Indecent Proposal

by Jack Engelhard

  “Only this goes against everything we believe in,” I said. “Where do we go from here?”

  “You mean after the deed? We’ll live as always. Only with more money.”

  Practical. Logical. Too practical. Too logical.

  Yes, the deed. What about the deed?

  “I’ll always know you had been with another man.”

  “You already know. I was married before, remember? So were you.”

  “We weren’t married then, not to each other.”

  “No, but we’ve had sex with other people. That diminishes nothing between us.”

  “But that was before. This is now.”

  “So pretend it’s before.”

  Juggle time, as mystics do. The past, the present, the future were not necessarily in that order. The big mind was not fixed to the earthly procession of time. The big mind was at liberty to turn the future into the past. So who said I had a big mind?

  “Nothing will change, Josh. You’ll forget.”

  “Suppose you won’t forget?”

  “Oh, he’ll be that great? Josh, women don’t fall in love over sex. Never.”

  I was learning. Suddenly lovemaking was a trifle. A bodily function. Unless, of course, it was between people in love, and Joan and I were in love. So between us it counted. With Ibrahim it would not count. At least that was the pitch.

  She was right about this: our lives were already changed. Accepting the offer might destroy us. But rejecting the offer would surely destroy us. That million dollars would always be there, if not in our hands, then in our minds--and that would be worse.

  Women don’t fall in love over sex?

  “How many times have you had sex?” Joan asked. “With me, your ex, and other women?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t keep the books.”

  “Can you remember one performance from another?” I couldn’t.

  “You can’t because sex is simply not that special. It’s like smoking.”

  “Smoking?”

  “Ask a smoker if he can remember one cigarette from another.”

  “If it’s so ordinary, why is Ibrahim willing to pay a million dollars for you?”

  “Oh--temptation is something else. Temptation is something else.”

  Again she was right. This was beginning to baffle me. Everybody was right. Somebody had to be wrong.

  So maybe that’s it, after all…sex is nothing… temptation is everything.

  As for Joan, I could not get the measure of her sincerity. Surely, I thought, she was playing me, testing me, judging me. The truth was there, behind that smile she kept flaring on and off. But I did not know what it was, the truth. I did not know the truth about Joan. Maybe there was no truth, about her, about me, about anybody. Maybe there was no such thing as a steadfast heart.

  Temptation was something else all right. But perhaps we were talking about another sort of temptation. Not Ibrahim’s, but hers. She was, after all, the girl who believed in trying everything once, and what a once this would be!

  The lack of outrage on her part taunted me. She seemed too willing. No doubts, no protests, no inhibitions, no indignation from this lady who so believed in the sanctity of the female self. No revulsion from this lady who had hated it when people near her coughed, sneezed, scratched or only cleared their throats.

  No fealty from this lady who once said she’d kill me if she caught me with another woman. Nothing but acquiescence and curiosity and something approaching delight.

  She should be horrified, I thought, and yet she isn’t. Her body, man! Never mind this business about heart, mind and soul. It’s supposed to be a package deal, this. What do they dream of at night in their pink bedrooms on the Main Line?

  As for me, I was feeling the sting of betrayal. But who was the betrayer? I was as guilty as Joan.

  You want me to go ahead with this, she said.

  This could not be true. Although, yes, I did compromise myself five days out of every week and so you figure what’s one night?--for the lady. This one’s on her. For the big payoff. Yes, her turn.

  Think of the rewards! This payday was unto ever-lasting.

  So is it right? No.

  But is it wrong?

  Can something be right and wrong, and is there such a thing as a small sin?

  Is one night of adultery the same as a lifetime of it, and is it okay if the husband consents?

  Never.

  Absolutely never.

  “Actually, it’s not prostitution,” she now said.

  “Actually, it is.”

  “No, just the opposite. We get this one night over with and we’re home free. The way we’ve been living, isn’t that prostitution? Others dictating to you! Using you. Isn’t that the very definition of prostitution? If anything, we’d be reversing the prostitution going on every day in our lives.”

  “That’s called rationalizing.”

  “Or reality.”

  Ask yourself this question, I thought. The test of tests. Suppose your mother, your holy mother, had been offered this same indecent proposal? What would you have wanted her to do? Turn it down, of course!

  Oh, really?

  Remember her...rushing to turn off the radio before the live-in landlord came home, and his finding out about it, clever and cunning Mr. Sherchock, by placing his hand atop the radio--and behold! It was warm.

  Such wisdom all of a sudden from a man who owned a beauty shop on Park Avenue, a bachelor who paraded his women for us and left cigar ashes on the bureau to test Mother’s efficiency. Nothing better to do with his time but think of such things, think of placing his hand on the radio--and it was warm!

  The horror on her face, this woman who in the Old Country had had three housemaids waiting on her.

  The reprimand: “Didn’t I tell you, Mrs. Kane? Didn’t I warn you? No radio. I have no money to burn on electricity. I better not catch you doing this ever again.”

