I Smell Esther Williams

by Mark Leyner

  She coughed—a dainty little cough like that of an antique miniature Basin-Pull steam engine.

  “Shoot” I said.

  She opened her pocketbook and took out a plaid cloth-covered cigarette box. In a slow, cautious, unassumingly economical motion, I reached into my vest pocket and withdrew a lighter which I displayed in the air before flicking. She leaned over and, smoothing a wisp of hair behind her ear, lit her cigarette. She took a quick nervous puff and fidgeted with a loose thread at the hem of her skirt and then with the chipped plastic viridine green button over one of the mock pockets of her blouse.

  “Shoot” I said.

  She gnawed at a hang-nail briefly and then tugged at the charm bracelet at her wrist. Crossing and uncrossing her legs, she scratched a discolored patch of flesh on her cheek. She kicked one of her pumps off, slid it under the chair with her foot, and loosened the nainsook Montpellier green bow at her collar.

  “Shoot” I said.

  I’ve got to get some rest now—tomorrow’s leather pounding time—flat-footing … gumshoeing … hawkshawing … what’s in a name anyway—tomorrow the sun rises—I shake the bones out of my hair—rinse the sea-weed out of my mouth—palliate these gripping cramps with some luke-warm juice and go out and make a dirty god damn shit-eating motherfucking buck. My name’s Leyner … Mark Leyner—I wasn’t born with that name—I earned it … believe me.

  THE ROSEATE SPOONBILL

  (Comments after the death of John D. Rockefeller 3d)

  It’s difficult to empathize with anyone. But it’s like impossible to comprehend the fright with which one, after not having been home for literally years—the fright with which one reaches into his old bureau—into his tenebrous grotto of a drawer—the fright with which one reaches into a drawer, right, and into the unsympathetic length of his tattiest dowdiest widowed sock and have like pains shoot up his dorsal environs. You want to say “see you in the funny papers” and burrow straight under that Disneyesque counterpane immediately. Life is, au fond, not for the chicken-hearted. Stan Musial, when he was physical fitness consultant to the president in ’65 wrote, “… there is no equality of opportunity—in education, in employment, or in any other area—for persons who are weak and lethargic, timid and awkward, or lacking in energy and the basic physical skills.”

  What considerations must be taken into account when looking for a man to marry? Can, for instance, one woman’s priorities accommodate both astrological affinity and the extent to which a gentleman has built up equity? And what form does that equity take? Has it been accumulated in a piecemeal, haphazard manner, consisting of, say, a television, stereo, toaster, wardrobe, clock-radio, and turquoise ring or two? Is its value apparent only with respect to a certain connoisseurship, as in the case of my friend Randall Schroth’s antique car?

  In this regard, what occupies the mind of someone like Brooke Shields’ mother? Miss Shields, whose pool of nuptial possibility is rife with the most conniving piranha. Has the thought of an arranged marriage not occurred to the mother of this extraordinary girl? An arranged marriage of the sort that was common in a host of venerable cultures, including the Akwe-Shavante Indians of Central Brazil and the Heian court of 10th century Japan.

  Although judging from coeval texts such as The Pillow-Book of Sei Shonagon and The Tale of Genji, the feudal Japanese court boasted enough heavy action, (conducted surreptitiously behind screens of wattled bamboo or rather ostentatiously, in keeping with the fabulously amoral Zeitgeist of the period), to curl hair upon the nape of the most coy and prim of handmaidens’ necks or to unravel the top-knot of even the most phlegmatic warrior.

  Oh great, Werner from my soap opera “To Knot the Grey Nuts” is dying. That phony … It’s good to see his hopes blow up in his face!

  Ray thought it was funny that my toilet is coin-operated—but what does he think this apartment complex is, a public school? Up in the rarefied air of my income bracket, you get what you pay for, Ray!

  The last thing she said was, “I’m about to be discovered. I’ve been pitting all my friends against each other.”

  So I said, “That’s an intensely delicate operation to have undertaken. And I really admire intense individuals. In fact, people have said that I have a certain intensity. A certain ‘I don’t know what exactly.’ A certain hunger for truth … a certain thirst for adrenaline maybe. Perhaps an unnatural affection for danger, a latent death wish … a kind of hopelessly self-destructive Weltschmerz. Aren’t you going to say anything?”

