“No. Really. I have a date.” She felt sixes and sevens and twenties and elevens. It was beyond her, but she was barely functioning. He turned her toward him, and she knew that she’d have to come up with someone she had the date with. But who? But, of course. Tom Dietrich.
“Now see here, Janice…”
“Tom Dietrich.”
“What?”
“That’s who.”
“Now look…off of all your clever patter this morning, I simply don’t figure you to be a virgin…or some other legendary animal.”
“How dare you?” She said it. Actually said it. Good grief.
He pretended not to have heard. “Nor are you married because I checked your application.”
“Swine.”
“Nor are you pregnant because I know better. Now here’s the deal. We’re going to have dinner. Then I’m going to take you home—to where you live. And I’m going to leave you there because I’m very tired and am not sexually aroused, though I cannot promise that at another time you’ll get off so easy. Then I’m going to thank you for a very lovely evening. Then I’m going to go home…alone.”
“What will you tell your wife?” God, did she say that, too?
“My wife is in Bermuda.”
“Then that’s where you should be.” She pulled away, on cue. Because she was playing the ingenue in a Busby Berkeley musical. In another moment the magenta spot would come on and she’d tap dance to the door, do a ukulele solo, and dive into a bowl of puffed rice. And for an encore she’d—
He was behind her. His hands were on her arms and he was talking to the back of her head. And he was turned on and revving. “Listen you—just cut it out because—” He spun her around, land she was kissed. Hard and fast and nice.
She knew who and where she was. She knew who was kissing her and why. She knew how it would go from there and when. But she kissed back, long and sweet and well. The fatigue that had been teasing her simply swept over her and possessed her, and the competition was over, and a Roman voice yelled out to the assembled, “Let the games begin.”
A dozen dirty labels passed before her eyes. Foremost among them were slut, easy mark, wanton, nymphomaniac. Next came sex-starved, spinster, harlot, tart, social climber, boss fucker. Next came the couch. The couch! She was on it. He was on her. Her blood was off to the races. Her heart was somewhere behind her liver. Her breasts were pliant in his hands. His tongue was knocking on her teeth! “Hell-o, there.” His legs were forcing hers open. What the hell was she doing there? Her hand found his face, and her fingers closed on all the flesh they could gather. She had the iggy impression that she was pulling a rubber mask from a plastic skull. “Yee-uff,” said the dead head in her hand, but she held on, drawing her fingers into a tighter ring, squeezing the collapsing face even harder.
Then the face pulled free, and she saw it, hovering above her, five blue streaks—all pointing to its nose. Then the streaks turned purple…and ran red. She was dumb-struck. And god-awful guilty. She had allowed the contest to happen. It had been implicit in her agreeing to work for him. He had done nothing that could have been interpreted as unexpected. She didn’t blame him. She wanted to apologize to him. She was always apologizing to men. To Brian, and Paul, and Buzz. To Tom Dietrich (if he’d ever materialize). To Luther. Alway apologizing, apologizing. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry…But she said nothing.
The next morning she was back in the steno pool, floundering with the guppies. And she didn’t have to say a word to anyone because somehow they all knew. She never referred to the incident again, in spite of the sly grilling from the rest of the girls. Remaining silent somehow added to her caste. Somehow she had become a woman of mystery, a femme fatale of unfathomable depths and untold-of experience. She liked that because, in reality, she was about as unfathomable and deep as a lima bean. She was, of course, back to $75 a week again, but none of the gods on Mount Personnel seemed too upset by her sudden tumble from the heights. Apparently it was not the first time that a typist had failed to measure up to F. D. Douglas’ expectations. It occurred to Tiger, as she typed her way into the unfolding day, that the comfy-cozy establishment existence she had so quickly embraced had brought with it its own narrow and traditional perils. However, no matter—it was a world of her own choosing, and she was fast moving up in it. Some of the finest people were raping her.
