Basic Forms

by Skolnik, Fred;

  In that time and that place he had been alone. Then she was with him and then she was gone. They lived in a red brick building high above the street. Once he lost his key and had to wake the super, peering at his wife behind him in their bed. He had worked in a department store and then in an office. He had gotten a gun. The gun changed his life. Hirsch stood on the threshold of the empty room, trying to penetrate its silence. It was three steps from the door to the center of the room, and three steps to the window. He looked down into the street and through the trees at the building on the other side of the yard. It was evening. One by one the lights began to come on and sometimes he could see a figure moving beneath the half-drawn window shades. The red enamel kettle on the stove began to whistle. He drank the coffee standing up. What had she worn? Where had she gone?

  The bed was made. Her clothes were on a chair, a skirt, a jacket, nylon stockings, her frilly blouse, the half-slip, the big brassiere with the embroidered flower between the cups, the silky underpants. The room was silent. Nothing stirred. The air was hot and still. He strained his senses to penetrate the silence of the empty room but it would not yield its secret. And he remembered the pennants in the salt sea air and the ships standing out at sea and the smell of rotten oranges and then the body bag.

  And her hair was soft against his cheek. And the stations flashed by, dim recesses of light in the endless night. And he saw his reflection in the glass, trapped between the stations and the train. In that time and that place they had been together. Then she was gone and he was alone again. He had seen her as though lost in a dream. And the music began to play. It went on and on. It carried him along. It lifted him up but did not set him down. And she was there, with her hair up and her hair down, with her breasts full and her neck thin, and the silver slippers beneath the bed and her closet full of clothes and the drawer with her underthings, and some jewelry and a band for her hair and the woolen hat and checkered scarf and boots and gloves as though it was winter again and they were in the snow, and the child stuck a carrot in the snowman’s face and rode away on a stick with a horse’s head. And he could hear that music now.

  VIII

  She wore lipstick and powder and rouge and carried a leather bag and wore high-heeled shoes that made her walk unsteadily and lean against him for support, so that her hair brushed his cheek and he had to keep his arm around her waist. He led her down deserted streets like canyons in the shadows of the afternoon. She turned to him with her fierce, proud look and gleaming eye and said, “I’m starving. Can we eat?”

  In the Automat she excused herself while he filled their tray and found a table in a quiet corner of the room where he could watch the street and the revolving door and the stairs leading down to the restrooms. Then she came toward the table and he blinked and studied her. His eyes were drawn to her perfect body, the frilly blouse, the attractive suit, the curve of her leg. She ate daintily, her left hand in her lap, her back straight and her shoulders square, occasionally fanning away the smoke that drifted through the air. “Aren’t you going to eat?” she said. “The roast beef is delicious.” Then she giggled, covering her mouth with her hand. “I’m sorry, I just thought of something so funny. Maybe hell is like this—a little man in a white cap standing there with all the sinners lined up in a row saying ‘rare…medium…well done.’” He noticed a certain thickness in her speech, her tongue getting entangled in the word “sinners.” She caught his eye with that lopsided, tremulous smile of repressed mirth that was often on her face and again brought her hand to her mouth. “I hope I’m not embarrassing you. I never think about what I say or do.” She took out a compact from her purse and patted her cheeks with some more powder, studying the effect in the little mirror and winking at him merrily. “What a dainty dish am I!”

  Afterwards they walked back to the Library locked together like a single person. He wanted to go in to get a book and leave her on the steps but she came in too and together they moved between the stacks and when he found what he was looking for she took his wrist and said, “Let’s see,” and nodded her head. It was a book of poems she thought she’d read. Then they walked to Union Square.

  “My feet are killing me,” she said. “Let’s sit down.”