  “I’m about to be discovered. I’ve been pitting all my friends against each other.”

  The October weather has been delightful. Like that crisp breeze just now. Did you see how rosy it made my cheeks? The playoff games have been more than body and soul can bear. Vitamin E has transformed my scalp into a fertile promised land. But the dead Pope looks like an ornate canary laid out that way.

  Some afternoons, the sun hits my phonebook at just the right angle and light shimmers off its cover like shards of topaz. Other men may be stalled in traffic, asleep with their succubi. Other men may be sitting down to dinner already. These men eat too early! But we men are such a club. With our habits and clothes. We love to kiss babies when we campaign. And we love to drink coffee. And that accounts for the sheer voluminosity of our philosophies, all that coffee.

  Ah, October whatever it is. I’m back in the saddle again. I’m the story of lovely lady who was very very very bewitching. As George Eliot said of Dorothea Brooke in Middlemarch, “Most men thought her bewitching when she was on horseback.” I feel as if a sixteen ounce glove has softened the fist of fate’s devastating uppercut. I feel as if horse tranquilizer has slowed the team that aproaches with my hearse. As if firemen have discovered new ladders, to discover me. The addlepated officer, retrieved, fighting a war that ended thirty-three years ago. The last of the Mohicans. The final Brontosaurus-burger sold on a Sat. night. Half swan, half doe. With feathers of Chantilly lace and hooves of translucent quartz.

  On the other hand, I’m an insular queen amidst all this exalted glee, amidst these Visa cards and platters of cheese and smoked lox. Even when I’m playing bridge, I have to worry about my ex-husband’s friends bombing my oil fields. In the dead of night, having to throw on a few things and go join the bucket line. It may be just a false alarm that a kid’s idle hands turned in or a ruse contrived by my sister to get me to my surprise party! I don’t know what to say. “For me?” or “You shouldn’t have!” or simply “I don’t know what to say.” But the simultaneous sensation of rampant happiness and anxiety results in a kind of torsion that is exhilarating.

  Aaaaaaahhh! To sleep, though, I need to be tapped not so gently on the forehead with a rubber mallet. Zzzzzzzzzzzzz …

  It feels magnificent, in this Morristown orchard, heaving apples towards the doe, with you, to end something here with this kissing and this tacitly fiducial understanding that this finality has all the taut resilience of a trampoline lofting us back next time across the flat lasagna pans that our separate individual lives have devolved towards … this monody of kissing—this flicker of emulsion.

  The germs in her nostril clung from tiny hairs which bristled like stalactites, and she said “Ahhhhhhchoooooo!” And from her delicious mouth sallied forth bits of a cyclist moving from left to right, bits of blue body-warm linen, bits of a tattle, bits of sky—of its blue polyhedra, bits of a spritz.

  — Gesundheit.

  — Thanks.

  “May I have this dance, senorita?”

  “You are indeed a wonderful man, Captain Parker!”

  — Thanks.

  PERSONAL PAGE

  Everyone throw your beach balls at Liz Fox. Tonight? Liz Fox. Someone said “Liz Fox has the copies.” Liz Fox arrived and left. O.K., enough Liz Fox anecdotes! Liz Fox said “The thicket is covered with petrol.” Liz Fox had become a trembling oil spill. Did you hear? Liz Fox wanted my recipe. Someone’s creating the “Liz Fox” look. My family was huddled around the radio when Liz
Fox said, “Today will live in infamy.” Liz Fox had a magazine and walked a crooked mile. Liz Fox is a notorious terrorist with international extortion never far from her thoughts. This is the first edition of Liz Fox. Liz Fox moved her tomato plants away from the window to keep them from freezing. “They’re cleaning Liz Fox up” was in the news. Can’t you find Liz Fox’s name in the white pages, foreign student? Standing at the far end of his yellow station-wagon, Liz Fox felt sad again. Liz Fox lost her baby and couldn’t let go but it was just her soap opera that was on. That guy fitted Liz Fox for gauntleted gloves. Liz Fox demanded that they reopen the investigation of the Attica massacre. Some guys smoked about a gram of really fine Liz Fox while they listened to records. Everyone followed Liz Fox to the out-of-the-way restaurant. Dance Liz Fox. Go! Go! Go! Go! Go! Rip your wig off! Liz Fox said “Tomorrow will be better than today was!”

