McMurtry, Larry - Novel 05 (6 page)

 
          
 
If Perkins, the Penroses' extraordinary
manservant, had had his way, the congressman's coq au vin would not have been
there for the pugs to eat.

 
          
 
That goes without saying, of course. Perkins
was easily the most impressive person at the party, if not the most impressive
person anywhere, now that Lord Mountbatten is dead. In fact, Perkins looked so
much like Lord Mountbatten that I faltered badly when I first walked in with
Cindy. Perkins is as tall as I am, and several times more dignified. I assumed
he must be our host, at the very least, so I attempted to shake his hand.

 
          
 
Perkins graciously ignored this gaucherie, but
Cindy didn't.

 
          
 
"If he wasn't the butler, he wouldn't be
opening the door," she pointed out.

 
          
 
Seconds later I was being introduced to
Senator Penrose, our real host, a little fellow I might have missed entirely if
left to my own devices. He had the constitution of a whippet and a complexion
not unlike that of a rag that has hung in the sun for several weeks.
Splotchy and bleached, in other words.

 
          
 
At dinner I spent most of my time stealing
glances at Perkins, trying to anticipate his next move. Seldom have I felt so
intimidated by a man. Fortunately the two ladies bracketing me were experienced
diners, who knew when to pick up a fork or surrender a plate—by watching them I
got through the meal without serious embarrassment.

 
          
 
The congressman from
Michigan
could have done the same, but he didn't. He
didn't look dumb, just sort of weakly self-satisfied. He was also compulsively
voluble on the subject of
Michigan
, perhaps the only subject he felt he had mastered.

 
          
 
The person in the unfortunate position of
having to listen to him was Cunard Cotswinkle, old Dunscombe's wife, a honey
blonde about Boss's age who had managed to marry and outlive three of the
world's ten richest men. Her nickname was Cunny and her charm was said to be
fatal— evidently a hyperbole, since if it had been, the congressman from
Michigan
would have been dead before we reached the
salad course.

 
          
 
At any rate, the congressman made a simple
mistake: He talked when he should have been eating. Consequently, while the
rest of us were eating salad his coq au vin still sat in front of him,
untouched.

 
          
 
Across from me, John C. V. Ponsonby showed
signs of being about to come to life. His chin, long since sunk on his bony
chest, lifted a degree or
two,
and one hand began to
fumble with his bow tie. The ladies beside me stared at him balefully: Clearly
he was not a favorite of theirs.

 
          
 
"If Jake starts talking about
Egypt
I'm leaving," one whispered to the
other, across my salad.

 
          
 
"I know what you mean," the other
said. "It's bad enough to have to read his columns."

 
          
 
"Oh, I don't read him," the first
lady said, looking reflective for a moment.

 
          
 
"If it came to that, I'd rather fuck him
than read him," she said. "I feel the same way about Max Lerner, for
what that's worth."

 
          
 
It was at this point that we all heard the
hideous scratching of eight little paws, all of them trying to gain a purchase
on the highly polished floor.

 
          
 
Here came the pugs, old, fat, and black,
making awful little mewling sounds as they tried to scratch their way across
the floor, their wet red tongues hanging over their underbites. Twice they lost
their purchase and sprawled on their stomachs on the slick floor, mewling more
horribly than ever.

 
          
 
The second time this
happened
Perkins picked them up by their scruffs and carried them around the table to
their mistress. That he managed to perform this chore without losing one whit
of his dignity says all that need be said for the man's presence.

 
          
 
Pencil Penrose received the dogs cheerfully
and they immediately began to compete with one another to scramble over her
bosom and lick her face,

 
          
 
"Wogers!" she exclaimed. "Gogers!"
as the little black dogs flung themselves at her overhanging bosom like salmon
at a waterfall.

 
          
 
The immediate effect of her exclamation was to
bring John C.V. Ponsonby to full wakefulness for the first time in hours. He
blinked slowly, like the old frog he more or less resembled, and watched
impassively as Wogers and Gogers attempted to scramble up or around Pencil's
bosom.

 
          
 
Despite her fondness for them, Pencil soon
tired of their sharp little claws and wet little tongues, so she without
further ado simply set them on the dinner table.

