Something Happened

by Joseph Heller

  But so what?

  It would have passed, sooner or later, just as she has passed already, just as I am passing now. (Fuck her, she's dead.) Her case is closed. If she didn't kill herself, she'd be older than I am now and probably a pest; she would be stout and wrinkled and suffer from constipation, gallstones, menopause disturbances, and bunioned feet, and I more than likely would not wish to see her. Everything passes. (That's what makes it endurable.) But the memory lives (but not for long. Ha, ha).

  Her record may be dead, but it isn't buried; and I remember also how she used to urge me on after Marie Jencks once she saw me lusting for that baby too. I could not stop thinking about Marie that way after I found out about her and Tom and that desk in the storeroom. (I used to eat my lunch at that desk two or three times a week and read the sports sections of the New York Daily News and Mirror.) I wanted her too. I didn't know how to get her.

  "Bang her," Virginia would exhort me. "Go get her."

  "How?"

  "Goose her."

  "You're nuts."

  "Grab her by the nipple."

  "You're crazy."

  All I could decide to do was keep my eye on Tom and see what he did to get her; and all he did was nothing. He practiced his handwriting. (He knew enough to wait and never approach her.) He sat unperturbed for days at a time, working on his handwriting with me, and waited tactfully and patiently for her to summon him into her office by buzzer or telephone or by ordering one of the other file clerks (it might be me) to send Tom in.

  "Are you busy now?" she would ask.

  He would answer: "No."

  "Get the key," she would command.

  And down to the storeroom they would go (where records and folders of people in accidents were crumbling with age in the file cabinets).

  Virginia and I kept track of their comings (ha, ha) and goings. She was truly a stupendous catch for a lucky young man to make (or be made by), although I liked Virginia more (and so, for that matter, did Tom). She seemed twice as large as Virginia, four or eight times as much in pure female bulk, that towering, sarcastic, frequently sympathetic bleached blonde of a twenty-eight-year-old married woman in Personal Injury, who looked solicitously after poor little old Len Lewis (who was suffering seriously from kidney trouble and dangerous related ailments and in all likelihood didn't really want to divorce his poor, old, little wife, to whom he had been married all his life and of whom he was probably still very fond) and did what she could to make his job easier. She was married to a cost accountant with a weak heart (weakened, probably, by her) and she bluntly took control of Tom whenever she wanted to and put him to work banging her down in the storeroom or in her divorced friend's apartment after business hours, in much the same autocratic manner she might use to call him into her office and order him to do some filing.

  (Tom never knew when she sent for him the kind of task to which he was going to be put, but he was perfectly willing to take the good with the bad.) The farthest Tom would ever go toward getting her would be to put himself on display in her office by pretending to hunt for some file. She knew exactly what he was hunting for. Sometimes she would frown, and he would move off immediately, as though in preoccupied continuation of his search for some specific accident folder. Other times she would react as he had hoped, smiling caustically, almost grimacing, and demand: "Is there something in here you want?"

  "Yes."

  "Get the key."

  And down into the storeroom they would go again.

  "I'm not even sure she likes me," Tom confided indifferently to me one afternoon in the file room, focusing much more emotion on the P's and Q's of the handwriting he was practicing than on the statement he was making. "But she sure likes doing it with me."

  I could not help wondering if she might not like doing it with me.

  So I tried to seduce her. (And failed.) I tried to steal her away from him--not steal her away, actually, but merely to get, if I could, my own fair share of that musky, estrous, overpowering, inexhaustibly marvelous and voluptuous blond married Viking (who was really just an overgrown, rawboned Scotch-Irish brunette from Buffalo with very large pores). And I got nowhere. Virginia spurred me on energetically with outrageous counsel.

  "Go give her a fast bang," she would advise. "She's dying for it right now. A lady can tell. Walk right into her office and get her."

  "How?"

  "She'll be good for you."

  "How?"

  "Tell her."

  "What?"

  "What you want. Come right to the point. That's the best way."

  "Oh, sure."

  "Grab her by the nipple. Slide your hand up under her dress--"

  "She'll kill me."

  "No, she won't. Look--Mr. Lewis is out. Go in right now and tell her you've decided you'd like to put it to her."

  "She'll lock me up."

  "She'll fall in love with you. You'll sweep her off her feet."

  "She'll break my head. And put me in jail."

  "She won't be able to resist you. You're better looking than Tommy. And more fun, too. You've got nice curly hair."

  "She'll tell Len Lewis, or Mrs. Yerger, and have me fired."

  "She'll pull her dress up right there, throw open her arms and legs, and sing: 'Oooooooh, come on, baby. Do it to me, like you did to Marie, on Saturday night, Saturd--' "

  "Pull up your dress and sing," I countered, "if you find me so irresistible. I want to put it to you, too."

  "Get a hotel room."

  "Marie does it on the desk downstairs."

  "Marie's got a big round ass."

