The Men's Club

by Leonard Michaels

  Kramer said, ‘Anybody want some coffee?’

  Berliner said, ‘Your pants around your ankles. I see it. I see it, man. You’re sitting in the car with your pants around your ankles. That’s a scream.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Paul, looking at Berliner with a dim light of pleasure, sharing the scream.

  ‘But why is your story like mine?’

  ‘The cars.’

  ‘The cars?’

  ‘She was sad. We went to her car. Then she was happy.’

  Berliner said nothing. Paul glanced at me. ‘No?’

  ‘Maybe it is,’ I said, not knowing what is or isn’t. Berliner muttered, ‘She used you.’

  ‘Yeah. You’re right. That’s what I mean.’

  Cavanaugh said, ‘You shouldn’t tell that story. There are stories nobody should tell.’

  ‘It’s what happened. It’s not a story. My wife left town and this woman laid me.’

  ‘Cavanaugh is kidding you,’ said Terry. ‘I’m glad you told it. What happened when your wife got home?’

  ‘Your pants around your ankles,’ said Berliner, laughing.

  ‘It’s a scream.’

  ‘I was happy when my wife got home. She said, “You horny or something?” She expected me to be mad at her. She said, “You horny? It’s only been two weeks.” I said, “Let’s go to bed.” She said, “It’s the middle of the day. The house is a mess.” I said, “Please.” She said, “I have too much to do.” We spent the afternoon in bed. I was happy she was home and that’s the truth.’

  ‘You weren’t lonely anymore,’ I said.

  Paul began fixing himself another marijuana. ‘When she’s around, I don’t have to try to live.’

  ‘Well, I don’t know about you guys,’ said Cavanaugh, smiling and surly, as if Berliner and Paul, in their stories, had reproached him. ‘But I love to do it. I’ve driven to other cities, my pickup loaded with camping equipment. Sarah thinks I’m going to the Snake River to fish. I’m driving to Denver to fuck.’

  Paul said, ‘You know how to live. Drive to Denver … That’s cool. If I tried it, I’d have an accident, go off a cliff or something.’

  Terry, looking at Cavanaugh, said, ‘They used to call a person like you oversexed. You’d drive to Denver? Must be twenty hours. More.’

  ‘It’s fun.’

  ‘Driving to Denver?’

  ‘The sex.’

  Terry scowled. ‘It makes you laugh?’

  Cavanaugh laughed. Berliner laughed at him.

  Terry said, ‘Sex is serious, but I’m sure it could be other things. For imbeciles it could be fun. Not for a man like you, Cavanaugh.’

  ‘It’s fun,’ said Cavanaugh.

  Berliner shouted, ‘Paul got his dick crushed. That’s fun.’ Laughing teeth and gums, his head snapped on a whiplike spine.

  Cavanaugh, lifting his wineglass, talked to it. ‘Life,’ he said. Then said, ‘Life is thirst.’ Nobody was listening. He drank his thirst.

  Six

  TERRY FROWNED and smiled. Big head; big face, like the map of a nation. Room for antithetical feelings. The eyelids fluttering, as if assailed by gnats, suggested embarrassment, uncertainty. The spill of his lower lip was amusement. A loosening – submission to Berliner’s raucous, licentious laughter – checked by small clutches of muscle, like tiny fists, at the corners of his mouth. Fluttering above, clutching below. What to call this expression? Maybe every combination in a face doesn’t have a name. But he’d name it himself. He was gathering towards speech, like a man about to rumba, waiting to feel the beat. From Terry – round, square, bulky – I expected definitive matter. Truth pressed by flesh. He looked only at Berliner. Berliner quit laughing. Terry was a doctor. People listen to them.

  ‘I married young. I didn’t know much about women.’

  He’d said this earlier, when Berliner left the room. Terry wanted him to hear it now, his motto. In his medical office, I supposed, diplomas hung on the walls. Like the silk shirt on his back. Credentials. Manifestations of his presence in the world, as distinguished from your own. More to the point, he was changing the mood in Kramer’s dining room. He wouldn’t begin amid the brainless residue of Berliner’s laughter. Too much self-respect.

