Free Mrs Hollingsworth's Men - Padgett Powell by Padgett Powell

emerging from deeper in the
house. Showing her the door, the woman who had greeted him said to
her, “The immediate forecast is for a deepening of the surreal fog.
No need to let the door hit you in the ass." Ray Payne had never
heard a woman tell anyone not to let the door hit her in the ass. He
liked her—the one speaking. The one leaving was acting somewhat
trembly for him.
    Seating them in the kitchen, the woman said, “Mr.
Mogul’s coming over to dinner. Bring this thing to a head."
    “ Roopit’s coming?"
    “ Yes.”
    “ Bringing Mrs. Mogul?”
    “ You like Mrs. Mogul?”
    “ She aint a tire patch on my last girlfriend,"
he said, "but I will admit her eyes are distracting to a man
under the tyranny of . . .
    “ Ray, you can speak your mind with me. Under the
tyranny of pussy. It’s a fair phrase.”
    This was precisely the kind of thing you could not inquire into and still lead a
hemorrhoid-free life —how she knew he was going to say that. “I
have some questions for Mr. Mogul,” he said.
    “ I do too,” the woman said. “Like what's to
become of Forrest, and what the plan is for the New Southerner."
    Ray looked at her hard, started to question, and gave
up. Resisting the urge to ask left him in a happy prospeet. He
recalled a thing a child had told him once: “At the fish market
with Mommy I see big flat fish with pimples on them. They are huge
and fat and I wish I had never seen them.”
    He told the woman: “Running the machine was hard. I
pressed Thimble and then Melt, without pressing both at once and
Control, which I now think was necessary to show the ladies melting
the thimbles. It made Forrest talk about thimbles and melt into the
ground. My bud Hod thew Forrest fifty foot high and on a skateboard.
They is no telling what will become of him. He is indestructible,
though. I know that. No matter w hat you push, you get something?
    The woman did not bat an eye. She was in the zone
too, apparently. “I know all that. But what about the new boy who
would save the South?”
    "Dweeb with the girl?"
    "Yes. Man on the bed.”
    “ He a pistol ball.”
    “ You liked that woman, didn’t you?”
    “ You know, my bud Hod took exception to a man
pleasuring hisself over her, and he all the time saying these Queer
okay, I’m okay things. He got something against kids, dogs.
. . . I don’t know about him."
    “ You don’t need him.”
    “ I know I don’t need him.”
    “ Ray, do you have a headache?"
    “ Headache?"
    “ John F. Kennedy told Harold Wilson that he, John
F. Kennedy, got a headache if he didn’t have a woman every three
days.”
    “ Oh, that kind of headache. John Effing Kennedy?
    "Let me get a smell of you, Ray, see about
fixing that headache of yours."
    “ Smell me? You want to smell me?”
    “ Ray, at this point in life, everyone can more or
less run his equipment. It’s what a man smells like, not what he does. I about know what you are going to do."
    In the action that
followed in the bedroom, Ray had occasion to think of the rest of
what the child had told him about the fish: “They are ugly and very
weird. I do not like them.” There was an element of that in sex,
Ray thought. Part of it was ugly and weird and not likable, but the
firestorm of hormones kept you liking it. He and the woman wrestled
well together, it seemed, for a first time. She seemed very
comfortable with him. He entered a fog of flesh and got lost in her
for a while. When he emerged, looking for air, he found her gasping
too, saying, “Hodhawmighty damn. Son !”
This was somewhat like hearing her tell the other woman not to let
the door hit her in the ass--he had only ever heard a man say
“hodhawmighty" and “son" that way. Yet it struck him as
perfectly correct and fitting. He felt he had known this woman all
his life.
    * * *
    When Mr. and Mrs. Mogul got there, they sat down to
dinner, and the woman who was familiar to him now in two ways got
right to it. She said to Roopit: “The man too tired