  They found a bench and sat slightly apart, her leather bag between them. She slipped her feet out of her shoes and said, “That’s a relief,” and then, “I wish you could massage them.” Then she took his hand. Her hand felt soft and warm. He watched the people in the Square. The old socialist in baggy

  pants was haranguing the crowd. Women with packages were coming out of stores and hastening toward the subway. He had come here as a child and afterwards they ate in the Automat, choosing hot dishes from the little windows where you put your nickels in. And listening to the clatter of dishes and forks and knives and the tinkle of coffee cups. And the steady hum or drone of voices. “What are you thinking about?” she said. He turned to look at her. She had wild, luxurious hair. Her eyes were hard and bright. Her chest rose and fell regularly in measured breaths. Her soft, full breasts rose too. He wanted to touch her but held himself back. He wanted to lay his head in her lap.

  “I haven’t been out in such a while. They say time heals all wounds. Did you ever think about getting old? I thought about it last night. Oh, once or twice a year I’m up all night with these thoughts that will not leave me. I get so sad. It’s like a chain of thoughts, one leading to the other—getting old, dying, all the sad people in the world, such terrible sadness, and the children, always the children. I was a child once too, and so were you. It makes me want to cry. I almost did, you know, last night. The tears filled my eyes. It’s strange how you can cry for other people and not yourself. Isn’t that a laugh. But I am happy now. For a long time I have wanted to say this to you. I am happy now. And though we have never been together in that way, and perhaps we never can, though I want it with all my heart, it is enough to be here with you as we are. Sometimes I think: he will not come. But you never disappoint me. I hear you in the hall and fix my hair and put some perfume behind my ear and then you knock. We should always be together, I think.”

  The day was winding down. Soon it would be dark. It was a time of day imprinted like a formal feeling in some hidden region of the mind. Around it gathered great complexes of memory wedded to desire. He could hear that music now. He held her hand and wanted her. She was his. He could mount her if he liked. Her hair was wild and touched his face. She told him a long story about her childhood and how her father died. He glanced at her from time to time. She might have had a brother. It was not clear. “Then my mother remarried,” she said, “and I was sent away.”

  She was silent for a while. Then she said, “Well, I’ve told you my story, now tell me yours.” But Zupan had nothing to tell. His father hadn’t died, nor had his mother. Nor had he been sent away. He had no brother and he had no

  sister. There had been just the three of them. He had been a student of philosophy once, but that was long ago. Now he led a quiet life. He took long walks and borrowed books from the Library. He ate in the Automat. He had worked in an office, he had rung doorbells, but none of it had worked out. He was presently unemployed.

  “I know the feeling,” she said. “I’ve been unemployed myself. Life has its ups and downs. That’s what my father used to say. I guess that’s obvious. You’ve seen my paintings. I’ve sold a few. You can see them in the galleries too. Painting keeps me busy enough. When I get tired I lie down in my bed. When I’m hungry I have a bite to eat. It’s as simple as that. And I also read a lot, as I believe I told you when we met. I’m so glad you came that night.”

  She squeezed his hand. She crossed her legs and made him want to touch her knee. She shook out her wild, luxuriant hair. He lit a cigarette. He blew the smoke into the air. It was getting dark. The Square was emptying out. In the morning it would fill up again, all things being equal. Men and women would rise from their beds and be led here by circumstance or
design. It was in the stars, you could almost say. But some would be diverted, follow different routes, and then a bench would be empty that might have been filled, a woman who came out on her balcony each night would look up at a dark window and never know who was there, a young man would see a long black gown fall open to reveal a woman’s flesh and store the moment in his mind. He threw down his cigarette and stood up. The woman stood up too. He crossed the street and she followed him. “It’s suppertime. Won’t you come up. I baked a cake just as I said. Everything is ready. I just have to heat it up.”

  They had their meal. She served it in her kitchen and then went out to the balcony. She leaned back in the lounge and he sat opposite her looking up at his window. She spoke again about her childhood. She seemed very sad. It was difficult to follow her story. Much of it seemed confused. It was not clear where she’d been when her father died or when her mother remarried. It was not clear if there’d been a brother too. Could he have been a twin, or a figment of her imagination? As she told the story she began to cry. It was terrible to see. He felt like crying too. He wished he could comfort her but knew he couldn’t. When she finished her story she blew her nose. “Silly me,” she said.