  ‘I also met a woman like yours, Berliner. I was married then, working in an emergency room, thirty-six-hour shifts, twice a week. Nicki wanted me to do something else, maybe private practice. But the money was good and I had plenty of free time. The emergency room wasn’t in a nice neighbourhood. I saw knife wounds. Men came in with things stuck up their assholes. Cucumbers. Coke bottles. An armed guard was always at the door.’

  Berliner nodded, as if hammered lightly behind the head, to show his appreciation of real life. His mouth was slightly open, waiting for the woman, not laughing.

  ‘It was another medical education. Good for me, I thought. Then, late one night, a gorgeous Latino appears in high heels and a tight short skirt. Also jewellery – rings, glass baubles – like this emergency room is her place for dancing. Her hair is black black. Moist-looking; gleaming like hot tar. She is young, confident, daring. She is the boss. I heard that already in her heels coming towards me. Hard linoleum floor. Bare halls. She walked like drumsticks. She made a racket.’

  Berliner smiled. This drama tickled him. Bare halls, hard floor, gorgeous Latino making her entrance, and here is Terry, young doctor, healing afflictions of the night. I looked at Terry’s shirt. Could anyone in that shirt – subtle mauve expensive silk – care much for other people? It occurred to me I wanted his shirt.

  ‘She sits, crosses her legs. Superior legs. Then she takes out a cigarette and offers me one. I didn’t accept. The nurse might have noticed. It wouldn’t look right, I thought, smoking with a patient. Her in particular. I said, “What’s your problem?” Now it makes me laugh.’

  His voice lifted; didn’t laugh. This was life. You laugh at it theoretically.

  ‘She says the doctors in the emergency room make arrangements with her for prescriptions. I say, “Yes?” Not an appropriate response, but I didn’t know what she was talking about. She’s cool, matter-of-fact, as if I do know in a general way. “It’s the tradition,” she says. I say, “Yes? What’s your problem?” She repeats herself about arrangements, negotiations. Tells me this is not uncommon. Then asks would I mind if she shuts the door. Nobody was out there except the nurse. I said, “If you’ll feel more comfortable, shut the door.” She does. Then she assures me I can phone doctors in LA who will vouch for her. Names names and specialties. Urology. Radiology. I begin to understand. She hasn’t come for a diagnosis. Nothing is the matter. She wants to make an exchange. Do business. The door is shut, but she is whispering.’

  ‘She’s like the woman I met?’ said Berliner.

  ‘Yes. She had an effect on me. I learned from her about myself.’

  ‘But the one I met liked me.’

  ‘May I go on?’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘She wants to do business. For certain prescriptions, she’ll do whatever I want, at my convenience, in a regular way. “Anything,” she says. She takes a date book from her purse. As if it’s all settled, she asks, “What are your hours?”’

  ‘Man, she’s nothing like the one I met.’

  Cavanaugh said, ‘Shut up, Solly.’

  Terry said, ‘Yes, she is. Listen to me. This was a difficult moment. They don’t teach this in medical school. It is overlooked, ignored, never mentioned.’

  ‘What’s this, this, this?’ said Berliner.

  ‘What she called the tradition. What she said is “not uncommon”. You know what I said? I said, “Go away.” She gave me a look I still feel. Like I’m a sick nut from the street. She says, “You need a doctor, Doctor.” She turns, walks to the door, then looks back. To make sure she isn’t dreaming. I say, “Go away or I’ll call the cops.” She opens the door, walks out. I’m standing there in my doctor outfit, my little office, by myself. She was going away. I myself chased her out. I felt grief. For this grie
f I was wearing a plastic name tag. For this grief they gave me instrument trays, prescription pads, and people called me Doctor. I cried out, “Wait, you forgot something.” She kept on walking. She didn’t hear me. I didn’t cry out again. I’d done enough; too much. I was trembling. Then the nurse says, “Wait. Doctor wants you. You forgot something.” She stopped. I was standing at my desk, looking down the hall at her. She looked back, waiting for me to speak. I had to say something, tell her what she forgot. The nurse was listening. I said, “Your prescription.” Like a fool. I didn’t mean it. But too late. She starts back, heels knocking, jewellery bouncing. She is putting on an act for the nurse with her whole body, laughing, shaking her head. Oh, it’s so funny that she forgot her prescription. She came back inside the office and, without asking me, shut the door. You don’t have to shut the door to write a prescription. It must have looked bad. I was locked in, and if the truth were known, I loved it. Now she wasn’t so damned gorgeous. Now there was something at stake. I could see flaws. She was arrogant, hot, suffocating meat. I couldn’t even talk.’