  “LA VIDA”

  Who’s your father? See that over there, he said, pointing to a fifteen year old smoking a cigarette. Him. That’s my mother, he said, pointing to a pudgy guy in a fedora. You want your shot or not, he asked. Definitely, I said, I’ve been planning this trip to Europe for over three years. Well, he said, take your pants off and lie on those newspapers. As soon as the needle’s in you’ll be in Europe. He sang. Left a good job in the city. Workin for the man every night and day. Smallpox killed near everyone round here, reckon. I could hardly sputter a few words of thanks when the hay wagon jerked forward and we were off again. What are those, I asked, pointing to a cluster of make-shift tents near the high school. The teenagers who’ve left home live there. They still go to high school? I asked. Oh yes they like school very much because all their friends are there. I jumped out and ran to the front of the school. There was a tall beautiful oriental girl. She reached under her shirt, unfastened her bra, and put it around her waist like a belt. I followed her, along with another couple who’d been standing nearby, into one of the tents. I sat in the corner with the oriental girl and she cleaned some grass. The other couple was on the ground, kissing and clutching at each other. Then this happy-go-lucky guy came in and sat down with me and the oriental girl. The girl who was kissing the boy worked his pants off and tugged at his boxer shorts moaning. The boy grabbed at the tent’s flap trying to close it all the way. She wriggled out of her pants she wore no underwear. Suddenly the happy-go-lucky guy dropped his pants jumped up and entered her from behind. I’ll never forget her expression of surprise and pleasure as she arched her back and said ah ah ah!

  PANGS IN THE P.M.

  “My son’s name was Diablito Leyner. Diablito—‘little devil.’ At three years of age he was five-seven, had body hair, a deep voice, read books, danced when you took him to Isadora’s, used stick deodorant, had sex with people’s housemates, had a receding hairline, drank too much now and then, and worried about things constantly. In fact, he was almost identically like myself. He was conceived on a spring night in a first floor alcove of the geology building where I’d found a janitress stooped in front of a display case of quartz specimens, completely transfixed with an annular sample of lapis lazuli. I tip-toed in back of her, lifted her skirt up, and we mated. So, one day I was defrosting my freezer. I’d put two or three bags of frozen vegetables in the back of the toilet tank to keep them cool. Diablito approached me from behind with a copy of Paradise Lost and read a passage: ‘O foul descent! that I who erst contended / With Gods to sit the highest, am now constrain’d / Into a Beast, and mixt with bestial slime …’ I stopped hacking away at the ice and told him it was time he hit the road and find out where he was at. ‘Take a bag of peas,’ I said, ‘and remember—eat where the truckdrivers stop, the food’s bound to be good.’ That was the last I ever saw of him. He’s changed his name to Richard Finestein. And he’s failed in half a dozen business ventures. The stock market, real estate, retail clothing, insurance, you name it. People say ‘Richard Finestein—he’s got a magic wand up his ass—everything he touches turns to shit.’ Well, I’m not the kind of guy who blubbers over spilled milk, if you know what I mean—but for weeks I’d just sit in that dilapidated Boston rocker and sweat buckshot and dumdum bullets and every night at the same time, a bus passed under my window followed, three minutes later, by a harried little man running with an overnight bag. Every night. You could time an egg by it. He’d run a few blocks and then stop, take a deep breath, turn around and walk back. One night I couldn’t contain myself—I flew downstairs just in time to collar the guy as he rushed by. ‘You again!’ he raged, ‘Every night you make me miss my bus!’ And he broke my grasp and ran, as was wonted, a few blocks, stopped, took a deep breath, turned around and walked back. As he approached me, he tipped his hat and bowed, ‘Excuse my behavior before,’ he said, ‘but I was in a terrible rush,’ and walked away … and I’m left standing there and I’m thinking—I’m like the guy who’s rummaged through a ton of glazed popcorn for something to hock and comes up with nothing but a sticky hand—and I’m thinking—what the fuck am I doing—I’m an asshole … and I was drinking so much V-8 juice that I always had diarrhea and I couldn’t find a razor I liked—the twin blades would get jammed up with hair and the little disposable single blades would cut me to ribbons …”

  “Mark … Mark … Mark,” Barbara said, “like, what’s really bothering you?”

