I Smell Esther Williams

by Mark Leyner

  Sonny Liston remodeled my nose in the fifth round in a Las Vegas ring.

  I wrote a monograph on bubbles and then became the proprietor of a ginseng establishment and my best friend is some clam from Cheyenne.

  Yesterday, the 13th of September, a conference was summoned to London to settle a new map of the Balkans. It became evident by lunchtime that Austria’s prime object was to deny Serbia direct access to the Adriatic. And, of course, behind closed doors, Austrian ministers’ jingoism waxed turgid in the grand huff and puff manner. The resolution of Austria to keep Serbia out of Albania was matched by the determination of Russia that the Serbs should be given this access to the sea. It was so silly! By 2:00 P.M. Europe was brought to the brink of war and by 2:30 P.M. war was averted. Like ad hoc big brothers, the Germans exercised a moderating influence over the Austrians, the English over the Russians. Hardly was the ink dry upon the settlement than acrimonious quarrels broke out among the very political “siblings” themselves. The ramshackle state of European stability reminds me of the state of Sally’s furniture. The edge of her bedroom dresser is marred. The wicker is broken, and the vinyl worn on her dining-room chairs. The cushions are worn on her couch and plastic tubing in the welting is coming out of the corners. The legs on the dining room table are loose and need regluing.

  Sally —

  I don’t know how to title these times—perhaps “The Contamination of Happiness” or “Bewildered, and Bereft of Fun-times” or maybe “Here Comes Hell Again!”—I miss you so much I want to have fits. There’s no news—only a revolving span of drudgery and discontent—barely marked by the passing of the days which speed by with the swiftness of a buried ton. The people I meet might as well be on the moon. I keep thinking, and each time as another realization, what a wonderful superb person you are. I just want to be with you. Maybe this weekend I’ll put the pen to a cheerier letter.

  All my love,

  Mark

  The Boston Celtics put me on waivers when I manifested the stigmata of Christ—I couldn’t shoot without discomfort. I’m an Irish raconteur and I entered the Story Fest in order to win enough cash to buy Sally some new furniture. As soon as the judge said “Go!” I had to render flies in three different ways:

  “I’ll teach you the abc’s of dance,” I said and Sally said, “We gotta get some zzz’s” and I began to shimmy unavailed upon, but then, at the western portico, a head popped up and we both saw it, you know what I mean?—and we just knocked that expensive oeil-de-boeuf style window right out in our enthusiasm to intercept the mannerless guy.

  “I am zee zinger who zings at Anthony’s Abattoir Sur La Mer,” he said, bowing crisply—and his back crackled.

  “Perfect” I said, “Now we can certainly dance, see—he’ll sing and we’ll dance.”

  “Nix” Sally said, “Shall I hit the hay alone or will you join me?”

  “Loosen up,” I suggested, doing a few quick squats, nipping at her tail at each descent.

  “I run tomorrow in The Big Stakes you randy lunk—lemme sleep.”

  Needless to say I did everything to keep her up including putting flies on her behind. I didn’t go to the event the next day but ascertained via reliable source that she ran like molasses.

  The next night after another scene, I vowed to sell her—“I’m through with horses,” I adjured. I took a whore’s bath, zipped over to the club and in the enthusiasm of my watershed pledge, I split a card in two, sideways, and burst about four thousand seven hundred balls in ten hours of continuous shooting.

  I was a bit hard pressed as I approached the second way:

  The guerillas are the fish —

  the people are the sea …

  “No, no!” the judge shouted, “You got the fly motif not the fish motif. Get lost and don’t come back!”

  With the sangfroid of an oyster on Sunday, I accepted the nonetheless unpalatable notion that I had been foiled. I suppose I’m really quite frightened of flies.

  I vant to be as mysterious as a voman.

  Dear Mao,

  I hope the people in heaven are real together. If they’re not, I know you’re organizing them.

  Sincerely,

  Kathy

  The workers in the old factory were laughing so much! Someone had just told the funniest joke! “A Yankee goes into a drugstore to buy condoms. ‘I’ll have a package of rubbers,’ he says. The druggist takes them from the shelf, ‘That’ll be $3.50 with tax.’ ‘I don’t want the ones with tacks,’ the Yankee says, ‘I want the ones that stay up by themselves!’ ”

  “You know, you look too nice to be in a dump like this. What brought you here?”

  “You’re a queer one, you’re young,” she said. “Love brought me here.”