  They sat on the balcony until midnight. Then he got up to go. There was no one in the street. He walked around the block, to her corner first and then to his and down the long street where he lived and up the steps and back to his apartment. He did not turn on the light. He stood in the doorway for a long while trying to penetrate the silence of the empty room, as though it contained a life of its own. Then he had a sudden apprehension that if he went to his window and looked across the yard her balcony would not be there. He moved into the center of the room and waited. He did not look out the window. He had drawn the curtain or blind. He found the bedroom door. He did not need the light. He knew where every object was. He undressed and crawled into his bed. He curled himself into a ball and hours later fell asleep. And when he was asleep words came into his head that made no sense, words that were forgotten the moment they were spoken: three of this, two of that, he couldn’t say. Where did the words go? Not into the air because he hadn’t really said them. He had only dreamed them, though the words were spoken in a voice that was not unlike his own. They must still be in my head, he thought when he woke up sitting in the sun. They must have receded there and locked themselves into an inaccessible place where the river turns. And for a moment he thought he might be someone else. But he wasn’t. He was sure of that. It would have felt different to be someone else, and he felt like himself, or had he dreamed these things when he was awake, at the edge of sleep, slipping in and out of himself like a guest in an overheated room?

  But time does not stand still. He had very little money in the bank. He was obliged to fix a date, as though it marked an end. Beyond it he could not go. Then he calculated his expenses and divided them into hours and days. He would have to skimp. The Horns might take him to lunch, Spinelli might buy him something to eat when he required company, Spinelli’s wife might invite him in one day when Spinelli was away or Mrs. Miller might bring him soup again. He thought of the janitor’s silent black wife. It was noon. The sun was overhead. It was a hot day but it was cool in the apartment. He had only fallen asleep at dawn, when the sparrows began to chirp and twitter and the heavy trucks came rolling by in the street below. When he woke up he was sweating. It was three steps to the bedroom door. He slept with the door closed, sealed into the room, his head beneath the blankets. He turned the light in the other room on and off and on again. He had a cup of coffee. He looked across the yard to the empty balcony. He smoked a cigarette. Then Spinelli banged on the door.

  They went down the steps together. Spinelli said, “I had the fuckingest dream last night. It was about this crazy scam called the Thousand Dollar Minute. There’s this card game and this dude wins twenty-one thousand dollars. They play with chips and there’s a banker and an off-duty cop who’s on the take and you go double or nothing on every bet. Then there’s a fake police raid and the dude gets shot. Go figure it. Dreams. Who the fuck needs them.”

  They were going to see Spinelli’s new house. He had sold the co-op in Queens after getting another promotion. He was now in charge of operations for all of New York City. He was already moving some of his things. He had his wife’s majorette’s hat and a few of her batons on the back seat; also a carton of bubblegum. He had a U-Haul hooked up to the back of the car. Horn had helped them load it up, or at least had seemed to, as most of his energy had been expended directing pedestrians around the boxes and pieces of furniture on the sidewalk. “You ought to throw some of this junk away,” Horn said, “and fix yourself up with something with style.”

  “Where I’m going you don’t need style,” Spinelli said, “you need balls.”

  Horn winked at Zupan to let him know that he was just egging Spinelli on. They crammed the van full and drove out to Long Island. Then they unloaded it. The house was enormous. The empty rooms were cavernous, vaulted with big windows and painted white with wooden floors so that you thought of workout rooms for gymnasts or ballerinas. Afterwards they went to the shopping center and found a pizzeria. Zupan had just a few slices while Spinelli had a full meal. Zupan watched him eat. If he had had two lives to live, he might have liked to live one of them as a Spinelli. In fact, if he had had his own life to live, he might have liked to live it as a Spinelli. Then he would have had a blonde wife and a house in Long Island. She would have performed for him with her baton in the big empty rooms, throwing it high up in the air and then catching it between her legs after twisting her body into one of the odd shapes the majorettes practiced on football fields while less pretty girls looked on enviously or perhaps disdainfully, depending on various factors. They would have had three children and she wouldn’t breast feed them. Who could blame her?

