What Is All This?: Uncollected Stories

CONTAC

He was in the local Fairway, buying groceries for dinner tonight. A few hours ago he and his wife and her son returned from Lake Tahoe a day sooner than they’d planned. It had become too expensive for them and Ginny had caught a bad cold there. Just before he left the house he asked what she’d like for dinner tonight and she said “Something soft and simple; I also have cramps. You decide, Rod — you know food better,” so he decided the softest and simplest meal they could afford was meatloaf and yams. He’d make them after giving Jess hot cereal and toast and while Ginny continued to sweat out her cold in bed.

He got two medium-sized onions out of a bin. They were going for four pounds for twenty-nine cents — a good buy; they wouldn’t come to more than five or six cents. The mushrooms he usually chopped up and put in the loaf he’d skip tonight. Even though they were on sale, sixty-nine a pound was still too high, considering how much money he had on him.

He counted what was in his wallet and pants pocket: three dollars and seventy-five cents. He could make a good meatloaf with that, buy a few essential breakfast goodies and still have a little money left over. They’d gone with friends to Tahoe, shared a cabin near the ski lift area for five dollars a day per couple. He’d taken forty dollars with him, but with gas, two quarts of oil for their old car, rented tire chains, rent, $1.25 mittens for Jess, dollar woolen cap for his own frozen ears, cigarettes for Ginny, grocery costs split among the three couples, a few dollars tossed away on the slots and electronic blackjack machines at the casinos, he didn’t have enough money for both Ginny and him to ski. They drove to Heavenly Valley the morning after they arrived, and while he looked after Jess, Ginny, who was much more of a skier than he and had brought her own skis, went up on the slopes and had a good time, he was glad about that. He wanted to get up there also, but it was only after the first day, when he learned what the equipment rentals and ski lifts costs and that his almost equally strapped friends couldn’t loan him a tenner, that he knew he wouldn’t. “I’ll take care of Jess tomorrow,” Ginny had said. “All day, so you can have some fun,” but how could you have fun there without money?

Driving back home from Tahoe he told Ginny they’d have all the money they need if they moved to New York. He’d come to California single, a grad student in English at Stanford, but by the time the two-year fellowship ended he was married to a woman with a small house, three-year-old son and broken-down car, all from her previous marriage, and a hundred-ten a month in child support. Since then he’d given up pursuing his doctorate, as the English department didn’t think he had the makings of a scholar and wouldn’t renew his stipend — his main reason for going to grad school — and tried getting a reporting job for the local newspapers and editing journals and books for the university press and teaching language arts in a junior high school. But he didn’t have sufficient journalism experience for the newspapers and couldn’t pass the tough three-hour editing test for the press and didn’t have the education courses needed for a teaching license and was told he’d have to go back to college to get them. He was broke. He’d been broke, on and off, for six months. He mowed lawns, clipped hedges, parked cars, tended bar at the faculty club, modeled for art classes with only a strap on — his eyes cast down when unsuspecting acquaintances showed up to paint or draw and saw him posing. Christmas season he got his first fulltime job since he left school: temporary salesman in the men’s sportswear section of a Palo Alto department store, where he taught himself how to steal.

His wage was $1.89 an hour. He felt he deserved more for all the work he did and that he needed at least three dollars an hour to live on, so he stole the balance from the store. He’d make out a change requisition slip for twenty dollars, take thirty from the cash register he shared with other salespeople, go to the gift-wrapping counter, which also made change for them, hand the girl the twenty and requisition slip, and while she was checking off different change rolls, he’d take out his handkerchief, sniff into it and stuff if back in his pocket with the ten dollar bill.

He did this once every workday for the last five of the six weeks he had the job, but all the money he’d earned and stolen was gone now — mostly for overdue house and medical payments and upkeep of the car. So he told Ginny he wanted them to go to New York. That while looking for editing and writing jobs, which would be easier to get there, he’d work as a per diem sub in junior high schools, something he’d done before. In New York he was certified. He was a second-step sub, which last paid twenty-nine dollars a day. At the store he used to work three more hours a day than he put in at subbing, and even with the ten dollars he stole daily, which he didn’t tell her about, he still didn’t make as much. But this was her home, Ginny said. She and her ex-husband had moved here from Michigan two years ago and, like so many new residents, she wouldn’t dream of living any other place. “I got a home, so why should I rent a dingy, cramped apartment? And there are great schools in this district. Jesse won’t have to get molested or run over every other time he goes out as he would in New York. Nor will I have to fuss with his snowsuit, like I did in Lansing, whenever I just want a quart of milk at the store.”

He was in luck. Ground chuck was going for fifty-nine cents a pound, twenty cents less than usual, but all the packages of it weighed at least a few ounces over a pound. He figured this was a standard tactic of the supermarkets: give the customer a break on the price but recover some of that loss by prepackaging the minimum amounts in much larger portions.

“Can I only have a pound of chuck, please?” he asked the butcher, who was weighing and labeling sausages before sending them through the noisy wrapping machine.

“We don’t have any there?” she said.

“None I can find. It’s for a small meatloaf, so anything more than a pound will only go to waste at our house.

She seemed annoyed she had to interrupt her sausage work. She turned over several packages of ground chuck so she could see their weights, selected one, unwrapped and weighed it, picked off a little meat, reweighed and priced it, put the meat in a new plastic tray, slapped the label to the bottom of it, placed it on the conveyor belt to the automatic packaging machine, where the meat was flattened and wrapped.

“It’s a special this week,” she said. “You’re getting a terrific buy.”

“It’s good chuck — I know. We use it often.”

Walking away, he thought Why’d she have to act like that? She didn’t give him that hard a time, but she should realize, without thinking twice about it, that some people didn’t have much money — that was an established fact. She probably got a dozen requests like his a day, and most for the same reason, he bet: every penny counts.

He got a can of tomato juice, three yams, a carrot, two small potatoes, which he’d grate into the meatloaf and was cheaper to use than bread crumbs, and a canister of salt — they were even out of that. Then he saw the Contac. “5 Days & Nights’ Continuous Relief for $1.49,” it said on the package. “Approximately a penny an hour,” it continued underneath, but $1.49 was still too much for him, so he’d have to steal it. Ginny had a bad head cold, and he had to be out early tomorrow morning looking for work, so couldn’t afford staying up half the night with her suffering. And Contac, maybe the best of all cold medicines, was also the easiest to steal, its package compact and slim enough to slip into the side pocket of his jacket.

He took the Contac off the shelf, put it in the jump seat of the shopping cart, pushed the cart to the first aisle he found empty, looked both ways, and slipped the package into his pocket. He got a quart of milk and stick of butter and was now ready to leave. He had all the ingredients he needed, for a meatloaf — eggs! but he was sure they had some at home — and medicine for Ginny. In his mind he saw the tiny little time pills working as they did in the TV ads — drop by drop releasing the medication into the animated bloodstream and giving almost instant relief.

There were eight checkout stands, all ringing up sales like mad, with about four baggers hopping from stand to stand and cheerily bagging the goods. He chose the stand that was third to being furthest away from the office. Someone, maybe the manager, was behind the large picture window, looking out, then at his desk to some paperwork or something, no doubt an old pro at sensing and spotting shoplifters, so Rod had to be careful. Third from the end, far enough away from the office but not that far where he might draw suspicion.

The checkout girl had waited on him a few times. She was slender and smallwaisted in her neatly pressed uniform and had a bright open face like his wife’s and was a far cry from the female clerks in New York City supermarkets. Here, most of them looked as if they’d gone from some mild success as high school cheerleaders to working fulltime as checkout clerks, a decent enough job, he supposed, till you went to college or professional school or got married and started having babies. In New York, the clerks wore street clothes and were generally older, tougher and had a better sense of humor than these girls, but didn’t much act like they respected or trusted their customers.

“And how are you this evening?” she said, her foot on the switch that brought the merchandise tread nearer to her.

“Fine, thanks.” The man behind the window seemed to be writing, then raised his head with his eyes closed, as if trying to remember something. “We’ve just come back from skiing.”

That sounds like fun.” She smiled and put the onions on the scale.

Five cents, she rang up, just as he’d figured. Then fifty-eight cents for the chuck and fourteen cents for the yams and eight cents for the potatoes and three cents for the carrot, which he’d also grate into the meatloaf as his mother did, for added body, she said, or was it flavor? Salt, butter, tomato sauce, and two packaged pecan pinwheels for thirty cents, which he got off a rack by the cash register. That would be dessert for Ginny and Jess. He should have picked up a Boston lettuce for a simple salad. He calculated he had enough money for one, and any other time he’d go back for it, but didn’t want to risk going through checkout again.

“Dollar ninety-seven,” she said. He gave her two singles; she handed him three cents and some Blue Chip stamps. “Was it snowing?” she said, bagging his groceries; all the baggers seemed tied up at other stands.

“Excuse me?”

“You know: in the place where you went skiing. Was it snowing there?”

“Fortunately, only a little,” and he knew she didn’t suspect a thing.

“We didn’t even have to use the snow chains we rented — that’s how nice the weather was, although there was more than enough snow on the ground to ski on.”

“I like to ski, my boyfriend and I, but just the costs of the ski lift and equipment is enough to keep us from going, Oh well, we’ll get there yet.” She gave him the bag and said “Have a good night.”

“Hey, you too,” he said, touching his pocket to make sure the Contac was still hidden by the flap, and left the store and headed for his car in the parking lot.

“If you don’t mind?” a man said behind him.

It was useless to run. And he couldn’t quickly come up with a reasonable excuse why he stole the Contac. He even became sloppy. “My kids,” he said to the man he’d seen behind the office window and who had the words “Buzz Walker, Store Manager” embroidered on his work jacket. “I can’t afford these expensive drugs,” he went on as the man held out his hand for what his eyes said was in the right side pocket of Rod’s jacket, “and my littlest one is very sick with a head cold.”

“I’m sorry about that. But you know we can’t be letting people steal what they want because they got financial problems. As it is, if your kid’s real young, these capsules are no good for anybody under twelve.”

“Is that so? I didn’t know that.”

“Says right here on the directions.” He pointed to the package Rod had given him. “What are you trying to do, kill your kid?”

“I still can’t read it. It’s too dark out here, and my eyes,” squinting as if he had serious trouble with them. The manager looked at him skeptically and then told him to forget it.

“But for both our sakes, shop somewhere else from now on, I got too much work as it is without these dumb hassles,” and he went back to the store, scratching the back of his neck with the Contac.

Considering the situation, Rod thought, the manager had been all right: fair, not self-righteous; not coming on strong with a speech about possible police trouble for Rod and making him grovel before he let him go. The manager knew how tough it was for some guys to pay the bills and keep a family going out here. But more important was that he had his own job to protect, his own family to support, so the organization that was paying him had to come before any individual feelings, especially when it concerned someone he didn’t know. If Rod had this guy’s job and was pulling in around two hundred a week and no doubt getting a discount on the food, he’d have acted the same way, though he wouldn’t have been so careless as to wait till the shoplifter made it to the lot with his theft. You can’t take him there. Too many legal loopholes. The shoplifter could put up a stink as to what was public or private property that could bring the entire company to court and maybe cost the manager his job. Rod would have stopped him after he’d paid for his groceries and was about to leave, or better yet, so as not to make a commotion, cornered him in some quiet spot in the store. Like the manager, he would have been fair and sympathetic though also resolute in not condoning the theft. And after he’d let the thief go, though also telling him never to come back, he’d write a report to the chain’s headquarters in Oakland, recounting, very subtly and self-effacingly, the terrific job he and his staff were doing in keeping down shoplifting, giving this one as an example, but saying he confronted the guy in the store. A promotion, bigger-than-usual Christmas bonus — who knew what could follow a number of such reports, most of them false or exasperated. But if he worked for a company that was paying him a good wage, he’d work his butt off for it, put in as much overtime as they wanted him to, and always push himself for advancement and never steal.

He picked up a Boston lettuce at the supermarket in the next shopping center, pocketed a package of Contac and brought the lettuce to the checkout stand farthest from the balcony office overlooking the front part of the store.

“Hi, how are you?” the girl said, smiling at him as if he were a familiar customer, though he’d only been here once. “Only one item? You could’ve gone to the express register,” and he said This one was moving fast, and only the lettuce because I forgot to get it before.” She rang up the lettuce gave him his change, “Have a nice night,” and he said Thanks. You too.”

He knew he wouldn’t be caught this time. He hadn’t looked uncomfortable, which he was sure he did the last time, or dallied to decide which checkout stand to use or tapped the jacket pocket at the stand or felt the flap on the way out. It had taken one casual look around in the drug aisle and a cough that doubled him over as he slipped the Contac into his pocket, and now he was in his car and driving out of the lot, and he wanted to howl and cheer but tempered his appearance to that of a tired worker who’d never sully his family’s reputation or jeopardize his future for such a petty theft.

Home, Ginny yelled from the bedroom “Rod? I’ll be up and fix us dinner in a moment.”

He told her to stay in bed: that he was more than happy to make supper for the three of them. He put together a meatloaf and put it and the yams into the oven.

Jesse came into the kitchen. “Make me cereal. Make Jess cereal, Rod.”

He kissed him on top of his head, lifted him into the highchair and in a few minutes had two slices of cinnamon toast and a bowl of instant oatmeal in front of him, with milk, butter, wheat germ and sugar on it. “For you, Jesse old king.”

“It’s hot,” Jesse said, waving his favorite spoon in the air. “Cereal too hot for Jess, right?”

“I’ll taste it,” he did, and said “It’s okay; it won’t burn you.”

He held the package of Contac behind his back and went into the bedroom. Ginny was in bed. “Guess,” he said, and when she said “Hmm, let’s see,” and then gave him that artfully dumb expression of hers of being completely taken in by his surprise, he produced the Contac.

“You’re a mindreader,” she said, pushing the covers aside to sit up and take the package. “I need them so badly, and you knew, Teeny, you knew.” She tore out one of the capsules and held it between two fingertips. “Do you think they work as well as those silly ads say? I got one heck of a cold on that trip.”

They better work at the price.”

She looked at the price on the package and whistled. “Dollar forty-nine? For ten pills? That’s crazy. You’re really extravagant, really too good to me,” and she swallowed the capsule without water. About thirty seconds later she said “You’re not going to believe this but I’m already feeling much better. I bet it makes me sleep better too. And listen,” and she breathed in and out extra loudly, “I think it’s already unclogging my nose.”

MEET THE NATIVES

Henry Sampson was awakened from a deep sleep by children yelling at the top of their lungs. He edged his body across the bed, picked at his Baby Ben. Eight-forty, he saw, squinting at the clock. Goddamn, he thought, it’s not even nine, and Sunday, no less, so why can’t the school lock its gates and help a man get some sleep? He shut his eyes and hugged the pillow to his ears, but still heard the kids in the schoolyard that faced his windows, now choosing up sides for Capture the Flag.

“Timmy you’re with me. Laura, get over there. Larry, Mary, Walt with me. Sylvia, Carole and Junior with Louie. That okay with you, Louie — five against five?”

“Fine with me.”

Henry moved the pillow from his face. The sides were unfair the way he looked at it — one team having two more girls than the other — and he was surprised Louie hadn’t put up a squawk. And really, this should be the healthy unperturbed attitude he should always take to their games — even squeezing a bit of it into the What the Native Children Do section of the Washington guidebook he was writing — if these kids weren’t the reason for most of his present troubles. He had come here, after having saved enough money as a waiter in New York, two months ago — in April, when the weather was still cool and dry, the windows of his cheap second-story apartment barely open and the neighborhood quiet. His goal was to write his fourth guidebook — a glib, witty first-person up-to-date account of the city’s high spots, night life, places to see, tour, eat at, drive by, and plainly avoid. In the first six weeks he completed most of his research, browsed through all the public buildings, monuments, memorials, museums and parks worth noting, and part of the day, when it was still quiet outside and the temperature comfortable, written what he considered to be the most exciting imaginative prose of any of his books.

Then the weather changed, the days and nights becoming hotter and stickier than he’d ever experienced. This was a valuable piece of information left out of most of the Washington books, and he already included it in the What to Wear section at the opening of the book. (DC’s weather is ideal for the gracious Southern clothing store owner. Here there are truly four distinct seasons — the fall and early spring being as delightful and pleasingly capricious as any city in the U.S. But the heat spells of late spring and summer? Let me inform you, dear travelers. It would be as insufferably stifling as the muggiest of Middle Eastern and Asian cities I’ve lived in if not for the ubiquitous air-conditioning.) And with the late May heat came jarring street noises, loud arguments and TV sounds from surrounding apartments, and the disturbances in the schoolyard of St. James: from the 8:25 morning lineup to the P.T. classes and after-school games of the neighborhood, kids. A week ago he decided that only at night and on Sundays would he ever find the peace to get work done at home. So during the day he now got up when the first few kids came into the yard, downed a quick breakfast and spent most of the time walking around the city, reading and napping in Rock Creek Park, editing copy there that he’d written the previous night when he’d drunk too much, and going to another tedious double feature in an air-conditioned theater.

All of a sudden it was silent outside. Maybe the kids had been kicked out of the yard or went to play somewhere else. He relaxed in bed, felt himself getting sleepy, for a while imagined himself playing Capture the Flag, freeing all the prisoners. Henry the Kid beating the other team home with the flag and being congratulated as he scored the winning point.

But a boy shook him out of his thoughts: “By the count of ten you pimps better be over that line or you lose the flag. One, two, three, four, five, six…”

Henry wanted to yell for the boy to get the hell away from his window.

“Capture the flag. Free him, free him,” a boy and girl screamed as Henry got out of bed. “I got the punk,” another boy shouted as Henry turned the shower on in the bathroom and put his head under it. When that didn’t cool him off and calm his nerves, he got in the tub and let the cold water rise around him.

He ducked his head into the water and thought God, if this isn’t nice, so nice, so perfect, so goddamn completely perfect, and came up for air, held his nose and dropped underwater again. It was so peaceful and comfortable in the tub that he pictured himself working here. He’d seen it done in a movie once — Spencer Tracy or Clark Gable sitting in a half-filled tub, typewriter and writing paper on a wood plank set up in front of him like a bed table, a cigarette stuck confidently to his bottom lip as he knocked off the last few lines of a prize-winning news article or novel. Confident and cheerful now himself, he scrubbed his face and hair with a washrag and through a soap bubble forming on his lips began to sing “Oh Suzanna.”

“Oh Suzanna, oh don’t you cry for me. For I come from Alabama with a banjo on my knee.”

It was all he knew of the song and he repeated those lines twice more and was giving out with what was possibly his highest range since his college chorus days, when a group of intentionally clashing voices outside joined in with him. He got up and slammed down the window. He still heard them mimicking him, so he threw on his terrycloth robe, drying himself with it as he went into the kitchen, and yelled from the partially opened curtains “Will you kids please stop!”

They continued to sing — the entire song.

“Didn’t you hear? Now you had your little joke, so can it.”

He couldn’t see them. They were behind a row of bushes inside the yard’s mesh fence, about fifteen feet from his building. The only other time he shouted at them was last week. They were fighting among themselves, whistling, screeching, cursing, and rattling the fence when one boy climbed it, then throwing pebbles at the boy when he was perched on top. “Stop that; you’re going to kill him,” Henry yelled, and the kids scattered and the boy climbed down on Henry’s side and ran away. Now he felt he was their target, and a regular sitting duck also. Having finished the “Oh Suzanna” song, they now baited him with the first stanza of “Lulu had a baby, she named him Sunny Jim.” By the time Lulu got excited and grabbed Jim by his cocktail, ginger ale, five cents a glass, Henry was in the bedroom, angrily zippering up his Bermuda shorts and prepared to show his face at the window for the first time to them and demand they stop bugging him.

They’d ended the song when he reached the living room, and didn’t follow it with anything. Relieved, he flopped into the easy chair with a book. It was one of the forty-odd history and guidebooks about Washington he’d borrowed from several public libraries — the main purpose being to condense what this writer and others had said into tiny sections of his own book. The title of his book, as his unpublished books on Philadelphia, New Orleans and San Francisco has been similarly titled, was: Henry Sampson’s Modern Guidebook to Washington, DC. Below that would be the subtitle: “Your most perfect little companion to all places for all people. Meet the natives and their environment and be as comfortable and knowledgeable as you would in your own hometown.”

He never got to know these other cities that well, having only enough time and money to stay in Philadelphia for a long weekend and never having the bus fare to get to New Orleans. And he’d only spent a few hours in San Francisco — where he first came up with the idea for a series of guidebooks — before shipping out on a World War II troopship to Australia. The Washington book would be different. Not only was he getting a true feeling of the city but the writing was more informal, something his other books, which now seemed like staid travelogue scripts, entirely lacked. These would be the keys to getting it published. And publication would create such a demand for his previous books, once he changed them to first person and did a bit more personal research and lightened up on the language, that he didn’t think it’d be more than a few years before he’d be known as one of the most readable authorities on American travel. He was musing about all this — the money, notoriety, delicious free meals and luxurious hotel accommodations that would accompany his success — when he heard the children shouting outside again.

“Louie, you’re the stupidest ass I ever seen,”

“You are, you mother.”

“My mother, what?”

“Just your mother, you mother.”

Henry tried to ignore their argument. He sat at his work table, typed “–37–” on the upper lefthand corner of the page, and continued typing and erasing for two minutes and six satisfying lines. “One especially intriguing area often missed by most tourists is DC’s own Chinatown, which is only a stone’s throw from the Capitol Building. It’s made up of an assortment of exotic shops run by native Chinese, some of the wares, a reliable source informed me, reputed to be smuggled straight from Red China, and under the very noses of your congressmen, no less! One particularly hospitable Mandarin restaurant I had several outstanding dinners at is the…” He was looking through his dining-out notebook, which didn’t list the restaurants he’d eaten in but only the more expensive places he’d jotted down many of the dishes and prices from the menus posted out front, when he heard another shouting match in the schoolyard.

“I said get your freaking hands off me, Ronnie,” a girl said.

“What’re you, crazy?” the boy said. “I wouldn’t touch you with a cruddy pole.”

“Yeah, I bet,” she said; “On your mother’s life,” he answered, and so it went, till Henry ripped the page out of the type-writer and bunched it up and flung it to the floor. That’s it,” he said, and he rushed out of the apartment and down the service stairs to the rear entrance. He calmed his rage once he got outside, moved closer to the schoolyard till he stood under the plaque above the door in the fence — a mutilated crucified Christ dangling over the school’s name and motto, both written in Latin.

“Pighead Sylvia’s got a hole in her sock,” a boy was singing to “Glory, Glory, Halleluiah,” but stopped when Henry entered the yard.

“No need to stop,” he said. “You have a pretty good voice, in fact, although the words are a bit nasty. Anyway, I only came down from that building there to ask if you kids could tone it down some.”

They all stepped back a few feet. He smiled and tried to think of something to say that would make them trust him. His eyes settled on tough-looking girl with messy hair and holes in her socks. Has to be Sylvia, he thought, laughing to himself. And the short kid there is probably Junior. He was trying to determine which ones were Ronnie and Louie when a boy came forward and said “Yeah, and who chose you to tell us what to do — God?”

Which intolerable bastard is he? Henry thought, but said “And who might you be, my good friend?”

“I might be Ronnie Peterson, that’s who, and I’m not your good friend.” He turned around to the others and squeezed his nose, and they all laughed uneasily.

Of course. The more the boy talked and swaggered, he knew it could only be Ronnie; the one who yelled the loudest, complained the longest, had the foulest mouth, constantly tried to feel up Sylvia and was always bullying someone. How many times had he heard his ugly shrill mouth, pictured these pugnacious mannerisms. Ten pages. Ten pages at least he could be advanced in his book if it wasn’t for this one kid alone.

“Look, Ronnie…that’s your name, right? What are you — ten, eleven, twelve? So you’re old enough to understand what I mean. Because every day I’m awakened by your loud games—”

“I’m not here any morning but Saturday and Sunday, so don’t be blaming me for those other days.”

“Who’s blaming anyone? I’m just saying I’ve got a very important government night job, and sleeping Sunday morning means a lot to me.”

“Well, I don’t know, mister, because Sundays this yard’s a public playground for everybody, and today’s Sunday.”

The yard’s also part of a religious school, and because today’s Sunday you should treat it with particular respect.”

“It isn’t my school.”

“It’s others’, though — Catholic people. And it means a kind of holiness to them that took almost two thousand years to create.”

“Well, school’s closed today, so it isn’t nothing.”

That’s right,” a boy said, getting next to Ronnie.

Henry tried to put the voice and face of this boy together. Then it clicked and he blurted out “Timmy Santangelo.”

“How’d you know?” the boy said, then glanced at Ronnie. Ronnie returned his dumbfounded look.

“Don’t be surprised,” Henry said. “I’ve been hearing you kids so long, I’m bound to know your names. Let’s see now,” and he ran his finger across his bottom lip as he observed a tall thin girl. “You’re Mary,” he said, and she nodded. “Mary…? Mary…?”

“Mitchell,” she said, covering her face with her hands and giggling.

“Mary Elizabeth Mitchell.” Some of the other kids inched up as if they wanted to be identified too.

Henry pointed at one of the boys, closed his eyes and thought Who the hell could this one be? Louie? Maybe Walt, or Larry, even. He knew it’d floor them all if he could say the boy’s name when he opened his eyes.

That’s Junior, mister,” Ronnie said. “And the little shrimp next to him is Walt. And after Walt is Louie and Carole. But what do you want to know for — you a cop?”

“Far from it,” he said, wishing Ronnie had given him a few more seconds. “And also, I think I deserve something like a little more respect from you. After all,” and he stepped closer to Ronnie, who suddenly looked frightened and yelled “Run, you dumb pimps, run,” and all of them except Ronnie and Timmy took off and stopped about twenty feet away.

“Why’d you tell them to run?” Henry said. “I’m not after any of you.”

“Just take a walk, mister.”

That goes double for me,” Timmy said, catching his thumbnail under his top front teeth and snapping it at Henry.

Jesus, he thought, he’s seen cocky kids before, but these two take the limit. So what does he do now? If he turns around, they’ll jeer him till he reaches his building, and then let him have it under his window for a while, embarrassing him in front of his neighbors and of course prevent him from getting any kind of work done. All he can do is stand firm where he is and let them know he means no harm, though this time directing his entreaties to the other kids.

“Listen, boys and girls,” he yelled at them. The reason I came down here—”

“Yeah, for what?” Ronnie said.

“Was I talking to you? — The reason I came down here,” he shouted over Ronnie’s head, “was because—”

“Ah, you already said that, so stop it.”

He lunged forward, just to grab Ronnie’s arm and maybe cover his mouth till he finished what he’d started to say, but Ronnie dodged out of his reach and Henry tripped and fell. Lying on the ground, he heard the slapping of the boys’ sneakers against the asphalt as they ran to their friends. When he looked up, all of them were laughing and pointing at him. He thought he must really look a sight. What with his knees scraped and arms dirty and blood trickling out of his stinging right hand, which had broken his fall. Really looking like the prize patsy of all time. He wiped his hand with a handkerchief, dabbed the knee cuts and tied the red-blotted rag around one of them. He stood up, laughing along with the kids.

“I feel like a real kid again, with my knees scraped and all,” he said to Ronnie and Timmy, who had moved to within ten feet of him.

“Well, you don’t look like one.”

“He looks like a donkey,” Timmy said, and repeated it to the others. One of them hee-hawed back.

“Hey,” Henry said. “When I was your age we also used to give the older guys the business. But when we went too far with it we also knew they had a perfect right to pin back our ears. So how about us calling a truce now and you kids running up to Columbia Road and having a soda each on me — okay?”

The two kids smiled, “Sure, mister, anything you say,” Ronnie said, and held out his hand.

Henry reached into his pants pocket for his money clip, and when he couldn’t find it, searched through his other pockets for a spare dollar and change.

“So?” Ronnie said.

“I left my money and keys home. Usually, I never leave without them. Wait here and I’ll throw a couple of bucks down from my window.”

“Quit stalling. What you’re going to do is throw down burning hot water on us, you mean.” He waved over the others, and once together, they all laughed about something and ran to the other end of the yard.

He watched them awhile, thinking he’d give his eye teeth to know what they were saying about him. He looked at his slippers — another thing that must have seemed funny to them — tried to think of the least humiliating way of leaving the yard, and finally, with a helpless shrug of his shoulders, started for his building.

It was quiet when he got to the apartment. He cleaned his cuts, sat at his worktable and thought he’d once been very much like Ronnie and Timmy. You put up a valiant resistance — you’re the leaders, so it was expected of you in front of your friends — but once the old grouch left, it wasn’t fun to rib him anymore. So you walked away, even felt petered out by the excitement, and you forgot whatever you were arguing about with the guy.

When some kids in the yard — he didn’t bother to look outside or try to place their voices — started up again a half hour later, he decided to call it a day. He changed into slacks, put in an attaché case a box of fig newtons, cold bottle of No-Cal root beer, two books and the first thirty pages of his manuscript, and left the apartment.

He spent the next few hours in Rock Creek Park and felt unusually good there. He couldn’t quite explain why but it could have been the glowing sun, his dream-filled sleep on the cool grass, the pleasure in watching people — kids playing quietly, babies and their adoring mothers and elderly couples picnicking in the shade, and especially this beautiful girl in shorts teaching her Great Dane to hurdle benches. She was alone, lived on his street three blocks away, so if it wasn’t for the possible misunderstanding of her giant dog, he might have approached her. Later, while walking back from downtown where he went to the National Gallery and took in another double feature and had dinner at Scoll’s Southern-style cafeteria, his original intention just to delay his return home, he felt that today had been his best day so far in Washington. (Life in the nation’s capital around early dusk has all the tranquil flavor and drowsy lush charm of the Old South. So prepare to rest your tired feet along the Potomac, weary wanderers, and some places dip your toes in it, or take a leisurely stroll along the old C&O Canal, hearty visitors, and enjoy the most soul-stirring balminess of any city in the U.S.) And in a way this was true. He’d never liked living alone, although he understood the present necessity of it to write his books, but if there was one American city where a single man could enjoy himself — free museums, plenty of safe clean parks, ratio of single women to men around five to one, price of alcoholic beverages much cheaper than in most cities because of no state taxes — it was Washington. So really nothing should bother him again when there was so much to see and work to get done — especially not the minor annoyances of those kids outside. In the morning he’d buy a huge fan at Goodwill, close the rest of the windows and write six hours every day no matter what, have the book finished in a month and rewritten and sent off to the publisher a few weeks after that, which should be just around the time his money was running out. Then when the book was at the printers — a New York editor of a fairly large house had expressed interest in it and in fact was the one to suggest the first-person approach — he’d be off celebrating somewhere, with not a care in the world except for the forthcoming reviews and the size of his royalties, which he had a strong feeling wouldn’t be anything but very good.