  Remember her gift for liveliness, her flair for joy. Then that day her shoulders sagged and her mouth fell and the bounce left her step and the light departed from her eyes and even her voice, as from a distant world.

  All of this forever, till the end of her days, for she had seen the truth in a flash, and not on a day when Father came home with bad news but good news. He’d found a new partner and was starting a new business and in a year, you’ll see, we’ll be back dancing with the Bronfmans.

  On this day she knew. It would never get better.

  For twenty more years nothing ever stirred her again. She went through the motions. Life was something she had already done and the rest of it was waiting to die. Even her son’s coming home the war hero was as nothing to her. Her husband, let him celebrate, but to her a hero was a man who made money.

  Poverty, never mind the want, but the degradation, this was the most dreadful thing.

  Now...turn back to that moment of her revelation, and now make that offer.

  Accept or reject?

  Talking about life, a one and only life.

  Reject, of course. This can never be right. And yet...does a person have the right to choose misery? Given the other choice, meaning a million dollars in exchange of a night?

  Yes, choose the good so that you may live. But suppose it’s the bad that lets you live?

  Chapter 12

  WE TOOK that question for a walk. Joan now suggested we stroll the Boardwalk to lift this weight from us, and on first stepping out we felt restored by the crowds moving from one casino to another, the sounds of laughter and couples walking arm in arm. For a moment we stopped by the pavilion in front of the Tropicana and listened to the oompah band and watched a man doing flips and turns on roller skates atop a picnic table... reminding me of such spectacles on Mount Royal in Montreal, a man exactly like this being introduced as “direct from the United Cigar Company...”

  We stopped in Atlantic Books. The latest Philip Roth was out in paperback. As she picked her copy I heard two women, both minimum-wage employees, talking of a near
by novelty shop. One said to the other:

  “Just do it. It’ll make the day go by faster.”

  What a way to live!

  Make the day go by faster.

  So it was like this for just about everybody. There were levels and degrees, but no person was able to deny another’s sense of affliction. This was suffering.

  Outside, I asked Joan, “Who said we all lead lives of quiet desperation?”

  She said, “Thoreau.”

  “Walden?”

  “Yup. ‘The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind.’”

  Of course she knew the quote, Joan being Joan.

  She said, “Yes, Josh. The secret’s out. Thoreau knew it ahead of you.”

  “Do you agree with him?”

  “Oh I don’t know. I don’t know. No, I don’t think so. I’ve seen too many happy people.”

  “So have I. For an hour. A day. Maybe even a week. But day after day?”

  “Oh yes,” she said. “Day after day. My sister Sunny...”

  “All right, she’s sunny.”

  “Yes she is, and there are more where she came from.”

  “But suppose he’s right...”

  “Of course there are plenty of miserable people...”

  “And suppose Ibrahim’s offer went to one of them?”

  She thought this over. “They’d take it,” she said. “First, if you put it on a hypothetical level, sure they’d say no. That’s a reflex. Who me? Never. But put the power of real money behind the question and the answer is yes. Yes.”

  “So that’s us,” I said.

  “That’s us.”

  “Even though we’re not miserable.”

  “That’s a state of mind. Your state.”

  “My state.”

  “Yes. You’re obsessed with money.”

  “But I’m not miserable.”

  “A person who doesn’t have what he wants, what’s that?”

  “So I am miserable.”

  “No. Unhappy. You’re unhappy and frustrated and that’s why this makes sense.”

  “That’s the only reason.”

  “That’s the only reason,” she said.

  “You don’t mind...being broke...driving around in that car...”

  “I do mind. But so what? We’re not alone.”

  “You can take it, right?”

  “I can. But you can’t. That’s why I’m game.”

  I resisted saying maybe too game.

  “You never wondered if I’d ever get us...comfortable?”

  “No,” she said. “I have confidence in you. You have talent. People are bound to realize your worth.”

  So much like my mother. The same cheerfulness and always so sure about the future. Just like my mother, and just like my mother Joan would wake up one day and see it all before her. Futility.

  Was this the Joan I was making? The same woman my father had made of his wife?

  In that case, Joan was right. It made sense. There was nothing to do but accept.

  No way.

  I did agree on this: I had talent. People were bound to recognize my worth. Oh sure.

  But suppose this happened only after you were good and dead? After all, most people lived and died just like this.

  I said, “The way we’re talking, it’s like a farewell.”

  As unexpected as an ambush, she stopped, turned and pulled me into a powerful embrace, planting wet kisses all over my face. “Never. Never, never, never. Nothing changes. Nothing. You’re my husband and lover forever.”

  This made it all the more like a farewell.

  We passed Convention Hall, which soon would be jumping for the Miss America Pageant, and then we caught a tram by leaping up while it was still moving. Joan was absolutely delighted by this cheap thrill.

  We sat closely together.

  “We don’t do this often enough,” she said, waving back to the people on foot.