  Spinelli said, “You ever see a pussy with bunions? You never know what you’re getting into. I told this broad, ‘Hey, my dick ain’t for sale. You want a good fuck, go to a leper colony.’” Spinelli squeezed his crotch, as if to illustrate his point. Spinelli paid and left a small tip. “Fucking cunt,” he said.

  They drove back to the city. Spinelli wove in and out of traffic and cursed everyone on the road. “Three more trips and I’m done,” he said. “I think I’ll leave the sofa. You want it? I got all sorts of shit. Come up and have a look. But don’t look at my wife or I’ll break your ass. I got plenty of old tit magazines. You can have what you want.”

  Spinelli let him off in front of the house and went to park in the no-parking zone. He saw Spinelli’s wife in her window, chewing gum. The black woman was picking up garbage near the steps. She turned her back to him and bent over in her storklike way but shot up again when she realized he was watching her. She had spindly legs and a bony rump and the blackest face he had ever seen, devoid of all expression. The street was quiet. Mr. McGuire had gone upstairs. Shadows were beginning to fall across the curb. Down the long canyon of the street, on Park Avenue South running up from Union Square, occasional figures could be seen, walking north and south. He couldn’t see their faces. He could only wonder who they were. Sometimes he followed a woman in the street. He stayed well back and if she turned into a building he went in too. Then their eyes met and she might have been frightened for an instant but he reassured her with a friendly smile and pretended to be looking for a name. Sometimes he got into the elevator with her and saw the fear again and trembling too but always got off on a different floor. Then he found himself looking at closed doors and wondered who might be living there. He read the names but did not knock or ring. He wore his old suede jacket and faded pants and might have been a delivery boy but had nothing to deliver in his hands. In the gilded mirrors in the halls his eyes were gray, metallic. He ran his fingers through his hair. The face he saw did not seem to be his own. It was a mask. He was somewhere else. There had been a smell of rotten oranges in the lobby and outside the smell of salt in the raw sea
air. And ships standing out on the horizon and couples strolling on the boardwalk on a Sunday afternoon. That had been in another time and another place. There had been three of them, himself and two others.

  He ate in the Automat. She had agreed to meet him. Afterwards they saw a show. Then they stopped to watch a film crew filming on Times Square. She told him about what she was studying. He had been a student of philosophy then. His head was full of ideas.

  It was getting late. She was waiting for him but the light did not come on in her window. Other lights came on, one by one. Her lounge was on the balcony. He thought she might be sitting there but wasn’t sure. Might she have fallen asleep, waiting for him to come? He had her number but didn’t call. He was afraid to hear her voice on the phone. It might be a voice he didn’t know. It might be any voice. He imagined her asleep on the lounge, her breasts rising and falling, so soft and full. He imagined her in a sweater and a skirt, her legs bare. He looked through the window for a while, waiting for his phone to ring, and then he went to sleep.

  The rent was due. On the first of the month the landlord came by and sat in his little office all day waiting for the tenants to come down to pay. There they made their complaints as well. Mrs. Miller said she wasn’t getting enough heat and Mr. McGuire said the stairs were slippery. Zupan paid his rent. He had begun to sell his books. He’d sold first the books he hadn’t read and later the books that didn’t matter and now the books he didn’t understand. He hardly noticed the difference. Books were still piled on his dresser in the bedroom and arranged on shelves along the living room wall. He paid his rent and ate in the Automat and felt unburdened for a while. He sat in Union Square. He was surprised to see her there. It was as though she had been waiting for him to come. They sat on their bench. She did not complain but he understood that he had disappointed her and even made her sad. Then it began to rain and they ran together down the subway steps and sheltered there until the shower passed. She laughed and wiped the water from her face and he lit a cigarette. They stood very close together. Other people came down too and waited out the rain. Then they all came up again and went their separate ways and he walked with her to her street and they took the elevator up and she threw off her shoes and changed into a sweater and a skirt and told him once again about her childhood. He could see that it troubled her. Her mood darkened when she spoke of it. Many things remained unresolved. Others puzzled her. “I always like to get to the root of things,” she said. “Not so much to know but to feel. Knowing satisfies the mind but feeling is for the soul. Don’t you think?”