[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.I felt bad, almost, for overstimulating Perkus.I’d ushered a kind of Rip Van Winkle from the gentle bed of his fantasies to this harsh tableau of real fame and influence, and jarring a sleepwalker incurs responsibility.It was all I could do, though, to keep from craning my neck at Oona’s far table.As Russ Grinspoon had implied, this getting-to-know-you interlude, while only wine had been poured but no plates set down, would be an impolite moment to break from our table.Later, in the rhythm of such things, we could browse between the tables.I had a good excuse for going over to Oona’s.Sandra Saunders Eppling was seated there, and it was in the nature of male-to-female etiquette, as well as the duties of a sitcom son to a sitcom mom, that I should approach Sandra for the reunion scene I could safely guess many bystanders quietly anticipated.Oona and Noteless were chatting with Sandra now.First we had to eat what now appeared, tongues of eggplant and bell pepper rolled into a juicy little vortex or eye at the center of a plate spattered with pesto, and then depart the table in the flurry as these dishes were cleared, following Russ Grinspoon, who’d ever-so-suavely placed his fishy hand on the bare shoulder of his rapt listener and asked her to excuse him, explaining that he’d promised to show me and Perkus a certain rare vase in Arnheim’s collection.Out we went, incredibly, easily, through the maze of tables and up the mighty staircase, afraid to touch a polished banister too wide for mortal hands, on steps so plushed by carpet that our footfalls felt ungravitied, so that we might have been ghosts, or snowflakes, riding an updraft instead of settling to earth where we belonged.In a dim, swank study at the top of the stairs, walls lined with leather-bound sets, storm-giddy windows overlooking the top of the greenhouse roof and, within it, the dinner party we’d vacated, Grinspoon sparked a ready joint.“You’re the cat with the astronaut gig,” said Grinspoon.He was nothing if not an aging, red-haired hepcat, his freckles sunburned at Christmastime.I might be predisposed to dislike him because his present career echoed mine, only with the difference he’d just pointed out.His job was just to preside, while I had to play Janice’s fiancé.“Yes.”“And you—just along for the ride?” He gave the joint to Perkus.“I like to keep my eye on this kind of thing,” said Perkus coolly, taking the pose of the first hard-boiled detective to crash a scene in purple velvet.I recalled him telling me I could “learn a lot” from my vantage amid the privileged.He drew on the joint and blew a gust toward the bookshelves.“You worked with Morrison Groom, didn’t you?”“Funny you should mention that name,” parried Grinspoon.“It doesn’t come up so often these days.” He smirked as if despite his words he’d been expecting Perkus’s question, as though he knew what I didn’t: that Perkus and I had really come here to enact this weird interrogation in a room apart.I hadn’t even smoked yet and the party seemed to be melting away into some more essential reality of Perkus’s devising—this one, unexpectedly, a detective movie starring a crapped-out ’70s star whose songs had been used, I believed I now remembered, as the soundtrack to a Robert Altman film about young orderlies at an old-age home, who ducked into broom closets to get high just as we were doing.Or possibly I remembered wrong.Perkus would tell me later.For now he passed me the smoldering joint.“Actually, I’m working on a piece,” said Perkus, as if this explained anything.A piece of what? I received an involuntary vision of the name “Morrison Groom,” clipped and pasted beneath an ice-floe polar bear.“None of those movies made any money,” said Grinspoon.“That doesn’t mean anything.”“No?” Grinspoon shrugged.“Okay.”Game, set, and match, Grinspoon.Perkus would have to organize his indignant feelings into some more impressive foray.“Any one of those unprofitable movies is worth all the rest of the films you appeared in put together.”Grinspoon showed his palms, a Nazi officer so decadent he was pleased to surrender.“Sure, but I was never much of an actor.” With this he winked at me, the fucker.“You didn’t dig Bartleby Rising?”“You were in that?”“I’m Bartleby’s boss.” Grinspoon now peered through his fingers to mimic spectacles, and pursed his lips like Scrooge.“Guess you missed it, huh?” Grinspoon kept mutating his appearance and affect, as though sensing, and wishing to mock, Perkus’s investment in matters of authenticity.He was rather obligingly monstrous, I thought.“I wasn’t curious.Florian Ib’s comedies are everything that’s wrong with Hollywood since 1976.At least George Lucas made American Graffiti.Ib should be forbidden from working with humans.He was better with Gnuppets.”“See, that’s the difference between us,” said Grinspoon.“To me they’re pretty much the exact same thing.” He gestured for me to return the joint to him, even as he glanced to check the progress of the party below.“Humans and Gnuppets?” asked Perkus with alarm.“No, no,” laughed Grinspoon.“Groom and Ib.But hey, man, I’m not an expert on film, like you.”“Groom and Ib are two opposed principles.”“I was thinking more of the joy they each took in a plate of carbonara, or a drunk hooker.Actually, I used to wonder if under that Santa Claus beard and beer belly, Florian might actually be Mo, hiding behind an assumed name.”“What?” Perkus’s response was electric, one eye riveted to Russ Grinspoon, the other pleading with me to attend this emergency.“You’ve heard the rumor that Groom’s suicide was staged, right?” said Grinspoon.“Nobody really believes coyotes could drag a corpse away and chew off all identifying features in twenty-four hours.”I was happy not to have another suck at the joint, for this evening was already dangerously distorted, the mayor’s home colonized by the magic zone of Perkus’s kitchen [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
