No Lesser Plea

by Robert Tanenbaum

  She shook Karp as hard as a smallish woman can shake a 210-pound man. No reaction. The sound of the party faded away.

  “Ah, shit!” said Marlene. She was exhausted and not a little drunk herself, having been sucking white wine all evening, not to mention the Scotch in the morgue. But she felt unable to leave Karp helpless in the middle of the Gym.

  Looking about for a solution, she spotted Maher’s washtub. It held about two inches of icy water—the remains of the fifty-pound block that had cooled the punch—in which floated some paper cups and a pair of beige lace panties. She removed this debris, emptied a trash can, and tilted the washtub to fill the can with about a gallon of ice water.

  This she poured over Karp’s head.

  Karp sat upright and made a sound like a breaching fur seal.

  “Phooooo-ahhh! ‘sall right! ‘sall right! I’m fine,” he said looking about wildly. Seeing Marlene, he smiled and said “Hi, Champ. Les go t’the Garn.”

  “C’mon Butch, we got to get out of here. Everybody’s gone.”

  She helped Karp to his feet, and steadied his sway, like a flying buttress. “OK, Butch, one step at a time, slow and steady.”

  They left the wreckage behind, descended in the elevator, and staggered drunkenly, clutching one another, into Foley Square.

  “Christ, Butch, where the hell are we going to find a cab? Shit, I don’t even know where you live.”

  “Wanna go t’ Manson Squa’ Garn. Play basabaw,” said Karp.

  “Karp, you’re looney. Just sit there, willya, and I’ll go get us a cab. Jesus, I’m going to have to flash tit to get anybody to stop at three-fucking-thirty.”

  But as she turned to walk up toward Broadway, Karp suddenly leaped to his feet and went into a basketball crouch. He took the long throw from Frazier, hit the pivot and raced down court on the fast break.

  “Karp! Wait! Oh, goddam it! Karp, stop!” Marlene took off after the weaving figure. Karp was naturally much faster than Marlene, but of course he had to keep the ball away from five Celtics, which slowed him down somewhat. On the other side of Foley Square Park he saw De Busschere open and whipped a screen pass over to him and then raced for the boards, which happened to be in the middle of Lafayette Street. He was just getting into good position again when somebody blindsided him with a terrific body check. Not for nothing had Marlene Ciampi spent five straight seasons as the only girl ever to make the first team on the dreaded 112th Street Rangers, the undisputed roller-hockey champions of Ozone Park. He went down on the cool pavement a few feet from the double yellow line.

  “Hey, foul,” he called weakly. He didn’t feel so good now. His knee hurt. The game seemed to have passed him by. Where were the other Knicks? Where was the crowd? There was only a woman yelling not very nice language at him.

  “Champ! Wha’ you doin’ here? Where’s a game?”

  “Game, my ass! Get up, Karp!”

  He got up and allowed himself to be led to the curb.

  “Oh, thank you God, here’s a cab. Karp, don’t move!”

  There was an empty cab with its dome light on in front of an all-night diner on the far side of Lafayette Street. As Marlene approached it, the cabbie came out of the joint, picking his teeth. He was a gap-toothed man with a fringe of graying hair, not much taller than Marlene, but twice as big around.

  Marlene opened the rear door and sat in the backseat.

  “I’m off duty, lady.”

  “Your sign’s not on.”

  “I was just gonna. C’mon lady, out. I gotta get home.”

  “No way. I’m in the cab and the law says you have to take me.”

  The cabbie sighed. “Where you goin’, huh? Canarsie, right?”

  “Uh … I don’t know. I mean, I’m taking my friend home.”

  “What friend?”

  At that moment Karp wandered up. The cabbie saw a swaying giant in a soaked and filthy shirt open to the waist, with a striped necktie wrapped around his head.

  “THIS is your friend? No way, lady, this guy’s drunk. No way in hell I’m takin’ him nowhere. Now, c’mon, get out of the cab.”

  “Butch, get in the cab!”

  “We wanna go t’ Manson Squa’ Garn,” said Karp brightly.

  “I’m leavin’,” said the cabbie. “Go play games with somebody else.”

