Lancelot

began to make things out. No darkness is absolute. The candle glow from the foyer made the faintest glimmer on the white walls. It was possible to make out the looming shape of the bed. I was standing. There was a shape on the bed. Its skin was darker than the white sheets. Now I could see it, the strangest of all beasts, two-backed and pied, light-skinned dark-skinned, striving against itself, holding discourse with itself in prayers and curses.
    Ah men, was this God’s secret plan for us? (What did your Jewish Bible say about all men being conceived in sin?) A musing wonder filled me. I ran my thumbnail along my teeth.
    My head ached, yet I felt very well, strong and light, though a bit giddy. My body seemed to float. Then I realized that the methane had come down. It had filled the high dim vault of the room and had come down close enough to breathe. At first I could not understand why my heart was beating fast and my breath labored, because I felt good. Then I understood. It was the methane. Standing, I was above them. It. I considered: it would be better to get lower and closer. It was dark.
    Though I must have been leaning, I seemed to be floating over them. Jacoby’s back was a darkness within the dark. Musingly I touched it, the beast.
    â€œOh, yes,” it said.
    A white thigh and knee angled out. I considered her, its, foot, the toes splayed and curled up—isn’t that called a Babinski sign, Doctor, Father, whatever you are? You know, I’d seen that before, the way her toes curled out and up. and had secretly thought of it as a sign of her common Irish or country-Texas origins or both. It seemed vulgar. I could remember my mother saying a lady always points her toes when she dances. Now my hand was exploring the white thigh, searched for and found what it already knew so well, the strap of fiber along the outside which bound the deep flesh above and below it. My fingers traced the fiber toward the knee, where it had a ribbed-silk texture.
    â€œAh,” said the beast.
    Then lightly I let myself down on it, the beast. It was breathing hard and complexly, a counterpointed respiration. I was breathing hard too. The methane had reached the bed.
    Suddenly it, the beast, went very quiet, all at once watchful and listening and headed up like a wildebeest catching a scent. Its succubus back, Margot’s, was still arched and I could barely reach around its thick waist and clasp my hands together.
    Squeezed together, the beast tried to break apart.
    â€œWhat in the—?” said Janos Jacoby.
    â€œOh my God,” said Margot, muffled, but instantly knowing everything.
    Mashed together, the two were never more apart, never more themselves.
    I was squeezing them, I think, and breathing hard but feeling very light and strong, so light that I imagined that if I had not held them I would float up to the ceiling. Do you remember how we discovered “red-outs,” how if you squeezed somebody from behind hard enough, first they became high, then saw red, then became unconscious. I could squeeze anybody on the team unconscious, even Fats Molydeux from Mamou, who weighed 310.
    It is possible that I said something aloud. I said: “How strange it is that there are no longer any great historical events.” In fact, that was what I was musing over, that it seemed of no great moment whether I squeezed them or did not squeeze them.
    â€œHow strange it is that there are no longer any great historical events,” I said.
    At any rate, it is certain that after a while Janos gasped, “You’re not killing me, you’re killing her.”
    â€œThat’s true,” I said and let go. He was right. I had been pressing him into Margot’s softness. He was as hard as a turtle and not the least compressed by the squeezing but she had passed out. But no sooner had I let go, and more quickly than I am telling you, than he had leaped up and begun doing things to me, California-kung-fu-karate tricks, knee to my groin, thumb in my eye, heel-of-hand chops to my Adam’s apple, and so forth. I stood musing. There were many clever and scrappy moves against my person which I duly and even approvingly registered.”A bed is no place to fight,” I said and we flew through the air until we crashed into the armoire. Janos must have found the knife in my game pouch where it had cut through me cloth and which I had forgotten, for when we broke apart at the armoire, he had it