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Jerry just told their father to fuck off; Dawn was driven almost crazy by him; and Sylvia Levov stoically and impatiently endured him, her only successful form of resistance being to freeze him out and live with the isolation–and see more of herself evaporating year by yearBut Marcia took him on as the fool that he was for still believing in the power of his indignation to convert the corruptions of the present into the corruptions of the past
“So what would you want her to be instead, Lou? A cocktail waitress?” Marcia asked
“Why not? That’s a job
“Not much of one,” Marcia replied”Not one that would interest anyone here
“Oh?” said Lou Levov”They’d prefer what she does instead?”
“I don’t know,” said Marcia”We’ll have to poll the girlsWhich would you prefer,” she said to Sheila, “cocktail waitress or porn star?”
But Sheila was not about to be engulfed in Marcia’s mockery, and with eyes that seemed to stare past it and right on through to the chloe paddington handbag egotism, she gave her unequivocal replyThe Swede remembered that after Sheila had first met Marcia and Barry Umanoff here, at the Old Rimrock house, he had asked her, “How can he love this person?” and instead of answering him as Dawn did, “Because he’s a ball-less wonder,” Sheila had replied, “By the end of a dinner party, everybody is probably thinking that about somebodySometimes everybody is thinking that about everybody
“Do you?” he’d asked her”I think that about couples all the time,” she’d saidAnd yet this wise woman had harbored a murderer
“What about Dawn?” Marcia asked”Cocktail waitress or porno actress?”
Smiling sweetly, exhibiting her best Catholic schoolgirl posture–the girl who makes the nuns happy by sitting at her desk without slouching–Dawn said, “Up yours, Marcia
“What kind of conversation is this?” Lou Levov asked
“A dinner conversation,” Sylvia Levov replied
“And what makes you so blase?” he asked her
“I’m not blase\ I’m costume jewelry chanel listening
Now Bill Orcutt said, “Nobody’s polled you, MarciaWhich would you prefer, assuming you had the choice?”
She laughed merrily at the slighting innuendo”Oh, they’ve got big fat mamas in dirty moviesThey, too, appear in the dreams of menAnd not only for comic reliefListen, you folks are too hard on LindaWhy is it that if a girl takes off her clothes in Atlantic City it’s for a scholarship and makes her an American goddess, but if she takes off her clothes in a sex flick it’s for filthy money and makes her a whore? Why is that? Why? All right–nobody knowsBut seriously, folks, I love this word ‘scholarship’ A hooker comes to a hotel roomThe guy asks her how much she getsShe says, ‘Well, if you want blank I get a three-hundred-dollar scholarshipAnd if you want blank-blank I get a five-hundred-dollar scholarshipAnd if you want blank-blank-blank–’”
“Marcia,” said Dawn, “try as you will, you can’t get under my skin tonight
“Can’t I?”
“Not tonight
There chanel classic flap was a beautiful floral arrangement at the center of the table”From Dawn’s garden,” Lou Levov had told them all proudly as they were sitting down to eatThere were also large platters of the beefsteak tomatoes, sliced thickly, dressed in oil and vinegar, and encircled by slices of red onion fresh from the gardenAnd there were two wooden buckets–old feed buckets that they’d picked up at a junk shop in Clinton for a dollar apiece–each lined gaily with a red bandanna and brimming with the ears of corn that Orcutt had helped her shuckCradled in wicker baskets near either end of the table were freshly baked loaves of French bread, those new baguettes from McPherson’s, reheated in the oven and pleasant to tear apart with your handsAnd there was good strong Burgundy wine, half a dozen bottles of the Swede’s best Pommard, four of them open on the table, bottles that five years back he had laid down for drinking in 1973–according to his wine register, Pom-363 chanel reporter bag mards laid down in his cellar just one month to the day before Merry killed DrYes, earlier in the evening he had found 1/3/68 inscribed, in his handwriting, in the spiral notebook he used for recording the details of each new purchase1/3/68″ he had written, with no idea that on 2/3/68 his daughter would go ahead and outrage all of America, except perhaps for Professor Marcia Umanoff
The two high school kids who were doing the serving emerged from the kitchen every few minutes, silently offering around the steaks he’d cooked, arranged on pewter platters, all carved up and running with bloodThe Swede’s set of carving knives were from Hoffritz, the best German stainless steelHe’d gone over to New York to buy the set and the big carving block for their first Thanksgiving in the Old Rimrock houseHe once had cared about all that stuffLoved to hone the blade on the long conical file before he went after the birdLoved the sound of itThe sad inventory of his domestic lady dior bag bo