The Pigman: Chapters 13-15

Once she started turning out the hors d’oeuvres, she gained momentum. In fact she started eating every other one she made.

Only one lamp went over, and that was during this frenzied dance when everybody was on the floor.

Helen also found a mangy fur stole that looked like it was made out of four hundred Angora alley cats so, needless to say, she was quite the sight coming down the stairs.

He was so much taller and thinner than the other one that the two of them together looked rather incongruous.

“Not one cent for tribute!” John suddenly mumbled, leaning forward, laughing, and then falling back unable to hold his head up.

"Get inside,” she ordered, and her voice had switched from the hysterical to the commanding, like I’d often heard it do when she was working as a nurse.

She was sitting at the kitchen table, crying—a slightly exaggerated crying which seemed to make our relationship even more artificial.

Of course, I edited it considerably for her benefit, and she seemed to take it well, now that the emotional raving was over.

There were a few moments of minor relapses, like when I told her I had never belonged to the Latin Club, but on the whole she took things better than I thought she would.

I felt tears rolling down my cheeks onto the pillow as I remembered the condition of Mr. Pignati’s house. Would he think we had forsaken him and deliberately ripped his wife’s clothes—viciously broken the pigs?

Would he think we had forsaken him and deliberately ripped his wife’s clothes—viciously broken the pigs? I wanted to phone him and say, Mr. Pignati, we didn’t mean things to work out like that. We were just playing.

I remembered a cat playing with a rubber ball somewhere...a kitten a girl friend had gotten for her birthday...and it was hiding behind a chair leg eyeing the ball...stalking it.

He looked very disheartened.
“My father says I have to go to a psychiatrist.”

“My mother started her high-frequency cackling, but it was Bore who got on my nerves. He just came to the top of the stairs, and I could hardly hold my head up to see him. My mother was on her hands and knees, wiping up the snow I dragged in on the skates. Bore didn’t even look mad. He looked sick and old. Then he went back into the bedroom without a word. This morning at breakfast he said they’d have to send me to a doctor.”

“Was Mr. Pignati all right?” he asked sheepishly.

“Lorraine and I want to apologize for having that party. We had only invited two people, but those others stopped by, and before you knew it things got out of hand. I mean, Lorraine and I will pay for everything.”
I gasped audibly.

As we waited for an answer all I could think of was Conchetta’s ripped dress—the one Helen Kazinski had demolished.

One of the attendants was washing the sea-lion manure off the middle platform of the pool, and at least he was able to do that with a certain degree of proficiency.

She really looked like the wrath of God, and I was too scared to go over and buy a package of peanuts for myself.

There was quite a wind even though it had warmed up enough to start the snow melting, and it made the frilly canopy on the cars snap loudly.

We didn’t say anything more—Mr. Pignati wedged right between us—as we rolled along the bleak pathways of the zoo.

Then came the tigers and bears, the two hippos who were inside for the season, and the eight-ton bull elephant, the only part of which we could see being the long trunk protruding from the doorway of his barn.

“Yep. Can’t say I felt particularly sorry about it because that baboon had the nastiest disposition around here.”

“Did an autopsy on him, and it looked like pneumonia.”

The lady with the baby in her arms just sneaked out a door. You could tell her motto was “When trouble strikes—vanish.”

What did she want from me—to tell the truth all the time? To run around saying it did matter to me that I live in a world where you can grow old and be alone and have to get down on your hands and knees and beg for friends? A place where people just sort of forget about you because you get a little old and your mind’s a bit senile or silly?

Maybe we were all baboons for that matter—big blabbing baboons—smiling away and not really caring what was going on as long as there were enough peanuts bouncing around to think about—the whole pack of us—Bore and the Old Lady and Lorraine’s mother included—baffled baboons concentrating on all the wrong things.

He was hobbling as fast as he could go, right toward the monkey house, with this sign around his neck: BUY YOUR FUNNY-FACE BALLOONS HERE!

Her hand lingered near mine, and I took it gently.

We had trespassed too—been where we didn’t belong, and we were being punished for it.