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'You should be careful not to catch the stitches on your underwear or bedclothes,' Vigneron said. 'In fact, you'll probably be most comfortable the next few days if you stay home and don't wear any clothes.'
'Just as I thought,' Trumper said.
'The stitches will fall out by themselves, but I'll want to see you in a week, just to make sure you're all right.'
'Any reason to suspect I won't be all right?'
'Of course not,' Vigneron said. 'But it's customary, after surgery, to have a checkup.'
'I may not be here,' Trumper told him.
Vigneron seemed bothered by his aloofness. 'Are you all right?' he asked. 'I mean, do you feel OK?'
'Just fine,' Trumper said. Conscious that he was making Vigneron uneasy, he tried to make amends. 'I've never felt better,' he lied. 'I'm a new man. I'm not the old prick I was.'
'Well,' Vigneron said, 'I'm not really in a position to vouch for that.'
Vigneron was right, of course; Vigneron was always right. It was most uncomfortable to wear any clothes.
Trumper eased himself into his underwear, a greased gauze pad stuck to the end of his penis. This kept the stitches from tangling in the weave of his clothes; they tangled in the gauze pad instead. Walking was a gingerly accomplished feat. He plucked the crotch of his pants away from himself and ambled bow-legged, like a man with live coals in the pouch of his jockstrap. People stared at him.
He took his mail and the odd gift from Ralph. On the subway he stared at an austere and formal couple who looked as if they had meant to take a cab. Would you like to see my diploma? he thought.
But when he reached the Village, nobody paid any attention to him. People down there were always walking in strange ways, and he looked no more odd than half the people he saw.
As he fumbled for his key on the landing outside Tulpen's door, he heard the splashy squeegee-sounds of Tulpen in the bathtub. She was talking to someone, and he froze.
'It's a very simplistic whitewash,' she was saying, 'to attempt to cover very deep and complicated people and things with very easy generalizations, superficialities - you know. But I think it's just as simplistic to assume that everyone is complex and deep. I mean, I think Trumper really does operate on the surface ... Maybe he is a surface, just a surface ...' She trailed off, and Trumper heard her sliding in the bathtub and saying, 'Come on, let's call it a night.'
He turned away from her door, hobbled down the landing to the elevator, out and on to the moving street, Let's call it a night, he thought.
If he'd waited, he would have heard the scene cut and finished, heard Ralph bawling out Kent and Tulpen asking them to leave.
But I went straight to the Christopher Street studio and let myself in through Ralph's elaborate devices and sequence of locks. I knew what I was looking for; I had some things I wanted to say.
I found the cut strips of what Ralph called 'fatty tissue'. These were bits of overlong footage, or scenes considered weak in some way. Tulpen had them hanging in the dust closet of her editing room.
I didn't want to destroy anything valuable; I wanted to use footage I knew was second-rate. I looked through a lot of stuff. The parts with me and Colm and Tulpen on the subway were interesting. Also, there was a long shot of me, alone, coming out of a pet shop in the Village with a fishbowl sloshing under each arm - presents for Tulpen, one day when I was in the mood. The pet-shop proprietor, who comes to the doorway to wave goodbye to me, looks like a German shepherd in a Hawaiian sport shirt. He continues to wave long after I've left the frame.
I did a little rough splicing; I knew that I didn't have much time, and I wanted to do a good job of laying the sound strip over the footage.
My cock hurt so much that I took off my pants and underwear and walked around bare-ass, being careful to avoid the edges of tables and the backs of chairs. Then I took my shirt off, too, because it brushed against me, especially when I sat down. So then I was naked except for my socks. The floor was cold.
It was getting light out when I finished; I moved the projector into its place in the viewing room and dropped the screen down so that they'd know right away that something had been set up for them. Then I ran through the footage once, just to check.
It was a short reel. I marked the can with adhesive tape; THE END OF THE MOVIE, it said. Then I rethreaded the projector, advanced the film to just the right place, and adjusted the focal length; all they had to do was switch on, and this is what they would see:
Bogus Trumper with his son, Colm, riding on a subway. The pretty girl with the nice breasts, the one who can make Colm laugh and Trumper touch her, is Tulpen. They are sharing a secret, but there's no sound. Then my voice-over says, 'Tulpen, I am sorry. But I do not want a child.'
CUT.
Bogus Trumper is leaving the pet shop, the fishbowls under his arms, and the German shepherd in a Hawaiian sport shirt waves goodbye to him. Trumper never looks back, but his voice-over says, 'Goodbye, Ralph. I don't want to be in your movie any more.'
It was a pretty short reel, and I remember thinking that they could probably stay awake through it.
I was looking around for my clothes when Kent let himself into the studio. A girl was with him; Kent was always bringing girls into the studio when he was sure we weren't going to be there. That way, he could show them around as if he owned the place, or was responsible for all that machinery in some grand way.
He was pretty surprised to see me, all right. He noticed I was wearing green socks. And I don't think Kent's girl ever knew that a person's pecker could look like mine. 'Hello, Kent,' I said. 'Have you seen my clothes?'
