Read The Dinner Party for Free Online

What now? Mother darling, I’m gay, I’m a real honest-to-God faggot, and I’ll be dead in six months or so.”
    â€œCool it. Here’s Goldilocks.”
    Nellie came striding up, proudly bearing a plastic container of coffee, some plastic cups, and a box of croissants. “Ellen saw me,” she explained, “but then your mother called her, so I grabbed these and ran. You like them?”
    â€œWe do indeed,” Clarence said, smiling at her. She stared at him as if she hadn’t seen him before, and then she whirled around and ran. “Which is power over women,” he said.
    Leonard, suddenly famished, handed a croissant to Clarence and then bit into one himself. He poured the coffee.
    â€œHave you tried cocaine?” Clarence asked, a stupid question that made him writhe inside.
    â€œI’ve tried it.” Stupid didn’t matter to Leonard.
    â€œIt doesn’t help?”
    â€œNot much, no.”
    Wet and glowing, Elizabeth was climbing out of the pool, and looking at her, Clarence felt that she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, and it made him wonder, as he had often wondered before, how it would be to love a woman, wholly, totally, to lust for her day in and day out, to become alive at the touch of her hand. Yet in the next breath, he said to himself, She is not that beautiful, and this whole stinking white world is filled with beautiful women, and I’m losing every sense of proportion sitting here in this lousy twentieth-century white paradise. He also remembered a time when his father had been laid off by the company where he had worked for twenty years, and he, Clarence, aged ten, had asked his father what God was like and wouldn’t God help them? To which his father had replied, “I know what God looks like. He is a cold-assed blue-eyed blond white son of a bitch, and you hold out a hand and he’ll kick in your head, like any rotten white boss I ever known.” His mother overheard this and burst into tears. He had never heard his father talk like that before. They were church-going folk who never tolerated bad language in the home, and he and the other kids watched, scared and afraid even to whisper.
    â€œTwenty minutes,” Leonard said.
    â€œTowel!”
    He threw a towel to her and watched her rub herself dry. She was breathing deeply, totally alive with herself. “Give me time,” she said. “I’ve only been at it a week.” She shook out her hair. “What is that—croissants? Give me one. And coffee. That dear angel Nellie. Well, Jonesy,” she said to Clarence, “what do you think of this big shit pile of money and class?”
    â€œGiven a chance, I could learn to live in a place like this.”
    â€œI bet you could. Money makes the world go round. But it costs. You don’t have the right grandpa, you can’t afford it. And the senator has to have a place in Washington. Respectable. A house in Georgetown, proper for proper entertainment.” She took a sip of coffee. “Of course, it’s small potatoes compared to Grandpa’s modest way of life. He has seven homes.”
    â€œCome on, you’re kidding.”
    â€œDidn’t Lenny tell you?”
    Leonard shook his head despairingly.
    â€œIt’s the truth. Lenny is embarrassed as hell with wealth. I don’t mind it. I can face right up to it. Myself, I don’t think seven houses are a reflection of sense or sanity, but then I don’t think rich people are very sane—or poor people, come to think of it.”
    â€œSeven homes?”
    â€œPoor black boy can’t believe it. I don’t blame you. I’ll give you a rundown. Old family house in New York City on East Sixty-fourth Street. Five floors, seventeen rooms, built by his granddaddy in eighteen ninety-six. Lodge in the Adirondacks, apartment in Paris, house on Cape Cod, house in Montecito—his granddaddy used to be buddy-buddy