Then I ran her up the flagpole, and everybody saluted.…
There my reverie gave way to sleep. I’d sort of planned on thinking back to the beginning with Helen, but sleep saved me from such heartache, and I forgot all about Helen and dreamed pleasant dreams of Jodi. The night passed slowly in slumber, and then dawn winked too bright an eye at me, and Jodi was beaming at me.
A wonderful girl, Jodi. She cooked breakfast and fed it to me without saying a word, and I for my part said nothing at all. I finished my third cup of coffee, thinking all the while of a suitable explanation to heave at Helen, and then, finally, I said: “Good morning, Jodi.”
“Good morning,” she said. “Did you forget?”
“Forget what?”
“Last night.”
“Jodi,” I said, “I shall sooner forget my name.”
“You’re nice, Harvey.”
I lit the ends of a pair of cigarettes and passed one to her. Then I remembered in part why I was still at Jodi’s, instead of being on the 8:12 out of Rockland County.
“Jodi,” I said, “the proposition.”
She nodded sagely. “Listen to this, Harvey,” she said. “You may like it.”
FIVE
There was time, in my not particularly innocent youth, when I considered myself an essentially moral type, a young man who was a bit shrewd perhaps, something of a corner-cutter and a doubt-benefiter, but nevertheless containing a solidly moral and ethical core.
We all believe that when young, I suppose. Some men—I imagine they should be considered the lucky ones—never do find out the truth. Alas, those self-ignorant ones are not to be found in the advertising profession, not outside the mailroom at any rate. It was relatively early in the game that I discovered what was really at the core of me—a black, sinful, unashamed and overwhelming concern, interest and fascination for number one. Or, I should say, Number One. Me. I quite frankly don’t know what I’d do without me.
“You may like it,” said Jodi, and I’d never realized till then just how well she really knew me. Her proposition, if it included someone like Al the Neanderthalus Chicagus, would inevitably be something highly illegal. Only a man who has learned to live with his nasty true self can be expected to sit still when someone begins a criminal or sinful proposition with the words, “You may like it.”
She expected me to sit still. Ergo, and all that.
I gained my precious self-understanding, by the by, at just around the same time as I was promoted from the ten-dollar desk and the Bull’s-Eye Spaghetti account, as so often happens in real life or whatever it is I’ve been doing for the past thirty-one years. The promotion and the self-understanding both were the end result of a little conversation I had with Fehringer one day after I’d been hitting the bull’s eye for about seven months.
I looked up from my pencil that day, and saw Furry Fehringer approaching my desk. He wore one of those smiles that makes you instinctively look to see if there’s a knife in his hand.
As a matter of fact, there was. But not for me.
“Min, keed,” he said. I think his years in the racket had made him learn to hate the English language, and he was gradually trying to divorce himself from it completely. He was doing a pretty good job.
“Sure thing,” I said. Both sensible English words, pronounced the way schoolteachers do it in Iowa, which just goes to show how new I was.
“Around the quad,” he said. “Kay?”
“Kay.” I was learning.
I got to my feet, and we roamed together around the quad. That is, we traversed the corridors of MGRS&S, up one pastel alleyway and down another, every once in a while passing that section of translucent glass-brick wall with the eight-foot free-form pink beer bottle in it celebrating a five-year-old MGRS&S coup, and Fehringer newspoke about this and that, mostly conversational chaff, from which I herewith extract the wheat, with my responses:
“You know Tom Stanton, eh, keed?”
“Uh huh.”
“Brought you into the corps, didn’t he?”
“Uh huh.” (My responses gained in directness what they may have lacked in vivacity.)
“Feeling of loyalty, eh?”
(Dangerous ground, that. I wasn’t that new. Was Fehringer a loyal Stanton man, or was his suzerain in our hierarchy? The best answer, I decided, was no answer at all.) “Well,” I said, “you know how it is.”
“Mmm. Just traded the flivver in, did I tell you?”
“Oh?”
“Mmm. Trade in every two years. Like to keep the old boat, sentimental attachment and all, but got to be practical. New one cuts the mustard. Sense?”
I nodded. “Sense,” I said.
“Pity about Tom,” he said.
I endeavored to look as blank as I felt. “Pity?”