He opened the door to his apartment and heard the screams of children, but thought Hell, it’s getting late, so it won’t last too long. In the bedroom where the screaming seemed even louder, he calmly took off his shoes and socks and stepped into his zoris. When he was in the kitchen getting a beer, he only found it amusing when a girl yelled hoarsely to her mother that she didn’t want to go home.

“Crybaby Sylvia’s a nincompoop,” a boy shouted. She yelled back “You stupid garbage bag” and other things before she was dragged off screaming by her mother.

Poor Sylvia, Henry thought, laughing out loud. Poor, poor Sylvia, He drank down the beer and a shot of bourbon, berating himself for not taking this super-cool attitude to their disturbances from the start. He got up for another drink.

He was sitting in the easy chair by the window, drinking his fifth beer and bourbon and staring at the gray silhouette of the school against the starlit sky, when he heard two of the remaining children telling Mary she was it.

“No I’m not,” she said. “It’s dark and I have to get home.”

“Come on,” a boy said — which one, he once knew, but now couldn’t tell. “You can stay a little longer.”

“Can’t,” and she was gone.

Henry swung at a pesky fly, felt relaxingly high from all the alcohol. He heard a bell chime somewhere the quarter hour of eight or nine, then Timmy saying “See ya tomorrow,” and the rattling of a stick against the steel wire fence as he left the yard. Now it’s quiet, Henry thought. At last — the sole advantage of living in the rear of a building and not facing the street. He slumped back, his shirt soaked through from the drinks and heat, and was dozing off when he heard a loud thumping in the schoolyard followed by a much softer slap. The thumping sounded like something being slammed against something else — a fist against one of those big bags boxers practice on, even, but couldn’t be that — but the slapping sound? when the noise stopped.

About ten minutes later, while he was trying to balance the empty beer cans on his chest like a pyramid — three, two and now the sixth on top — the same noises started up again. He put his nose against the window screen, couldn’t see anything, and yelled “Hey, what the hell’s going on down there?”

The sounds continued, thump-slap, thump-slap, while he tried to figure out what they could be. Ball against a wall, of course. Has to be.

“Hey, is someone throwing a Spaldeen against a wall or something?” The thumping continued. “For crying out loud, don’t you kids ever stop playing? Enough, already. Beat it! Take off! Let some people around here get some peace and quiet for a change,” hoping a neighbor or two would join him in scolding the kid. He decided nothing would stop the racket short of a trip downstairs himself. He yelled through the window “I’m coming down,” grabbed his keys and money clip off the dresser, hurried through the building and into the backyard, stumbling over a bush in the dark. He got up — same goddamn hand from before, he thought — and walked through the school gate and saw Ronnie Peterson, only dimly visibly from the moon and the lights in the apartment buildings, casually tossing a basketball against a handball wall.

“What’re you doing with that freaking basketball?” he said, rubbing his bad hand against his pants and going over to him.

Throwing it.” He didn’t move a step.

“But why the hell now — when it’s so dark?”

“You don’t have to curse, you know.”

“Okay, then just why now?”

“Because my punchball I couldn’t see.”

“But do you have to play in the same spot all day?”

“I didn’t. We all went home for lunch and came back only after dinner.”

“Look, I don’t mean to seem unreasonable, kid, but isn’t it a trifle late for you and your ball to be out?”

“I got permission. Tomorrow’s no school. And listen, mister, you’re as drunk as can be. I can even smell it from here, so why should I listen to you?”

“Don’t get fresh with me, Ronnie. Take some advice and don’t act so tough when your friends aren’t around to back you up.”

“I don’t need them. You don’t scare me. And don’t be coming nearer or I’ll get my dad to break your nose in.”

“Say, I’d like that. Go on, call him — well, go ahead,” not sure if he was up to facing the boy’s old man if he did take his bluff. “Because I’d really like to speak to Mr. Peterson about his dear considerate son.”

“Maybe later. Stick around. He’ll be here soon to get me.” He poised the ball over his head, threw it against the wall, and retrieved it effortlessly when it bounced back to his chest.

“Now didn’t I ask you nicely just before? I mean, don’t you think you’re just banging the ball out of spite.”

“Shove off, mister,” a slight quiver in his voice.

“Well, what, then? I mean, what do you want from me — my blood?”

“Meada du sombrero, mister — you know what that means in Spanish?” Henry shook his head, and Ronnie said “‘Go shit in your hat.’”

He swirled around and threw the basketball against the wall, didn’t see Henry’s fist coming down on his face. The blow caught him square in the cheek and sent him sprawling. The ball rebounded past them, banged against the fence with a ping and rolled jerkily a few more feet before stopping. Henry charged over to him, and was pulling at Ronnie’s shirt and hair when a woman screamed behind him. He jumped up, looked around as if others were watching him, looked at Ronnie, whose eyes were closed and he wasn’t moving, and ran to his building.

Someone pounded on his door half an hour later. “Mr. Sampson? It’s the police. I want you to open the door.”

“Be there in a jiffy.” He was sitting in the easy chair, downing his last beer. The pounding became more insistent. Henry yelled out “I have to put on some clothes before opening up, you know.”

“Just open it now.”

He unlocked the door. Two policemen were in the hallway, and behind them two men in baseball uniforms held up a woman by her underarms. She was sobbing and sweating and saying in a Southern drawl That’s him, that’s him. That’s the filthy crazy bastard I saw nearly kill my boy.” The ballplayers just stared at their spikes, as if they’d been tapped at random by the cops to hold this woman and didn’t want to get any more involved than that.

Henry was so sickened by her wet pulpy face that he had to turn away. He also didn’t like her pointing at him as if he were a common ignorant dipso like herself who’d just committed an unprovoked brutal act. Because there were things to explain. Plenty of things — all proving how justified his attack on her son had been and why it could be labeled a clear case of self-defense.

She pulled away from the men and tried to punch Henry. A policeman grabbed her wrists and tried calming her down. He said “Yes, ma’am…All right, ma’am…Now everything’s going to work out just dandy, ma’am, so you take it easy, you hear?” The other policeman took down Henry’s name and address and began asking a lot of questions Henry found to be embarrassing. Yes, he was not a permanent resident. No, he could not say he had any present visible means of support other than for a little savings. Yes, it’s possible he struck the face of a boy known as Ronald Gregory Peterson. Yes, he had a pretty good idea why he did it. No, he’d never been in trouble in Washington before. Yes, he might have had some difficulties with law enforcement agents in other cities.

And then other questions, some even more disturbing, Henry feeling too dizzy and confused to answer them and really only thinking of a paragraph he wrote last week for the Tips the Natives Know section about the ruthless almost Gestapo-like tactics of a lot of the police here and which he’d have to revise. Because he had to maintain more than a semblance of truth and fairness in his books if they were to be worthy of publication and sell. And these two here — the first policemen he’d spoken to in this city — showed courtesy and considerable understanding and tact, far unlike that fat slobbering Texas cop who arrested him on a street a year ago, when all Henry had wanted from several prostitutes and strippers were statistics and humorous anecdotes for the Strictly Male section of his uncompleted Houston-Galveston book. (Tourists concerned with the current widely discussed issue of law and order in our nation’s major cities will be pleased to learn that the DC police — and this opinion is not only mine but that of many very discerning and influential Capitol Hill friends — is probably the most honest, intelligent and well-mannered municipal protective force in America. Besides being unusually effective in keeping the city’s crime rate down beyond a reasonable low, considering the poverty that exists in some outlying areas here, the police are also helpful and friendly to residents and tourists alike in dealing with matters of a noncriminal nature. In a way, they remind me of those handsome white-uniformed Carabinieri in Naples and Rome. For whenever I approached one for street directions or really any topical or historical information, he would first salute me, smile, even bow a little, and then very graciously and patiently offer his help.)

WHO HE?

Always home for dinner on time, shirt smelling of work: sweat, from all the teeth he pulled out, and the chemicals he used there for plates and fillings.

Scrubbed his hands with a nail brush before sitting at the table—“My fingers have been in all sorts of mouths, so need two to three washes”—my mother at one end, he at the other, various numbers of kids on either side.

“Eat all your plate,” he’d say to me. “When I was your age we felt lucky to get one square a day.”

Not “What happened at school today?” but the job I had after.

“Everything still good there? Getting to work on time and not giving them any trouble? You never want to lose or quit a job before you have another one. How much you making now? They don’t hint you’re due for a raise soon? If you do have a few extra bucks a week hanging around in your pocket, you don’t think it’s time you started contributing to the house? I did at ten and never stopped. It costs us a small fortune to bring up seven kids.”

When they didn’t want us to know what they were saying at the table, they spoke Yiddish. He’d taught it to her so she could speak to his mother. His father, a weaver and darner, had spoken a broken English, but only Yiddish at home.

“Go lie on your stomach in a bathtub,” was one of the curses he translated for us. Others: “May his head get so small to fit through the eye of a needle. May the rest of his life be like a hand caught in a jackal’s jaw. May he have no sons to say kaddish for him, and if his wife does give him one, then a son who turns into a goy.” I didn’t understand why he found them so funny.

“Mockey Jew bastard” was the worst thing he could call a person.

“Not at the table, Labe — please,” my mother would say.

“Who he?” he often said when we were speaking about someone he didn’t know. “Who is he?” I once said, and he said “You too? God, won’t any of my kids ever know when I’m joking?”

Home with newspapers he found on subway seats and in public trash cans, yellow with piss a couple of times and once with spit on it, but he said “So what’s the big deal? You just tear that part of the paper off and read the rest. And look what I’ve saved over the years by not buying the afternoon dailies: several trees.”

When one of us said “Why do you have to be so cheap?” he raised his hand and said “Shut your trap, you nobody,” but never once hit any of us except a few times with a newspaper.

He gave my mother spending money every Friday at the dinner table. He’d come home, scrub his hands, sit down, take out his wallet and say “Here, for the week.” Sometimes she’d say she didn’t know how she could keep the house running on so little, and he’d say something like “What, what I gave isn’t enough? Okay, then — take everything I got,” and throw some more bills across the table at her or slap the money down in front of him and tell one of the kids “Pass it to your mother.”

In a good mood, he’d take a wad of bills out of his pants pocket, unwrap the rubber band around it and say They aren’t all ones either. Who’s gonna count what I took in just for today?” When one of my brothers or sisters would give the figure, he’d say to us “See why I want all my sons to be dentists?”

They argued at least twice a week at the dinner table. When it got really bad I’d get up and start to bring my dishes into the kitchen, and he’d say “Where you going? You didn’t excuse yourself.” I’d say “May I please be excused?” and he’d say “Get the hell out of here if you can’t take it.”

He’d eat the half a grapefruit right down to the white rind, then hold it up, squeeze it in half and drink the juice left in it straight into his mouth.

Got arrested for steering, for a cut of the fee, his patients or women they knew to doctor friends for illegal abortions. He spent two years in prison, lost his dental license and had to give up his practice, and went broke paying for his lawyers.

“Did it standing on one foot,” he liked to say about his prison term, but that was all he spoke about it except that he met lots of very respectable and educated people there—“Judges, important businessmen and politicians”—many of whom will be future patients of his, he said, once he gets back his license.

“If I had a nickel I’d build a fence around it,” he said whenever we asked him for one, and then he usually gave.

Insisted we kiss him till his dying day, he used to say, “just as I did with my father.”

“Pick me a winner,” he’d say when I put my finger in my nose. “Get me a green one this time,” he also used to say, if he didn’t say the “pick me a winner” line.

I was ashamed of his frayed pants cuffs and shirt collars, stained ties and pants, broken shoelaces and other men’s shoes he wore. Dead men’s shoes, given to him by their widows, of several sizes from a too tight to a floppy 11.

“He’s a diamond in the rough,” his best friend told my mother before they got married, “who’ll continue to adore his mother much more than he ever will you.”

He said he was happiest when he was at his office, seeing a stream of cronies there, and working on people’s teeth, especially extracting a deep-rooted tooth out of a big man’s jaw. “If I can pull it out with no Novocain, even better. I’ve been blessed with two strong quick wrists to do it, if the guy sits tight, with little bleeding or pain and no swelling after.”

Pulled one of my mother’s molars out two nights before their wedding. “In her parents’ kitchen,” he said, “and without anesthetic. She was an ideal patient; not a tear or peep.”

He supposedly had a woman or two on the side now and then, my mother said, but she never believed it: “He was too stingy to.”

To keep what little hair was left on top of his head, she massaged his scalp several nights a week for years.

“I’ll admit,” she said, “your father and I never had a problem in bed, except when he’d been terrible to me that day. But he always said ‘Let’s work things out before we go to sleep so we can have nice dreams and wake up okay,’ and for the most part we did.”

Rare times we saw him loaded, and it always seemed to be after they came home from the annual Grand Street Boys gala, he’d throw all his change on the kitchen floor for us to pick up and keep. Then my mother would usually say That proves your father’s had too much to drink. Always when there’s an open bar. One of you want to help me get him into bed?”

I can’t remember him ever holding my hand when I was young, teaching me a sport, helping me with my homework, seeing one of my teachers, taking me to a ballgame or park, stopping to talk to me on the street, going anywhere alone with me but once a year to buy me clothes wholesale at a patient’s factory downtown. He did used to take a couple of us to Broadway shows once or twice a year because the theater manager, for free dental work, would give us seats that hadn’t been sold. We’d show up in the lobby about twenty minutes before the play began, the manager would be called out, he’d say “Let’s see if anything’s available,” and we’d wait while he checked. There were always seats for us, though we’d have to be split up, my brother or sister and I in the balcony, my father in the orchestra.

“It’s not what you know but who you know”—quote he used most. Or “Remember this: it’ll help you out in life. It’s not what you know but who.”

“I failed with my sons when none of them went into dentistry,” he used to say. “Artists you had to be. Writers, reporters, part of the intellectual elite. You’ll all learn soon enough that you went wrong, but by then you’ll be stuck for the rest of your lives at what you’re doing.”

He’d stand me up on the kitchen counter in front of his friends and say “Sing ‘God Bless America’ for us.” His friends would applaud when I was done and give me a nickel or dime each. One man gave me a new dollar bill once. My father took it from me and said “Better I keep it for you for the time being. Otherwise, you’ll lose it.” When I asked him for it a while later, he said “What dollar you talking about? I’ve given you way more in change over the last few weeks. All you kids ever ask me for is money.”

He used the word “schwartzer,” and I said “You shouldn’t say that word.” He said “What’re telling me, that I’m prejudiced, against them? I’m not. They’re in fact great patients, paying up much faster than the Hebes and never once bouncing a check.”

Three of his five siblings died of diphtheria and influenza when they were very young. His surviving brother looked like a wolf and was a bookie most of his life and died of a blood clot in his brain when he walked into a streetlight pole. His sister came to the apartment one Sunday a month with a jar of glutinous soup she made and greasy cookies and onion rolls she baked that were still warm. They always spent at least an hour alone together, talking very low so no one would hear them. After she left, my mother said things like “I wonder how much cash she got out of your dad this time after one of her sob stories. He’s a sucker for everything she says, just as he was for his mother.” Or “I can imagine the loathsome things she said about me and which your dad, of course, let her get away with. I never liked his family. Only his father. A sweeter, sadder shlep never lived.”

He liked to call me “junior boy” because I was small for my age and the fourth and last son. At first I liked it — he said it affectionately and sometimes rubbed my hair. But when I got into my mid-teens I asked him to stop calling me it — it made me seem too boyish. He said “I can’t; it’s gotten into my blood.” “Junior boy, junior boy,” he’d say mockingly when I was in my twenties and angry for one reason or another or indignant over something, usually politics or the state of culture.

“You can fall in love with a rich girl as well as a poor one,” he said, “so why not one with money? But never bring home a girl of whatever financial means who’s not Jewish.”

“I get along with everybody,” he said, “which is why I’ve done well as a dentist, and when I lost my license, selling textiles. Be like me, smart and not a wiseguy, and you’ll get somewhere. Go on like you’re doing — a cynical sour-puss — and you’ll end up a flop no matter what field you go in.”

The whole world’s trying to steal from you — remember that,” he said. “But what most of them don’t have is our Yiddische kop, so take advantage of what God and we gave you. You don’t, that just shows what a schmo and easy mark you are.”

Some nights after dinner he’d say “Get me one of my cigars out of the humidor.” He’d give me the cigar band, sometimes slip it on my finger, and a matchbook for me to light the cigar. Then he’d sit back in his easy chair, content in smoke. “Boy, does that feel good after a long day. And better when you have such a terrific kid lighting it. Thanks.”

“Where’ll all your writing get you?” he’d say. “To the nearest soup kitchen if you’re lucky. Give it up before you really start suffering because of all the disappointments you’re bound to face.”

“You drink too much and you got a filthy mouth,” he’d tell me when I was in my twenties. “You’ll just make enemies and never get a good-looking levelheaded wife. She’ll think: ‘That’s gonna be the father of my children when there are so many more refined sober guys out there who have a steady income? Not on your life.’“

Most of my teeth he worked on he ruined for me. He didn’t take x-rays when I had a cavity, saying he didn’t need to: when he was drilling he could see with his own eyes where the decay ended, which meant that a year or so later the tooth usually started aching again. He did give me Novocain, but the minimal amount, so it always hurt when he used the drill on me. When I was sixteen I paid for two root canals with another dentist with money I was making as a delivery boy after school and Saturdays. My father never asked me about my teeth after that and I never told him about the other dentist, but he knew. Otherwise he would have said, as he used to, “You haven’t had a checkup in a while. Let’s set up a time next week.” Before he got his license back he worked on our teeth and several of his old patients’ in a friend’s office, always at night after the other dentist had left.

Walked out on some of his dinner checks, half to save money and half as a game. “I love putting something innocent over on people,” he said. “What about the waiter or waitress?” I said, and he said “Oh, don’t worry your head; I always leave a tip.”

When I got in front of the TV set, he’d say “What’s your father, a glazier? Get out of the way.”

His family was very poor and he worked every day after school and all day Sunday starting when he was eight. “Saturdays, because we were Orthodox, I rested like the rest of the neighborhood, though if my folks had let me I would’ve worked that day too after attending shul.

“Went straight from high school to dental school — that’s the way it was then; it wasn’t that I was especially good in the sciences. But I applied myself, burned those candles — and lots of those nights they were candles, which were cheaper than gas, or electricity, when our building finally got it. If I could do it, you can too, if you changed your major again and went back to being pre-dental. Of course, I could’ve spent four years in college and then gone to dental school, but who had that kind of time to waste? I wanted to start making some real money and move my folks to a better apartment and buy my mother a fur stole, and things like that.”

Had the largest dental practice and the first purple opentop car on the Lower Eastside. “I saw that car as an advertisement for my practice,” he said. “All the girls were after your father,” my mother said. “Not only did he have a good income but he also had hair then, so was quite the catch.”

Also said about his time in prison “I did it dancing, something I always felt good about, that I didn’t whine or act like a fruitcake while I was there.”

My younger sister and I were told he was a major in the army dental corps in San Diego — my mother even got out the atlas to show us where San Diego was — taking care of the teeth of soldiers who were about to be shipped across the Pacific to fight the Japanese.

“After his release,” my mother said, “with his license taken away and all our savings gone and the war still on, so no opportunity for him to make a pile of money — that time was the hardest for your father, I think worse than being in prison. It was also the bitterest period of our marriage, and we’ve had some beauties.”

Worked in a war factory in Brooklyn when he got out. After the war, he sold shoes and then paints and then textiles and quickly did so well at it that in a few years we were able to keep a maid.

Forced to give up dentistry for good because of his worsening Parkinson’s disease and diabetes. For a couple of years he was falling down on subway platforms and streets after work, and strangers had to help him home. Thank you,” I’d say at our front door or in the building’s vestibule when I’d see them through the peephole, “I’ll take him from here.”

The last few years of his life I’d shave him and clean his dentures and give him his shots and exercise him and clean him up after he went to the toilet and come in every night around twelve — I’d rented an apartment on their block to help out my mother with him — to give him his pills and turn him over so he wouldn’t get bedsores and to make him comfortable for the rest of the night. Sometimes I got mad at him while he was lying in bed — that he’d just pissed or shit right after I’d changed his diapers — and would turn him over too hard or curse him under my breath or curse my own fate out loud that I had to be coming here every night to take care of him. “You want to do the right thing,” he said a few of those times, “but it’s just not in you, so you shouldn’t even try. Don’t help me from now on. I’ll live longer without it. Anything’s better than you acting like an animal to me.”

When my parents were first introduced, he was a handsome dentist with a thriving practice and she worked as a receptionist in a doctor’s office during the day and at night and Saturday matinees danced in a West 42^nd Street musical review. He used to meet her at the stage door two to three nights a week and give her flowers and boxes of candy. “You laugh,” he said to me, “because you can’t see anyone your age doing that today. But then, if you wanted to win a beautiful girl nine years younger than yourself, that’s what you were expected to do.”

“I couldn’t get her to bed so I had to marry her,” he said. “But I already knew that bad girls you sleep with and nice ones you marry. Look at your mother. It’s obvious she doesn’t like me talking about it, but I think it’s an important lesson all my sons have to learn.”

“Hook up with a shiksa,” he used to say, “and she’ll wake you up in the middle of one night and start shouting into your ear how much she hates Jews. It’s bound to happen eventually, so stick with Jewish girls. Much less confusion with your kids later on, and they’re prettier than shiksas and make the best wives.”

“When we were kids we went barefoot in the summer to save on the shoe leather,” he’d say.

“We had so many relatives and landsleit living with us in our small apartment on Ludlow Street that we had to sleep in shifts, sometimes two to three to a single bed.”

“It was two for five to go to the movies then — two people for five cents. So I’d stand out front of a movie theater and say ‘I got two, who’s got three?’ and always got someone to go in with.”

“No matter what a cop or teacher smacks you for, you deserve it. Always respect authority.”

This is my youngest boy,” he said to a couple of his cronies in his waiting room. “Maybe not the sharpest of the bunch, but so far the hardest worker and the one most interested in making money, so the son I have the highest hopes of following me into dentistry. If he doesn’t become one, like the other three, I’ll really consider my life a flop.”

“Dad emotionally cool?” my mother said. “It’s just a front. He doesn’t like showing his deeper emotions around you kids. Afraid it’ll give you the wrong way to act and later make you vulnerable to people who take advantage of sensitive men. So he wants to always look chipper and strong, even tough, able to endure and stand up to anything. But weeks after your brother died he was still crying to himself to sleep every night. With his mother, he was even more inconsolable. At least with your brother he let me hold him in my arms sometimes, though don’t let on to him that I told you.”

“Why would you want to move out when you’ve got free room and board here?” he said to me when I started looking for an apartment after I graduated college. “Stay with us till you have a pile of dough in the bank and can afford a long layoff from work. The food’s good, bed’s comfortable, you have your own room now, so if you want to be left alone to type your head off in it, the room’s quiet enough with the door shut where nobody’s going to complain.”

“Don’t be a dope,” he said when I told him I’d stopped signing up for my weekly unemployment insurance check because I was no longer looking for work. “You and your last employer put good money into that plan, so take it while you can. If you were doing something really illegal, that’d make it a different matter. But you want to write and just live off your savings, do it when the government checks run out.”

“I don’t care what you say,” he said, “that girl’s ugly as sin and dull as dishwater and is making a fool of you if you think she’s good-looking and has a nice personality.”

Went through the apartment a few times a night turning off all the lights in rooms nobody was in. “You people,” he’d say, “must think I’ve got stock in Con Edison.”

“Get off the phone,” he’d say on the extension when I was trying to make a date with a girl or talking to a friend. “I’ve only been on two minutes,” I’d say, which was usually how long it was before he picked up the extension, and he’d say “It’s been ten minutes, don’t tell me. The phone company charges by the minute, you know, and not a single flat fee for the call. Besides, I’m expecting some very important calls from my patients, so say goodbye.”

“Close the icebox door,” he’d say when he saw me looking inside the refrigerator for something to eat, “or get what you want fast. You’re spoiling all the food.”

“You already eat like three Greeks,” he’d say sometimes when I’d open the refrigerator or breadbox shortly after dinner, “you want to make it four?” “I’m a growing boy,” I said once, “you’ve said so yourself,” and he said “Yeah, don’t I know, but give it a little rest, will ya? You’re eating us out of house and home.”

That woman’s got a beak and bad breath on her that’s driving away fine prospects,” yet he made a match for her as he did for lots of his patients. “I hate to see two people lonely,” he said, “so when they sit in my chair and tell me they’re looking for somebody, I almost immediately know which of my other patients is the right one.” If the couple got married — several couples did — he hinted to them that he expected as a thank-you for bringing them together a new suit from Harry Rothman’s or four custom-made shirts from the Custom Shirt Shop.

“When I was a boy I walked to work even on the worst days to save on trolley fare. Thunderstorms I’d go through — blizzards like we don’t get anymore — and I never got even a cold or where the weather stopped me from a single day’s work.”

I kissed his lips on his hospital deathbed, something I’d never done with him — it had always been the cheek — and didn’t want to do it then but for some reason thought I should. I was alone in the room with him when he died.

I knew he was dead; everything about his body said so and I’d heard a death rattle and put my ear over his mouth and heart. I didn’t check his pulse because I was never good at finding it on anyone but myself. I wanted to kiss him with nobody around before I summoned the hospital staff and they examined him and declared him dead and shooed me out of the room so they could clean up him and his bed. From a pay phone down the hall I called my mother to say Dad had died peacefully and then my brothers and sisters. I had lots of change on me because he’d come into the hospital in a coma and we didn’t think his room needed a phone. Kissing him was something I think he never would have done with me if I were the one who died, and why should he? He had more sense than me in many ways — he never did anything unless he was sure he wanted to — and no fake sentimentality. I’d come every day to the hospital — it was an easy cross-town bus ride from my apartment — and stayed the last two nights there sleeping on a couch in the visitor’s lounge and every hour or so looking in on him and sitting by his bed and dabbing his forehead and cheeks with a towel if they were wet and swabbing his lips with glycerin swabs if they were dry. He probably would have done what he did with my youngest sister, who died in the same hospital of cancer when she was twenty-three, though like him the cause of death was listed as pneumonia: visited me after work the first two days, stayed half an hour and then gone home to have dinner. And after those two visits — maybe even after the first — said to my mother “I can’t go anymore”—this is what she told me at the time—“It’s too tough to. I can’t take seeing one of my kids in this condition.” So he wouldn’t have seen me alive after the first or second visit and would have left it to my mother to tell him how I was doing, I’m almost sure of it. With my brother he never had to go through any of that because Gene drowned and was never found.

“Kiss me, I’m your father, and I don’t deserve it after the nickel I just gave.”

“Listen to me, I’m your father, and you know anyone else better to advise you with your welfare in mind? I’ve been around; I know the ropes. Believe me, I won’t steer you wrong.”

“Leave the house for good, why don’t you,” he said a couple of times. “All I ever wanted was for my kids to be civil to me and for there to be a bit of peace in my life. But I can’t have any of it when you’re always kvetching and squabbling with me and making speeches and getting angry at every third thing in the world.”

I think what hurt him most, other than the deaths of my sister and brother and of course his mother, and more my brother than my sister since she’d been sick since she was five, he said, “and we never thought she’d live as long as she did,” was that while he was in prison my mother got him to go along with a name change for all the kids. “She forced it on me. Shoved the powers of attorney at me and said ‘Sign them or I won’t be there when you’re released.’ I should’ve told her to stow it, but for the sake of keeping the family together, I didn’t. She was ashamed of my last name because I was all over the newspapers in this big graft scandal and was doing time and she said all your lives would be ruined by having my last name. That people remember, but she knew damn well they forget or don’t care. As for me, I never regretted going through any of it except for losing my dental license all those years. So I had to find another profession when I got out, and it worked. I was a terrific salesman; made a bundle and would’ve stuck with it but I loved dentistry more. But I’ll never forgive her. She did the worst possible thing she could do to me, and all out of spite. That’s why I get so mad at the dinner table sometimes. I see you kids and I think of it, and it makes my blood boil.”

“Change your last name back to mine,” he said a few days after my eighteenth birthday. “You’re of legal age now where you don’t need both parents’ consent,” and I said “I can’t.” “Why not? Come on, please, change your name back and I’ll give you anything you want within reason.” I said “I wish I could, just because I know how happy it’d make you, but with the other kids keeping the name we have now, it wouldn’t be a good idea. I want to have the same last name as them, and they all want to keep the name they’ve had for almost fifteen years.” He said “Look, what am I asking for? Just for one of my sons to carry my name — the two older girls will marry and get new ones — and I’d pay for all the legal costs involved,” and I said “Honestly, it’s just been too long.” “Ah,” he said, “you were always such a weak jerk. Get out of my sight.”

FOR A QUIET ENGLISH SUNDAY

“You know, it sort of looks like spit in a way.”

“My God,” she said, “what does?”

“Nothing,” he said. “I was just thinking out loud.”

“No, really, what? I wasn’t being cynical. I’m interested.”

The rain driveling off the arch there. Also the way it smacks against the sidewalk.”

She looked at both places. The rain didn’t look like spit or anything close to it. But if he insisted…

“You’re right. It does resemble it.”

“Resemble what?”

“Oh, come off it, Peter — like what you said. Like spit, then, I suppose.”

“You couldn’t quite get the word out for a moment, could you.” He laughed in that ridiculing way he knew she disliked, half to himself and half aloud. But she wouldn’t let it upset her, since that was what he wanted. Then he’d have excuses.

“Well,” she said, “it’s never been one of my pet words. But I will go along with your description.”

