Good as Gold

by Joseph Heller

  "I'm a millionaire, Bruce," Harris Rosenblatt en­lightened him, "and every millionaire is a Harvard man. Although not every Harvard man, of course, is a millionaire. There's really only one outstanding univer­sity in the country, Bruce, and I'll never regret that I went to the Harvard Club for lunch today." They paused at the corner before parting. "We must have dinner soon with you and Belle when you've taken your position on the President's staff."

  "I'm turning it down," said Gold, looking rather shamefaced.

  "Then we must not have dinner," Harris Rosenblatt gruffly decided. "What will you do instead?"

  "Something of very great importance," said Gold. "I'm writing a biography of Henry Kissinger."

  "Of who?" asked Harris Rosenblatt.

  "Henry Kissinger."

  "Who?"

  "Henry Kissinger. He used to be Secretary of State. He's the one who wanted to go down in history like Metternich and Castlereagh."

  "Like who?"

  Gold abandoned the project and ascertained at the apartment that Dina was safe and could manage on her own till evening when he drove back with Belle. With Kissinger gone, he was stuck only with the book on the Jewish experience in America he owed Pomoroy and Lieberman.

  On the fourth day he succeeded in alleviating one of Joannie's problems by reassuring her that a messy divorce would not compromise his career in the least. Joannie returned from a condolence call to Harriet with news that Harriet would like to see Esther and Rose again soon to talk about old times with Sid. Muriel's crude rejection of every attempt at conciliation with Joannie rankled Gold until Greenspan rang up again

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  from the downstairs vestibule to report that the White House was trying to reach him by phone and getting a busy signal.

  "Bruce, he wants me to ask you again," said Ralph. "This time he may actually be offering you the position of Secretary of State."

  "Ralph, I don't want it," said Gold.

  "Was it anything we did at the U.N.? Is it something we're going to do to Israel?"

  "No."

  "Bruce, the President is going to be very disappoint­ed. He's counting on you to help with his punctuation."

  "Nothing doing."

  "What about that piece you gave him? 'We Are Not a Society or We Are Not Worth Our Salt.'"

  "He can keep it," said Gold.

  "Reprint rights too? Can we publish it under his own name?"

  "If you'll leave me alone," Gold pleaded with fatigue. "Ralph, please stop bothering me. And call off that Greenspan."

  "I'll try," said Ralph. "But it's like talking to the wall."

  "Greenspan, go away," Gold shouted across the street on the fifth day at the surreptitious, unshaven figure in back of the telephone pole as he left for the messages and fucking student papers accumulating for him at the college. When he returned at twilight, Greenspan was upstairs in Esther's apartment wearing a prayer shawl and a yarmulka.

  "We needed one more for the minyan," said Victor, "and I found him downstairs in a car."

  Rose had another swelling in her breast and this time would go into a hospital for a biopsy. There was a waiting period of twelve days for a room.

  "Yiskadal v'yiskadish," Gold began the prayer for the dead, reading the Hebrew works phonetically from an English text after Greenspan had started the evening prayers.

  Greenspan was the only one there who could read

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  the language in the original. Greenspan still had not shaved. Gold was embarrassed that all the men in the family had, in violation of the ban against shaving during the seven-day period of mourning. Greenspan was invited to stay for dinner and encouraged to invite his wife.

  "Greenspan, please leave," Gold whispered.

  "And will you need us tomorrow night too?" Green­span hinted. "My wife bakes beautifully."

  "Shame, shame, Greenspan. You're a shonda."

  "Am I supposed to spend my whole life in coffee shops and cafeterias?" Greenspan wanted to know. "How often do you think I get a chance to eat like this in my line of work?"

  "But you're taping all this, aren't you?" Gold accused.

  "My bug is sealed."

  "Why is he holding his hands on his belly?" Julius Gold demanded with a scowl, raising his voice in interest and irritation for the first time in almost a week.

