Aberration of Starlight

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Grates bitter chocolate into his Rum and Maple pipe tobacco. It is his elite trademark, the idea hauled from the back pages of some pulp. Flying Aces. Sweetish air surrounding him. All his pipes go sour.

When Susan crosses her legs and leans back on the couch. The way her dress rides up. Creamy swirl of her slip and her firm legs in silk stockings gleaming hazily metallic.

Janet’s annoying looks of dismay when he gets home late, supper over and the dishes washed. Tommy in bed. The predictable blubbering that he cannot stomach.

The day of Tommy’s birth he can’t find a place to park and Janet clawing at the seat. Odd dim light of the waiting room and a nurse comes out with her clothes in a pile, her high-heeled shoes on top.

Woolworth’s rose oil shimmering in his hair. Its aroma mixed with the rum, the maple, the chocolate. Gets used to the sour taste.

Flirts like a goddamn fool with Susan, hearty brother-in-law act. Pulls her to him roughly and rests his thumbs at the sides of her breasts. Flash of her peach slip.

The waitress in the diner just a few months after his marriage. Oh, she loves the smell of a pipe! He puffs and puffs, touching lightly his moustache. Parks out in Elmhurst in his salesman’s Nash.

Her clothes in a bag on the bar before him, he has a few rye Presbyterians, a faint odor of perfume and soap from the paper bag in which he has put them. A sudden fear that she will die. The three other men in Reilly’s do not know him.

His white Panama. What’s the name of that big-shot guinea hat? Maybe he’ll buy one in the fall.

Janet puts her mouth tentatively around his penis. Her eyes are closed and she is blushing, or maybe just flushed with excitement. He can feel her hot tongue slow and soft. Thank you, oh darling, thank you. My wife, my wife, my beautiful bride. Her breasts are brushing his thighs. Suck, oh suck, my sweet cunt baby. Like she was born for it.

She knows about his desire for Susan. Your own brother’s wife! My God, haven’t you got any pride, or anything? He shakes his head to show patient amazement at her accusations.

Calls the hospital at six in the morning and it is a boy. The cigars. Now comes the hard part, the boys say. Better get in touch with that old girl friend, Tom. What? Girl friend? You know — Mary Fist. Blushes. Nine out of ten do it and the tenth’s a liar. That’s how it goes, that old joke.

Buys her a nightgown and a peignoir to match, a pale maize. I’m sure your wife will like this, the salesgirl is pretty but flat-chested. But has good legs. But has faint acne scars. But has a perfect bottom. Sees her in the ensemble.

She loves the smell of a pipe! Rather gross face with big blue round eyes and bobbed blond hair. A tramp kewpie doll. As she smiles at him in the faint light beneath the trees she massages his erection with both hands. Jesus, she wasn’t born yesterday! You married guys! Says tsk-tsk the way it is spelled.

He doesn’t get the promotion to head salesman despite the baby. Nor the juicy territory in Long Island City. All untouched out there. Comes in the next day with a new pipe and hat. Fuck you all. Brings white roses home to Janet. Thought they’d make the place look coozy.

Janet has a good mind to talk to Alex about it. Making a spectacle of himself every time he gets a few drinks in him. Oh for Christ sake, Janet! You talk to Alex and you ‘11 be the one making a spectacle! God, Tom, don’t you like what I give, what I do for …? You have to stare at everything in skirts? His eyes roll to heaven.

The day she comes out of the hospital with the baby it is cold and rainy. He forgets a coat and sweater for her even though she reminded him the day before. It’s easy to see what you think of me! Not a thought in your head about me or your son! Oh Christ, just wait inside and I’ll bring the car around to the goddamn entrance. Throws his raincoat over her shoulders.

The kewpie doll thrusts her wad of Juicy Fruit into his open mouth with her tongue as he rubs her breasts. She is pulling open the buttons of his fly when he begins to come. Jesus Goddammit Christ! Oh, you married guys. Fucking thing is ab-soid! He sits in wet sticky misery while she puts on fresh lipstick.

He and Alex and Susan drink Orange Blossoms. So tomorrow is the big day when your son and heir comes home! He is drinking too much gin too fast. Impressing her. She snuggles next to Alex and he plays with the hem of her skirt. The lucky bastard. Janet is one crackerjack of a wife, Tom. Don’t deserve her. He has another Orange Blossom. Let’s call it just a plain Blossom, he says. The orange’s just a gleam in its eye — your eye. Mud in your eye.

There’s always another time, baby. You know where I work. Don’t eat any oysters but, O.K.? Flat azure stare directed at him from some dim corner past the last trolley stop. Pulls his pants and shorts away from his crotch with one hand and blows a kiss with the other.

