, brave small Dutch boy, a danger hanging tidal above his friends, in this town where he had been taken in because Angela had been a Hamilton. The men had stopped having careers and the women had stopped having babies. Liquor and love were left. Bea Guerin, as they danced to Connie Francis, her drunken limpness dragging on his side so his leg and neck ached, her steamy breasts smearing his shirt, seemed to have asked why he didn’t want to fuck her. He wasn’t sure she had said it, it sounded like something in Dutch, fokker, in de fuik lopen , drifting to him from his parentsas they talked between themselves in the back room of the greenhouse. Little Piet, Amerikander, couldn’t understand. But he loved being there with them, in the overheated warmth, watching his father’s broad stained thumbs packing moss, his mother’s pallid needling fingers wrapping pots in foil and stabbing in the green price spindles. Once more with the eyes of a child Piet saw the spools of paper ribbon, the boxes holding colored grits and pebbles for the tiny potted tableaux of cactuses and violets and china houses and animal figurines with spots of reflection on their noses, the drawerful of stacked gift cards saying in raised silver HANEMA , his name, himself, restraining constellated in its letters all his fate, me, a man, amen ah . Beside the backroom office where Mama did up pots and Papa paid his bills were the icy dewy doors where cut roses and carnations being dyed and lovely iris and gladioli leaned, refrigerated, dead. Piet tensed and changed position and erased the greenhouse with the party.
    The new couple. They looked precious to themselves, self-cherished, like gladioli. Cambridge transplants, tall and choice. Newcomers annoyed Piet. Soil here not that rich, crowding. Ted? Ken. Quick grin yet a sullen languor, a less than ironical interest in being right. Something in science, not mathematics like Ong or miniaturization like Saltz. Biochemistry. Papa had distrusted inorganic fertilizer, trucked chicken dung from poultry farms: this is my own, my native land . She was called oddly Foxy, a maiden name? Fairfox, Virginia? A southern flavor to her. Tall, oak and honey hair, a constant blush like windburn or fever. She seemed internally distressed and had spent two long intervals in the bathroom upstairs. Descending the second time she had revealed her stocking-tops to Piet, reclining acrobatically below. Tawny ashy rims in an upward bell of shadow. She had seen him peekand stared him down. Such amber eyes. Eyes the brown of brushed fur backed by gold.
    Bea. What did you say? I must be deaf .
    Sweet Piet, you heard. I must be very drunk. Forgive me .
    You’re dancing divinely .
    Don’t poke fun. I know I can’t matter to you, you have Georgene, and I can’t compare. She’s marvelous. She plays such marvelous tennis .
    That’s very flattering. You really think I’m seeing Georgene?
    It’s all right , singingly, gazing into a blurred distance, don’t bother to deny it, but Piet—Piet?
    Yes? I’m here. You haven’t changed partners .
    You poke fun of me. That’s mean, that’s not worthy of you, Piet. Piet?
    Hello again .
    I’d be kind to you. And someday you’re going to need somebody to be kind to you because—now don’t get cross—you’re surrounded by unkind people .
    For instance who? Poor Angela?
    You’re cross. I feel it in your body you’re cross .
    No , he said, and stood apart from her, so her dragging was no longer upon his body, and she sagged, then pulled herself erect, blinking, injured, as he went on, it happens every time I try to be nice to a drunk. I wind up getting insulted .
    Oh! —it was a breathless cry as if she had been struck. And I meant to be so kind .
    Whitewash