  That department store signal was in my head—Ping Ping Ping Ping.

  “Aaaaaaaw Barbara … I may have killed two or three Tai Chi students with that Datsun of mine.”

  “You could use some more tea. Say when.” she said, bending at the waist and pouring more hot water into the cup that shook in my trembling hand. Her breasts fell forward against the printed calico of her blouse. But even this movement seemed alien and incidental as did the movement of the drapes that seemed to inhale and exhale in the breeze through the open living room windows, as did the sound of the plastic knobs at the end of the drapery cords bouncing against the wall, as did the sensation of scalded flesh as tea spilled over the top of my cup onto my hand.

  “When.” I said.

  “Is Joe Safdie’s head loose?” Barb asked.

  “No Barb,” I said, “he just waves his head around that way when he talks—it’s just a habit.”

  “Is it attractive?”

  “I don’t know, Barb—you’ll have to ask another girl that question.”

  “Well tell me how it happened.”

  “It’s just a mannerism that someone develops … an idiosyncrasy.”

  “Mark … Mark … Mark … Not that. How did the accident, that you may have had, happen?”

  “Aaaaaaaaaw Barbara.…”

  Then the phone rang. It was Lisa.

  “I can’t talk now. I’m in the shower. Bye.”

  “Aaaaaaaaaaaw Barbara.… It was between Cascade and Baseline. I was on my way to Chautauqua. They move so slowly. They crossed the street so slowly.”

  “Did you kill em? Did you kill em?” she asked and her eyes got real big.

  “I don’t know. They move so slowly it’s hard to tell if they’re dead or alive.”

  “There’d be dents in your car if you hit anyone.” Barbara said, blending some soy sauce into a bowl of mayonaisse with a wicker-handled whisk.

  “I don’t know. They’re very thin—like sparrows—almost not there—with awful anorexic pallors. They’d fall like candle-pins.”

  From the window I could see my Datsun. And I could see the balled-up mimeographed sheets that teased and capered about its full tires. I kept a megaphone near the window so that in case a youth leaned on the hood or set a milk dud on the windshield and poised his fist above, I could broadcast my vehement anger below and watch him flee. The car was, after all, my responsibility. From the window, I could see the Flat-irons, not quite piebald with snow and rock and not quite hypertrophically lush with green growth—but in between. I used to stand on the balcony and watch the setting sun imbrue the sky with its puce and blue-indigo stains and then fall down, deep in the Rockies where it would rattle
around in the night like a black roulette ball. Then I’d go back inside and watch the news. Then maybe make chopped-meat and Rice-a-Roni, then have coffee. Then later take a glossy girl from the stack, from my seraglio of magazines, and rock against the cool sheets in a cool sweat and fall asleep before I could even mess.

  “There’d be blood on your car if you hit anyone.” Barbara said.

  “What?”

  “There’d be blood on your car if you hit anyone.”

  “I don’t know. I think I went right to a car wash. And then I went to Baseline Liquors.”

  “What happened there?”

  “The guy there said ‘How ya doing today?’ and I said ‘I can’t believe how much beer costs’ and he said ‘It’s really something’ and I asked ‘Does it just keep going up all the time or what?’ and he said ‘Every time they bring the fuckin stuff in—it’s gone up …’ ”

  “Wait a second,” Barbara said.

  “What?”

  “Nothing. Go on.”

  “And then I said ‘It’s always because something else from somewhere else is costing someone else more,’ and he said ‘The big companies got their heads together on this thing,’ and I said ‘The oil companies sure do’ and he reached over the counter and grabbed my lips and pulled them apart so that all my gums were showing and I had him shred one of those free entertainment guides across my teeth and with two of the shreds, I demonstrated how asymptotic lines and hyperbolae never meet and I said that this also shows why Mendel, the Austrian botanist, and Joe Tex, the American singer, would never meet—and then he began to weep. ‘What is it?’ I asked ‘I’m weeping,’ he said, ‘because I’m sad that Mendel and Joe Tex will never meet.’ ”