I gave it time. Figured I had to. Somehow it was all too goddamn symbolic to go up against without a true plan. There she was, holed up in the Y like Helen of Troy. Well, I studied that there Marshal House Y. I studied it from every angle, like a surveyor, like I was preparing an invasion. I suppose I could have dressed in drag and walked right in, but somehow that seemed very gauche. Besides, my stubble’s a bit too heavy and I’m against wearing falsies on principle. I knew where Tiger worked, too. I knew the firm, the building, the floor. I was like the cat in Les Misérables—what was his name? Javert? You know, the guy Charles Laughton played. There wasn’t a place Tiger went or a move she made that I didn’t know about. It was fantastic. It made my day, my life. I was her fucking Boswell, recording her every move. I saw the girls she had lunch with, watched her when she shopped for clothes in Alexanders (even thought of sliding into the check-out counter and accusing her of shoplifting; only I didn’t think it would’ve been such a smash hit of an idea). I knew which subway she rode, the sandwich place she stopped off at every night. And I loved the whole bit. It was my own special pursuit of happiness, as guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution. It got so that if she ever turned around and discovered me, and ran up to me and kissed me, and said she wanted to come back, I’d have been disappointed. I watched her the nights she left late from her goddamn job. I watched her that one night when she left around 6 P.M. so damned tired she couldn’t walk straight. But it was okay. It was good for her, gave her a nice taste of the slavey world. Fat was still waiting for his shirts to come back, and it was taking so long that I was beginning to worry if he’d sent any out in the first place or, if instead of taking them around the corner to Won Lee, he hadn’t just mailed the damned shirts direct to Hong Kong, where some coolies could run them down to the Yangtze and hit them against rocks. My nights were getting pretty unbearable. Because I never did care to go food shopping, I found myself staying alive on a diet of Lorna Doones and Oreos. No word from the folks in the islands, so fuck ’em. I felt a sudden overpowering need for a dog, so I almost stole one; only he didn’t turn out to be exactly my best friend because he nipped me and then, for good measure, pissed on my leg before I could get out of the lousy pet shop. Many people in New York have parakeets for pets, birds and canaries. It’s easier to housebreak a bird than a beagle anytime. Also, birds don’t bark, and though they give you no protection against burglars, you don’t have to walk them. A bird, then, when you get down to it, is really man’s best friend. With the possible exception of an eagle which, if you criticize its singing, it could fly away with your nose, so don’t. I study hard, very hard. But I’m not getting any better in arithmetic, so there goes the new sled they promised me. It’s not Christmas yet, but I find myself getting very much with the Christmas spirit and may shortly steal something big and Yuletidy, like the Salvation Army.
18
The man at the other end of the telephone line was not Luther, as Tiger had first suspected. Nor was he Fred Douglas, who, already back from Bermuda, was already out in Chicago on some kind of Sherman antitrust case. The man on the phone was someone entirely else and entirely new. He identified himself as Steven Larrabee, and went on to say that he was calling at the suggestion of Martha Wesloski, who had previously told Tiger that the man in question was young, personable, eligible, and on the way up. Tiger remarked that he sounded like a smiling young balloonist, but Martha let it go, going on to say that a definite plus in the man’s favor was that he did not work for the firm. Repeat. He did not work for the firm. The prevailing opinion among the girls in the steno pool was that the firm was a way station for just about e
very overstimulated lawyer in town. Therefore, any man who did not work for the firm, regardless of his occupation, be he plumber or philosopher, stood a halfway decent chance of being halfway decent. Also, there was no way in which Steven Larrabee could ever work for the firm because he was not a lawyer, or a plumber, or a philosopher—he was an optometrist. Also, and the main reason that Tiger said yes to his offer of dinner, was that she had not had dinner out in a hundred and fifty years, and those hero sandwiches were getting to her, threatening her digestion and haunting her dreams. So, “Yes, Mr. Larrabee. Yes, yes, yes.”
The restaurant was semiexpensive and totally Russian. Balalaikas and the Red Army Chorus floated through unseen Muzak vents. The lights were low, the chafing dishes bright copper, and Tiger—for the first time in many a day—relaxed and enjoyed herself. The man across from her, Steven Larrabee, was reasonably attractive and just short of being thirty. As a result of his upbringing and his chronology, he was not yet as sure of himself as he would be in a few more years. Therefore, in keeping with her ability to more or less be like the man she was with, Tiger was youthful and comfortable and happily wide-eyed.
