Read Galatea for Free Online Page B

it.”
    We were through the front door by then, she and I, and she hustled out to Mrs. Val’s bedroom. But in the living-room it was like some crazy dream, with Val walking around, snapping his fingers, and paying no attention to the Epsom; the waitresses working, gathering stuff up; and a thing on the love seat that was like a cartoon in the papers. He was, I would say, fifty, a small man in blue coat, blue shirt, gray pants, and two-toned party shoes, with white hair and a red, sun-burned face. He seemed to be in a rage, and no talk about ankles, the trick Homer had pulled, or anything would calm him down. He was grounded, apparently, for lack of the keys to his car, and meant to be driven home. Whatever Val would say, he’d keep coming back to it: “But, Mr. Vawl, I must awsk you to drive me. I will not take a cawb. I’m amized you awsk me to. I—”
    “Mr. Commissioner, I will, when—”
    “I’m ready, Mr. Vawl, to gow.”
    “But the boy—”
    “Has decawmped, as you towld me.”
    “And my wife—”
    “Has already heard my regrets, expressed to her in person, and has grawnted permission, Mr. Vawl, so if you down’t mind—”
    Hammers went in my head, as they had when I hit Pabby Ramos, and I prayed to be saved from wrong-time adrenalin. But about that time in came Bill, weaving, belching, and mumbling. Mr. Commissioner looked at him and went on: “Mr. Vawl, it’s a simple mawttah of prowtocowl, and I shall sit hyaw—”
    It was the first I’d heard of protocol, and how it was different from Hadacol I didn’t at that time know. But while he was talking, Bill was lurching, past the love seat, past the table, past the sofa, around to the brass basket full of wood left over from spring. He picked up a chunk and said: “Watch ’t, Val—duck! I’ll teach the son a bitch protocol!”
    Now, in the ring, you hit, duck, or block, and on that stuff you do or you don’t. My hand was there, and maybe the adrenalin helped, I don’t say it didn’t. But catching the chunk was just the beginning, because all hell broke loose, with the girls screaming, Val yelling at Bill, Mr. Commissioner yelling at Val, and me yelling at everyone: “Break it up!”—whatever that meant. I went over the sofa at Bill, tied him up, and dropped the chunk in the basket. But he kept right on with his talk, right over my shoulder. He said to Mr. Commissioner: “Pro’col, y’ goddam squirt, pro’col here is me! Stan’ up when I speak t’ y’. What you c’-missioner of? Hey, ’m ask’n y’. Y’ dayum li’l end o’ nuff’n! Y’—”
    “Bill!”
    The voice in the door wasn’t loud, but, brother, did it carry! Marge jerked her thumb at the girls and told them dress. Soon as they were out she went over to Bill, unwound my arms from around him, and looked at him. He took her hand, slapped his own cheek with it, and started to cry. I wanted to cry. She didn’t wait to see if I did or not, but marched herself to Mr. Commissioner, and said: “John Dayton, you order your cab and go!”
    “Why—Mowge Dennis!”
    “Stop talking that way!”
    “When did you get here, Marge?”
    “I been here. All the time. I’m Holly’s sister-in-law. Why, the very idea of you, with all the trouble we got, carrying on like this!”
    “This—this is a hell of a note.”
    His accent seemed to be gone, and so did the protocol, and I grabbed Bill by the arm, drug him out to the cottage, and parked him on the bed. When I opened the closet door to put his coat on a hanger, there was Homer’s maroon with all keys right in the pocket. Mr. Commissioner picked his out and at last shoved off for town, and the cab he had ordered would do to haul the girls. Val grabbed the phone, snatched a list out of his pocket, and began calling people to say their cars would be sent, this very night at once, as “the tangle is straightened out—and you’ll have it right at your door, if you’ll say where the keys should be put.” I realized I would