caretaker. They needed someone to take in the mail and douche the plants and so forth. Also to turn on lights in the evening, to give the semblance of a full house. They are irrational about being robbed. They ply me with post-cards saying they hope they haven’t been you-know-whated. Antelopes roaming the ranges. I keep a blunderbuss on the chiffonier, hoping that the sight of it, plus my sagging tits plus my oatmeal mask, will offset any rude assailant. I might carouse with him or suggest a game of Sardines. All it needs is for him to be a certain type, a sort of defunct hangman, granite featured, for me to get into the swing of it, get the old hairy scutcheons sliding, get on with the Thigh Show.
Needless to add I appropriated the master bedroom, the electric blanket and this quilt. The room they ascribed to me was a single room with red wallpaper, of the oxblood variety. Lil had the audacity to appear there one night, swaddled in linen no less, and with a rosary swinging from her waist. The curtains liftedas if a flame or a breeze had been put to them and there she was, rouged, rejuvenated. Full of wise saws about Jesus, whom she called Jesu. I found it an impertinence myself. She had little gold sleepers in her ears. Some goddam dreg of love welled up in me and I wanted to put my hand out and touch the earlobe, the cool, the white earlobe that just missed being chafed by the rim of the gold. I wanted to tweak it. At the same time I wished she’d make herself scarce and said so. She was sermonising in her customary voice, about the joys of heaven and the writhing woes of hell. I wanted to inquire into the statute acreage of same and also to ask if unfortunate children got born there. She kept limbo and purgatory out of the narrative altogether. I could smell the sizzling and the burning of flesh from the great tale with which she regaled me. So vivid was it that I could see them, these poor souls, rotomating like chickens, as I’ve seen and watched them in the take-away “Nosh” place. She was looking very august. To tell you the truth her visitation gave me the willies. I was afraid she might nake herself. I was digging into the mattress and sweating like a pig. She actually got into the bed, the single bed. It squeaked. I edged away. Who wouldn’t. She arched and tilted and bowed her body so that she fitted exactly into mine, my tumescence and my curves, her tumescence and her curves, and it felt as if we were being welded together, or at least moulded together, like one of her legendary carragheen soufflés in its wetted mould. She had precepts written out on a slate, in gold no less, like the Writ of Moses, stipulating further how I must live out the remainderof my life. She kept adhering to me. Such suctorial sounds, such busying. Then she started to infer that she would be resident here for all time, keeping a total watch. She was not like Hamlet’s father, coming back at an appointed hour to deliver State news or instigate a bit of foul play. She was going to be trailing me for the rest of my life, counting the number of cigarettes I smoked, my alcoholic intake, the knaves that I brought home, my femoral moments with the Duke, she was to be my guardian angel. I had the most terrible feeling, the most shocking realisation, you cannot kill the dead. And yet I had a go, in fact I wakened up howling and aiming the warming pan at her. I gathered up my effects.
This room is brighter as well as airier and the bed itself is on a dais. The pictures and gouaches are the backs or buttocks of various Japanese ladies. It seems he has a preference for backs, so Tig said. The wardrobes are louvred and the drawers inhumanly neat, along with being lavender-scented. There are also camphor balls volleying back and forth at the merest wrench, and I gainsay that they are the genuine thing from Borneo. In my cups I mistook them for sweets and bit into one, expecting a peppermint bouquet. Recently the place has suffered a bit of
Needless to add I appropriated the master bedroom, the electric blanket and this quilt. The room they ascribed to me was a single room with red wallpaper, of the oxblood variety. Lil had the audacity to appear there one night, swaddled in linen no less, and with a rosary swinging from her waist. The curtains liftedas if a flame or a breeze had been put to them and there she was, rouged, rejuvenated. Full of wise saws about Jesus, whom she called Jesu. I found it an impertinence myself. She had little gold sleepers in her ears. Some goddam dreg of love welled up in me and I wanted to put my hand out and touch the earlobe, the cool, the white earlobe that just missed being chafed by the rim of the gold. I wanted to tweak it. At the same time I wished she’d make herself scarce and said so. She was sermonising in her customary voice, about the joys of heaven and the writhing woes of hell. I wanted to inquire into the statute acreage of same and also to ask if unfortunate children got born there. She kept limbo and purgatory out of the narrative altogether. I could smell the sizzling and the burning of flesh from the great tale with which she regaled me. So vivid was it that I could see them, these poor souls, rotomating like chickens, as I’ve seen and watched them in the take-away “Nosh” place. She was looking very august. To tell you the truth her visitation gave me the willies. I was afraid she might nake herself. I was digging into the mattress and sweating like a pig. She actually got into the bed, the single bed. It squeaked. I edged away. Who wouldn’t. She arched and tilted and bowed her body so that she fitted exactly into mine, my tumescence and my curves, her tumescence and her curves, and it felt as if we were being welded together, or at least moulded together, like one of her legendary carragheen soufflés in its wetted mould. She had precepts written out on a slate, in gold no less, like the Writ of Moses, stipulating further how I must live out the remainderof my life. She kept adhering to me. Such suctorial sounds, such busying. Then she started to infer that she would be resident here for all time, keeping a total watch. She was not like Hamlet’s father, coming back at an appointed hour to deliver State news or instigate a bit of foul play. She was going to be trailing me for the rest of my life, counting the number of cigarettes I smoked, my alcoholic intake, the knaves that I brought home, my femoral moments with the Duke, she was to be my guardian angel. I had the most terrible feeling, the most shocking realisation, you cannot kill the dead. And yet I had a go, in fact I wakened up howling and aiming the warming pan at her. I gathered up my effects.
This room is brighter as well as airier and the bed itself is on a dais. The pictures and gouaches are the backs or buttocks of various Japanese ladies. It seems he has a preference for backs, so Tig said. The wardrobes are louvred and the drawers inhumanly neat, along with being lavender-scented. There are also camphor balls volleying back and forth at the merest wrench, and I gainsay that they are the genuine thing from Borneo. In my cups I mistook them for sweets and bit into one, expecting a peppermint bouquet. Recently the place has suffered a bit of
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