“Booze. Fifteen to one in the club car lab now, you know. Poured into Westport every night.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“Been covering for him, holding the flanks. Loyalty myself, you know. Sentimental attachment. Grand guy.”
“Sure.”
“Pity,” he said again, and gloomed at the pink beer bottle on the way by. “Used to cut the mustard.”
“Uh huh.”
“Got to look out for myself,” he said. “Wife and kiddies, that bit. Name and game, you know. Expect a hassle on the Wilmot Toothpaste. Sales on the downydoo.”
“Oh?”
“Like to have you in my corner, Harv. Step up, eh? Think it over.”
And we went back to our respective desks.
I thought it over. Fehringer claimed he’d been doing Tom Stanton’s work for a while now. He had the game, and he wanted the name. All I had to do was manufacture a little damaging evidence concerning Bull’s-Eye Spaghetti—which was also, ultimately, in Tom Stanton’s bailiwick—and I could have a piece of the game for myself. When Fehringer moved up, so would I.
I thought it over. All afternoon at the desk I thought it over, and homeward bound on the IRT I thought it over some more.
Come to think of it, I wonder just how many decisions to foreswear goodness and virtue in favor of evil and degradation were made homeward bound on the rush-hour trains of the IRT, between Lexington-51st and the depths of the Village. (For the benefit of foreign citizens the IRT is the Metro. Geh?) This daily voyage involves three trams and a lot of subterranean walking, all in the close company of a surly mob which, for pure meanness of spirit and nastiness of behavior, holds no equal in all history with the possible exception of Robespierre’s crowd in the French Revolution. (Could it be that old Tom Jefferson’s—what a copywriter!—second revolution never came about simply because, for the urban masses, all revolutionary humors are dissipated in the mere process of getting to and from work? A thought I toss out for political scientists in the arena.)
At any rate, I thought Friend Fehringer’s proposition over all afternoon at my desk, and couldn’t see myself being such a dastard as he proposed, not for anything in the world. How could I possibly look myself in the eye ever again, having betrayed a kindness in such a manner? For it was, truly, Tom Stanton S-sub two who had given me my start in this rewarding (sic) profession.
On the Lex local, straphanging, between 51st Street and Grand Central, I thought it over some more. And subtly, without my really noticing it at all, my thinking began its insidious change. My thoughts were still in opposition to Fehringer the Ferret, but my reasoning had metamorphosed. Now, I was thinking: What if Fehringer doesn’t get away with it? After all, Tom Stanton is S-sub two, no easy man to diddle. Wouldn’t my smart move be to avoid the issue entirely? Thus remaining both morally pure and occupationally safe.
Walking underground from the Lex local to the 42nd Street shuttle, my busy brain turned to contemplation of the Bull’s-Eye Spaghetti account. Was that an occupation, after all, worthy of safeguarding?
Wedged amid the snarling weasels on the cross-town shuttle from Grand Central to Times Square, I thought about Fehringer’s job. I might, could po
ssibly have that job myself, if Fehringer bootstrapped (or bootlicked, or booted) himself upward. With its increments, ah, yes. One could taxi homeward, lollygagging in blissful solitude in acres of back seat, whilst the taxi driver did all the sweating and snarling in one’s stead.
Traversing the tile-walled corridors from shuttle to 7th Avenue Express, and riding that Profane Comedy southward, I began to see the justice of Fehringer’s proposal. He was absolutely right actually. Tom Stanton was a rather heavy boozer. He’d been glowing rather brightly, in fact, when he’d met and hired me. Feral Fehringer was undoubtedly accurate in his claim that he had been carrying the ball for Tom Stanton lo these many moons. Name and game, indeed and exactly. A ball carrier in need is a ball carrier indeed. And I was surely worthy of promotion myself. Hadn’t my earnest efforts on behalf of Italian clotheslines been met with universal and unequivocal approval among the higher-ups?
By the time I made the change at 14th Street from the express to the local, I had made another change as well, and somewhat more significant. What, I was currently asking myself, had Tom Stanton really done for me after all? Hired me to the mailroom, that was what, something any personnel manager or employment agency in the business could have done just as well. And what had Furtive Fehringer done for me? He’d rescued me from the mailroom and started my upward climb via Bull’s-Eye Spaghetti, for number one. And he’d offered me a helping hand to climb yet another rung of the ladder of excess. Fehringer the bellringer. Put your money on Fraternal Fehringer, the pupil’s choice.