 
          
 
I was frankly shocked. I had eaten at a number
of tables where it was customary to set the plates under the table for the
dogs, but never at one where the dogs were put on the table and given a go at
the plates.

 
          
 
In view of the reaction of the ladies beside
me, I'm inclined to think it's not a common thing, even in
Georgetown
. They snapped to attention and looked around
them happily, as if they had received an unexpected benediction.

 
          
 
"Now that is an upper-class thing!"
one whispered to the other.

 
          
 
Both of them sighed, in a refreshed way.
Apparently the burden of years of middle-classness, if not worse, had suddenly
been lifted.

 
          
 
The dogs were so delighted to be on the table
that they frolicked for a moment, rolling around, mewling, and even briefly
simulating copulation.

 
          
 
Fortunately for everyone's digestion, Wogers
and Gogers were long past consummating anything. After a brief hump they shook
themselves and stared myopically around the table. Then they trotted across the
table as confidently as two black imps.

 
          
 
Just as the congressman from
Michigan
belatedly reached for his knife and fork,
Wogers and Gogers spotted his chicken and made a beeline for it. The
congressman happened to glance down, to see what he was eating, and saw a sight
that would have unnerved Douglas MacArthur.

 
          
 
Wogers and Gogers were by this time ripping
their way through a cold but toothsome chicken breast. Thanks to certain
genetic drawbacks, such as blunt noses and tiny teeth, they were making a
sloppy job of it. Both of them had their front teeth in the congressman's plate
and were slinging drippings this way and that as they tried to tear a few
filaments of chicken loose from the bone.

 
          
 
When I described the scene to Boog, the next
day, he rolled on the floor and laughed until froth came out of his mouth.

 
          
 
"That gutless little piss-ant," he
said. "I hope he swallert his tongue. He can talk more and say less than
any man I ever met, unless it was Everett Dirksen.”

 
          
 
Jake Ponsonby was making an effort to keep
himself awake. He was doodling what appeared to be, Latin hexameters on his
shirt cuff".

 
          
 
Old Cotswinkle, meanwhile, had suddenly
discovered that there was a girl sitting next to him—namely Cindy— and he
was
staring fixedly at her bosom.

 
          
 
Lilah Landry was employing her
Georgia
gift of gab for the benefit of an elderly
Britisher who seemed to have recently unplugged his life support system. He was
either dead or pretending to be, a fact that made no difference to Lilah. She
continued to talk rapidly and smile dizzily in his direction.

 
          
 
For perhaps a minute the party seemed to lose
what little motion it had. Few conversed, no one got up, the servants held
themselves
in abeyance, and the water in the finger bowls
slowly grew cold. At the head of the table Senator Penrose was talking quietly
about Mr. Jefferson—to hear him one would have thought that Mr. Jefferson had
been to dinner the night before.

 
          
 
The congressman from
Michigan
recognized at once that his food was a lost
cause, and attempted to put a dignified face on the matter.

 
          
 
Unfortunately, the congressman didn't have a
dignified face. He had a weak, selfish face, on which the only thing writ large
was self-esteem. Though bug-eyed with embarrassment, he had survived fourteen
terms in the House, so when Cunny Cotswinkle glanced over to see if the pugs
had finished picking his chicken breast he actually smiled—a shit-eating grin
to end all shit-eating grins.

 
          
 
"I love dawgs," he said.

 
          
 
When the pugs finished mangling the chicken
breast they trotted back down the table and had another little frolic, this one
directly in front of me. Also directly in front of me were two very fine
Charles II casters. I had been admiring them all evening.

 
          
 
The pugs got up, snuffling from their
exertions, and one of them started to lift a leg on the nearest caster.

 
          
 
No one was paying the slightest attention
either to the pugs or me, so I reached over and jabbed the dog in the ass with
my fork. Then, for good measure, I jabbed the other one too.

 
          
 
The reaction was wonderful. The first pug
squeaked like a sick bat and darted straight across the table. In his myopia he
mistook Lilah Landry for his mistress and leaped straight for her bosom.

 
          
 
Lilah was wearing an attractive burgundy gown,
easily loose enough at the bust to accommodate a small slick dog. Since she was
still treating the moribund Englishman to a display of southern dizziness she
didn't see the dog coming. He hit her just above the breastbone and immediately
slid down between her breasts.

