But it was Suede who bounded toward them, glistening in his own excitement. He skidded into place, cigarette dangling from his mouth, layer upon layer of thick straight hair following the handsome curve of his head, and his eyes dark with expectation. Instantly Coco felt herself brighten, cheered by his enthusiasm. Suede always responded to parties, cluing into the scene, cuing in on the people, absorbing through osmosis the dominant feelings, feeding on unfamiliar faces and places. His ability to extract highs from even the most ordinary occasions was a heavy contributor to his sensuality and a magnet to women.
But the moment Gavin introduced him to Sylvia, Suede began to ask questions about the license challenge and then, right then, right before Coco’s jealous and disbelieving eyes, he began to turn on to Sylvia, unperturbed by the heavy lethargic fat that smothered her youthfulness, mentally measuring the enormous breasts undulating beneath her dress. Haughty, heavy, and humorless, Sylvia began to explain the case. Eventually the conversation shifted to changes in federal and state laws that affected women, and then Sylvia lit up. Each time one of the men made a declaratory statement, he would direct it toward Sylvia, study her face, await her response, check to see if both her breasts were still there, and then turn away, seemingly educated and refreshed by the encounter.
Totally ignored, Coco stood her ground, feeling her body begin to dissolve from the gin that she still sipped delicately through a straw. For a while she amused herself trying to spot other guests who might be watching or discussing her, but when she conceded she wasn’t attracting any notice, she returned to their discussion. Slowly the minutes were becoming blurred and unchartable as she felt herself dissolving out of the scene. Occasionally she marshaled her senses, hastening back to the present, but each time, her perceptions were progressively more detached and tangential.
After a while the fervent discussion turned to dinner. Coco protested that she didn’t feel like going out to a restaurant, but the arrangement-making drowned out her resistance, so she obediently followed Gavin inside the house to say her good-byes and thank-yous. After half an hour of aimless walking, she finally remembered where the car was parked. She moved silently beside Gavin, radiating unhappiness and complaining that she had forgotten something back at the party, although her little beaded purse still dangled from her wrist and she hadn’t brought a jacket. Gavin seemed impatient with her confusion, and since he didn’t seem to like her very much anymore, Coco kept quiet while a childish sadness dripped through her body.
Gavin drove. Coco sat in front and turned her head slightly so she could see out of the corner of her eye into the back seat, where Sylvia was slouched close to Suede, despite the thick, heavy heat in the car. Her head was bent awkwardly against Suede’s shoulder, while the remainder of her generous body sprawled next to his. Her thick legs were spread apart, exposing the secret passageway to her crotch, and the long colorless wings of her hair had drooped together like curtains over her eyes. The enormous breasts that hung loosely to each side wiggled from the motion of the car.
nine
Coco followed the others into the small recently discovered Cuban restaurant, feeling as if she and Gavin were on a double-date with Suede and Sylvia (Most Popular Couple) and tagging along in a desperate effort to get in with the Popular Crowd.
I’m not going to know what to talk about when we sit down, Coco thought, staring straight ahead at the back of Gavin’s blue striped sport jacket as they conga-lined behind the manager through a maze of tables in the dark, authentic, non-air-conditioned room. They shuffled into hard, straight-back chairs, and Coco stared at a large fan churning near the kitchen doorway, feeling as if the entire universe was temporarily dwarfed into a square white linen world with four sharp corners—over any of which an other-directed sailor might fall.
“They have pretty good food here,” she said suddenly, attempting to establish some friendship to offset her acute ache of loneliness. It was hard to feel cozily alienated from Gavin when they were in the company of an unexplainably happy couple who were manufacturing a mutual sexual attraction which they guarded protectively between them as if it were a small energetic child they were baby-sitting. Gavin grunted agreement, and Coco felt a spasm of neglect race through her. She lowered her head and studied the wine-stained map of the tablecloth, featuring one huge pink continent (Australia? Africa?) until the waiter appeared, looking forlorn and foreign, to take their orders.