  "He's got a bug in hispupik," said Gold to his father. "Keep it covered, Greenspan. Here comes my step­mother with some words of wisdom you must never forget."

  "Cackle, cackle," said Gussie Gold.

  The number of visitors was diminishing nightly. Muriel turned civil to Joannie finally with a curiosity almost baldly salacious and she and Ida began bickering with each other as of old. Joannie was leaving early that evening, to prepare for her flight back to California the next morning. She said to Gold, at the elevator, "How are things with you and Belle now?"

  "As good as ever."

  "Does she know that?"

  Gold kissed her goodbye with genuine feeling and decided to patch things up firmly with Belle if he could.

  "Belle," he began in a roundabout way on the sixth day, almost faltering at the start. "How is your mother? Does she know we're together again?"

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  Belle nodded before speaking. "She knows."

  "She knows?" said Gold. "How did you tell her?"

  "I didn't tell her."

  Gold spoke with puzzlement. "How does your mother know we're together again if you didn't tell her?"

  "I never told her you were leaving," Belle said with a smile. Then she requested a favor for the children. "I had calls from the boys. They'd like to come home for the weekend."

  "Aaaaah, let them," said Gold as Belle turned to answer another phone call from Ralph.

  "I don't want to talk to him."

  "What should I say?" asked Belle.

  "Tell him to kiss my ass."

  "I'll tell him no such thing."

  "Ralph," Gold began.

  "I have to, Bruce," Ralph said in apology. "When the President tells me to try, I have to at least make the call, don't I? It's not about Secretary of State this time."

  "What is it then?"

  "He's written a screenplay."

  "So have I."

  "So have I," said Ralph.

  "I have no connections for screenplays," said Gold. "Tell him to get a good agent and try to close a deal for an option."

  "He likes to keep his options open," said Ralph. "Was that Belle on the phone before? If it was, please give her my love."

  "And you give mine to Alma."

  "Alma who?" said Ralph.

  Gold gave a grimace of annoyance. "Alma your wife and Alma your fiancee. Isn't Alma the name of the girl you're married to and the girl you're engaged to?"

  "Oh, gosh, Bruce, they're both over," said Ralph with surpassing affability. "I'm certainly glad you haven't found out about Andrea yet. And I hope you won't be angry when you do."

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  "Andrea?" Gold was glued in place with a speechless expression for a moment. He had forgotten entirely that he was still engaged to Andrea. "Found out what?"

  "That we're together," said Ralph. "She and I."

  "Together?" said Gold. "How together? What do you mean together? In what way are you together?"

  "As lovers."

  "You mean you're fucking?"

  "Oh, we've been doing that for years," said Ralph.

  "Even while she and I were engaged?"

  "But we were never friendly," Ralph put in quickly. "Then we found ourselves together one evening and really got close. She paid us a compliment, Bruce, you and me, I think, although I'm not sure which one, or even if it really is a compliment. She said I was as good as gold."

  Gold felt like a big schmuck when he finally found his mother's grave after the final prayers on the last day and saw that every character on the headstone was in Hebrew. He recognized not a one. The earth had no message for him. He put his arm around the weather-beaten stone monument for
a moment in a strange kind of hug and that felt a little bit closer and warmer. He left a pebble on her grave.

  Returning for Belle by way of Coney Island Avenue, he came upon a softball game in a schoolyard played by boys wearing yarmulkas, and he left the car to watch. Athletes in skullcaps? The school was a religious one, a yeshiva. Some of the teen-agers had sidelocks, and some of the sidelocks were blond. Gold smiled. God was right—a stiff-necked, contrary people. Moisheh Kapoyer, here it was winter and they were playing baseball, while everyone else played football and basketball.

  And a stubborn dispute was in progress. The boy at first base had his back to the others, in a pose of limp exasperation. The pitcher was sulking and refused to throw the ball. The batter was waiting in a squat with

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  his elbows on his knees, his head resting with disinter­est on one hand. As Gold watched, the catcher, a muscular, redheaded youth with freckles and sidelocks and a face as Irish or Scottish or Polish as any Gold had ever laid eyes upon, moved wrathfully toward the pitcher with words Gold for a minute had trouble believing.