What do you have under that kimono? Aha! Why, me proud beauty, you are a dainty morsel! Janet drops the red silk around her ankles and stands in the soft bedroom light in red pom-pom mules and white step-ins. Reaches over and pulls her into bed, a-ha! Sh, the baby. Sucks voluptuously at her nipples, her half-smile aims at the shadows on the ceiling. Sweetie, sweetie sugar nook. Clutches her between the legs softly. Thin scent of Juicy Fruit and gin on her breath.

Alex’s false teeth bright and horrible. Maybe I’ll grow a moustache. The old womb broom. I hear the janes go crazy? Don’t ask me, Alex. I’m a married man.

He is transfixed by Janet’s loveliness in her wedding gown. The taste of the warm Manhattans at the reception. Throws her bouquet of tea roses and her cousin Margaret catches it. Nice-looking girl but her nose is too big.

He is really polluted by now. Somehow he is blurting things out through the gin haze. About how Janet loves to, you know, do certain things. Looks like a schoolteacher, but brother! Alex is angry and embarrassed. Oh, have another drink, for Christ sake. I’ll even build one for you. Susie?

A hundred, a hundred and fifty miles on the old perambulator every day and he outsells all those other deadbeats. And in crap territory, too. Day after day and calls in the evening too. Depression or no Depression, they got to cut meat.

Babs with the soiled drawers. What the hell. Dotty — no, Dolly— who cries and curses like a trooper. How about the hash-slinger with the big tits thought you could get pregnant going down? Christ, what tramps.

Your own brother’s wife, looking right through her clothes. How would you like it if I stared at Alex that way? Or Alex at me? And the way you talk, all those double meanings. By the way, what did you tell Alex when I was in the hospital with Tommy? He looks up at heaven with a patient smile. Would you for Christ sake please tell me what you’re talking about?

Oh, Alex likes it, too, don’t you, honey? Alex gets up to get matches. Take it easy, Susan. And other things too, like — ahem! — you know what I mean? Bow-wow? If you get me? Tom’s erection is painful as he imagines her on her hands and knees, her luscious buttocks in the air.

Janet is striking at the Annual Dinner in a new flesh-colored dress. He gets the Hundred Club Plaque, presented by Mr. Lawless. He wants to do it standing up with their clothes on in the kitchen but she says she has the curse.

That dumb bitch slut of a waitress makes that crack about his ass. He sits in the Nash and imagines how Janet must think of him too. Why, goddammit! He’s just a clown to her even though she never said anything. Can he help it? Dear God, can I help it?

One day in the waiting room of A-Better Manufacturing this perfect sentence clicks into his mind: My wife is a cocksucker. He glances at the switchboard operator and she smiles back. Dingy greenish teeth. Who was that other cunt with the teeth? Joyce, out in Passaic. What the hell was he doing out there?

This must be some kind of a gag. A handkerchief? She is not kidding. You don’t want to use a cundrum and I don’t want another kid and neither do you, mister. This must be a gag! No gag, Tom. Of course, she’s in that goddamn orchid nightgown, bad luck. Her not-tonight outfit. He wonders if she knows that’s what it means to him.

Tommy cries with a bottle, without a bottle, all night, every night. Colic. He pushes the old perambulator till eight, nine o’clock every night. Go home? Listen to all that and her bullshit too? If you think you’re getting supper at this hour you’ve got another think coming. Stick the supper where it’ll do you the most good, you bitch. Tommy is crying.

What kind of a cluck do you think I am? Now that I got the territory developed you’re giving it to Disch? What am I? The workhorse around here? I don’t give a good goddamn if times are hard! He gets another job, straight commission, no draw, and outsells everybody in a year’s time.

One New Year’s Eve just the four of them at Alex’s new house in Rego Park. Susan dances with him and says something off-color about his moustache. What? Mr. Innocent, she says. But what is that big hard thing in your pocket, Mr. Innocent? He presses his hand against her bottom for a second. Why, brother-in-law! Janet and Alex talk on the couch, examining snapshots of the children. The son of a bitch would like to screw Janet, that holier-than-thou act can’t fool me.

The bartender buys him one back and he tells him that his wife is having a baby. Well, well, the man says. He looks at the paper bag. Tom cannot tell him that her clothes are in there. He feels ashamed — carrying around a woman’s clothes! Good luck! The bartender raps the bar with his knuckles.

