He said it: ‘Tonight.’
Berliner howled. Nobody joined him. He quit, grinned, said, ‘Hi, Nancy.’
‘Hi, Solly.’
‘We’ll help clean up,’ said Paul. ‘No trouble, Nancy. Come on, men.’
Nobody moved.
She had a small, tipped-up nose. Soft pointy mouth. Cartoon simplicity. Conventionally pretty. Her voice belonged to another face, older, complicated by experience, not so pretty. I wondered if Kramer had photographed her.
She wore a blue-green blouse; lank, slick material, open to the second button, hanging over the top of her jeans. No bra. Free, indifferent; sexy, but more like self-possessed. The slick material trembled with her breathing. Watery effects. Nothing else showed her distress.
Dark blonde hair, parted in the middle, was brushed back towards her ears. Her forehead was high; eyes widely spaced, oval, brown, clearly receptive. They challenged Kramer with patient staring. No judgements in them; she simply expected him to speak. He said, ‘Hey, you had your hair cut, didn’t you? Looks good. Very very good.’
‘I like it, too,’ said Paul.
‘Thanks.’
‘The horizontal look,’ said Kramer. ‘It’s in. Very in. One of my clients had her hair cut for the vertical look. The same day she sees a magazine cover and the model’s hair is altogether fucking opposite hers. She goes vertical, the world goes horizontal. It really bothered her. Made her feel stupid. Vertical when everybody is horizontal. She went deaf for a week.’
‘Do you think it’s fair talking about her this way?’
‘Yeah. Where did you have it cut? San Francisco?’
‘A woman friend cut it for me.’
‘Good job. What do you call it – layered, right? Sort of a windblown look. Like a beach. Windy beach. Your friend knows what she’s doing. My client paid eighty bucks to get her hair cut, then talked about it with me. Another fifty bucks. Figure a hundred and thirty bucks for a haircut, plus going deaf. She could hear the phone ring, but no voices. Went deaf to voices. Told me people were screaming at her – husband, kids, even the clerks in the supermarket. I had to laugh. Not in front of her, naturally. She was too freaked out. I went to the toilet, shut the door. I laughed and laughed.’
I supposed it was a funny story, but didn’t laugh. Neither did anyone else. Kramer, suddenly an impetuous talker, was deaf to himself. Nancy moved before he finished, stepping through the confusion of the dining-room floor. She was wearing sandals. Pretty feet. I imagined her ankles and legs were also pretty and I began to look for imperfections. Do women look at each other this way? It felt indecent, in these circumstances, but I couldn’t not do it. If she were perfect, I’d feel depressed. At the dish cabinet, she stopped, looked at the gashes down one side, touched them lightly with her fingertips.
‘Oh, I’ll get rid of those marks,’ said Kramer very confidently, almost boasting. She wasn’t listening. He shut up and watched her. She pushed the splintered door, entered the kitchen. We heard the refrigerator seal breaking with a gasp. After a few seconds, the door shut. ‘You must have been hungry,’ she said. Her voice, coming from the kitchen, had nothing special in it beyond this observation.
‘Yeah,’ said Kramer, echoing her tone, ‘we were starving. I’ll replace the food tomorrow. I’ll have it catered – chicken, salmon, everything. What time is your women’s group coming over?’
He faced the kitchen door, hands on his hips. He looked ready. Weight evenly distributed, head up, glance fixed on the door. Ready to listen, answer, act. The door opened. Nancy re-entered the dining room. ‘I feel invaded.’
‘Right,’ said Kramer, as if she’d answered his question precisely. ‘I hear you and I want to think about what you’re saying. Invaded. What do you feel about that?’
Berliner giggled. ‘Why don’t you put it on tape?’
Kramer glanced at him as if the idea were considerable.
‘Put it on tape,’ said Nancy. ‘Maybe you’ll want to play it back later while you’re thinking about it.’
Kramer nodded. ‘You mean it would like tell me something about our relationship?’ He was ready for that, too. Very agreeable. Ready to learn. It came to me that, for Kramer, life was forever open to new understandings. Amid the destruction of his dining room, he was committed to no particular interpretation of anything.
‘All this is telling me something about our relationship,’ she said.
‘Sure, baby. That’s what we’ve been talking about the whole night. Relationships.’
