Thinking too, he’s a practical-headed guy, he’s had scenes like this, at least resembling this, the hurt and the rage and the adrenaline rush, in the past, I can’t walk away, the rest of the day will be fucked.
Wheeling back then cursing to himself and climbing the stairs, in a sweat inside his good clothes And she’s going to pay for this, too: the bitch and upstairs on the third floor there’s Christina Kavanaugh standing where he’d left her, flat-footed, stunned, a rash-like flush mottling her pale skin, tears spilling over onto her cheeks but she’s defiant too. “He’s my husband. Of course I love him. I love him too.”
“Let’s get this straight, Christina,” Corky says. “Harry knows about me?—us?”
“Yes. He does.”
“You told him?”
“Yes. I did.”
“Since when?”
Christina hesitates. Her tear-brimmed eyes lose their focus for a moment, she’s considering lying then reconsiders, tells Corky, “Since last June.”
“Last June?”
“Yes.”
“From the start?”
Corky hears his own rising voice, Christ this would be funny if he wasn’t involved.
Staring at the woman as if he’d never seen her before, never really seen her before. Let alone, only a few minutes ago, his cock deep up inside her where, it’d seemed, it had been so right.
Christina moves to touch Corky again, to make him hear. The way she’d said Thalia was touching her friends. The fingers’ raw pleading appeal, the appeal of flesh. Listen to me, believe me, here I am: I exist.
“Corky, please don’t be angry. I should have told you. I was going to tell you eventually. Harry is my husband, we’ve been married for fifteen years, I couldn’t deceive him. I don’t want to deceive him. I share most of my life with him. His own is so—” She pauses, pleading, hoping for the right word, but the only word that comes to her is flat, inadequate, “—sad.”
Corky says, “What the fuck do I care, his life is ‘sad’! What’s it got to do with me! As I see it, I’m the sucker—the asshole. I’m the one who doesn’t know what’s going on.”
Seeing the door behind him is wide open, anybody could be out there on the landing getting a good earful, Corky slams it shut, so hard the place shudders.
Now to Corky’s disgust Christina begins to seriously cry. An aggrieved, incredulous weeping, and the flush in her face deepening, crimson as a birthmark.
Now in front of Corky’s eyes the transformation he’s witnessed so many times, too many fucking times, beginning in fact with Theresa, how many times with Theresa, the woman will make herself ugly to him, the most cunning and cruel of their strategies, throwing back in your face like vomit the emotion you’ve felt for them, what you’d believed was love now jeering mockery. And this too she’ll pay for: the cunt.
Christina says, “Corky, why does it matter so much?—Corky, please,” and Corky says, “You’re telling Harry Kavanaugh each time we fuck, it shouldn’t matter so much? What do you take me for?” and Christina says, “But I don’t! I don’t! It isn’t like that, nothing so crude as that,” and Corky says, “It sounds to me pretty crude, it sounds to me pretty sick, d’you do this with all the guys you fuck, or only with me?” and Christina says, “Corky, I tell Harry about my life, I share my life with him, don’t you understand?—I just want the rest of his life to be as happy as I can make it. He’s seriously ill, the MS is out of remission, it’s beginning to attack his—” and Corky interrupts, “Don’t tell me! I don’t want to know! It’s got nothing to do with me! Harry Kavanaugh isn’t my friend, I’m shit on his shoes, what the fuck do I care about Judge Kavanaugh, any more than he’d care about me!” and Christina, shocked at this, says, faltering, “‘Shit on his shoes’?—what do you mean? Corky, that’s crazy,” and Corky says, “You think I don’t know how you feel about me?—about guys like me?—from Irish Hill? You think I’m that much of an asshole, I don’t know?” and Christina says, “But you’re wrong, honey, you’re wrong, what are you saying? You must know I love you, of course I love you, but—I love Harry, too,” and Corky says, “Then love his prick, suck off his prick,” and Christina says, pleading, “Corky, stop! The things you’re saying! It isn’t just that, I love you very much, I thought you were my friend,” and Corky says, enlivened by rage, and his rage delicious to him, as to all the Corcorans, for what is more delicious than your soul flaming up, a big ball of flame you want to fan bigger, and bigger, “I’m not your friend, Christina, I’m not anybody’s friend, don’t touch me.”