But still, you know, some tattered remnant of my earlier self-respect still clung to my hunched shoulders. Rationalizations were all well and good, but something more was needed.
I was still living with Saundra at that time, and so I broached the subject to her that evening. I felt the need for a confidante, for someone to assure me that my choice was right and proper and good and beneficial, and that I could get away with it.
Saundra seemed, at the time, like the logical choice. She hated Madison Avenue so. Our nocturnal exertions were punctuated by manifestoes, our foreplay was fortified by foreign-born philosophies, our sex was ever seasoned with sociology.
According to Saundra, the capitalist society was a jungle, of the most primitive kind. For the individual in such a jungle, there were three choices open, three avenues of life: First, one could choose to be a timid tiny creature, with a burrow in which one hid from the ferociousness outside. Wage slaves and other roamers of the rutted routine were such stuff as timid tiny creatures were made on. Second, one could choose to be a lion or a panther, stalking the jungle, tearing from its richness whatever one could get. Financiers and Wall Street and Madison Avenue were panthers. Third, one could choose to be an eagle, and get the hell out of the jungle completely, by soaring above it all, swooping down into it only rarely for sustenance and otherwise wafting among the clods, thinking higher thoughts. Saundra and her unwashed friends were, if you could believe it, eagles.
According to Saundra, timid tiny creatures deserved everything they got, and in all justice were fit prey for panther and eagle alike. Panthers, on the other hand, were contemptible for their lack of intellectualism or morality, but were worthy of respect for their graceful ferocity. Eagles, of course, were the chosen few.
Saundra, I think, was never quite sure exactly what yours truly was. I lived more or less like a timid creature, but I had moments of aspiration toward pantherdom, and I seemed somehow able to converse with eagles on their own air.
In essence, therefore, I believed it reasonably safe to inform Saundra of my decision to join the ranks of panthers with one mighty bound upon the back of Tom Stanton. Her contempt for Stanton—for all advertising men who compounded their original sin by living in a commuter suburb—seemed to be sufficient to keep her away from any pity for the man. And her grudging respect for panthers should keep her at my side after the announcement was made.
I arrived at our den of iniquity—the term ‘pad’ was not at that time as yet hip, nor was the term ‘hip’—exhausted not from my labors but from my homewending, and over platters of Dinty Moore beef stew I told her of Philistine Fehringer’s proposition, and of my own decisions thereunto.
Alas, it only goes to show that one never knows women! At least not emancipated Bohemian women who have left the middle class behind but haven’t yet decided whether that makes them upper class or lower class. Saundra’s reaction to my disclosure was as violent as it was unexpected.
“Harvey, you don’t mean it? You’d—you’d stick a knife in the back of the man who befriended you? Who got you your job?”
“Well,” I said, “he is a lush.”
“That only proves,” she snapped back, “that he has a conscience. I wouldn’t be surprised if he had a very delicate soul. Look at the way you two met. He came to you instantly because you didn’t have any shoes on.”
“So did the waiter,” I said.
“Don’t try to be funny, Harvey,” she said commandingly. “I think that’s a terrible thing. If I thought for one minute that the man to whose bosom I had—”
“And a lovely bosom it is,” I said.
“Don’t try to change the subject. Mr. Stanton was very good to you. How you could even think of—”
She went on and on that way. I had forgotten one important truth: Early upbringing remains behind, no matter how many logical or emotional over-lays are laminated on it. And had I ever mentioned that Saundra hailed originally from Doughboy, Nebraska? (If you don’t believe that such a place exists, friend, you just look it up in that miserable encyclo-pedia that smooth-talking door-to-door son-of-a-bitch sold you last year.) Way down beneath all the eagles and panthers and timid tiny creatures, Doughboy, Nebraska still burned in the heart of my raven-stressed Saundra. It was Doughboy that was talking now, not pinko sociology professors from Czechoslovakia. And Doughboy, it seemed, was just as long-winded as that other Saundra I had come to know and love so well.
And all at once I realized she was right, though for the wrong reason. Of course I should remain loyal to Tom Stanton! My evil little brain went clickety-click, and the whole frabjous plot lay nekkid before me. Alors!