  She laughed, and the laugh was harsh with the hint of tears behind it. She threw back her head, and touched the rose in her black hair. She had a lot of hair.

  — from Confidential

  by Donald Henderson Clarke

  You see me with my sunglasses and cigar at ringside—then in the morning—it’s the 14th of September—I had bought a purple toothbrush to clean my tongue and imagine a voluptuous coed—a pouting libertine in men’s pajamas—a girl paring her eyelashes with the scissors my father had used for his nose hairs—a Hoffritz scissors! Some cowboy told me an eastern scissors won’t cut at this altitude … who do they take me for? Do they want to see me cry like Jackie Coogan in “Toyota Sally”?

  (This section should be read like a Jewish Haggadah.)

  I began to think of my employees as students—two of whom were intrigued by the image of a hypertrophic drummer beating upon a bus-like gong. The re-juxtaposition of words, that is, simply, the manipulation of language, from a position within the matrix of a consumer society, (such as U.S.A.), or from within the matrix of a draconian society (such as ours) is an analogous operation to one which I undertook a number of days ago and which I wish to render: I awoke on the morning of the 10th of September and divided my body up into square centimeters and upon each cm. applied a different cologne—in point of illustration, upon one nearly matted area beneath my pitching arm I daubed what is commerically known as “Canon & Common Law”—a fusty bouquet with the slightest hint of sherry and damp tweed; upon the raised demarcated square at the base of what Sean Michaels calls the “milch pimple” I applied the somewhat rousing fragrance of “Turkish Scimitar.” At any rate, each of the thousands of square cms. was “bathed”—as it were, in like fashion. The experiment consisted of, procedurally, simply this: entering a full early-morning bus and evaluating the response, particularly the distaff response to, first, the cumulative effect of the odeur and secondly the particular effects of each “flesh-tag”, as it was exposed to the air. I was at the time completely unaware of the fact that similar experiments conducted in Quebec City under the aegis of the Canadian Royal Academy had resulted inexplicably in epidemic-style outbreaks of (with each affliction a drop of wine should be poured into the plate) Bugger’s Itch, Bilge Mouth, Fad Dieting, Listless Advertising, and infrequently, Ridiculous Judicial Appointments. The bus rocked back and forth like a buoy and before I could collate any substantial data a behemoth percussionist had set his giant mallet upon the top of the bus and its metallic richness resounded throughout Boulder calling all writers to work. Boulder’s a writer’s town; its streets bespeak the tangled strains of the raconteur’s spiel. “Sally” I said to the girl sitting next to me, “Is that my wallet you have? Do you have any relatives with irritating habits? Is an olfactory art plausible?” Just then we careened into the old factory—the place where great literature is made—the place where many of the great classics were written including, most recently, Thelma Strabel’s Reap The Wild Wind and my own “In Susan.”

  She insisted upon reading and re-reading “In Susan” and talking technique.

  She pointed to my nose. “Run into a hammerfish?” she asked.

  The next morning I wrote her a note:

  In response to your questio
n—how well do we know Susan—it seems to me that the question should not be—how well do we know Susan vis-a-vis the notion of character qua character—but how well do we “know” Susan qua Susan—a question which synecdochically raises the corollary—how do we “know” “In Susan” qua “In Susan”—at which point, the word “know” seems to spasm like a fish out of water.

  I’ve recently begun a new tack … now I’m writing about the agent of my twenty-four hour-a-day anxiety. Listen closely … he’s like a madman on the loose. His footsteps approach with each creak of of the floorboards above. I can hear his bell. He murmurs, “Sally’s forgotten you …”

  She lay in the sand with her scuba mask, snorkel, spear and flippers and I built, like the bowerbird, a chamber in which to woo her. To woo her hence. To woo her from the gloss of the page. I looked at the clock-radio, at the photograph of Sally upon the night-table and again at the photograph in the magazine. My laziness annoyed me—there were three matters which required my immediate attention: the unraveling of a blunderheaded confusion regarding my bank account, the acquisition of a New York Times and the purchase of Donald Henderson Clarke’s newest volume entitled Confidential. I was especially anxious to see the size of the headline announcing the Kaiser’s break with the Prussian Parliament. I called two of my students and told them to get right over with the new palanquin and take me to the bank, first of all!

  I precipitated the disco wave by using a bat bone on a woman’s ear as a sort of musical dildo. The song went like this:

  I know I’ve said and done stupid and upsetting things in the past—but please believe me, I want to be with you always—I just want us to be together for good. I have absolutely no interest in any one else—that’s simply the fact of it.