He turned away and looked at the doorway’s granite arch, which had been shielding them from the rain the last five minutes.

Then, without meeting her eyes, he shifted his blank stare past her to a row of Georgian townhouses across the street, the slicing rain looking more now like snow or sleet than anything else. She wondered what he was thinking.

“What are you thinking, dear?” she said.

“Nothing much.”

“I hope you’re not angry with my remarks before, I was only trying to be accommodating.”

“And my most profound humble thanks to you, m’lady,” and he swept his arm in front of him and bowed low to her in mock gallantry. Straightening up, he said “Now what do you say we drop the subject and walk?”

“It’s still raining.”

“Just a ways — I promise. Then we’ll duck in someplace for coffee.”

“Now that’s the most intelligent idea you’ve had since you suggested lunch.”

He walked out from under the arch, and she followed him. The rain had let up a bit and the cloche hat she’d bought yesterday was all the protection she needed. But he was walking much too fast again — acting like a disgruntled schoolboy and not making any secret of wanting to lose her, though she wouldn’t let on she knew. She’d play his little games, have coffee and tolerate his moody silence and get him back to the hotel for a nap and later some cocktails and dinner and a show, and maybe by tomorrow, or the day after, she’d have convinced him he’d already tied up half the pewter imports to American so didn’t he think it was time they headed back to their children and home in New York?

“You don’t feel you’re walking too fast?” she said.

“Maybe it’s you who’s walking too slow.”

Then how about if we compromise? You go a little slower and I’ll do my best to stay even with you. I’m sure we can work out a delightful walking arrangement that way.”

He continued to walk fast.

“Now you’re not fooling anyone,” she said from behind. “I know you’re only doing it so you can get way from me.”

“Oh geez. So I’ll stop if you want,” and he stopped, giving her only enough time to get beside him before he set out again, this time walking so slowly that she was always a step or two in front of him.

There’s no end to your playful games today, is there?” she said, slowing down herself.

“No games. I just don’t like dragging my behind. I don’t know, for some reason I feel extremely energetic,” and he widened his stride till he was a good ten feet in front. She ran after him and tugged his arm till he stopped. “What?”

“If you don’t want me with you today, fine. But at least have the balls to tell me.”

“I certainly appreciate you’re harping on that again.”

“But you would rather be alone — I mean: right?”

“If that’s what you want me to say, okay.”

“You’d rather be with that woman friend you met on your last buying trip — isn’t that true too?”

“Again, if that’s what you want me to say, okay.”

“Stop mimicking yourself. You sound simpleminded.”

Then stop being a pain in the ass. Stop bugging me.”

“All I want is for you to say if you want to be alone. An honest yes or no. I’ll find something to do without you.”

“You really expect an answer to that? Because all your suspicions and assertions have been groundless since you first started up about this fictional beauty.”

“Sure they have. But ever since we landed in Ireland you’ve been beating the drums to get to London like some breathless Romeo.”

“Oh yeah, I can really see myself doing that.”

“Who is she, Peter?”

He stuck his palm out and squinted at the sky. “It’s stopped raining.”

Thank you for the weather report, but all right, when did you first meet her?”

“Who?”

“Just tell me. I’m no kid anymore. And I’d never ask if I felt I couldn’t accept the answer. I’ve been half expecting it for a couple of years.”

“Make sense: expecting what?”

“Hey. Why don’t we just separate for the afternoon right here? You could then do whatever you want without me and I could finish my shopping.”

“Knock it off, Cyn, I’m tired of it.”

“It’s for your benefit I’m making the suggestion.”

“And again, I appreciate it to no end. Your considerateness is an absolute wonder to me.”

“Yes,” she said, eyeing his composure and not as sure now. “Let’s see then.” She placed her hand on her chin. “You know, I really don’t know how many hours I should give you — for the truth now: how long does a man need to make love to a woman he hasn’t seen in four months.”

“Four months.”

“With me you hardly take four minutes these days.”

“I do my best.”

“Your best — but never mind. Tell me, did you drag us around this wet neighborhood because she happens to live here? I’m not complaining about the choice, mind you, because it’s a lovely part. London can be so pretty, and so clean.”

He looked away from her to a few cars passing.

“Well, then is her apartment done up Modern? Neo-Victorian? Old Depression? No furniture at all? Poor dear, and quite an inconvenience for the two of you, but maybe you can fix that. All right, if the topic fails to interest you, then just tell me what color hair she has. Women are curious about such things. It’s probably a well-brushed mousy brown, although you’ve always preferred real blond — long and artsy-like and casually billowing over the shoulders like those California college girls you said you used to flip over so much and who never gave you a tumble.”

He continued to look at the street, then at his shoes, then at her new suede walking shoes, the soles caked with mud because the storm had opened up on them while they sat reading in a little park nearby.

“Don’t stand there gaping like an idiot at nothing — pretending she doesn’t exist. I saw her envelopes in your pockets — even in your billfold once. She writes you at the office, right? About once a week from what I can make out. For a moment she thought she had him: his bottom lip dropped and his face froze. She was excited at the prospect of his spilling the whole story of the woman and thus clearing up the fuzziness of it in her own mind, because just by his silence and cunning avoidance of the issue she was starting to feel like a fool. But now he returned to his old maneuvers, gazing out at the street, at nothing at first, then at a passing bus, trying to give the impression he wasn’t concerned with anything she said.

That last one got you, didn’t it? Well, you needn’t have looked so worried. I didn’t pry inside the envelopes. That’s not saying I wouldn’t have, but I just never had the chance.”

Those letters you refer to — that is, if they’re the same ones I’m thinking of, were business correspondence from a silver company in England.”

“London, England?”

The main office is in London, yes. But the factory’s in Edinburgh.”

“And this company always makes it a practice of writing you on salmon-colored stationery and with pale-blue feminine script?”

“Knock the ways of British business if you want, but it’s what helped send us over here on the cuff.”

“And doesn’t that make me delirious. But the owner, or salesperson, couldn’t by any chance have the first name of Margaret?”

“If you mean Miss Pierce — she’s their corresponding secretary. She must be a damn efficient woman from what I can make out, though I’ve never met her. Both times I was in the office, she wasn’t there.”

“It’s a lovely name, Margaret — as if it fits for this quiet English Sunday. Seems any woman who’d have it would be the type to light your fires, eagerly mix you drinks and such, and later make perfect shy love.”

This one’s probably a pursy seventy and maybe an Anglican deacon on the side.”

“If I ever wanted to be named anything, it was Margaret. I think I would have been much different for it.”

“I kind of always preferred the name Morris for you myself.”

“Would you like my being called Margaret? If you did, I might even change it for you.”

“If you feel that name would suit you better, fine. Now let’s get a move on then, sweetheart, though to where, I don’t know.”

She sailed. “Just lead the way, my dear.” She looped her arm through his and they began to walk at an even pace. After a minute, he broke away from her and walked ahead. She kept abreast of him for a while. Then he walked faster, his arms and fists pumping back and forth like those people in sweatsuits she’s seen on the park side of Central Park West from her apartment window, looking as if they were in a speed-walking race.

“I can’t keep up with you,” she said.

“You have your thirty-dollar walking shoes on — so walk.”

She stopped, wheezing from nearly running a block alongside him, and said “I was right before. You do want to hurry off somewhere without me. Every action of yours says so.”

He stopped and trotted back. “When are you going to give up on that worn-out crap?”

“When you start telling the truth.”

“I can’t insist what I say is the truth. And there are people around. This is getting embarrassing. You’ll just have to start believing what I say, that’s all.”

“But you do want to walk much faster. At least admit that.”

“Yes, I want to walk faster. It felt good, but not for the reason you have. I just feel like moving today — almost like running like a kid.”

“So why don’t you then?”

“Yeah, I can really see myself doing that too.”

“I’m serious — run. Don’t let me hold you back.”

“If you don’t shut up, I will.”

“But that’s what I’m saying — run. I’m being honest with you, and you’re a dope not to take me up on it. Say your goodbyes and run the hell away from here, back to the hotel for your things and then back to this neighborhood or some other, or wherever, but run, goddamnit — just go.”

“Oh, screw it then,” but he stared at her a few seconds as if waiting for her to change her instruction, and then began walking in the direction they’d been heading, quickening his steps when he was a few feet away from her and then starting to run. People on the street turned to look at him as he ran past. At first all she could think was how silly he looked from behind, his jacket waving and his buttocks jiggling and his legs cockeyed and flailing as if this were the first time he’d tried running, although he more likely forgot how to run as he used to or was running that way because he’d been out of shape so long. By now he was more than a block away, surprising her with his wind and at a distance much farther than she expected him to get in such a short time.

SEX

I think life is worth living just for the sex in it.

Say that again?

Life. Life can be worth living just for sex.

I see.

I believe that.

And I see. But what happens when you get old and there’s no sex. You commit suicide?

Old people do it.

Once a year and hurray, today’s the day, and maybe every sixth federal holiday.

They can do it almost as much as us. Though it takes longer and the men have less juice to squish out and the women are a little drier down there. So I’d use a lubricant, that’s all.

Oh, wiggle me one of your drier-down-heres — I love that.

It’s true. In the Times. There was a study. A report of one. If you’d read, you’d know.

I still don’t think so. The heart, the sudden palpitations — who’d have the guts to?

So you go slower, side by side. There are ways. Whatever, will you try to hustle it up a little?

And don’t give me that. about my reading. It doesn’t have to be newspapers.

Just be quiet and move, twitch, do something because you’re becoming a dead weight on me again,

You’re also supposed to move.

Let’s just keep a lid on it till we’re through.

Right. You about through now too?

I was through two minutes ago.

You never said anything.

Said? What the hell you think my screams were about?

Those were screams? I thought that was you complaining I was too heavy.

Those were sexual moans. I hit the top, I yell like everybody else, except maybe you.

I yell; I scream.

You titter. You go meow like a pussycat — and then fall off and doze or pretend to because you think it’s cute. You’re a boy getting his first screw. You’re hopeless.

Thanks. I’m still not done yet, so thanks. My uncle, my whole family, say thanks.

Don’t blame me.

No, I’ll blame my uncle, my whole family — thanks.

You had your chance. When I’m up there that long I’d think you’d get there too.

Well, I wasn’t.

You had time.

What’s time got to do with it? I was enjoying the nuances, the textures, each little speciality of the act. Gradually building to the peak of all time, or one of them. Then you came in with your sex-is-life line.

Life is worth living, etcetera. Anyway, will you get off me?

Maybe I can still work it out.

Work it out on some other girl, not me.

Give me a minute more.

Minute more on someone else, now off.

Hold it. I’m there. Just give it another shake or two. Oh, that’s it, that’s it.

Oh, that’s it, what? I’m not doing anything. God, you’re a load.

There.

Bull.

No, there, I did it.

You did what? You did nothing.

Feel it down there yourself.

Whatever stuff might he there is from me, not you. Wow, what a zero I have in you.

Zero; that’s a hole. That’s you.

Then I got a one, but a limp one. You’re the worst.

That doesn’t help, by the way if you want there to be a next time. The mind remembers — the subconscious — even if I don’t.

Next time? I really look forward to that.

You never know. It just comes.

I come; you don’t.

Oh? Next time I’ll get in the same place from the other side when we’re all turned around and going cookies, and send you to heaven, baby, send you to heaven.

Send me into a state of frustration and depression, maybe.

I might as well be doing it to myself.

It’s never the same.

There are ways. Chopped liver. Somehow. There are also other men.

And other women.

That’s what I’m telling you to do. But not with me again. How could I?

When you get the itch, you just lie on your back, or I get on my back with my itch, and—

No, sir. Don’t even think the possibility exists.

Sobeit, my love.

Good. Now how about getting off, up, dressed, out and far from here.

Right. Up, out, off, dressed, out, up, away and far from here — got it. But in that order, or should I start from the last first or first laugh?

How did I meet you?

Excus-e me?

How did I ever meet you, and why? What did I see in you and how? What was it that brought us to this? What in God’s name kept me going with you? I’m asking myself. What the hell was I thinking?

What are you talking about?

Why you? There must have been a dozen other guys in the bar, so how come you?

You were attracted to me at the time. Now you’re not.

I wasn’t attracted. It was because of where I happened to sit at the bar — next to you.

Maybe you sat next to me intentionally.

I sat there because it was the only stool left at the bar. Maybe the person before me was a woman who you also bored to death, but she was smarter than me and left.

The person before you was a man.

Maybe you bugged him to death and he left. But that still doesn’t explain it. And don’t give me that you remember who sat there before me. It was too long ago.

Two months to the nose, almost, and I do. It was a man. He had blond hair, and probably still does. And was around my age, build, height, handsize, and he said he was a film editor or something. He talked a lot about film, carried film books. Several on top of the bar getting wet.

I should have met him. He should have held out and bugged you out of the bar. Then your stool would have been the only one available and I would have taken it and talked to him and maybe liked him and given him my phone number, and two months later I’d be here with him, instead of you.

He was gay.

The truth now.

He wasn’t. Or didn’t seem so, at least. In fact, he said “No chicks here, for my money,” and left. That’s what he said.

You remember that too? I don’t believe it.

I’m telling you. I came in, sat, drank. He was already there and didn’t seem too interesting. He mostly spoke to the soldier en the other side of him who was getting worried this man’s books were getting wet.

The soldier sounds nice. How come I don’t remember him? You’d think I’d remember someone in uniform.

Because he also left before you got there and was replaced by another man. A drunk, though nicely dressed, who was in his own world singing songs to himself out loud. Said he could be a singer again, was at one time.

Oh, yeah. Funny guy, in a raincoat, but a fool.

Right. And after ten minutes of this fool singing and right in this man’s ear most of the time, he got up — the editor did — and said to me “No chicks here, for my money,” and left. Then you came in.

I wish I hadn’t.

No matter what you wish, face the music — you came in and sat down.

Who was sitting on the other side of you — just in case I had gotten your seat?

Skip, the ex-actor, who’s an unbelievable eighty-two. Sitting there when I came in and when we left.

I like Skip.

Maybe you should have tried something with him.

Don’t be obnoxious.

I’m not. I like Skip too.

Not that he’s unattractive. I mean, don’t be obnoxious about him. He’s beautiful — a beautiful man — and gentle and witty and filled with wonderful interesting stories about his travels and professional life. And he’s had his heartaches, too. Losing his wife early. Throat cancer that forced him off that soap and practically killed his acting career. A son who couldn’t care less that he’s alive, and grandchildren he’s never seen. He’s told me. He’s told you. Don’t dash his memories.

Who’s dashing?

Spoil them. Crap on them. Don’t insult the old guy. He’s great. I love him.

Getting pretty hot there between you two.

God, you’re stupid.

Don’t call me stupid.

Dumb, then. Because why do you say such stupid things?

Sometimes…forget it.

No, what? I’m sorry.

Sometimes I have to. Sometimes we all, for whatever our reasons, say dumb stupid things.

That could be true. I thought you were going to say something more insightful than that, but okay. Anyway, you now want to get your clothes on?

You see — I did come. Look. There. It isn’t piss.

Maybe it’s your juices finally coming out now from way back in your body. Once those little guys get swimming I don’t see them going back down your tubes to your testes and that other place they’re made in, just because you only got them halfway up.

I’ll get another batch all the way up now if you let me.

If there was ever non-love talk between two people, this is it. Are you a necrophiliac?

No.

A lover of dead bodies?

I know what it is.

Because if there was ever a dead body to make love to, mine’s it. Though don’t try.

I’ve ways to get you going.

No way friend — none. This body is closed, a mausoleum. Door locked, key lost, at least for you. Nothing. For you, nothing ever again.

I know — I’d even bet — I could get you interested.

No. Because I won’t let you. That pencil looks better than you. Just get it out of your head. All your schemes. The BS about bets.

Why won’t you give me a tiny chance to try?

Because I don’t want to. Simple and plain. I don’t like it with you. With anybody like you. I also hate this talk — hate you for talking it. It’s dead-body talk. Antisex. Necrospeech.

Gets me going. Look, take a peek. You can say you’re not attracted to that?

Jesus, what do I have here? Go. Really, your clothes on, the door way behind you. Something. But beat it.

That gets you going? I’ll do it. Yes, ma’am, just watch me fly.

Don’t. Please, don’t be sick.

I was only joking. I’m not sick. That’s what happens when I’m frustrated. But more so that I can’t get what I truly want to say to you across. The nice things. Though I once did it like that with a woman. The one I lived with. It was fun. It might seen crazy now, but she wanted me to, would ask.

I don’t want to hear about it.

“Squirt like a fountain,” she used to say. Something like that. She was from the West Coast. That was the term they used there, she said — Oregon. “Shoot,” I think it was, instead of “squirt.” Or “make.” That’s it. “Make like a fountain,” she used to say.

She must have been as sick as you.

Why? She wasn’t. I loved her, she me. We were together for three years. She had a son, was once married, and for those three years I was his surrogate dad. But after being with someone that long you often try out experiments or throw a few comes away. That night we did it that way. Big deal — no harm. She’d done it like that with her husband. I think we also later made it the more normal way together, so I got in two instead of one, besides all that fun.

I never did it that way except when that was all I was doing with boys.

Make believe I’m a boy.

Uh-uh. From now on you better get used to doing it to yourself and in your own apartment till you hook up with someone else.

It’s not the way I’d prefer it now, either.

Fine. But I’m serious. You and I — we’re no more.

Okay, you said it.

Then you understand?

Right.

Good. I’m getting dressed. Please do too.

Come on, what am I asking for? Then I go, and for good, as you said.

Enough.

Honestly. A quick one. Then I never call or come back.

I said no. I don’t want it or feel like it.

Then I’m going to have to take it.

Try, and I’ll kick your nuts in.

Go on. I’d like that.

You really are crazy, you know? Just take off.

I want it, though.

You want to prove something’s more like it. Well, not with me. No time. And don’t get crazier or you’ll have more than trouble from me. The police — I promise you.

What will you say? I’ve been banging you every other day for two months. You’ll say you suddenly don’t want to?

Don’t start with me.

Let me just touch it.

Hands off. Not even a look.

Once, and more than a touch, and I swear I’ll be fast, and then I’m gone.

Get away.

Please?

Get the hell off of me.

Just a little fun-making.

Stop. You’re hurting me. I’m not ready.

Get ready!

I can’t. It doesn’t work like that. And you’re already in deep trouble.

Get ready, because I’m coming in.

You craphead.

Oh, I love that.

You mother, you bitch, you whore. Get off. You’re heavy as shit. I don’t want to. Not now.

Now.

You’re hurting.

Now. Oh good; that’s so good.

Shut your mouth.

You want me to keep it shut?

Shut your mouth. Let me out. Get out of here. Off me. Please.

I’ll shut up if you want. I’ll be quiet.

Be quiet.

You won’t complain.

I’ll complain. I don’t want to do this.

Complain, then. That’s actually not so bad. Complain all you like.

I won’t complain.

No, complain.

I won’t say anything.

Then, good. Neither will I. Let’s just enjoy it.

I can’t.

Try.

All right.

You won’t blame me?

Yes. No.

Say you won’t blame me.

I won’t blame you.

And you don’t.

I don’t.

And that you like it this way a lot.

I don’t.

Neither do I — not a lot.

Please be quiet.

It’s not a bad way, though, is it?

Quiet.

I will. But what I’d like to know is why we have to do it this way so often.

This position?

No, just doing it.

Not often.

A lot of the time, then.

Not even that.

Then once ever week or so…you got to admit that.

Shush.

THE KILLER

Falling feet first in the air I get the feeling if I wanted to save myself 1 could simply flap my arms and fly back to the bridge. Fly in loops and all kinds of stunts under and around the bridge, in fact. In fact, if I could fly like that I don’t think I’d want to die so fast. I’d first fly to wherever in whatever way I wanted to and then die by flying someplace I could only die by flying to, like straight into a building or mountainside. I flap my arms. I start to fly. I fall into the river. But I’m not dead yet. I’m zipping further down in the water like a heavy spear but more like a sleek fish. I don’t mind drowning but I don’t think I’d want to drown that fast if I could swim for a while like a fish. I’d swim to the ocean’s floor and see its strangest sea creatures and rock formations and flora, and then when I’d seen enough I’d kill myself some way like swimming deep when I knew I didn’t have the breath to get back to the top in time. Or else off a huge waterfall to jagged rocks below, or I don’t know but somehow like a fish when I no longer wanted to swim but just wanted to die.

I try to swim and start but stop because I can’t, and give myself up to drowning, but pop out of the water like a stick and onto my back. Somehow I made it to the top, but I didn’t want to. I didn’t even want to reach the water alive. I wanted to die in flight as I thought people did when they jumped from so high a height, and I was sure if the free fall didn’t kill me the impact of my body against water would. Maybe the way I fell stopped me from being suffocated in the jump, and the way I landed — there was barely a splash — stopped me from being smashed. But I survived and I’m now unable to sink. This river is near the ocean and the ocean might be depositing a lot of its salt in this part of the river, and that salt bed, if it’s called that, might be keeping me afloat. But I could be wrong, as I know as much about oceanography, if that is the science that deals with ocean salt accumulating in the river’s delta or basin or whatever the right word is for the river area the ocean flows into making it even saltier than the ocean, as I do about aerophysics, if that is the science that deals with the speed of sixteen feet per second — or is it thirty-two? — that an object falls at once it reaches its maximum speed if there are no obstacles in its way.

I let myself go all over as I do when I want to completely relax myself, but I still can’t sink. It would be nice, though not as nice as swimming like a fish or flying with my arms as wings, to float around like this for as long as I want, though only if I were able to navigate myself and go at a faster speed. But I am able to float, as I wasn’t able to swim or fly, so maybe I should float out to the ocean and somehow across it and then after a long journey down all those foreign coastlines, but more realistically just down our domestic ones, to find a way to kill myself by floating, such as going up a river where the ocean’s salt line ends and making sure I’m in the middle of this very wide river when I start sinking so there’d be no chance the current could carry me alive to land.

I try to float faster by kicking my feet. But I can’t get up sufficient speed to make floating interesting enough to want to stay alive for the time being, so I turn over on my stomach with my head in the water to drown. But by some natural means or I don’t know what, I’m flipped over on my back. I turn over and try to swim, thinking maybe the force of my strokes and kicks will keep me on my belly long enough to swallow enough water to drown, but I’m flipped right over and floating on my back. Now what animal or insect do I remind myself of and in what environment does this animal or insect’s automatic flipping-over movement take place? The closest one I can think of is a dead fish in stagnant water being prodded onto its stomach by a stick, and once the stick’s taken away, flips back over to one of its sides. And what science would deal with the phenomenon of my being flipped over when I try hard as I can not to? Probably a couple of them, including oceanography.

I turn over on my stomach and while I’m being flipped back I gulp a mouthful of water, thinking if I do this repeatedly I’ll swallow enough water to drown. But the moment I’m on my back again I cough up the water. I try it again and again, but my body won’t allow even a small portion of water to stay past my throat.

It seems I’ll never get to do what I want in this water and I’ll have to float like this till one of the river’s boats picks me up or I’m washed to shore. Either way, I’ll be pampered with warm drinks and blankets and eventually they’ll find out what I was doing in the water and word will get back to some newsroom and I’ll be made into this dumb folk hero whom nature kept alive despite his most earnest efforts to take his life, which will make it even tougher for me in the future to find a solitary way to die. What I should do is backstroke to a remote shore before daybreak, get back to the bridge and my car, and find a way to kill myself where there’d be no chance I’d survive.

But which way is shore? It’s either east or west, if I’m still in the river, or north if the current’s carried me to the ocean If I’m in the ocean and swim to shore as if I’m in the river, I’ll be on my back all night without reaching land, always parallel to shore though perhaps progressively further away from it if the tide pulls me that way, and so tired by daybreak that I won’t have the strength to backstroke to shore once I sight it or out of range of a would-be rescue boat. And if I’m still in the river and backstroke to shore as if I’m in the ocean, I’ll be swimming all night up the river, also too tired to backstroke to shore once I see it or away from a passing boat. The best thing is just to float till daybreak comes, conserving my energy for when I’m able to see where I am in the water.

I close my eyes. Sleep would strengthen me further and even seems possible. But if I’m now in the ocean I might float too far out to swim back to land. I’ll wind up floating along till a boat discovers me or I starve to death. Starving to death seems the better of those two, but how can I be sure I won’t be rescued hours before I’m about to die? Then I’ll be rushed to shore and hospitalized till I recover and hounded by reporters and the police who’ll want to know what I was doing in the ocean and how come my car was left on the bridge and several types of scientists who’ll want to know all the scientific reasons why I was able to survive my jump and stay so long afloat, making it even less likely I’ll find, for the time being, the necessary privacy to end my life.

I decide to backstroke to shore as if I’m now in the ocean. That way, if I’m actually in the river and found there before I reach shore, I’ll probably be looked at as just a routine near-drowning rather than the person of note I could easily be turned into if I were found floating and dying way out in the ocean. And if I’m in the ocean, then by back-stroking to shore I’ll either reach shore or by daybreak be closer to shore than if I didn’t swim to it, or be somewhere in the river between its two shores if I now, by some luck, happen to be in the ocean at the river’s mouth.

To find land, which is north of the ocean, I have to find the North Star. And to find that star I’ll have to first find the Big Dipper, as one of the few things I know about astronomy is that the top star of the ladle of the Big Dipper points to the bright North Star. But to find the Big Dipper I’ll have to find both Dippers to see which is the larger of the two, because for all I know the Little Dipper might also have a bright star off the top of its ladle.

I float several complete circles, but all I can come up with is one Dipper. It isn’t a very large Dipper either, as I remember the Big Dipper getting in the summer or winter. If it’s in the summer that the Big Dipper gets much larger, then the Dipper I’m looking at, and which does have a fairly bright star off its top ladle star, would be the Little Dipper, which I remember gets proportionately larger the same season the Big Dipper does. So if that medium-sized Dipper up there is the Little Dipper in its larger summer size, then the fairly bright star off its top ladle star isn’t the North Star.

Instead of swimming on my back to this bright star, and I figure it’s a fifty-fifty chance it’s the North Star, I take what I consider a sixty-forty chance to reach land and that’s to conserve my energy till morning by floating to wherever the currents take me. By not swimming I realize I might be reducing my chances of drowning, since if I backstroke all night I might get so tired that the automatic reflex or survival instinct or whatever it is physiological that’s probably responsible for my flipping over and also preventing me from swallowing any sea water, might stop functioning. But I float, all the time trying to compensate for the decrease in my drowning chances by keeping a sharp eye on the sky for that second Dipper. If I find it I’ll be able to positively identify the North Star, follow it to land, if I’m in the ocean, or up the river and then to land, if I’m now in the river or that part of the ocean the river flows into, and get to my car, if it hasn’t been towed because of my illegal parking by the bridge, and drive it off a cliff somewhere or, better yet, into my air-tight garage where I’d keep the motor running and asphyxiate myself, something I would have done instead of jumping if I hadn’t concluded beforehand that the surest way of successfully killing myself was to jump from the middle of the south side of that particular bridge.

I float all night without locating the second Dipper. The sun rises and I don’t see land. But now knowing where west is, I backstroke till I’m exhausted in the direction of what, because of the moving sun, is growing to be less of a chance of being north or south.

I see a boat and swim toward it, thinking if I get on it I’ll pretend to my rescuers that I fell off my own small boat, ask them to let me rest in a private room, as I’m feeling ill and very tired, and in that room find a means to kill myself — a knife, scissors, piece of glass which, if it isn’t broken I’ll break soundlessly, a sheet to hang myself from a pipe or a sturdy hook overhead if there’s one.

I get within a few yards of the boat and yell for help. A man sees me and runs to the front of the boat. The boat slows down, turns around, a rope is thrown to me and I climb onto the deck. They men who help me up speak a language I’ve never heard. They crowd around me and. pat my back, rub my hair and kiss my cheeks. A man who wears what looks like a captain’s hat runs to me from the front of the boat and throws his arms around me, lifts me up and grunts and grins at having rescued me. I thank them in English, but nobody seems to understand me. I shake the captain’s hand and place my hands under my chin in a way which in my country means I’m sleepy. He nods and speaks to one of the crew. The young man goes below deck and returns with a tray full of food. “No, no,” I say. I yawn and close my eyes dreamily and pretend to snore, which have to be sounds and signs understood in every country. The captain says “Ah-oh,” and sends the young man below deck again. The man returns with bottles of whiskey and glasses for us all. The captain raises his glass to me and says something and they all slug down their drinks. He puts his hand over my lips to stop me from drinking to the first toast, but the second, fourth and sixth toasts I’m allowed to drink to. Then he escorts me to the pilothouse, points to his wallet and gestures he’d like to see mine. He takes out my driver’s license and speaks into a radio set, the only words I understand being my three names roundly mispronounced.

I yawn and stretch my arms and mime a man lying down and plumping a pillow and sticking it under his head and pulling a blanket up to his shoulder and falling asleep, and after I’m finished the captain says “Ah-oh,” and sends the young man out of the room. The man returns with dry clothes and sandals. I put them on and sit in a chair and feign dozing off, hoping they’ll be as nice as they’ve been and carry me to an empty room so I can continue my sleep in quiet. I hear shushing sounds from the men. A blanket is tucked around me. After about a half hour I stand and beat my chest to show I’m fully awake and inhale deeply as if I’d like some fresh air and open the door so I can perhaps find a way to kill myself outside the pilothouse. The captain shakes his head and finger as if he understands what I want and I’m going about getting it the wrong way. He opens the door of a water closet, waits outside it till I’m done there, walks me to a sink and makes motions of a man washing his face and hands, and after I’ve done that, he leads me to the eating area next to the galley and sits me down at a table and orders a man to bring me breakfast.

After breakfast the captain takes me to his cabin. He points proudly to several framed photos on a wall. One is of him and a woman in a wedding dress arm in arm. Another of four beaming children sitting on the grass, with the captain and woman hugging each other behind them. Another inside a frame bordered with black ribbon is of the captain and woman and four children, all much older now, standing behind an elderly seated couple, who are kissing each other’s hands.

