Damn a virgin; she wanted to start all over again and how do you explain that batteries need recharging when you don’t speak Cherokee? So we began talking in dumb show and even making jokes and laughing. At first I’d thought that Natoma was a serious, intent girl without much sense of humor. Now I realized that the traditional life on the reservation had compartmentalized her; she wasn’t accustomed to letting all her facets show at the same time, but she was loosening up. You don’t get intimate with crazy Curzon without some of the jangle rubbing off on you.

Suddenly Natoma held up a finger for silence and caution. I silence and caution. She tiptoed to the tepee flaps and flung them open as though to catch a spy. The only spy was one of the wolves guarding our privacy; no doubt instructed by M’bantu. She turned back to me, bubbling with laughter and went to the cordovan trunk, her dowry. She opened it as though she expected it to explode and motioned me to come and look. I looked, and it was what I expected: cockamamy homespun. She removed the homespun and I gasped.

There were velvet trays in which were nested a complete eighteenth-century Royal Sèvres dinner service for twelve. Nothing like it had existed for centuries, and fourteen point nine one seven percent of the world couldn’t buy it today. There were seventy-two pieces and how the Guess family ever got hold of the set would have to wait for another time. Natoma saw the awe on my face, laughed, picked up a plate, tossed it in the air, and caught it. I nearly fainted. Sequoya was right; I’d married out of my class.

I had to tell her that she was more of a treasure than her magnificent dowry. So I closed the trunk, sat her on the edge, put her legs and arms around me, and told her so gently and tenderly that she began to cry and smile with each little gasp while her hands kissed my back. I was crying and smiling myself, our wet faces pressed together and I knew Jacy was right. For two hundred years I’d been living entirely for mechanical pleasure. Now I was in love for the first time, it seemed, and it made me love and understand the whole damn lunatic world.

6

Around seven in the morning there was a thunder of coughing outside the tepee that woke us up. We found ourselves in a tangle that made us giggle. She had a headlock on me and one leg over my hip; taking no chances of my getting away. I had one hand on a cup custard and the other on the art gallery; probably making sure they were real. We both yelled and the Chief answered in Cherokee and M’b in XX. “You must appear now for the final ceremony, Guig. Then everyone can go home. May we enter with the necessaries?”

They came in with hot water, towels, toilet articles, and fresh linen. After we were bathed and dressed the two returned with instructions. “Slow circle counterclockwise. Guig on Natoma’s right. Brother behind groom. Second behind bride. Dignified and stately. No horseplay despite any and all provocation. I know I can depend on you for that, Guig.”

“Wilco.”

“I only wish I could say the same for my sister. Nobody ever knows what she’ll do next.”

We started the procession and all was dignified and stately. Then I suppose Natoma’s pride in us couldn’t be contained. She raised both fists high and banged them together four times. There was no mistaking the message and a roar of approval went up. Behind me I heard Sequoya groan something like “Oi gevalt,” but it was more likely the Cherokee equivalent. She kept on parading and boasting and there were some amusing reactions. Wives began berating husbands, which didn’t seem fair; they weren’t newlyweds. Young braves signed to me that they could double my score any night. Old women darted up to me to give my crotch a congratulatory handshake. Natoma slapped their hands away. No trespassing.

It took us two hours to break it up and say good-bye to the crowd, M’bantu carefully coaching me in tribalese. “This is now your clan, both direct and collateral, Guig. No one can be slighted or it may be the start of a blood feud, the worst kind. I’ll guide you through the totemic degrees of precedence.”

So I made sure not to slight anyone in the tribe and at last went into the tepee and collapsed. Sequoya and M’bantu were washing their ceremonial paint off. “I’m not complaining,” I said. “I’m just grateful that I’m an orphan.”

“Ah, but there’s another clan, Guig, the Group, and they must meet your lovely new wife.”

“Now, M’bantu?”

“Alas, now, otherwise feelings will be hurt. Shall I bring them?”

“No, we’ll go to the house… The Chief’s house.”

Sequoya stared at me. I nodded. “You gave me your tepee. I give you my house. Only take those goddamn wolves with you.”

“But—”

“Not to argue, Dr. Guess. It is the equivalent of our African custom of new friends giving each other their names.”

The Chief shook his head dazedly. All this anthropology was a little too much for him. “But Natoma can’t leave,” her brother, Sequoya Curzon Guess, said.

“Why not?” her husband, Edward Guess Curzon, demanded.

“Custom. Her place is in the home. She must never leave it again.”

“Not even to go shopping?”

“Not even for that.”

I hesitated for a moment. I’d really had the tradition bit up to here, but was this the time to make an issue of it? I did what any sensible coward would do; I put it on my wife. “Chief, will you translate this for me very carefully, please?” I turned to Natoma, who seemed fascinated by the argument. “I love you with all of me…” (Cherokee) “No matter where I go or what I do I want you at my side…” (Lots of Cherokee) “It’s against your people’s custom but will you break the tradition for me?” (Cherokee finale)

Her face broke into a smile that opened up yet another world for me. “Jas, Glig,” she said.

I nearly broke her back. “That was XX,” I shouted. “Did you hear it? She answered me in XX.”

“Yes, we’ve always been quick studies,” the Chief said disgustedly. “And I can see you destroying every sacred custom in Erie. R. Let’s take this liberated squaw to your — my house. Button your collar, Guig. Your neck’s covered with bite marks.”

The Group, minus the Syndicate, was in the house. When last heard from, Poulos Poulos had checked in from the twin cities, Procter and Gamble, but that was before I’d reported finding our Wandering Boy. No one had the faintest idea of what the Greek was doing in the mighty metrop. of P G, which now covered half of Missouri. I have to be honest; I was relieved that he wasn’t there. He can enchant any woman he fancies and I figured a little extra time might help me strengthen my defenses.

“Ladies and gentlemen, this lady is Sequoya’s sister, who speaks nothing but Cherokee. Please make her welcome and comfort her. Her name is Natoma Curzon and she has the misfortune to be my wife.”

Scented Song and Borgia surrounded Natoma and smothered her. Edison hugged her so hard he probably gave her an electric shock. M’bantu summoned Nemo, who climbed out of the pool and drenched her. Fee-5, black with rage, slapped her twice. I started forward in a fury but Natoma grabbed my arm and held me. In a calm voice Borgia said, “Sibling cyclone. Let me handle this. We’ll have to let it run its course.”

Fee-5 Cyclone tore through the house. She ripped down every picture projector, trampled cassettes, destroyed the few rare print books I’d managed to collect. She smashed the perspex pool, flooding the drawing room, living room, and Sabu. She demolished the terminal keyboard of my diary. Upstairs she tore my bed and clothes to shreds. All this in a horrid hissing silence. Then she ran into her room and crumpled on her bed in the fetal position with a thumb in her mouth.

“R. Good sign.” Borgia sounded pleased.

“What’s so good?”