I leaped up from the table. I never did care much for beef stew anyway. Rushing around to Saundra’s side, I embraced her, crying, “You’re right! You’ve made me see the light, Saundra, and tomorrow morning I will go straight to Tom Stanton and warn him of Fehringer’s evil scheme.”
She studied me suspiciously. “Do you mean that?”
“Cross my heart,” I said, crossing my heart.
“Because if you don’t,” she said, “I certainly wouldn’t want to have anything to do with—”
She was far from finished, of course. She intended to talk all night, no matter how often I agreed with her. So I pinched her left nipple and said, “Darling, speak to me only with thine eyes.” That was a little euphemistic cue-phrase we’d developed for a certain amorous variant of which I had become quite a devotee of late, since it prohibited speech on Saundra’s part.
“You haven’t finished supper,” she said.
“It isn’t beef stew I want to eat,” I said gallantly. My future had suddenly opened before me, rosy and soft, elating me in all sorts of ways. As the cave-man returned from a successful hunt or joust, full of his triumph, and could find no better capper for the whole thing than to throw his mate onto the floor of the cave and prod her with his maledom a while, so I.
I grabbed my Saundra’s little breasts—as hard as young rocks, but much more delicious—and led her by them to the bedroom. By the time we passed the threshold, she was giggling and her little tail was wagging just fine. Bohemian ranter or Doughboy doughgirl, both of those were finally incidental. Saundra was, elementally, a sex machine. She had two buttons in front, and both were marked ON.
I’m a lazy man, all in all, and Saundra loved to pander to my laziness. Our conjunction now took its usual—but far from routine—course. Fully clothed, I reclined upon our wrink
led bed, still musky from this morning’s pre-breakfast calisthenics. Saundra, narrow body and all awiggle, pink tongue-tip trembling between her lips, proceeded to undress me while thus I lay in regal lassitude. My shoes and socks she removed, then nibbled my toes a while and tickled my soles. Pulling off her sweater and bra, she next knelt at the foot of the bed and carefully placed my feet. Right foot to left breast, the hard dark burning nipple between first and second toes, likewise left foot to right breast, and then I wiggled my toes for her benefit, while she giggled and wiggled and squealed. A silly thing, but we both enjoyed it.
Then, her eyes now gleaming bright, she would push my feet away and come climbing up over me, to sit astride my waist and unbutton my shirt while I unzipped her dungarees. Man’s dungarees, thank God. The female variety has the fly on the side, designed no doubt by some anti-social type or a believer in the theories of Malthus.
In order to remove my shirt, she would have to lean close over me, while I propped up a bit on my elbows. This position was perfect for windshield wiper: Left breast, kiss, right breast, kiss, left breast, kiss, and so on. The T-shirt involved a bit more work, but was worth it.
At this juncture, Saundra liked to lie prone upon me a moment or two, and nibble on my chest. I always took this opportunity to push her dungarees and panties down over her hips and halfway down her thighs, which was as far as I could reach in that position. I then liked to treat her buttocks like a drum, slapping little stinging syncopated rhythms on them, while she squirmed in delight beneath my hands.
When we’d worked this routine as far as we could stand, Saundra would next writhe off me and, standing beside the bed, finish removing her dungarees and panties. Then she would stand close enough for me to do some in-fighting while she wrestled with my belt, and stripped away the last two pieces of my clothing.
Then she spoke to me, for a while, only with her eyes. For very good and obvious reasons.
There were times when I preferred to simply lie in state during this interlude, passively appreciating her attentions upon me. But there were other times, and this was one of them, when I was in high spirits and wanted to reciprocate in kind, a treat that Saundra found absolutely delightful. She was, as I have said, a lean and bony thing, all flesh and bone, but with wiry muscles and unquenchable energies. She found it impossible to remain still whenever I so much as touched her. Her shoulders twitched, waggling her bite-size breasts, her hips gyrated, her legs trembled, her arms waved around, and she was generally and delightfully in motion. This motion increased tenfold when I chose to perform upon her the equivalent of her service for me. The dear hard nipples of her lovely breasts would scrape upon my belly, her head would nod in staccato agreement, her hips would pulse madly upon me as I once more slapped the small globes of her buttocks, her knees would beat upon the bed beyond my ears, and her hands would caress in fine imitation of my own handiwork upon her.
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