Corky is about to lose it, on the hairsbreadth edge like going over into orgasm, delicious to him, but terrifying, too, as Christina pleads with him he’s been pacing about the crowded space, colliding with things, gives a chair a kick and when the God-damned clock on the mantel begins its sugary-whirring chimes he knocks it off with one flat-handed blow and that shuts it up for good, a clatter of breaking glass as Christina screams, Corky’d smash the Chinese cat-fox in his fist too but it’s out of his reach on a table, he neither knows nor cares what he’s doing only that he’s doing it, such rage burns and in burning justifies itself, consumes itself, since boyhood he’s had a wild temper, Christina Kavanaugh has never seen him erupt, yes but she’s seeing him now, her eyes are being opened now, the bitch, the lying cunt, deceiving Corky Corcoran of all men, yet she continues to plead with him, as if words might save them, words in the face of such passion, trying to touch him, even to caress him, he shoves her away half-shielding his face as if revulsed by the sight of her. Corky’s going to explode and hurt this woman if she isn’t careful but still she approaches him, she can’t believe she has no power over him as, within the past hour, she’s had such power, and such magnificent power, Corky sees it as arrogance, a woman’s arrogance and in this woman the arrogance of the rich, she’s not only right but in her rightness mature, adult—“Corky, honey! For God’s sake how can you be so narrow, so ungiving? Is it some Catholic thing?—some remnant? Nothing has changed between us, has it? Tell me what has changed between us?”—a woman throwing herself upon a child, a child in a fury of a tantrum, she’s his mother, is she, is that it, needing just to get her arms around Corky and hold him fast, still, warm breasts against his face, fingers clutching his head, yes then she’d have him.
Then it happens, it’s the paradox of such situations, Corky’s experienced them many times before, older but no wiser, well maybe a little wiser, an ex-married man is always wiser than a kid starting out knowing nothing, it happens that Christina herself loses it, the lighted flame flares up in her head too, she slaps at Corky when he shoves her away, she begins to scream, sobbing, “Damn you! Damn you! I can’t believe this! You!” catching him a good smarting blow on the side of the face, and in a reflexive motion quick and unthinking and unerring as a cat’s Corky strikes out at her in return, he’s a counterpuncher and counterpunchers love to take a hit because it pulls the trigger, gives them permission, all of the Irish you might say are counterpunchers, shrewdness in desperation, enormous joy in cunning, Watch your back! Corky hits Christina on the shoulder, not hard, but hard enough to stagger her backward, to let her know this is serious, and she flails back at him like in fact he’s her thirteen-year-old kid, yes but Corky isn’t Christina’s kid or anybody’s kid, he hits her again, a little harder, and this time she cries, “God damn you! I hate you!” slapping and clawing at him, and Corky crouches in a quick defense like a boxer, at St. Thomas he’d had a few lessons, skinny lightweight with a good jab but no real punch in either hand still he was quick on his feet, and he’s quick now, ducking now, and his face distorted in a grimace as he balls his fist and punches Christina, this time catching her in the ribs, and again in the ribs, he hasn’t lost it so much he’d hit a woman in the breasts or the belly or the face, certainly not the face, and this woman’s face wet and slippery like rubber with tears, contorted, ugly, she makes one last frantic try at holding him, wrapping her arms around him, still she must believe that if she can hold him she’ll
have him, pleading, begging, “Corky, I love you, don’t hurt me, don’t leave me, I love you, don’t,” now in her desperation that’s like a drunken woman’s tugging at his belt, his trousers, she knows he’s hot for it as he hasn’t quite known in his rage he’s hot for it too, and as at other times in his life, these other times of which he doesn’t think nor wish to think except when good and soused and then he’s incapable of thinking, as at other such times Corky gives in immediately, all his fury is in his cock, all his brains, his blood, like a hemorrhage into his cock and Christina pulls at his clothes, greedily at his crotch, and at her own clothes, begging, whimpering, this desperation in her she won’t believe herself capable of afterward nor wish to recall afterward but now in the terrible exigency of passion can’t halt, clutching at her lover like a drowning woman, the two of them abruptly on the bare floorboards clumsy and panting in manic splotches of sunshine and Corky has his fingers in her, she’s moaning thrashing from side to side her face contorted, reddened