“How many Abrahams do we know?” I said. “And his name is not Abraham, it’s Ibrahim.”
“Oh. Forgive me.”
“You’re being so smart this morning.”
“I simply don’t understand the fuss, my darling Josh.”
“Guess you had to be there,” I said.
“What does he want?”
“Want? What does he want?”
“Well, you said he’s calling back. Yes, what does he want?”
“Beats me.”
“Well he wants something.”
“Come on, Joan.”
“Where’s your cynicism?” she asked.
“I don’t bring it to Atlantic City.”
“He wants something,” she said.
“I have nothing to give.”
“We all have something to give.”
Strange for her to be so cautious. More like her to be first in her sorority to date a black man (and retain her chastity until she got married), and race thoroughbreds in Virginia, and surf the waves of California and even, once, ride the back seat of a Hell’s Angels motorcycle. That was Joan.
I said, “I brought Ibrahim luck last night. Maybe that’s what I have to give.”
“You say he’s a billionaire, this Abraham...”
“Ibrahim, Joan.”
“This Ibrahim. You say he’s a billionaire--and he needs your luck.”
“Maybe I need his.”
“Aha! Now we’re talking. You want something from him. Admit it, Josh, you do.”
“I do not.”
“You do, too.” She shook her head and then posted loving eyes. “Sometimes, Josh, you’re so transparent. You can be such a boy. Men never do grow up. But then, that’s what charms the daylights out of us poor helpless women.”
“Joan, my life changed last night. That’s all.”
“Oh?” she said, flashing that brilliant smile. “But you look the same.”
There, I thought, she’s into that Main Line tease, devilishly irreverent and playful, making herself a bad girl for the delight of it, savoring the exasperation she provoked.
There was also this--her fear of losing her individuality inside the man she loved. So to defend her uniqueness she rebelled, and not only against me but against anything that suggested authority. There was a story, which she never denied, that when her English professor declared Kafka an overrated talent she--this daughter of Old Money and Protestant ethics--gave him the finger.
“So do we forget the beach this afternoon?” she said.
“Why?”
“I thought we’d stay in our room and wait for Abraham to phone.”
“Not funny, Joan. But yes, I am waiting for his phone call.”
“But you don’t know why.”
“No, I don’t know why.”
“But you are expecting something exciting. Like maybe he’ll crown you prince.”
“In a sense he already has. Like the man who shook the hand of J. P. Morgan on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. He said, ‘Mr. Morgan, I would like you to do me a favor.’ Morgan said, ‘I have already done it, sir.’ All right? So that’s what Ibrahim did. Joan, read my lips. I played for millions!”
“But his,” she said. “Not yours.”
“Good guess.”
“Are you really that impressed by money? You shouldn’t be. It’s unbecoming.”
Her remark embarrassed me and I asked for the check. The Galaxy restaurant was getting crowded anyhow, though these were my people. My fellow Americans and my fellow gamblers, here for the cure as I was. As if in Lourdes, here we were, the financially lame. Here to make the correction. There had been a mistake. We hadn’t received it at birth, we failed to earn it by the work of our hands, so we were here to wrest it from Lady Chance. Heaven had forgotten to bless us. Maybe a slot machine or blackjack table would hear our prayer.
Even the rich were here for the same reason. Is anybody rich enough?
We went for a stroll on the Boardwalk as was our custom after breakfast, and it was true that I resisted each step that took me from the Galaxy and Ibrahim’s phone call. What did he want? Was it something good or something bad? Or nothing at all?
“Maybe he won’t even call again,” Joan said, “and you’ll have to go back to life as a commoner.”
I didn’t mind the ribbing but wasn’t nuts about what she had said before, about it being unbecoming, my being so impressed by money. For money, her mother the Main Line matriarch had tried to split us up. Out there in Bryn Mawr, visiting her parents for Christmas, her mother had hustled me aside saying, “My daughter plays tennis and golf. What do you play?”
Play, I thought. Does everyone have to play?
“She rides horses.”
“I once rode a horse,” I said. “His name was Malcolm.”
“Do you belong to things?”
“Nothing at all,” I had said.
“I mean clubs and fraternities and chambers of commerce and the like. Joan belongs to everything.”
“Everything?” I said.
“Everything,” she said.
“I guess that’s possible. Maybe not desirable.”
“What’s your passion?”
Did I dare say Israel on the Main Line? Was it polite? I did and she said, “That’s a country.”
“I know.”
“Have you ever been to Europe?”
“I come from Europe.”
She said, “This won’t last, you know. This marriage. Joan has rich tastes.”
“I know it won’t last,” I said.
“You know?”
“We thought we’d give it a try for a year or two.”
“That’s not funny.”
Her father, he was funny. He told this joke about Jesus, the four ways we know he was Jewish: “He didn’t leave home till he was thirty. He went into his father’s business. His mother thought he was God. He thought his mother was a virgin.”
“Father!” Joan said. “That’s positively offensive.”
To which her father responded, “Babe, nothing is offensive.”