Coco was trying desperately hard to save the cube of her alcoholic numbness that was quickly melting from the heat and the fact that the Cuban restaurant had no liquor license. Gavin was talking rapidly, obviously attempting to appear brilliant, witty, sophisticated, and out-front impervious to the developing sexuality at the table. Suede was conspicuously jovial, watching Sylvia possessively, touching her presumptuously, and passing her bread with parental relish. Sylvia had nestled quickly into the orbit of Suede’s magnetic ego and was expressing total sympathy with all his New Left clichés. Only twice, when she thought she could do so without detection, did she attempt to inspect and evaluate Coco’s face.
“Are you tired, Gavin?” she asked in a domestic tone of voice. She leaned forward hoping to appropriate some marital intimacy that would offset the distracting sexuality developing along the north and east sides of the map, and wondered if the vulgar availability that Sylvia advertised reminded Gavin of his mistress. A sharp emotion pierced her body.
Gavin smiled a grimace of controlled exasperation and said he felt great. Coco made a quick inspection of his face and realized that he was trying to hear what Sylvia and Suede were saying.
She ate more bread. She drank. She smoked. She listened. She waited. She hated everyone. And then suddenly, Sylvia, who had begun noisily guzzling gazpacho out of a large spoon, turned directly toward Coco.
“You’re sort of into women’s-lib stuff a little, aren’t you?” she asked, and then, self-consciously, as a sisterly afterthought, stretched her broad thick lips into a smile. Her teeth were very straight and white, making her face look less gross and hefty, more generous—more soft and accessible. With that single smile Sylvia had translated her heaviness into a lushness that put her into the major leagues of threatening women and out of the object-of-pity class.
“Yes,” Coco answered stiffly, while her alcoholic high lost altitude like a helium balloon brought home from the zoo. “I’m in the Columbia Road Consciousness Raising Local and the Northwest Area Theoretical Council.”
“Ah-huh,” Sylvia said with belittling approval.
Coco felt totally deflated. Her far-out membership, which in PTA circles was equivalent to a CP card, was no longer sufficient. Somehow Sylvia had simultaneously infiltrated the ranks of the men and upped the ante by endowing her feminist activities with great political value—an alchemization Coco had tirelessly pursued but never achieved. She waited tensely for the next attack in the unannounced intramural scrimmage.
“Are you into the July Fourth march at all?”
“Oh, yes,” Coco said. She felt so grateful that her anxiety turned into recklessness. “I’m co-chairwoman of the Citywide Coalition Housing and Accommodations Committee.”
It sounded ridiculous.
Gavin looked toward her with incriminating surprise, while Suede smirked in a way that was only a trifle more churlish than cruel.
Coco shifted in her chair, futilely trying to release the dress which was glued to her thighs with sweat and to erase the impression she had just made.
“Yah,” Sylvia said, stuffing a thickly buttered piece of bread into her mouth. “I guess that’s where I saw your name. I’m on the National Steering Committee.”
The waiter appeared, carrying four platters, which he rhythmically swung down in front of them. Coco stared at the dark meat bobbing in brown gravy and realized she had totally and permanently discredited herself. The irony of being put down by a newfound sister for not being heavy enough into the movement was a total denial of everything women’s lib represented. And at
the same time Sylvia was belittling Coco, she was simultaneously elevating the lib movement so that it sounded respectably radical enough for both Gavin and Suede.
“I guess I’m supposed to march with the Steering Committee next Tuesday,” Coco said, pathetically grappling for composure and trying to appropriate some aura of purpose and prestige. “Or at least that’s what Helen Blumenthal told me.” Then she tossed her head back as if to sling her hair away from her face, produced a proud profile toward the west, and unleashed one of her outlandishly Hollywood, hold-it, glamour smiles. The pantomime signaled a magnanimous forgiveness of Sylvia’s trespasses by assigning them to an understandable inferiority complex.