The captain offers me the top bunk, a brandy, pulls curtains over the portholes, puts on pajamas and gets into the bottom bunk. In the dark he says something in his language, which I suppose means sleep well or pleasant dreams. I say “Goodnight or good morning,” and the room is silent. Only the boat’s engine can be heard. For now I’ll just think and sleep. Later in the day I’ll try to find a way to end my life. A sharp fishing knife, since this seems to be a fishing boat, to slash my wrists and bleed to death in an out-of-the-way section of the boat. If there is no such section, I’ll jump into the ocean, which I assume we’re in, when none of the crew is watching, and preferably in the night. Maybe this part of the ocean doesn’t have the salt accumulation the other part had, if that was the reason I couldn’t sink. Or else maybe the reflex action or survival instinct or whatever it was that kept me flipping over on my back and stopped me from swallowing the salt water, won’t work so well this time or at all.

But suppose one of the crew finds me after I’ve just slashed my wrists or sees me in the water and jumps in and saves me? Then they’ll know I was in the water to commit suicide the first time they found me and they’ll lock me in an empty room or brig with my arms bound behind me and take me to wherever the boat’s going or to my country, but certainly hand me over to the authorities who deal with people who try to kill themselves. I’ll be locked up in jail or a mental institution till the authorities are sure I won’t try to kill myself again. That might be for weeks, maybe even years, because who knows what standards are used for releasing potential suicides in the captain’s country or even in my own. If these standards are now fair and progressive, how do I know they won’t be reversed during the years of my confinement, meaning, for example, that what would release me today if let’s say I was confined for the same reasons five years ago, might in the future, because of the new harsher standards, get me ten years, fifteen, maybe life.

Or suppose I manage to escape in the water without anyone seeing me and another boat comes along and rescues me no matter how hard I try to avoid it? Or else I get so cold in the water or frightened of being attacked by sharks I see or irrationally fearful of sharks I imagine I see because of the hallucinations that come to someone freezing to death, that I signal that boat and it rescues me and the new captain learns I jumped off another boat and probably a bridge and I’m locked up and later turned over to the authorities. Or else this new captain might not learn of my previous attempts and I again try to commit suicide by slicing my wrists or jumping overboard and I’m discovered with my wrists bleeding, or saved a third time from the water, or else they don’t see me in the water but for the same reasons of freezing or sharks real or imagined or something else I’m rescued and locked in a brig till I’m turned over to the authorities who deal with people who try to kill themselves again and again. No matter how progressive the standards are in whatever country I’m taken to, I still won’t be released because of my three to four consecutive suicide attempts till the authorities are absolutely sure I won’t try to kill myself again. That might mean, in my extreme case, the surgical removal of some part of my brain to prevent me from killing myself. Which would mean living a total hell for the rest of my life without any chance to kill myself though perhaps with occasional dim ideas I should. Or maybe the surgery doesn’t work, as my jumping and drowning attempts didn’t, and I’ll try in some way to kill myself again and this time fail because of my own panic or weakened condition brought about by the surgery. Or else the authorities might detect through some special tests that I’m going to try to commit suicide again, and they’ll order the doctors to cut deeper, pump me up with chemicals or alter my genetic code, leaving me as much dead as alive, more dead than alive, but for the rest of my life not alive enough to try to kill myself.

I never should have jumped. I should have worked out my suicide better. I certainly won’t try to kill myself on this boat and possible bungle the act, maybe even injuring myself while doing it to the point where even if no one finds out about the attempt I’ll end up physically incapable of making another suicide try. What I have to do now is contrive a foolproof excuse as to what I was doing in the water. Another as to why my car was left by the bridge. Others to cover the possibility of my being seen on the bridge or falling into the river. And once the press, public and authorities and scientists are done with me after I get to land, I must resign myself to living a quiet, modest though noticeably content existence till the next time I try to take my life.

A HOME AWAY FROM HOME

Downstairs, his father was watching TV. Ray was in his old room upstairs trying to keep his eyes open and his mind from drifting, as there were still lots of things to take care of before he flew back to California.

His father had to be put in a nursing home, that was the main thing. He was ailing, incontinent, periodically incoherent, in constant need of attention and his condition was only getting worse. It’d be ridiculous taking him to San Diego with him, as Ray’s house was too small and he knew they’d be at each other’s throats the day they got there.

Ray had looked after him a month now, after a neighbor had phoned and said his father was too feeble to stay by himself anymore. He was tired of changing his father’s bed every day, doing all that laundry, emptying and scouring his urinals and setting them strategically around the house, tucking him into bed so he wouldn’t fall out, turning him over twice a night and waking, showering, drying and dressing him and for breakfast sticking two eggs in boiling water for three minutes when every day his father demanded they be scrambled in chicken fat or at least fried sunnyside up.

He’d only put off placing him in a home earlier because the old guy had begged, pleaded, “I’d get down on my knees if I could to stop you,” blubbered real tears as he said “Just another week. Ray. Wait till the Sunday after next, please.” Always the stall. And last night he said “I’ll die in a week’s time if I’m put in a home. I know it, sure as I’m sitting here watching TV.”

Ray went downstairs. “Pop? I’d like to speak to you.”

“Speak to me later. Ted Soloman’s got a good show on tonight.”

This is more important than Soloman. I’ve got to be getting back to California.”

“When?” He pressed the TV remote in his lap, and the sound went off. “You going back tomorrow? Good. Tonight? Even better. Not that I won’t miss you. But it’ll be nice having the house to myself again,” and he turned the TV sound back on. A comedian was still talking about his freeloading brother-in-law.

“Now this mooch,” the comedian said, and his father laughed, “is such a sponge on me that just yesterday…”

“I’m not going back tonight. Things have to be settled first. Number one, we’ve got to discuss that nursing home.”

“What nursing home?” The comedian became a raving mute again, right on a major punch line. “You going to work in one in California?”

“You’re going to a home — now, you know that. It just depends when. You’ve got to realize I teach in San Diego, and by staying here with you I’m losing all my paid sick days for ten years.”

“You sick? Take some of my medicine then. Got more than I can use in two lifetimes, those thieving doctors.”

“I spoke to the nursing home administrator today. He says they’ve a waiting list a mile long — that’s how well respected and popular this home is.”

“Popular because it’s cheap.”

“It’s not cheap. I’ll be paying more for you there than I would at Grossinger’s Hotel.”

Then send me to Grossinger’s. There I’d at least get to meet interesting people and eat good, filling food. And what a choice. You ever see the menu they got up there?”

The food’s supposed to be excellent at this home also. And this Mr. Kramer, the administrator, told me—”

“Better food than at the Concord, Grossinger’s has. That’s a fact. Been to both resorts, and Grossinger’s is without doubt the best. I only wish you were in the resort business.”

“So do I. It’d be a nice healthy life.”

“Healthy life, my eye. Money. You’d make money. Piles of it, though you’d probably have your first stroke by the time you’re forty. And with three college degrees, those guests would give you twice the respect you get from your junior high school delinquents.”

“Junior college, and they’re good kids.”

“Whatever they are, but you won’t listen to me. You never have. So what do you say you let me watch some entertainment for a change,” and he switched on the TV.

This Mr. Kramer,” Ray said over the ad, “he says he’s held your place as long as he can. That if you don’t take it in two days, we’ll have to give it up. That I’ll have to forfeit my thousand dollar deposit besides, and he doesn’t see the prospect of another vacancy for three months.”

“Somebody’ll die before then. Old people always do, especially in nursing homes.”

“Listen, it took me a month — will you shut that thing off!” The television went dead. “A month of constant badgering to finally get you this bed, and I don’t want to give it up. I promised Mom I’d see you were well taken care of, if anything happened to you, and this is the best way I know how.”

His father looked sad, then indignant. “What’re you always going on about your poor mom for? Is it you want me to think about death?” Ray shook his head. “Well, you’re successful at it, even if before it never enters my mind, close as some people might say I am to it. All I know is that death’s my world’s worst enemy — but you? It’s always on your mind, day and night.”

“I didn’t know I was upsetting you so much.”

“Worse than that, you’re a depressing joke. Okay, we both loved her. But she’s dead and buried now and we’re left here alive with each other, so let her rest in peace.”

“Fine. Now let’s get back to what we were talking about. The only solution left is for you to try the home for a month. If you don’t like it, I’ll find you a place more comfortable.”

“You’re a liar. For you saying you’d fly East just to make me more comfortable? Once I’m in that home, you’ll forget me for good, just as you forgot to invite me to California.”

“If you mean for a visit, I was always too busy with work. But if you mean the homes there, you wouldn’t like them. Who would you know there but me? And you’d leave in a week, it gets so hot.”

“You don’t want me out there because you don’t want me around, period. That’s okay. You’re no bargain yourself. But I’m willing to admit how bad off my health is, so if that Hudson River home you got lined up for me is so important to you, have them hold my place for two more weeks. If it’s not too difficult to understand, I just want a last two weeks alone by myself here and then I’ll go.”

“Impossible.”

“Why? Just leave, that’s all. Get Mrs. Longo down the street to look in on me twice a day, and I’ll be okay. So I mess up the house a little — big deal. Then, in two weeks, I’ll go to the home, but in my own way. No help. Nothing. Just me in a cab with nobody around to make a fuss over me. Then the realty people can sell the house, the junk people can have the furniture, and with the money you get from them you can help pay the nursing home. My own Social Security and the little savings I got should take care of the rest.”

“You serious?”

“Serious as anything. Move my bed near the john and I’ll be all right. When I want groceries or something, I’ll phone and they’ll deliver. Is it a deal? Because believe me, it’s the only one I’ll make.”

Next day, Ray called Mr. Kramer and asked if he’d hold his father’s place two more weeks.

“Can’t,” Kramer said. Those beds are too scarce as it is. And I’m not getting a dime from yours, and I’ve maybe ten families hounding me to put their fathers here for the rest of their lives. What better offer could you give me than that?”

“My father will also be there for the rest of his life. And he’s a very amiable man who won’t give your staff the slightest trouble.”‘

“All my patients are amiable, Mr. Barrett. I’ve no complaints: they’re all dolls. I’m sorry, but you have to have that bed occupied by tomorrow, or it’s off my reserve list, and also gone is your deposit.”

Ray arranged for Mrs. Longo to look in on his father for the next two weeks. That afternoon, after seeing that the refrigerator was full and a bed was set up near the downstairs john, he kissed his father goodbye and trained to the New York town overlooking the Hudson where the nursing home was. He greeted Kramer in his office, said how glad he was to meet him after speaking with him on the phone these last weeks, and asked to see his father’s room.

“You want to inspect it before he comes, that it? Right this way, then. It’s really heartening to see such a devoted son,” and he led Ray to the second floor.

There it is,” Kramer said. “Even from the corridor you can see how much cheerful sun it gets.”

Ray walked into the room, said hello to the three patients there, and sat on the one empty bed. He kicked off his shoes, stretched out on the bed, and told Kramer that for the next two weeks he was going to be staying here. “I made a deal. And if you’ll hold on for a minute and not get so hysterical, I’m sure I can make you understand.”

“So how are things looking to you today?”

Ray opened his eyes. It was Mrs. Beets, an 82-year-old resident from the next room, nudging his shoulder.

“Fine, thanks, and you?”

“Terrible. My palsy’s never hurt me worse. You want to see how bad my hand shakes?”

“I was sort of taking a nap, thanks.”

“Naps you can always take, but my hand here’s shaking more than even yesterday. I think it ought to be photographed for posterity by a TV news show, just so young people can see how fast a human hand can shake.”

“Leave him alone, Beetie.” It was Mr. Spevack from the next bed. He was 78 and on his back all day, as he’d recently had one of his legs removed because of some rare bone disease.

“I was only showing him my hand.”

“Show it to the Marines.” After she left, saying she had a painting class to attend anyway, Spevack raised himself a few inches and said “Never saw such a bad palsy case in my six years here. But tell her that once and she’ll never leave us alone. Sleep well?”

“So-so.”

“Sleep, go on, don’t let me bother you. Man’s best healer, sleep.” And after Ray felt himself dozing off again: “What about your stomach? Acting up again?”

“It was never acting up, Mr. Spevack.”

“And the sugar in your blood. Very important, you know.”

“It’s perfect. On my honor.”

“How can you be sure? Check. You always got to check. You take a urine sample this morning?”

“As I told you when I got here, I’m only holding this bed for my father.”

“Why doesn’t he come visit you, your old man? Shame on him. Son in a dreary place like this and his dad doesn’t visit? It’s not right. Now, if you were my son…”

“If he was your son,” Mr. Jacobs, another patient in the room, said, “you wouldn’t have to come visit him. He’d always be in the bed beside you, talking and dreaming of his pretty ladies.”

That’d be nice,” Spevack said. “My family always around.”

“What you say?” Jacobs said. “Can’t understand you. Put your teeth back in your mouth.”

“I said it’d be nice having my whole family around. Just like the ancient Chinese.”

“What? You reminiscing again? Wake me up when you’re through, as I’ve heard it all.” He shut his eyes, and between snores said for them to wake him when the dinner cart rolled down the hall. “I’m starving, though who can eat the garbage they give us here,”

“I like the garbage,” Spevack said to Ray. “Doesn’t give me heart-burn, which Mr. Jacobs should appreciate the value of. He’s had four major strokes and is working on number five, because you see the way he sneaks the salt shaker from under his pillow and sprinkles it on his food like it was air?”

“So I push off tonight or a week from now,” Jacobs said. “Isn’t anyone outside who’d care except maybe the social worker chap who checks up on me here, and him you can have on a silver platter. That’s why I sleep so much. When the end comes, let it happen during a beautiful dream.”

“He’s got nobody,” Spevack whispered. “You at least got a father and a good future in San Francisco., right?”

“San Diego.”

“Mr. Zysman knows all about California also. Didn’t you once live near San Diego, Mr. Zysman?”

“You joshing me?” Zysman said from under the sheet, as he never showed his face. “I was in L.A. — literally nearer the North Pole.” He was the youngest official patient in the room—68, and up until a few months ago, if Ray could believe everything he said from under the covers, he’d been a man about town—“A gadabout with two young cuties pinned to my arms, dinner every night at Sardi’s or the 21, and still a big-time operator and heavy backer of movies and shows.” But his Fifth Avenue apartment caught fire with him in it, most of his body had been burned, and he’d sworn never to let anyone see his body and face except professional people—“Doctors and maybe a few of the prettier nurses, but that’s where I draw the line.”

“Come on, Zysman,” Jacobs said. Throw off the wrapper and tell us about those gorgeous young ladies in Hollywood.”

“I can’t. You want to see a body of just scar tissue? And I used to be such a handsome rake. With a full head of hair and a big chest and powerful ticker and still able to get it up when I wanted to with the most exquisite and demanding showgirls. Now look at me.”

“I’m looking,” Jacobs said, “but all I see is a big lump under the sheet. Come on, show us that thing you used to dazzle your showgirls with.”

“Never.” He burrowed deeper under the sheets. “Not today, tomorrow, or in a million years.”

“We should all live so long,” and Jacobs went back to sleep.

They should get Mr. Zysman a private room or curtains he can pull from under his sheet,” Spevack said. “But every time he asks, they say they will, and then you never hear of it again. You should’ve gotten into one of those nicer homes I hear about in California, Ray. There they treat you like a golden-ager should.”

“Food, everybody.” It was Mrs. Slomski, one of the nurses’ aides. She wasn’t the most pleasant woman and seemed to drink on the job, but most of the men liked having her around. She was occasionally exuberant, told raunchy jokes and, for a few extra bucks, snuck in food for them they weren’t supposed to have.

“So how are you today, people?” she said.

“Sleeping soundly,” Jacobs said.

“And I’m not quite ready to sit up,” Zysman said, “so could you please slip my tray through the hole I made in the covers?”

“No chance. Today, good friend, you’re seeing the light.”

“Lay off the guy,” Spevack said. “It’s his business if he doesn’t want to come out.”

“But God’s own handiwork is out there for the viewing,” she said, pointing to the treeless parking lot and the home’s other wing.

“Not only that, the doctor ordered it.”

“What doctor? Name me names.”

“Doctor Gerontology, that’s who. He said: ‘Mrs. Slomski, I think it’d be beneficial today to have people see Mr. Zysman, and Mr. Zysman to face up to people seeing him,’ though naturally I can’t tell you the doctor’s real name. Professional courtesy and all that.” She placed a tray of food in front of Spevack and then tapped Zysman through the sheets. “You coming out, sweetie?”

“If you insist on seeing me,” Zysman said, “put a screen around the bed.”

“Enough dillydallying, Mr. Zysman. First of all, all the screens are in the new wing. Secondly, I raised six kids and saw to my own dear parents till they were in their nineties, so it’s not as if I don’t know how to handle people.”

“I said to lay off the guy,” Spevack said. “He’s got a bum heart and everything that goes with it. You continue and I’ll report your drinking habits to Kramer’s office. You’re probably tanked up even now.”

“You think they don’t know? They encourage it, in fact. Drinking and drug-taking are the two professional hazards that all nursing homes accept from their personnel, because how else could we bear looking at so many crotchety old men? Two.”

“Have some pity, Mrs. Slomski,” Ray said. “If Mr. Zysman doesn’t want to come out, respect that wish.”

“You, Mr. Barrett, should think to mind your own business. Talking about disgraces, you’re the worst. Occupying a bed that rightfully belongs to a senescent is one of the most despicable crimes against hunan nature a person could do. To me, you don’t even exist.”

“I’ll be occupying it for one more week. Then my father gets it.”

“Listen to that lie. You’re running away from the world, that’s what you’re doing. Or maybe writing an exposé for a scandal magazine. We’re wise to you — the whole staff. We all think you’re a misfit,” and she swiveled around to Zysman, said Three,” and flung the sheets off him. When they first saw his scarred body — his gloved hands covering his eyes and a scream so tight in his throat no sound came out — everyone but Mrs. Slomski had to turn away.

“Get a doctor,” Jacobs said, “My heart. My heart can’t take such a sight.”

Mrs. Slomski daintily put the sheets back over Zysman. “Now that wasn’t so terrible,” she said. The truth is, you don’t look half so bad as you think. It’s all in your head. Because nobody here hardly winced except for Mr. Jacobs, and you know what an old fuddy-duddy he is, besides being a great one for a practical joke. Take it from me: what I did was therapy. And now that everyone’s seen you, how about coming out on your own accord and eating these nice goodies?”

Zysman didn’t move. After about a minute Mrs. Slomski said how her curiosity just seemed to get the better of her at times and lifted the sheets off him though held them up in front of her so nobody else could see him. She let the sheets fall back on him and said “Know what? I think the poor man’s dropped dead on us.”

Ray phoned his father a week later and said the two weeks were up.

“Yeah? So what do you want me to do?”

“Have Mrs. Longo pack your bags and drive you here so you can take over the bed.”

“Look, I don’t know if I’m ready to go there yet. Why don’t you fly back to California and let me work things out on my own.”

“If I leave now, I not only lose the deposit, which is a lot of money to me, but they’ll take the bed away from us also, and then where will we be? No place. It’ll take a month or two to find you another home or another place in this one. Believe me, if I had the strength, I’d come and get you and, if need be, carry you here myself.”

“You feeling sick?” his father said.

“Why do you say that?”

“Your voice. It’s weak. And this business about your strength.”

That was just a figure of speech. All I have is a little cold.”

“Give me another week. The extra time will do your cold good, and then I’ll be there to take over your bed.”

Ray didn’t tell him about Zysman and that he felt his death had in some way started the decline of his own health. He’d never seen a dead man before, not even in the army. He lost ten pounds in a week and, for unknown reasons to the staff and himself, wasn’t able to hold down any solids. And Mr. Lehman, the patient who now had Zysman’s bed, was screaming again, something he did half of every day and night, till Ray told himself he’d had it here for good. He threw off his covers, said “Let my dad find his own home if he wants, but I’m getting out,” and jumped off the bed, but crumpled to the floor. Nothing was going to stop him from leaving, though, and he stood up but his legs collapsed again, Spevack rang for an aide, who put Ray back to bed. At first Ray thought it was the flu. There was a bug going around the home, though he’d never heard of a flu that made his hands tremor and his up-till-then 20/20 vision so bad that he had to be fitted for thick corrective lenses. When the doctor made his rounds the next day, Ray asked if anything more serious than the flu could be making him feel so sick and weak.

“If you were forty years older,” the doctor said, “I’d tell you your illness was simply another common geriatric problem that someone your advanced age had to accept. But you’re 33, if your chart is correct. So all I can say is that your condition is caused by some minor, though unique fluke in your metabolism, and that it won’t be long before you’re feeling as healthy and vigorous as a man your age should.”

Few days later, the barber came around for the patients’ monthly haircuts. As he snipped Ray’s hair, he asked if he wanted any of the gray touched up.

“What gray hair? I’ve got as many as you’ve got fingers. Just finish the trim.”

“You patients here,” the barber said. “You’re all as vain as the high school Casanovas I cut,” and he held a mirror up to Ray’s hair. Not only was it partially gray on the sides and top, but it was thinning in spots and there were lines on his face that a fifty-year-old man didn’t have and his neck was beginning to sag. What the hell’s going on? he thought. Just a couple of months ago he was so youthful-looking that other teachers on the campus often mistook him for one of their students.

Every day after that, he studied the increasing changes in his face, hair and neck. And every day he phoned his father, who was less inclined than ever to go to the home.

“I’ve been getting these disappointing reports on you,” his father said, his voice more resonant than Ray had heard it in years. “From your Mr. Kramer, who says you’re an unruly patient and giving everyone there a hard time. That isn’t like you. Place getting you down?”

“I’ll say it is. Believe me, I’d be on the next plane to San Diego if it wasn’t for this damn flu.”

“Flu? Before it was just a cold. You got to take better care of yourself.”

“Flu, eye trouble, maybe the early signs of ulcers and a urological disorder — I’m not kidding you, Pop. But once I’m better, I’m getting the hell out of here, with or without my deposit, and then you’ll have to find your own nursing home.”

“Fine with me, because I’m feeling so good I think I might not need a home after all. Fact is, I’m feeling as good as I ever have in my life. Would you like me to visit you?”

“How? If you use up all your strength getting here, then make sure it’s when you’re coming to stay.”

His father came the next morning, looking better than Ray had seen him in ten years. He’d lost weight, his face was rugged and tan, he had an energetic gait, even his spirits seemed up, and with him was a very pretty young woman in her late twenties or so, whom he introduced to Ray as Ms. Amby Wonder.”

“Amby, meet Raymond.”

“How do you do?” she said, extending her hand. “Any friend of Barry’s is a friend of mine.”

“Friend? This is my son. Raymond Barrett — don’t you recall my saying?”

“Oh, yeah. Barry did mention you. So, pleased to meet you too, Raymond.”

“Who’s Barry?”

“Why, your Daddy, most certain. Barry for Barrett. Isn’t that what everyone calls him?”

“Who is this woman, Pop — your nurse?”

“You won’t believe this, Ray,” and he moved closer to the bed so Amby wouldn’t hear, “but she’s my girl.”

“You mean your daughter? Someone not from Momma?”

“Girl like in woman. You don’t understand?”

“I’ll tell you what I don’t understand? I’m looking at you and I almost don’t recognize you. You seem several inches taller than when I used to walk you to bed and tuck you in. You got a glow on your face you never had. And your clothes — right out of a stylish men’s shop. What’ve you been doing, taking rejuvenative pills?”

“Sure, why not? Great stuff, those — you want my doc to prescribe you some? Take two after rising and four before bedtime, and whoopee!” and he twirled around twice and squeezed Amby into his body.

“Pop, you’re embarrassing me,” Ray said, glancing at his roommates.

That’s one of your problems: too self-conscious. But listen, it’s not just the pills. It’s my new disposition. Mrs. Longo suggested I see a psychiatrist. I said ‘What, me, a shrink? — never.’ But she harped on it and to get her off my back I went, and in just five sessions he got me, straightened out fine. He said ‘Throw away your sadness and walker and get yourself a piece of ass,’ and that’s what I did. But you?”

“What about me?”

“Your scalp, for one thing.” He ran his hand through Ray’s hair.

“Even I got more than you.”

“It’s from the flu. But it’ll all grow back.”

“And that nice red color your hair used to have? That’ll grow back too?”

“I’ve been worrying a lot lately, and a little gray won’t kill me.”

“I still don’t like it. Ailments, balding, your face kind of sickly-looking. I think you should be in a real hospital. Want me to admit you into one?”

“I’ll be okay, I said. In a few days I’ll be up and out, and then it’s goodbye to New York forever.”

“I’m glad, because you can really use that warm California sun. As for Amby and me, we’ll be getting some sun also. In Antigua. If you’re really not feeling that sick, then we’ll be flying there tomorrow.”

“You crazy? Pills, psychiatrists or whatever therapies you’re on-they can’t keep you going forever. You’re committing suicide. You should take it easy — rest, like me.”

“Let him go to Antigua if he wants,” Amby said. “His doctors say he’s as healthy as a horse, and you should be happy to see him having fun.”

“Don’t give me that claptrap, young lady,” Ray said. “I don’t know how much dough you think he has and how much of it you’re planning to finagle out of him, but I think you should know first that he has a very serious heart condition.”

“Heart condition?” and she laughed.

“And diabetes, liver trouble, glaucoma, plus a half dozen other equally enfeebling afflictions. He’s an old man, if you must know the truth,” and Amby kept on laughing, his father joining in with her. “His doctors said long ago that a person in his condition can barely stand the strain of walking, less any great globe-trotting with an adventurous young woman — a tramp.”

“Now hold off, Ray. Amby’s a fine young lady.”

“She’s an insidious conniving tramp who’s going to ruin your life. So get her out of here — I don’t want to look at her anymore.”

His father took Ray’s hand and shooed Amby out of the room. “Calm yourself, Ray. You’re upset and tired, besides not feeling too well. We’re only going for a week. When we get back, we’ll come see you again, okay?”

“You won’t find me here.”

Then in San Diego we’ll come visit — but just take care.”

“Don’t bother visiting with her. I won’t have you both out there, and not because I don’t have room.”

“Anything you say. But relax, son.” He put his fingers on Ray’s temples, as he used to do when Ray was a boy and had a headache, and rubbed them so gently that Ray soon felt himself falling asleep. His father whispered goodbye to the other patients and left the room.

“Dad?” Ray said a minute later, jolted out of sleep by a pain in his side. He dragged himself out of bed to the window, and opened it.

“Dad?” he shouted to his father hustling through the parking lot with Amby. “You’re being used, fleeced, swindled by a pro. You’ve got to get out of her scheme fast before she takes you for every dime you have. Now you’re coming to San Diego with me when I’m feeling better, you hear? We’ll take long ocean walks, sit out in the sun, talk over good times, go out for nourishing dinners, and see all the better TV shows together. We’ll take good care of each other is what I’m saying, and I’m going to have to insist on your coming, you hear? I said, do you hear? Goddamnit, Dad, you get so headstrong where you can’t even listen to me anymore?”

PALE CHEEKS OF A BUTCHER’S BOY

Max Silverman figured he had about the softest job in the Bronx: assistant manager of a large five-and-dime on Jerome Avenue, under the El tracks. Most of the administrative duties were handled by Mr. Winston, the manager for fifteen years, so all Max had to do was roam the aisles to prevent kids from pocketing merchandise, relay Mr. Winston’s orders to other workers and fill in for him when he wasn’t there, and do a little bookkeeping and stock-control work at his mostly empty desk in his windowless office in the back of the store.

Then another recession came, this one, as the newspapers put it, the worst economic downturn since the end of the Korean War. In a month, four salesgirls were fired on the spot. A few days later, after the President had said on TV that all reports of a serious recession were grossly exaggerated, Mr. Winston gave Max a check for his salary and three weeks’ severance pay, told him how much the company appreciated his efforts to raise the store’s sales volume during this unfortunate reversal, and regretfully said goodbye.

The two times Max had been laid off in the past, he blamed it on the ineptitude of government and the greediness of big business moguls and stockbrokers and the like, whom he pictured smoking fat cigars and playing cards beside the pool at some swanky West Indian hotel, while he and other victims of their bungling and schemes were being tossed into the streets. But this time he didn’t feel so had. The way he looked at it, he hadn’t been fired as a common laborer, which is all he was in the past, but that part of management which had to be sacrificed for the economy to survive. And then his mother, who was planning an early semi-retirement for his butcher-father on Max’s future earnings, took it lightly — even lifted his spirits a bit by saying she’d heard he had an A-1 reputation as assistant manager and would be sure to get a similar position sooner than he thought. But after a month of job-hunting and Wednesday morning visits to the State Unemployment Office, where the lines each week seemed to get longer with men much better dressed and groomed than he and who looked much shrewder and so were more likely to find work, he became depressed, lost what confidence he had, and once more was blaming his being unemployed on the President, Congress, the New York Stock Exchange and top executives of huge corporations and businesses.

A week later, after having no luck at three employment agencies before it was even ten o’clock, he became so disgusted with everything that he decided to call it a day. He took the subway back to Burnside Avenue, waved to his mother as he hurried through the apartment, and shut his bedroom door behind him. Putting on his pajamas and yelling to her that nothing was wrong, when she asked through the door, he got into bed and soon fell asleep, a cigarette, which he’d taken only a few drags from, still lit in the ashtray on his night table.

That afternoon, his mother braved a look into his room. Seeing him sleeping soundly, she pushed his door till it banged against the wall. Max rustled around, opened one eye and peered at his mother, who was mumbling to herself and fidgeting with a dish towel.

“Max?” she said, bending over him.

“What?” he said drowsily.

“Max!”

“What, for Christ’s sake?”

“You sick or something, lying there? Before, you said you wasn’t, but your cheeks have lost all their rosiness.”

“I’m fine, Ma, thanks.”

“If you’re fine, why you lying in bed like you’re sick?”

“I don’t know. I’m tired. And frustration, not finding work. I thought maybe my luck will change with a good night’s sleep.”

“Night? Three in the afternoon is night?”

“What’s it, three?” he said, shutting his eyes and trying to doze off.

“What then, midnight?” She pulled a wristwatch out of her housecoat pocket and dandled it above his eyes. “You see what time it is?” nudging him till he opened his eyes and looked at the watch.