Later I had said, “Father? You call your father Father? Not Dad or Daddy?”
“I love him,” she said, “but we’re not alike. Frankly, I can’t believe they’re my parents. In fact I don’t.”
By this time she had already been disinherited on my account. How much, I asked, was he worth?
“No more, no less than any other flesh.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Oh what’s the difference, Josh? You and money.”
“I want to know. It’s titillating.”
“Fifty million. So I hear.”
“Dollars?”
“It’s all tied up.”
“You gave that up for me? You’re crazy.”
“I have no idea how much of that was to be mine. And I don’t care. Anyway, it would be more like several hundred thousand, so don’t get too high on yourself. Besides, he’d have to die first and he never will.”
Joan never defended her father and only once her mother. A high school principal had complained that Joan was sensitive and her mother had replied, “Exactly, sir. Joan was raised to be sensitive.”
Joan liked that and so did I.
I never told Joan about my conversation with her mother. I also never told her mother that I played hockey and baseball because hockey was not the same as tennis and baseball was not the same as golf. I also never told her that forget horses, I rode camels in Sinai and tanks in Golan.
When we got to Ocean One, Joan sensed the urgency of my mood and we turned back and she said, “Still thinking big thoughts?”
“Listen,” I said, “before this year is out I’m buying you a mink coat. I’m buying us a house. I’m buying you a car. Yes, a car. I’m bound to get hot. I told you, I’m due.”
The car, our one and only car, was a Malibu that had turned thirteen. This machine had a terrible problem--in human terms, flatulence.
Th
e backfiring from the tailpipe was constant, and as loud as machine-gun blasts. The loudest “Bang!” came right after the engine was turned off. Windows shook. People dove for cover.
But as we got close to the Galaxy it was she who brought up Ibrahim, and she did not call him Abraham.
“You say he’s handsome,” she said.
“Oh yes--and there was something else about last night. I proved something.”
“Oh?”
“That I’m not a slave to people like that.”
“Oh?”
“Cut it, Joan.”
“All right. How are you not a slave to people like that?”
“I won all this money for him and he promised to make it worth my time.”
“Maybe slip you a couple of million.”
“You’re not being serious, Joan.”
“He didn’t keep his word, right? Just like an Arab.”
“Joan, you’re being very bad.”
“Well isn’t that the point?”
“No!”
“You don’t hate Arabs.”
“I don’t hate anybody.”
“Even Arabs.”
“That’s another story and we’re not talking about that.”
“That’s right. We’re talking about Ibrahim.”
I said, “He’s so rich he’s not even an Arab anymore.”
She laughed. “So this Arab who isn’t even an Arab he’s so rich...”
“He owns people, Joan.”
“Nobody owns people, Josh.”
“Oh, he does. But last night he didn’t own me.”
“How so?”
“I didn’t ask for the money. It was coming to me but I did not get up on my hind legs begging.”
“Yes, I know,” she said, “like your parents. You’re very sensitive about that still and won’t take a penny that’s not yours--but this wasn’t borrowing, Josh. I’m sorry. You should have been paid.”
“What about self-esteem?”
“If you had self-esteem, Josh, you would have demanded what’s yours.”
“No.”
“Yes. He took advantage of you and I don’t like that. Don’t they do enough of that where you work?”
“I get paid.”
“They take advantage of you, Josh. So did Ibrahim. But you know what I think? I think that’s why he’s calling you. I think he’s calling you to pay you for all you did last night. It’s only right.”
I agreed. He owed me and it was time to pay up.
By the time we got back to our room at the hotel we were very satisfied with ourselves for having arrived at this satisfactory conclusion. When we walked in, sure enough there was the red message light blinking on the phone.
“Don’t call yet,” said Joan. As she slipped out of her clothes I agreed it was unseemly on my part to be overly anxious about Ibrahim. Joan and I made love, even tried something new, and when came the big bang she yelped the big yelp followed by sighs and whimpering, and this, I thought, the sounds--this was more special than anything.
Not like people married for almost three years, we still made love like people in danger. Like beloved infidels.
Then I dialed the operator and she gave me the information.
“Ibrahim,” I said. “Left his number. Wants me to call him.”
“Well?”
“I don’t know.”
“But you were so eager. As if your whole life depended on this.”
“Now I’m thinking.”
I wasn’t sure. I was troubled. I had not told the man where I was staying yet he knew where to reach me. A man like that, of course, had ways. That was not what troubled me.
An ordinary friendship was out of the question. I was not in his league. Not even in the minors. He wanted something from me all right. Even at the blackjack table, enthralled as he was in our game, I felt the press of his attention. He knew me.
Even when I had been a face in the crowd I sensed his pull. He had me singled out. When he beckoned me to join him, the gesture, the raising of the royal hand, the turn of the regal face, was no impulse. He had it planned. The more I thought of it the more certain I was that I was being set up.
For what?
That was a joke, of course--that I brought him good luck. He wanted something else.
“I’m ready for a night out on the town with the world’s richest man,” said Joan. “How about you?”
