TWO

At any rate, the reason she is swearing is because they are on their way to an evening party. He knows what she means. The parties they attend together are full of falseness. Because he is an artist in San Francisco. There is nothing real about artists in San Francisco, not the art, not the women who live with them, not the galleries, not the critics, not the men who live with them, not even San Francisco--everything is filmy, filmy as bay fog. Except maybe for their hands. The hands are priceless.

All of them together make one big pile of shit she declares grabbing hold of his hand as they approach the door of the evening party. He squeezes her hand. She squeezes back thinking how meaningless, wondering where is the risk in squeezing a lover's hand while walking to a party?

They pass rows of colored houses remarking at the features like so many faces. Her descriptions: the fucking amazing view, the goddamn little rows of windows stretching for fucking miles. His: more azure evening light, warm glow from the inside out, houses alive. Doors, windows, roofs speaking. They make a good pair, or rather, their mouths make a good pair -- hers pushing out, exploding, his soaking everything in slow and sweet.

Near the house they will enter she suggests wild why don't they run back down the hill, past the houses again, past the doors and windows and faces into only the evening. She unbuttons her blouse. He can barely see her, the light is dim. She tugs at his arm and he half believes her, as always. But they do enter the house because someone sees him and calls out his name. She leaves her excitement standing in the yard, leaning in the direction of the night, eyes wide, chest heaving, naked.

Inside everyone calls him Pater. His name is Peter she keeps reminding them, but she is the only one who calls him this. Finally some man with a mostly bald head except for some gray on the sides which he has had styled and sculpted explains to her that Pater sounds more like the name of an artist -- that more people will buy from a Pater than a Peter. She is astounded that he thinks he must tell her this. The paintings: what is being bought? Sometimes she can't remember his name at all, simply his painting.

There are a lot of drinks. Language in the rooms of the party suddenly turns liquid. Animals begin crawling out. One man becomes a lizard, his belly scraping the carpet, his arms and legs sticking out stiff from his body. Another man who has been pinching the asses of women all night turns into a crab, with one, huge, red, heavy claw, so heavy he cannot lift it anymore. A woman with big lips becomes a blowfish, bubbles rise from her face now and then, her eyes move to the sides of her head and look magnified. Pater or Peter becomes a bird with heavy, colored plumage, terribly magnificent: his back sways, his chest protrudes.

She drinks continual scotch. She still feels like a fucking person.

She goes into the bathroom and removes her bra and underwear from underneath her clothing and stuffs them into the medicine cabinet. She emerges from the bathroom some new animal no one has ever seen before. Everyone notices her. She names herself something between the color red and the word devour. She looks for him.

Some small man who might be a ferret or a weasel is talking to Pater/Peter, the rooster or the peacock. Everything swims. She watches her lover shrink. She moves closer. The ferret/weasel's mouth is making sharp, jerky movements. Closer still she hears words like ridiculous and no talent and not a chance in hell. Her lover is shrinking before the weasel into a small bird, then into a chick, peeping uselessly. The ferret-man's tongue looks long and dangerous, his lips are knives moving together, slicing and clicking.

She hates. She hates the ferret, she hates the smallness of the chick. She hates the alcohol, she hates the party, the animals, the body who came into the house. The ferret's mouth becomes the only thing she can focus on, even as a crowd is gathering because by now of course she has started swearing, even as the fish-woman swims up and blows diplomatic bubbles between them, even as the giant red pincher drags itself near, the ferret's mouth clicks and slices and becomes more clear than is possible, so that finally she has a direction for her hate to aim at, and she punches his mouth right off his face. Everyone is a person again, humanly stunned.

A man rests on the floor. Her knuckles ache. Some quiet hands lead her away, a man whose name she cannot remember. She thinks he is saying it's alight, it's alight. She suddenly realizes this is how she feels every goddamn night of her fucking life. His hands are on her face, her shoulders, he tries to sculpt her O.K. Her own hands hang useless.

This love cannot live unless she fights him every day of her life. He paints, will paint. She aches for the years, the marriage, the waiting to be over, to summer over into a different life. She runs toward summer with no hands. He will paint with or without her.