“Yeah, three.”

“Three it is. That’s my point. So what are you doing still lying in bed?”

“Don’t worry about it, please,” he said, getting up. “It’s just a day’s rest. Now if you don’t mind?” He grabbed her elbow and escorted her out of the room.

“You’ll end up a no-good loafer if you make sleeping in the day a habit,” she said from behind the door. “Get a job, why don’t you. Only then can you sleep; then you’ll have the right to. Max? You taking in what I’m saying?”

That evening Mr. Silverman was unmoved by his wife’s story of their son’s behavior. Things are tough all over,” he said, opening a beer. “A lot of good intelligent workers are unemployed now — good young butchers in the market, even — so don’t be concerned if he’s discouraged for a day or so. It’s only natural.”

“But why should he get discouraged? I mean, five or six jobs he could’ve got today if he looked hard enough. But no, he’s in his room all day doing what? Sleeping off all his chances, that’s what.”

He lifted his shoulders and murmured that he supposed she was right. “Your worrying, though’s, not going to hold up dinner, I hope. At the table we’ll have a little talk with him.”

She summoned Max to dinner a half hour later, but he said through the door he was too tired. She immediately got worried, because for Max to miss or pass up one of her Thursday meatloaf dinners meant he was either working late or drastically ill. She went into his room, turned on the ceiling light, and felt his head.

“Ma, I told you already, I’m just sleepy.”

“Sleepy? You got how many hours sleep today and you’re still sleepy? No, something’s wrong with you; I know.”

He moved his head away from her hand and shut his eyes.

“Please, Max, I got meatloaf on the table, so come eat it while it’s hot.”

“I’ll eat it cold tomorrow. I always liked it better in a sandwich with ketchup on it.”

“You’ll eat nothing cold tomorrow. I’ll throw it out the window before I give it to you that way. Now I’m not kidding, Max. Supper’s ready and you’re holding up your father.”

He propped himself up on his elbows and stared at her. She’d seen this pose of his before and nervously grabbed his flannel pants off the chair and tried ironing the cuffs between her thumb and forefinger.

“Here,” she said, holding out his pants.

“Here, nothing,” and he slapped at the swaying pants in front of him. “I’m warning you, Ma. If you don’t leave the room I’m going to a hotel for the night and tomorrow find my own apartment.”

She left the room, saying, as she closed the door, that she’d make two meatloaf sandwiches for him tomorrow when he looked for a job—“just as you like then, with lettuce and ketchup and a little sprinkle of salt.”

Next morning Mr. Silverman tiptoed into Max’s room, his old underpants hanging loosely at the crotch. He carried the first section of the Times, which he’d just finished reading during his usual half-hour stint on the john. He said “Jesus, how do you stand it; it’s so cold in here,” and shut the window. He shook Max’s shoulder, and when he heard his awakening grunts, asked if he wanted to ride downtown in the subway with him.

“No thanks, Pop,” Max said, his voice muffled in the pillow.

“You still feeling sick?”

“I was never sick.”

Then maybe you should get up. It’s quarter of eight.”

“Quarter to eight?”

“Sure, quarter of eight. Be smart and get to the agencies first. That’s what I used to do when I looked for work.”

“Friday’s the worst day for looking…you know that. Besides, it’d be silly going downtown now when I got an interview in Brooklyn at noon.”

“In Brooklyn?” his father said, chattering from the cold. “You’d travel all the way out there for a job?”

“At this stage of the game I’d take one in Newark. You should get dressed. You’re freezing your ears off.”

“But in Brooklyn it’ll mean a good hour and a half ride from here. That’s before seven you’ll be getting up if the job starts at nine.”

“So I’ll get my own apartment there — I don’t know. I’ll tell you about it later tonight.”

“But why should you pay rent when you got your own room and plenty of food here? Look, don’t get desperate, all right? A good job you’ll get Monday, so just sleep your worries away today.”

When he returned to his room, his wife asked if Max was getting up.

“He still looks a little sick,” he said. “Why don’t we let him sleep?”

She jumped out of bed and went to Max’s room.

“Max!” she said, throwing open the door.

“Yeah, Ma?” he said, his head under the covers.

“I’m not fooling around now. Max. Get up this instant. You got to get a job.”

“Like I told Dad, Ma, I’ll go later — in an hour or so.”

“You’ll go now!”

“I said later. Now, please?”

She threw the covers off him. He was curled up on the far side of the bed, one hand under his head.

“Max, you was never a loafer. I’m surprised, really surprised,” and stormed out of the room, leaving the door wide open. He got up, shut the door, opened the window a few inches, picked the covers off the floor and went back to bed.

The only movement he made from his room that day, besides going to the john a few times, was a quick trip to the kitchen for a few slices of seeded rye and a knife and an unopened Velveeta cheese, and another trip into the living room two hours later for a book of Reader’s Digest novel condensations, which he’d purchased for ten cents and a coupon through the mail. His mother, who always cleaned the apartment thoroughly on Mondays and gave it a good going-over on Wednesdays and Saturdays, twice opened his door by bumping it with her vacuum cleaner as she turned the doorknob. Both times, after saying “Excuse me, that was an accident,” and peeping into his dark cigarette-smelling room, she slammed the door shut and continued vacuuming the hall outside his room another ten minutes.

Max admitted to himself he was never that reflective a person, but began thinking a lot as to why he refused to leave his room other than for the toilet and snacks. First, thinking about the psych course he took in his second and last year at college, he blamed it on his mother’s strong pushy nature and his father being kind of meek and browbeaten and such. But that was a lot of nonsense, he thought, No matter what he felt about them, he still couldn’t tie staying in bed to all that Freudian crap he’d read in his textbook and heard long discussions of in the City College cafeteria. So next was that he did it because he did it and that was that. He liked this one better because it fitted his concept or image or something about himself in the way he made decisions; quickly and forcefully, without time-wasting thought or going back on it. Anyway, that was good enough for now, and he opened the Readers Digest book, lit a cigarette, and knocked off a condensation of Uris’s Exodus.

That evening his Uncle Barney, the sage and Ann Landers of the family, knocked on Max’s door. He walked in when he didn’t get a response, and sat on the bed.

“Is it all right if we talk nicely — with the light, too?” Barney said, turning on the night table light and squeezing Max’s foot through the covers.

The folks call you in?”

“Stopped by on my own. Just wanted to see how my favorite nephew’s doing.”

“What time is it?”

“Time for supper, kid, so what do you say? Though we were only dropping by, your Aunt Dee and me are thinking of gracing this happy household by eating over tonight.”

Max turned to the wall-side of the bed. “See you at the table then, okay?”

“Come on, kid, what’s happened to you? You used to be such a go-getter — a real driver for the almighty buck. Believe me, I know what I mean when I say if you don’t get up now you’ll be chained to this bed like an addict.”

“I can’t right now, Uncle Barney — just try and understand.”

“What do you mean ‘can’t’?”

“Just that something around me — a voice, even — is telling me to stay here another night. Then when I leave, the whole world will open up for me. Not exactly that, but something like it.”

“Huh? What’s with this voice stuff? Listen, the only things you’ll get staying here so long are bed sores and a free ticket to the loonybin. I’ve always done right by you in the past, haven’t I? So I’m telling you now, kid: get up.”

Max rolled over to face him and said “Will you just get out of here already and let me sleep? And shut the light before you go, because you turned it on when I didn’t ask you to.”

“Okay, okay, you’re going off your rocker and I won’t waste my breath on you anymore; okay,” and he shut off the light, left the room and shut the door. Max then heard from the hallway his mother carrying on the way she did over the newly dead: “Oh my God; what am I going to do? Oh my God.”

He wasn’t bothered much after that. Twice his father tried to make contact through the door, with a couple of taps and then some mumbling about Max’s health and appetite and did he need anything? Max answered the first time with a grunt that he was doing fine, don’t worry. But the second time, feeling sorry for his father, he said that he’d see him the next morning when they’d go to the Bronx Botanical Gardens, something Max had been promising to do with him the past ten years. The Gardens were only a twenty-minute ride across the Bronx, but neither of them had ever been there.

Saturday morning his parents closed their eyes or turned away each time Max went to the bathroom or sneaked into the kitchen for a snack or cup of coffee. On Sunday Max dry-shaved himself in bed, leaving the start of his first mustache. Later that day, while lying in bed, cigarette smoke rising from the ashtray balanced on his chest, he concluded that he was no longer staying in bed for any just-plain-old-Max reasons, as he’d believed, but as a one-man protest against the lousy economic conditions in this country. He saw himself staying here for weeks — a sort of fast-unto-death that Gandhi threatened the British with in India — the word getting out to neighbors and friends and through them to the newspapers, who’d write him up as someone protesting against heavy unemployment and the so-called reputable captains of industry who caused it. In time, others would join his protest — thousand upon thousands of blue-and white-collar workers staying in bed, eventually causing many big businesses and corporations and factories to close down. Supermarkets, department stores, movie theaters would suffer. Time and Newsweek would devote cover stories to the news, TV would run half-hour documentaries on it. It would an end up with a meeting of the frightened big guns of the financial and industrial world, who’d end the recession and after that work together with the federal and state governments to building a new and sounder economy. Sometime after, before the eyes and ears of the nation, they’d credit him with having alerted them to how serious the situation was and for having driven some sense into their heads. Because of the notoriety he’d get, he’d soon have a top executive job, with a huge private office and plenty of pretty secretaries within reach, and become a known force in the business world. All these things were up for grabs for guys like himself: The Takeover Generation” that Look devoted an entire issue to; the young entrepreneurs who were on the way up by the use of their wits and initiative and because of their courageous, dynamic actions.

He awoke an hour later. At his feet were the Times and Tribune with the Help-Wanted sections on top, which his mother must have put there during his last nap. He kicked them to the floor. “Who needs you?” he said, and shut his eyes and tried to get back to sleep.

Monday, Mr. Silverman left for work, calling Max, through his bedroom door, a hopeless mental case and wishing on him a multitude of the worst Yiddish curses. Mrs. Silverman, too distraught to say anything, went about her morning household chores. But around noon, with all the rooms dusted, carpets swept, scrubbed and mopped with pine disinfectant, she could no longer restrain herself. She barged into his room with a shriek, waking him.

“Get up, you bum, before I call the police.”

He pulled the covers over his head. His mouth felt parched and sour. He’d brush his teeth soon as she gave up and left the room.

“I said to get up, you dirty loafer, or I swear I’ll throw you out of the house myself. Don’t think I can’t, because I can. Max, do you hear me? Get up this instant.”

He turned over on his back, sneezed, said “Excuse me,” and reached to the night table for a cigarette and matchbook. He lit up, shut his eyes, and exhaled.

“All right,” she said, dusting the top of his dresser with her hand, “you’re not going to listen to ne, so I’ll try this. How long you going to make us suffer this way?”

“Until the recession ends.”

“What do you mean ‘the recession ends’? Talk sense.”

“Okay; I just don’t know.”

“You just don’t know what? I’m listening. I’m your mother and it’s natural I’m interested in what you have to say.”

“I’m telling you, I don’t know. But something wonderful will come from all this, something that’ll benefit all of us. You might not realize it yet, but you’ve got a great social reformer on your hands.”

“Does that mean you’re not leaving today?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Tomorrow?”

“Like I say: I’m not quite sure.”

“You mean never, then, don’t you?”

“I don’t know; it’s difficult to judge.”

“Well, just tell me so I’ll know better than to have my friends and family come over and see our disgrace. Next week? A month? A year? Just so I know, Max.”

“Maybe.”

“Maybe what? Listen, you’re thirty, so act like thirty. For fifteen years you felt like working. I did too before I had you, and your father for his whole life. So why all of a sudden you feel you can’t get up and get work? Believe me, if that’s what you really think, then all I can say is you’re a freeloader and a bum.”

“I’m sorry, honestly I am.” He took another drag and stared at the ceiling fixture.

That smoke,” she said, waving her hands in front of her. “You’re blowing it in my face, you know?

“I wasn’t trying to. I was blowing it towards the door, but maybe a breeze caught it.”

“Breeze, nothing. Stop smoking so early and get up. Enough’s enough.”

He watched her stack his coins into neat columns on the dresser, then pick up the newspapers off the floor and fold them.

“Your father wanted to know where the papers were this morning. He hadn’t finished them. He paid for them, you know.”

“You probably put them there yourself when I was asleep.”

There?” she said, pointing down. “On the floor like a slob?”

“Anyway, tell him there’s nothing in them, so he didn’t miss anything.”

That’s for him to decide. For you, sure you say there’s nothing, but there’s plenty in them, plenty of good jobs.”

She put the newspapers on a chair and began carpet-sweeping the small round rug in the middle of the floor.

He felt hungry, but couldn’t leave his bed while his mother was still in the room. She’d yell that if he could get up for his stomach then he could just as easily get up to make money for his food. He decided to light another cigarette. There was almost no pleasure in the world like smoking, he thought. It always took his mind off anything unpleasant. He might even be able to drive her out of the room if he blew more smoke in her direction. He reached over to the night table and fingered blindly through the cigarette pack. It was empty. He propped himself up and opened the night table drawers, but there were no cigarettes there, either.

“You take my butts, Ma?”

“Why, did you ever see me smoke?” she said, continuing to sweep the rug. “You do, like there’s no tomorrow.”

“But I’m sure I had them there; a couple of packs.”

“News to me.”

It was useless trying to talk to her. Always the same line; never a decent, understanding word. He got out of bed and rummaged through the top dresser drawer, but all he found there were three mangled packs, an empty carton, and some matchbooks. Next he searched all the kitchen shelves, where his mother usually hid the cigarettes she’d stolen from him when she thought he was smoking too much. She never dumped them, though, since she hated throwing out anything that at one time cost money and could still be used.

He sat down at the kitchen table with a coffee and prune Danish in front of him. He figured he’d looked at every possible hiding place, even picking through the garbage can under the sink on the theory that she’d really lost control of herself today and thrown away the cigarettes she’d taken from him. But wasn’t he acting like a perfect idiot? Because how long had it been since his last smoke? Twenty minutes? So what the hell was he getting so worked up about? All he had to do was think the situation out, just as he had when something unusual came up at the store that Mr. Winston wasn’t around to handle, and the crisis would be over.

He called Mr. Shalita at the candy store two blocks away, asking him — practically commanding him in his new, deep authoritative voice — to send over a carton of Camels, a cold Pepsi, bag of pretzels and the latest racing car magazines. Mr. Shalita said he couldn’t make deliveries till the boy got out of school — some three hours from now. Max said That’s sure a strange way of conducting a business,” and politely canceled the order. He next called the one neighborhood supermarket, and when the person who answered said she couldn’t take phone orders unless the customer had a charge account, he slammed down the receiver. His mother, he saw was now in the living room, grinning into the mirror she was wiping with some liquid from a spray bottle, though the mirror was as clean as anyone could get it.

“Hey, Ma,” he said, “you know the name of that grocery on Tremont?”

“What do you need in a grocery we haven’t got here?”

“Come on, you know the one. The store next to the Spotless Cleaners.”

“Spotless, I know, but no other store next to it.”

She knew all right. Maybe if he asked her nicely she’d order the carton from Mr. Shalita. That old guy would do anything for her, even lock the store and deliver the goods himself. But she’d only refuse and call him a nicotine addict and cigarette fiend. Forget the cigarettes and just read and sleep the next three hours, then phone Mr. Shalita and have him send the kid over with the order.

He went back to bed. That was the way to work things out: easily, decisively, using the brains God blessed you with. One day he’d look back at all this and have a fat laugh over it. He’d be sitting at some fancy poker table with a few business friends, and after winning a good-sized pot he’d tell them about this crazy smoking incident. It’d be a story to joke about with people who had the minds and experiences to understand. Didn’t Einstein laugh with the world about the time he flunked an important math exam? And what about Bernard Baruch, who bundled an easy stock market deal just a short time before he made off with his first million-dollar killing. Both of them laughing up a storm about the worst failure to hit them before they decided to really become somebody. “And the same with me with my cigarette urge,” he’d tell his cronies, as he picked up his second fantastic pot with four-of-a-kind — all kings.

He got out of bed a half-hour later and quickly showered, shaved, cleaned his teeth and brushed his hair. By the time he got back to his room the floor had been mopped, the bed stripped, his two pillows hung over the fire escape railing, and the place felt like an icebox from the airing his mother was giving it. All of it to create a symbol of sorts, he realized, but he could care less; he was only interested in dressing and collecting his wallet and change off the dresser and getting to the cigarette machine at the corner luncheonette. He stuck a tie and a waxpaper-wrapped schnecken and paper napkin into his overcoat pocket and, eyes down, walked past his mother as he left the apartment. He didn’t want her pumping him for answers he was in no mood to give. When he reached the second-story landing, she yelled down the stairway from two flights above “Max? I’m having your father bring home a silver-tip roast for supper, so you’ll try and be back by six?” He kept walking. When he got to the ground floor, she yelled “And don’t bring home the Post tonight, even if you buy it. Your father always gets it, and you know how he hates seeing two of the same papers in the House. Max, you still there? If you are: best of luck.”

UP AND DOWN THE DROSSELGASSE

“Must we go now?”

The man nodded.

“Since I’d much rather stay here.”

“So, stay.”

“Now please be sweet to me, Hank.”

“So, come. Because what do you want me to say? ‘Of course, my dear, I want you to accompany me. What would a jaunt be without you?’”

“It’s just I’ve always loved these small outdoorsy cafés — having nothing but strong black coffee, and maybe a dessert, and soaking up the afternoon sun. Oh, well.” She stood up, brushing crumbs off her lap. “Look!” and she pointed to the cobblestone street when a motorbike drove past — a goggled priest arched over the handlebars like a racer, an attaché case strapped to the luggage rack.

But Hank was fingering through a palmful of several countries’ coins.

“Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could transfer this exact setting to the heart of New York?”

“You’d still have lunch at the Brasserie three to four times a week.”

“No, I wouldn’t. We’ve nothing as quiet and quaint as this.”

“Jes hold it there for a second, ladies and gents,” and he put his hand over his eyes and waved the other in front of him: his tent-show swami routine. “I see a woman seated…at a restaurant table…why, it’s Mrs. Patricia Lincoln Kahn. Dressed to her pretty eye teeth in authentic suede and fur and now blotting her lips on a cloth napkin after consuming a five-dollar omelet.”

“I don’t think they run them that high.”

Then a five-dollar cottage cheese salad topped with an enormous prune. Now there’s a mouth-watering image if I ever created one. Enough. Bill’s paid with all sorts of denominations. What the hell, it’s one continent and they’re among friends. Let’s go.”

“Which direction?”

“Let’s see…Left, then another left to the river street and after a while through this cruddy old alley, which the guidebook refers to as ancient and historic. Till we get to the Drosselgasse — that main drag before, where we hit the third bierkellar up the street. I think it’s called the die or das Rheinlander or something.”

“Very original, since we’re practically floating on that river.”

The Chinese have been known as ingenious though unfathomable people for ages.”

The Chinese?” Her eyes were drawn to a third-floor window across the street, where someone’s bare arms reached through the curtains and drew in the shutters. She envied the woman, who she figured was about to settle down for a nap after a heavy German lunch. She turned to Hank to tell him she’d like to go back to the hotel and take a nap, and found him staring at her.

“Spying Nazi bastard,” he said.

“Excuse me?” She pretended to look for someone behind her.

That man you were looking at in the window there. You know what I mean,” when she continued looking at him skeptically—“all of them, then. Spying’s part of their precious Aryan blood.”

“Nonsense. You’re just going through some Jewish paranoia phase. Besides, that man up there was a woman.”

The women were just as bad. Because did I ever describe the Dutch museum photo of these German women laughing when a Kraut soldier pulled a rabbi’s beard?”

“Only a few times. But why this sudden rage at the Germans? Before, you always thought they were industrious and intellectual. And then you never even had a third to tenth cousin in Europe during the war. Both sides of your family have been in the States so long they’re almost considered Yankees. What nonsense.”

“Anti-Semite.”

“Oh, please — you’re really speaking to the right person. Maybe my folks a little, and certainly my grandparents, but don’t look at me.”

“Shiksa anti-Semite. I still say it: you all are. But you can’t change. It’s in your precious Aryan blood also.”

“Okay. Did you leave a good tip? The waiter gave us an extra free coffee, and they usually charge for that.”

He snapped two more marks to the table. The waiter came up, took the check and the money off the table and said “Danke schön,” bobbing his head and smiling a bit too generously as most German waiters tend to do, Hank thought. He really couldn’t take their mannerisms or food or any of their customs and places of interest for that matter. After two months of touring Europe he didn’t know why they had to end up here, their first German town after boarding the excursion boat in Holland for a trip along the Rhine. Though he’d sworn to his father, who still grumbled every time he saw a German car and who couldn’t even stomach clicking the shutter of Hank’s Zeiss-Ikon, that he’d never set foot in Germany. It was one of his father’s stipulations for giving him the money to travel. The other was that on his return to New York he join his father’s law practice.

“Actually, I like Germany,” Pat was saying when they left the café and headed toward the river. “No matter what they did in the war or what your family thinks of them, this country’s still pretty great.”

“What stereotypical reasons do you have for this sudden national crush? Bach? Beethoven? The great Dürer? Or maybe even the songs of the Rhinemaidens.”

“For one thing, they’ve been nicer to us here — just shopkeepers, waiters, our hotel clerk, even people with directions on the street — than in any country we’ve been to.”

“If you mean they’ve been sycophantic and obsequious, which someone less clever than you might take for graciousness and helpfulness — then I say yes, I agree with you, you’re right.”

“Oh, stop the nonsense.”

“And please stop misusing that inadequate word.”

“But it is nonsense. I mean, try forming an opinion of your own once in a while, instead of sounding like Papa Kahn and your brother Stanley.”

He looked away. Oh Jesus, she thought, he’s going to start pouting again. “I’m sorry. Hank. Let’s forget it.”

“Excuse me?” he said as if he hadn’t heard her. He’d stopped at a stone parapet that overlooked the river, and was watching a crowd of people walking and cycling off the excursion boat.

“Could you believe the tourists still flocking here like that?” she said, curling her arm around his. “Boy, are they ever in for a surprise.”

“Maybe they all live here.”

“Nobody lives in this dull town but waiters and bosomy barmaids.”

Then possibly because Rudesheim’s a famous resort town. Say, now that can be the answer.”

“Famous? Since when? I never knew it existed till that Thomas Cook man slipped it into our itinerary.”

“And I promise never to reveal a word of that confession,” and he fingered a cross over his chest. “Now what do you say?” and he pointed to the street that would lead them to the center of town.

“Let’s go back to our room. We’ve had plenty to drink already, and I can see you’re itching to get loaded again before dinner.”

“Just one more sip with me and we’ll go back to the hotel.”

“I’ll drink with you later — during dinner, and I’m serious now.”

Then maybe you better drink alone at dinner,” and he took her arm out of his and walked away from her.

She caught up with him, and without saying a word they went through an alley till it opened up on the Drosselgasse, a narrow sloping street glutted with bierkellars and souvenir stands and coffee and pastry shops. She had a hard time keeping up with him, as he was anxious to get to the place he found last night in his solitary bar crawl through this section of town. Approaching the door of the Rheinlander, he stepped aside, extended his hand and bowed like one of the more fawning waiters they’d had, and let her pass him and descend the stairs. When she reached the bottom he galloped downstairs two steps at a time, tripping on the last step and falling.

“You hurt?” she said, helping him up.

“It’s okay. I landed on my good shoulder for a change. It’s these damn stone steps all the old bars seem to have.”

That’s the third time you’ve fallen like that in a week, you know.”

“I wish you’d stick to counting drinks like other wives.”

“If you want,” and she laughed, brushed some dirt off his sleeves and reached up on her toes to kiss his cheek. Then she took his hand and led him into the bar.

A large party of German men and women were drinking and toasting and singing what sounded like folk songs at a long oak table. Pat liked the looks of the place — it was low, snug and woody — and wanted to sit near the group and possibly strike up a conversation with then and be invited to sing along. She had a good soprano voice, perhaps too overtrained by a private voice teacher while she was in college, but she’d still managed to get into a folk-singing trio in one of the coffee houses off campus and make some money at it. But Hank tugged on her arm, just as she was about to suggest where they sit, and made his way to a two-seater at the other end of the room — a fairly dark spot tables away from any other customers. He studied the wine list. When the waiter came over and asked in German if they were ready, he ordered the most expensive bottle of the local wine. “Und macht sure it’s natur, jawohl?”

“Jawohl.” the waiter said.

“Und kanst du try und keep doze people über der von singen like katzen und hunds?”

The waiter, folding up the wine list and standing it back up on the table, smiled and shrugged that he could only try and do his best.

“Jawohl, mein kapitan, you should’ve said,” Hank said.

The waiter was still smiling at them as he left their table.

“You’re always there with the quips,” Pat said, “—the real bon mots.”

“Would you have preferred my jumping up and clicking my heels at him?”

“Now who’s giving out with the stereotyped impressions? Officious and snotty as a lot of them are reputed to be, although I haven’t seen it, they weren’t all Nazis. Like the one who’s waiting on us. I mean, what is he, nineteen, twenty? — so he was barely five when the war started. And this is his country we’re in. So if you still insist on deriding him, let’s go back to France or somewhere and knock the Germans from there.”

“Jawohl, meine darlink,” and he gave her the seig-heil salute.

“Cut that out, Hank. That’s offensive to most people here. What makes it worse, it’s not even funny.”

That’s because you never understood my type of humor.”

“Oh, I understand it all right. It’s not like it’s far out or subtle, you know.”

“Just blow it out.”

“No. I take it back. You just proved your humor is subtle.”

He was going to answer her, when the waiter brought the wine, twisted the bottle around so Hank could see the label, wrapped a towel around it and drew the cork, and poured a little wine into his glass. Then he stepped back and stood at Hank’s right, looking at him.

“I believe you’re supposed to sniff and sip it and then tell him it’s delicious.”

“You know German better than me; you’re the one with the Kraut background. Tell him to forget the stupid amenities and fill up my glass. I want to shoot the first one down, not pick at it like some fag.”

“You’re awful.”

“Sure I’m awful. Because I’m in this awful country and it’s making me feel awful that I’m here.”

She smiled at the waiter and said “Mein mann hier wisht das sie fullen seine Glas voll, bitte.”

“Ah-ha,” the waiter said, smiling as he refilled Hank’s glass and then Pat’s. “Das is viel besser, is not?”

“Mucho besser.” Hank said. He slapped the table and said in a Texas drawl “Here’s mud in your eye, slowpoke,” and drank down the wine and held out his glass for the waiter to refill it.

“Oh, Jesus,” Pat said, laughing to herself and looking away.

The waiter refilled Hank’s glass. “Is good, der Wein, nicht wahr?”

“Hank gulped down this glass also, then loudly smacked his lips.

“To tell you the dang-blasted God-awful truth, pardner, this here’s just ‘trocious wine — just disgusting stuff, but what could I do? I was thirsty.”

The waiter beamed. Thank you, sir, lady. Vielen dank.”

“Now tell him to beat it.”

“You know he can understand some English, Hank.”

That was English? Come on, tell him to get lost. His breath’s bad.”

“Mein mann sagt vielen dank auch,” she said, trying to keep her weak smile from appearing apologetic. “Sie sind sehr gut zu uns und wir…wir…appreciate it. Versteht appreciate? Von der herz,” and she touched her blouse on the left side.

“Yes,” the waiter said, looking perplexed but still smiling. “Das herz.” pointing to his chest. “I understand the heart very much. Thank you. Americans are very kind.” He refilled Hank’s glass and moved back till he stood by the bus table, holding the bottle and ready to pour the moment one of their glasses needed refilling.

“I thought I told you to tell him to beat it.”

“He only means well. He’s not busy, so I guess he thought he’d give us a little extra service.”

“But he should know better than to hover around our table — making us feel uncomfortable with his lousy groveling act.”

“I don’t feel uncomfortable. And I see no reason for you getting upset.”

“Are you going to tell him or do I have to in my own way?”

“Not another commotion — please. It’s not as if he should vanish because we’re acting like a couple of starry-eyed honeymooners.”

He stood up, signaled for the waiter, and when the man eagerly strode over, grabbed him by his jacket’s white lapels and said “So, you versteht English? Then beat it!” The waiter patted Hank’s back as if telling him to forget whatever was bothering him, and pulling free of Hank’s hold, leaned over to refill Pat’s glass and pour a little wine into Hank’s filled glass. When he stood erect again, Hank swung at his face but missed and fell across the table, his arm knocking both glasses to the floor when he rolled onto his chair and then toppled over with it. At the other end of the room the German party toasted to one another and began singing a new song — a loud cheerful one. Pat wanted to scream, to create total silence with her scream, but covered her shaking lips with her fist and bent down and pushed some broken glass away from Hank’s hand as he struggled to get to his feet, the waiter holding him under an arm. When he made it to one knee and was resting in that position, Pat took the billfold from his inside jacket pocket, gave the waiter a ten-dollar bill and said to him “I am very sorry. Sehr. Mein mann…he meant no harm. Please understand. Bitte versteht. Es tut mir leid. Both of us. Es tut mir leid.”

The waiter smiled at her and pocketed the money without looking at it. Then with the help of another waiter who’d just come running over, they lifted Hank into a sitting position and slid a chair under him. The singing had stopped, and when Pat looked over she saw most of the group looking at them.

“Sit up,” she said.

“I’m sitting.”

“You’ve really done it this time. My poor boy of a husband’s really gone berserk and done it.”

“Stop with the soap opera crap and help me get the hell out of here. I slugged down that rotten wine too fast and it went to my head.”

“You’d never act like this in the States, You’ve acted like a boor often enough, but you’d never go this far because you know you’d never get away with it there.”

“Well, I had good reason here. You saw what happened. Freaking creep wouldn’t leave us alone. And you just wait till I get back to the States. Europe this time has given me renewed vigor, new balls.”

“I wish we were going back tomorrow.”

“What’s the matter, Patty Pooh, aren’t you having fun?” He rubbed her cheek affectionately and scanned the room, avoiding the embarrassed glances of their waiter and the glares of the older waiter, who’d raced back from the kitchen with a beer stein of coffee, which he handed to Hank.