eyes shut, a glisten of spittle on her chin, blindly she reaches for him, her fingers grasping at him, she must have him, no way out of this except she must have him, and quick and deft and coldly furious Corky straddles her, mounts her, with the brute efficiency with which, decades ago, as he and other fifth-grade boys at Our Lady of Mercy watched in speechless glee, a male mongrel German shepherd mounted a female mongrel setter in an alley behind the school, Corky’s hot and mean as a pistol, veins standing out in his forehead, veins ropey and tight to bursting too in his penis, he shoves it into her, it’s what she wants so he’s giving it to her, hears her scream, grunt, whimper his name, he grips her hard and purposeful enough to bruise, just below the waist where you can get a solid grip, at the woman’s waist and torso she’s lean but here she’s fleshy, female, beginning to get flaccid, a thirty-six-year-old woman in the body if not in the face and after all she’s had a kid, she’s pushed a kid through it, the birth canal, the vagina, the cunt stretched to bursting like shitting a watermelon a woman once told Corky, that’s the romance of delivering a baby so no wonder Theresa quit being a mother to him as if incapable of recognizing him except to know his name and his relation to her but incapable of feeling it, Corky doesn’t blame her, Corky doesn’t blame any of them, Corky on his bony knees like praying his sinewy thigh muscles he’s so proud of operating the lower part of his body like a jack-hammer, and as much tenderness in the operation as in a jackhammer’s, a half dozen short quick hard thrusts and Corky comes, an anguished-sounding grunt forcing itself through his clenched jaws, a splash of dazed light behind the eyelids, that eruption of sheer sensation in the groin no sooner done than done. Like a decapitation.
3
The Shadow-Office
By the time Corky gets to the Athletic Club downtown at Union City Square, fuck it, he’ll be thirty minutes late, maybe forty, he envisions Greenbaum’s crinkled-turtle face and shrewd pouched eyes, the liquid sharpness to those eyes Corky associates with Jewishness which to his Catholic imagination is as much a quality of IQ as of race or religion or whatever Jews are, yes and another thing about Jews, not that Corky’s experience is deep or wide-ranging but he’s been around, maybe in fact his father used to say this, with Jews there’s a brain independent of and in no way hinted at by the face as with every Irish person you’re likely to meet, faces you can read simple and clear and self-incriminating as a baby’s bottom. Every emotion rising to the surface and the most shameful ones, above all shame itself, oozing oily at every pore.
How could she!—all these months! He’d been so crazy about her.
Sucker. Asshole. The one who doesn’t know what’s going on.
Corky’s suffused with shame. Corky will never forgive Christina Kavanaugh. From this hour on, he’s done with her.
Used Kleenex. Toilet paper.
Fuck a married woman, you’ll end up getting fucked over yourself.
Whose warning was this, drunken ebullience masking utmost sincerity, Corky half-recalls it was old Drummond himself, of all people. Ross Drummond. Corky’s boss for years and his father-in-law for years though not exactly the same years. Warning Corky who was after all married to Ross’s own daughter at the time so it might be interpreted on the face of it a strange or even an insulting thing to say except if you knew the guy.
Treacherous old bastard, yes but he’d always liked Corky Corcoran and trusted him and that’s all that matters.
End up getting fucked over yourself but how could Corky have guessed, cautious about keeping their affair secret, not so much as a hint to his friends, and Corky’s friends are always pumping him about his women, and all along, from the start, she’d been deceiving him, Corky can’t believe it, yes but you’d better believe it, asshole.
He’s my husband, of course I love him, I love him too.
I share my life with him.
Now the fury, the sex part of it, is over, what he’s feeling is hurt, shame. Driving his car too fast, swerving slightly, on a littered ramp of the Fillmore Expressway. Jesus you’d better push it out of your head, better clear your head, you’re going to crack up the car and you never will make it to the U.C.A.C. for lunch or anything else.
Enough to know from this hour on he’s done with Christina Kavanaugh. With both the Kavanaughs.
Clumsy to do this while driving, one arm on the wheel and a hand groping out, he gets the glove compartment open just to check is there a pint of anything inside though knowing of course that there isn’t. After his last near-accident, when he’d scraped his beautiful new car along the right side, Corky made up his mind no more pints in the car thus no temptation to drink while driving no matter his mood and his need.
