Subtle Bodies by Norman Rush

Author:Norman Rush [Rush, Norman]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Romance
ISBN: 9781400042500
Publisher: Knopf
Published: 2013-09-01T04:00:00+00:00

27 “Where’s your better half?” Joris asked Ned.

“Interior decorating. Rearranging the deck chairs.” Ned looked around the bedroom assigned to Gruen and Joris. “Your digs are identical to ours.”

“Same nice big bed. We have to sleep together, like you guys. Head to toe because I don’t want his cold,” Joris said, pointing at Gruen, who said, “I don’t want it either.”

Ned sat down in an armchair at the foot of the bed. His two friends were lying on the bed a yard apart, under the spread, drinking, their heads on pillows propped directly against the glass of the great window looking into blackness. The rumbling brook below was a presence in the dull room. This wing of four rooms was cantilevered directly over it. There was no reading lamp, only an amber fixture in the ceiling shedding the sort of light he associated with hotel corridors.

Gruen said, “You know I bet those people who lived in what was it called, yeah, the Falling Waters House Frank Lloyd Wright built them moved out in about six months. It was just like this place. I can see the wife saying I’m going mad I tell you, mad.”

“Where did you get the sambuca?” Ned asked. There was a liter bottle of sambuca two-thirds full on the floor next to Joris. They were drinking from paper cups.

“We stole it,” Gruen and Joris said in unison.

Joris said, “And you can’t have any. Yes you can.”

“No thanks,” Ned said.

“Right now we’re lounging,” Gruen said.

“We like it,” Joris said.

Gruen gestured vehemently for Ned to lock the door to the room, or at least that’s what the rotary motions of his right hand seemed to mean.

Ned got up, turned the lock, and resumed his seat.

He said, “For your information, if you don’t aim your bed north/south you’re going to turn into a stunted carrot. Or something. Because you’re thwarting the earth energies that make you big and strong. I just moved our bed.”

“Beg pardon?” Gruen said.

“Nina gets these things from an advanced thinker, her mother. Nina doesn’t believe them but I have to execute anyway.”

Gruen said, “Joris is in the middle of something that will make your hair stand on end. His life in the whore world. He doesn’t care. He is fucking telling all about it. It’s the best fucking story you ever heard. And we don’t want any interruptions.”

“Jesus, what have I missed?” Ned said.

Joris said, “You missed when I was telling about when I first became a whoremonger …”

Ned said, “Well wait a minute. A fishmonger is somebody who sells fish, isn’t it?”

“Oh shut up,” Gruen said.

Joris said, “I have to say this for Douglas. He did make me think behind words. But on that one if you look in the OED you’ll find that a whoremonger is somebody just like me, who goes to whores. I’ll tell you, a pretty amazing moment was when I figured out that your highness meant your way-up-aboveness in physical space and nothing else. Also Douglas pointed out that

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