“How much did it take to pacify the kid?” Hank said.

“Drink up the coffee. It’ll do you good.”

“I said, how much did you give him?”

“Ten,” she whispered, “but only so he wouldn’t call the police. He had a right to, you know.”

He laughed. “Hell, for that amount of gelt it should’ve at least got a good crack at the Nazi punk.”

“Will you stop being a moron?”

“Bottoms up, everybody.” He raised the stein, sipped from it and put it on the table. “So”—grinning now as if that one sip had done the trick—“ready? I feel much better, and I know of a terrific keller across the street where this Yid can really get into a brawl. Get back at the butchering bastards the best way you know how, I always say.”

“I asked you to stop it. And I think they’re waiting for you to apologize, I hear it’s the local custom after you’ve tried to kill someone.”

That tenner both apologized for me and paid for the wine.”

“No, it didn’t. And you really have to apologize to our waiter if you want me to leave here with you.”

“Stop threatening me with the either-or shit. I want you with me-you’re my darling schatzie and I’ve told you that — so let’s get a move on.”

“Mein mann,” she said to the waiters, who’d been standing silently a few feet away, “er kanst nicht gut Deutsch gesprechen, am I being clear? I’m saying—ich sage — konnen sie verstehen mir? Aber er sagt zu mir das er ist sehr traurig für alles diese — sehr.”

“Please speak nothing of it,” the older waiter said. “It happens. We are sorrowful too.” The younger waiter nodded, smiled at her and gave her the check.

“Danke schön.” She got the exact amount in marks out of her handbag and gave it to him.

“Bitte schön, madame,” he said. The two waiters picked up the broken glass, cleaned the floor with a towel, cleared the table of everything but the wine list, and went back to the kitchen.

“Good God,” Hank said, “did you catch those guys smiling so nicely at me? What in the world could you have told them?”

That you were very sorry. And that you also wanted to say just how sorry you were in German but didn’t know the language, so you asked me to say it for you.”

He thought about it, then whistled. There’s one I never heard before. It’s good; no, it’s actually superb. You’re a genius when it comes to making my apologies,” and shaking his head in wonder how she could have come up with such a line, he started for the door. When he got there, he yelled back “So, der, meine sveetheart, sie comink?”

She was searching in her handbag for a tip, found five one-mark coins and put them on the table. Then seeing that not only wasn’t Hank watching her but he was already past the door and hustling up the steps, she hurried after him.

“If you weren’t always in such a damn rush,” she said when she caught up with him on the street. “I can’t run like you. I haven’t got your long legs. And I’ve high heels on, Hank, high heels, so have a heart, will you?”

AN ACCURATE ACCOUNT

I say “So I’ll see you tomorrow.”

She says “Not tomorrow. I need some time by myself.”

Then the next day.”

That day too.”

“Hey, what’s going on?” I say this jokingly but she doesn’t take it as a joke. No smile; she looks serious. I say, not smiling this time, “What’s up?” and she looks at me a little sadly. As if she’s about to cry. Then a tear comes to one eye. I watch it well in the corner and go down her cheek. She’s wiping the cheek when another tear wells in the same eye. I say “Why are you crying? What’s wrong? You sick? About us, then? Something wrong with us? That has to be it. I recognize the signs. So, come on, speak.”

“I think…this is what I think. I think…”

“Why are you crying, though?”

“Please let me finish. I’m crying because of what I’m thinking. I think you should get used to spending more time by yourself and with other people than me. I mean, every day with me.”

“It’s not just your work, then, that you want to be alone?”

“No. I think—”

“Uh-oh. I don’t like the sound of it.”

“It’s been on my mind a long time.”

“Not the sound or the sight of it, and it’s sounding and looking even worse.”

“I’m sorry, maybe it does sound bad. As for my face, that’s how I feel. I’ve been meaning to tell you this for a while. We can’t continue like this, indefinitely seeing each other day after day. It’s reached its limit and doesn’t seem to be going anyplace.”

“What are you talking about? I want to marry you, live here and have a child by you.”

“I’m sure you do. You’ve talked of it before. But I don’t think that can work out. You just don’t seem capable of it.”

“I’m telling you, I am and it’s what I want. That should be enough.”

“You’re devoted to your writing.”

“I’m devoted to my writing for my work and other things, but to you for me emotional life and everything else. I’m devoted to you as much as I am to my writing, but in a different way. The two can go together.”

“I don’t think they can and I wouldn’t want you to stop your writing.”

“I don’t have to.”

“If you had a child you’d have to be making more money than you do from your writing.”

“So I’ll get a job. I’ve always made some kind of money, always been able to find a job.”

“To make enough for you. True, I work, and make more than you. But if we had a child, I couldn’t teach for a while, and there’d be so many other expenses after that, and you don’t have enough “

“We’ll save. What’s the difference? We’ll sacrifice. I’ll sacrifice, though it wouldn’t be a sacrifice. I love you. Do you love me?”

“Yes.”

“You said, I don’t know how many times — maybe just a few, but that you never loved anyone more than me. Has that changed?”

“No. It’s been better with you than it has with anyone, but I can see it’s not going to work out.”

“How can you say that, after a happy morning, a happy evening, a great summer vacation — after we’ve been so close for almost a year? How can you so casually dump on it all?”

“In the end it seems we’re just not suited for each other and it doesn’t seem we’ll ever be.”

That’s ridiculous.”

She’s crying out of both eyes now. She says “Wait,” and goes into the bathroom. For a tissue, I suppose. There’s a stuffing up in my neck and I feel tears coming to my eyes too. I can’t believe this is happening. I know that’s trite to say, but the scene is suddenly very unreal. It’s happened before, plenty of times. At least five, probably not too unusual for a guy who’s 43 and never been married and been short of money for as many years as I. But I’ve never been happier with anyone more than I have with Lynn. I’ve been in love as much, but never happier. We’ve been so tight. She’s perfect for me, or as perfect as a woman can be for me. I know I’m slightly neurotic and my compulsion to write can be a problem for the women I’m with, but so far she’s put up with me and we get along very well. Again, this is trite, but it seems I’m in a dream. Or even that I’ve just awakened from a frightening one and am still a bit shaken from it. That’s the image that comes to me while she’s in the bathroom, maybe there for a tissue or to wash her face. Or to give herself more time to think what to do with me, or all three.

The toilet flushes. Maybe that’s a ruse, maybe it isn’t. She certainly didn’t flush the tissue down it, as she always crumples them up and drops them in the wastebasket there. She comes out. She’s wiping her eyes with a piece of toilet paper.

“No more tissues left?”

“Yes,” she says. The box was empty. You know everything, though, don’t you? Or notice it. Listen, Michael—”

“I just can’t understand any of it. I can’t say I deserve it. I know I’m not easy being with sometimes, but I haven’t been too bad. Everything so far between us has been good, I think, with not a single dispute between us.”

“All true.”

“Never a disagreement; not even a tiny one; none. So what you said before might make sense for you but it doesn’t for me.”

“We can continue to see each other but not as regularly.”

“No. That’s what the last one said. Diana.”

“I don’t care what Diana said.”

“She said ‘Let’s see each other once a week,’ after we’d been seeing each other seven days a week for three years.”

“I told you, I’m not interested.”

“I went along. It just dragged out. I don’t want this to drag out. If you’ve made your decision, you’ve made it. It’s not going to change. It’s been my experience that once a woman makes a decision like that, at least when she makes it about me, it doesn’t change. I’m going to look at it like this. I’m not talking about Diana anymore, so do you mind if I continue? It won’t take long.”

“Go ahead. I’m sorry for cutting in on what you were saying.”

This is the way I see it. The — our — relationship is the patient and we’re the doctors. You want the patient to come in once a week or something. I think the patient should die.”

“What?”

That’s not it,” I say. “I was going to speak about it differently.”

“Some metaphor!”

“I don’t want the patient to die slowly, is more what I meant. The disease the patient has is inoperable, terminal, the rest. I don’t want the patient to suffer. It’s better the patient dies immediately. Ah, my imagery, metaphor, whatever it was, was bad. I can’t think straight. I’m too sad, shaken up. I am. I probably look it and I am.”

“I don’t like this either. I hate that this has to happen.”

“You look it too. The tears, your face and voice. Your key.” I take my keyring off the piano. It’s where I usually leave it and left it last night. Her apartment key’s on it and I try getting it off.

That’s not necessary right now.”

“It is.” I can’t get the key off. The ring won’t open. “I’ll get it when I get back to my place and mail it to you along with the money I owe you for the second month’s cottage rent and utilities and whatever else. I can’t believe all this,” and I head for the door. “My things,” I say, “I should probably take them,” and I get a plastic shopping bag from the kitchen, go into the bedroom and bathroom and stick a few clothes and my shaving equipment and hairbrush in it and two books, and head for the door again. My duffel bag and typewriter and manuscript I was working on this summer and other books I already dropped off at my apartment when we drove in, just before we put her car in her garage.

She doesn’t say anything when I think she might, and I unlock the door, don’t say anything else or look at her, and leave.

Her building has an elevator but I like to walk the six flights downstairs. Now it’s not a question of liking or not, I just do, as I don’t want to wait for the elevator by her door and I just want to move. I think, when I’m rounding the stairs, didn’t I see any signs where this was coming? I didn’t. At least right now I don’t see where there were any. Out of the blue, it came, out of the blue.

Round and round I go downstairs, and I open the door on the ground floor and I’m in the lobby. Frank, one of the doormen, is there, and he says “Hey, Michael, good to see you; when you get back?”

“Yesterday afternoon. Made it from Maine in one day.”

“I was on duty yesterday. Probably on dinner break when you got in. Around six?”

“Around then.”

“Get lots of work done?”

“Two months away; nothing much to do up there; it’s the best time.”

“But you’re always working. Me too. This job and reading. Writing I leave to you guys so I can have something to do.”

“What do you have there?” because I’d got him out of a lobby chair where he’d been reading a book.

“Socialism in South America. Maybe not for you, but I’m interested in economics, history, politics, those kinds of relations — international — and know nothing about it in South America, or not as much as I do in other places. How’s Lynn?”

“Fine.”

“I’ll see her, but tell her welcome back. Cool for this time of year, right?”

“I felt it upstairs. Had to shut some of the windows. I love it like this, breeze blowing directly into the apartment off the river and such.”

There’ll be plenty more warm and even hot days left. It’s only starting September. You get hot days in October.”

“Not always, but we probably will. See you, Frank. You’ve been very nice.”

“Hey, thank you; you too. I love talking to nice people who know books, and this building’s loaded with them.”

I wave, he does, and I leave.

When I’m walking to the subway and thinking about what happened upstairs, I start to smile. I don’t know why. Then I think it could be because I’m not feeling hopeless, depressed or upset. Women breaking up with me has happened so many times the last twenty-plus years and every time it happened with someone I really liked I got tremendously depressed and upset, and this time I’m not. What does that mean? That I didn’t love her as much as I thought I did or I feel some relief over the breakup and something inside is telling me that and therefore not to overdramatize the situation and get depressed and upset? No, I loved her a lot and wanted the relationship to go on but I guess I got upset one last time that last time with Diana and that was the last time I can get upset over something like that. Maybe. That after reacting the same way so many times it would just seem stupid to act that way again. Maybe. Probably this feeling won’t last, though. We’ll see, I hope it does.

I go into the subway station at a Hundred-sixteenth, buy a magazine from the newsstand on the platform, get on the downtown local and start reading an article on one of my favorite contemporary writers — one of the few I even like — an Austrian, who died of TB just last year. A few stations pass before I realize I haven’t thought of Lynn since I started the article. That’s a first. And it’s not so much the article, which is stiffly written and full of literary jargon and has no new information about the writer or any original ideas. Before, after a breakup like this, the woman was on my mind all the time for at least a couple of days and of course I’d be constantly morose and also angry. But I don’t have those feelings now. I feel pretty good, in fact. I go back to the article, which gets interesting at the end of it because of the writer’s last tragic years.

I get off at Seventy-second and some guy standing at the station’s entrance says “Got a quarter? I’m very hungry.” He looks like he does need food and I give him some change and he says Thanks,” and I say “You’re welcome, and take it easy,” and he says “I’ll try.” Giving a panhandler change and a brief pep talk aren’t things I would have done right after one of the previous breakups. Those times I would have felt more sorry for myself than I would for him and I’m sure I would have scooted right by. No, I don’t feel too bad.

“Michael,” someone says when I’m walking home, and I turn around and it’s Annette. She used to go with my friend Ben. I say hello and we shake hands and I say “So how’s it going? What’ve you been up to these days?” and she says “Nothing much, or same thing. My meditation and spiritual retreats and my work. Seen Ben?”

“Not for two months. Been away. But we wrote and phoned. He’s doing fine. Likes his new job.”

“Good for him. He was broke, last I heard. He’s still not drinking too much, I hope.”

“No, he cut out drinking and smoking, both cigarettes and dope.”

“He must be seeing someone. It can’t be just the job.”

“He is.”

“He’s in love?”

“You really want to know?”

“What do I care? All right, I care a little, but that’s been over a long time. Nah. Don’t tell me about him. I don’t care that much and it’ll get back to him besides, not that I’d care if it did. He’s totally out of my life, and good things have been happening to me too since I turned him loose. My play — the one I’ve been trying to sell for years? Not an easy one to peddle — a modern restoration comedy — but I found a backer. Good theater too, on West Fifteenth Street. We go into rehearsals next month.”

That’s terrific.”

“Better than terrific. It’s Godsend-great. ‘Eat your heart out, Benny boy, with your dismal satires,’ I want to say, ‘and while at it, kill your liver.’ And they’re interested in — it’s a consortium of wealthy producers — the play I just finished. I’m on a roll that I hope never stops. How’s Lynn?”

“She’s fine. Filling in for someone at Princeton the next two years, so doing quite well. And publications in important journals in her field. She’s on a roll too.”

“Good for her. So, still together.”

“To tell you the truth, I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Not going so well, then, huh? Too bad. You were crazy about her and it seemed the same for her to you. You don’t seem too disturbed by it, so it’s probably been awhile. Both Ben and I thought you two were the most perfect couple alive. We saw marriage, kids, side-by-side burial plots.”

“We were, we are. Whatever the tense. She had doubts, though.”

“Why, if she loves you? Money? Sex? Another guy?”

“Don’t ask me. Anyway, you seem fine and you look good and I’m glad things are going so well for you. I gotta run, if you don’t mind. Something at home.”

“I’ll send you an announcement of the play’s opening. Lynn too. I’ll get her address from the phone book. If it’s a problem, you can come on different nights.” She puts out her cheek, I kiss it, and she goes into the street to hail a cab and I go into a candy store to buy today’s Times. I’ll do the rest of my shopping later.

It wasn’t that I didn’t want to talk about Lynn, I think, heading up my block, but that I thought Annette was getting too nosy. Because who is she to me? When she was seeing Ben, I didn’t even much like her. She always talked about herself and what she was doing and never asked what you were doing and she dumped on him all the time, paid some of his bills when he was short and then badmouthed him about it in front of people and also for dressing so sloppily and drinking too much and thinking he has talent as a playwright, and other things. “Why do you stay with her?” I asked him once, something I probably shouldn’t have, and he said The sex is good, and she’s lively.” God knows what she thought of me and my writing, and she no doubt thought I got the better of the deal when it came to Lynn. I feel, though, that if I bumped into someone now I actually liked and knew pretty well I’d even volunteer to speak about my breakup with Lynn today and say that for some odd reason it’s not hurting one bit and also that I’ve no idea why she did it. It wasn’t the sex, she didn’t have another guy, and it can’t be that she thinks I can only be devoted to my writing. So what was it? Maybe the money. That I didn’t make enough, she didn’t think I ever would, hard as I tried, and that frightened her when she thought of settling down with me, and did us in. It could be that. Or that and things I’m not seeing. That she’s 32 and wants to have children and doesn’t want to waste her time in a fruitless relationship. Anyway, can’t be changed.

I get home and while I’m putting away my things, I think suppose she calls? It’s possible; she did say she still loves me. So she could call to see how I’m taking it, worried that I’m not too despondent, that sort of thing. If she did, what would I say? I’d say, in the nicest way, that I’m okay, don’t worry, but to keep it that way it’s better for me That she doesn’t call again. I wouldn’t tell her I’ve barely thought of her since I left her apartment, or pined for her even once. I wouldn’t want to hurt her feelings. I don’t want to get even with her. That I’m taking it so well is enough for me. But she probably won’t call. Almost definitely she won’t. She’d know better. She’d think that calling me would be giving me some hope we could resume our relationship and maybe even eventually get married, and so on, and she wouldn’t want me to think that. No, she’s definitely not going to call.

I make coffee and get a stick of butter and sliced bagel out of the freezer, where I left them two months ago, and toast the bagel twice before it’s completely unfrozen. I sit down with the coffee and buttered bagel and read the paper. I look up; after reading a few articles and reviews, and think I still don’t feel bad at all. Either it hasn’t hit me or it never will. I really can’t say why. I’ve given myself a few reasons, but they don’t seen enough. Have I become a cold fish? That’s not it. And it isn’t that I no longer love her. Hell, I love her as much as I’ve loved any woman, but what was different with her is I never wanted to marry and have a child with someone more. That so? It’s so. I also never had more laughs with any woman, enjoyed myself more with one, felt less tension than I did with any woman, and never respected and admired a woman more than I did her or thought I was luckier in being with anyone more, and lots of other things more. Never had an easier relationship, a more compatible and companionable and comfortable one. The three big C’s. This one was as easy and smooth as can be till late this morning when she dropped that news on me. If we had a disagreement, and we did have a few, rarely but a few, we worked it out almost immediately. There was never any anger or sulking or bitterness or continued bad feelings between us. I was confident that nothing would disturb our relationship, that it’d go on easily and smoothly and wonderfully and all the other things, seemingly forever. That we were as absolutely right for each other as two people could be. What Annette said, “Perfect together.” Or was it “the most perfect couple alive”? We were close to being that, close, so how come I’m now not sad or even a little regretful? Really, I don’t understand it. I’ll miss her, won’t I? Miss the sex, her body, presence, wit, intelligence, gentleness and goodness. Miss most everything about and around her, won’t I? Her good friends, having dinner with her parents, the same cottage she rents every summer, her two Siamese cats. Miss all that and more, won’t I? I’ll pass or go to places we’ve been together and think of her wistfully, won’t I? See things, or think of them, I’ll want to do with her and be sad I can’t, won’t I? All the things between two people who love each other and are so alike in many ways, right? So how come I’m not sad? I think I know why. I’m relieved, but relieved I’m not sad. But why aren’t I sad? I don’t know. I give up. But something unusual has happened to me. If I don’t react the way I usually do, that’s unusual. I think that’s right. And maybe it is just because I couldn’t allow myself to go through being sad over a breakup again. But could that be all? Ah, the hell with it. Maybe there’s no sure explaining of it, at least for now.

Just then the phone rings. I think it’s Ben. He knew I was getting back today and probably called Lynn’s place and she told him I was here. I pick up the receiver. “Yes?”

“It’s me,” she says. “Before you say anything, I want to tell you I’m sorry about what happened.”

“So am I. But what can we do? Nothing.”

“Don’t say that. I’ve thought it over.”

“So have I.”

“What did you think?”

Things. But you called me. What is it?”

“You sound angry.”

“I’m not. I’m feeling pretty damn good, in fact.”

“You still sound angry. Not just your tone, but your choice of words. But I’m glad you’re feeling good. I’m feeling very bad, though. I made a mistake, Michael. That’s what I called to say. It could be I had to find out what my true feelings were about you and our future together by creating the worst scenario possible. Well, that I did, and I don’t like it. When you left, I broke down. It’s because I knew I’d made a grave mistake and that I do want to live with you and, if it continues to work out as well as it has before this morning, then for us to eventually get married and have a child.”

“You thought all this in such a short time?”

That’s what you have to say?”

“I’m just asking,” I say.

“Yes, it’s what I thought after you left. It all came to me in a flash. My reaction, my thoughts. We’ll work it out, sweetheart, we win. This is the bump we needed. If there isn’t enough money, we’ll deal with it. At first, we’ll save on just having one apartment between us. You’ll get a job and I’ll do my best to keep working and I’m sure my folks will help us out. They want to be grandparents as much as you want to be a father. But we’ll sacrifice, as you said. Both of us, not just you. But I first have to know how you feel about what I’ve said.”

“I feel relief, but not about that. I wish you hadn’t called, but you have. That you did call, I wish you hadn’t said what you had, but you did. But I can’t ever be with you again. Not see you, not be with you. The truth is, I can’t ever be with anyone like that again. I never want to go through another relationship like ours. I only want to work as hard as I can at what I do for the years that I have on earth and then die. Okay, that’s a lot of melodramatic bull. Simply put: staying involved with you or getting involved with someone else is obviously impossible for me. I see that now, this minute, because of this phone call, clearer than I ever have. Actually, I never saw it before; I’m only seeing it now. I’ll miss you but love my unhappiness over missing you more than any future happiness I’d get from being with you. No, that’s a bunch of bull too, and the quickest way to tell is that it’s so aptly put. In fact, probably nothing much of what I said makes sense or isn’t bull. I’m sure it’s riddled with inconsistencies and contradictions and things like that. I don’t even know why I’m saying any of it except for that there is something there, in what I said, there’s definitely something there, I just know it, and if the words and ideas are all mixed up and maybe incoherent, at least I know the feeling isn’t. No, strike that last line out too. It was said for effect and makes no sense either.”

She’s crying.

“I’m going to hang up now, Lynn. If I don’t I’ll lose my resolve, if that’s what it is, and say yes or maybe to something I feel deeply I don’t want to. You just shouldn’t have hit me with what you did and in the way and at the time you did it. Maybe that’s all it comes down to. We were, I thought, so happy. The thoughts I had about us after that never would have come to me, this phone call never would have come. Right now I’d be at my mother’s apartment, which was where I was off to when you hit me with what you did. I’d be having a drink with her, maybe my second, and filling her in on what we did since she visited us this summer, and then gone to my apartment for the night or back to yours. No, mine. That’s where my typewriter and manuscript and writing supplies are, and I wanted to write tomorrow morning after not having written for two days, one to pack and clean up the cottage, and the other to drive. That’s what we planned, right? when we dropped my things off at my apartment and then dropped the cats and your things off at yours and put the car in the garage and did some shopping. So I would have spent the night in my apartment, worked most of the day tomorrow and then gone to your place around late afternoon, most likely, since that’s when I usually went and we usually saw each other every day. Too late for doing any of that now except for my going to see my mother. But I don’t want to do that now either. I’m in no mood to, and she’d be glad to see me and have company and somebody to drink and talk with, and I wouldn’t want to spoil it for her. I’ll call her tomorrow and pretend we only just got back, or got back too late today to visit her, and see her then, tomorrow, when I hope I’ll be in the mood more to visit her. If she’s expecting me today and calls here tonight, I’ll tell her I’m very tired after the long drive and I’ll see her tomorrow. If she calls your place, tell her to call me.”

“What is it with you?” She seems to have stopped crying. “You don’t sound like yourself.”

“Oh? I don’t? Now there’s a wise statement. Or bright, I mean bright.”

“Even there. So cynical and a little mean. You never talked to me like that. Even when you were angry at me.”

“I was once angry with you? I don’t recall it.”

“Several times. And I with you. But you’re in a state I’ve never seen you in, and it doesn’t become you.”

“It doesn’t? And I’m unbecoming? Well, you’re wrong. But I am going to hang up. Please, I don’t mean to hurt you, if that’s what I’ll be doing, but be prepared now for my hanging up.”

I hang up. Tears come. First, a couple of drops, and I think it’s over, and then I cry so hard my next-door neighbor, if she’s home, must hear me. She probably is home; she usually gets back from work around six and then just stays there. I cry for a long time, five minutes, ten. Long for me. I’m usually a quick crier, and almost only at funerals and weddings and sad movies and when I think or talk about my dead brother and sister and father. I’ve never cried over a woman before. Is that right? Yes.

I wash my face in the bathroom, get a bottle of vodka out of the freezer, where I didn’t mean to leave it when we went to Maine, and half-fill a juice glass with it. I drink it slowly. Now I’m just drinking to calm myself, but I think I’d like to drink enough where I eventually pass out. After a few sips, I put ice in the glass and open a small can of V-8 juice and pour some of it in because it’s cheap vodka and it doesn’t taste good straight. I make another drink and then a third and go to my work table with it. I take the typewriter out of its case, set it up with paper in it, and think I’ll write a letter to her. I don’t know what I’ll say, but it’ll have in it an apology for being cynical and a little mean and for acting so rude to her when she took the tine to call me. But I should call my mother, say we just got to the city and I’m very tired from the trip and I’ll see her tomorrow around noon. “Maybe you’ll let me take you out to lunch,” I’ll say. But I’ll slur my speech and she’ll know I’m getting drunk or already there and worry about it and ask a lot of questions, so I’ll call her tomorrow and see her then. I start typing the letter.

“Dear Lynn: I don’t know why I said what I did to you yesterday (it’s now tonight). I know I’ll never be able to completely explain it. I meant it or I didn’t. Or meant some of it, though what part now I don’t remember. (Yes, I’ve been drinking.) Drink or not, I know I love you but I also know that what you did to me today killed it for us forever. Oh, forever’s too big a word. It’s the wrong word. It’s — Lynn. I’m sorry and I know no apology will ever undo the harm I did. Again, slickly written in a momentary lucid moment, so don’t believe a word I just said. I should give this up. I can’t write. Can’t write a letter now. I can barely find the right typewriter keys. I’m going to get up now and go to bed. It’s early, it’s still light out, so really not so long since I hung up on you, but I belong in bed. If I don’t, I’ll pass out at my work table. And I know I’m not going to mail this letter to you. How can I? I’ll give it time, maybe things will get better. Though when I say ‘it’ and ‘things,’ what am I talking about? Us, us! Maybe we just shouldn’t be together. That’s what I think. I might send this letter after all, but tomorrow — I’m in no condition to go out now; even to finding a stamp and an envelope to stick this letter in — just so you’ll get as accurate an account of what happened, or just my take on things, as you can. Then make your own decision. I’m sure what you decide, I’ll want too, or at least I’ll go along easily with it. I don’t know if that’s true. So, I’m sorry, believe me, very sorry, but that person who said all those things to you tonight was definitely me. Best ever, Michael, and of course, much love.”

I think, after I fall on my bed and turn over on my back and feel myself drifting off, that I’ve ruined it with her for good.

YO-YO

Hi.

Hi.

I’m sorry, did I startle you?

No, I think I startled myself.

I must have had something to do with it.

You just about had everything to do with it.

Isn’t that close to what I just said?

I don’t think so. My being startled came from my reaction at suddenly seeing you and being said hi to from you on your bike.

It still sounds close. But next time I won’t rush up on you like that.

I don’t think there can be a next time like that.

You mean next time you’ll be ready for my racing down the street on my bike in the night and suddenly stopping and saying hi to you like that?

I mean next time I won’t be surprised by my reaction at suddenly seeing you and your saying hi to me like that.

But if you’re not startled or surprised by your reaction next time, then it’d mean you either saw or heard me or were told I’m racing down the street toward you on a bike.

What I think is that my surprise to my reaction at suddenly seeing and hearing you on your hike doesn’t make sense.

I’d think that every reaction by someone rational to something real happening would have to make some sort of sense.

Well, they say it’s not supposed to make total sense.

They”? Who’s “they”?

The people who talk about the things I’m now talking about, such as my suddenly being surprised by my reaction at suddenly seeing you and hearing you say hi to me from your bike.

If you suddenly got surprised by my suddenly racing up to you on my bike on this empty street in the night and saying hi to you, then I think your surprised reaction to being surprised still makes sense.

Then the they who are they and not is they are wrong and you’re right and I’m wrong. And though I still think I’m right by being wrong when I say they could be right when they say my reaction to my reaction doesn’t make sense, it does make sense.

I think all this talk about what doesn’t or does make sense is making less and less sense to me the more we talk. And if we’re going to continue to talk we should both feel that what we’re both saying makes sense.

All right, then — you biking back from work?

Yes, and you?

Walking back from the store.

Returning something? For I don’t see any packages.

I didn’t say what kind of store.

Was it a shoelace store where you bought just one pair of shoelaces?

A yo-yo store where I bought just one yo-yo.

Is it in your pocket?

No.

Up your sleeve? I can see it’s not concealed in your hand.

It’s in my mouth, its string end looped around a back bottom tooth. I bet you thought that lump in my cheek was my tongue.

Either your tongue or a large new sourball or even a larger sourball when new that had been slightly sucked.

I didn’t say I went to a sourball store. And of course I couldn’t have just come from a tongue store, as there are none.

I didn’t say what kind of tongue I meant. For you could have gotten a tongue in a shoelace store. And if it were a sourball in your mouth, then had it left over from the last time you went to a sourball store.

I actually did have one left over. Till a minute before I first saw you, when I sucked down and swallowed the sourball in my right cheek to make room for the yo-yo I bought.

You could have put the yo-yo in your other cheek. Or if you like the right cheek for your yo-yos, then taken the sourball out and put the yo-yo in the right cheek and the sourball in the left.

I could have, but I only thought of putting the yo-yo in my mouth after I’d sucked down most of the sourball and bit into the little left and swallowed the pieces. Had I known I was going to bump in to you, I would have saved half the sourball I had left.

I don’t eat sweets.

I could still give you half my yo-yo. It isn’t a sweet or sour, comes apart easily and I’m sure in the short time it’s been in my mouth, hasn’t been changed in any physical or chemical way.

It would depend what flavor it is.

Wood.

I prefer plastic.

I think sucking a plastic yo-yo would make you sick.

But wood could give me splinters while plastic wouldn’t.

If I can’t give you a wooden yo-yo half, instead I can demonstrate my little yo-yo trick with the whole yo-yo in my mouth and its string end looped around my back tooth.

You only have one back tooth?

