Do you, I said.
Naw, he said. I mean to do what I want with her again, way I used to. I’ll catch her. If you see her? Knock her down, pin her down, and hold her for me, will you?
No, I said.
Maybe I’ll pin you down, he said.
I blasted through him, thinking, as I did, of a huge mound of shit coming out of his rear, with razor blades embedded in it.
When I came out on the other side, he was on the ground, moaning in pain, clutching his ass.
All right, all right, he said. I was just funnin’ you.
Go “fun” someone else, I said. I’m not in the mood.
I guess not, he said.
And he tried to stand but his ass hurt too much.
How’d you do that? he said.
Not sure, I said.
But that wasn’t true.
I had a pretty good idea.
Part of me was eternal and I hadthoseconsiderable powers at hand (my mind was vast, unlimited, unrestrained, rapid, and skillful), while the other part, which very much longed to be alive again, was making me: desirous, ornery, active, aching to interfere in whatever way I could, in any old thing.
Powerful combo.
—
Nearby, someone was whistling “La Marseillaise.”
The Frenchman came unsteadily around the side of the house.
Ah,madame,he said. Here you are. Where have you been?You look wonderful, by the way. Disordered, loose. Full of desire and confusion. Rather unhinged. Yet beautiful. In a rough way.
Oh, be quiet, I said.
But it was true: my beige skirt and pale pink blouse had been cleaned and pressed by fresh love for life and also I had self-redone my hair with fondness for ME, and, being decidedly ephemeral yet nevertheless touched by the eternal, I looked, if I may say so, justterrific.
He, on the other hand, looked awful: his head a nearly featureless blob, his hands two vague smears at the ends of sticklike arms, his feet likewise, at the ends of sticklike legs, his formerly white clothing/boots/scarf now dirt-colored and in tatters.
You don’t look so good, I said.
I don’t feel so good, he said.
Suddenly he noticed the fellow whose ass I’d damaged.
What happened to him? he said.
Me, I said. I did.
You are perhaps not yourself? he said.
Which was like the understatement of the century.