  "So've you."

  "I like you, darling," she declared unexpectedly, looking up straight into my eyes. (I was almost swept away by surprise.) "An awful lot. Really, I do. Even though I'm smiling now when I say it--I do mean it."

  I was almost too stunned to reply. "What are you talking about?" I whispered fiercely.

  "I wish we were older," she continued wistfully in a tone close to some boding lament. "That's what I wish. You know what I wish? I wish you were old enough to knock me around a little."

  I was shocked and terrified, almost enraged with her in my confusion and embarrassment. "Why do you talk like that?" I demanded indignantly, afraid that something fateful I did not understand and could not cope with was already taking place. "Why do you say things like that to me now? Right out here in the middle of the office?"

  "Because nobody who hears me will believe me," Virginia continued blithely without lowering her voice or altering her expression of beaming innocence. "Not even you. Not a single person around us would take me seriously if I just let my voice get louder and louder steadily until it was almost a shout"--her voice rose clearly and deliberately until it was almost a shout and everybody nearby was watching us with amusement--"and suddenly called out, 'I love you, Bobby Slocum!' "

  (And she had to go and kill herself. Why? She was no longer an employee of the automobile casualty insurance company because she had committed suicide shortly after the war and was no longer employable.) "You're a riot," I muttered awkwardly with an artificial smile.

  "See?" she resumed in her normal voice, as all the people around us bent back to their work. "Nobody believes me. Not even you, do you?"

  "What do you want?" I begged of her in bewilderment. "Tell me what to do. Look, Virgin-for-Short, I'm only seventeen years old. And I'm scared. I don't know what's going to happen to me."

  "Don't be scared," she answered, and now her voice did go soft with a tender care and affection. "We'll be alone soon in a hotel room, and I'll do things to you that no girl ever did to you before. I promise." (We were never alone in a hotel room. A little while ago in New Orleans, a whore in a nightclub made that same promise to me in exactly those words, and then had nothing different to offer when she came to my room.) "Now go get Marie."

  "Mrs. Yerger is watching," I noticed.

  "She doesn't like me," said Virginia.

  "She doesn't like me, either."

&
nbsp; "She doesn't like me because I try to have fun with everybody I know. Especially with you."

  "I better look busy."

  "I'll keep you busy--here." Virginia wrote the number of an accident folder on a sheet of paper. "Find this accident for me," she instructed. "It's a large property damage case with three personal injuries. You can probably get it from Marie Jencks," she added mischievously.

  "Yes, Miss Markowitz," I responded heartily enough for Mrs. Yerger to hear me, and started away briskly.

  "Oh, and Bobby! Remember--" She beckoned me back to her desk with an important look. In a low voice, she instructed: "Grab her by the nipple."

  So, with Virginia goading me on, I set out to seduce Marie Jencks. I tried in the only way I could think of: by loitering. I loitered on her premises for two or three minutes at a time whenever Len Lewis was away from his desk and I saw her sitting in their office alone. I lurked and hovered in her view perpetually, pretending to search for accident folders, expecting her to look at me one time and perceive suddenly, in a moment of effulgent revelation, that I had dark curly hair and was a better-looking boy than Tom Johnson and much more fun, and that she would then say to me also: "Are you busy now? Get the key."

  I never even came close. The most I ever got from her was, "Are you going to spend the rest of your life in here?" or "Why do you keep staring at me all the time like a moonstruck cow?" or, shrewdly (she knew what I was after, all right, the sapient bitch), "Is there anything in here you want?" or, most unkindest cut of all: "You get out of her now. Send Tom in."

  And down to the storeroom Tom would go with her again, leaving his handwriting behind in the back of the file room for me to work on alone, and it is his handwriting that I still use. (I wonder who's using Marie.) Tom relied on me to cover for him in case Mrs. Yerger or anyone else came calling for him. And I did.

  ("Tom."

  No answer.

  "Tom."

  Still no answer.

  "Where is that boy, I wonder."

  "Downstairs in the storeroom, Mrs. Yerger, laying Marie Jencks on a desk," I could fancy myself replying.) It was pretty hard, I confess, keeping my thoughts on Tom's handwriting when I knew he was down in the storeroom with her. Usually, my imagination wandered right down there with him (and I was more inclined to make dirty drawings of the two of them instead). That got to be a pretty steamy meeting place, that gloomy, silent, dingy mausoleum for dead and decaying records on the floor below. Occasionally, someone else in the company would really wish to go there in search of an old accident, and barely miss colliding with Tom or me in a new one. It was only one floor down, but descending the two staircases of that one floor to the musty storeroom was like escaping from scrutiny into some dark, cool, not unpleasant underworld, into the safe and soothing privacy of a deep cellar or dusty, wooden coal shed. I enjoyed going there often, even just to eat my sandwiches alone and read the Mirror and Daily News, or to steal away for a long smoke in the morning or afternoon and meditate over which teams would win the college football games that coming Saturday or what would eventually become of me and my mother and my brother and sister. (My brother is dead already: his heart attacked him one day without warning in the waiting room of his business office, and it was all over for him in a matter of seconds. My mother is dead too. My sister lives far away. We sometimes talk on the telephone.) I imagine ill-humored Mrs. Yerger, who took note of everything, gave that storeroom a very thorough airing once Virginia, Tom, Marie, and I were all gone.