  Down on the beach a muscle-man in swim trunks was standing on one hand, and the lady next to Joan said, “There he is. He does it every night. That’s all he does. I wonder if he’s crazy.”

  Even now in the dark, the locals were walking their dogs, the dogs skipping along the water’s edge and on the sand, couples, silhouetted and isolated against the expanse of the sea, were doing what was private.

  In the pavilions and on the benches along the Boardwalk railing the elderly were gathered and seated, and some were not so old. There was talking and gesturing and whispering and laughter, clusters of people from all over, all over the world, accents and dialects and languages of all sorts, even English.

  After a drought of some thirty years, Atlantic City was again the place to be. The Boardwalk, slowly coming back, was the place to be seen.

  I watched her from the corner of my eye. She was positively happy now...forgetting that offer from Ibrahim that had us in turmoil. She was exultant, smiling and laughing and making small talk with the other passengers on the tram. As much as she tried to be plain and ordinary and simple there was something about it, like a queen come down to mix with her subjects. She was wearing a white shawl and around her shoulders it was draped as a royal vestment. This lady had been to the Riviera! How could she get a kick out of this?

  She had been in private planes, sports cars, speedboats, yet there was something so solid about her. She had once said, “I’m really a Jewish mother at heart. Oy vey.”

  To test this I took her to the Orthodox synagogue on Castor for the high holy days, and she was appalled.

  “Oh it was beautiful,” she had said. “The cantor and all the men in white. Such beautiful melodies and the Torah scrolls with their glittering crowns. Too bad I couldn’t see or hear most of it because they keep their women in the back. Now why is that, Josh?”

  “Because...Joan, it’s too involved.”

  “In the back?”

  “Talk to Gloria Steinem.”

  “In the back?”

  “Trust me, Jewish women are more equal than men.”

  “I’ll go wherever you want, Josh, really I will, but not second-class.”

  “Women don’t have to go to synagogue anyway.”

  “But I want to go. Next time we’ll go Reform again. It’s so much like church. Why?”

  “Why what?”

  “Why don’t women have to go to synagogue?”

  “Because their prayers are already answered, just by being women.”

  “That is beautiful. No, I mean it. That’s beautiful. But one day I’ll talk to God about this business of keeping women hidden in the back. She should know about this.”

  Now the tram passed Bally’s Park Place and the Claridge and the Sands and we rode all the way to Showboat, where we got off. “Shall we go in?” said Joan.

  “No,” I said.

  “You don’t want to play?”

  “No.”

  “You’ve never tried it here.”

  “They’re all the same.”

  “This doesn’t sound like my Josh.”

  Snap out of it, I thought. This is a great night. There really isn’t much more.

  She pulled me indoors and said, “All right, I’m going to play.”

  Which did not sound like Joan.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Something.”

  “Look out, Showboat!”

  She followed the crowds and found that the big action was by the video poker machines, the hottest games in town. Here, unlike most other slots--here you had choices and could make decisions.

  “Do you even know how to play poker?” I said.

  “Josh, see, you don’t know me. Of course I know the rules of poker, silly boy. Played it in college.”

  “Strip poker?”

  “Maybe once,” she said. Our Lady of Once.

  Mostly women, but a good number of men, were working the machi
nes, tapping the buttons.

  “Hold this machine,” she said--the only one available amid the crush of players.

  She got change at a Change Booth and came back with a roll of forty quarters. She was excited.

  She put in a quarter at a time.

  “Hon,” said a lady, “a quarter at a time gets you nothing. You got to put in all five quarters.”

  “Thanks,” said Joan, but continued slipping in a quarter per play.

  “I know this machine,” said the lady. “It can get hot.”

  Sure enough it did. Four of the cards were diamonds, and in this order: ten, jack, queen, king. She needed an ace of diamonds for the jackpot. “Josh,” she said, “do you see this?”

  “Yes,” I said, but she only had a quarter going, and she’d only get back some more quarters, instead of a thousand dollars had she put in all five, as the lady had said.

  Joan held the four good cards, pressed Draw, and up came the ace of diamonds. Royal flush.

  She yelped, “Josh!”

  The machine rang up a few credits.

  “You just lost a thousand dollars,” said the lady.

  Joan didn’t mind. She’d gotten herself a royal flush!

  I didn’t mind, either. So what? A thousand dollars.

  I mean so what? A thousand dollars.

  Who needs a thousand dollars?

  I was sweating. What happened to the air conditioning? Don’t they air condition these places anymore? I thought of that movie, Hole in the Head or something, with Frank Sinatra playing the poor shiftless guy against the big shot Keenan Wynn. They’re pals from way back. Sinatra trying to pass himself off as a successful guy himself. They’re at the racetrack, both with big bets on the same horse, Sinatra having sunk all his money on this horse. The horses are off and running. Here’s Sinatra up on his toes, sweating and hollering, and there’s Wynn, seated and calm because it’s just another bet for him, watching Sinatra, seeing the desperation, the loser in him.

  In an instant, the loser had given himself away.