Tiger sat at the table in the red leather booth as though she were a giddy out-of-towner. She wasn’t putting Steven on. She was simply being what she was at heart yet never had a chance to be, a tourist in New York. She craned her head a hundred and eighty degrees and sopped up all the atmosphere she could. “Oh, it’s great. Really. I love it. Thank you for bringing me here. It’s so…Slavic. So Tchaikovsky. I’m sure the food is everything you say.”
Steven smiled at her from over the large menu. “You never had Russian food before?”
“Nope. Never. And the smells in here—” She inhaled deeply. “Mmmmm. Kiev in the spring.”
He laughed. The girl was exactly as advertised. And within five minutes of meeting her he had married her, fathered two sons by her, and built a split level in Connecticut to house the togetherness of their next fifty years. Yet never once did he copulate with her…that’s how much he respected her. “What do you usually eat?”
“Hero sandwiches. Big ones. Impossible ones.”
“Which is your favorite?”
“Turkey, provolone, tongue, chives, water cress, chopped liver, spumoni, Smucker’s blueberry jam, garlic, and thousand island dressing on a soft roll.”
“When Martha told me to call you she didn’t mention that you were out of your mind.”
“Actually, you’re the one who’s crazy. Which is why I seem crazy. Why, I’ll bet, when you talk to yourself in a mirror, it all seems perfectly natural. When I talk to myself in a mirror, the words come out backwards, which, if you think about it, is exactly what should happen. Besides, what you’re doing talking to yourself in a mirror is beyond me. Why do you do that? Check that out.” Her eyes dove into the menu. “Ah, the bill of fare. Food fit for a czar.”
The waiter appeared, replete with napkin over his arm. He hovered over the pair of diners like the Spirit of the Russian Revolution. He was surly and impatient and spoke with a trace of dialect. “Yes. Your order, please. The kitchen closes soon, and there vill be no axcaptions.”
Tiger looked up at the waiter because she knew that voice. She also knew that face. Luther nodded back at her as if to say “good evening.” He had an order pad ready and was tapping it impatiently with the stub of a pencil in an effort to hurry Steven along.
Steven, with a winning kind of ingenuousness, was immediately intimidated. He looked at his menu, fully cognizant of the fact that time was running out. He smiled wanly at Tiger. “I’m going to recommend that you have the blinichik. Yes. You’ll like that. Or you might just prefer the shashlik. Or even the lulu kebab.” It dawned on him that he had skipped something. “Or perhaps you’d like to have a drink first? How about some nice red wine?”
Tiger’s mouth was so tight that the words could barely squeeze through. “I’ll have a cup of hemlock.”
“Pardon?”
“Wine would be nice.” She smiled.
Relieved, Steven looked up at the stone-faced Rasputin. “Do you have a wine list?”
“No. We are all out.” Luther said that with severity and finality, his Rasputin eyes searing into Steven’s as if to hypnotize and then drive to suicide.
“Oh,” said Steven. “Well…a nice red wine then. And chilled. And a whole bottle, please.”
“I’ll give you two halves.”
“No whole?”
“Two halves.”
“Oh. All right. But chilled, okay? Nice and cold.”
“One vill be cold. One vill be…eh. Both vill be vite.”
“No red?”
“Vite.”
“Oh,” said Steven, as he struggled to regain command of the situation. “Well, we’ll have one blinichik and one shashlik.” He smiled across to Tiger. “You can try them both and keep the one you prefer.”
Tiger nodded that it would be fine. She wanted to kill Luther. And she wasn’t surprised to see her fingers coiling about a bread knife.
Steven looked up, to reconfirm his order, but Luther was gone. Steven was nonplussed. “Waiters. I swear. Do you think he got our order?”
Tiger shrugged, knowing full well that they hadn’t seen the last of the phantom waiter. “He’ll be back.”
“So,” said Steven, suddenly beginning to bug Tiger with his predictability and all-American charm, “tell me about yourself. How long have you been in New York?”