  Berliner, half-smiling – a little disappointed, not disapproving – said, ‘All right, man,’ as if conceding the world. ‘What was her name?’

  ‘I can’t remember.’

  ‘Bullshit.’

  Terry smiled and conceded: ‘Mango.’

  ‘That’s her name?’

  ‘But the point is—’

  ‘Mango,’ screamed Berliner, a vehement, exotic bird.

  Seven

  TAKING YET ANOTHER slice of pie, Terry said, ‘My compliments to your wife, Kramer. She baked this with her hips. Give her my applause.’

  The courtesy, grossly extended, was cruel. Maybe Berliner’s laughter had annoyed Terry; hence he punished Kramer. Or he was embarrassed by his own incontinence. In his story and at this table. Nobody else was still eating. In the bones of the bald head was a need to chew. The more he talked, the more they needed to churn, crush, savour. Kramer seemed to enjoy watching him, even to be grateful for the sight, as if he recognised something in Terry he particularly liked.

  ‘Nancy will be delighted to hear what you said. I’m positive she made this pie. There is more if you want.’

  Each word, like a vessel of liquid, was evenly and distinctly uttered not to spill. He struggled thus to contain his pride in Nancy’s pie. A good generous host. His furniture, paintings, plants, ceramics and tattoos bespoke a lust for accumulation, but he lusted also to give. He’d slept with hundreds of women. His generosity was oceanic, lusciously abundant, like his black hair. Styled precisely, too.

  Paul, from an abyss of reflection, said, ‘Women like doctors.’

  Terry stopped chewing. ‘You mean my Latino?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘I had something she wanted. Prescriptions.’

  ‘Oh, come on.’

  ‘The truth. She bought drugs and sold them at a higher price. She’d done this for years, on and off. Ever since high school. She needed the money.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah. But you’re a doctor. Women like doctors because they’re real. Most men are losers.’

  ‘You think doctors can’t be losers?’

  ‘I’m saying only what that chick was after. It wasn’t scrips, it was you. There are other ways of making money.’ He sounded resentful. Logic wasn’t a nice way to talk to him.

  ‘I saw her again. The rest was repetitions, complications. The meeting I like to remember. Pleasure is in the beginning.’

  ‘Courtship,’ I said, ‘in the emergency room.’

  ‘Indeed, courtship. Wooing.’ Terry grinned. ‘Mango and I became friends, or what you could call friends. I even loaned her money. Sometimes twice a week I’d drive to Martinez. She lived near an oil refinery. Farmhouse with a couple of acres. She grew chard, peas, tomatoes, artichokes – a talented gardener, can you believe it? She had chickens and rabbits, too.’

  ‘She wasn’t a hooker?’ said Berliner.

  ‘Too original. She was an entrepreneur. Her name was Felicia Mango. She worked in a factory. No education. Her handwriting was moronic. Balloons instead of dots over the i’s. Also heavy loops under the g’s and y’s, like testicles. But she could name all the local wild flowers. Fantastic memory. I’d recite a list of thirty numbers and she could repeat it with no mistakes, backwards. She made me swear I wouldn’t tell anybody she could do this. She thought something was wrong with her. I said, “You’re a talented woman.” She pointed at me and laughed: “You’re a big nut.” I said she was gorgeous. She said, “You’re gorgeous, too. You don’t have pimples. I got pimples.”’

  ‘What do you mean “friends”?’ said Berliner. ‘You were fucking.’

  ‘Doctors or losers. Friends or fucking. Is there no other way to think? You know, I used to believe the wheel was the basis of Western civilisation. Then I read, in a book about the history of machines, it was the principle of reciprocating motion. Not the wheel. Yes; no. Right; wrong. That’s how we think, build a bridge, talk, walk. I was her friend. Sometimes we’d go for a drive, Berliner, and not fuck. I loaned her money and she paid it back. Once I helped change an elbow pipe in her toilet. I’m good with my hands. I was showing off. Pails of rusty water. Black nasty grease. I loved it. What bothered me was the sentiment. The idea. Me doing this for her. Afterwards in bed she was more affectionate than sexual. She asked questions about my wife. She wanted to know what Nicki looks like. Also does Nicki care if I see other women. Cavanaugh says he doesn’t like kissing. Me, it was talking about my wife. I’d get depressed. She’d say, “Tell me some numbers.” She knew it amused me, impressed me that she could repeat thirty numbers. After a while, it only broke my heart a little.’

