Linger Awhile by Russell Hoban

‘All right,’ she said, ‘I don’t see anybody I know, so what kind of party is this?’
    ‘It’s not a party,’ said Grace.
    ‘Why are you talking funny?’ said J Two.
    ‘I’m English,’ said Grace. ‘You’re in London.’
    ‘That’s a crock of shit,’ said J Two. ‘There aren’t any London locations in this picture.’
    ‘You’re not in a picture now,’ said Irv. ‘This is reality.’
    ‘That’ll be the day,’ said J Two, and she fainted and fell back into the puddle.
    ‘I wonder if Istvan’s Justine started out like this,’ said Grace.
    ‘I wasn’t there so I couldn’t say,’ said Irv.
    She was really an awful-looking thing in black-and-white,and when we got her out of her wet clothes it was even worse. ‘I forgot about clothes,’ said Grace. ‘We’ll have to get her other things to wear. Underthings as well, tights, shoes, whatever.’
    ‘Then what?’ said Irv.
    ‘I don’t know yet,’ said Grace. We’d been working for a couple of weeks to bring this creature into the world but Grace was looking at it, at her I should say, as if the whole thing was totally unexpected.
    ‘Well,’ said Irv to Grace, ‘while you’re thinking about it you know what we have to do.’
    ‘I know,’ said Grace, ‘and I’ll go first. Bleed me, Artie.’
    ‘I don’t want to take too much,’ I said. ‘Let’s just get her into full colour so we can see where we are with this.’ Mind you, while we were doing all this the rest of London was going on as usual. Some trains were running, some weren’t. The streets were full of buses and cars and pedestrians, the pubs were full of drinkers, and we were putting blood into this thing that had climbed out of our suspension of disbelief. Great.
    As J Two filled up with colour I felt a little stirring of interest. She was a good-looking woman, you had to give her that. ‘Hello, honey,’ she said as she came round. ‘Why don’t you get naked with me.’ She stuck out her tongue which was quite a long one and gave me the wettest kiss I’d ever had. She tasted like a swamp full of incontinent crocodiles. My head went round, the room tilted several different ways, and the wall opened up to let some huge hopping thing into the room. ‘Mmmmm!’ said J Two. ‘Oh yes, gimme that old-time religion, do it, do it, do it.’
    ‘Are you talking to me or the huge hopping thing?’ I said. ‘I don’t usually tilt this much on the first date.’
    ‘Artie, try to come down a little if you can,’ said Grace. ‘Justine, you’ll have to slow down if you want to hang out with us. We’re actually a pretty quiet crowd.’
    ‘Oh yeah?’ said J Two. ‘Who died and left you in charge, Grandma?’
    ‘Watch your mouth,’ said Irv.
    ‘Up yours, Grandad,’ said J Two.
    The room was heaving around and the thing that had hopped out of the wall was making obscene gestures but I still couldn’t see its face. Maybe I’m St Anthony, I thought. Is this a temptation?

25
Detective Inspector Hunter
    3 February 2004. I don’t read much poetry any more but there are some poems that I go back to. There’s one by Yeats that’s certainly short enough to stay in my memory but I never get it exactly right and I have to turn to the page in his
Collected Poems
where the bookmark is:
    MEMORY
    One had a lovely face,
And two or three had charm,
But charm and face were in vain
Because the mountain grass
Cannot but keep the form
Where the mountain hare has lain.
    The form where the hare slept is emptiness in the shape of the hare. Last night I dreamt that Rose Harland came to my bed. I was lying on my side and she shaped herself to my back and pressed herself against me. Inthe dream I woke up and said, ‘What?’
    ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered, ‘I didn’t mean to wake you, I only wanted to get warm.’
    ‘That’s all right,’ I said as I woke up out of the dream. I put my hand where she’d been but her side of the bed was cold.

26
Istvan Fallok
    23 January 2004. I