The men decoded Coco’s message. Suede’s eyes touched Coco accusingly before sweeping away in a diversionary survey of the room. His face was stained with hot anger, and though Coco invariably felt cheered at discovering someone else’s discomfort corresponding to her own, she realized that she had gone too far. Sylvia had totally ignored Coco’s prize performance and now began to tell Suede and Gavin how she was organizing and planning the tactics for challenging any Democratic state delegations that had less than fifty percent women in Miami.
Coco listened in stupefaction as Sylvia’s fat elastic lips snapped a sound of legitimacy into the challenge tactic, as if she were representing chicanos or blacks rather than women—people who were clearly, rather than debatably, oppressed.
“So what’s the status of the Channel Eight suit?” she asked irritably, to interrupt Sylvia’s monologue.
Everyone turned toward Coco.
“I mean, you know … Gavin never fills me in on any of his work.” She picked up the last piece of meat from her dish with her fingers and stuck it in her mouth as she spoke. “You know how it is,” she said, winking Female Complaint #10 toward Sylvia. “He probably doesn’t think I’d be interested or that I could understand.”
That caused a devastating silence. Suede politely looked away, as if Coco had belched or cut wind at the table, and Gavin turned red with anger. But instead of Sylvia falling into line, she transparently shifted over into the men’s camp, to get on the winning side.
“Jesus, Coco,” Gavin groaned, swallowing a harsher curse.
“Well, why haven’t you told me anything about it?” Coco persisted. “You know I’m interested in equal opportunities for women.”
“I know,” Gavin said reluctantly, to appease Coco without really conceding any ground, “but don’t come on about it now. Like this.”
So Coco turned back to Sylvia. “And how long have you been working in the movement?” she asked.
“Since I dropped out of Bennington last year,” Sylvia answered. But even behind the tan screen of her hair she seemed overly interested in the static between the Burmans. She was watching them like an anthropologist out in the field observing the strange customs of a married couple, victims of a decadent and divisive social order.
Then, gracelessly, she began to explain about her involvement in women’s liberation, scattering clues to her identity like the Homecoming Queen from Last Chance throwing rose petals from the back seat of an open convertible.
Coco’s irritation shifted into outrage. She began stamping out the butt of her Marlboro into the greasy gravy left at the bottom of her heavy white porcelain dinner dish. Involuntarily she remembered reading a theory that new mothers who compulsively tap their babies backs to bring up burps are really suppressing murderous beating impulses. Coco wondered if her quick abbreviated jabs at the dinner dish were restrained slaps at Sylvia for being an aggressive opportunist. To hear an unpleasantly self-assured young girl talk abstractly about the female condition as if it were an offshore oil strike, a natural resource for her own private development, was intolerable to Coco. Sylvia was shamelessly using Coco’s problem as her own solution.
Frantically Coco smiled toward Suede, trying to make him acknowledge such gaucherie, but then she saw he was incapacitated by a total body hard-on, sexually primed by Sylvia and her Booby Twins. Sylvia’s delivery of all the ideas which had achingly emerged from thousands of consciousness-raising sessions had become the biggest come-on and turn-on of all. Totally stymied, Coco administered several fast swallows of espresso into her soiled-tasting mouth.
It was all too much for her. Slowly, insidiously, the poor little Cuban restaurant melted into a stage drop, an inviting, irresistible setting, for another love fantasy. Obliterating the unpleasant realities at the table, Coco put down the miniature coffee cup and sent her favorite film up to the projectionist’s box in the rear of her head. This was the one in which The Ultimate Man her P.L., turned up at Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, the two-week summer spa for Washington housewives and children too young for day camp and too old for New England sleep-aways. Politely Coco sent a farewell smile to her dinner companions, who were still discussing methods of translating their psychological needs into various political programs, and left for the beach.
