They discussed the operation while Kent tried to reassure his girl and Trumper agonizingly put on his gauze pad and underwear. Then Bogus told Kent that under no circumstances was he to preview the little reel that lay in wait on the projector; it was meant for Ralph and Tulpen to watch together, and would Kent be so kind, please, as not to touch anything until they were all there to watch it together.
Kent read the adhesive tape on the reel can. 'The end of the movie?' he asked.
'You bet your ass, Kent,' Trumper said. Then he walked out holding his crotch out in front of himself.
He might have waited. If he had, Kent might have told him about the bathtub scene they'd shot. If he'd waited longer, he might have noticed that Ralph and Tulpen didn't come to the studio together, or even from the same direction.
But he didn't wait. Later he thought about how he had this infuriating habit of leaving too soon. Later, after Tulpen had straightened him out about her non-relationship with Ralph, he had been forced to confess that he'd never even had a good reason for leaving at al
l. In fact, Tulpen pointed out, he had simply made up his mind to go some time before, and that anyone looking for excuses to leave can always find them. He didn't argue.
But now, with his raw new prick, he let a little of the morning pass, then went to Tulpen's apartment when he was sure that she'd be at the studio. There he picked up some of his things, and a few things that weren't his; he stole a cereal bowl and a bright orange fish for Colm.
It was a long bus ride to Maine. The pit-stops were endless, and in Massachusetts it was discovered that a man in the rear of the bus had died; a sort of quiet heart attack, the other passengers assumed. The man had meant to get off in Providence, Rhode Island.
Everyone seemed afraid to touch the dead man, so Bogus volunteered to lug him off the bus, though it nearly cost him his prick. Perhaps all the others were afraid of catching something, but Bogus was more appalled at the fact that the man was unknown to everyone around him. The driver looked in the man's wallet and discovered that he lived in Providence. The general reaction was that it was more bothersome to have missed your stop than to have died.
In New Hampshire Trumper felt compelled to introduce himself to someone and struck up a conversation with a grandmother who was on her way home from a visit with her daughter and son-in-law. 'I guess I just can't understand the way they live,' she told Bogus. She didn't elaborate, and he told her not to worry.
He showed her the fish he was bringing to Colm. He'd refilled the cereal bowl with fresh water at every pit-stop along the way. At least the fish was going to make it. Then he fell asleep and the bus driver had to wake him up.
'We're in Bath,' the driver told him, but Trumper knew he was in limbo. What's worse, he thought, I've been here before.
What had made this leaving different from the first leaving was not necessarily a sign of health. That is, it was easier this time, and yet he hadn't really wanted to go. All he knew was that he had never finished anything, and he felt a need, almost as basic as survival, to find something he could finish.
Which made him remember Dr Wolfram Holster's letter, flushed down a hospital toilet with a bloody pee, and that was when he decided to finish Akthelt and Gunnel.
Somehow the decision was uplifting, but he was aware that it was a queer thing to feel positive about. It was as if a man, whose family had for years assailed him about finding something to do, had sat down one night to read a book, only to be interrupted by a disturbance in the kitchen. It was just his family, laughing about something, but the man flung himself upon them, throwing chairs, punches and vile language until they all lay bruised and cringing under the kitchen table. Then the man turned to his horrified wife and said to her encouragingly, 'I'm going to finish reading this book now.'
One mauled member of his family might have dared to whisper, 'Big deal.'
Still, the decision was enough to give Trumper a sort of frail courage. He dared to call up Couth and Biggie and ask if one of them would pick him up at the bus station.
Colm answered the phone, and the pain when Trumper heard his voice seemed greater than if he'd tried to pass a peach pit through his sutured prick. But he was able to say, 'I have something for you, Colm.'
'Another fish?' Colm asked.
'A live one,' Trumper said, and looked at it again to make sure. It was doing fine, it was probably seasick from the sloshing in the cereal bowl, and it certainly looked small and delicate, but it was still swimming around, by Christ.
'Colm?' Trumper said. 'Let me speak to Couth or Mommy. Someone's got to come get me at the bus station.'
'Did the lady come with you?' Colm asked. 'What's her name?'
'Tulpen,' Trumper said, passing another peach pit through his prick.
'Oh, yeah, Tulpen!' Colm said. He obviously liked her a lot.
'No, she didn't come with me,' Trumper told him. 'Not this time.'
34
Into a Life of Art: Prelude to a Tank on
the Bottom of the Danube
YOU ASSHOLE, MERRILL! You were always hanging around American Express, waiting for lost little girls. I guess you found one, and she lost you, Merrill.
Arnold Mulcahy told me it happened in the fall. A restless time, eh, Merrill? That old feeling of needing to find someone to spend the winter with.