Joan was ready for anything, always. She lived by the philosophy that everything ought to be tried once. She did not believe in a hereafter. This life was the beginning and the end.
I dialed Ibrahim’s number at the Versailles, the number to his suite, and there was no answer. I let the phone ring seven times before I hung up. Joan was disappointed--but then the phone rang.
“This is Joshua?”
“Yes.”
“Thank you for returning my call,” said Ibrahim.
I asked him how he knew I had called. He knew more than that.
“You rang seven times,” he said.
Which told him something, that I was interested. A man did not let a phone ring seven times unless he was interested, and Ibrahim had been there, at the other end, counting, measuring the degree of vulnerability.
“We ended it too quickly last night,” he said. “I never had a chance to repay your kindness. The rudeness completely mine. You were extraordinary, Mr. Kane. I must make amends. Would you and your wife join us for dinner tonight?”
How did he know I had a wife? My wedding ring, to be sure.
“We already have plans for dinner,” I said to win back the advantage of indifference.
“That’s a shame,” he said.
“Thank you for calling,” I said.
“Tomorrow night then. Yes, we’ll have dinner tomorrow night. I insist.”
We made arrangements and after I hung up, I said, “The prince insists.”
Joan was thrilled. She did a pirouette. Then she hugged me--or was it someone else?
Chapter 4
WE GOT to the beach early the following day because Joan said she wanted a quick start on the sun--she was still “too white” in places. A jealous person might wonder about her resolve. We were meeting Ibrahim this evening. Fortunately I was not a jealous person and didn’t ask why this lady, usually so casual about her abundant good looks, suddenly required embellishments.
She was stretched flat on the blanket like a corpse, facing up, eyes firmly shut, silent for now. I knew she was alive because when the sun moved so did she, afraid to be cheated out of a single ray.
Around us were other bodies, scattered left and right as far as the eye could see, some under white and red beach umbrellas. Everyone was relaxed and slow, into a beach tempo, and the sounds of talk and laughter and radios were soft, muffled by the waves that came in sparkling off the horizon.
I heard the familiar drone and looked up. A plane bearing an advertisement for a seafood restaurant passed overhead. Down by the water couples were walking hand-in-hand, the young tossing Frisbees, the even younger building sandcastles. To me the beach was a good time--only hurry up and get it over with.
Joan had brought the Walkman along and we were listening to Mä Vlast--she had a knack for finding the right station amid the swarm of hard rock--and I wondered what she was thinking.
In college, at NYU, I wrote a short story about a man who arrives home unexpectedly. He is happily married and his wife utterly loving and devoted to him and no, he does not catch her in bed with another man. But this: he hears her talking on the phone saying, “Oh, he’s such an asshole.”
He turns and never goes back home, devastated to the end of his days.
I had based the story on an actual person, and though the story never got published it was a thought that always intrigued me--that we never know what another person is thinking. We don’t know the human heart. Not even our own.
So it was Mä Vlast on the radio and it was goose-bump time when it came to the Moldau, which Smetana had written
for a Czech river and which Israel had taken for its national hymn, “Hatikvah.” When this refrain began to swell Joan turned for an instant to smile and pat my face. “That’s you,” she whispered. “My hero.”
She understood this and then again she didn’t. She certainly didn’t that time she had said she wondered, only wondered, if it was worth having a country if it meant killing innocent people. Meaning, I supposed, the Arabs, two hundred million of them, all innocent, against six and a half million Jews, all guilty, as usual.
But she was mostly a pacifist and had meant no harm, though I had a bad habit of getting emotional about all this. My father was partly to blame.
It began in May 1948, in Montreal. We were still fresh and raw from escaping Hitler and losing the rest of the family. My father had walked up Fairmount Street to buy the Yiddish paper and came back in tears, not for the headline that declared Israel a state, but for the glorious picture on the front page. He said, “Look. A Jewish soldier!”
So that’s what I became in 1967, not a hero, but a Jewish soldier. I got on a plane and met a man named Dovid ben Yiddidya, who said, “We’re looking for a pitcher.”
I said, “Softball or hardball?”
He said, “Grenades.”
I became a pitcher for Zahal, the Israel Defense Forces--nobody there knew how to throw, not like an American--and they gave me a uniform and said follow those men.
I got to know Shmuel and Shlomo, Moshe and Doodoo, Gavie and Hezie, Avi and Avri, Yonah and Yanni. There we were in Sinai and I pitched against Egypt. When Sinai was taken we roared back and I pitched against Jordan, and we won, and I knew we won when we stood by the Western Wall and I heard the shofar and everybody wept.
This nobody would ever understand.
Now I was getting tired of the beach and anxious about our upcoming evening with Ibrahim. Then, the urge hit me--the urge to gamble. Maybe now it would happen, the million-dollar hot streak, and there’d never again be a need to suck up to anybody.
“I’m going back to play some,” I said to Joan. “You coming?”
She was surprised.
“Restless?”
“I guess.”
“You’re a bad boy.”
“I know.”
“I’m staying. Meet you back here.”
Indecent Proposal Page 4