  I remember also a rape that nearly took place there one lunchtime when Virginia was trapped with me and two older, bigger boys who also worked in the file room. They would not let her out. She had gone too far, joked and boasted about too much, and now they would not let her go, they said, until she "took care" of the three of us. Virginia grew nervous quickly. We all kept talking and wisecracking compulsively, as though nothing unusual were occurring. One of them had his arms around her shoulders from behind, seeming to hug her playfully, but actually holding her almost helpless and trying to press her to the floor; and the other was soon busy with both hands under her skirt, trying to unsnap her stockings and roll her panties down. I watched, with dread and keen anticipation. All of as were breathing heavily (even I, who was just watching). We wore strained, sick, determined smiles and forced husky laughter out between quick comments in order to sustain for as long as possible the charade that it was all really in fun. It was obviously not in fun. Virginia was terrified after the first few seconds. Her cheeks were chalk white and quivering as she struggled to wrest free. (I never could bear the sight of terror, not in anyone, not in my whole life, not even in people I hate.) Her eyes fell upon mine in wordless panic and appeal. I intervened and let her get away. I was terrified also as I stood up to those two older, bigger boys and insisted they let her go.

  "Let her go," I said hesitantly.

  "She wants you," one of them said.

  "Let her go!" I screamed, with clenched fists.

  After Virginia had fled, they shook their heads in unbelieving contempt and told me I was stupid for letting her go just as she was getting ready to put out for the three of us.

  Was I stupid?

  (I know that by the time we got back upstairs, she was serene and gay again, and not nearly as grateful to me as I took it for granted she would be. And there was no change in her friendliness toward the others. She joked and flirted with them as before, with a show of flattering respect, as though she thought much more of them now. I couldn't understand that I still can't. I do wonder, though, what would have happened between her and me if I had kept my mouth shut and joined with the others in making her put out for the three of us. Would she have thought more of me too? How could she? But would she? She used to tell me that on her tombstone she wanted an inscription that read: "Here lies Virginia Markowitz. She was a very good lay, even though she was Jewish."

  I bet it isn't there.)

  I bet I was stupid.

  (I know I never got to lay her. And I should have. I think I wanted to. I'd like to lay her now. I wish she hadn't killed herself and was still around for me to call up and make love to, to tell her I care for her and how much she has always meant to me. I'm glad she's not, because I'm not sure I would want her now. I don't know what I want.) I know I was much more encouraged about my own future because of Virginia, Tom, and Marie Jencks. It was reassuring to learn that so many people were getting laid, that the activity was indeed so widespread. It augured well. Tom was twenty-one years old and had a big blond married woman of almost twenty-eight who let him make love to her. I took it for granted that when I was twenty-one, I would have a big blond married woman of twenty-eight who would let me make love to her on a desk also. I thought such women came along automatically.

  It never happened, of course.

  There was no Marie Jencks for me when I was twenty-one. All I got when I was twenty-one was the right to vote. And by the time I finally did get around to screwing a woman of twenty-eight, it was my wife, and I was thirty-two and already married to her, and that was not what I had been daydreaming about at all.

  Today when I have anything to do with a woman of twenty-eight, she generally turns out to be not a woman, but a girl, and often just a little girl: she is unmarried and unhappy, or married and lonely. And it isn't the same as it would have been if I had that same girl and were still only seventeen. It is sometimes pleasant, sometimes sad; it is never pleasant for long without turning sad (and uncomfortable, at least for me. Often, they wish to become more devoted to me than I want them to be. I find close relationships suffocating). There is usually something drunken about it (that's my fault, I guess--I like to drink and to get them drinking too), something forlorn and pathological (perhaps in both of us). They like to talk a lot, and they like to listen, to be talked to seriously. (More than anything else, I think, they crave to be spoken to.) I know one or two or three girls near thirty with whom I have become very good friends by now; I don't see any of them too
often because our meetings are uneventful (at least for me) and soon turn dull. I meet many young girls I like an awful lot for a while and feel I could love loyally for the rest of my life if I didn't know beforehand that I would grow so bored quickly. That Cuban girl this afternoon was about twenty-six or twenty-eight, and now that I think of her again, she wasn't really so bad. She wasn't really unattractive. She would have been a great girl to have if I were still only a kid of seventeen and knew I could have her whenever I wanted to, and didn't have to pay. She had a small child somewhere being brought up by somebody else. She wanted enough money someday to have her child back and to open her string of beauty parlors.