House of Holes by Nicholson Baker Read Free Book Online Page A

tissues. This is with ice and a straw and you suck it up greedily.”
    “Shall we summon another?” said Jackie. Again she made one of her expert signals to the bartender. Then she paused, listening. Across the room, the pianist had begun playing.
    “What song is it?” asked Cardell. “It’s very familiar.”
    “It’s Hoagy Carmichael, of course,” she said. “ ‘I get along without you very well.’ ”
    “God, these names. ‘Martin Chuzzlewit,’ ‘Hoagy Carmichael.’ You know, when I’m sitting in some lecture hall, listening to some talk by some really deadly historian—no offense to your profession—my head just gorges itself on obscene images. I can’t help it.”
    “Like what obscene images?” Jackie said. “Be specific.”
    “Oh, you know—” Cardell did some quick self-censorship. “Specifically two people tied together at the knees. Loosely tied together.”
    “Not tied. Oh, please.”
    “What?”
    “That’s such a tired trope—people tying each other up and peeing in mayonnaise jars and whatnot,” said Jackie. “You don’t want that, do you?”
    “Well, no, of course not, but.” Cardell could feel a joywave gathering, a tingling in his lips at the exhilaration of saying what was now in his head. “Imagine two chairs, facing each other. I’m in one, you’re in the other.”
    “Please, Cardell, let’s not make it quite so personal.”
    “Okay, Charles Dickens is in one chair—”
    “Not Dickens.”
    “Okay, that hunky bar pianist is in one and you’re in the other, but you’re not really you, because your mind is gonzo on apple cobblers. I mean sherry. Shorry. And you’re both in your fashionable underwear, and your knees are tied together with long colorful scarves.”
    “Indian-print scarves?”
    “Absolutely. Not tightly, but not loosely, either. You’re toying with your slobbering kitty, and he’s doing his bulldog—and your mouths are murmuring filthy nothings that neither of you can quite hear. Then he takes hold of your waist and tries to pull you toward him, and you hold his shoulders and try to pull him toward you. But no can do.”
    She frowned. “Why?”
    “Because of the scarves. His knees and your knees are made to share the same fate. You see? Their bony places and their soft places. The knees are your point of mutual contact. You’re kneecapping. The harder you try to pull toward him, and the harder he tries to pull toward you, the more it forces your legs apart. It’s sad, really. Then he sees your hand going fast and you start to go, ‘Ooh, mm, ah, mm, oh,’ and your brow goes all furrowy, and your eyes go all glittery, the way they are now, you throw your head back, exposing your swanlike neck, and just when you’re at that moment when you’re starting to feel yourself come, suddenly you really desperately need him inside you, and just at that moment the scarves come loose and Charles Dickens is there—I mean the bar pianist—and you feel his dick find you, and it starts to push and to muscle its way in, slowly at first, and then wom, oh shit, he’s slamming it up there, old twinkle fingers is in you, and his hips are humping, it’s out of his control.” Cardell did pelvisy things on the bar stool. “Ngong, bong, ung, fung!”
    Jackie closed her eyes and smiled. “Well,” she said, “you’ve made little missy pussy just a little bit horny, baby, because you talk dirty, and I sure do love a bar pianist.”
    “Good,” said Cardell. Jackie held her head still, averted, listening to the songs; then she relaxed and got a sad look. “They play their hearts out in hotel bars where nobody can hear the twelve clever things they’re doing with the harmony.” She pointed. “See the big brandy snifter for tips there on the top of the piano? Not much in it.”
    “So maybe we should casually drop a ten-spot in the snifter as we walk on by.”
    “When?”
    “When we leave together in about ten minutes to kiss and look into each