But this time something was causing interference with the reception of her fantasy flick. All her life Coco had created carefully detailed, list-accompanied fantasies—no misty tremulous dreams for her. When she lay awake in bed, resenting the sleeping body of her husband beside her, she would carefully pack imaginary trunks to take to a deserted beach hide-away, remembering refills for her favorite Papermate pen.(no country store could be expected to stock such an esoteric item), and extra boxes of inspiration Manifold Carbons, and large bulky sweaters to wear with skinny muslin pants on rainy days, and op-art plastic manuscript folios, and all her spices so she wouldn’t need to replace them from scratch, and matching striped swim-suits for the children. Coco had always accepted the responsibilities of her fantasies. But this time, despite all her advance work, the proper film did not appear on the screen of her mind. Nor did her X-L P.L. turn up at the appropriate moment outside the carmel-corn corner candy store. Coco was drawing a great big fat zero.
A jarring shuffling of chairs and a noisy inspection of the bill interrupted her. She looked across at Gavin, but he was still oblivious of her, unaware that she had been to the ocean. “Let’s get going,” he said. “It’s got to be cooler outside.” He looked at Coco like a lab tech wanting to X-ray her true intentions.
So Coco stood up and walked away from the table ahead of the others so she could wait alone in the street, embracing the cool fresh breeze that blew debris along the sidewalk.
Then they all drove back to the Burmans’ house.
ten
Once upstairs in the second-floor living room, Coco sat down in the blue chair that was a flattering background color for her, and watched the scene develop. Gavin had extravagantly sent Mrs. Marshall home in a taxi and then enthusiastically led everyone upstairs, made drinks, and began pacing around the room acting the charming now-barefoot host. As an act of good faith, he began his conversation by asking Suede about his new novel. This was the first introduction of a nonpolitical subject and a polite though begrudging acknowledgment of Suede’s commercial acclaim.
“So when’s your book coming out?”
Year after year, Gavin had increasing difficulty dealing with Suede’s success. They had both left college as equals—indeed, with Gavin holding a slight edge of intelligence over Suede—but now it was Suede who was famous, photographed, promoted, and pursued. The bylaws of their unmentionable but eternal competition demanded that Gavin verbally acknowledge his defeat in the popular success race while claiming a serious lead in the social-contribution heat. A favorable Supreme Court decision was of higher rank than a National Book Award on the original Achievement Scale they had both agreed upon back in their undergraduate days.
“In September,” Suede said dismissingly, trying to minimize what was profitable about the path he had chosen.
“Do you think the movies will buy it?”
It had been established long ago that Gavin must fathom all the depths of his repressed jealousy in exchange for Suede’s concession that Gavin’s work was more valuable (though l
ess visible and sexy) than fiction-writing.
“Jesus, I hope so. I’m broke. And writing articles is a ball-busting way to make a little bread.”
“They’ll probably offer you half a million for this one—after Making Out,” Gavin said magnanimously.
In accordance with the original contract, Suede now had to acknowledge his deficiency in the arena of radical politics, which he entered only as a journalistically detached observer and commentator. “But I’m really going to bust my ass writing this radical-law piece. People just don’t know anything about these firms or about all the grand-jury shit that’s going down.”
“Sure,” Gavin consented, placated and satisfied. Now he could return to the subject of the Esquire article that dealt with his professional, political, and personal obsession—the need for radical law firms to combat social and political failures of the court and prison system. He quickly ran through his customary lecture on the hideous composition of the Supreme Court, the endless instances of police brutality, the possible outcome and consequences of the Democratic National Convention, and the need for revolutionary reforms throughout the society.
“The country’s falling apart,” he said ominously, eating cashews from a can he had succeeded in prying only half-open. “This fucking war is ruining the country.”
Suede, who had unknowingly chosen Gavin’s favorite chair, thus causing the endless pilgrimage up and down the room, listened good-naturedly because Gavin had been decent about the novel and even extravagant in mentioning the possible movie sales.
Loose Ends Page 11
