The Rachel Papers Read Online Free PDF Page B

to do it while I still felt tolerably spermy and Joycean after my night with Gloria. In my mind I saw young Charles leaning against Jenny's passage wall and smiling into the telephone. I couldn't hear what he was saying, but his eyes were bright and his face pleasantly animated. 'Hi, Rachel ? This is Cha - ... Great - thanks - how're you ? Whoah, baby. Yeah, sure, tonight's fine.'
    I ordered another coffee. An old woman passed by surreptitiously dropping paper-wrapped sugar-lumps on to the chair opposite. 'Hello. Good afternoon. I should like to speak to Rachel Noyes, if I may. I wonder whether this would possibly ... ? Thank you. So kind. Hello, Rachel Noyes ? Rachel Francette Noyes? Good afternoon. You probably don't remember me (why should you?) but in fact we met at the party in August ? August pth ? I was wearing..."

    We met at the party in August. It was a wine and lights flashing and everyone jumping up and down party, as opposed, say, to a lie on the dank carpet cradling empty Pipkins wishing there was more than one girl there party, or, again, to a smoke hash and eat syphcakes while Charles Manson, Esq., pats the bongoes and recites scabrous prose poems party. It was the very best kind of party.
    Geoffrey and I had got wind of it from a young (quite posh) hippie in the Marble Arch Okeefenokee Pancake House. He wouldn't tell us the address until Geoffrey offered him a hallucinogen (in fact an asthma pill of mine he had momentarily immersed in a bottle of blue-black Quink).
    'It's LDH,' Geoffrey had whispered to him, 'just over from the States. Better than acid. Stronger than MDA. Chas?'
    'Oh - any day.'
    'Make it a beautiful one, man," Geoffrey nodded to him as we left. 'Peace.'
    Rachel arrived in a group of four - what looked like a random car-load - but stayed alone by the door, arms folded adultly. She talked to no one, although she kept waving and shouting hellos. I stood with some other girlless duds along the adjacent wall; my pits prickled as she twice refused offers to take the floor. The second loping Greek lingered awhile to remonstrate with her. Far from stepping in and saying 'Okay, mac, you heard the lady,' I waited for him to go away.
    She looked confident and self-possessed all right, as young ladies in these circumstances generally do, but, like myself, excluded rather than merely detached from the festivities. She must have soul, I thought. In my case, though, it was simply a question of being unable to dance in front of other people. Geoffrey, who was gyrating away quite giddily not ten feet from me, postulated that it was one of the best, if not in fact the best, ways of pulling girls. But I dance only when I am alone, in ten-second spurts, usually before a mirror, sometimes naked, more often attired in sexter-style underpants.
    She lit a cigarette. That would give me five precious minutes in which to think.
    I did an instant assessment. She was fairly formidable, a bit out of my league really. She didn't belong to the aggressively sexy genre, like some of the more tear-jerking girls there, whose golden thighs and teeming breasts I found about as approachable as leprosy. However: tallish, nearly my height, shoulder-length black hair conventionally shaped around strong features, she made much of her eyes, her nose made much of itself, black boots and black cowgirl skirt met at the knee, manly white blouse, expensive handbag, few bracelets, one insignificant ring, rather stern no-crap stance, intelligent lower-middle class with a good job, something bossy like public relations, living alone, older than me, possibly half Jewish.
    The ethnic detail, yes, would provide me with an opening. I am in rny own appearance if anything rather oppressively Caucasian, but I could always go up and say This party's none too kosher, is it?' or 'I see your schul-days are over.' At that moment I glanced round and guessed that I was the proprietor of the only foreskin in the room. Perhaps I should appeal to her Aryan