  Uh-huh Uh-huh!

  I’m not going to talk about who should move where or stay where or anything like that—I just want to tell you that I hope in the coming weeks we can make some plans (be they present or future plans) to stay together and perhaps get married.

  Uh-huh Uh-huh!

  I just want to know for sure that our relationship is permanent—because knowing that will make whatever separation there is more than bearable. I’ll talk to you soon.

  Ah … if only nuptials were Sally’s bag. Perhaps she’s too much of the whore.

  The sheets smell like Sally, There’s snow on the mountain already. Is Sally alive? Has she been driven to resort to cannibalism? Has she simply been driven to a resort—perhaps Steamboat Springs?

  I attended, uninvited, a soirée in Louella Menzies’ smoky trailer. Nothing had yet been served and during a lull I fairly burst out, “Did somebody say dinner was on? What is the conventional wisdom vis-a-vis dinner, because I need the sustenance to make way like a smitten red-man into each valley and canyon where I’ll cup my hands to my mouth and call, ‘Yoo-hoo … Sally … yooo-hooo!’ ”

  OCTOGENARIANS DIE IN CRASH

  Close to the field of battle, they await an enemy coming from afar; at rest, an exhausted enemy; with well-fed troops, hungry ones. This is control of the physical factor.

  What is called ‘foreknowledge’ cannot be elicited from spirits, nor from gods, nor by analogy with past events, nor from calculations. It must be obtained from men who know the enemy situation.

  — SUN TZU

  CHARACTERS

  THE DAUPHIN

  VERNON, the Dauphin’s chamberlain

  LUCAN

  JUDY, who feasted on exotic bird’s nests for days at a time and dressed her Pekingese puppies in vests made of costly imported fabrics

  VIC PIANO, owner of SIT-Siemens electronics plant and Pirelli rubber factory; Lucan’s ideal

  DEBORAH

  THE TIME: 1973

  SCENE 1

  A hubcap-shaped Connecticut gymnasium.

  LUCAN: I appreciate it even more—the mildness is terrific. Is your telephone still hooked-up downstairs?

  THE DAUPHIN: You know it’s not the same number as when you used to call all the time.

  VIC PIANO: Why don’t we just make this easy for both of us?

  THE DAUPHIN: This is strictly business then.

  LUCAN (nibbling at roast guinea fowl in a veloute sauce): Strictly business.

  VIC PIANO: Is there a tape running?

  THE DAUPHIN: Yeah.

  LUCAN: You better catch it. I’m not the only one to believe that a deaf-mute girl read the lips of a Las Vegas entertainer planning to bomb a famous UFO museum. How do you like my striped suit? If you do anything to jeopardize this program, I’m going to get you!

  VIC PIANO: You want this excitement … this … this action—just as much as I do!

  THE DAUPHIN: No one lives to violate my wife and talk about it!

  LUCAN: I live to violate your wife and talk about it!

  VIC PIANO: It sounds like a woman.

  THE DAUPHIN: How did you know that?

  LUCAN: Instinct, I guess.

  SCENE 2

  A conference room.

  LUCAN heats a pan of quartered tomatoes and sautés shrimp. The color change in the shrimp can be seen. When they are done, they curl up.

  LUCAN: The chimes ring, the dogs bark. Cheese sandwiches in a panel truck. And oh … the violins! The lady says “May I have this dance?” I would be most delighted …

  THE DAUPHIN: You’re dreaming, Lucan. It’s never going to be that simple again, that … that safe.

  VIC PIANO (chewing a piece of truffled sausage encased in piecrust): But for you and me, Dauphin?

  THE DAUPHIN: Can’t you see? We’re dying … we’re dying in time to our own beautiful symphony of parting chariots.

  (They impulsively embrace and kiss.)

  LUCAN: …cherubs beneath an extinguished lamp.

  THE DAUPHIN: I remember a baseball called a nickel rocket, men.

  THE OTHERS: A baseball called a nickel rocket, sir!

  VIC PIANO: How is Judy doing?

  LUCAN: As a matter of fact, very well. She’s even beginning to think a little like the old man.

  THE DAUPHIN: What do you mean?

  SCENE 3

  A congressional hearing room.

  LUCAN: … she said she wished she could have spent an evening with the jailhouse rocker.

  THE DAUPHIN: The action would include some inspired pussy humping and crotch rubs that would burn your eyes out.

