Free Small Changes by Marge Piercy Page A

had she had a room to herself, and even then nobody bothered knocking. The walls had been paper thin and she could always hear every cough and shoe dropped and flush of the toilet.
    Lennie had put a blues record on the turntable. They did not have a phonograph but what they called a system, which had parts: turntable, speakers, amps. The music that emerged was rich. To listen to music that full was sensuous and electrifying: it was swimming music, it could almost be drowning. As they ate, from the open windows mild spring air sifted through the rooms rustling papers and swaying the matchstick bamboo blinds.
    Lennie dug into the pockets of the army surplus jacket he had not removed. “Anyone for anchovies? Or fancy mixed nuts?”
    “Hey, Raskolnikov, we’re going have to bail you out,” Tom warned but reached for the nuts. “Why boost anchovies? They taste like the canned food we give that miserable cat.”
    “Because I love them.” Dorine took the can. “Thank you, sweetie. Why do you call him Raskolnikov?”
    “Because he looks like a wild man hatchet murderer. Ask our dear neighbor downstairs. She faints at the sight of him.”
    “Okay, Napoleon,” Lennie said. “Little and mean and crafty, a general nuisance and generally devious.”
    “Now I may be little, I may be mean, but I’m an Irishman. And no Irishman was ever caught dead at a place named Waterloo. Unless he thought it was a urinal.”
    Jackson looked at Tom sadly. “That, I think, is a joke you shoplifted from Phil.”
    “One Irishman is like another. Just like people say about Chinese, they all look alike,” Lennie said.
    “I’ll give you an easy way to tell us apart.” Tom started to grin. “I still have my head. Philip Francis Boyle’s is nailed to the wall of a certain lady collector—”
    “Who am I?” Dorine chirped nervously. Something lurkedunder the talk. Dorine was trying to get them away safely. “Sonia? Am I Sonia, if he’s Raskolnikov?”
    Jackson came around with a bottle, refilling glasses. “You’re Lady Godiva. For your kind heart, of course.”
    The jagged green nudes. They had bodies you could cut yourself on. Women of broken glass and metal: nothing like Dorine. She was soft and squishy and nervous to be liked, sitting there apologetic for taking up space.
    “Who’s Jackson?” Lennie asked. “Socrates?”
    “I fancy myself a Christ figure.” Jackson posed against the wall with arms outstretched. “For my saintly humility, my absolute Christian poverty, and my patience with all of you sinners.”
    “No, man.” Ryan smiled. He had the look of a fox sometimes, a tame slightly seedy fox, perhaps one born in a zoo. His eyes saw a great deal out of the corners. She was not used to a man who observed people carefully. “I know the parallel. Tannhäuser.”
    “Who?” Jackson looked blank.
    “Jackson lacks culture, don’t you think?” Tom clucked to Lennie, who nodded sadly. “Tannhäuser was a knight who escaped after being held prisoner a long time in the Venusberg.”
    Jackson looked at Tom steadily and his skull seemed to harden and come forward in his face. “Not very original, man. That too is Phil’s baggage. Don’t you get weary of dressing up in other men’s ideas and other men’s wit?”
    Tom looked young and sullen. “You take yourself too seriously. Phil only thought up calling her Venus. The Venusberg is a higher-level joke.”
    “Who am I?” Beth asked. But Jackson was giving Tom that unwavering stare and Tom was acting out being unmoved and Lennie was looking worried. No one heard except Dorine, who smiled at her with a shrug. Almost immediately they broke up into the two couples, leaving Jackson. Fingers on her elbow, Tom led her to his room. “What was that all about?” she asked him.
    “Oh, just a ball breaker Jackson was mixed up with. She left this guy Phil—a drunken would-be poet—for Jackson and then vice versa. You know her—that big loud-mouthed Miriam Berg. See, that was