‘Hi, Nancy,’ said Cavanaugh.
‘Hi, Cavanaugh.’
We’d remained where she found us, Kramer closest to her, at the edge of the spill, the toppled dining room table approximately between them, slightly to her right.
‘Let’s go sit in the living room,’ said Kramer. ‘I’ll turn on the machine. You say what you feel.’
She nodded the way he did. ‘The feeling machine.’
Kramer smiled. She didn’t.
‘I can say what I feel without the machine, but I feel – even saying this – you might feel I’m cutting your balls off. I sense negative vibes. You feel I’m like ruining your party, don’t you?’
‘I don’t know about that. But you aren’t responsible for my feelings. We have discussed this, right? I mean I could feel what I feel and you could feel—’
‘Right, right, right. I understand. I appreciate your feelings about your freedom and being a creative person.’
‘And I appreciate how you, like, want to express yourself.’
‘But you feel I don’t have to do it this minute. I could express myself later.’
‘It could be later,’ said Kramer, generosity in his voice, accepting her idea as if he were offering her something.
‘I mean I understand how it could be later. That’s cool.’ She nodded again in his manner as she spoke, same generous ingratiating tone as his. ‘Sure, it could be later. We could sit down later. Talk.’
They looked at each other, nodding, birdlike, a ritual dance of species recognition. The rest of us looked at them. Their unanimity made us seem disorganised and irrelevant: marginal men, incidental scribbles. Even the giant Cavanaugh looked trivial compared to them. Yet I wondered if, in a room full of men and women, I could have guessed Kramer was married to this woman. Probably not. I expect physical similarities. Not the familiar fat of conjugal loneliness or the clumsy compulsive first person plural, but something in the original beings, their racial teleology, similarities in hair, eyes, shape of lip and foot. It’s as if, in couples, I expect cows or gorillas. Never the unpredictable discrepancies of a human man and woman. No, I couldn’t have guessed these two were married. He had luxuriously fashioned black hair; and his arms, tattooed in blue and red, seemed to spring from his soul. She was simple, immediately present. No costume instinct, plainly pretty in colour and bone; nothing to hide or advertise. He was dark, she light. His expression was sensuous, a mix of menace and self-love, qualified by his eye problem, the way he blinked occasionally to focus. Her expression was neutral, consistent, what you sometimes see in good-looking women – facial restraint, close to deadness, as if they fear their effect on others. They looked chemically antithetical. Not right. All wrong. But love is blind, unreasonable – forget plausible – and marriages are made in heaven. Kramer was insanely reasonable now. ‘Yeah, we could sit down, have a cup of coffee, talk. In the morning, like.’
‘It is the morning.’
This was sharp contradiction, or qualification. Kramer assimilated it quickly. ‘Right,’ he said, cocking his head, snapping his fingers, then back to hands on hips. Ready once more. I was on his side, though it was hard to root for him; something in his will to accommodate was contemptible. Besides, she was prettier; perhaps smarter, but I couldn’t tell about that because she had a certain moral advantage, given the circumstances. The way her blouse continued trembling also affected my sympathies, making pity and sadism masturbate each other, making me like her, and, even without
better evidence than I had, making me wonder if Kramer deserved this woman. She said, ‘What you are saying is that we could wait until the sun comes up. Is that, like, what you mean?’
I heard faint pressure on the ‘like’ and realised, for the first time, she was imitating Kramer. A form of praise, imitation works also for hate. Nothing substantially personal had been said, yet hearing even this was a privileged, if awkward, intimacy. Some couples relish public battle; these two had style; manners; almost Japanese in their gracious distance.
‘Yeah,’ said Kramer, ‘that’s what I mean. We could wait till the sun comes up. But I don’t want to do some oppressive fascist number on you. I mean if you would like to talk now, I could dig it.’
‘But you would like to talk when the sun comes up. That’s fine with me. I like to talk when the sun comes up. It’s more creative.’
Kramer thought for a second, then said, ‘Yeah,’ nodding. She joined him, both nodding, as if towards a truth beyond themselves, extremely general and creative. Then she turned, went into the kitchen, disappeared, reappeared, ruined door flying with her passing through it towards Kramer, who stood hands on hips, nodding, nodding, watching her come swiftly to him, hands above her head.