  VIC PIANO: Right off the bat, people will say “there’s good fucking and bad fucking.” Why let them go on and on and on and on and on and on, their penises sliding into their vaginas. Fucking.… there are so many ways of thinking about it. Here’s the worst fucking list of doctors I ever saw: Dr. Bernard Schulman, Dr. Irvington Solomon, Dr. Theodore Martens, Dr. Craig Bushel, Dr. Sally Bloom, Dr. Richard L. Lumis, Dr. Peter Sibel, Dr. Theoharis Ariola. It’s always, “Dispose of his body, Ginger, and for crisakes Let’s Fuck!” They always want media attention.

  THE DAUPHIN: You put the carrot before the cart—my father used to promise them a girl-packed UFO show.

  VIC PIANO: These orchids I discovered nearly thirty years ago in certain forests of Burma. They occur at extremely rare intervals—traditionally only once in a century. From these orchids I have at last obtained, after twenty-five years of study, an essential oil which completes a particular formula—the formula elixir vitae for which the old philosophers sought in vain.

  THE DAUPHIN: What a story! A beautiful stranger warns the 100 that she intends to track them down single-handed! What a scoop it would be to discover who she is!

  VIC PIANO (pouring the men hefty glasses of local cognac, giving them steaming bowls of homemade soup, and heaping their plates with meat): You’d only be writing her obituary! She hasn’t a chance against the 100! Those hoods have a finger in every racket in the area!

  THE DAUPHIN: Simmer down! Johnny Adonis, the convicted murderer scheduled to die in the electric chair tonight, wants you to see him in the death house, immediately!

  VIC PIANO: Can’t understand why!

  THE DAUP
HIN (covering the microphone with his hand): It’s those little things that nag you.

  VIC PIANO: They nettle at you.

  SCENE 4

  The setting is the same as Scene 2, though the sound of mopeds is not quite so thunderous.

  (When Wu Ch’i owned a restaurant, there was a cook who, before dinner, was unable to control his ardour. He advanced and fried a pair of dumplings and returned. Wu Ch’i ordered him to be beheaded. The maitre d’ admonished him, saying: “This is a talented cook; you should not behead him.”

  Wu Ch’i replied: “I am confident he is a cook of talent, but he is disobedient.”

  Thereupon he beheaded him.

  The son of the son of this hapless cook was VERNON.)

  It’s about four o’clock in the afternoon. Shadows begin to worm their way across the stage. A $600 stallion belt buckle holds up VERNON’s trousers.

  LUCAN: I look older when I smoke. Don’t let my age fool you.

  THE DAUPHIN: How old are you?

  LUCAN: I was launched in ’51.

  VERNON: You’re jerkin’ him off, toots.

  THE DAUPHIN: No—how old are you?

  LUCAN (heatedly): 22!!

  SCENE 5

  A hotel lobby.

  DEBORAH sits across the couch from JUDY who is folding a section of newspaper. The couch is badly in need of reupholstering.

  JUDY (reading from the paper): Octogenarians “Die” in Crash. Peter J. Reichwein, 82 years old, and his wife, Lois, 82 of Wayne, were “killed” yesterday when their car crashed into a slow-moving train at a crossing. Due, in large part, to the miraculous speed with which they were delivered into surgery, doctors were able to revive the New Jersey couple after two hours of confirmed forensic “death.” Interest heightened amid reports from attendant hospital personnel that a voluble and robust Reichwein later recalled the experience of participating in this exchange at the instant of “expiration”: “What do you mean bringing a platinum cutie into a respectable establishment like this?” “Platinum cutie!!! Men, surround this oaf! Make it so champagne bubbles will never tickle his nose again!! Fix him so another wax dame will never make him balmy!” “You will do no such thing, Captain!” “Draw your weapon from its scabbard!” “You are about to become extinct, Captain! Never again to strengthen alliances or encourage troops to succor the poor!” “You’re a shit, sir … a real shit!!” “I’m going to cleave your brains in two—I hope they don’t regenerate like worm-parts, Captain!!” “It is you sir, who will soon adorn my hook !!!” “Your fish-like countenance strikes me as familiar, Captain—have we sparred before?” “You too ring a visual bell, sir, but I too cannot locate the source.” “Let us agree then that the survivor of this skirmish trace the wellspring of this faint familiarity.” “If it is I, sir, I will employ in my investigation every possible means—electronic bloodpressure units, calculators that are as thin as credit cards, wrist microsplit stopwatches.” “Taste death, then, Captain!” “Taste death then to you sir.”