zanotowane.pl doc.pisz.pl pdf.pisz.pl matkasanepid.xlx.pl
.I felt bad, almost, for overstimulating Perkus.I’d ushered a kind of Rip Van Winkle from the gentle bed of his fantasies to this harsh tableau of real fame and influence, and jarring a sleepwalker incurs responsibility.It was all I could do, though, to keep from craning my neck at Oona’s far table.As Russ Grinspoon had implied, this getting-to-know-you interlude, while only wine had been poured but no plates set down, would be an impolite moment to break from our table.Later, in the rhythm of such things, we could browse between the tables.I had a good excuse for going over to Oona’s.Sandra Saunders Eppling was seated there, and it was in the nature of male-to-female etiquette, as well as the duties of a sitcom son to a sitcom mom, that I should approach Sandra for the reunion scene I could safely guess many bystanders quietly anticipated.Oona and Noteless were chatting with Sandra now.First we had to eat what now appeared, tongues of eggplant and bell pepper rolled into a juicy little vortex or eye at the center of a plate spattered with pesto, and then depart the table in the flurry as these dishes were cleared, following Russ Grinspoon, who’d ever-so-suavely placed his fishy hand on the bare shoulder of his rapt listener and asked her to excuse him, explaining that he’d promised to show me and Perkus a certain rare vase in Arnheim’s collection.Out we went, incredibly, easily, through the maze of tables and up the mighty staircase, afraid to touch a polished banister too wide for mortal hands, on steps so plushed by carpet that our footfalls felt ungravitied, so that we might have been ghosts, or snowflakes, riding an updraft instead of settling to earth where we belonged.In a dim, swank study at the top of the stairs, walls lined with leather-bound sets, storm-giddy windows overlooking the top of the greenhouse roof and, within it, the dinner party we’d vacated, Grinspoon sparked a ready joint.“You’re the cat with the astronaut gig,” said Grinspoon.He was nothing if not an aging, red-haired hepcat, his freckles sunburned at Christmastime.I might be predisposed to dislike him because his present career echoed mine, only with the difference he’d just pointed out.His job was just to preside, while I had to play Janice’s fiancé.“Yes.”“And you—just along for the ride?” He gave the joint to Perkus.“I like to keep my eye on this kind of thing,” said Perkus coolly, taking the pose of the first hard-boiled detective to crash a scene in purple velvet.I recalled him telling me I could “learn a lot” from my vantage amid the privileged.He drew on the joint and blew a gust toward the bookshelves.“You worked with Morrison Groom, didn’t you?”“Funny you should mention that name,” parried Grinspoon.“It doesn’t come up so often these days.” He smirked as if despite his words he’d been expecting Perkus’s question, as though he knew what I didn’t: that Perkus and I had really come here to enact this weird interrogation in a room apart.I hadn’t even smoked yet and the party seemed to be melting away into some more essential reality of Perkus’s devising—this one, unexpectedly, a detective movie starring a crapped-out ’70s star whose songs had been used, I believed I now remembered, as the soundtrack to a Robert Altman film about young orderlies at an old-age home, who ducked into broom closets to get high just as we were doing.Or possibly I remembered wrong.Perkus would tell me later.For now he passed me the smoldering joint.“Actually, I’m working on a piece,” said Perkus, as if this explained anything.A piece of what? I received an involuntary vision of the name “Morrison Groom,” clipped and pasted beneath an ice-floe polar bear.“None of those movies made any money,” said Grinspoon.“That doesn’t mean anything.”“No?” Grinspoon shrugged.“Okay.”Game, set, and match, Grinspoon.Perkus would have to organize his indignant feelings into some more impressive foray.“Any one of those unprofitable movies is worth all the rest of the films you appeared in put together.”Grinspoon showed his palms, a Nazi officer so decadent he was pleased to surrender.“Sure, but I was never much of an actor.” With this he winked at me, the fucker.“You didn’t dig Bartleby Rising?”“You were in that?”“I’m Bartleby’s boss.” Grinspoon now peered through his fingers to mimic spectacles, and pursed his lips like Scrooge.“Guess you missed it, huh?” Grinspoon kept mutating his appearance and affect, as though sensing, and wishing to mock, Perkus’s investment in matters of authenticity.He was rather obligingly monstrous, I thought.“I wasn’t curious.Florian Ib’s comedies are everything that’s wrong with Hollywood since 1976.At least George Lucas made American Graffiti.Ib should be forbidden from working with humans.He was better with Gnuppets.”“See, that’s the difference between us,” said Grinspoon.“To me they’re pretty much the exact same thing.” He gestured for me to return the joint to him, even as he glanced to check the progress of the party below.“Humans and Gnuppets?” asked Perkus with alarm.“No, no,” laughed Grinspoon.“Groom and Ib.But hey, man, I’m not an expert on film, like you.”“Groom and Ib are two opposed principles.”“I was thinking more of the joy they each took in a plate of carbonara, or a drunk hooker.Actually, I used to wonder if under that Santa Claus beard and beer belly, Florian might actually be Mo, hiding behind an assumed name.”“What?” Perkus’s response was electric, one eye riveted to Russ Grinspoon, the other pleading with me to attend this emergency.“You’ve heard the rumor that Groom’s suicide was staged, right?” said Grinspoon.“Nobody really believes coyotes could drag a corpse away and chew off all identifying features in twenty-four hours.”I was happy not to have another suck at the joint, for this evening was already dangerously distorted, the mayor’s home colonized by the magic zone of Perkus’s kitchen [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]