  ‘But she was a friend,’ said Berliner. ‘To me —’

  Cavanaugh interrupted. ‘Solly, it’s not hard to understand. I was making it with a woman who always wanted to take pictures of me. Like I’d be on the crapper and the door flies open. Click. I’d be in the shower and the curtain rips away. Click, click. She has a hundred pictures of me washing my ass. I was her friend.’

  ‘Yes. Something like that,’ said Terry, looking doubtful even as he nodded yes, yes. ‘But I know Felicia was my friend because she stopped asking me for prescriptions. I offered. She got mad. She said she only takes from pigs. Others have less trouble in these situations than I do. She was a friend. But the truth is I don’t go down on my friends. You see what I’m getting at?’ He laughed heavily, as if the idea were funnier than the fact. ‘I used to be a political person, a lefty. I signed petitions, gave to good causes. Now, all of a sudden, I understood the meaning of alienation. A body lying next to me in bed was asking questions about my wife.’

  ‘A friend,’ said Berliner, as if repeating the word restored meaning. ‘Man, you are weird.’

  ‘He believes in the principle of reciprocating motion,’ I said.

  ‘I’m a scientist. I don’t like to kid myself too much. She was a body.’

  ‘Did she see other men?’ I asked.

  ‘She once phoned me at the emergency room. I was knee-deep in blood and shit, but it was Felicia, so I ran to the phone. She asked if it’s all right for her to have dinner with a jerk at the factory. Would I mind? Of course I didn’t mind. I wanted her to see other men, though it worried me. If I carried bugs it would be a disaster.’

  ‘Your wife was a body, too,’ I said.

  ‘Marriage should be monogamous. I believe this with all my heart.’

  ‘To prevent bacteria,’ said Paul. ‘I can dig that.’

  ‘To prevent the wife from becoming a body. It isn’t a question of bacteria – though, naturally, I worried plenty about infections. I took precautions. Still, I worried. Sure enough, I got an infection. Don’t ask me how. Maybe I wanted it. I had to phone Nicki’s gynaecologist. He’d been my professor in medical school and we both moved to California at the same time. It didn’t make things easier. Nicki was seeing him for a problem with cysts. Which was convenient, but I had to go to his office, te
ll him the whole story. He was interested from a medical point of view. How did I get the infection? Was it a new, hybrid strain? It was plain clap. He was also sympathetic. The way he listened made me pity myself. He encouraged me to talk. I nearly cried, I felt so disgraced. I told him Nicki was on the verge of nervous collapse, which was crazy. Nobody who plays tennis, who jogs, who sleeps nine hours a night, is nervous. I must have meant myself, but I went on about poor Nicki. I told him how she rushed out of the house in the middle of an argument and drove away like a madwoman. How once she didn’t see the neighbour’s dog sleeping in our drive. She ran him over. I made her sound homicidal. If she discovered she had clap, would she suppose it came from her tennis racket? No; she’d do something dramatic. He knew her, but he believed every word. He asked if we shouldn’t consult a psychiatrist. Think about having her committed. For her own good. I had a horrible picture of myself. A doctor gives his wife clap and has her committed for her own good. I wouldn’t discuss it further. I could treat her myself, I said, maybe slip drugs into her yogurt. But I had to leave town for about ten days. I was helpless. He promised to help me, to be discreet. We shook hands. He patted me on the back. When I next phoned him, he said, “She’s clean,” and hung up. No bill for services, only a sock in the ear. Maybe he was disappointed in me, but why he wanted to hurt my feelings I’ll never know. Thank God Nicki didn’t have clap.’

  ‘Praise the Lord!’ screamed Canterbury. He smiled as if he intended more, but – screaming – he’d shocked himself, lost the necessary presence of mind. He quit. He was still. Blond clean pale stiff. A smile in a floating head. Holiday colours below.