 
          
 
The second pug had more voice. She squealed
like a shoat trying to get at some slop and raced straight down the table toward
Senator Penrose.

 
          
 
The Senator saw the dog coming just in time to
swallow whatever he had been about to say about Mr. Jefferson, and ducked. The
pug bounced off his chair, hit the floor, and fetched up in a comer, squealing
horribly.

 
          
 
"Oh, Gogers," Pencil said, giving
her a pettish glance.
"Bad creature!
No table
manners."

 
          
 
If it was Gogers on the floor, it could only
be Wogers neatly nestling between Lilah Landry's breasts.

 
          
 
By the time Lilah managed to check the flow of
gab all that could be seen of Wog-ers was a little whimpering black snout,
directly between her impressive breasts.

 
          
 
The sight was sufficiently novel to cause Jake
Ponsonby to stop doodling hexameters. He blinked twice, put aside his pen, and
slowly brought his froglike gaze to focus on Lilah's bosom.

 
          
 
At this point Pencil looked around and saw Wogers,
too, had misbehaved.

 
          
 
"Uh-oh," she said.

 
          
 
Ponsonby was more eloquent. He lowered his
head until the prominent vein in his nose was only an inch or two from the more
delicate veins in Lilah's breasts.

 
          
 
"Lilah, my dear," he said, "
is
it your intention to suckle that pug?"

 
          
 
Ponsonby's voice was perfectly adapted to his
favored role as Tory panjandrum and parliamentarian of
Georgetown
. In it one heard not so distant echoes of
the Raj.

 
          
 
Lilah looked down at the pug for a second and
gave the company her best smile.

 
          
 
"Why puppy dawg," she said,
"how'd you get in there?"

 
          
 
Ponsonby blinked again. "Perhaps
pedantically," he said, "I am put in mind of Livy, the first book. Do
you expect to found a city?"

 
          
 
"If I do I hope
it
ain't nothin' like
Macon
,
" Lilah said, addressing herself
gingerly to the problem of extracting a pug from her bosom. By this time she
had the undivided attention of everyone except old Cotswinkle, who, having
found one nice bosom to stare
at,
saw no reason to
play the field.

 
          
 
Lilah reached down as delicately as possible
and tried to get Wogers by the neck, an action he didn't appreciate. Instead of
coming out he wiggled deeper into the pleasant valley.

 
          
 
This brought his sharp little hind-toenails
into contact with Lilah's tummy.

 
          
 
"Oh, puppy, don't tickle," she said,
jumping up. "I can't stand tickles."

 
          
 
Jumping up was a big mistake.
As Wogers scrambled for a purchase the law of gravity brought him into
contact with yet more ticklish regions—so ticklish, in fact, that Lilah dashed
wildly around the table, screeching hysterically and clutching the pug to her
stomach as tightly as she could, another act that was counterproductive.
Wogers concluded that he was being suffocated, a not unreasonable fear, and
scrambled all the harder.

 
          
 
By this time Lilah's screeches were so
earsplitting that only Dunscombe Cotswinkle, deaf as a brass pig, was
unaffected by them.

 
          
 
"Perkins!" Pencil said.

 
          
 
A nod from Perkins was all it took. Two alert
Guatemalans grabbed Lilah, arresting her wild flight. Her bosom was heaving,
but Wogers wasn't heaving with it. He yipped hopelessly from somewhere near her
midriff".

 
          
 
"Here, get him," Lilah said, bending
over. One of the Guatemalans thrust in a hand and got him, but a snag
developed. Evidently one of his hind feet had hooked itself inextricably in
Lilah's pantyhose.

 
          
 
At this point the two Guatemalans began to
shake Lilah vigorously. Short of cutting Wogers' foot off, it seemed the only
method likely to work, and it did work. Wogers promptly thumped onto the floor.
Perkins picked him up and then went over in the comer and collected Gogers.
Both were handed to a maid.

 
          
 
The company then all stood up. Lilah Landry
had quickly shaken herself back into a state of world-class fashionability. The
women, well trained as bees, made a beeline for the hallway and went up some
stairs.

 
          
 
I started to follow, but came hard up against
Perkins, who stood in the door.

 
          
 
"Brandy will be served in the
study," he said.