  At this, Marlene leaped from the cab, grabbed Karp by the belt and collar and, before the startled driver could make a move, jackknifed Karp face down across the backseat. She then got in herself, sat on Karp’s backside, pulled his legs in so that his shoes pointed to the sky, and slammed the door.

  “Look buddy,” she said to the cabbie, “I don’t want any trouble, but it’s been a long day for me too. Take us home and it’s twenty bucks over the meter. But, I’ll tell you this. I work for the DA, Homicide Bureau. Screw with me and I’ll have two blue-and-whites following you around for the rest of your life.”

  “Hey, wait a second, I got my rights, huh? I got rights!”

  Karp said, into the seat cushion, “You have the ri’ to remain silen’. You have the ri’ t’ have a lawyer presen’ durn quesering. If you cannot afrd a lawyer you are a cheap l’il punk.”

  “Ah, crap, lady, what if he pukes in my cab—it’s the end of the goddam shift!”

  “If he pukes,” said Marlene in a voice that rose into an alto shriek, “I will personally wipe up every single motherfucking drop—with my UNDERPANTS! NOW DRIVE!”

  “Where to, lady?”

  Marlene had to pull Karp’s wallet out of his hip pocket and read his address to the cabbie.

  When they reached Karp’s place, Marlene opened the door with Karp’s keys. He stood in the middle of his bedroom for about ten seconds, then stumbled to the bathroom, got on his knees, and threw up everything he had eaten since October 1956, or so it seemed. He rinsed out his mouth, walked to the side of the bed, and fell straight across it, bouncing twice. He was snoring before the second bounce.

  Marlene watched him for a moment. She thought, if I could just rest my eyes for a minute, I could get myself together and figure out how I am going to get back to my apartment. She looked around. No chairs, no couch, no rug. She walked over to the bed and eased herself down across its head.

  Just five minutes, she thought.

  When she opened her eyes again, sunlight was streaming through the closed Venetian blinds in thin, downward-slanting shafts. She looked at her watch: 11:30. She got out of the bed and stood up. After a while her brain caught up with her skull and the room stopped spinning. Karp hadn’t moved a millimeter all night, was still face down, mouth open, gently snoring.

  Marlene felt as if her skin were covered with glue. She ran her fingers through her hair, and started when she felt something damp. It was a bit of cole slaw. If I don’t get a shower this minute, she thought, I am going to commit suicide.

  She walked into the bathroom and stripped. She let the hot stream of the shower beat the garbage out of her head and off her body. Looking around for soap or shampoo she found only a double cake of Ivory. Ivory? Oh, Karp, you sybaritic devil, you! OK, she thought, so I’ll smell like a dish.

  Karp was awakened by the familiar sound of his shower running. The previous evening was nearly a complete blank. He remembered the phone call to his wife (Oh God, that!), the campaign headquarters, going with Guma, cooking shish kebabs—and that was it. Period. He couldn’t remember ever having gotten that smashed on a six-pack of beer. Maybe he was losing his marbles. He couldn’t even remember turning on the shower.

  The bathroom air was nearly opaque with steam. Naked now, Karp pulled back the shower curtain on the faucet side and took the heavy spray straight in the face, as was his habit. Then he reached behind him to grope for the soap in its shelf midway up the wall. But instead of the soap, what he grabbed was Marlene Ciampi’s small and pointy breast.

  “Hey,” said Marlene, “you could at least say ‘good morning.’ “

  He pulled away and spun around. Marlene was standing with
hands on her hips, a characteristic pose of hers when fully dressed, and trying to arrange her face into an expression suitable for the occasion. Karp struggled to do the same.

  Karp said, “Marlene. Oh.”

  Marlene said, “Butch. Oh.”

  Simultaneously, their faces fell apart and they began to laugh uncontrollably, a huge, gasping, wracking laughter. Their legs couldn’t hold them. They slid down the soapy walls to the floor of the tub, with the bullets of water streaming down on them.

  “God! Karp, stop it, I’m peeing in my pants,” said Marlene, and this struck them as additionally hilarious, and they laughed some more.