For whenever there’s a mood, there’s a need. But no more.
The last time Corky felt such shame, he can’t recall. A long time ago.
Of their many quarrels none with Charlotte had gone so deep, so worked him up, sweet Jesus what if he’d lost it completely and hurt her, what then, one solid punch can smash a woman’s jaw, teeth, nose, thank God he’d pulled back in time, nor had any of the quarrels with Thalia been quite so bad, of course with Thalia it was a different story, another kind of testing of Corky Corcoran. Sweet-faced little Thalia in eighth grade walking in the upstairs hall barefoot and gliding in what they called a baby-doll nightie, pink cotton to mid-thigh and childish puff sleeves and lacy collar and her little bush showing shadowy through the fabric, yes and her little breasts, no larger than peaches, the dark nipples, and Corky stared and blinked and for sure blushed and Thalia whispered, “Oh! excuse me, ‘Corky’!” She’d called him “Corky,” too, not in her mother’s voice but in her own: shy-seeming, startled, almost inaudible: and her gaze, the thick-lashed dark brown eyes, dropping away as she turned, to hurry back to her room.
So he’d imagine, or maybe in fact he did hear, her giggling in there.
Well, fuck Thalia, fuck them all. Making an asshole of him.
Except: he’s worried about her, he should call her, yes but he hasn’t got her number. Yes but he could call Miriam at the office and have Miriam get the number from Charlotte, why doesn’t he do that, but no he’s too agitated right now, Miriam’s like an old wife she can detect the faintest tremor in her employer’s voice, remember her stiff disapproval though utterly wordless, discreet, when he’d been drinking in his private office, her prim worried mouth and averted eyes.
Corky’s late for his lunch with Greenbaum but fuck it he’s so sweated up and freaked he has to stop by his Pearl Street office to wash up a bit, his crotch for sure, and run cold water to splash on his face which looks fevered, not like a guy who’s been fucking all morning but who’s been royally fucked, in the ass. Changing also to a fresh white shirt identical to the one he was wearing.
You’re an American, you’re good as you look. Right?
Opens then a closet door, considers the bottle of Johnnie Walker on the shelf—“No thanks.” It’s good for a guy’s morale to say no even if just to himself at a time of great temptation.
This place is Corky Corcoran’s “shadow-office.” So he thinks of it though no one else knows its name. Three fairly large but near-unfurnished rooms on the second floor of an old brick building at Pearl and Tannenbaum, within sight of the Expressway, with a view here too, slantwise, seen through traffic haze, of the river. Miriam the office manager of Corcoran, Inc., on State Street is aware of the shadow-office but knows virtually nothing about it not even its location. Maybe she thinks it’s staffed with a shadow-Miriam, but it’s not—there’s no staff at 274 Pearl, Suite #7, at all. A single telephone, the old-fashioned rotary kind. But no listing in the Union City directory. The office furnishings are minimal, inherited from the previous tenant who departed in haste. A few years ago Corky acquired not only these furnishings but the entire mostly vacated building in a marathon poker game at the Mayor’s residence one New Year’s Day. (Not worth much at the present time, the property might be worth a lot one day, if, say, the $100-million Riverview Project ever comes through. The building at 274 Pearl, five floors, twenty “suites,” built 1922, is officially condemned and was slated for demolition in 1984 but spared through a convenient clerical error in the City Hall Department of Records; through another error, the property is off the tax rolls.)
Corky uses this shadow-office to keep certain financial records it would make him uneasy to keep in his State Street office, not that there’s anything illegal about these records but they’re of a private nature, many having to do with cash-exchange deals and gambling wins and debts, Corky’s known in Union City as a game, sometimes reckless, sometimes very lucky and sometimes very unlucky gambler, a guy who’ll take a chance, a guy who’ll give a friend odds, a guy who always pays you back and no bitching or self-pity, thus the records which constitute to him a kind of diary of his days and nights, but in code, and a code he periodically changes. These accounts are kept in old-fashioned ledgers with numerous listings fastidiously inked out, obliterated with a black felt-tip pen—interludes Corky wishes forgotten, and has forgotten. When some scores are settled, it’s wisest to forget.
What I Lived For Page 11