"Shut up, you big dyke," said the New York man; he came up on the porch. He'd left the motor runnin
g to his sports car, and its idle charged and calmed itself--charged and calmed itself, and charged again. The man wore cowboy boots and green suede bell-bottom pants. He was tall and chesty, though not quite as tall and chesty as Roberta Muldoon.
"I'm not a dyke," Roberta said.
"Well, you're no vestal virgin either," the man said. "Where the fuck is Laurel?" He wore an orange T-shirt with bright green letters between his nipples.
SHAPE UP!
the letters read.
Garp searched his pockets for a pencil to scribble a note, but all he came up with was old notes: all the old standbys, which did not seem to apply to this rude person.
"Is Laurel expecting you?" Roberta Muldoon asked the man, and Garp knew that Roberta was having a sex-identity problem again; she was goading the moron in hopes that she could then feel justified in beating the shit out of him. But the man, to Garp, looked as if he might make a fair match for Roberta. All that estrogen had changed more than Roberta's shape, Garp thought--it had unmuscled the former Robert Muldoon, to a degree that Roberta seemed prone to forget.
"Look, sweethearts," the man said, to both Garp and Roberta. "If Laurel doesn't get her ass out here, I'm going to clean house. What kind of fag joint is this, anyway? Everyone's heard of it. I didn't have any trouble finding out where she went. Every screwy bitch in New York knows about this cunt hangout."
Roberta smiled. She was beginning to rock back and forth on the big porch swing in a way that was making Garp feel sick to his stomach. Garp clawed through his pockets at a frantic rate, scanning note after worthless note.
"Look, you clowns," the man said. "I know what sort of douche bags hang out here. It's a big lesbian scene, right?" He prodded the edge of the big porch swing with his cowboy boot and set the swing to moving oddly. "And what are you?" he asked Garp. "You the man of the house? Or the court eunuch?"
Garp handed the man a note.
There's a nice fire in the wood stove in the kitchen; turn left.
But it was August; that was the wrong note.
"What's this shit?" the man said. And Garp handed him another note, the first one to fly out of his pocket.
Don't be upset. My mother will be back very soon. There are other women here. Would you like to see them?
"Fuck your mother!" the man said. He started toward the big screen door. "Laurel!" he screamed. "You in there? You bitch!"
But it was Jenny Fields who met him in the doorway.
"Hello," she said.
"I know who you are," the man said. "I recognize the dumb uniform. My Laurel's not your type, sweetie; she likes to fuck."
"Perhaps not with you," said Jenny Fields.
Whatever abuse the man in the SHAPE UP! T-shirt was then prepared to deliver to Jenny Fields went unsaid. Roberta Muldoon threw a cross-body block on the surprised man, hitting him from behind and a little to one side of the backs of his knees. It was a flagrant clip, worthy of a fifteen-yard penalty in Roberta's days as a Philadelphia Eagle. The man hit the gray boards of the porch deck with such force that the hanging flowerpots were set swinging. He tried but could not get up. He appeared to have suffered a knee injury common to the sport of football--the very reason, in fact, why clipping was a fifteen-yard penalty. The man was not plucky enough to hurl further abuse, at anyone, from his back; he lay with a calm, moonlike expression upon his face, which whitened slightly in his pain.
"That was too hard, Roberta," Jenny said.
"I'll get Laurel," Roberta said, sheepishly, and she went inside. In Roberta's heart of hearts, Garp and Jenny knew, she was more feminine than anyone; but in her body of bodies, she was a highly trained rock.
Garp had found another note and he dropped it on the New York man's chest, right where it said SHAPE UP! It was a note Garp had many duplicates of.
Hello, my name is Garp. I have a broken jaw.
"My name is Harold," the man said. "Too bad about your jaw."
Garp found a pencil and wrote another note.
Too bad about your knee, Harold.
Laurel was fetched.