  After a while their laughing died away, and they looked each other in the eye. Both were a little frightened, which, of course, they saw in each other’s eyes. Because they knew, these two very smart, very verbal people, that the Animal Train was about to leave the station, taking them both to some unknown place which they both hoped was True Love, a hope neither of them would admit for some time, having been taught that it was no longer a regularly scheduled stop.

  So without thinking—for once—Karp jumped on the delicious girl in his bathtub, and Marlene opened her arms and her soapy thighs to him, also without a thought in her head and they both, as Marlene would have said, fucked like minks until they were wrinkled, soggy, exhausted, and drunk with happiness.

  Chapter 13

  “I swore, I SWORE, I would never get involved with anybody where I worked. I can’t believe I’m doing this. I had a thing going with my contracts professor in law school. Nice guy, married, three kids. I sweated bullets in that course. I mean, we agreed that we were going to keep it separate, sex and grades. So like three people ever aced contracts since 1706, or something, and I got one. Needless to say, every piss-ant law-school wimp was smirking all over himself when they posted the grade. ‘Of course, she got one, snicker-snicker.’

  “I had migraines for a month. What could I do, hang the marked blue books and papers from my lip? I make law review—the same thing, snicker-snicker. Anyway, I said, ‘never again’ and here I am, involved.”

  They were dry and lying side by side on Karp’s bed, with a sheet over them. The window was open and a summer breeze rhythmically stirred the half-closed Venetians. Bars of sunlight moved across the bed, up the wall and back again. They had both called in sick.

  “What makes you think we’re involved, snicker-snicker?”

  “Oh, we’re involved, all right. Do you think I’d let you ravish my milk-white body for a cheap one-night stand? I’m a proud Sicilian maiden. Betray me and my brother will cut your balls off. Then I’ll dress in black and wear them forever in a little embroidered bag, around my neck.”

  “I thought you said your brother was a dentist.”

  “Orthodontist. Doesn’t matter though. He’s connected, heavy. The mob is queer for straight teeth, it’s common knowledge. Guys who know how to fix an overbite can write their own ticket with the dons.”

  “You’re a nut, Ciampi, you know that?”

  “Maybe, but I’m serious about keeping this whatever-it-is from getting around the office.”

  “What? You mean I can’t boast of my conquest in the locker room?”

  “No, really, Butch.” She was silent for a moment, then propped herself up on one elbow and looked into his face.

  “I heard about your wife.”

  “You heard about my wife! Shit, Champ, I just heard about my wife. Who the hell told you? Oh, Christ, Guma!” He pulled a pillow over his face and groaned.

  “Well, what did you expect? Tell Guma, tell Jimmy Breslin, except Guma maybe gets the word around a little faster. We could talk about it, if you want.”

  Karp peeked over the top of the pillow. “I don’t know what to say. I mean, I feel like a jerk. I thought I was in love, I thought I knew who with, and all of a sudden, it turns out that person doesn’t exist. It’s amazing, this year. It starts out, I have a job, a career that makes sense. I believe in it. I have a marriage, maybe going through some rough spots, but I believed in that, too. Now, Jesus, the DA’s office is heading for the garbage can, my wife is gay. I thought I got through the sixties, all that bullshit. I thought I knew the answers. You know, like an exam. Study hard, work out, clean mind, clean body. Fuck the answers—I don’t even know the questions anymore.”

  “You should have taken more philosophy.”

  “Yeah, right, instead of basketball. If I was five inches taller I wouldn’t need to know how to spell philosophy. Oh, well, I guess the great cosmic questions will always elude me, jock that I am. How about you, Ciampi, do they elude you too?”

  “Well, I’ve always had some problems with ‘what is the ultimate ground of being’ and ‘what is the meaning of “meaning.” ’ And of course, the triune nature of the Godhead has kept me awake many a night. But right now, I believe the most important question is, ‘Do you eat pussy?’ ”

  “Me? Never!”

  “What, never?”

  “Well, I do drag a slow kiss through it, now and again.”

  Marlene threw back the sheet from their bodies and stretched luxuriously. “Then do so,” she said.

  Much later, there were no longer any slats of light floating in the walls, just the bluish glow of a summer evening in New York. Marlene lit a Marlboro and sent a geyser of smoke up to the ceiling.