  "Varf!" shouted the catcher. ''Varf it, already! Varf the fucking ball!"

  Gold continued to Esther's for Belle and drove home. He owed Pomoroy a book. Where could he begin?

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  last of three children through orthodontia, her splendid teeth were of transcending symbolic importance. Her posture and muscle tone were good.

  "You must learn to think more of yourself," he told her at one point during dinner, and took her hand lightly for a few seconds. "After all, if you are not for yourself, who else shall be for you?" A self-conscious prudence deterred him from attributing the paraphrase t0 R^bbi Hillel.

  AndraTiV^> timid and deferential, and he was not certain how to pfS£eed with a woman of such quality. In the taxi outside her condominium he asked if he might come up for a drink. She consented with evident relief, grateful, it seemed, for his preemptive move. The apartment was large for a single person, even for one so tall, and the unexpected good order suggested the daily ministrations of an efficient cleaning woman. The furniture was ghastly, the pieces outsized.

  "It was left this way when I bought it," he was pleased to hear her explain.

  Gold took it as propitious that she seated herself on the sofa near him after bringing him his cognac.

  "All that year together at the Senator Russell B. Long Foundation," she said with some bashfulness, sipping her vodka, "I thought you didn't like me."

  "Really?" said Gold. "I always liked you. I thought you didn't like me."

  "I always liked you."

  "You should have said something."

  "I thought you hated me. I never thought you even noticed me."

  "Oh, come on."

  "Really, Dr. Gold—"

  "Call me Bruce," he interrupted.

  She blushed. "I'm not sure I can."

  "Try."

  "Bruce."

  "You see?" he laughed.

  "You're so much fun."

  "Why did you think I hated you?"

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  "Because you knew I liked you," she answered.

  "I didn't know you liked me," he said. "I thought you hated me."

  She was moderately overwrought, as though charged with something heinous. "Why would I hate you?"

  "I don't know," said Gold, and noticed his hands moving about restlessly. "I had so little to offer a singly girl like you who was so sensitive and intelligent g^ even had her own Ph.D."

  "I wouldn't have cared," she said in souHtfj apoi0gy "I was so impressed with you. Everyone was. You were always so quick and domineering and sexy."

  "Sexy?" Gold was astounded.

  "Of course. All the girls there thought so."

  "Do you still," asked Gold, "think I'm sexy?"

  "Oh, yes." She blushed again.

  Gold wondered what to do next. He laughed loudly and punched her lightly on the arm, as one good fellow to another, and then brushed the back of his fingers against her cheek as though in unpremeditated exten­sion of his jocular disbelief. Her reaction surprised him. Instead of stiffening or withdrawing, as he more or less expected her to do, she leaned into his hand and continued bringing herself toward him on the sofa. In a moment they were kissing. Brandy splashed on his knees as he blindly divested himself of his glass and took her in his arms. Her fingers were clasping the back of his head. Again, he was at a loss to proceed with a girl like her. He moved his lips about her ears and neck as though in thirsting search of an erogenous zone. A waste of time, he knew from experience. Erogenous zones were either everywhere or nowhere, and he meant to write about that someday, too, when neither Belle nor his daughter would be scandalized by his knowledge. With a guilty start he realized his mind had been wandering, and refocused his attention upon Andrea. He clutched her all the harder to compensate for moments lost in digression and feigned a gasping shortness of breath. Moaning softly, he kissed her eyes and waited for something to happen. Andrea dropped

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  her hand into his lap and took hold of his penis. Then he knew he had it made.