Tiger responded with some inanity, but her eyes were on the action taking place some five yards beyond Steven’s shoulder. A little round waiter had come out of the kitchen, balancing a heavily laden tray. He had just set the tray down on a serving table, preparatory to rolling it to the customers who had ordered it, when Luther darted out of the shadows and, in one fluid move, got behind the table and rolled it right up to Tiger and Steve, where he then began to plop the steaming dishes onto the table. And very rudely.
Tiger clenched her eyes shut, and her mouth, too, so as not to see and not to explode. Steven’s good nature and trusting character began to take flight. He looked up at Luther. “Say, what are you doing?”
Luther continued to ladle out the sizzling food, plopping and slopping it all about as though he were feeding hogs, much of it missing the plates. “It’s all right,” Luther said reassuringly. “You vouldn’t be sorry. The kitchen is closing quickly. I had to take what I could gat. You’ll like this. Soup Siberia, a great delicacy among prisoners. And here, look, Noodles Molotov. You put a match to it and throw it at a tank and—do you have a match?”
“Now wait a goddamn minute…”
Luther dropped the act and stopped the serving. He leaned across the table and clamped a big paw about Tiger’s wrist. “Let’s go.”
Steven stood up. He wasn’t as tall as Luther, but he wasn’t afraid. “Listen, you—” And he made a fist that seemed less of an optometrist’s and more of a coal miner’s.
With her free hand, Tiger reached across to grab Steven’s arm, to dissuade him, and for a moment they all three looked as though they had joined hands on the top deck of the Titanic. It wasn’t necessary for Tiger to have interceded. Steven never had a chance to display the tiniest bit of righteous indignation, for two large waiters materialized on the scene, the smaller of them easily as tall, as well as fifty pounds heavier than Luther. The pair of them gathered about Luther and made a large sandwich of him, pressing against him so noticeably that Tiger could have sworn that Luther would shoot up like a squeezed banana. Instead, Luther was spun about quickly, like a toy soldier doing an about-face, then carried off, his feet never touching the floor.
The manager was there, addressing Steven with a sickly angelic smile. “Please. My apologies. This man is not a waiter.”
Luther, struggling between the matched set of giant Russian bookends, evidently overheard and shouted back, “Gimmee a chance! I’ll be a great waiter!” His opinion only hastened his departure.
The manager still felt comp
elled to explain to Steven. “Sometimes…crazy people. You know.”
From farther away Luther cried out. “If not a waiter, let me be a singer!” And somehow he pulled free of his massive captors and, jumping up onto a table at which four people from Schenectady had been dining, he burst into a loud semi-Russian song that could best be described as lousy. “Yol-donka, dov-yuldski—in Moscow, mine luff!” He finished up like Jolson, but with one foot in sour cream. Rude hands reached up at him, and he was pulled offstage like a bad vaudeville act getting the hook…only to reappear nearer toward the door, bobbing up like a Boris-in-the-box. “How about a juggler, heh?” His hands found a tureen of borscht, and up into the air it floated, descending onto people like a giant beet shot squarely between the eyes. “And for my naxt number—”
For his next number he hurled more food, mostly borscht. And the patrons screamed because what goes up must come down, and it was coming down on them, a maroon monsoon. Somehow an ignited candelabrum with twelve candles took to the air and, before settling onto a Ukrainian cream pie, triggered the sprinkler system. It added brilliantly to the esthetic chaos.
The waiters, by then numbering five, all of them as large as the Kremlin, no longer chose to be delicate with Luther. They went at him—hard. He took many good cuffs but fought back valiantly, landing a few belts of his own while screaming at them in what he figured was Russian profanity. “Moznik! Fla! Fla! Grib-donska, duv yippies! Zush-nikki, kak sookers!”
The conflict grew, and more Americans became involved. Men from St. Louis and ladies from Philadelphia, furious at what had become of their quiet repast, began to flail at whoever came close, some of them sensing an opportunity to beat the check, others more pragmatically conjuring up future legal actions. And still others, incensed at Russian duplicity, took pleasure in beating their fists at some of the smaller Russians on the premises. And that included the manager, not of Russian descent at all, but an escaped Hungarian who was gagging on the borscht and was getting pretty sick of the whole act without any help from irate Americans.
A Glimpse of Tiger Page 14