The Moon In Its Flight by Gilbert Sorrentino Page B

you? I remember, do I not, you telling me that she asked you the meaning of “gobbet,” or was it the derivation of “radish”? You say that was April Starre? Why would you think of April Starre when Regina looked, not like her, but exactly like Ursula? Speaking of whom, why did you insist on calling her really beautiful buttocks ugly? And why did you persuade the other women to give her a box of candles and bananas? And why did Sheila Christian blush and crack her gum when you arrived? In the photograph you have of Sheila and Ursula, who is the blonde asleep or in a faint or perhaps even dead beneath the hydrangea? Why do women to whom you show this disconcerting photograph mysteriously call that position a “malady”? Why, for instance, do you say, “With a malady like that the only cure is Emperor Ointment”? And in the other photograph, isn’t that you doing the Tiger Hump? And why do all of you, you, Regina, April, Ursula, and Sheila, insist that Jesus was at the party? And then why do you agree that, despite all evidence to the contrary, he arrived wearing a sleeveless pink dress? Weren’t you wearing a sombrero like the sojourning Mexicans? Or were they really blackamoors whose curious taste for the fugue depressed all of you? And the turbans beneath their sombreros frightened you? But didn’t they kill the parakeets to assure you of their good intentions? Didn’t they appear the next morning in slippers and dressing gowns to tell you and anyone else who would listen of sunshine and cognac and the coconuts of Florida? Before we go on, would you like some chocolate? Or would you prefer to sit under a California umbrella and have a glass of orangeade and gin to chase the blues? Perhaps you’d like a free pass to the Bijou to see The Janitor’s Waltz? Seriously, as they say, why are you waiting this way, so hopelessly, really, for Ramón? Do you believe, despite all you’ve learned, that he’s different from other drummers? Didn’t he make you publicly “perform” on a bed covered with white carnations? Didn’t you have to eat cauliflower ice cream for him? Didn’t he make you sleep on bare porcelain tiles? Don’t you consider that being laced, day after day, into that tiny corset was an indication of his true feelings for you? And while you and the Mexicans acted those lewd roles for the camera, didn’t Ramón sit there blithely eating peas? You say that he sent you bouquets? But didn’t he give Ursula the pearl-and-ruby necklace he’d bought for you? Weren’t you bitterly hurt when he took April and Regina to Barbados on what he called a “double honeymoon”? Don’t you think that there’s a reason that he makes you live on Willow Way? Don’t you find it strange that a loathsome dwarf constantly spies on you? Didn’t your very blood sicken when you first realized that there wasn’t a crevice of your body that the little monstrosity hadn’t seen? Why do you pretend not to know that he’s always there, watching and masturbating? Why do you play those madrigals every night? Why do you threaten to call Connecticut, where you don’t know a soul, with the news? Why do you continue to believe that the cinnamon cantharides tablets and the sex toys that you get every month are from Ramón? Don’t you ever see the misshapen beast watching you in your bath? Why did you let Ursula hide in the family chapel? Didn’t you find it odd that Ramón asked Regina to pose for that “emperor” in nothing but pearls and high heels and carrying a tiny Japanese parasol? Didn’t she tell you that she was persuaded with hashish nougat? Were you the beautiful brunette rapt amid the flowering dogwood? Or were you naked in that copse of almonds? Why did Sheila name the sparrow that you gave her “Lesbia”? She was living then in the mauve-brick tenement you own, wasn’t she? Why did the milkman deliver free ice cream to you and to her every Saturday? Didn’t you say that his name was Bud or Billy Starr?