I’ve several. But the right lower’s the one I choose for the loop to be around, as it’s the biggest and I believe my strongest tooth. And because it’s a bottom tooth, the string has less chance of slipping off than it would around an upper tooth which, if my lips or front teeth couldn’t grab the departing string in time or my tongue couldn’t pin it to my teeth or gums, the yo-yo would fall to the floor. And if the floor happened to be this sidewalk, the trick couldn’t be tried again till the yo-yo was washed and the string, except for its loop end, had thoroughly dried.

I was only asking. Now I’m watching,

Well, as the yo-yo fully unwinds out of my mouth, I lean over a ways like this and do the walk-the-dog trick on the sidewalk and then jerk my head up so the yo-yo can rewind into my mouth. Then I close my mouth and stand straight and bring my feet and the inner condyles of my femora together again, or stand straight and bring the feet and condyles together and then close my mouth, and the trick’s done.

That’s quite a finish.

You’re not in too much of a rush to watch it? If you are I could save the trick for another night when there might be a bigger moon and no clouds or perhaps during one of the hemisphere’s rare auroras, or at least under or near a streetlamp.

I’ve time and there’s plenty of light.

Or even one weekend or holiday afternoon when you’re cycling down the street toward me and I happen to have a yo-yo in my mouth with its string end looped around that back tooth.

What I think is that you’re dawdling on doing the trick because you don’t have a yo-yo in your mouth.

Want me to open my mouth so you can see it?

Almost every time you opened your mouth to speak I saw you had no yo-yo inside. That is, once you said you had a yo-yo inside your mouth and I began making an effort to look for it.

Then I must have swallowed it.

Isn’t that a risky thing to do with a yo-yo?

Why? My digestive track’s like an alligator’s.

Is an alligator’s especially fit or equipped to digest yo-yos?

An alligator’s or crocodile’s or any of the large loricates who can digest an iron wrench without a problem.

That would be fine, if your yo-yo was made of iron and not wood.

The iron yo-yo I had was too prone to rust, didn’t taste as good as the wood, and either chipped or dented a ceramic or linoleum floor tile if I landed it too hard, or my front teeth if I jerked it back into my mouth too fast and without perfect control.

What about the string? Should I put my mind at ease because the string’s also made of wood?

The string’s made of string.

Then it must be a vegetable fiber, which shouldn’t do your digestive system any harm if the wood doesn’t.

I’m allergic to all fruits and vegetables, so I’m sure it wasn’t either of those.

Maybe it was made of dried meat or fish.

Allergic to all animal flesh too — dried, fried or fresh. And anything grown in the ground except trees, shrub stems or the harder vines makes me unwell. But I think we better check whether the string’s still in my mouth before we get upset. It could have come undone from the peg that joins the two yo-yo disks.

Doesn’t seem to be inside.

Did you look way back to the right lower molars?

I envy you. From what I can make out, you haven’t a filling in your mouth.

Forget about that. Is the string there or not?

Seriously, though, how can you have no fillings? You must be a few years older than I and so have had even more time to get cavities and impactions and lose a tooth or two. But you’ve all your teeth and apparently no cavity that large where the tooth had to be drilled and filled.

You didn’t check the upper set.

I’d need a dentist’s mouth mirror and penlight for that.

I could stand on my head on the sidewalk so you could see it.

I’d have to get on my knees to look, which would dirty my skirt.

What if I stood upside down on this car hood and opened my mouth extra wide?

You’d get dirty and probably slide off the hood and break some of your beautiful teeth.

Then I’ll just have to take out the top set and show it to you in one piece.

You saying you’ve had less success with the upper set than your lower?

I’m saying I’ve two sets of uppers. One for taking out and showing people who are interested in upper sets or really any kind of sets, teeth, twins, etcetera. And a second set underneath the first for the prehension and chewing of food and as half of a defense and offense weapon and for clasping and carrying things.

You’ve got a pretty full mouth.

I’d even have more in it if I hadn’t swallowed the yo-yo.

You forgot the string.

I didn’t forget the string, just which side I put it in. For I occasionally loop its end around the lower left molar to give the right molar a rest if I’m doing the trick several times in a row. And the last time I looped the string around the tooth was a while ago.

Just waiting for someone to bike along to do the trick for?

All the bikers on the block but you have seen it, which was why it was in my mouth so long.

No new uni-, tri-or hydrocyclists move into the neighborhood in the last few days?

One, but he didn’t stop pedaling long enough to be shown the trick to.

I’m sure there’s a good reason why, but I better go.

You have to?

The babysitter leaves to babysit for her own child when my husband comes home at five. And after an hour of babysitting alone with his son, my husband can go wild.

Paints his face, dons a malamute’s garb, does a snarling yipping dance — wild like that?

Just a few booming curses at my maiden and pet names. It isn’t easy taking care of a sleepy-hungry two-year-old between five and six.

I bet it was even harder before he turned five.

You know, sometimes it can be difficult talking to you.

That’s because I only have you for a few minutes. But at four I expect he got so out of hand now and then that you and your husband had to shout “four” and then duck, or just flee the house or crack.

No. We both had to shout “duck” and then fall on all fours in the house and quack.

You have more than one two-year-old who was four?

One’s enough for the time being.

One might be enough, but there’s nothing you can do about it once his second birthday comes.

It already has: three times. Which is the favor I want to ask of you, which I don’t think I’ve alluded to yet. You see, tonight’s Tim’s second birthnight again and neither my husband nor I—

Bill.

Phil. And we don’t want be around as we weren’t for Tim’s last three anniversaries, as we feel if we’re not there when his birthnight comes, he’ll always remain one.

One what? And how do you elude your son during the same day of his birthnight?

He was born at night, so we always assumed that’s when his anniversary is. Though whenever we travel around the world and Tim’s second anniversary comes, I always check my terrestrial calendar as to what hour and day it is where I am when it’s nine at night in New York on November tenth.

But that’s not tonight.

And I’m not at some other part of the world but New York.

And a good thing it is for me too. As I’m tired, grimy and thirsty and I’d hate right now to be talking to you so far away from my own kitchen, shower and bed.

Worse came to worse, you could always babysit for Tim while we’re out trying to avoid him, and celebrate his second birthnight with him and later wash up and sleep on our couch.

If I spent the night with you all in another part of the world, I might not have the time and means to get back to my job and room in New York.

You could make it your job to get back to your room by doing your yo-yo tricks in the streets.

But if I swallowed my yo-yo, the country I’d be stuck in with you might not carry them.

Then carry a few dozen extra with you and make your plane passage back by introducing the yo-yo craze to that country.

How does one go about introducing a yo-yo craze to a country? Does one say “Yo-yo craze, this is country. Country, I want you to meet yo-yo craze”?

I think it would be protocol in the host country to first introduce the country to the yo-yo craze and then the yo-yo craze to the country. After that, every five years you could reintroduce them the same way and become financially set for life.

But in those five years when I’d be away someone else might reintroduce the country to the yo-yo craze, and when I came back it would be old hat.

You’re not missing my point? But say you were a couple of days late after the five years were up and someone got there before you with the reintroduction, start an old hat craze in that country.

You think I also have those in my mouth?

I didn’t even see an old jacket, which is why I said I envy you so much. No matter how well I take care of my teeth, I get one to two cavities a year.

With me, no matter what I do, I can’t get cavities.

I don’t know why you’d do anything to get them. Though if you ever do get a cavity, I’ll give you the name of a good dentist. If he’s too busy to take on new patients, I’ll try to give you my teeth with cavities in them in exchange for the equivalent of your perfect teeth. If by some luck I don’t have cavities this year, I’ll give you my old fillings, which you can then tell my dentist you want repaired or replaced for me.

I wouldn’t have any place to put your fillings.

Since you swallowed your yo-yo, you could put the fillings in your cheek.

I would if I could loop a string end around one of them and this filling could spin out of my mouth and unwind and rewind like a yo-yo so I could do my walk-the-dog trick.

My dentist wanted to give me the unwinding-rewinding kind of fillings, but gold’s the best I could afford.

Gold’s rustproof, so it might taste a lot better than iron after a while and yet be just as digestible. But I think it would still break a front tooth or two if I lost control of it in the rewinding.

Now I see why you tried to get cavities. So you could always have fillings around in case you swallowed your yo-yo in a country which doesn’t carry them and where you didn’t have the foresight to carry any extras in.

You’ve got quite a memory.

Oh, I forget plenty of times. Like how Phil acts when it gets way past six and I’m not home when he’s babysitting alone and he’s past booming out curses to all my names.

I suppose the best thing then would be for you to get right home.

The very best thing would be for Phil not to get so upset after an hour of babysitting alone, so I wouldn’t have to worry so much about rushing home.

Then I suppose the next best thing after that would be for you not to worry so much about how upset he gets after an hour of his babysitting alone when you’re still not home.

No, I think the next best thing after Phil not getting so upset after an hour of his babysitting alone so I wouldn’t have to worry so much about how upset he gets and have to rush right home, would be for me to simply go home.

Then the next to the next best thing, if the next best thing is your simply getting home, is for you not to worry so much about how upset he gets after an hour of his babysitting alone when you’re still not home.

No, the next best thing after my simply getting home, is being home.

Then the next to the next to the next best thing, if the next to the next best thing is your being home, is your not worrying so much about rushing home.

No, I’d still have to worry about it.

But it would still be the next to the next best thing if you didn’t.

It’s so far from reality that there’s almost no reason for me to even think about it or for you to catalogue it. And I really have to go.

That’s the next to the very best thing on your list.

Is it? You mentioned my memory, but I don’t know how you kept track. Anyway, right now it’s the only thing.

If it is, then there isn’t a list and thus no next to the best thing or next to the next or next to the next to the next best things.

You might be right. It’s become too confusing to me with all these nexts and bests and not-nexts and thuses. And it’s not that I don’t want to talk about it. It’s all been very stimulating. That must sound insensitive and forced. It’s not easy talking the ordinary way with you. But I am married and have a child and responsibilities and a home and am loved by a man I’m in love with and who’s the father of my child, so I’ll have to do the only thing or the next to the very best thing or whatever thing or next you said it was on my list or list turned non-list and just go.

It’s not that I don’t want to have a child or responsibilities or a home, but I’m not married and right now have no prospects of such or am even seeing a woman, and I don’t want to go.

So stay.

I think I will.

Then, nice talking.

Same here. But may I carry your bike up the stoop?

I don’t see how you can if you stay.

I’ll come back.

If you come back, you still haven’t stayed.

Then I won’t stay. I’ll just carry your bike up the stoop to the building’s vestibule or ground floor hallway and then come down again and go.

The bike’s not that light. But carrying it up the stoop’s good exercise for me after riding it back from work so lazily. I can do it myself.

I know, but I’d like carrying it up for you.

You’re supposed to let women do what they can for themselves these days.

I know what I’m supposed to let women do these days, and what I want to do for this woman right now.

Look at you. You can suddenly get so serious.

Bike-carrying’s serious business for me.

I’d think yo-yo carrying’s the business you’d be more serious about. For no matter what the country you’re in does or doesn’t carry and no matter how many extra yo-yos you might carry in, it doesn’t seem possible you could ever swallow a bike.

Should I leave it in the hall here or carry it to your apartment?

The landlord lets me keep it here. Was it heavier than you thought?

I never thought it would be heavy.

Did it turn out to be heavy?

It turned out to be light.

Not as light as your yo-yo, though.

Truth is, it’s the yo-yo that’s not turning out to be as light as I thought. Maybe it wasn’t made of wood after all.

Laminated plastic perhaps?

One of your favorite flavors, if I remember, but I suddenly don’t feel too good.

You’re not serious again.

I am serious.

Probably you should take an antacid when you get home.

It’s more than that.

A doctor?

A doctor wouldn’t take me.

A city hospital?

I don’t know if I could take a city hospital.

The emergency room of a private hospital would certainly take you, wouldn’t they? But then you’re not really ill.

This time, maybe it’s you who’s missing the point. My not wanting to swallow an entire city hospital is just a sensible precaution.

If the hospital’s big enough, it might swallow you.

You’re hardly comforting.

Because you can’t be ill.

I can so be ill.

Then I don’t know what to say.

If you can’t think of anything, I can give you some things to say.

I think the best thing for me to say is goodbye.

And the next best thing?

There can’t be a next best thing. I have to go. I’ve a home. A husband, a child, they’re waiting for me. And if my son’s napping, then just my husband. Thanks for carrying up the bike. Goodbye.

Then I don’t know what’s so good about it.

Then badbye or just bye.

Yes, that’s probably just a goodbye.

Bye, then?

I wish we didn’t have to say bye.

We didn’t say bye. We said “badbye” and “just bye” and “then bye.” And we didn’t say these byes, only I did.

I mean I wish we didn’t have to say goodbye.

But you still haven’t said goodbye.

Then what I mean is I wish I didn’t have to say goodbye.

What you really mean is you wish I hadn’t and still didn’t have to say goodbye.

No, that’s not what I really mean.

Then what you really mean is you wish, after I said I hadn’t and still didn’t have to say goodbye, that I went upstairs and said my goodbyes.

Yes, that’s what I mean.

That’s what I said you meant.

And that’s what I meant when I said “Yes, that’s what I mean.”

And that’s what I meant when I said That’s what I said you meant.” Anyway — bye.

But that’s what I meant when I said “And that’s what I meant when I said ‘Yes, that’s what I mean.’”

Which is what I meant when I said “And that’s what I meant when I said ‘That’s what I said you meant.’ Anyway — bye.” Anyway — bye.

And that’s what I meant when I said “But that’s what I said I meant when I said ‘And that’s what I meant when I said “Yes, that’s what I mean.”’”

But that’s what I meant when I said “Which is what I meant when I said ‘And that’s what I meant when I said That’s what I said you meant.”’” Anyway — bye.’ Anyway — bye.” Anyway — bye.

Bye.

NO KNOCKS

I go out into the street. Finally, it’s a nice day. Rains came, went; sun now. I say hello to my landlord, Next-door neighbors. Wave to Mrs. Evans behind her window. Mr. Sisler sitting on his stoop across the street. Rob’s boy walking their dog just before he goes to school. Mary Jane Koplowitz dumping her family’s garbage on her way to work. Children, workers, cyclists, pedestrians, mailman. “Howdy-do. How are you? I feel great. Lovely day. What a relief after so much rain. Hiya. Morning. Hope the good weather holds. See ya. Take care. Hope you have a nice day.” I walk down the block and say more of the same. “Hello. Morning. How’s it going? So long. Have a great day.” Friendly street. Living on it for years. People know who you are, what you do. What do I do? They know I do relatively nothing. Just about nothing. Nothing. They know. In other words, they also know what you don’t do. I don’t work. They know. No home projects or work for other people that keeps me home. They know that too. I walk, talk, read. I get up first. I have breakfast, wash, shave. Shower every day. No shower in the morning, then an evening shower. Then I go downstairs. Not after my evening shower, though I might do that too, but after I do all those morning things. I never bother checking the mailbox anymore, on the way out or when I come back. There’s never any mail. I’m waiting for the day the mailman says “Mr. Rusk, your mailbox is jammed full. I can’t stuff any more mail inside. Please take the mail out so I can have room to put new mail in. At least take some of the mail out so I can have some room to put new mail in.” That’ll be the day. Day I might even look forward to. Do I? No, though once did. But it’ll be a day, all right. What’ll those letters be like? Say it happened. And who’d write? Nobody. I know no one other than from the street and around the immediate neighborhood. No relatives, friends, old acquaintances. And I tell people who move off the block or out of the neighborhood “Just come back and visit if you want, but don’t bother to write. I never bother opening my mailbox, so I’d never get your mail. Only day I’ll open my mailbox is the day the mailman tells me it’s too full to get another piece of mail in, but that’ll be the day. But say that happened. I might only take out a few pieces of mail, or just one big one, to make room in the box, so I still might not get your mail.” And I pay all my bills by cash and personally and on time. So no need for mail. I’ve none. No need for it and no mail. And the mailman’s instructed not to put any junk mail in my mailbox. The instructions are on the building’s vestibule letterbox for the mailman not to put any junk mail into my mailbox. Or they’re on the vestibule mailbox for the mailman not to put any junk mail into my letterbox. One or the other. I’ll go to the library one of these days to look up the difference in the dictionary between those two. If there isn’t one, I’ll find that out too. A difference. Mailbox and letterbox. Both I get my mail in, but which is which? And if the vestibule box that houses all the tenants’ smaller boxes for mail is called a letterbox and those tenant boxes are called mailboxes, or vice versa, than what’s the box on the street called that people put their mail in? Not only people. Yes, only people. I was going to say “Not only people but children too.” But children are people too. Children are people, period. I don’t know what could have been on my mind when I started to say “Not only people but children too.” Caught myself this time. Other times also, but my mind’s particularly sharp today. Not particularly. Not even sharp. Mind’s just functioning a bit better than yesterday. Not even that. I can’t really tell if it’s functioning any better today than yesterday. Mind’s functioning better now than when I woke up today. That’s for sure, so that I can at least say. But now I’m at the corner.

I look around. No one I know here. People, yes, but no one I know to talk to when I feel like talking to someone. I look all four ways. Up the block I just came down. Down the next block of this street that I don’t think I’m going to continue on. Both ways along this avenue I’m now on. Though who’s to say where the avenue begins and sidestreet ends when one’s standing on the corner where the avenue and sidestreet meet? I’m sure plenty of people can say. I can’t. Not right now, at least. But all four principal directions, in other words. East, west, etcetera. No one I know. No one who knows me. There’s a difference there. Lots of people — Not lots. Several. A few, I’ll say, claim to know me when I don’t know them. Not claim. But they say they know me. They’ll come over to me or just stop me and say “Hello” or “Good morning (etcetera), Mr. Rusk.” In other words, that etcetera: all depending on the time of day in the time zone we’re in. If, for example, they say “Good morning, Mr. Rusk,” when it’s obviously evening, then I figure they’re joking or confused or even crazy or they made a simple word-reverse mistake, and I react according to how I feel at that moment about why they greeted me this way by my last name. If they use Mrs. or Miss before my last name, then no matter how accurate they are with the time of day, I ignore them or question them about the use of that conventional title of respect. But say they do say “Good morning, Mr. Rusk,” when it’s morning or close enough to it where I don’t think the greeting is strange. If I look at them as if I don’t know them — and usually when I look at them this way, I don’t know them — they’ll say “I know you but you don’t know me.” Sometimes they’ll greet me and immediately say that about my not knowing them, even though I do know them and they know I do. And sometimes when I know them and they know I do, though they’ll say I don’t, I’ll look at them as if I don’t. Why will I give them that look when I do know them and why will they say I don’t know them when they know I do? Couple of reasons, at least, that I can think of. But today none of that happens. So no one to talk to now unless I stop someone I don’t know and who I know doesn’t know me and start to talk to him, something I don’t like to do.

If I walk uptown on this avenue, which is north, the chances of stopping someone I know in proportion to the number of people on the street will be much less than if I walk downtown, which seems to get more crowded the further south you walk, just as the streets seem to get less crowded the further north you walk. The chances of stopping someone I know in proportion to the number of people on the street would be greatest if I walked back to my block and kept walking up and down it and especially on my side of it, but I don’t like going over the same route so soon after I came off it. I could cross the avenue and continue west along this same numbered street. But partly out of personal reasons, which I won’t go into, and because the chances of stopping someone I know in proportion to the number of people on the street would be no better walking west than walking uptown, west seems the least likely direction to go except if I didn’t want to stop or be stopped by someone. I could, of course, create many other routes other than just walking straight in one of the four principal directions. I could go north four blocks, then west till I hit the river, or south three blocks and east one and then south again till I get to the heart of the city; or south two blocks and east three and across the park and continue east till I hit the river that runs along the other side of the city, and so on. But I think the best chance, without going back to my side of my block and walking up and down it, of stopping someone I know or being stopped by someone I know or don’t know but who says he knows me, is to walk downtown on the avenue I’m on.

So I walk south. I see no one I know on this avenue and am not stopped by anyone. I keep walking. Chances get less with each step that I’ll meet someone I know or don’t know but who says he knows me. I walk five blocks, six. Chances get even less, and after four more blocks, almost nonexistent. Then I’m so far away from my neighborhood — sixteen blocks — that I feel if I want to talk to someone now, and I think I do, the only way would be if I stopped someone I don’t know, and chances are almost nonexistent here that he’d know me, and start up a conversation with him despite my dislike or reluctance or apprehension, or whatever it is, in doing so.

First person I see on the street, and I’m now twenty blocks from where I live, who I think I’d like to stop and talk to is a man. Not because he is a man. Though maybe because I’m a man I prefer to stop a man stranger to a woman, since I think a man would be less alarmed at being stopped by someone he doesn’t know and feel more willing to talk to a stranger than a woman would, though I could be wrong. Are women less likely to be bothered or frightened by women strangers who stop to talk to them than by men? I’d think so. And what about men in regard to women strangers who stop them because they want to start up a conversation, or even for other reasons, like asking change for a dollar, let’s say, or asking for a handout, or a donation of some kind? I’m not sure. But this man. I might now know why I prefer stopping a man I don’t know, to a woman, but I’m less sure why I think I’d like to stop and talk to this man out of hundreds I’ve passed. It could be his clothes. One reason. He’s dressed in a sports jacket and slacks, boots, big wide-brimmed western hat, and is carrying a closed umbrella and flat package, and has an overcoat over his arm. But closer I get to him from behind, more I think the flat package is a thin book and the jacket and pants are a suit made of a heavy fabric and the overcoat is a parker and the umbrella a black cane. When I get right up behind him and then am walking alongside him on his left, keeping in pace with him now, I see that the flat package is a book, on cytohistology, its cover says, another word, if I remember it and remember to look up, I should look up at the library one of these days. The other was what? I forget, though it came to me today and could come back. The cane’s the closed umbrella I originally thought it was, but beige rather than black. Boots are western and well polished and recently heeled and have intricate stitching on them that looks like a lot of lassos. Parker is several djellabas that I supposed he’s taking to a store to be cleaned, though that’s a wild guess. His hat is still a Stetson-type, though leather instead of felt. Shirt’s almost the same color as the suit and seems to be made of chamois cloth, while the suit’s suede. Brown suede. Light brown. Darker brown leather buttons in a hatched pattern. Flap pockets. Same kind of buttons on the pockets. Or at least the left flap pocket has that button; the right one could be different or have come off, for all I know. A tie. Red. Stickpin. Gold. Cuff links. Just initials or one word: DAD. Or at least the left cuff link has those initials or that word; the right one could say MOM, for all I know, and also gold. “Hello,” I say.

He stops. “Do I know you?”

“No. Do I know you?”

“Not as far as I know,”

That’s what I should have said. Not ‘No.’ But ‘Not as far as I know.”

Then we definitely, or almost definitely, which could be undefinitely but not nondefinitely, don’t know each other as far as we know, could that be right?”

“As far as I know it can’t be ‘We undefinitely don’t know each other,’ but on the other one you’re right. Now as far as knowing each other, my memory does fail me sometimes. So we could still know each other. If we do, I’ve forgotten, and I’ll have to leave it up to you to remember.”

“My memory does fall short of me also,” he says. “No, that’s not the word. The words. My memory does fail me also, as far as I’m concerned. And that’s not the expression. My memory occasionally fails me also, as it does everyone, but I’m almost sure I don’t know you. Years ago I might have. But there comes a time when I have to say about someone I knew long ago but since then haven’t spoken or written to or heard from in any way, or seen, and if I did see him, didn’t recognize him, that I don’t know him now.”

“So we could have known each other once, you’re saying?”

“Possibly,” he says. “But our faces could have changed so much since then that we don’t recognize each other now. And our eyesight, in addition to our faces or apart from them, and to a lesser degree as a recognizing factor, our voices, mannerisms, appearances and clothes. Anyway, to boil it down to the minimum: if I once knew you, I don’t recognize you in any way now. How about you?”

“Same here all around. So how are you?”

“Do you mean, since I last saw you, if I ever did see you, or last spoke or heard from you, if I ever have?”

“Yes.”

“I’m fine, since we last spoke, wrote or saw each other, if we ever did. And if we didn’t, I can still say I don’t think I’ve had a bad day that I can remember since I was born. That’s not to say I haven’t. My memory again. What it does say is that as far back and as much as I can remember, I haven’t. Had a bad day, I’m saying.”

“I can’t say that.”

“Well, it’s over now, whatever it was, isn’t that right?”

“I can’t say that either.”

“Broken love affair? Family tragedy? Professional or affinal crisis? Illness? Malaise? Something you read in the newspaper? Got in the mailbox? Witnessed, from your window? Saw in the street? Personal experience or experiences? Is one of those it, or are some to all of those them, and which can’t be broached, right?”

“Personal experience, yes.”

“A woman?”

“Can’t be broached, yes.”

“Yes, a woman?”

“Can’t be broached.”

The woman? The subject?”

“Can’t be broached, can’t be broached.”

“Too bad, then. That it happened. And that she or it can’t be broached.” Sticks out his hand. “Lionel Stelps.”

“Victor Rusk.”

Shaking of hands. Nicing of days. Changing of weathers. Preferences of sun to rain, city to suburbs, streets to parks, busier the better. What do you do’s? Where you off to’s? Going my ways? Okays. Walk. Talk. Seems he likes almost nothing better in life than to walk the streets too. To talk to people he knows or doesn’t know but who know him, or to people he doesn’t know and who don’t know him but who like almost nothing better in life than to walk the streets and be stopped by people they know or don’t know, and for many of the reasons that he and I do. Because we like people. Talking and listening to people. Because we like to be outdoors and preferably on the busy and hectic streets of the city with many kinds of people of both sexes and all sorts of age groups and occupations and pursuits. He’s very much like me, in other words. Maybe that’s why I wanted to stop him, when I ordinarily don’t want to stop anyone I don’t know and who shows no sign of knowing me. Not just his clothes. Not that I could have known much what he was like or what he almost liked doing best in life just by his clothes. Not that I really could see what his clothes were like, and especially the front part, from so far away in back when I first spotted him and thought I might want to stop him. Not that I even like to stop people who are like me in any way and who like almost nothing better in life than walking the streets to stop and talk to people or be stopped by people they know or don’t know but who know them or show some sign they do. And as far as I know he isn’t like me except for what he almost likes to do best in life and that he likes what helps contribute to it: mild weather, good health, sufficient sleep, crowded city streets, etcetera. His voice, face, hair, build, height, weight, age and just about everything else about him, and especially his clothes, aren’t like me or mine at all. He’s well-kempt, — shoed, — spoken, — bred, more mildly mannered than I, it seems, and he wears a hat. I don’t own a single headpiece. Not even a winter cap, or hat with a brim of any kind to keep the sun off my face. Must be lots of people who do what we do, we say. Streets, walk, talk, people, stop, like to be stopped, and so on. Now the sun goes. I probably got a bit of a burn on my face today, which he didn’t because of his hat. Continue to talk. He’s lived a few more years in his apartment than I have in mine. Streets get less crowded, and not because we’ve passed through the heart of the city or it’s that time of day. Bad sign, we say. Clouds come. We continue to walk. Three more blocks, four. Sky darkens. Talk about what we don’t like to do most. Stay inside on nice days like this one was, for one thing. Not talking to anyone for hours, another thing. Day after day of unrelenting rain is probably the worst thing. Wind. Store awnings quaking. People hurrying. Signboards swinging. People running. They sense something. Finally, we do too. Or I just sense it, because it’s possible he already did and wasn’t saying. Maybe because he wanted to continue talking. “Pity,” he says. Pats my shoulder.

“Pity is right,” and I pat his shoulder.

Though nice chat we had.”

“Yes, while it lasted. No, that’s not what I wanted to say or how I wanted to say it. One of those, not both. But I think you know what I mean without my going into it or repeating what I wanted to say the right way.”

He doesn’t say yes or no or nod or shake his head. He smiles, a weaker smile than the ones before, and sticks out his hand. I stick out mine and we shake. It starts to sprinkle.

“See you sometime,” he says. “But I better run. Don’t want to ruin my clothes.”

“I guess I don’t mind getting—” I begin to say, but he walks away. Put up his umbrella and is heading further downtown. That where he live? Maybe he was shopping in midtown. But he had no package. The djellabas. But they weren’t bagged or wrapped. Maybe he came to midtown to get them from a friend, or even the umbrella or book or hat or he bought something that can’t be seen in a pocket or around his neck or wrist. Or even his ankle. Men sometimes wear ankle bracelets, though that’s the least likely prospect I mentioned. Or maybe he strolled all the way to around where I live and possibly beyond, and just to stroll — for exercise, let’s say — and I caught him walking back to his home downtown. But that doesn’t explain the djellabas. The book he could be carrying for any number of reasons. For instance, just to read in a stopping-off place like a café. What was the subject matter of the book again that I was going to look up? Forgot. Such a long, complicated and unfamiliar word, I doubt I’ll ever be able to remember it. Maybe he hurried off with that rain excuse because he knows something more about this area than I. I rarely get this far from my block. The last time was when? Can’t remember. Well, lots of questions, and nothing like a little mystery in one’s life. What’s the mystery in mine? That personal experience I brought up and didn’t explain? Bet he’s wondering about it now. Woman, hmm, I can see him thinking. Actually, I can still see him walking downtown, the umbrella still protecting him. He’s a block away but not many people between us. Then he disappears. Maybe he ducked in someplace to get out of the rain. Doesn’t even want a few drops on his clothes, if that excuse was the truth. What I was going to tell him before he left was “I guess I don’t mind getting caught in the rain as much as you.” He would have asked why. I would have said “My clothes are quite old and used. First old, then used. I mean by that: made old by someone else, or who knows how many people, because who knows how many thrift shops they were in, then further used by me. In plainer language: I bought all the clothes I have on in a thrift shop. Several thrift shops, but they all came from one. Meaning: several different thrift shops, but they’re all thrift-shop clothes. In even plainer language: they’re worn, shabby, very cheap clothes that were the only ones I could afford in several very cheap thrift shops. What could be called work clothes if I worked. Worked at a laborer’s job where one didn’t need good clothes. In the plainest language possible: I don’t mind ruining them; they’re already ruined.”

I look in all four directions, I seem to be one of the few pedestrians on the streets, and those that are on them are protected by rainwear or umbrellas or both. But why get wet? It’s pouring now, so I mean why get wetter? I duck under a store awning. But why duck? Ducks take to rain, don’t they? That might have elicited a laugh from that man. A good joke, I think, and I laugh out loud. Oops. Someone’s under the awning with me. A woman, also with no umbrella or rainwear.

