Against the Day by Thomas Pynchon Read Free Book Online

mesmerizin variety
artist she run away with, a certain Zombini the Mysterious.”
    “Know him, by gosh!” Chick
Counterfly, nodding vigorously. “Makes his molly disappear down a common
kitchen funnel! ‘ Imbottigliata! ’
ain’t it? then he twirls his cape? Seen it down in New Orleans with my
own peepers! some awesome turn, you bet!”
    “The very customer,” Merle beamed,
“and that beauteous conjuror’s assistant you saw’d likely be ol’ Erlys herself,
and say, you’ll want to close your mouth there, Buck, ’fore somethin flies into
it?”—the casual mention of adultery having produced in Randolph’s face a
degree of stupefaction one regrets to term characteristic. Chick Counterfly,
less affected, was alert enough to offer, “Well—an entirely admirable
lady, whoever she was.”
    “Admiration noted—and you might
examine little Dahlia here, who’s the spit of her Ma, fulminate me if she
ain’t, fact if you’re ramblin by some ten, twelve years hence, why ride on
over, have another look, make an offer, no price too small or too insulting I
wouldn’t consider. Or if you’re willing to wait, take an option now to buy, got
her on special, today and tomorrow only, dollar ninetyeight takes her away,
heartbreakin smile and all. Yehp—there, lookit, just like ’at. Throw you
in an extra bonnet, I’m a reasonable sort, ’n’ the minute she blows that
sweetsixteenth birthday candle out, why she’s on them rails, express to wherever
you be.”
    “Seems a little long to wait, don’t
it?” leered Chick Counterfly.
    “—I could go age fifteen, I
guess,” Merle went on, twinkling directly at Lindsay Noseworth strangling with
indignation, “but you’d have to pay in gold, and come fetch her on your own
ticket . . . . But say now would you
mind if I got a snap of you all in front of this Trouvéscrew unit over here?”
    The boys, fascinated as always with
modern sciences such as the photographic, were of course happy to comply.
Chevrolette managed to mollify even Lindsay by borrowing his “skimmer” and
holding it coyly in front of their faces, as if to conceal a furtive kiss,
while the frolicsome Darby Suckling, without whose spirited “clowning” no group
snapshot would have been complete, threatened the pair with a baseball bat and
a comical expression meant to convey his ingenuous notion of jealous rage.
    Lunchtime arrived, and with it
Lindsay’s announcement of early liberty.
    “Hurrah!” cried Chick Counterfly, “me
and old Suckling here being starboard liberty section will just head on over to
that Midway Plaisance, to have us a peep at Little Egypt and that Polynesian
exhibit, and if we can fit it in, why some of those African Amazons
too—oh, and don’t worry, lad, anything you need explained, just ask me!”
    “Come on, boys,” Chevrolette McAdoo
gesturing with a cigarette in a rhinestoneencrusted holder, “I’m headed in for
work now, I can show you backstage at the South Seas, too.”
    “Oboy, oboy,” Darby’s nose beginning
to run.
    “ Sucklinggg? ” screamed Lindsay, but to
no avail. Crowds of colorfullydressed aeronauts had swept between them, as
ships arrived and took off, and the great makeshift aerodrome seethed with
distractions and chance meetings . . . .
    In fact, just about then who should
arrive, aboard a stately semirigid craft of Italian design, but the boys’
longtime friend and mentor Professor Heino Vanderjuice of Yale University, a
look of barely suppressed terror on his features, desperately preoccupied
during the craft’s descent with keeping secured to his head a stovepipe hat
whose dents, scars, and departures from the cylindrical spoke as eloquently as
its outdated style of a long and adventuresome history.
    “Galloping gasbags, but it’s just
capital to see you fellows again!” the Professor greeted them. “Last I heard,
you’d come to grief down in New Orleans, no doubt from packing away more
alligator à l’étouffée than that old