  Gold woke up in love and a believer in miracles Andrea did not seem to mind his scrawny chest and ^newy, hairy legs and arms. He showered and, after breclkt^stin8 Wlth Just a yellow towel knotted faddishly about%hls waist> began to dress lazily. Gold had made the coffe% whlle Andrea sliced overripe bananas into breakfast ce?S§L^At his suggestion, she added raisins. On his next trip, n8*WQuld bring her a coffee grinder, a pound of his favorite blend of coffee beans, and a French drip coffeepot of ceramic. Gold could cook when he had to. He would introduce her to Irish oatmeal.

  "Will you want to see me again?" she asked from her dressing table.

  "Of course," said Gold.

  "Lots of men don't."

  "Lots of men?" Gold, sitting on the edge of her bed, paused with a sock halfway up his ankle.

  She nodded, turning faintly pink. "I don't mean lots in here. But lots of men take me out and say they'll call me and then they never do."

  "Why not?"

  "I don't know. Do you really want to see me again? I'll understand if you don't."

  /'I'd like to come back next week."

  "You could stay here with me in the apartment," she said. "I won't be in the way."

  "I was hoping you would ask."

  She was pleased. He was mystified. "I'm so glad you liked me," she told him. "Was I all right?"

  "Andrea, you must never ask that," he instructed. As a matter of fact, she had not been all right, but Gold was far too astute to delve into that can of worms now. "And I think I'm in love with you."

  Gold was struck afresh by the number of stunning tall women who fell in love with shorter men like him­self who were rapacious, egotistical, and calculating.

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  Surely, though, she must suspect he was shorter. The explanations that came most readily to the fore were anything but complimentary to either of them. Was it possible that someone so self-assessing as himself had qualities of attraction he was not aware of? It was possible, for Andrea in the nude was as gorgeous a§ he'd imagined, and she seemed to adore him.

  In morning light her eyes were lavender. Her legs were long and straight, her hips small, her jg£jp str0ng, and all her fair flesh was imbued with^golden tinge that contrasted beautifully, he Jfegught, with his own swathier pigmentation. She loved his darker color. She was charmed by the hair on his chest. He watched with the possessive air of someone special as she slipped a tasteful print dress over her head and shook out her hair. That she was rich added an extra dimension of vitality and eroticism to the quixotic passion he felt for her. Nothing equals the foot for ugliness, Gold remem­bered Ernest Becker had written in The Denial of Death, but hers, both bare and shod, were as unre­markable to him as his own.

  "When I was young," she ruminated aloud, adjusting a thin gold necklace, "I wanted to be a model. I guess I stiirdo. Not a fashion model. A sex model." She applied makeup sparingly to her lips an
d eyes. "I wanted to be a cheesecake model or pose in the nude. Then when all these obscene newspapers and maga­zines began coming out, I wanted to be a pornographic model or act in dirty movies. I used to sit in front of a mirror for hours and practice sucking dicks. For the camera, I meaft. Like those models in cosmetic ads. I got to be quite good at it, I think. Would you like to see?"

  "I have to go back to New York," he replied in the steadiest voice.

  "It's just a small motion of the mouth."

  "I have a one o'clock class."

  "It only takes a second, silly," said Andrea, and made a small motion of her mouth above her cylinder of pale lipstick. "Isn't that good?"

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  Gold was iu -^**-

  Washington he wlh^g^ ^~«
  amazement the many bizajTj uuwf iffSs to which he perceived he was going to be increasingly subjected. "I can see," he said, "how that might be confusing to someone who did not understand." He straightened his other sock and put on his shoes.

  "Once I found out, of course," said Andrea, "I took to it all like a duck to water. Last summer I was at the swimming pool at Daddy's estate with this new beau, and he did the strangest thing. I was scraping a callus off the bottom of my foot with a callus scraper. He stood up suddenly and said he never wanted to see me again, and he drove away without packing his things or even saying goodbye to Daddy. Do you know why?"

  Gold came up behind her and stroked her shoulders. "Were you near each other when you were scraping off the callus?"

  "We were together at the pool."

  "Does it make a noise?"

  "Like sandpaper."

  "I might have done the same thing."

  "I don't know things like that."