“Howdy-do,” I say to her, “Nice day, eh?” She gives me the fisheye, looks away. One of those. Meaning: she is.

“Just a joke,” I say. “Minor. Harmless. Didn’t mean anything by it. Just the good mood I’m in. But some rain. Cats and dogs, yes? Bats and hogs, no.” Fisheye, looks away. Still one of those. No letup. She nor the rain. Me too, I guess. Strangers. But maybe I’ll get to her yet. In a good way, I’m saying. “Okay, I understand, madame. Takes all kinds, and I love that it does. But must say good-day. I must, not you. For ducks take to rain as they do to water, don’t they? In fact, rain is water. Rainwater, of course.” Fisheye, mutters, clutches her handbag closer to her, moves two steps away from me but still under the awning. I laugh to myself, but inside this time. Sort of to balance the last time I laughed out loud, which was to an inside remark.

I salute her goodbye and step into the rain. Really pouring now. Buckets. I start running north. Every so often I duck under a store awning or building overhang and try to make talk with someone there, and the awnings and overhangs I choose I choose because someone’s there, but have no luck. Could be the clothes and that I’m so wet. And more I run, wetter I get. And there’s nobody I know under these overhangs or who seems to know me. If they do, they’re not saying, something I can also understand. A man so drenched and who keeps running in the rain without any protection can seem crazed. I run a few more blocks, keep ducking under overhangs, more because I’m tired than to talk to anyone, so some of the overhangs I duck under don’t even have anyone there. Run a lot more blocks, but I’m really just jogging now, and walk fast and then at a normal pace the last five blocks till I reach my sidestreet. I run down the block — there’s nobody out or at the window to wave to — and go two steps at a time up my building’s stoop into the vestibule, where the landlady’s mopping the floor under my mailbox or letterbox I don’t open but do peek through and see nothing inside.

“Some day out,” I say, but she’s in no mood to talk. And when she’s mopping while it rains she usually gets less in the mood with each succeeding dripping tenant. “Have a good day, though,” I say, and run up the three flights of stairs to my apartment to do some undressing, showering, maybe soaking in a tub, drying, dressing, wet-clothes hanging, eating, resting and sleep. All that and more till later today or early tonight or tomorrow or tomorrow night or sometime this week, depending if the rain stops and if it’s not too late in the day, I can go out again.

WALT

“Don’t worry; there’ll be better days.”

“No doubt.”

“For both of us, I mean.”

“I know, or at least I hope. But you were going?”

She leaves. I putter around the house: sweep up, put away dishes, mop the kitchen and bathroom floors. She comes back.

“I got all the way to the bridge when I realize I forgot something.”

“Forgot to stay away.”

“Don’t be nasty. I’ll get it and then I’ll go and I won’t be back.”

“Promise?”

But she’s upstairs. Comes down with her hair dryer.

“Your hair dryer, no less. Oh, you really needed to come back for that.”

“I thought why bother buying another one as long as I have one here. Because you weren’t planning on using it, were you?”

“Oh sure, can’t you see me under it with my five hairs on top and short side hair. But what you should’ve thought in your car was why have a dryer at all?”

“You can’t let up?”

“You can’t dry your hair with a towel?”

“With a trowel, that’s how I’d like to dry your hair. Anyway, my dryer makes drying quick and easy. Saves me time for more important things.”

“Like prolonging affairs?”

“One affair. The others weren’t even minor romances. Not even mini-minor ones. Just tosses in the hay if there was hay.”

“A turn or toss in the sack, then.”

“If the sack’s supposed to be the mattress on the bed, then for most of them, that’s correct.”

The sack is the bed. Old word for it, and the tossing or turning business, old expression. I think it comes from the navy — if not the expression, then the word, or maybe both.”

“You were in the navy?”

“You saying you didn’t know?”

“I thought it was the Marines.”

“Navy. Private first class.”

“I know they don’t have privates.”

“Sailors don’t have privates? Oh, new joke if it isn’t an old one. They’ve privates, privies and privileges as in liberties, or they did when I was junior grade.”

“You were an ensign, now I remember. Well, I salute you, Ensign Wilkerson, and say ahoy there or whatever the nautical term is for goodbye.”

“Shove off.”

“Shove off. Okey-doke and adieu, my dope, as the French navy might say,” and she leaves.

“Screw you too, once my hope, now my rope. Good riddance, my former deliverance, and…and…nothing. Just nothing.” I throw a coffee mug, only dish I didn’t wash and put away, through one of the front windows. She comes back.

“You know, I was opening my car door when I heard the crash. At first I thought let him get his anger out. It’s good for him. Then he’ll be calm, like seas are calm after a storm, which all JGs are familiar with, right? Then I thought hell, I still own half this house, so my warning to you. Ensign Wilkerson, first class jerk, is don’t go busting up any more of it or I’ll get my rear admiral on your ass, or whatever the legal officer is in navy talk, for more than just a divorce. In other words—”

“In other words, go hang myself or slit my own throat, you were going to say?”

“No.”

“Ah, you were always so considerate and sweet: property, more important than people, in your book. To that I say, screw property, yours and mine, jointly or singly held,” and I throw a lamp through another front window. She runs to the phone, looks in the directory, and dials.

“Police? I’m in your precinct. Thirty thirty-five Waverly, and my husband is tearing up our house and I want him arrested…Yes, it’s a domestic dispute. It always is if it’s between husband and wife, but that shouldn’t stop you from coming here. It’s half my house, and after he gets done destroying it, I fear he’s going to start on me…Good. Edith Wilkerson, his is Walt. Please hurry.” She hangs up.

“So you’re going to stay after all.”

“Till the police arrive and then just long enough to have you put away in jail or a mental institution. In fact, the hell with my beating it out of here. You’re the one who’ll have to go and be barred from this house for life, even if I’m the one who carried on and am ending this marriage.” She picks up the receiver and dials. “Mrs. Silbert, please.” That’s her lawyer. “Miriam? It’s Edith. Walt’s destroying our house. Literally, I mean. I was in the process of leaving…No, I don’t think his breaking up the place is natural.” I pick up the extension. “He’s on the extension so watch what you say. He’s already broken two front windows that are full pane, not little French ones, and I’ve called the police and would like you to be over here soon as you can,”

“I can’t come now, Edith. I’m tied up all day.”

Then get a writ out against him, or something, but quickly, because I don’t want him staying here. He’s going to wreck the whole house, I know it.”

“Did he threaten that?”

“Ask him. I told you he’s on the extension.”

“You also told me to watch what I say. Okay. Walt, this is Miriam Silbert, Edith’s lawyer who’s handling her divorce. You’ve received several letters from me and notices from the court with my name on them, so you know who I am. My question is, are you planning on doing further harm to the house?”

“And her lawyer. And the police who come here. Everything. The front and back yards and basement and Edith too. I am going to murder her.”

“Walt, just what you’re saying now could land you in jail for a while and provide even additional grounds for a divorce, so try to be reasonable and answer me.”

“All right. I’ll only murder her lawyer.”

“I’m serious, Walt. What my advice is—”

“Lawyers always have advice. Don’t you people have marital and social and psychological problems of your own?”

“Of course. I was born poor to insane parents and had a miserable childhood and adolescence and got divorced twice. That’s neither here nor there except for the experience and know-how and insights into human nature it gave me. Now I’m happy.”

“You know this creep Edith is supposedly in love with?”

“I am in love with him, no supposedly,” Edith says.

“Edith, let me talk to Walt. You’re in business, Walt. You know that a lawyer, even in court under oath, can’t divulge what a client’s told her. Especially not to the client’s contestant.”

“Her client, his contestant, party of the first tart, the second fart. Bull. Divulge. Bulge. Bilge. Reveal. God, you people are creeps. You ought to be her lover, not lawyer.”

“And what’s that supposed to mean? Little more of it and you’ll be hauled into court by me.”

“It was nothing. Silliness. Senselessness. Man in distress. You were about to suggest? Perhaps that I leave this house for a hotel, agree to the divorce proceedings and give in to everything and make your work easier than pie-eating, yes? Okay, I will. I did I do and now I will. But no big settlement in her favor, you hear? I’ll pay half the divorce costs and that’s it. Two kids in college and I’ll do my best to keep them there, but to only pay half. My share of the house and all its belongings I’ll give free and clear to the three of them, but let the kids work for the rest of their college costs if Edith can’t come up with it. It’ll do them good. You worked. I worked. Edith didn’t much but she’ll have to now.”

“Times have changed, Walt,” Miriam says.

“Why? Because schools are much more expensive now? So pay is a lot more also than in your day or mine.”

There aren’t that many available jobs for college students. That’s why they do unpaid internships.”

“Manure. Kids can always find work. Picking dead tree leaves out of pachysandra bushes or whatever pachysandra is. A ground covering. An herb. A friend of mine has a son who did that last month for four bucks an hour, imagine that?”

“Walt, I’m very busy. Appointments and meetings. We’ll talk about leaves and manure another time.”

“But I’m divulging the dog-eared ruth, Miriam, the ragtagged forsooth.”

“You are what?”

“Nothing. I’m crazy. Rather, feeling rather crazy today. Where’s the nearest lamp? There’s still one front window to blow out.”

“Walt?”

“He’s left the phone, Miriam. I think he went looking for a lamp. Here he is, unplugging one now. No, ripping it out of the wall. Hold it. I’ve got to stop him.”

She tries to stop me. I shove her to the floor. She jumps up and grabs the lamp by the cord while I hold it by the top. Tug, pull. “Walt, Edith,” I hear Miriam on the phone. Edith now has the lamp by the base. I drag the lamp to the phone with Edith pulling back at her end and say into the receiver “You don’t think I should do it, Miriam?”

“If you mean throw the lamp through the window, of course not.”

“Strangle Edith with the lamp cord, I mean.”

“Miriam, will you get someone here to restrain him?” Edith yells a few feet from the phone.

“Walt, I’m hanging up now and calling the police to get over there right away. Maybe Edith didn’t tell them how serious it is.”

“Too late. They’re here.” I hang up. The doorbell rings. “Go answer it, please. I’m bushed, and you invited them.”

“Only when you put the lamp down and promise to back off.”

“I promise.” I put it down. She goes to the door. I throw the lamp through the one front window left. Two cops come in with drawn guns. “Welcome, strangers.”

“He’s tearing up the house,” Edith says.

“We can see,” one of them says. “You want to relax a second, Mr. Wilkerson?”

“And your names, my friendly police?”

“I said to relax; now cool it.”

“I think I’m allowed to have your names. You’re in fact both supposed to be wearing name tags above your badges.”

That’s in the city, not here in the county.” They’ve put away their guns.

“You want me to relax and cool it, I want your names.”

“As you say. Allen and John.”

“You were born and went through life without cognomens?”

Those are our last. I’m Jim and he’s Russell.”

“Howdy, fellas. I’m Walt Wilkerson. I live here. I broke those three windows, as you must’ve heard. You at least heard the third being broke. Or created those three holes. No, the panes will have to be replaced, so they’ve more than holes; they’re broken for life. This is my wife, Edith. Show them the sunny side of your teeth, Edie. We were married twenty-one years ago, or are about a week shy of that anniversary date. Or maybe just I’m shy, but she’s not, for lately she’s had many dates and this month she’s taken up seriously with another man. Before then, just dates with others. Maybe six altogether. I can’t say she’s had those six altogether, though I’m sure in pairs and maybe even one as a trio they’ve been in the altogether. As you can see I’ve become quite torn up about it, which I’ve begun demonstrating by tearing up this house. But they were nothing-much affairs, the previous six. A night. Maybe two. A morning or three. A couple of summer weeks when she met them on the beach and. I could only come out weekends because I worked. We have two children who used to vacation with us when they were younger, Sue and Chuck. You can chuck Chuck and though I don’t think Suzie’s thinking of suing me, I’m sure her mother and brother are. Insufferable kid, Chuck, but Sue’s okay. Both are away in college and spending plenty of money and getting so-so grades. Neither thinks much of me and my work or have much to speak about with me, and though the feeling wasn’t mutual, it’s become so the last year. I’m naturally mad at what’s happened to me, or if you listen to my wife, just mad naturally. Mostly because she told me last night about the quick six and this recent heartthrob and that he’s the main reason she instituted the divorce. Now she’s going to try to institutionalize me. Hot flash: fat chance. Edith, dear, could you get these men coffee and cake while we talk?”

“I wish they’d just take you away.”

“I think I’ve a better solution,” Jim says. “How about if we try to settle the dispute without your having to press charges or our booking him at the station house and both of you going through the whole court scene?”

“I’m sorry, fellas. If pressing charges is the single best way of getting him out of here, that’s what I want to do.”

“I won’t go without a row,” I say.

“Don’t tempt us,” Russell says. “So far we’ve let you run off at the mouth and scare the daylights out of us with your third broken window there, and now we’re having a nice discussion. But don’t speak about making tough.”

“I know judo and other martial arts.”

“No, he doesn’t,” she says, “or never showed it. It’s true he was in the navy during some Asian war, although I thought it was the marines. An ensign.”

“Long time ago. Garbage barge. Skippered it around the bigger ships and smaller destroyers. But I was a lousy sailor. Bad sea legs. I also can’t stand to fight. The judo and stuff was just for mental discipline and body tone. I’m really a peaceful man experiencing a painful crisis. But if your wife suddenly told you she’s slept with six other men in the last year and in the last few months with one in particular and that she hates your guts and sight and said all this in the dark of your bedroom moments after you told her how much you still adore her and long to make love with her, I doubt either of you would have taken it any better than I.”

“I never married,” Russell says.

Then you, Jim.”

“I was. To be honest, splitting up was the next best thing that ever happened to my wife and me, the first being our brood.”

“You see, Walt?” she says. “If the marriage isn’t working out, why postpone the divorce?”

That’s how we felt, Mrs. Wilkerson.”

“Oh, do call her Edith,” I say. “Anything more than that, she’ll begin to mind.”

“We had three kids. Bing, bang and boom, that’s how quickly they seemed to come. But we’d gotten hitched too young. So, very amicably, no dillydallying with legal advice or anything, we decided, after we’d seriously talked it over, and have continued to honor our original arrangement once we knew the marriage was through—”

“Yes, yes,” I say, “that was you two, but with me it’s different. I still love my wife and think a reconciliation can be made.”

That’s absurd and a lie, Walt,” she says.

“Will you just get these men some coffee?”

“No, thanks,” Jim says. “We just had breakfast.”

“I wouldn’t mind a cup,” Russell says.

“Heat up the Danish also. Please, they work hard and are probably hungry.” She goes into the kitchen. “Can I speak plainly with you guys, man to men?”

“Of course,” Jim says. That’s what we’re also here for.”

“It’s not only my tender feelings for her or that I can’t see myself suddenly living alone after so many years of marriage, kids, barracks, barges, college dorms and with my siblings and folks. Or even those six brief liaisons and now the one long one. But then when a woman tells you she’s never loved you and in fact could never stand you and you’re that and this when you always thought you were this and that, well—”

“You got agitated,” Jim says.

The windows. The everything. I even threatened to kill her and her lawyer both.”

“Shouldn’t do that.”

“Don’t I know. It’s all wrong. But man — a person, is only human. If we didn’t get excited sometimes, we’d explode. Or we’d be automatons, if that word’s still used.”

“Even so — three windows. It’s going to cost a lot. This house jointly owned?”

“She can have everything — that’s not my point. But only after I bust a little more of it up first.”

“No can do,” Russell says. The house has to be totally yours to destroy. Even if it is, if your destroying it is disturbing the peace of your neighbors, you’d be breaking another law and so can’t destroy your own house. It sounds unfair. You should be able to do with your own property what you want, right? But if you live around people, you have to show respect for them if that’s the norm of the land and the law.”

“Wait till your divorce settlement comes through,” Jim says. Then, if you get the house and still feel the same way, do it with as little noise as possible and staying within the building safety code. Bust up the whole inside if you want — we won’t stop you. The outside might be a different story. For instance, something like a very neglected lawn or façade that’s beginning to depreciate the property value of the rest of the neighborhood, I think they can get you for that too.”

Then I ought to swing along with the divorce, say all my threats were said in a fit of anger and I didn’t mean them, and try to get this house. If I do, I can do what

I like inside it providing I don’t cause too much of a ruckus or make the place structurally unsound and its exterior isn’t visually offensive to my neighbors. I got it. Thanks a lot, guys. I think that should be all.”

“We have to speak to Mrs. Wilkerson first before we leave,” Russell says. He goes into the kitchen.

“You like your job?” I ask Jim.

“Very much, and it pays okay.”

“Ever remarry?”

“Me, I freelance now and have plenty of fun.”

“You meet them at bars?”

“Bars, parties, friends’ homes, workplace and on vacations. No shortage of great ladies out there, I found.”

“Still see the kids?”

“On my days off. I take them or just visit. My ex-wife has a much better disposition to me when I get there, now that I’m gone.”

“You still don’t desire her when you see her?”

“Why should I? I have my own women now, she her men, so between us it’s all business and concerns and tales of the kids. When you first divorce you can’t believe you’ll think this way, but soon it becomes second nature with you no matter how hard you fight it.”

“Can I get that down in writing?”

“As long as you don’t ask me to do it in blood. Look, to me with your sense of humor and clear moments coming up more now than then, your problem is just emotional and temporary. Off the record, you’re still pretty young; not old, at least. So you have kids college age. So will I in twelve years, and you still got your energy and if you lose twenty pounds and keep jogging around a bit and let the hair on one side grow out and comb it over your head in a concealing way, you’ll have a good face and figure too. And living in this house and neighborhood must mean your standard of living’s way up there also, so you’ll survive. Better than that, you’ll thrive. Women go for guys with money to burn. Maybe we weren’t made for living with just one person all our life, something only this generation’s finding out.”

“Oh, they knew it in early Greece and ancient Rome.”

There you are; you’ve brains too. Think of your split-up as almost a renewed lease and blessing. But now let me ask you a few questions. You going to pack your bags now, go to the city and take a room there and let Mrs. Wilkerson live peacefully in the house for the time being? Because if you insist on staying and she presses charges to force you to leave, the judge, as they usually are with the wives, will be more sympathetic to her than to you.”

“Yes, I’m going to do exactly as you say.” I head for the door.

“Wait till Russell comes back. And don’t you think you should put on your socks and shoes?”

I get my keys off the wall hook and open the door.

“Now I said to hold it, Walt. That means stop right there.”

Their car’s blocking mine. Edith left the keys in hers and I get in it. Jim and Russell rush up to the car as I back out of the driveway to the street. “I said to halt,” Jim says. He unsnaps his holster.

“Don’t be a fool,” Russell says. “We’ll get him later.” I drive off, waving to them as I go. Edith is at the door. I drive down the street. There’s the tricycling McQuire kid and Gretchen raking her lawn. And the Beinstock triplets in their stroller, three of them in a row. Cute. Abe Eaton. Myra Skintell. Mrs. Nichols. “Hiya, Mrs. Nichols,” I yell out the window.

“Morning, Walt,” she says. Nice lady. Always there when we needed her or one of her children to babysit. All seemingly happily married couples and contented boys and girls. So Edith and I and our kids didn’t make it. Or at least I didn’t with them. So, that’s what happens sometimes.

I drive to town, park and go into the smoke shop where I know there’s a phone. Two men at the magazine stand look at me and then at themselves as if they think I’m a bit off. Sure, the bare feet and the only shirt I have on is an undershirt and it’s late fall. Well, so I’m doing something out of the norm, but not against the law, I don’t think. I say to them “You’d be in bare feet too and only this skimpy shirt if you went through what I did today. First my wife tells me about her six and one lovers. Next I knock out three front windows of my house and threaten not only her life but her lawyer’s. The cops are after me for fleeing what might be considered the scene of a crime, which is knocking out my windows and threatening my wife’s life or just escaping in her car, which might not be a crime if it’s considered jointly owned, but anyway, before they said I could go.”

“Shouldn’t you be going back to square things with them?” the younger man says.

“Mind your biswax, Pete,” the other man says.

“He told us, so I’m just suggesting to him.”

“Do what I say; don’t get involved.”

“Ah, the attitude of the day,” I say. “Stay cool, your nose clean, hands off, once removed — no, I don’t know what I’m saying. But that’s what I hear a lot from the guests and call-in folks on the radio talk shows, going into the city and on my way back. You know, to and from work? But I don’t believe it, do you? We’re all still earth dwellers and not very far from our origins and so pretty much the same, isn’t that so?”

“What?” Pete said.

“Now I told you, Pete,” the other man says.

“My dad says to keep my trap shut, so I will, but I can’t make out half what you’re saying.”

“Your father? How nice. Hello, sir. Walt Wilkerson here. May I ask your name?”

“Hyram Falk. This is Pete.”

“Glad to meet you both.” I shake their hands. “What are you reading?”

“Just magazines,” Pete says.

“Good for you. Excuse me; I got to make an important phone call.” I dial Information, get Miriam’s work number and call her, “Miriam, I’m about to make your job much easier and also make it possible for Edith to pay your exorbitant fees. I’m going to burn down my house now so she can collect all the insurance money from it and, though I’ll contest it to make it look authentic, a quick divorce because of the mental cruelty inflicted on her by my burning the house down with all her things in it.”

“Don’t, Walt,” she says. The authorities will say you did it only to get the insurance money for Edith, and then she’ll get nothing. Besides, she called before and said your house is being watched and that the police of your town and the surrounding ones are out looking for you. She suggests, and I go along with it, that you plead temporary insanity and that I represent you in criminal court. Believe me, it all looks bad now, but everything will work out.”

I do. It doesn’t. Six months in the clink for resisting arrest and attempting to run over an officer. Lies, but what can I do? After that, too much to drink and everything goes down the tubes. Wife and kids are already gone, but now business, savings, friends. Ten, twenty years pass. Cheap rooms, rotten food, crummy jobs, too many times fired or laid off, for entertainment: watching lousy television on thirdhand TVs. I don’t want to go into it that deeply anymore. I get sick, liver and kidneys fail, I get worse — throw in the heart and lungs — but I don’t do anything to control or prevent it. With each succeeding operation I tell the surgeons not to worry if it looks bad for me on the table: just put me away for good, something I’d do myself but can’t. They say Hmm, interesting entreaty, they’ll think seriously about my suggestion but I should know that in the last years of some of their 90-year-old patients there was nothing they liked more in life than sitting out on a porch or sidewalk under a warm sun. Finally, the one who’s to operate on me today says he’ll take away my life support system under anaesthesia as he’s a great believer in mercy killing too. So that’s where I am now. Men’s ward of the city hospital and soon on my way to the operating room. Since there’s no one to say this for me, I’ll say it myself: “May he rest in peace forever; I mean me.”

I wake up in the recovery room. “Sonofabitch lying doctor,” I try to say. One of these days I’m going to be gutsy enough to do myself in. But by then I probably won’t have the strength.

IN MEMORIAM

He phoned the newspaper and said to the woman who answered “I’d like to place a notice in your In Memoriam space.” She said The In Memoriam notices are handled by the Obituary section of the Announcements department. Hold on and I’ll connect you.”

“Obituaries, Ray Kelvin speaking.”

“I’d like to place an In Memoriam notice, Mr. Kelvin. You have a pen handy, because I’ve the notice all set?”

“Just a second, sir. What’s the name and address of the person we’re to bill this to?”

That would be me. Stanley Berwald. B-e-r-w-a-l-d. Three-seventy-six President Street. Brooklyn.”

“Is there a middle initial?”

“It’s ‘O,’ but it’ll get to me without it.”

“And repeat the address, Mr. Berwald?”

He repeated it.

“Zip code?”

He gave the zip code.

“Finally, your phone number.”

Phone number.

“What date do you want the notice to appear?”

“February 10^th.”

“Now, if you’ll write down the cancelation number in case you later want to change or cancel the notice, we’ll go ahead with the wording.”

“I’m not going to want to cancel or change it. I’m going to give you this notice and when you send me the bill, I’ll pay right away and that’ll be the end of it.”

“You probably won’t cancel or change as you say,” Kelvin said. “In Memoriams, in fact, have the lowest cancelation and change rate of any of our announcements, obituaries being the next. But there have been placers like yourself in both categories who also had no intention of changing or canceling their notice, but who later, after the paper’s closing time for canceling or changing one for the next day’s edition, called and wanted to do just that. Even that we change the name and address of the person we’re to bill the notice to when the bill’s already been sent out — we get some of those also.”

“You won’t have that problem with me. I’ve lived in the same apartment the last thirty-eight years and don’t plan to move, and nobody but me knows the notice’s being placed. And I’ve worked most of the night composing it, so it’s the one I’ve decided on without question.”

The paper, no matter what the circumstances, still requires me to give a cancelation number for each notice, both for our protection and yours. The number I give will be the only way the paper and you can identify and locate your notice once I’ve put it through. We’re also required to give cancelation numbers to all death, birth, marriage, engagements, memorial services and thank-you-for-your-condolences announcements. Also for help and situations wanted, personal and commercial notices, real estate, auction sales, merchandise offerings, business opportunities, automobile and pet exchange and anything else in the line of classified ads. We use this system because we haven’t the filing space or staff to keep any records of announcements and classified ads other than the cancelation numbers, which are automatically processed into our computers and then removed once the announcement and ad charges are paid.”

“It seems you’ve made your system a lot more complicated than it need be, and probably at the expense of the customer.”

The system actually simplified the placing and taking of announcements and ads. And the fees for them are much less than they’d be without the system, if you’ve any idea what filing and office space rent go for in this part of the city and what kind of payroll it’d take to keep a staff of bookkeepers and filing clerks for this department, not that it’s so easy to hire them. But what do you say we finish up with your notice, Mr. Berwald? There could be another caller with a notice or announcement he or she wants to get in before closing time.”

“After all you’ve said, I’m not so sure my notice will get in on the day I want it to or won’t get mixed up in the real estate or help wanted sections or canceled soon after I get off the phone.”

“Not anything to worry about. Because of the early closing time for In Memoriams, as compared to obituaries, let’s say, typographical errors or misplacing an announcement almost never happens. The most likely error, though chances of it are extremely rare, is that your notice will get lost between the time I type it up and dispatch the original copy to the printers and the carbon to the accounting department, both by pneumatic tube, which is usually done within twenty minutes after our call’s completed, depending on the length of the notice to type and how busy the tube is. This also further illustrates how important the cancelation number is. Call us before I’ve dispatched your notice, and without cancelation number or anything else, I or one of the other announcements reporters will be able to locate your In Memoriam at one of the three places it could be: still in my typewriter, typed up and on my desk waiting to be inserted into the pneumatic tube cylinders, or in the cylinders and waiting to be placed in the tube to the printers and Accounting. But call without cancelation number after the cylinders have been sent and you could end up with two published In Memoriam notices and bills, if you’re calling to change the wording of the notice, or one bill and published notice if you wanted the original notice and bill canceled.

He gave the number.

“Keep it in a safe place till you get your bill, which takes about a month,” Kelvin said.

That’s a long time. Suppose I lose it before then?”

“If you lose it but don’t cancel or change before your notice’s in the paper, then nothing will go wrong and the notice will appear as you requested it.”

“Suppose it doesn’t appear as I requested it? I don’t want, for instance, to be paying for something that puts someone else’s In Memoriam above my name.”

That won’t happen. But in the rare chance it did, you’d call this department and give your cancelation number to whoever answers the phone and say your notice appeared incorrectly and you don’t want to be billed for it or that you already sent a check for it and want to be reimbursed. We’ve a policy here where if the announcement isn’t printed as directed, the customer doesn’t pay a cent. What happens then is that the person you speak to sends down your cancelation number to Accounting, which keeps copies of the announcements for sixty days and then stores them on microfilm for ten years. If they find your notice didn’t appear as it should have, which means the way I wrote it up, then you’re reimbursed. If it appeared the way you gave it to me, which is why I’m being so meticulous about it, then of course you’re expected to pay in full.”

“Suppose it doesn’t appear on the day I specifically wanted it to, what do I do then?”

“Again, you call this department, give your cancelation number to the person who answers and tell him what the problem is. He’ll find the copy of your notice in Accounting through your cancelation number, check it with the In Memoriams that ran the day you requested yours to and, if the newspaper was in error — and even if your In Memoriam ran the day before or after you wanted yours to-you’ll be reimbursed in full. So, if everything’s clear to you now, Mr. Berwald. I’ll write up your In Memoriam. What’ s the name of the person the notice is about, last name first?”

“My wife. Same as mine. Berwald. Sarah with an a-h.”

“Do you want to add her middle name or initial or her maiden name in parenthesis or without?”

“Good idea. It’s Wiener,” and he spelled it. “And no parenthesis. Just Sarah Wiener Berwald. That’s how she went.”

“Would you read the notice to me? Slowly, as I’m not a fast typist.”

“‘Sarah, darling. Today is a year, a year of pain, sorrow and loneliness. Only God knows how much I miss you. What can I say? I am so lost without you. My dearest Sarah, no one will ever take your place in my heart. I love you so. Forty-seven years of beautiful memories. I speak to you with tears every night. I will mourn you until I join you. Love, Stan.’”

“Let me read back the notice, Mr. Berwald, and then quote you the charges. ‘Berwald, comma, Sarah’ with an a-h. ‘Wiener’ with an i-e.

‘Sarah, comma, darling. Today is a year, comma, a year of pain, comma, sorrow and loneliness. Only God knows how much I miss you. What can I say, question mark. I am so lost without you. My dearest Sarah, comma, no one will ever take your place in my heart. I love you so. Forty-seven years of beautiful memories. I speak to you with tears every night. I will mourn you until I join you. Love, comma, Stan.’”

That’s right. And all the commas seem fine.”

The notice will be printed in both editions of the newspaper on February 10^th, will take eighteen lines in the In Memoriam column, and the charges, to be billed to you at Three-seventy-six President Street, Brooklyn, New York, 11231, will be sixty-eight dollars and fifty-three cents.”

That’s okay.”

Thank you, Mr. Berwald.”

“You’re welcome.”