One doesn’t always see, for an instant, what one sees. This was such blind seeing, as she came, her hands clasped about the thing, coming down with her hands onto Kramer’s head at the hairline. Black iron pot struck gonk. Resonance followed. No appreciable damage to Kramer’s hairstyle, but red worms came creeping forth, feeling slowly towards his eyebrows.
I looked at Cavanaugh, as if to see what I’d seen, and found him between surprise and negation – ‘Oh’ and ‘Don’t’. Berliner’s face, left of Cavanaugh’s, showed nothing. Slowed by marijuana, he waited for significance in the act.
Kramer stood dummied, glazed, hands on hips, forehead flashy with blood. He rocked slightly, absorbing the blow, letting force slip down spinal ridges to ass and legs and heels while his hair released blood; red genius, oozing from his mind. He acknowledged no pain, didn’t seem to know he was bleeding. Didn’t lift a hand to his head. Merely blinked to restore focus. They stood face to face, powerfully coupled, while the rest of us shifted weight, gaping and incapable. Then Kramer spoke:
‘I feel you’re feeling anger.’
Terry muttered, ‘Half a dozen stitches. Probably not serious, but if there is vomiting later …’
‘Grounds for divorce,’ said Canterbury, ‘assuming the injured spouse survives.’ He sounded eerily pleased and was smiling. A wide, rash smile. Apparently hysterical; high on the action. Maybe frightened, but pleased by his fear. His smile was gothic.
Nancy said, ‘I want to express myself, like now.’
‘I feel you’re feeling anger,’ said Kramer again. ‘What do you feel about that?’
He was, obviously, trying to evoke her deepest motives. She screamed and brought the pot up from her abdomen, following the same arc as before. Kramer went backwards on his heels to dodge it, stumbling towards the living room, losing balance, sitting down hard on the edge of the orange rug. She went after him. Paul leaped out of her way. Cavanaugh grabbed for her and Berliner turned his head not to look. Cavanaugh’s hand, catching her shoulder, crushed her blouse against the bone. She stopped, swivelled her head towards the hand. Looked at it, not him, as if she scrutinised a noxious insect. It let go. She proceeded to Kramer, bent towards his face, and said, ‘I don’t want to talk to you.’
‘Okay,’ said Kramer, gazing at her knees, not showing anything or doing anything or conceding anything, but abiding. She straightened, walked past him, going to the stairs, and, with mechanical trudge, up the stairs. A door slammed. Opened. Her voice said, ‘Tonight. You clean up tonight.’ Then came a smashing noise against the ceiling directly above our heads. I remembered she’d carried the pot upstairs. She was smashing it against the floor, the noise changing as it smashed a rug, bare boards, a wall, and then came breaking glass. Then it stopped. We heard sobbing.
Kramer, still sitting on the rug, gazing at nothing, said, ‘I don’t know what’s going on. Never nags, never complains, never has moods, never even gets sick, and now she has a tizzy. What the hell is going on? Man, I thought we had an understanding.’ He shook his head abruptly, as you’d shake a bottle to feel if there’s liquid sloshing inside. Blood sprinkled the rug.
Berliner, glancing at the spots on the rug, said, ‘Anyone can see that.’
Paul said quietly, ‘Let’s clean up.’
‘No,’ cried Kramer, rising with determination. ‘You guys shouldn’t do that. You’re my guests.’
Nobody mentioned his face. It was difficult not to stare, not to think how odd that he couldn’t see it himself.
‘We want to help,’ said Canterbury. ‘Terry, take that end of the table. Is there a broom?’
‘Kitchen,’ said Kramer glumly, standing now, suddenly a pointless man, all determination gone. Cavanaugh stepped towards the kitchen. Canterbury and Terry righted the table. Berliner and I squatted at the edge of the mess, plucking out the unbroken things – salad bowl, knives, forks – putting them on the table. Paul joined us. Kramer hovered, watched the work, doing nothing. We’d taken his initiative away, all moving quickly and efficiently, but he was preoccupied, listening for Nancy. There came a sound of water flushing upstairs, again, again, again. Kramer said, ‘She does that when she’s mad, but only sometimes.’
‘Do you know about the noiseless flush?’ said Canterbury instantly, eager to be pertinent, to advise. ‘Toilet bowls that make no sound. At most a whisper. I’ll give you the name of my plumber.’