  “Karp, the soles of my feet are sweating. They never did that before. God, what can it mean? Karp? Karp are you listening?” She knuckled him in the ribs.

  “Ow. Marlene, why are you always abusing me physically? You’re always punching me.”

  “Because you don’t give me your absolute attention at all times and do everything I want.”

  “Oh, well, just asking. By the way, you also drool when you pop your rocks.”

  “Yeah, it’s true, my dirty little secret. Karp!”

  “What now?”

  “Karp, I just realized we haven’t eaten anything all day.”

  “So to speak.”

  “No, food! I’m starving! What have you got?” She leaped off the bed and trotted into the kitchen, her buns winking in the dying light. Karp listened to the opening of cabinets and the slamming of the refrigerator door. In a few minutes she came back holding a plastic zip-lock bag.

  “This is great, Butch. I can eat the refrigerator instructions and you can have the warranty card. There is no food in this apartment. How can you live that way?”

  “We of the planet Zarkon have no need of earthly foods. We get our sustenance from young females, whom we lure to our dens and drain of their vital liquids.” He made a clumsy lunge for her leg, which she avoided.

  “Uh-uh, bozo. First eat. Marlene wants protein. Marlene want STEAK. If I don’t get to Max’s in five minutes, you will have to explain my shriveled corpse to the police. Let’s get cleaned up.”

  So they had another shower, with appropriate soapings and rubbings and tickles, until Marlene pushed him away saying, “Oh God, don’t get me started again. I’m going to have to get my thing relined as it is.”

  “Oh, yeah? There’s a guy on Coney Island Avenue does a good job. He’ll do your muffler for the same price.”

  “Get away from me, you maniac,” she said, and jumped out of the shower.

  There was a full-length mirror on the back of the bathroom door. While Karp dried himself, Marlene wiped the fog from the mirror. She made Karp stand next to her facing it. At five-two, her head barely cleared his breastbone.

  “Christ, we look like two different species. What a giant! If you were wearing roller skates, I could practically give you a blow job without bending down.”

  “Damn it, isn’t it funny how you never can find a skate key when you want one? Ahhhgh! Stop it, Marlene! I thought you wanted a steak.”

  Later, as they were dressing, she asked, “What happened to your knee? It looks like Frankenstein’s face.”

  “I hurt it playing ball in college. It was sort of a freak accident. I landed on my face with my le
g sticking up over somebody’s back. Then a two-hundred-and-thirty pound forward came flying through the air and landed on my ankle. The lever effect. The only thing holding my leg to my thigh was skin.”

  “Oh, yucch, poor baby!”

  “Yucch is right. My orthopedist said it was the perfect knee injury. Everything that could rip out in a human knee ripped out. He had residents from all over the West Coast coming in to observe. Didn’t do a bad job, though. I can walk all right, mostly, even run a little. But big-time basketball? Finito.”

  “How come? I read all the time about the pros getting hurt and still playing.”

  “That’s different. First of all, practically nobody gets hurt in basketball as badly as I did. I told you, it was a freak. Then again, they’re already part of the team. They can wrap themselves up, shoot in some dope, and play a couple of minutes. It’s different if you’re trying to break in. You’re competing with guys who are in perfect shape … and well …” Karp was staring out the window as he said this, his voice dying away at the end. Marlene touched his arm.

  “You still feel bad about it, huh? Were you really good?”

  “Yeah, I guess. I don’t have that much natural talent, and I’m a hair short for the pros, but I worked at it. I can handle the ball. I’m a dead shot from anywhere on the court. I can, I could, jump better than most white guys. I think I would have had a shot at point guard or second guard someplace. Being a honky helps, there. The fans don’t like seeing ten black dudes running around. Hey, let’s change the subject. This is getting me depressed.”

  “Fine. How come you live this way? I mean the place looks like a crash pad. No food, no furniture. Shit, you don’t even have a wastebasket.”

  “I eat out a lot.”

  “No, really, Butch.”

  “Really? Because eating in is what you do at home, and this isn’t a home. You think I want to fix a little frozen Salisbury steak every night and eat it in front of the tube? I sleep here, and keep my clothes here, period. And every so often some hot little number insinuates herself into my life and I fuck here.”

  “Every so often, eh? How often is that?”