Janet takes Tommy and goes to her mother’s house in Connecticut. Enough! Enough of your bimbos and tramps. You can’t take Tommy away! You wait and see who can or who can’t. She returns after six weeks. He embraces her and they cry and make love on the floor outside the bathroom.

One girl he picks up on a corner under the El takes him to her place near Erie Basin. Scrabbling and scratching in the walls. Just the fuckin rats. They don’t bother nobody. He cannot maintain an erection in his fright and horror. A big strong guy like you? He gives her a fin.

So I’m batty because I want you to leave your stockings and shoes on? What about you, hah? What about you, Janet? Didn’t you ever notice that all you really like to do is suck? Every goddamn thing winds up with you going down and I’m sick of it. And I’m crazy! Janet sits still on the edge of the bed in her slip, her face pale but for a flush across her cheekbones. I’m going downstairs now to read, she says. Oh, Janet! Janet? Janet, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to say … I didn’t mean to say anything like that. Really. She lies down on the bed and closes her eyes with her fingertips. You are rotten, Tom. You are a mean, rotten man.

Tells what’s her name? Ruth? That he wants to be engaged to her. The perfect wife. He has always admired nurses. She masturbates him, sitting straight up with her eyes directly in front of her in the Fortway one Thursday night. That’s that. Now she can get fucking lost. Three weeks of coffee for a hand job.

He runs into Susan in downtown Brooklyn. She is coming out of the Williamsburgh Savings Bank in a Nile-green tweed suit and a little hat to match, small dotted veil over her face, green pumps. O-ho! Spending the old man’s money while he sweats in the salt mines? Chinese restaurant where there is luncheon dancing. She moves her belly gently, almost modestly, against his erection. Smiles right into his face. What a nervy bitch! Her terrific smell, my God! Jesus, kid, you are absotively the tops, whoo. Now, dear Tom, if you had a little place that we could go? I got the old perambulator parked down near Court Street. In a car? I’m a married woman, shame on you. He pushes against her belly, clenches his teeth. Besides, you don’t really take me seriously? I really love Alex. Store teeth and all? You are a son of a bitch. But with a heart of gold, right? Oh sure, and a gold something else, too, in your opinion.

The sales conference in Washington at which he botches his presentation: “Selling the Second Unit.” Keeps saying “depresson,” though cold sober. The city terrifies and saddens him. In a hotel bar some old, really old slut gives him the cold shoulder. Masturbates in his room.” On the train home he sees a girl, remote, in the sunny haze of a field, sitting placidly on a rock. He starts, it’s Janet! Exactly like Janet when he first met her. What in the name of Jesus? He feels a chill.

The four of them pretty well looped by now. Alex and Susan go into the kitchen to make sandwiches. Their giggling, then silence, then whispers, and Alex breathing hoarsely. Why not us too? he asks Janet. He pulls her dress up and sits her, laughing, on the couch. Don’t come in for a few minutes! he calls, yanking her step-ins down. Why, what ever can you be doing? Susan laughs. This is terrible, Janet says, putting her heels up on the couch, her hands on her knees.

When she goes this time she stays away for three months.

Ruth? Ruth? He has been away — the Midwest. Big business pressure. Big deals. Really. Take a walk, my phony friend. You ugly bitch!

I can’t see Tommy? Again? What the hell do I give a good God damn about your fucking father and his fucking country fair? He’s my son!

Buys three new pipes. In a month they have the familiar sour taste. His new Borsalino and a Studebaker. Can sell a meat-cutting machine to a vegetarian. Crackerjack. Crack-er-jack!

Alex and his new moustache. Hey! Ronald Colman! You like it too, Susan? She smiles what he takes to be a dirty smile.

Get the goddamn divorce any time you goddamn well want it, yes, yes, I don’t give a damn, I won’t contest a thing. Say hello to your dee-lightful mother, Carrie Nation, O.K.? And you can go to hell too, hear? And you can also go fuck yourself too! Mrs. Cocksucker! Tell your mother that.

He’s still a young man, everything will work out fine. Meet somebody who knows the score. Touch of grey in his hair. Distinguished.

Listen Alex, I don’t want to impose on you. You didn’t expect a guest for supper, for Christ sake. Susan looks at him, same old lying come-hither smile. How he’d like to stick his dick right into that smile. Maybe she’s got false choppers too. We’ve got plenty to eat, Tom, I’m roasting a chicken. Crosses her legs. Leans back in the chair. The way her dress rides up, the creamy lace at the edge of her slip, legs stretching the silk stockings tight, sheen of metal. That son of a bitch Alex. Don’t even know what to do with that piece.

Maybe some nice mature divorcee. Knows the score. No illusions.