Berliner said, ‘I don’t like the idea.’
Canterbury turned to him. ‘Why not?’
‘Doesn’t seem right. If there’s no flush, I might forget to flush. Leave turds floating in the bowl.’
Flushing persisted upstairs; violent annihilations.
I said, ‘Let’s discuss it.’
Canterbury and Berliner smiled at each other. Kramer, half-smiling, tried to join them in spirit. Cavanaugh swept steadily, shoving glass, sticky food and wine into a glittering heap. Paul crouched beside it with a dustpan. The flushing stopped. I was grateful for the silence. Kramer looked up at the ceiling, as if at clouds that prophesied the weather. Berliner started to say something. Kramer said, ‘Wait.’ Berliner shut up. The silence ended with a long thunderous crash. The house shuddered. Dust drifted down from the ceiling. ‘The Victorian dresser,’ whispered Kramer. ‘Big mother. I don’t know how she did it. Must be really pissed, really pissed.’ He looked at us. ‘What do you think?’
His face, gripped by this question, was so grotesquely sensational nobody could speak to it. Red lines tangled from hair to jaw, some dry, some wet, and black eyes came beating through as if looking for a way out of Kramer’s head. He said, ‘Enough. Enough. I’ll do the rest. You guys get out. I’m really glad you came by tonight. The evening means a lot to me. I want to do it again. I’ll work out a schedule with Nancy. That’s our problem, like. I see it now. We need a better schedule. You all take off now. I swear that dresser weighs half a ton. Marble and oak. She pushed it over, you dig? It’s like time for you to go home. She’d never say anything so uncool, but I know her. I see what she’s, like, trying to say. If you hang around, it could fuck up my marriage.’
Not to see his face as his marriage wasn’t easy. I suppressed the metaphor. This was no time for aesthetic reactions. Cavanaugh leaned the broom against the wall.
Kramer put out his hand to me. I stepped forward, shook it affectionately. With dense, frowning doubt, Terry did the same. Canterbury did it, saying, ‘I’ll phone with the name of my plumber.’ Kramer nodded, ‘Yeah, yeah.’ Paul, then Berliner, hugged him. Cavanaugh, arm around Kramer’s shoulders, said, ‘Call me if you need anything. Call any time, man.’
Terry said, ‘You see about the cut there.’ He gestured vaguely towards Kramer’s hairline. Still bleeding.
Kramer urged us with his eyes: goo
dbye. ‘Wonderful club,’ he said, focusing on each of us in turn as we moved towards the door. He remained where he stood in the dining room, peering through bloody reticulations, urging, yearning. Then he waved goodbye.
The door shut. We were outside.
We collected under a street lamp, making a circle, a sort of room, with our bodies. Pines stood along the street. I smelled wisteria and roses. No sounds followed us from Kramer’s house. Paul drew his bag of grass from his jacket. Wine-clotted. He separated dry pieces slowly. We watched as he rolled a thick, ragged cigarette, bulging in the middle, twisted and pinched at the ends to compensate for the bulge. Canterbury said, ‘Nancy’s good-looking, isn’t she?’
Paul said, ‘Uhm,’ and lit the cigarette, dragging hard, then passed it to Berliner. Canterbury tried again: ‘We can’t leave him in there like that, can we?’
Berliner dragged, coughed. ‘It’s where he lives.’
He passed the cigarette to me. I took a short drag, passed it to Cavanaugh. He did the same, passing it next to Terry. He studied it for a moment, started to pass it away, but then committed it to his lips. He took in a little smoke, fired it out quickly, passing the cigarette to Canterbury. He made the tip sizzle in a long suck, held the smoke as if he’d done this often before, and forced a smile. His creamy slacks billowed at the cuff. He looked antiseptic, chipper, cheery, frightened – the man didn’t have one way to be.
Paul, with the cigarette again, held it close to his lips, looking shrewd, but when he spoke his voice was entirely innocent. ‘You know what I think? I think that was great. It was like an experience.’
Cavanaugh said, ‘For Kramer.’
‘For all of us. I’m glad I saw it. I’m glad.’
He was massively sincere. Nobody tried to qualify his comment.
Terry said, ‘I’ve got to work tomorrow.’
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